Hoover Institution (Stanford, CA) — Contributors to a landmark new report detailing the challenges and promise awaiting India in the coming years gathered at the Hoover Institution on January 28, with the hope that the nation’s relationship with the United States will continue to improve.
With India now the world’s most populous country and by far the world’s largest democracy, Hoover senior fellow Šumit Ganguly said that it’s time for an American audience to have an up-to-date guidebook on the economic, social, and political challenges facing India, drawing from a host of leading scholars on that nation.
Filling the need for crucial information about India and how both it and the United States could benefit from warming ties is The Hoover Institution’s Survey of India.
“Quite frankly, there is no comparable one-stop shop that provides this kind of panoramic view of India’s economic, social, and political developments,” Ganguly told attendees at a launch event for the report in Hoover’s Annenberg Conference Room. The event and publication were organized by Hoover’s Huntington Program on Strengthening US-India Relations.
The Survey of India features experts such as economist Nirvikar Singh of the University of California–Santa Cruz writing about India’s economy, and sociologists Jack A. Goldstone and Leela Visaria detailing India’s approaching demographic turning point.
Volume coeditor and Hoover research fellow Dinsha Mistree told attendees that he realized in a meeting several years ago with US federal officials that a report on the state of India was necessary.
“They didn’t know how India’s system of higher education worked,” Mistree said. “It’s surprising how little exposure American [diplomats] have to their Indian counterparts.”
The report tackles eight “pillars” of subject matter useful to Americans seeking to better understand India today. Chapters include examinations of India’s current security and defense procurement posture, its health outcomes, its research and development strategy, and its energy sector.
During the January 28 discussion, Mistree said that the personal relationship between presidents Donald Trump and Narendra Modi could hopefully deliver results on three budding aspects of the India-US economic and security relationship.
Future meetings could result in a deepening of the defense relationship between the two nations, seeing as the Russians—deep in their own military procurement struggle because of huge losses sustained during the invasion of Ukraine—can’t reliably deliver military equipment to India anymore.
Diplomats from both countries could propose to make India a stronger link in the Quad, a diplomatic and military framework including India, Australia, Japan, and the United States, which is seen as a means of countering Chinese influence in Asia.
But with those two developments, Mistree said that India needs to make concessions on tariffs, as it still coddles a lot of its domestic industries in sectors including automotive assembly and alcoholic beverage manufacturing.
Several speakers agreed with Mistree but pointed out that there remains a significant impediment to warming US-India relations that nobody in Washington is poised to overcome. As Ganguly explained, there is still a “sclerotic obsession with certain episodes during the Cold War, among some Indian bureaucrats who resist greater cooperation with the United States.
During the Cold War, India helped lead a nonaligned movement and fought several wars with its neighbor, Pakistan, who received material support from the United States.
This Cold War sentiment will serve as a barrier to continued cooperation between India and the United States for some time, but Ganguly said there are avenues to continue improving ties. Joint military exercises, defense tech cooperation, and exporting more natural gas to India could all help bring the two nations closer together.
