- Prelims: Current events of international importance, GDP, foreign exchange reserve, Parliamentary Committee on External Affairs etc
- Mains GS Paper II & III: Bilateral, regional and global grouping and agreements involving India or affecting India’s interests.
ARTICLE HIGHLIGHTS
- India as global power:
- Some argue that India should aspire to be a great power and assert its growing power internationally
- Others argue that India should focus on the uplift of millions of its people above the poverty line, improve governance and reconcile within the country before venturing into making a better world.
INSIGHTS ON THE ISSUE
Context
Challenges India faced:
- India in 1991: a weak, poor, and deeply beleaguered country with a foreign exchange reserve of $8(five point eight)billion and a nominal GDP of $270 billion.
- For a population of 846 million, around 50% were poor.
- Despite efforts to diffuse fears of a nuclear war
- prospects of an India-Pakistan clash loomed
- violence in Kashmir was at its peak.
- The collapse of India’s trusted partner, the Soviet Union on the one hand, and strained relations with the United States on the other.
India’s stand now(2023):
- India’s foreign exchange reserve has grown to around $600 billion
- A war with Pakistan is not something India is concerned about now.
- China has taken that place though — and there is a general sense of foreign policy optimism.
- The reforms initiated after the 1991 economic crisis led to higher GDP growth and significant poverty reduction.
- India is ranked as the world’s fifth largest economy, India’s nominal GDP could soon touch $4 trillion
- It has one of the largest militaries in the world with over a hundred nuclear weapons.
- The U.S. is now one of India’s closest friends, and India has strong relationships with several powerful states around the world.
- India is one of the pivotal swing powers of the contemporary international system
- strategically located, and often playing both sides with great elan.
- The great power politics around the Ukraine war brought renewed focus on India’s role in world politics.
- The U.S. and the wealthy West want India to be on their side.
- There are serious suggestions that India should mediate between Ukraine and Russia to bring an end to the war.
- India uses the language of mediation in global crises.
- India acts as a bridge between the north and south and east and west, indirectly indicating that it is a major ‘pole’ in world politics.
- India’s national power has increased dramatically, making it a force with system-shaping capabilities and intentions.
Challenges for India:
- Despite being the fifth largest economy in the world, its GDP per capita was $1,947 in 2021 whereas that of Bangladesh, at $2,227, was more than that of India
- Though Bangladesh is only the 40th largest military in the world.
- GDP and military strength do not equal the well-being of a country’s citizens.
- India is beset with major infrastructural and governance issues
- Ease of doing business may have improved, but starting a business without a bribe is still not easy.
- Regional, caste, ethnic and religious divisions run deep.
- India’s domestic challenges will continue to distract the attention of its political leaders from attending to global problems.
- Poverty and well-being of millions living under the poverty line: A task that is bound to divert its attention from serious external engagements.
- India is managed by career bureaucrats who usually do not diverge from precedents and avoid taking even remotely risky decisions.
- Without political will, foreign policy tends to be on autopilot.
- A weak domestic economy prevents politicians from allocating adequate resources for foreign policy objectives.
- Parliamentary Committee on External Affairs (2022-23): It observed that “despite an increase in the overall budget allocation of the Government of India, the allocation made to MEA in percentage terms has witnessed a downward turn during the last four years
- The committee further said we “do not find such allocation in consonance with the country’s rising aspirations and growing global stature”.
Way Forward
- The kind of power India would become will not only define the future of the world in important ways, but, most definitely, shape the destiny of its citizens.
- Even though India’s domestic inabilities will continue to moderate its ability to influence the world order befitting of its size and ambition.
- Being unwilling to engage and shape it would be a strategic blunder.
- If you are not a rule shaper, you are a rule taker: India has no choice but to influence and shape the global order to meet its foreign policy objectives.
- It has a significant impact on its economic growth, security environment and geopolitical and geo economic interests.
- Be it debt restructuring, climate change, global trade or non-proliferation,India can ill afford to let someone else make the rules and abide by them.
QUESTION FOR PRACTICE
The long sustained image of India as a leader of the oppressed and marginalized nations has disappeared on account of its new found role in the emerging global order.’ Elaborate(UPSC 2019) (200 WORDS, 10 MARKS)
