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