Description
Along with the meteoric rise of China, there has been much interest in the emergence of India, as a rising power with one of the fastest growing economies in the world up until the 2019 Covid-19 Pandemic crisis. The rapidly developing US-China rivalry gives India an added importance in world politics today as India is the most significant swing power that can help balance China’s potentially aggressive rise in the Indo-Pacific region. Further, the strengthening of Hindu nationalism under Narendra Modi, who has been making strong attempts to emerge India as a leading power while at the same time taking populist postures internally and using international status enhancement for electoral victory evokes global interest. The dynamics of international status in domestic political contestation has not obtained much attention in the extant literature. Now that we have some three decades of data on India’s economic and military growth, we can make a better assessment of the achievements and shortcomings in comparison with others, especially China. Using the burgeoning literature on status quest this paper assesses their validity in the Indian context. What do these theories tell us about this case and how better can we understand it?
