India’s time has come

India has been unable to match China’s powerful infrastructure, diplomacy as both US and India worries that China wants to become a regional “hegemon”, a fear that has united the world’s largest democracies over recent years.

A rising India wants a power broker at the table of global powers, with its huge military and growing economy as India is getting ready to set its own terms on everything from defence to climate to trade. The book highlights India’s evolution in business, trade and foreign policy and how it affects the US.

Alyssa Ayres, a former US diplomat, whose book Our Time has Come provides a fascinating and detailed account of a nation growing. India is aspiring to be a “leading power “ able to shape events and win a greater role at global institutions such as the UN. India is fearful of China’s powerful military so Narendra Modi ’s aim is to attain primacy in the Indian Ocean. The  Sino-Indian flashpoints are even beyond their long and disrupted shared border, over which they fought a war in 1962 which India lost.

 After their recent summit, Modi and Xi instructed  their respective armies to avoid any further border spats

America’s thinking is crud3 but logical: If there are two big powers in Asia, namely India and Chin, one alone cannot dominate.

 

Our Time Has Come: How India Is making its Place In the World by Alyssa Ayres, Oxford University Press £18.99, 360 pages.