India’s Option For Larger Reach

As India marks 76 years of its Constitution, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, in his third consecutive term in office, continues his vow that the country would be listed as “rich” in the enviable club of advanced economies within the next 25 years. Modi’s public pledge to make the world’s most populous nation, and with the largest concentration of poverty-stricken people, a “rich country” by 2047 might sound ambitious. It’s not impossible, though prevailing pointers raise a few logical questions.

An essential condition for enhancing the prospects of economic target registering a roaring success demands an effective course, among other aspects, in dealing with neighbours in an indisputably emerging new world order. The Indian prime minister’s last-ditch effort would be to go first for the most logical choice. In hindsight, New Delhi could reassess how diplomacy was conducted with what effects and eventual outcome over the seven and a half decades. 

Accusing Nepal of playing the China card, echoed by known anti-Nepal elements, was an issue discussed threadbare at least until the turn of the millennium. The two neighbours, contrasted by territorial size, population volume, and technological and industrial growth, might not necessarily merit a heavy bear hug but can engage in an accelerated pace of cooperation for mutual benefit beyond the rhetoric. 

That should also set a model for a big neighbour and a significantly smaller but one of the world’s 20 oldest independent states with its own identity. In 1768, the country’s foundation was firmly laid down. Flanked by two most-populous, giant neighbours, this landlocked nation has worked for a balanced approach to both of them. 

Critical comments 

Opposition leader in India’s parliament, Rahul Gandhi, pounded his critical hammer on the Modi government not long ago after the United States’ President Donald Trump announced, “I don’t care what India does with Russia.” Seething with anger over New Delhi’s refusal to ditch importing oil from Russia, the piqued Trump described the world’s largest multiparty democracy as a “dead” economy. 

As goes the saying, “If wishes were horses, beggars would ride them”, the American president’s dark dream of the Indian economy going steeply downhill is unlikely to come true. At the same time, however, the ground reality does not guarantee accelerated economic growth and enhanced international cooperation without changing gears for causes, including diplomacy, that boost the international image of South Asia’s largest country, and with its gradually fueling leverage. 

“Glad” that Trump spoke the truth, Rahul Gandhi said that only the finance and foreign ministers think everything is fine. He regretted that despite External Affairs Minister S. Jayashankar’s claims of foreign policy successes, no country had condemned Pakistan for “terrorist attacks” in Pahalgam in Kashmir last April, in which at least 26 people were killed. However dastardly the attacks on innocent people might be, no country blamed Pakistan for the tragic incident. 

On another front, Trump wanted New Delhi to stop buying Russian oil. His anger boiled over, and hence the dismissive “dead” economy tag under whom he once called “my dear friend Modi”. Grapes-are-sour syndrome in Trump shows unpredictability in pace, frequency, and intensity. When he could not cower down the Indian premier, he characteristically passed the derogatory remark on India’s economic health in a huff. Would the Indian economy be “great” if New Delhi stopped buying Russian oil? The answer should meet the acid test of accuracy, whether a statement comes from a mighty nation or a middle-level power.

Maintaining a balance between competing big powers is a challenge-filled task. But appearing to be too smart gets exposed earlier than imagined. It has consequences, and the stakeholders cannot fail to spot the anomalies. Its ties with neighbour China and the US, which is 16,000 km away, cannot be the same and attain equal success with both under the existing circumstances.

At 1.45 billion, the world’s most populous country is riven with corruption and faces minority rights issues that Western powers blow up for political ends. In 2025, it was reported that 46 per cent of Lok Sabha members had criminal cases registered against them. Maharashtra state election on Nov 26 does not indicate a BJP comeback across the nation. Polls in Jammu and Kashmir gave grounds for celebrations. But they are smaller states with a smaller number of seats.  

Risks and rhetoric 

Hobnobbing with the West, including former colonial powers that suppressed, killed and exploited the peoples of Asia, virtually all of South Asian nations are today not able to formally step into Ukraine instead of supporting the invaded but not daring to join it on the field, as it did in Iraq and Afghanistan. Playing the West against the Russo-Chinese alliance backed by Iran and Saudi Arabia carries heavy risks. Whereas the whole of NATO and European Union powers have not been able to counter Russia effectively so far, India should steer the course cautiously but without losing sight of who to support when the crunch comes.

Trump’s clear and repeated statements include a desperate desire that Canada would be “beautiful without any borders”, Greenland as US territory meets the superpower’s “vital interests”, and the Gulf of Mexico would be renamed “Gulf of America” in order to ensure guaranteed dominance of the US in the Western hemisphere. 

The question is not to be embroiled in a mess when the Sino-Indian partnership strengthens and gathers steam in Africa and much of Asia. It would be unfortunate for both India and the rest of South Asia if their vast potential for a place in the global landscape were to be stunted at a time when a new world order has begun to take shape. 

(Professor Kharel specialises in political communication.)