The enigma of India's arrival

Coming at a time when India is receiving new global attention, India: Emerging Power, looks at the country's prospects in the changing international system, says C.RAJAMOHAN.

WHATEVER might be the final judgement on the wisdom of the Vajpayee government's decision to conduct five nuclear tests in May 1998, it certainly got New Delhi what it so badly wanted for years - serious international attention. India's nuclear choice in that hot summer was condemned widely at home and abroad as an unacceptable violation of international norms. But not for long.

The attempted isolation of India and its international castigation did not really succeed. Less than two summers after Pokharan II, India was the object of much international wooing. World leaders were tripping over each other as they trooped in and out of the Indian capital in search of a new relationship with the Asian giant.

By the time this year had dawned, India was basking in new diplomatic glory. It had resisted the coercive measures of the international community; reordered the relations with the major powers to its advantage, and managed an armed conflict with its nuclear neighbour with some responsibility and political success.

India's new diplomatic activism was not limited to "big power" diplomacy. New Delhi also demonstrated the ability to re-engage the "extended neighbourhood" in the Persian Gulf, Central Asia and the South East Asia that got disconnected from India for various reasons. And it was confident of recasting its relations with the smaller neighbours.

A decade of economic reforms had already made India one of the faster growing economies of the world, and created a new basis for diplomatic relations with many countries of the world. India's now famed forays into Information Technology surprised the world and gave it a new lustre. Five decades after independence, the smug feeling that India has arrived began to settle down in New Delhi.

But has India really arrived? Is it really a major power on the international scene or just a transient flavour of the year at the turn of the millennium?

Few scholars are better positioned than Stephen Philip Cohen to answer these questions with authority. For decades now, Cohen has been among the sharpest foreign observers of India. When interest in contemporary India was drying up in the United States during the final years of the Cold War, Cohen's programme at the University of Illinois kept India in American focus and drew large number of Indian scholars to the U.S.

Having moved a couple of years ago to the Washington Beltway - littered with think-tanks and advocacy groups - Cohen has had the opportunity to make his knowledge of India and the Subcontinent have a direct impact on the policy process in the U.S. His latest work is a fabulous tour d'horizon of modern India's strategic past and a valuable reflection on its prospects in the international system.

Cohen's book is perfectly timed. It comes at a moment when there is a significant rise in the international political interest in India. But for those wanting to take a new look at India and its future role in the global balance of power, there was no single book that painted the big picture. And that precisely what Cohen has done.

Cohen's intimate knowledge of the evolution of Indian foreign and security policies is likely to make this book a standard reference on modern India's statecraft. And his ability to present valuable insights into India's security policies without a heavy academic touch makes the book intelligible to all.

Many of the post-war analyses of the future global order have talked about the potential of India to become one of the six power centres - besides the U.S., Europe, Russia, China and Japan. Most point to India's democracy, its rapidly growing economy, its scientific and technological capabilities, and its increasing military might as indicators of an emerging power.

For many Indo-skeptics, however, New Delhi is unlikely to ever get its act together. That India is condemned to a perpetual state of "emerging", but never really arriving as a great power. Cohen's own answer is reflected in the difference between the titles of the present book and the one he coauthored two decades ago, India: An Emergent Power?

In removing the question mark from the title of his current work, Cohen is putting across an optimistic assessment of India's strategic prospects. Cohen's exploration of the tension between India's potential and the obstacles that stand in the way is an objective and compelling one.

Among the challenges to the Indian state that Cohen examines are the coping with the revolutionary change at home, modernising the process of policy-making, finding a modus vivendi with Pakistan, resolving the Kashmir problem, defining a credible Asian role, managing the nuclear arsenal effectively and building a cooperative relationship with the U.S.

Most of these issues are taken up in separate chapters for a detailed discussion. There is another fascinating chapter on the world view of the Indian strategic community. With great skill Cohen sketches out the divisions among the Nehruvians, Gandhians, realists and revitalists in presenting the great debate in India about its role in the world.

In assessing its future as a great power, Cohen suggests New Delhi will retain its uniquely Indian way of doing things. And its special role in the world is "primarily to 'be India', and to address the human security issues that stem from its own imbalances and injustices", Cohen argues. Reading from the Indian experience, Cohen concludes that the "future favours India, which does not necessarily mean that this future will inevitably be pleasant or peaceful".

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India: Emerging Power, Stephen Philip Cohen, Washington DC: Brookings Institution, 2001, p.377.

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