event

Why India Is Not a Great Power (Yet)

Thu. November 12th, 2015
Washington, DC

Since the economic liberalization of the early 1990s, India’s rise as a great power has been imagined either in terms of rapid economic growth and immense potential in the global market or its remarkable ‘soft power’—culture, tourism, frugal engineering, and the 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. In his new book, Why India Is Not a Great Power (Yet), Bharat Karnad delves exclusively into these hard power aspects of India’s rise and the problems associated with them.

Karnad examined 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 how these shortfalls have prevented the country from achieving great-power status. Lisa Curtis, Daniel S. Markey, and Richard M. Rossow joined the discussion. Carnegie’s Ashley J. Tellis moderated.

Lisa Curtis

Lisa Curtis is a senior research fellow at The Heritage Foundation, where she analyzes America’s economic, security, and political relationships with India, Pakistan, Afghanistan and other nations of South Asia.

Bharat Karnad

Bharat Karnad is professor of National Security Studies at the Center for Policy Research (CPR) in New Delhi, India.

Daniel S. Markey

Daniel S. Markey is adjunct senior fellow for India, Pakistan, and South Asia at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), where he specializes in security and governance issues in South Asia.

Richard M. Rossow

Richard M. Rossow is a senior fellow and holds the Wadhwani Chair in U.S.-India Policy Studies at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).

Ashley J. Tellis

Ashley J. Tellis is a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace specializing in international security, defense, and Asian strategic issues.

EconomySecurityMilitaryForeign PolicyGlobal GovernanceSouth AsiaIndia
Carnegie does not take institutional positions on public policy issues; the views represented herein are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of Carnegie, its staff, or its trustees.
event speakers

Ashley J. Tellis

Tata Chair for Strategic Affairs

Ashley J. Tellis is the Tata Chair for Strategic Affairs and a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, specializing in international security and U.S. foreign and defense policy with a special focus on Asia and the Indian subcontinent.

Bharat Karnad

Lisa Curtis

Lisa Curtis is deputy assistant to the President and senior director for South and Central Asia at the National Security Council. Formerly, she was a senior research fellow on South Asia at The Heritage Foundation's Asian Studies Center. Prior to joining Heritage, she served on the professional staff of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, where she held the South Asia portfolio for the then-chairman, Senator Richard Lugar (R-IN).

Daniel Markey

Daniel Markey is the author of China’s Western Horizon: Beijing and the New Geopolitics of Eurasia (Oxford University Press, 2020). He is also a senior research professor in international relations and the academic director of the Master of Arts in Global Policy program at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.

Richard Rossow