Indian Politics & Policy Volume 1, Number 2, Fall 2018 | Page 130

India’s Search for Economic Prosperity and Global Power
vious governments. It is unclear whether
these examples merely reflect stylistic
differences with previous governments
or whether there is a qualitative shift
in India’s foreign policy doctrine under
Modi.
Fourth, Ayres’ optimism of India’s
future economic prospects seems
to downplay some of the weaknesses
in India’s current growth model—particularly
the lack of domestic inclusiveness—and
it underestimates the scale of
the challenges that India needs to tackle
to maintain rapid growth. She offers evidence
from efforts to improve manufacturing
and the case of the auto industry
as one that now thrives despite various
weaknesses in the past. To a certain extent,
her analysis of the improved fortunes
of the auto sector finds resonance
with Sinha’s analysis of the textile sector
outlined later in this article. However,
as other studies of political economy of
India (e.g., Drèze and Sen 2013; Kohli
2012) point out, India’s growth has not
been inclusive enough; a point also emphasized
strongly by Joshi. Joshi argues
that changes since 1991 can be characterized
as a “partial reform model” and
continued adherence to this model is
unlikely to achieve what he considers
sustained “high-quality” growth. Given
that Ayres’ expectations about India’s
future foreign policy prospects are
predicated on the country’s continued
economic success, these weaknesses
inherent in the current growth model
could potentially act as a more significant
constraint on India’s global ambitions
than the book accounts for.
India’s Economic Performance:
The Past, the Present, and
the Future
In several ways, Vijay Joshi’s comprehensive
and meticulously detailed
account of India’s economic
performance acts as a sobering and
refreshing corrective to the hype that
has frequently surrounded the country’s
economic prospects over the last
decade. Joshi’s central argument is that
“with ‘business-as-usual’ policies India
will be hard put to achieve high-quality
and enduring per-capita growth of even
6 per cent a year, let alone 8 per cent a
year, which would be necessary for it to
become a prosperous nation in the next
quarter century” (5). To become a prosperous
nation, India requires radical reforms
along various lines.
In spelling out this argument,
Joshi begins by emphasizing the enormity
of the task that lies in front of India
in order to achieve ‘high-quality’
growth, which refers to inclusive and
environmentally friendly growth, and
why he believes that India is likely to face
an uphill task without radical changes.
The reforms that began in the 1990s
were effective but are now running out
of steam and could only be considered
partial and incomplete in the first place.
The mode of policy change—“reforms
by stealth”—is also unlikely to bring
about the deep changes necessary to
ensure high-quality growth. Further,
India’s rapid growth in the first decade
of the 2000s was propelled by a highly
liquid and expanding world economy
and that such a “benign global environment
looks very unlikely to return
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