2023 is also the year India assumes presidency of the G-20. The world needs India’s leadership now more than ever, for India is the one global superpower that can and will stand up to the CCP’s genocidal dictators.

India resisted the CCP-controlled WHO’s authoritarian mandates and lockdowns, while containing the virus with therapeutics, thus India’s economy and governance fared far better than that of the United States and Europe, which lost trillions—and constitutional rights—due to “pandemic restrictions”. Unlike the vacuous, amoral Western elites, who financed the rise of the 21st century’s totalitarian superpower, India has no illusions about the CCP. For decades, Tibetan refugees in India have exposed the CCP’s depraved persecution and slaughter of its “minority peoples”—Tibetans, Mongols, Uyghurs. India never gets enough credit for hosting multiple refugee communities from numerous conflict zones in Asia and letting them tell their stories to the world.

On a visit to India in 2009, the US Secretary of State’s verdict was unequivocal: ‘I consider India not just a regional power, but a global power.’ Since the turn of the century, India’s economy has surpassed those predictions, expanding fourfold in the course of a decade. Over the same time, expectations that India might increasingly define its political interests to match its economic clout have in turn grown. The same is the case with its democratic heritage and potential for strategic partnership.

Several commentators suggest that India has the potential to become a global superpower, a state with an extensive ability to exert influence or to project power in much of the world.

Being a superpower can be defined as the extensive ability to exert influence on an international scale. It is the state of possessing the might, both economic and military that is superior in comparison to other countries. Superpower status is achieved by combining means of technological, cultural, military, and economic strength as well as diplomatic and soft power influence.

India’s rise has certainly been impressive, and warrants the attention that it has commanded. India has been one of the world’s best-performing economies for a quarter of a century, lifting millions out of poverty and becoming the world’s third-largest economy in PPP terms. India has tripled its defence expenditure over the last decade to become one of the top-ten military spenders. And in stark contrast to Asia’s other billion-person emerging power, India has simultaneously cultivated an attractive global image of social and cultural dynamism.

India’s rise in geostrategic terms is rendered all the more significant since its power resides at the confluence of the United States’ two great hegemonic challenges: counter-terrorism operations in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and the management of China’s growing regional assertiveness. If India’s proud nonalignment during the Cold War had given it a leadership role in the developing world, its 21st century position places it at the heart of superpower geopolitics. Barack Obama’s enthusiastic endorsement of a permanent UN security council seat for India, as part of making the US-India relationship ‘a defining partnership of the century ahead’, speaks volumes for the global importance of how India defines its foreign policy.

Superficially, India seems to have travelled a long way from the summer of 1948. Now – despite the dissensions in the borderlands, in Kashmir and the north-east – it is clear that India is and will be a single country, whose leaders shall be chosen by (and also replaced by) its people. Indians no longer fear for our existence as a sovereign nation or as a functioning democracy. What we hope for instead is a gradual enhancement of our material and political powers, and the acknowledgement of our nation as one of the most powerful and respected on earth.

In January 2019 the multinational bank Standard Chartered published a list of the world’s strongest economies by the year 2030. China grabs the top spot with an awe-inspiring gross domestic product (GDP) four times its current size. Behind it is a resurgent India whose economic heft leaves the USA trailing behind at third place. The figures might seem ridiculous at present but they do serve as confirmation bias for anyone who’s betting on Asia’s growth story: China and India, having suffered five centuries of systematic decline, are assuming their historic roles in the world stage.

This expectation was given life when the late British economist Angus Maddison published an estimate for historical GDP that revealed China and India’s importance to global trade. But with much of Asian history unsettled until now one indisputable fact gleaned from examining the past is India’s prominence. Accurate data about its economy before the common era may never come to light but there’s enough evidence proving its ancient empires shaped the world around it. After all, even Alexander the Great (356 BC – 323 BC) attempted to conquer India for its riches, which proved his undoing. Other conquerors tried the same, none as humiliating as the excesses of Timur in 1398 and the Persian warlord Nadir Shah whose army ravaged Delhi in 1739. Yet even when India failed to resist its invaders its culture and splendor were never snuffed out.

The Republic of India, now on its 72nd year, with the fifth largest economy on Earth is well on its way to earning its seat among the great powers. But the past incarnations of India did enjoy the same status and one region proves this. Dubbed the “East Indies” by European explorers smitten by profits and now labelled the “Indo-Pacific” by American strategists who plan to contain China, the societies that inhabited “Nusantaria” benefited from India’s goodwill for centuries. Nusantaria, by the way, is a word coined by the British author Philip Bowring to describe maritime Southeast Asia, the marvelous collection of states that have joined together as ASEAN. The names may change over time but the commonalities are recurring. In his acclaimed book Empire of the Winds (Bloomsbury, 2019) Bowring assembles a deep history that shows how Austronesians scattered over a “great archipelago” mastered the seas and enabled maritime trade.

These Austronesians, who include Cambodians, Indonesians, Filipinos, Malaysians, Thais, and Vietnamese, have different national identities today yet share varied cultural traits, many originating from India. A consequential thalassocracy that ruled the island of Sumatra from the 7th until 11th centuries whose capital became a renowned center for Buddhism patterned its governance on Indian kingdoms. Vestiges of Buddhist and Hindu influences are everywhere in Southeast Asia, be they ancient cities almost lost to time or in cherished local cuisine. An entire chapter in Bowring’s Empire of the Winds is devoted to chronicling how Indian political and religious norms flourished in Nusantaria for a thousand years. This was enabled by trade rather than outright conquest.

Unlike China’s historic trade relations with Southeast Asian states, whose volume waxed and waned depending on politics in the mainland, India’s connections to the same region are unbroken. Even under the Raj in the late 19th century it was Indian bureaucrats and laborers who helped build colonial economies in Burma, Hong Kong, and Malaya. Thriving South Asian communities from Bangkok to Manila are not accidental but eventual. In the age of ASEAN an assertive Delhi is committed to new alliances where its economic and military power incentivizes weaker countries away from Beijing’s own embrace. The vital lesson here is apparent; Maddison’s meme on India’s significance rings true enough. India was a superpower of the ancient world and is now resuming this position.

“India has overtaken the UK to become the world’s fifth-largest economy,” says Shilan Shah, senior India economist at the consultancy Capital Economics, citing recent updated figures from the International Monetary Fund. “Looking ahead, India looks set to continue its march up the global rankings. In all, we think India will overtake Germany and Japan to become the third-largest economy in the world within the next decade.”

The signs of being a superpower are increasingly becoming clear. Ingredients needed for a tectonic shift are falling into the cauldron of the moment for India. Let us examine the five main demonstrable factors driving this change.

  • Civilisational and national reawakening

The dominant global liberal order of the last three decades, which has created a self-serving power elite, looks condescendingly at India’s nationalism. But the very constituents of this global order, the leading western nations, had become developed and wealthy from being swamps of poverty and squalid shantytowns only by the push of nationalism. From Germany to France, the United Kingdom to the United States, Italy to Scandinavia, nation after nation pulled itself up from their shabby existence after nation states emerged in Europe and the pride in one’s land, language and people became the main driver of change.

  • Unchaining the economic giant

In spite of three crippling waves of the pandemic and teething troubles from setting structures like GST, Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, real estate regulation, and digital economy in place, India remains the fastest growing major economy and the brightest spot of hope for investors.

  • Military might, Made in India

India used to be the biggest importer of arms. But in the last eight years, it has upped its defence exports by eight times. In 2021-22, India’s defence exports touched a record Rs 13,000 crore. Around 70 percent of defence production was done by around 50 Indian companies in the private sector.

Indigenous Research

Scientific research used to be modern India’s weak point. State-run labs were controlled by a rotting, politicking bureaucracy. That has started changing. From budget rocket launches to Deep Ocean research to green energy, the country has taken significant leaps. But the most impressive feat lately has been India’s reach out to the world during Covid 19 with its own indigenously developed vaccine.

Both China and India have limited global reach today, and both are trying to reach the status of developed economies. Both need to provide better education to their citizens, improve their legal/enforcement systems and cut down corruption. Both have questionable human-rights records, although India seems in a better shape. Both have thorny relations with some of their neighbors that are unlikely to get resolved. China has a head start on the economy size, while India has a head start on the political system. In the short-term, economy is more tangible, but in the long term the political system is at least as important (as this is critical to fixing the legal system, setting up effective law enforcement, and rooting out corruption).

India is a ‘soft superpower’, and it does not stockpile destructive materials within its borders or elsewhere. Yet it can call, manufacture and use any number of armaments at short notice. These capacities are stored in scientists’ heads and vast databases for ‘instant’ recall. India can fire a space probe to the moon at 1/100th the cost of an American one! That means the country can produce 100 rockets for the price of 1 NASA rocket! Does anybody know what that means?

The superpower capacity is calculated in theoretical knowledge rather than stockpile knowledge. A country cannot continue manufacturing weaponry that goes obsolete in a week. The call-up rate is disproportionate to the use ratio. The US needs to go to war with the slightest excuse. It is to use its obsolete weaponry and kick start the full production capabilities to upgrade to the latest. There are two ways this can be done. Theoretically or practically. Which one would you choose?

Look at the global reach of the world’s biggest businesses. Where do they get their human resources from? Good guess. India! Take out the Indians, and Facebook, Google, Pepsi, and Silicon Valley, will crumble. That is an indication of Superpower capability. It is not like North Korea parading large rockets filled with sand. Why are their people still pushing bullock carts and pulling rockets on rubber wheels?? There’s your answer to intelligent thinking.

Long before aircraft came into existence, the ‘vimana’ was depicted on the walls of archeological sites. They knew, 5000 years ahead of civilisation. How? Because they dared to think ahead.

Imagine what a huge task it was to bring 700 million to world standards of living in 70 years? Other superpowers took 400–500 years. They did this by looting and killing and slavery. They made themselves ‘capable’ by stealing from colonies and countries. That’s not a superpower. That’s thievery! I can’t think of that success in any other way.

Did India steal from any other country? No. Why? you tell me.

TO BE CONTINUED…

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