Project Syndicate: India at Last?
Sep 8, 2023
As Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi welcomes world leaders to New Delhi for the G20 summit, he seems as eager to highlight India’s role as a global power player as he is to ensure a successful summit. And India has much to be proud of, from the fastest reported GDP growth of any major economy to the landing of a lunar rover on the Moon’s south pole.
The importance of the latter achievement should not be underestimated. As Shashi Tharoor, an MP for the Indian National Congress, explains, the successful lunar mission “serves India’s global diplomacy” by “enhancing its credibility and influence.” By “showcasing its technological prowess, India’s space program reminds the world not only of its innovative capabilities, but also of its capacity to help shape solutions to global challenges in other areas.”
But, while Tharoor calls India a “technological force to be reckoned with,” Milan Vaishnav of the South Asia Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace highlights a serious potential risk to Indian research and innovation: intensifying government pressure on academics who challenge official narratives. “India will never be a ‘vishwaguru’ (teacher to the world),” he explains, “unless the government stops silencing dissenting voices.”
Indian politics may also be distorting the economic picture. Princeton’s Ashoka Mody accuses the authorities of “downplaying inconvenient macroeconomic facts so that they can celebrate seemingly flattering headline figures.” He claims that the annual growth rate of 7.8% reported for the second quarter of this year reflects statistical legerdemain, and shows that “growth is, in fact, low, inequalities are rising, and job scarcity remains acute.”
By contrast, Brahma Chellaney of the Center for Policy Research touts rising GDP as “the driving force behind India’s emergence as a major global power.” But sustaining India’s “upward trajectory” will require it to “maintain political stability, rapid economic growth, domestic and external security, and a forward-looking foreign policy.” This will not be easy, he acknowledges, but virtually everyone – not least the United States – should hope it succeeds.
Along the way, India faces a “big strategic choice,” argue Arvind Subramanian of the Peterson Institute for International Economics and JH Consulting’s Josh Felman: whether or not to remain a member of the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) following the grouping’s decision to expand its ranks. Given that the new “BRICS+” is “more political in focus, more China-centric in leadership, and more anti-West in motivation,” the answer is “probably not.”
Featured in this Big Picture
Shashi Tharoor
SHASHI THAROOR
Milan Vaishnav
MILAN VAISHNAV
Ashoka Mody
ASHOKA MODY
Brahma Chellaney
BRAHMA CHELLANEY
Arvind Subramanian
ARVIND SUBRAMANIAN
Josh Felman
JOSH FELMAN
Shashi Tharoor
India’s Lunar Triumph
SHASHI THAROOR
Milan Vaishnav
India’s Universities Lack the Freedom to Excel
MILAN VAISHNAV
Ashoka Mody
India’s Fake Growth Story
ASHOKA MODY
Brahma Chellaney
India’s Quiet Rise
BRAHMA CHELLANEY
Arvind Subramanian
India Should Quit the BRICS
ARVIND SUBRAMANIAN, ET AL.
India’s Lunar Triumph
Sep 4, 2023
SHASHI THAROOR
How India's relationships with its partners and rivals, and its global role more broadly, evolve remains to be seen. But the country’s achievements in space – most recently the first-ever landing of a lunar rover on the Moon's south pole – undoubtedly strengthen its diplomatic hand, not least because of the respect they inspire in other countries.
NEW DELHI – In 2014, after the Mars Orbiter Mission, known as Mangalyaan, made India the first Asian country to reach Mars orbit, and the first country ever to do so in its maiden attempt, The New York Times published a cartoon. Well-fed Westerners lounged inside a house labeled “Elite Space Club,” while India, represented by a turbaned peasant with a cow in tow, knocked on the door. It was a patronizing and racist image, and it triggered a furor in India.
Now, the Chandrayaan-3 mission has made India the first country to land a lunar rover on the Moon’s south pole, and a new cartoon began making the rounds. This time, the peasant and his cow are inside the house, now labeled “Moon South Pole,” while Americans, Russians, and others line up at the door, rockets in hand, to request admission.
Indians are proud of their space program, for good reason. One of the world’s oldest and most ambitious, it arose from the Physical Research Laboratory, established in Ahmedabad in 1947, the year of India’s independence and brutal partition with Pakistan. In 1962, India’s visionary first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, created the Indian National Committee for Space Research (INCOSPAR), marking the country’s official entry into space exploration. In 1969, INCOSPAR became the Indian Space Research Organization.
Since then, the ISRO has undertaken missions to the Moon (Chandrayaan-1, -2, and -3) and to Mars (Mars Orbiter Mission), and created its own launch vehicles and satellites. Moreover, India plans to launch a solar observatory, Aditya-L1, this month, and aims to 2-3 people into low Earth orbit by the end of this year. (An Indian astronaut orbited the planet on a Soviet spacecraft in 1984.)
India owes its remarkable progress in space exploration in large part to Nehru’s dedication to developing a “scientific temper” among the Indian people, his understanding of technology’s role in national advancement, and his faith in the country’s scientists. Though India was beset by poverty, illiteracy, food insecurity, and disease, Nehru knew that it must – and could – aim for the stars.
Nehru’s doctrine of self-reliance, within tight budgetary constraints, had an enduring influence on India’s space program, exemplified by the ISRO’s decision to take a slower, fuel-saving approach to the Moon. Both Mangalyaan and Chandrayaan-3 were the least expensive ventures of their kind, costing about a tenth of equivalent NASA missions. They cost less even than Hollywood depictions of space missions: Mangalyaan cost less than the film Gravity, and Chandrayaan-3 less than Interstellar.
The ISRO’s strengths extend well beyond frugality. With a focus on indigenous development of technologies and techniques, it has become a premier manufacturer of both launch vehicles and satellites, and a sought-after provider of low-cost launch services to other countries. Its Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle, with 24 successful flights, has a proven track record. In February 2017, India launched a record-breaking 104 (mostly American) satellites simultaneously on a single rocket.
How far we have come since the early 1960s, when a classic photograph by Henri Cartier-Bresson showed Indian rocket parts being transported on a bullock cart. And this is just the beginning: India’s space program is set literally to skyrocket. Experts predict that India could account for at least 10% of the global space economy in the next decade, up sharply from 2% currently.
India’s space program bolsters its internal development, having made important contributions even in seemingly unrelated areas, such as disaster management, education, health care, agriculture, fisheries, and urban planning. Moreover, it serves India’s global diplomacy, enhancing the country’s credibility and influence. Those who once scoffed at the idea that a poor developing country aspired to send rockets into space must concede that India is a technological force to be reckoned with.
As India’s lander touched down on the Moon, Prime Minister Narendra Modi wisely resisted parochial triumphalism and hailed the achievement as a victory for “all of humanity.” But he also correctly noted that the achievement “mirrors the aspirations and capabilities of 1.4 billion Indians.”
By showcasing its technological prowess, India’s space program reminds the world not only of its innovative capabilities, but also of its capacity to help shape solutions to global challenges in other areas, from cyberspace regulation to peace-keeping. India is showing the world that it can be a standard-setter, rather than just a follower of rules made by developed countries.
Chandrayaan-3’s success strengthens the confidence with which India faces the world. The country has spent the year presiding over the G20 and is an influential voice for the Global South. But it has also been walking a geopolitical tightrope lately, playing leading roles in both the Quad (alongside Australia, Japan, and the United States) and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (with Russia and China). While its relations with Western countries have never been closer, it shares a tense disputed frontier with China, and has an increasingly complicated relationship with its traditional partner, Russia.
How these relationships, and India’s global role more broadly, will evolve remains to be seen. But the country’s achievements in space undoubtedly strengthen its diplomatic hand, not least because of the respect they inspire in other countries.
Looking up at the sky after Chandrayaan-3, Indians can contemplate a glorious future. New horizons beckon.
vaishnav1_Getty Images_indiauniversityGetty Images
India’s Universities Lack the Freedom to Excel
Aug 29, 2023
MILAN VAISHNAV
The abrupt resignation of an economics professor from a prestigious private university has highlighted concerns about academic freedom in India. The country will never be a “vishwaguru” (teacher to the world), as Prime Minister Narendra Modi often boasts, unless the government stops silencing dissenting voices.
GENEVA – Since enacting the National Education Policy 2020, India has sought to position itself as a twenty-first-century knowledge hub featuring globally competitive institutions of higher education. But the abrupt resignation of a young economist from one of the country’s most prestigious universities, and the subsequent campus revolt over his exit, casts doubt on India’s ability to realize this ambition.
In July, Sabyasachi Das, an assistant professor at Ashoka University, released a working paper alleging irregularities in India’s 2019 general election. The study, which has not yet been peer-reviewed, suggested that Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) won a disproportionate share of closely contested constituencies because of electoral manipulation – namely, the selective culling of Muslims from voter rolls.
To be sure, Das notes that the purported irregularities did not affect the outcome of the vote; the BJP won by a landslide. But given that Modi’s party promotes a strident form of Hindu nationalism and views India’s Muslim minority as electorally irrelevant, the specter of electoral tampering is troubling.
The paper ignited a firestorm. Ashoka, a private liberal arts university located outside New Delhi, sought to distance itself from Das, questioning both the relevance and integrity of his research. After university authorities subjected him to a gag order and launched a committee of inquiry, Das resigned. The economics department swiftly condemned the move, insisting that Das be unconditionally reinstated. Other university departments chimed in, and students have also voiced their discontent.
For decades, government has applied pressure – often indirectly to facilitate plausible deniability – on academics whose work contradicts official narratives. But since Modi came to power in 2014, that pressure has reached new heights. In 2021, the political scientist Pratap Bhanu Mehta, a vocal critic of Modi’s policies, also resigned from Ashoka, writing that the university’s founders made it “abundantly clear” that his association with the institution was a “political liability.”
Moreover, the pressure on researchers, likely greater in lesser-known schools, extends beyond college campuses, as evidenced by the regulatory assault on the Centre for Policy Research, one of India’s most highly regarded think tanks.
Modi’s government seems to want foreign universities to set up outposts in the country and has invested heavily in select Indian universities designated as “Institutes of Eminence.” Yet the recent controversies suggest that India will not be a vishwaguru (teacher to the world), as Modi often boasts, unless both the government and university leaders credibly commit to uphold intellectual freedom.
India’s academics must be free to explore controversial subjects and to publish politically uncomfortable findings. The university leaders tasked with creating these conditions are in an unenviable position, given the leverage that the government retains over institutions of higher education – a reminder that its regulatory control never disappeared, but merely evolved after liberalization. Even private universities with diversified funding sources are not as shielded from political pressure as many had believed.
But that should not stop university administrators from broadcasting their unwavering support for faculty, even – or especially – when they take on contentious topics. In a globalized world, talented Indians who feel stifled at home can seek better opportunities abroad. Many have already done so: more than 225,000 Indians renounced their citizenship in 2022, the most in over a decade. The last thing Indian higher education needs is a mass exodus of talent, not least because the country’s best performing university placed 149th in the latest QS World University Rankings.
Government supporters who deride dissenting thinkers as “anti-national” fail to recognize the merits of peer review – a painstaking process through which independent experts weed out subpar research. The controversial findings Das reported in his working paper may wither under scrutiny, but if they pass muster, his data and code will be open for all to scrutinize.
Unfortunately, this case represents the worst of all possible worlds: a promising researcher who felt compelled to leave his job; a prominent university facing a crisis of confidence, as faculty and students push back against administrators; and an abject failure to understand the basic principles of social-science research. As a result, India’s liberal credentials have suffered another serious blow.
India, like all societies that aspire to academic excellence, cannot let ideology – emanating from either the left or the right – guide research, and Indian universities cannot abandon faculty who ask politically provocative questions. Otherwise, students – the human capital that is expected to fuel a “new India” – will become collateral damage, watching helplessly as the government snuffs out the spirit of inquiry.
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India’s Fake Growth Story
Sep 6, 2023
ASHOKA MODY
Indian authorities are downplaying inconvenient macroeconomic facts so that they can celebrate seemingly flattering headline figures ahead of hosting the G20 summit. But in covering up the growing struggles faced by the vast majority of Indians, they are playing a cynical and dangerous game.
PRINCETON – Behind the billboards in Delhi advertising this month’s G20 summit are slums whose residents can no longer earn a living. Their roadside stalls and shops have been demolished, lest they tarnish Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s carefully curated image of a rising India.
India’s GDP statistics are also on display as part of this “branding and beautification” exercise. With an annual growth of 7.8% in the second quarter of this year, India appears to be the world’s fastest-growing major economy. But, again, behind the billboards are human struggles on a massive scale. Growth, in fact, is low, inequalities are rising, and job scarcity remains acute.
The G20-inspired billboards touting India’s latest GDP figure include a mysterious line about “discrepancies.” Normally an innocuous reporting convention in national accounts, the discrepancy is the difference between domestic income (earned by producing goods and services) and expenditure (what residents and foreigners pay when buying those goods and services). In principle, expenditure should equal income earned, because producers can earn incomes only when others buy their output. In practice, however, estimates of income and expenditure differ in national accounts everywhere, because they are based on imperfect data.
Typically, this discrepancy does not matter for calculating growth rates, because income and expenditure, even if they differ somewhat, have similar trends. But every now and then, the two series follow very different paths, with hugely consequential implications for evaluating economic performance.
The Indian National Statistical Office’s latest report is a case in point. It shows that while income from production increased at an annual 7.8% rate in April-June, expenditure rose by only 1.4%. Both measures clearly have many errors. The NSO nonetheless treats income as the right one and assumes (as implied by its “discrepancy” note) that expenditure must be identical to income earned. This is an obvious violation of international best practice. The entire point of the discrepancy line is to acknowledge statistical imperfections, not to make them disappear. The NSO is covering up the reality of anemic expenditure at a time when many Indians are hurting, and when foreigners are showing only a limited appetite for Indian goods.
The proper approach is to recognize both income and expenditure as imperfect macroeconomic aggregates, and then to combine them to assess the state of the economy. Hence, the Australian, German, and UK governments adjust their reported GDP using information from both the income and expenditure sides.
Moreover, while the United States uses expenditure as its primary metric of economic performance (unlike income in India), the US Bureau of Economic Analysis accounts for the often sizable difference between income and expenditure by reporting the average of the two as its composite measure. When we apply the BEA method to Indian data, the most recent growth rate falls from the headline 7.8% to 4.5% – a marked decline from 13.1% in April-June 2022, when the post-COVID-19 rebound first triggered the current wave of India hype.
That hype never stood up to an elementary analysis of the data, but it has persisted because it serves the interests of Indian and international elites. They prefer to forget that India’s GDP growth rate was 3.5% in 2019, before falling sharply during COVID, or that it slowed again to an average of 3.5% since then, even after the 13.1% dead-cat bounce in the second quarter of last year. The latest data not only confirm slowing growth, but also alert us to the underlying causes: rising inequalities and job scarcity.
Those inequalities are reflected in the increased import content of domestic expenditure, which is up from 22% before COVID to 26%. With the help of an overvalued exchange rate, rich Indians are buying fast cars, gilded watches, and designer handbags – often on shopping sprees in Zurich, Milan, and Singapore – while the vast majority struggle to buy necessities.
The data also show why the Indian economy is failing to create jobs, especially those that would support a dignified standard of living. Apart from public administration, the most rapid income growth by far this past quarter (at 12.1%) was in finance and real estate. This post-liberalization feature of Indian development, now augmented by “fintechs,” generates only a handful of jobs for highly qualified Indians. Public administration also is growing robustly, but this, too, creates only limited job opportunities. Among other growth sectors, construction (helped by the government’s infrastructure drive) and low-end services (in trade, transport, and hotels) mostly create financially precarious jobs that leave workers one life event away from severe distress.
The dog that refuses to bark is manufacturing, the primary source of employment in every successful developing economy. Following decades of disappointing growth, India’s post-COVID manufacturing performance has been particularly weak. This reflects the country’s chronic inability to compete in international markets for labor-intensive products – a problem made worse by the slowdown in world trade and weak domestic demand for manufactured products, owing to appalling income inequality.
Indian authorities are choosing to dismiss inconvenient facts so that they can parade seemingly flattering images and headline figures ahead of the G20 summit. But they are playing a cynical, dangerous game. Slippery national account statistics betray a desire to wish away slowing growth, rising inequalities, and grim job prospects. The authorities would do well to recognize – and reconsider – the path they have set India on.
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India’s Quiet Rise
Sep 5, 2023
BRAHMA CHELLANEY
The end of China’s four-decade-long economic boom has thrown into relief the emergence of Asia's other demographic giant as a geopolitical and economic force. But while India appears stable and resurgent under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, its future will depend on its ability to maintain political stability and rapid economic growth.
NEW DELHI – China’s sharp economic slowdown has raised alarm bells around the world. But it has also thrown into relief the rise of another demographic powerhouse next door. The Indian economy grew at an impressive 7.8% annual rate in the second quarter of 2023, and the country recently reached an important milestone by becoming the first to land a spacecraft on the Moon’s potentially water-rich south pole. And, India’s ascent, unlike China’s, has not been accompanied by an increasingly assertive foreign policy or an appetite for other countries’ territory.
As India’s geopolitical, economic, and cultural clout grows, so does its global footprint. China’s “decline,” as some have begun to call the conclusion of the country’s four-decade-long economic boom, opens new opportunities for the Indian economy and other developing and emerging countries.
Earlier this year, India reached another milestone when its population officially surpassed that of China, which had been the world’s most populous country for more than 300 years. While China’s shrinking, rapidly aging population is likely to impede economic growth and may curtail its geopolitical ambitions, India – one of the world’s youngest countries, with a median age of 28.2 – is poised to reap a huge demographic dividend.
But the driving force behind India’s emergence as a major global power is its rapid economic growth. While India’s GDP is still smaller than China’s, the country is currently the world’s fastest-growing major economy and is projected to account for 12.9% of global growth over the next five years, surpassing the United States’ 11.3% share.
In addition to fueling a consumption boom, India’s youthful population is also driving innovation, as evidenced by the country’s world-class information economy and its recent moon landing, which the country managed to achieve despite a national space budget equivalent to roughly 6% of what the US spends on space missions. Having already surpassed the United Kingdom, its former colonial ruler, India’s GDP is poised to overtake that of Japan and Germany to become the world’s third-largest economy by 2030, behind the US and China.
Given its increasingly unstable neighborhood, it should come as no surprise that India has the world’s third-largest defense budget. The deepening strategic alliance between China and Pakistan underscores India’s precarious position as the only country bordering two nuclear-armed revisionist states with expansionist ambitions. Moreover, for the past three years, India has been locked in a tense military standoff with China along its Himalayan border. Bilateral relations, marked by intermittent clashes in the disputed Tibet-Ladakh border region, are at their lowest point in decades.
By confronting China despite the risk of a full-scale war, India has challenged Chinese power in a way no other country has done in this century. But despite leaning toward forging closer ties with the West, India remains hesitant to enter into formal military alliances with Western countries.
Western powers are partly to blame. US President Joe Biden’s reluctance to comment on the Sino-Indian military standoff, let alone openly support India, has sent a clear signal that India is responsible for its own defense. Given that the country’s future growth hinges on its ability to defend itself against external threats, India will likely step up its efforts to modernize its conventional armed forces and enhance its nuclear deterrence.
The escalating geopolitical rivalry between China and India could also impede efforts to unite the Global South and transform the BRICS group into a credible alternative to the G20 and G7. The BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) recently agreed to expand the group by adding six new members: Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Ethiopia, Argentina, and Iran. Given the 11 members’ divergent interests, BRICS+ will likely find it even harder to reach consensus on any major issue.
Meanwhile, China’s economic slump could prompt President Xi Jinping to double down on his expansionist agenda. Biden recently characterized the stagnating Chinese economy as a “ticking time bomb,” warning that, “When bad folks have problems, they do bad things.” China’s controversial new national map, which depicts vast areas of India, Malaysia, the Philippines, Vietnam, Taiwan, and Bhutan (and even a bit of Russia) as Chinese territory, underscores the threat posed by China’s increasingly aggressive behavior.
In addition to these external threats, India’s future will be shaped by its response to domestic economic challenges. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has made great strides in modernizing the notoriously outdated Indian bureaucracy and promoting e-government to reduce red tape and attract foreign direct investment. His government has invested heavily in upgrading and expanding the country’s infrastructure, implemented regulatory reforms, and sought to boost domestic manufacturing through Modi’s “Make in India” initiative. But to transform itself into a global manufacturing hub, India must invest in human capital, particularly in education and training.
Moreover, India’s size and diversity also pose enormous challenges. India may be the first developing economy that, from the beginning, has pursued modernization and prosperity through a democratic system. But as one of the world’s most culturally diverse countries, its seemingly never-ending election cycle has often fueled division and polarization.
But, despite its US-style polarized politics, India’s democratic framework has served as a pillar of stability. By fostering open expression and dialogue, the Indian political system has empowered grassroots communities and individuals, enabling members of historically marginalized classes and castes to rise to the highest levels of policymaking.
Whether India can maintain its current upward trajectory will depend on its ability to maintain political stability, rapid economic growth, domestic and external security, and a forward-looking foreign policy. Success would enhance India’s global standing and help advance US interests in the Indo-Pacific, the world’s new geopolitical fulcrum and home to its fastest-growing economies.
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India Should Quit the BRICS
Sep 7, 2023
ARVIND SUBRAMANIAN
, JOSH FELMAN
Following the BRICS’ recent announcement that it will add Saudi Arabia, Iran, Ethiopia, Egypt, Argentina, and the United Arab Emirates, India faces a big strategic choice. Why should it belong to a China-centric club that will no longer share or serve its own interests?
WASHINGTON, DC – The world’s most powerful leaders will soon meet in New Delhi, heralding the culmination of India’s G20 presidency. While the G20 has delivered very little since its early successes following the 2008 global financial crisis, there are two reasons why the group’s coming summit still matters for India.
First, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has turned the G20 presidency into a major domestic issue by involving all of India in the preparations. G20 posters featuring Modi are plastered across the country, signaling his intention to present India as a key player on the global stage. The more that Indians are persuaded their country is a vishwaguru (teacher to the world), the greater the ruling party’s chances in upcoming state elections and next year’s national elections.
Second, India now faces a big strategic choice, following the BRICS’ (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) decision to add Saudi Arabia, Iran, Ethiopia, Egypt, Argentina, and the United Arab Emirates. Until recently, the BRICS was anomalous in design and ineffective (and thus harmless) in operation.
But BRICS+ is more political in focus, more China-centric in leadership, and more anti-West in motivation. Its composition is shaping its character. The question for India, then, is whether it still makes sense to belong to such a grouping.
That answer is “probably not,” for three reasons. First, consider the economics. The attraction of the original BRICS (South Africa joined in 2010) lay in its members’ economic dynamism. Back in 2004, Brazil, Russia, India, and China were booming. But today, the BRICS risks becoming a collective of fading stars. To be sure, many of the BRICS still have high levels of wealth. In particular, China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE still have the resources needed to partner with and donate to poorer countries. But wealth alone is no guarantee of global economic influence. Just look at Japan. Developing and emerging economies aren’t particularly interested in a potential partner’s glorious past; they want to align with countries that are on the rise.
There is no doubt that the BRICS of 2023 is much less dynamic than it was two decades ago. Gone are the days when China could effortlessly achieve 10% annual growth. The economic model that produced those spectacular results has broken down, such that most analysts now expect secular growth of 3% or less. Meanwhile, Russia has been in terminal decline for years – and now its war of aggression will enfeeble it further. Though Brazil is currently enjoying a boom on the back of higher commodity prices, it remains to be seen if its fortunes can be sustained.
As for the others, Argentina is teetering, yet again, on the edge of financial collapse, and South Africa remains saddled with astronomically high unemployment and profound governance and fiscal challenges. Egypt needs support from the International Monetary Fund to ensure any semblance of macroeconomic stability, and even Saudi Arabia and the UAE are living on borrowed time: a concerted global push on climate change will leave them stranded with devalued hydrocarbon assets.
In short, BRICS+ comprises a bunch of economic has-beens. The big exception is India, which is still growing rapidly, with long-term prospects that have improved markedly in recent years. Since it no longer has much in common with the other BRICS members, it should consider leaving – both for symbolic and practical reasons.
That brings us to the second big issue: politics. The new BRICS+ shows every sign of becoming more political, and in ways that pose serious problems for India. For starters, its increasingly China-centric, anti-Western orientation runs counter to India’s longstanding principle of non-alignment. Maintaining equidistance from rival power blocs has always been a central tenet of Indian foreign policy, which it has upheld even in the face of Russia’s war on Ukraine.
To Modi’s enormous credit, India has managed to move closer to the United States and Japan while also maintaining its relations with Russia; it has also deepened its ties with Israel and forged better relations with Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and especially the UAE. Is India prepared to jeopardize this success just to remain a member in good standing within the enlarged BRICS+?
Moreover, apart from Argentina and Ethiopia, the new members are all autocracies, and this fact matters now that the group is becoming more political. Does India really want to belong to an authoritarian club? Notwithstanding its own political backsliding under Modi, it still counts democracy as its international calling card.
The third reason to quit the BRICS concerns global governance. There is no longer any doubt that the US- and G7-led international order is unfit for purpose. After all, multilateral financial institutions do not give nearly enough voice to rising powers; multilateral trade institutions have been undermined through unilateral protectionist measures; and interdependence itself has been weaponized in the name of US national security.
But even if India would prefer a new world order, its vision would not coincide with that of China, Russia, or Saudi Arabia. Among other things, the other BRICS members aspire to dethrone the US dollar as the world’s dominant currency, and to provide alternative development resources and emergency funding to poorer countries. But these objectives imply that a better world would be based on renminbi dominance, Belt and Road Initiative-type lending, and a greater reluctance among official creditors to write-off debts when poor countries face crises.
These solutions are not obviously better than the status quo, and from India’s perspective, they are almost certainly worse. How would India benefit from replacing US dominance with Chinese dominance? By lending its weight to BRICS+, it would become complicit in supporting China’s geopolitical aspirations.
Since India already eschewed membership in the China-centered Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, it would be rather odd for it to align with China in a quasi-political grouping. The feeling appears to be mutual: Chinese President Xi Jinping reportedly intends to skip the G20 summit.
That should make India’s choice easier. The G7 is outdated, and BRICS+ is no alternative. Tedious and performative though it has become, the multilateralism of the G20 remains a sliver of hope in navigating a new world of fragmented disorder.
As an assertion of its emerging strength, India should leave the BRICS. And, as a signal of its commitment to constructive alternatives, it should strive to make the G20 a success.
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