India’s transition to a Great Power needs more governance and less bureaucracy, more reforms and less regulation, more assertive engagement with the rest of the world and less passive neutrality. – Minhaz Merchant

India’s geopolitical absence during the Middle East crisis has emboldened critics of India’s global rise. The critics are both indigenous and foreign. The US-led West does not welcome the prospect of India becoming another economic, technological and military powerhouse like China in the next decisive decade.

Christopher Landau, America’s deputy secretary of state, said it explicitly during a recent think tank conference in Delhi: “India should understand that we’re not going to make the same mistakes with India that we made with China 20 years ago in terms of saying, ‘Oh, you know, we’re going to let you develop all these markets,’ and then the next thing we know, you’re beating us in a lot of commercial things.”

The indigenous criticism of India’s evolving place in the world is harsher as it always is during an election season. Where does the truth lie? Has India’s global advance stalled? Or, is it simply navigating a difficult course in a disorderly world?

Strategic autonomy is India’s guiding geopolitical principle. But stretched too far, it can morph into passive neutrality. That is not how a nation makes the transition from a Middle Power to a Great Power.

Take China’s rise as an example. Till 1980 it was a peripheral power with a GDP of $0.19 trillion and widespread poverty. Its reformist leader Deng Xiaoping began an economic liberalisation process that catapulted China to a Great Power in one generation. By 2010, China’s GDP had grown more than thirty-fold in 30 years from $0.19 trillion to $6.10 trillion.

Much of China’s ascent owed to two factors: Communism and intellectual property theft. Obsessed by the Cold War, the US propped up China as a counter to the Soviet Union. It allowed free access to Chinese scientists and academics to US universities and research laboratories. China reverse-engineered US military and civil technology before Washington realised that it had unwittingly created a superpower rival.

America’s attitude to India is deeply prejudiced by its toxic Chinese experience. In 2005 the US experimented with deploying a still “fragile-five” India as a regional counterweight to China. An India-US civil nuclear deal followed, along with closer economic ties. China remained America’s target.

That policy has been largely abandoned for two reasons. One, China is now too powerful to be countered by a third country. Two, India itself threatens to become too powerful for America’s comfort in the next decisive decade.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) in its latest World Economic Outlook (April 2026) report places India’s GDP, measured by Purchasing Power Parity (PPP), as the world’s third largest at $18.90 trillion. The US is the world’s second largest economy ($32.38 trillion) below first-placed China ($44.30 trillion).

The combined GDP (PPP) of India and China in 2026 is therefore $63.20 trillion, double US GDP. The two Asian giants are growing at an annual rate of 4.5 per cent (China) and 6.5 per cent (India) compared to annual US growth rate of 2 per cent. The economic gap between the world’s three largest economies is widening with India’s GDP (PPP) now nearly half China’s and two-thirds America’s.

Trump factor

Under President Donald Trump, the US regards India’s ascent with concern. Moreover, Washington believes a thaw between India and China could create a powerful axis against the US-led West. That axis is currently fragmented. One half is centred around China, Russia, North Korea and Iran—all irredeemably hostile to the West.

The other half comprises powers of the Global South led by India, Brazil and others. If these two halves come together on a common platform, the US-led West could for the first time in two centuries face a credible threat to its global hegemony.

The only international platform that can grow into a unified non-Western axis is BRICS. India is currently the group’s annual rotating head. Foreign ministers from BRICS nations are scheduled to meet in Delhi in May. India will host the BRICS heads of government summit in Delhi in October. Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin are scheduled to attend.

BRICS has now expanded to 11 member-nations. They include the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, Iran and Egypt, all key players in the unfolding world order.

As a Great Power in transition, India must ignore the advice Deng gave China in 1980: “Hide your strength, bide your time.” For India, the time to hide its strength has long gone. It has historically punched below its geopolitical weight. That era is over.

India must now move from a policy of strategic autonomy to strategic assertiveness. Autonomy is the passive language of non-alignment. It is mistaken by other powers as India’s unwillingness to take sides, take risks, and impose its strategic thinking on others.

For an economy which, as IMF data points out, contributes 17 per cent to annual global growth, second only to China (26.60 per cent) and far more than the US (9.90 per cent), passive neutrality is not the quickest path to Great Power status.

China transitioned from a Middle Power in 2000 to a Great Power in 2020 by being geopolitically assertive. As a noisy, fractious democracy, India’s path is not as smooth as Communist China’s. But in the long run, the advantages of democracy and freedom will always score over communism and dictatorship.

The seeds of China’s demographic downfall were sown in the 1970s when it enforced forcible birth control and a one-child policy. India tried to do the same during the 1975-77 Emergency with forcible sterilisation. Communism allowed China to enforce the policy. India’s democracy did not: forced sterilisation ended with the revocation of the Emergency and the 1977 general election.

The outcome: China’s population is in free fall. Workforce productivity, despite AI automation, is slowing. The UN projects China’s population will halve to 733 million in 2100. India’s population in contrast will plateau at 1.5 billion through to the end of the 21st century, giving it the tools to become the world’s largest economy (PPP) by 2055.

But the transition to a Great Power needs more governance and less bureaucracy, more reforms and less regulation, more assertive engagement with the rest of the world and less passive neutrality.

The tools are in place. Washington and Beijing may feign disinterest but they are watching carefully. Neither welcomes India’s ascent and will do what they can to stall it till, like China, India becomes too big to stall. – Firstpost, 21 April 2026

› Minhaz Merchant is an editor, author and publisher.