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Joshi, Vijay - India's Long Road - The Search For Prosperity (2017, Oxford University Press) - 23

The document discusses India's strategic positioning in a multipolar world, emphasizing a balancing act between the United States and China while focusing on economic cooperation and military deterrence. It suggests that India should prioritize domestic challenges and economic growth over pursuing Great Power status, as its global influence will naturally increase with prosperity. The book is structured into five parts, covering India's history, economic performance, and the challenges of achieving rapid growth.

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Liv Fernandez
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177 views1 page

Joshi, Vijay - India's Long Road - The Search For Prosperity (2017, Oxford University Press) - 23

The document discusses India's strategic positioning in a multipolar world, emphasizing a balancing act between the United States and China while focusing on economic cooperation and military deterrence. It suggests that India should prioritize domestic challenges and economic growth over pursuing Great Power status, as its global influence will naturally increase with prosperity. The book is structured into five parts, covering India's history, economic performance, and the challenges of achieving rapid growth.

Uploaded by

Liv Fernandez
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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10

The world is now multipolar but with United States–​China rivalry as one
of its major axes. As of now, India’s best strategy is surely to continue with
its delicate balancing act between the two. With China, it should cooperate
economically, as it has done in supporting the Brics Bank and the Asian
Infrastructure Investment Bank as a junior partner, but at the same time
build enough strength, conventional or ‘asymmetric’, to deter China from
military adventurism. With the United States, it should keep the possibil-
ity of an alliance open but not enter into a formal pact unless it became
absolutely necessary. (This is because India does not see eye to eye with the
United States on many issues. There are good reasons to preserve strategic
autonomy unless a major conflict with China seems imminent.)
Should India start thinking of itself as a potential ‘Great Power’? The
term was used by the former US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in
New Delhi in 2005, and harks back to 19th century Europe. Despite India’s
growing international significance, deliberate pursuit of Great Power status
would surely be unwise, if not foolish. New Delhi has many major domestic
challenges to keep it fully occupied for a long time to come. Moreover, the
fundamental source of India’s power is going to be economic. If India can
maintain high growth rates and use that growth to achieve widespread pros-
perity within a democratic system, its national security, broadly defined,
will improve, and with that, its global influence will inevitably grow. The
role of foreign policy should be to ensure that the balance of power in the
country’s neighbourhood, as well as India’s diplomatic alliances and foot-
print, are such as to enable and reinforce India’s pursuit of high-​quality and
rapid economic development. More ambitious foreign policy goals would
either obstruct the achievement of this objective or would be attained quite
naturally in the course of time by achieving it.

READER’S GUIDE

The book has five parts. Part I is introductory. Chapter 1 (the present chap-
ter) sets the stage and explains briefly what the book is about and what it is
not about. Chapter 2 is a broad-​brush review of India’s post-​independence
history and economic performance. Chapter  3 defines the aims of eco-
nomic development, and weighs up the roles of the state and the market in
achieving them.
Part II focuses on the challenge of accomplishing rapid growth. Chapter 4
begins with an introduction to the sources of growth in India, and proceeds
to examine one of these, viz. capital accumulation, and the ‘animal spirits’
that drive it. Chapter 5 analyzes India’s ‘employment problem’ and how it

[ 10 ]  Setting the Stage

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