Indian Politics & Policy Volume 1, Number 2, Fall 2018 | Page 126
India’s Search for Economic
Prosperity and Global Power
Kanta Murali 1
Indian Politics & Policy • Vol. 1, No. 2 • Fall 2018
Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science, University of Toronto
[email protected]
Ayres, Alyssa. 2018. Our Time Has Come: How India Is Making Its
Place in the World. New York: Oxford University Press.
Joshi, Vijay. 2017. India’s Long Road: The Search for Prosperity. New
York: Oxford University Press.
Sinha, Aseema. 2016. Globalizing India: How Global Rules and
Markets Are Shaping India’s Rise to Power. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Twenty-seven years after the
extensive economic reforms
of 1991, India stands at an inflexion
point. On the one hand, more
than two-and-a-half decades of rapid
economic growth has firmly placed it
in the ranks of the world’s emerging
powers. On the other, India remains
plagued by a variety of domestic problems
and challenges—a quarter of its
population remains mired in extreme
poverty, public services remain woeful,
economic inequality and exclusion
along a variety of dimensions continues
to rise, crony capitalism and corruption
abound, the decay of numerous public
institutions is all too evident, and the
country has some of the highest rates of
environmental pollution in the world.
Over the last four years, India has also,
arguably, been witnessing one of the
lowest points in its democratic history
with the sharp rise of majoritarian
and illiberal politics. How should we
reconcile these apparently contradictory
trends, between India’s growth and
its persistent problems? What do these
trends mean for India’s economic and
geopolitical future? What factors are
likely to affect the pace, scale, and nature
of India’s ongoing global integration?
How is the interaction between
the domestic and international realms
likely to play out in this process of
transformation?
Three recent accounts—Vijay
Joshi’s India’s Long Road, Alyssa Ayres’
Our Time Has Come, and Aseema
1 I would like to thank IPP’s book review editor, Arzan Tarapore, for his useful suggestions on an
earlier draft.
123
doi: 10.18278/inpp.1.2.5