India’s Search for Major Power Status

Commonwealth Club of California Podcast

In 2022, India surpassed the United Kingdom as the fifth largest economy in the world. Since the 1990s, a series of U.S. presidents and secretaries of state have acclaimed India as a rising major power that deserves to be recognized as a lead actor in the international arena.

T.V. Paul, an international relations professor at McGill University, explores in his new book The Unfinished Quest the key motivations driving Indian leaders to enhance India's global status and power, but also on the many constraints that have hindered its progress. Paul's analysis of India's quest for status also sheds important light for understanding the China-India rivalry, as well as India's relative position in the broader Indo-Pacific theater.

Join us for a special online-only program to hear Paul’s sweeping account of India's uneven rise in the global system. Whether India can be a "swing power" able to mitigate China's aggressive rise depends on its relative power position in that theater and its own evolution as an inclusive, tolerant democracy that can develop and utilize its most priced asset, the demographic dividend, says Paul.

MLF ORGANIZER

Dr. Kalidip Choudhury, Ph.D.

An Asia-Pacific Affairs Member-led Forum program. Forums at the Club are organized and run by volunteer programmers who are members of The Commonwealth Club, and they cover a diverse range of topics. Learn more about our Forums.

This program contains EXPLICIT language.

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