All that Glitters is not Gold: India's rise to power

Abstract

Recent years have seen a plethora of writings—by scholars, journalists and policy makers alike—on India's rise to power. This paper argues that this much-vaunted rise needs to be viewed with caution. It examines the case for India's rise, and operationalises its growing influence by applying and further developing the concept of ‘veto-player’. It highlights ways in which India has indeed acquired the status of a de facto veto-player in international relations. But the paper then presents three sets of reasons for caution. First, even though India's rise to power might appear dramatic and sudden, it is a product of a long and incremental process. This has policy implications: not all the policies of the preceding era should be carelessly abandoned by India or by other developing countries in similar circumstances. Second, there are still significant hurdles—many of which are domestic—that it must overcome if it is to fully realise its potential and acquire the status of a great power. Third, India may have acquired effective veto-player status in certain crucial negotiations, but this does not automatically translate into an ability to achieve preferred outcomes. Having examined the hurdles that India faces on its pathway to power, the paper goes on to suggest strategies that could be adopted to convert veto-player status into positive influence.

Notes

The author thanks the Nuffield Foundation, which provided financial support that enabled her to conduct research for this paper, and Andrew Hurrell and Desmond King for many stimulating conversations on the subject of emerging powers.

1 See, for instance, the mini-special issue on the rise of India, Foreign Affairs, 85 (4), 2006; or Dominic Wilson & Roopa Purushothaman, Dreaming with the brics: The Path to 2050, Paper No 99, Goldman Sachs, October 2003.

2 C Raja Mohan, Crossing the Rubicon: The Shaping of India's Foreign Policy, New Delhi: Viking, 2006.

3 http://www.wto.org/english/res_e/statis_e/its2005_e/section1_e/i06.xls. Note that these figures exclude intra-EU trade.

4 http://www.wto.org/english/res_e/statis_e/its2005_e/section1_e/i08.xls. Note that these figures exclude intra-EU trade.

5 Chandana Chakraborty & Peter Nunnenkamp, Economic Reforms, Foreign Direct Investment and its Economic Effects in India, Kiel Working Paper No 1272, Kiel Institute for the World Economy, March 2006.

6 Wilson & Purushothaman, Dreaming with the brics.

7 Shairi Mathur, Voting for the Veto: India in a Reformed UN, Working Paper, London: Foreign Policy Centre, September 2005.

8 www.wto.org.

9 Interviews with senior officials in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and with politicians, April 2005, Brasilia; December – January 2005, New Delhi; and April 2005, New Delhi.

10 One indication of India's efforts to justify its actions and demonstrate its responsible status can be found in the writings of Jaswant Singh—India's Foreign Minister at the time of the 1998 tests and a member of the bjp. Singh, ‘Against nuclear apartheid’, Foreign Affairs, 77 (5), 1998, pp 41 – 52.

11 For an account of some of the problems that this deal entails, see ‘Blast from the past: America's nuclear deal with India’, The Economist, 12 December 2006, p 18; and Michael A Levi & Charles D Ferguson, ‘US – India nuclear cooperation: a strategy for moving forward’, Council Special Report, csr No 16, Council on Foreign Relations, June 2006.

12 George Tsebelis, ‘Decision making in political systems: veto-players in presidentialism, parliamentalism, multicameralism, and multipartyism’, British Journal of Political Science, 25 (3), 1995, pp 289 – 325.

13 K Gajendra Singh, India and the European Union, Paper No 1163, South Asia Analysis Group, November 2004, at http://www.saag.org/papers12/paper1163.html, accessed 18 August 2006. See also the website of the Ministry of Commerce for India's involvement in other regional arrangements, at http://commerce.nic.in/.

14 Stephen Cohen, India: Emerging Power, Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2001.

15 On translating economic growth into power, see Agata Antkiewicz & John Whalley, Shifting Global Economic Power: from oecd to bricsam , cigi Working Paper, Waterloo: Centre for International Governance Innovation, October 2005, at http://www.cigionline.org/publications/docs/ShiftingPowerWP.doc, accessed 23 July 2006.

16 Amrita Narlikar, ‘Peculiar chauvinism or strategic calculation: explaining the negotiation strategy of a rising India’, International Affairs, 82 (1), 2006, pp 59 – 76.

17 The coalition was founded by Brazil and India in 2003 in the run-up to the Cancun Ministerial.

18 Gurcharan Das, ‘The India model: an economy unshackled’, Foreign Affairs, 85 (4), 2006, pp 2 – 16.

19 Dani Rodrik & Arvind Subramanian, From ‘Hindu Growth’ to Productivity Surge: The Mystery of the Indian Growth Transition, imf Working Paper, WP/04/77, May 2004.

20 Andrew Hurrell & Amrita Narlikar, ‘A new politics of confrontation? Developing countries at Cancun and beyond’, Global Society, October 2006.

21 Singh, ‘Against nuclear apartheid’, pp 41 – 42, writes: ‘The nuclear tests it conducted on May 11 and 13 were by then not only inevitable but a continuation of policies from almost the earliest years of independence. India's nuclear policy remains firmly committed to a basic tenet: that the country's national security in a world of nuclear proliferation lies either in global disarmament or in exercise of the principle of equal and legitimate security for all’.

22 To be fair, this triumphalism is seen more in the writings of journalists and academic observers, eg Raja Mohan, Crossing the Rubicon. In most interviews that this author conducted with government officials, diplomats and politicians, policy makers seemed to recognise the value of some of the older methods and also expressed caution against a wholesale conversion to the West, because of the risks of a popular as well as political backlash. Interviews, New Delhi, January and April 2006.

23 Hurrell & Narlikar, ‘A new politics of confrontation?’.

24 For example, for an accessible analysis, see Pavan Varma, Being Indian: Inside the Real India, London: Arrow Books, 2006; and Pankaj Mishra, ‘The myth of the new India’, International Herald Tribune, 6 July, at http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/07/06/opinion/edmishra.php, accessed 25 July.

25 Mishra, ‘The myth of the new India’.

26 Abhijit Sen, ‘“Shining” in rural India’, Seminar, 537, 2004, at http://www.india-seminar.com/2004/537/537%2Dabhijit%20sen.htm, accessed 25 July 2006.

27 Reasons as to why the government might—incorrectly—assume that it does not need to invest in basic infrastructure are discussed accessibly in ‘India overheats’, The Economist, 3 February 2007,p 11.

28 John Odell, Negotiating the World Economy, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2000.

29 Stephen Cohen, for instance, India: Emerging Power, entitles his chapter on Indian diplomacy ‘The India, that can't say yes’.

30 Narlikar, ‘Peculiar chauvinism or strategic calculation’.

31 Robert O Keohane, After Hegemony: Cooperation and Discord in the World Political Economy, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004.

32 Amrita Narlikar & John Odell, ‘The strict distributive strategy for a bargaining coalition: the Like Minded Group in the World Trade Organization’, in John Odell (ed), Negotiating Trade: Developing Countries in the wto and nafta , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006; and Amrita Narlikar & Pieter van Houten, ‘Breaking the deadlock: North South trade negotiations using a signaling mechanism’, paper presented at the Annual Conference of the International Studies Association, San Diego, CA, March 2006.

33 Note that by locking itself into a strong coalition (ie one that has proven itself resistant to defection), particularly by investing in its leadership, the country can send an important and costly signal regarding its commitment to a particular position; similar assertions made by the country on its own are likely to be less credible.

34 Narlikar & Houten, ‘Breaking the deadlock’.