Abstract
This Chapter explores the conception of India as a rising power. In the last two decades, India is said to be a growing economic power which is interested in pursuing political and strategic gains. It is indeed listed as a large economy, comparable to other BRIC economies, such as Brazil, Russia, and China. However, these understandings about rising India can be questioned. Taking a social constructivist starting point, this Chapter argues how social phenomena, such as India’s rise, are shaped by human interaction through dialogue between individuals and groups. Exploring India’s so-called emergence in terms of economic growth, military potential, and foreign policy outlook, it demonstrates that these “social facts” can be further interrogated. One interpretation can gain more prominence than the other. The understandings of India are embedded within a larger debate about global transformation which presupposes a particular view of the international order and India’s position within it.
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Notes
- 1.
A flurry of acronyms were introduced, such as “BRICS” with the inclusion of South Africa. Other grouping acronyms for growing economies were CIVETS: Colombia, Indonesia, Vietnam, Egypt, Turkey and South Africa; and MINT: Mexico, Indonesia, Nigeria, and Turkey
- 2.
An example of these discussions about India’s rise and others was a video produced by the European Union to appeal to young voters, but which was quickly retracted after criticism of racist imagery of an aggressive kungfu-fighter and turbaned knife-wielder. The video seemed to imply that the EU should remain strong against China, India and Brazil through its own enlargement. As it said: “The more we are, the stronger we are” (See The Guardian 2012).
- 3.
“It is only a slight exaggeration,” William Wohlforth once stated, “to say that the academic study of international relations is a debate about realism” (Wohlforth 2008: 131). Even though realism is currently somewhat less dominant, it has co-opted other theories in the past, such as neoliberalism.
- 4.
- 5.
When the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) waged the “India Shining” election campaign through various advertisement channels in 2004 in order to celebrate the success of economic advances, the Indian population was thus not hailed into this self-understanding as critics were quick to point out the large inequalities.
- 6.
Foreign direct investment to India is much lower than in other BRIC countries. In order to attract foreign direct investment, Menon argues that more changes are necessary regarding subsidies on basic products, overregulation due to rigid labor laws, protection of certain sectors including agriculture and services, and tax evasion (2014: 49–50).
- 7.
There have been some different developments. The Food Security Bill was passed in 2013 which provided three-quarters of the rural population and 50% of the urban population with 5 kilos of grain for each person per month at lower prices (Sharma 2016: 197)
- 8.
In the 1980s, Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi also implemented modest liberal reforms by lowering taxes and tariffs, which increased the growth to 5.6%. Yet, his policy reinforced a corrupt regime which created a fiscal crisis in the 1990s (Das 2006).
- 9.
Since the end of the Cold War, the military relationship changed, because the Russian Federation had not the means to supply all the required equipments
- 10.
The reference to the importance of India’s cultural traits can also be found in a report by Rodney Jones prepared for the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (2006: 4–9).
- 11.
See for different views, for instance, the compilation of essays by George Tanham and commentaries of Indian scholars (1996).
- 12.
See also van de Wetering (2016a). The book argues that there are four continuous themes that are coined with regard to US-India relations, including the non-alignment theme.
- 13.
According to Chacko, these assumptions can also be found in Indian foreign policy literature; quite a few authors argue that India should have a more realist foreign policy, such as Mohan and Pant (2012: 2–3)
- 14.
Prime Minister was initially seen as more proactive. This has become less the case, but he remains pragmatic concerning particular issues, as mentioned above.
- 15.
This region was articulated as important to the Obama administration, which was evident by the Pivot to Asia plans, by strengthening its collaboration with Japan, Australia and others.
- 16.
There were more discussions about US decline. Joffe elaborates: “In the late 1950s, it was the Sputnik shock, followed by the ‘missile gap’ trumpeted by John F. Kennedy in the 1960 presidential campaign. A decade later, Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger sounded the dirge over bipolarity, predicting a world of five, rather than two, global powers. At the end of the 1970s, Jimmy Carter’s ‘malaise’ speech invoked ‘a crisis of confidence’ that struck ‘at the very heart and soul and spirit of our national will’” (2009).
- 17.
Others agree that there was again a lively declinist debate in the 1980s. G. John Ikenberry argued: “In recent years no topic has occupied the attention of scholars of international relations more than that of American hegemonic decline. The erosion of American economic, political and military power is unmistakable” (1989: 375).
- 18.
Other scholars were also concerned with the decline of the US, especially in the literature on international regimes and hegemonic stability theory, based on realist and liberal insights. It discusses whether the stability of a regime and economic openness is most likely dependent on a single dominant power. For instance, Robert Gilpin writes about America’s declining economic and political position in American Policy in the Post-Reagan era, while Stephen Krasner discusses the decline in US external economic power and domestic constraints (Gilpin 1987: 65; Krasner 1977).
- 19.
There are more viewpoints. See, for instance, Bajpai (2002, 2014) who discusses that there are three main schools of thought: Nehruvians, hyperrealists, and neoliberals and three smaller schools, including Marxism, Hindu nationalism and Ghandianism. Stephen Cohen looks at four schools that shape Indian foreign policy-making, namely classical-Nehruvian, militant Nehruvian, conservative realism and Hindu revivalism (2002). Rahul Sagar lists four visions, namely moralists, Hindu nationalists, strategists and liberals (2009: 801). Thorsten Wojczewski, however, argues that post-Nehruvianism and its counterhegemonic discourse, the hyper-nationalist dsicsourse, are more suitable, to discuss Indian foreign policy (2018: 2).
- 20.
Smaller Asian countries, including Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan were already articulated as Asian Tigers. Several of these East Asian economies were affected by the Asian financial crisis of 1997.
- 21.
In 2011 there were the Munk debates, biannual series of debates on major policy issues which took place in Canada, entitled: “Be it resolved, the twenty-first century will belong to China” with Niall Ferguson, David Daokui Li, Henry Kissinger, and Fareed Zakaria. The former two were on the yes-side and the latter two on the no-side (Munk debates 2011). China was also discussed within US politics. For instance, the Obama administration said it “welcomes the rise of a stable, peaceful, and prosperous China” (Obama 2015: 24)
- 22.
- 23.
This also reflects Robyn Meredith’s ideas in The Elephant and the Dragon, in which she argues that India’s approach was more “slow-but-steady” while China’s was a “rocket-like rise” (2007: 11).
- 24.
However, there is more stability in Asia than assumed by International Relations theories. For instance, David Kang discusses that various International Relations scholars, including realists, institutionalists and constructivists, base their theoretical assumptions and predictions on an “expansionist and revisionist China” (2003: 63)
- 25.
The IR discipline itself can be seen as ethnocentric, gendered and reproductive of non-West IR communities at the periphery and a western community at the core. This is, for instance, even visible in terms of citation practices, in which scholars associated with the US and Western-Europe received higher citation rates by authors in the US and Western-Europe, and in the periphery (Tickner 2013: 631–632).
Further Readings
Chowdry, G. (2004). In S. Nair (Ed.), Power, postcolonialism and international relations: Reading race, gender and class. Abingdon: Routledge.
Malone, D. M., Mohan, C. R., & Raghavan, S. (2015). The Oxford handbook of Indian foreign policy. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Miller, M. C. (2016). The role of beliefs in identifying rising powers. The Chinese Journal of International Politics, 9(2), 211–238.
van de Wetering, C. (2016). Changing US foreign policy toward India: US-India relations since the cold war. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Wojczewksi, T. (2018). India’s foreign policy discourse and its conceptions of world order: The question for power and identity. Abingdon: Routledge.
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van de Wetering, C. (2020). India as an Emerging Power: Understanding Its Meaning. In: Hosli, M.O., Selleslaghs, J. (eds) The Changing Global Order. United Nations University Series on Regionalism, vol 17. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-21603-0_6
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