Why India is Not a Great Power (Yet)
by Bharat Karnad
Since the economic liberalisation of the early 1990s, India has been, on several occasions and at different forums, feted as a great power. This subject has been discussed in numerous books, but mostly in terms of rapid economic growth and immense potential in the emerging market. There is also a vast collection of literature on India’s ‘soft power’—culture, tourism, frugal engineering, and knowledge economy. However, there has been no serious exploration of the alternative path India can take to achieving great power status—a combination of hard power, geostrategics, and realpolitik.
Why India is Not a Great Power (Yet) published by Oxford University Press, delves exclusively into these hard power aspects of India’s rise and the problems associated with them. Bharat Karnad offers an incisive analysis of the deficits in the country’s military capabilities and in the ‘software’ related to hard power—absence of political vision and will, insensitivity to strategic geography, and unimaginative foreign and military policies—and arrives at powerful arguments on why these shortfalls have prevented the country from achieving the great power status.
The book will be released by General VK Singh (Retd), Minister of State for External Affairs. It will be followed by a panel discussion, which will include:
- General VK Singh (Retd),
- Shivshankar Menon, former National Security Advisor (NSA),
- Rear Admiral Raja Menon (Retd), former head of the Net Assessment & Simulation Centre at the National Security Council and ex-Assistant Chief of the Naval Staff (Ops), and,
- Lt. Gen. SL Narsimhan, Commandant, Army War College, Mhow
We request all to be present by 6:30pm for tea and registrations.
RSVP Anuradha Mukherjee – anuradha.mukherjee@oup.com, 011-43600144
