The Hoover Institution’s Survey of India offers a panoramic overview of political, economic, and societal developments over the past year. The goal of the Huntington Program on Strengthening US-India Relations, which produced this survey, is to generate, identify, and advance policy-relevant scholarship and connections that further the critical partnership between India and the United States. Download the new report here.
Mark Twain once described India as “the land of dreams and romance, of fabulous wealth and fabulous poverty, of splendor and rags, of palaces and hovels, of famine and pestilence, of genii and giants and Aladdin lamps, of tigers and elephants, the cobra and the jungle, the country of a hundred nations and a hundred tongues, of a thousand religions and two million gods, cradle of the human race, birthplace of human speech, mother of history, grandmother of legend, great-grandmother of tradition, whose yesterdays bear date with the mouldering antiquities of the rest of the nations—the one sole country under the sun that is endowed with an imperishable interest for alien prince and alien peasant, for lettered and ignorant, wise and fool, rich and poor, bond and free, the one land that all men desire to see, and having seen once, by even a glimpse, would not give that glimpse for the shows of all the rest of the globe combined.”
Although contemporary India has transformed considerably since Twain’s time, very few Americans have taken more than a passing glimpse at this nation of nations. This neglect was perhaps defensible if not shortsighted in the decades after India’s Independence in 1947. Indeed, the noted American anthropologist Harold Isaacs, quite aptly if poignantly, described India (and China) during this period as “scratches on our minds.” In those decades following Independence, India’s leaders mostly chose to focus on reversing the damage that nearly two centuries of rapacious British colonialism had wrought on India. Independent India rightly prioritized domestic issues; on the international stage, India’s main goal was to chart an independent and nonaligned course from the major world powers. US policy makers during this time made their peace with India’s reluctance to engage: they did not see much strategic value in working with India or its leaders. Not surprisingly, these decades from the 1950s through the 1990s translated into a generation of misunderstanding and distrust between the United States and India.
However, as India has prospered in recent decades, it has simply become too important to ignore. Today India is home to more than one in five of the world’s people, making it the largest country on Earth. It boasts the fifth-largest economy and the world’s fastest-growing major economy at that. Its commitment to democracy has provided decades of political order for a diverse populace, even as some institutions have at times been accused of overstepping their bounds. And as US policy makers shift from focusing on terrorism and insurgency emanating from the Middle East and South Asia to the challenges of a rising China, an increasingly hostile Russia, and the difficult necessity of preserving a free and open Indo-Pacific region, the awesome potential of India’s ascent demands US engagement.
Since the 2000s, there has been bipartisan recognition that the United States must deepen its partnership with India. A major stepping stone toward this goal occurred in 2008, when the two countries signed a historic civil nuclear agreement. Under this agreement, India would split its civil and military nuclear infrastructure and allow international inspection of its civilian nuclear facilities. In return, previous sanctions placed on India would be suspended and India would be allowed to acquire nuclear technologies and materials for civil purposes from foreign sources. Even though the United States and India ultimately failed to advance much nuclear cooperation, the negotiations that brought this agreement to fruition established a new timber of trust in the relationship that had been sorely lacking.
But trust cannot be built on good faith or common enemies alone. Trust—or at least the kind of trust that can bind two nations in a robust partnership—also requires a deep and intimate understanding of the counterpart society. It remains to be seen whether the two countries can successfully work together, but US leaders in government, in the private sector, and in academia have a responsibility to learn about India.
It is in this spirit that we have prepared The Hoover Institution’s Survey of India. The chapters thematically present eight of the most important aspects of India’s political economy. Although the chapters are rigorously researched, the contributors were not asked to present a definitive history of their subjects. After all, entire books could be written on each of these areas. Our contributors were instead tasked with presenting what an educated US policy maker should know about a given issue area, with a bias for presenting and explaining recent developments in India. Although they are short and easy to read, the chapters are not just a mere glimpse of a policy space. Each chapter has been written to inform US experts in that area as well as more general readers who are simply interested in India.
Taken together, these eight chapters present the contours of a rapidly ascending power. India’s trajectory over the past several decades has been downright enviable, and the country is likely to continue its ascent across multiple dimensions. But the pressures that the country faces are also apparent. India’s biggest challenges seem to be internally sourced. Contending nationalist visions between liberalism and secularism on the one hand and majoritarian Hindu nationalism on the other not only shape the country’s electoral outcomes but also emerge across India’s political economy. To be sure, the United States is no stranger to such growing pains. As the United States approached a similar point in its national history, it descended into the vortex of a sanguinary civil war. Although India is unlikely to experience anything as painful as a civil war, given its inherent cultural and religious pluralism, the country will ultimately have to reconcile what it means to be Indian. What India chooses to pursue will not only affect these eight policy areas but will also shape the US-India relationship more broadly.
In summary, the main goal of this survey is not to simply inform a US policy maker or two at a particular point regarding some trivial summary statistics. After all, one can already look up basic information from other sources. Instead, our contributors provide a sense of the underlying dynamics—political, institutional, societal, and otherwise—that are collectively shaping the trajectory of India. By raising the overall level of awareness on India’s political economy, we hope that this Survey of India will inspire Americans to learn more about India and its people.
Our push could not come at a more critical time. Despite the widespread recognition that the US-India partnership will be one that defines this century, and the equally widespread recognition that India’s internal dynamics will shape its engagement with the United States, it seems to be an open secret that many leaders in the United States do not have substantive exposure to India. This should come as little surprise: very few US students have had the opportunity to visit India, and even today, there are only a handful of scholars across the country who teach classes on India or its political economy.
The United States and India will continue to struggle in advancing this critical partnership unless and until US expertise on India matures and deepens.
