India always had the Himalayas as a comfortable physical and psychological barrier, warding off any sense of imminent, existential crisis it may have felt as a young nation. Pakistan it could deal with – India’s cantankerous neighbour is also poor and agricultural, with less than one-sixth India’s population. We are, however, faced with a new situation today

by Swagato Ganguly

The tectonic plates of global geopolitics are shifting, as the West is about to pick up the gauntlet China has thrown to it.

On a visit to South Korea some years ago I asked a senior Samsung executive who had also served in government, what made his country soar to First World status when 60 years ago it was just like India – underdeveloped and agricultural. He ruminated for a minute, then answered it was the Korean war of 1950-53 – which had a cataclysmic effect on Korean society and during which the capital, Seoul, changed hands four times – that transformed the attitudes of Korea’s social and political elites.

Meanwhile, India always had the Himalayas as a comfortable physical and psychological barrier, warding off any sense of imminent, existential crisis it may have felt as a young nation. Pakistan it could deal with – India’s cantankerous neighbour is also poor and agricultural, with less than one-sixth India’s population.

We are, however, faced with a new situation today. China, having made giant strides in development and military strength, is currently in expansionist mode – as Prime Minister Narendra Modi indicated when he spoke to Jawans on a surprise trip to Ladakh on July 3. Modi’s forthright speech on that occasion, and the subsequent decision to pull the plug on 59 Chinese apps, was a refreshing change from the downplaying of the China threat – even as Indians scream imprecations at Pakistan – that is the default mode of our strategic thinking.

Beijing, which wants to bestride Asia like a colossus, is having a go at the Himalayan barrier which hitherto gave New Delhi its sense of security. It’s true that barrier was breached in 1962, when the Chinese captured Arunachal Pradesh – but the breach proved momentary as they rapidly withdrew. This time, however, Beijing won’t be in a hurry to retreat – the extent of permanent infrastructure and unprecedented mobilising of its armed forces along the LAC indicates this. Moreover, it has lined up its chips correctly. While Modi’s speech at Ladakh spoke of the path of development as opposed to that of expansionism, China in fact has galloped down the former path for the last four decades.

As I argued in these columns recently (‘A New Cold War?’, May 21), Beijing’s perspective is markedly different from the Western (or Indian) one, in that it never believed that the Cold War ended with the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. This has provided it with a sense of existential urgency (not unlike the South Korean one), as its ambition to equal and ultimately surpass the US drove it to modernise rapidly. Beijing didn’t make Soviet first secretary (later Premier) Nikita Khrushchev’s mistake of publicly threatening the West “history is on our side, we will bury you!” But that’s the path it embarked on.

With the Himalayan barrier acting as a psychological cushion India, meanwhile, plodded along in an insular bubble, sufficient unto itself. India and China were roughly at the same economic level in 1980, but now China is five times richer. It’s been argued that India’s problem is too much democracy. According to latest rankings of the Human Freedom Index , however, India ranks a lowly 108th in personal freedom and 94th in human freedom among 162 nations. Given India’s immense diversity, weakening democracy further would be tantamount to weakening the integrity of the republic itself. Fortunately, the problem lies not in too much democracy but rather in too much bureaucracy – with the promise of the 1991 reforms petering out over the last decade or so.

Two things are apparent about the post-Covid normal. First, the tectonic plates of global geopolitics are shifting, as the West is about to pick up the gauntlet China has thrown to it. Second, unlike the old Cold War where India was a marginal player, it will be a frontline state in the new era of heightened geopolitical rivalries that’s looming. Its safe space is gone, as the China-Pakistan alliance will become much more visible in its attempts to constrain India. Among other things the spectre of a two front war will loom for the foreseeable future, placing an additional burden on India’s flailing economy.

To cope with this new situation, the first step is strategic clarity. New Delhi must rework its inward orientation, which includes an obsession with internal politics, and realise that it has reached a tipping point with China. To restore balance it needs to surpass China in economic growth rates, which means doing 8-10% annual GDP growth sustainably, while decoupling from China in strategic areas such as telecom and power. It must sharply cut its regulatory and bureaucratic cholesterol, which requires a decisive departure from the Nehruvian consensus governing economic policy. Self-reliance is all right, so long as we realise that – like reservations which undermine merit – it works best in homeopathic doses.

Second, if India is a frontline state now, non-alignment won’t do anymore (as foreign minister S Jaishankar correctly indicated). India’s desire to stand alone allowed even Pakistan to routinely outmanoeuvre it diplomatically in the past. And now, it has a great power ranged against it. As strategic analyst C Raja Mohan wrote recently, “That China has become far more powerful than all of its Asian neighbours has meant Beijing no longer sees the need to evoke Asian unity.” The Galwan valley clashes and threat of a wider war provided New Delhi with a clear indication of who its friends and enemies are, and it needs to pick up smartly on those cues.

Hopefully, the looming external threat will prick India’s insular bubble. If it galvanises India’s elites into the sort of modernising behaviour South Korea exhibited earlier then Beijing – in the end – would have done New Delhi a great favour. It’s worth remembering that South Korea, too, bloomed in the shadow cast by the Chinese giant.