India on the Rise: How High Will It Go?

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

Good afternoon, all. Welcome to this discussion marking the release of the March/April issue of Foreign Affairs. I’m Dan Kurtz-Phelan, the editor of Foreign Affairs. We’ve got three fantastic guests, all of them Foreign Affairs authors, joining us today to discuss India, its upcoming election, its economic prospects, its global role in foreign policy, and of course its relationship with the United States. We’ve got a lot to cover, so I will only very briefly introduce the three of them. Before we jump right into discussion and again, I will be in conversation among the four of us for the first portion of this hour and then we will go to questions from all of you. So please gather those and submit them as we go.

We’ll start with Alyssa Ayres. Alyssa has been really a top India hand in both the U.S. government and in the American academy over the last few decades. She is currently the dean of the Elliott School for International Affairs at George Washington University. She’s also a senior fellow here at the Council on Foreign Relations. And she served in the State Department overseeing India policy in the Obama administration and also worked in government during the George W. Bush administration, when really the beginning of the modern U.S.-India relationship was being hashed out.

Next, we have Ashley Tellis, another top India hand both in the U.S. government and in the think tank world. He is currently a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. And he served as the senior advisor to the U.S. ambassador to India during the George W. Bush administration, when the nuclear agreement was being hashed out and much of what we’re discussing today was set on its course.

And then, last but not least, we have Pratap Bhanu Mehta, who is really one of India’s top political thinkers in a variety of roles. He’s now a visiting scholar at Princeton University, but before that was vice chancellor of Ashoka University, outside of Delhi, and ran the Center for Policy Research, which was long one of India’s most-respected think tank—or, probably its most-respected think tank until the government, I suppose, decided it was a little bit too respected and has mostly dismantled it in the last few years. I was lucky to spend a year as a fellow at CPR when Pratap was running it a decade or so ago. And he’s also the author of a short but brilliant book called Burden of Democracy, which I highly recommend to anyone trying to understand some of the deep roots of these issues in Indian history. So thank you so much to all three of you for joining us today and for the work you’ve done in Foreign Affairs over the years.

Pratap, I’m going to start with you. So we are, of course, looking toward India’s elections in the next couple of months. And as we do, Prime Minister Modi’s dominance is such that I think there’s little doubt about his victory, and so we don’t need to speculate on election outcomes. But I do think it’s worth taking this as an opportunity to step back a bit and reflect on how Modi has established such dominance over the last ten years in office. He was elected as a somewhat controversial and divisive figure, but he really has established—to use the word that the historian Ram Guha used in a piece in the current issue of Foreign Affairs—“supremacy” over Indian politics. So as you look over that record, what do you think the key reasons for that supremacy are? 

PRATAP BHANU MEHTA

Thank you, Dan. Great to be here. So I think I’d give three reasons, just very briefly. I think first is his ability to establish ideological dominance. And he has managed to convince large sections of the Indian population that he is the best embodiment of India’s long-term national interests. Every other political party, he would argue, is either a symptom of a decaying ancient regime—dynastic rule or something—or caught up in very short-term sectional interests of region, caste, or something. So he’s occupied that kind of nationalist imagination: big transformation.

The second—he has presented himself as a kind of embodiment of the consolidation of Hindu self-consciousness and Hindu nationalism. I mean, it’s evident in the grammar of pretty much everything he does, this agent of liberation from a thousand-year history of subjugation.

And the third, I think it is worth remembering, is that he heads one of the most powerful and best-organized political parties in the world, that there is a kind of organizational aspect to the way in which they can mobilize voters which is actually quite unprecedented. So that’s, I think, the ideological level.

I think the second thing, I think, to be said, is that he has sold this kind of idea quite effectively, that he has enabled India’s state capacity to expand in many effective ways. The Indian economy may not be doing as well as the government sometimes claims, but compared to many of its peers, it’s a competent record. But the sense that, you know, there’s a kind of modern technological leap the Indian economy can make—whether it’s in industrial policy, whether it’s in digital infrastructure, whether it’s in literal, real infrastructure—is quite palpable. And then undergirded it by a welfare coalition talking of themes that people had not talked about in Indian politics before: sanitation, gas, connections to women, drinking water. And I think the most striking measure of his success is that, by all accounts, women seem to be voting for him more than the opposition. So he’s occupied that modernist space as much as that kind of Hindu nationalist space, I think quite powerfully.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

And just to expand a bit on the Hindu nationalist element, which is I think what much of the outside analysis of his government focuses on, do you see that—the discussion of that, that you are very well aware of, in the United States—understanding the depth of it, the nature of it? Or are there elements of it that we miss when we’re observing it from afar?

PRATAP BHANU MEHTA

I mean, I think it’s a difficult discussion to have, I think for the following reason: you know, I think the discussion tends to veer between either complete catastrophism and alarmism, right, “India’s just going to fall apart tomorrow.” And honestly, it’s very hard to experientially make that case immediately. On the other hand, the reaction to it is also kind of complacency that somehow this is some kind of fringe element that in some senses, you know, will work itself out, but India will more or less kind of remain as it is.

I think the sensible attitude to take is that, look, we know from the history of these kinds of nationalisms that as they consolidate more power, they become more dangerous. And they combine two elements: one is prejudice against minorities—ethnonationalism—and the second is deepening authoritarianism. And I do think there is a little bit of underappreciation of the degree to which both of these elements now play in Indian politics. And certainly, authoritarianism—making it the default mode in which the Indian state operates—I think is definitely increasing.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

And say a bit more about how you see that authoritarianism playing out, because as we watch this vote unfolding over coming months—

PRATAP BHANU MEHTA

So, very simple measures: curtailing civil liberties, certainly freedom of expression, freedom of journalism, academia, civil society; greater control over the information order; increasing use of state power to target opposition leaders. Most of the so-called anticorruption cases, it’s not a pure coincidence that they are against opposition leaders, and the coincidences isn’t that they’re the only ones that are corrupt. Getting the judiciary, in some senses, to sign off on the fundamentals of the Hindu nationalist imagination. So there are all of these signs you can see, but we can talk about others as well later.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

Ashley, let me go to you to focus on some of the kind of external-facing elements of Modi’s time in government. I think this is a moment when there’s lots of talk of India’s global power. We’ve seen these moments before, but this seems to be just kind of a new level. It of course hosted the G-20 last year and there’s lots of pride when you’re in Delhi about that. There is a sense that India’s moment has kind of arrived in various ways.

Let me ask you a two-part question here. To what extent do you think that sense of triumphalism or optimism is warranted? And then, second, to what extent is that a result of changes that this government has made to foreign policy, as opposed to kind of continuity across governments of different parties in India?

ASHLEY TELLIS

So let me try and answer the second question first, Dan, and then will answer the question of whether it’s warranted. So I think this government represents in one sense an important continuity with India’s foreign policy past, which is India’s always looked at the world as the arena that has to be made safe for its own economic development at home and its eventual rise as a great power. That has been an objective going back to 1947, and Modi has pursued that same objective, I think, more or less consistently in line with what his predecessors have done. 

But I think there are four other changes that have come about in India’s foreign policy, some of which involve style, some of which involve substance. The first is a dramatic upsurge in self-confidence. Sometimes that self-confidence is not necessarily anchored in a material reality, as Pratap alluded to, but that self-confidence is there all the same, and it is really striking.

The second is the prominence of personality. Now, India’s always had larger-than-life figures. You know, Jawaharlal Nehru strode the international stage. In a lesser degree, Indira Gandhi did that in her time. But I do not think we have seen before such an astute use of governmental machinery to project the personality of Prime Minister Modi, both on the domestic stage and on the international stage. I don’t think his predecessors really had that kind of political acumen to do that in a way that he has done. And so, you know, the G20 event, for example, that you alluded to, Dan, almost gave the impression that it was Modi’s event rather than a G20 event. I mean, he was truly the dominant personality in that whole process.

The third—and I find this particularly interesting, and it ties with the questions of Hindu nationalism that you and Pratap just spoke about—is the increasing articulation that India must be treated as a unique civilization-state rather than as a liberal state. And I think the argument there is that India will pursue certain objective in its domestic politics and must not be held to account by some universal norms because its particularity, its unique culture, et cetera, justifies creating a carveout for the way India conducts itself. And this has become very prominent under Prime Minister Modi and is worth paying attention to.

And the fourth and last element I would flag is the almost naked conviction with which global cleavages have to be exploited for India’s benefit. Now, all nations exploit the cleavages that exist in their environment. Some do it more apologetically than others. But I think in India’s case, it has become quite transparent, and many Indian political leaders have had no compunctions in arguing that this is all about self-interest and not necessarily tied to the achievement of any universal goods, which India was very careful to do in the past, even when it pursued policies that tied it to the achievement of some universal aims. And I see that less prominently in Modi’s foreign policy.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

Alyssa, let me go to you, and would welcome your thoughts on some of the points that Ashley covered. But I also wanted to focus a bit on the U.S.-India relationship specifically. You, of course, spent time helping manage this relationship in government. I think you were out of the State Department shortly before Modi came into power. 

But I think, you know, if we were to go back 10 years ago and consider what the relationship might look like under, especially under a Democratic administration here and Prime Minister’s Modi government—you know, there was a visa ban on him for a period of time, there was lots of focus on his time as chief minister of Gujarat and the treatment of minorities during that period. Are you surprised by the course of the U.S.-India relationship over the past ten years? And under both Trump and Biden it’s been, I think, one of the strongest relationships kind of across parties that we have, and there’s a strong bipartisan consensus now. Would that have surprised you if I told you that ten years ago? And to the extent it does, what do you think accounts for that?

ALYSSA AYRES 

I don’t think I’m surprised by the idea that there continues to be a strong bipartisan consensus, but I do think that the depth of the relationship as it has evolved between New Delhi and Washington over, let’s say, the past half decade, that has deepened in a way that I’m not sure I would have predicted, particularly with the redevelopment of the Quad under the Trump administration and the carrying that forward in the Biden administration.

India and the United States have had a long history of ties—friendly ties, but not close ties, right—the “estranged democracies,” to quote Dennis Kux’s wonderful title. And I think it was always hard to find space for India on the U.S. foreign policy agenda—or, rather, space for India in the middle of the radar screen for the U.S. foreign policy agenda, to mix metaphors. And I think that time has passed. I think that it is now clear that India does have an important role to play in Asia, globally with the Global South, and the depth of the ties with Washington, with the United States, reflects that.

It doesn’t mean that there isn’t still a long laundry list of irritants in the relationship that continue to mean that it’s not smooth sailing. That’s certainly the case on the economic side. It continues to be the case with a number of areas where, for example, you mentioned and Ashley mentioned in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine: this is not an area where India has decided to stand up for territorial sovereignty, and has looked to make good use of an opportunity to assure its own energy security by procuring oil and gas from Russia during a time when I think many countries, including the United States, would have seen this as an important moment to stand up for the importance of territory and not invading neighboring countries, which is an issue that India cares a lot about given its own concerns for China.

I think we are probably likely to see continued strong bipartisan consensus on ties with India in the future regardless of whoever comes into office in the United States next year. But I think there may be differences in the way that different administrations might approach different aspects of the relationship on the economic side and on the side of the question of values. And we may want to come back to that as a separate conversation later.

But I do think part of what has happened is that India has simply become more important globally. It is now the world’s fifth-largest economy. It is an important area for countries that are interested in investing. This is a huge, growing market. It is also a potential place for relocating manufacturing. That story is not quite where Indian policymakers would like it to be; but it’s certainly, at a time of de-risking and trying to move global supply chains increasingly to other areas outside of China, there’s a great opportunity there for India, and I think you’re going to continue to see great interest in India on the economic side.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

Let me linger on the Russia-Ukraine question, the point that you raised. I think in India you hear two different explanations for India’s reaction to the war and continuing relationship with Russia. One is, look, Russia’s been a longstanding defense supplier, an important counterweight to China, you know, there are lots of reasons why India needs to be kind of careful about this, and so be patient and give us some time as we make some of these shifts. There’s also a kind of more cynical, cold-blooded one, which is, look, this is not really our problem, and if we can get cheap oil and maintain these relations without having to make choices, that’s good for us. 

I’m curious what you see as the real driver of India’s response to the war. And if you think—I mean, Washington has been fairly tolerant of this. I don’t think it’s become a huge irritant in the relationship. Do you think the U.S. posture toward this is the right one?

ALYSSA AYRES

I don’t think it’s become a huge irritant. Ashley has also written a bit about this, too; he may want to chime in. It’s not a huge irritant, but it certainly has given some people pause. This is an arena—again, India has concerns about territorial sovereignty, so you would think, as a matter of global principle, this might be a space to stand up and say, “Invading your neighbor is not what we do.” But that has not been India’s mode on this.

Now, it’s true that Prime Minister Modi has said publicly, “Now is not the time for war,” and so people point to that public comment, rightly, as his intervention in calling for a de-escalation or some change from the current situation of conflict. But that of course hasn’t really unfolded in any way. And again, I think India is playing a very realpolitik hand here. And energy security, it’s very true, has long been important for a country that has 1.4 billion people, ever-increasing energy needs, the economy has returned to a fast pace of growth. So all of these comments make sense logically, but it is certainly the case that this is not India deciding to stand with countries that are against invading neighbors.

ASHLEY TELLIS

I agree with everything that Alyssa said, but I would anchor that in the argument I made earlier, which is India has become much more self-confident, is much more willing to very transparently anchor choices in self-interest, and from a perspective of self-interest, it sees the relationship with Russia as being very important for multiple reasons.

There is the longstanding emotional attachment, because the Russians supported India consistently during the latter Cold War in a way that we did not do. But beyond emotion, there is a judgment that India cannot afford to let the Russians get closer to the Chinese than they already are. And they believe that if they cut off ties with Russia, then it essentially leaves Russia unmoored and free to tighten that relationship with Beijing, which is to India’s disadvantage. And I think the Indians exaggerate their influence over Moscow’s choices on this question. But as long as they believe this to be the case, they’re not going to be cutting ties to Moscow or chastising it for what it’s doing in Ukraine any time soon.

And the last and equally important element is that India has a different vision of world order from the United States, in that India genuinely wants to see a world order that will be configured through multipolarity, and they want the Russians to be present there as one of the poles. And they think that joining in any campaign that essentially destroys Russia as one of the poles is to the long-term detriment of India’s grand strategy in foreign policy. 

And this has multiple implications for us which I don’t think we’ve quite fully grasped. But the point is, they do want to see Russia as a great power because they believe that they have an affinity with Russia that serves their interest. And so pushing back against the Russians for all the reasons that Alyssa identified—which are, you know, important reasons like respect for sovereignty, and so on and so forth—at the end of the day just takes second place in competition with all the other objectives.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

And, Ashley, let me stick with you on the question of China. You wrote a piece several months ago warning American policymakers and observers not to expect India to do too much when it comes to U.S. tension with China, especially in a kind of Taiwan scenario. But as you do look at India’s concerns about Chinese power and evolving response to it, how would you characterize it? And to what extent do you see convergence with American policy and American strategy in Asia?

ASHLEY TELLIS

So I think there is one important element of convergence which we should not overlook, which is that both Washington and New Delhi have a clear objective of making certain that Beijing does not become so overwhelmingly dominant in Asia or globally that it essentially chokes off space for all other countries, including and especially India. So on that count, there is strong convergence. But that convergence is embedded in a reality that is a little more problematic and often sort of not paid attention to.

And the first element is that India is a much weaker state in comparison to China. India’s a much weaker state when you compare it to the United States vis-à-vis China. And that imposes real limits on the degree to which India can push back against the Chinese. The United States can do what it wants because it’s the more powerful state. India does not have that freedom to exercise its options.

The second is simply geography. India is uncomfortably close to China in a way that the United States is not. And therefore, while India benefits from a certain competition between the United States and China because it increases Delhi’s maneuvering room, it also does not want to see the United States and China come to blows, because if they do, then that imposes very uncomfortable choices on India. India will have to then pick and choose sides. And the one thing that has been quite consistent in Indian foreign policy is the refusal to pick and choose sides in ways that end up alienating the other. So competition, yes, but nothing that involves a serious conflict that puts India in a position where it has to come down clearly on the side of one player or the other. And those are the limits, I think, to India’s partnership with the U.S. that I think we need to recognize.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

Pratap, I’d love to go to you on the foreign policy questions, and you’re welcome to react to both the Ukraine and China comments that Alyssa and Ashley have made. First, I want to pick up a third point that I think Alyssa mentioned, which is this idea of India as the kind of leading country of the global South. And I think, some of this, there’s some substance to this, some of this is kind of opportunistic. But to what extent do you see that as a real serious element in Indian foreign policy going forward? And to the extent that there is substance to it, what exactly does it mean?

PRATAP BHANU MEHTA

So I think two things. One—if I may just preface it by picking up on one thing Ashley said because it’s related to the global South point, I think, which is, you know, Ashley put India’s objective as, “We should not put ourselves in a position where we have to take sides,” right? There’s a different way of putting this, which is that the way in which India sees the superpowers thinking of world politics, its assessment has been that they think of corner solutions in world politics, which is to say this isn’t a zero-sum game. And there is a real concern, given the history of the United States both with China and Russia, that it would be a catastrophe for the world if it came to the point where the world had to choose between one or the other. I mean, nobody’s going to come out a winner in this. So the more positive way of putting Ashley’s point is that India’s view has been, “Let’s try and throw cold water over conflict,” rather than, in some senses, push the world into a precipitous corner solution. 

Now, this point is related to the point about the global South because that’s where most of the global South is. The United States is not realizing the degree to which that’s the preference for the global South; that if there is the Russia-Ukraine conflict, there’s collateral damage in Africa, so you don’t want precipitous conflict, even though you should stand up for the principle that no country’s sovereignty should be violated, particularly in the way Ukraine’s has. And so there is a kind of ideological positioning in global politics which is really, I think, quite an opportunity for India. And I think in that sense it is quite aligned with the objectives of the South.

Having said that, there is a question somebody asked, which is—we are in a world where everybody is anointing themselves the leader of something or the other, and the question is: Who’s following? Right? I mean, Brazil is also the leader of the global South. South Africa is, in a sense, doing things. So I think the global South is united by a kind of affinity that we don’t want a precipitous great-power conflict. And India sees itself as playing a role in that. But whether it can actually effectively lead countries in a coalition, I think that’s an open question.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

I mean, I was struck—

ASHLEY TELLIS

I would add one more point to that, because I think Pratap is absolutely right. In recent times, India’s championing of the global South has been motivated equally by the fears that it doesn’t want to give China sort of free rein over that community, right? The Chinese, through their investments over the last twenty years, have made huge inroads in terms of influence, and India wants to pry the global South to the degree it can away from Chinese influence and domination. And so that only is one more variable that pushes India in that direction.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

Pratap, I was just also going to reflect on the differences in the conversation on Israel and Gaza that you hear in India and then in contrast to much of the rest of the global South—and the kind of Brazilian or South African or, I think, broadly sub-Saharan African sympathy for the Palestinians and criticism of Israel is certainly not shared in Delhi, at least from the government there, so a kind of greater acceptance, I think, of the Israeli war.

PRATAP BHANU MEHTA

No, and it’s the flipside of the acceptance of Russia, right? And the United States is in this bind, which is technically the same principle should apply on both. So I think it just proves Ashley’s point that it is playing, in a sense, realpolitik, and the United States picks up on it in one case and not on the other.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

Alyssa, I want to go back to you on the values question that you briefly alluded to. You know, you had written in a piece early in the Biden administration—it was in March 2021—that, quote, “Shoring up U.S. support for India’s democracy will be easier said than done. The Biden administration will need to put values back into the U.S.-Indian relationship without severing the strategic ties that have flourished over the past two decades.” I think as you look back over the last three years, what’s striking is how little the U.S. administration has seemed to do on that front, that it’s been fairly quiet and fairly restrained when it comes to any criticism of India’s domestic actions. Is that the right way of characterizing it? And would you push for more? Is there anything more that can be done to address some of the issues that Pratap mentioned earlier in the conversation?

ALYSSA AYRES

Yeah. I think this comes against the backdrop of a moment in the Trump administration when it became pretty clear that values no longer had any role in bringing India and the United States closer together. And I ask all of us to remember that indelible moment when President Trump had visited India during his tenure as president, and riots were underway in New Delhi, and the president said that he talked to Prime Minister Modi and everything was fine. That moment really made it clear that this was not something that was on the agenda for the Trump administration in any way. And I think the Biden administration has been carefully trying to figure out how best to raise and cocoon these questions. 

The Biden administration, as you can see in a number of its different bilateral relationships, prefers to take challenging diplomatic conversations into the diplomatic channel and not the kind of public castigation channel. Although it is certainly the case that the Biden administration’s regular reporting, the State Department’s human rights reports, reports on international religious freedom, all of these reports that the State Department works on on an annual basis, have been pretty frank in where they see challenges to rights, to liberties, to Indian civil society.

And so that continues to be something that is on the U.S. State Department’s—the foreign policy agenda. But it’s not the first thing that anybody says publicly when they do meetings or press avails together. And I think that is likely the Biden approach to preserve the ability to have tough conversations in private.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

When you look at—I realize that the assassinations of Sikh activists in Canada, and the attempted one, or plot, in the United States, are allegations that the Indian government still denies at this point—but it does seem striking, looking at those, that it reflects a real sense of kind of confidence or impunity when it comes to some of these questions, even when they spill over to North American soil. It just seems like a kind of striking demonstration of where the relationship is on that front.

ALYSSA AYRES

I have to believe that this is a topic that is coming up in the private channel. I just can’t believe that it wouldn’t be.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

Pratap, as you look at this set of issues, is there anything that you think outside actors can or should be doing differently? Or is this, you know, this was always thought to be kind of core to the U.S.-Indian relationship, but perhaps we’re just in a different reality and there will not be this kind of values component in the same way?

PRATAP BHANU MEHTA

I mean, I’m actually very skeptical that there will be the values component—I think partly because, I mean, frankly, the United States’ authority in the world has eroded so considerably. I mean, I think that is a background fact that has to be taken for granted. I think the Indian government reads it that way. I mean, I think that’s the important point, that that’s how they understand the world to be. I mean, I do think the kind of moral pressure that, you know, people-to-people, civil society, recording of what’s going on, providing a channel for actually documenting, I think in a sense that’s important.

But I do strongly feel—I’ve said it at Council on Foreign Relations forums before—that if this becomes a tool of American geostrategic policy, it’s actually a disaster for democracy. And I think America has not yet found a way of disentangling its commitment to democracy and human rights and its geostrategic aims. And if you keep Netanyahu close, I mean, Mr. Modi looks much better by comparison.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

Let me ask one more question to each of you, and it’s what you expect to change in a third Modi term, assuming we do get there. Pratap, I’ll start with you. Do you imagine a kind of Hindutva domestic agenda that is kind of energized or the focus shifting elsewhere?

PRATAP BHANU MEHTA

I mean, I don’t think it’s an either/or. I think the agenda is going to deepen because they want to consolidate the cultural gains. So just to give you a small example, after the consecration of the Ayodhya temple, now there is a demand to return not just two other major temples, Kashi and Mathura, but probably about 4,000 other shrines, and there is a lot of local activism on that ground. 

So this is an agenda to, in a sense, change the default cultural common sense. And so that consolidation will continue. How much repression will be required for that and how much violence it produces—that’s, I think, an open question. But I don’t think we should be in any doubt that the Hindu nationalism consolidation agenda will continue. It’s not simply election-related.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

Ashley and Alyssa, anything on the foreign policy or U.S.-Indian front that you would focus on as perhaps a change or an acceleration in a third term? Ashley, I’ll start with you.

ASHLEY TELLIS

So I think the important point that Pratap made, which needs to be appreciated, is that on all these issues, right, there are no either/ors that confront the government. So there will be, for example, a consolidation of all the elements of Hindutva in the last two terms, that will go into the third term as well. But it will also be accompanied by a doubling down on the initiatives to increase India’s economic growth and so on and so forth. Because they do recognize that making India a developed country, making it a great power, is very important for the recrudescence of the Hindutva agenda itself. So even as you push on the nationalist element, there will be other elements which we would very much welcome, right: a deepening of economic growth, openness to the world, et cetera, et cetera. Let’s hope all that comes about. 

On the foreign policy front, I see again an intensification of exactly the same kind of policies that we saw in the second term, which is, there’s going to be a deepening of what Indians call multi-alignment, which is deepening relations with many powers. The United States will continue to be the most important country that India engages in; I don’t see any shift on that count. And all the efforts that India and the United States are currently making beyond the state-to-state level engagement in the area of technology, in the area of society-to-society ties, research and development, innovation, all that will continue apace.

Because at the end of the day, India’s circumstances are not going to change dramatically this third term. There’s still going to be a China problem. There’s still going to be an ambition to build global multipolarity. There’s still going to be a desire to elevate India’s prominence at the high tables of global governance. All these are perennials, right, which are not going to disappear. And on all those issues, the U.S. matters very much to India, and so I see the doors essentially staying open for the deeper partnership.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

Alyssa, let me put that question to you, but also just add a Trump spin to it. Would the re-election of Trump—would a second Trump term change anything in the relationship?

ALYSSA AYRES

Well, let me pick up on the economic piece, just so we make sure that that’s in the conversation. I think one of the things that surprised me about the Modi government’s approach to its economic ambitions with India is the extent to which the idea of making India, right—this plan to help increase the percentage of manufacturing to the Indian economy, which itself was the same plan that the previous Congress-led coalition government had had through its national manufacturing policy, that ended up becoming transformed into something that was much more focused on the next round of these production-linked incentive packages accompanied by an increase in tariffs. 

So what you’ve seen is a desire for India to become an increasingly important part of global trade through building greater manufacturing at home. And yet, it is looking to do this not by deepening its integration, but rather by putting up more barriers to protect and help its domestic manufacturing sector succeed. And that creates challenges for our bilateral conversation. It has thus far not resulted in the big bump in manufacturing that India has seeked to have. And that in itself is a challenge, because India does need to create more jobs for this very large demographic, this youth bulge, that needs to find gainful employment. 

It’s hard to get the precise figures on unemployment. The official stats say, I think, India’s unemployment is now something close to three percent. The CMIE [Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy] numbers put it closer to eight percent. India needs to create more jobs, and that’s been a priority for successive governments. The way the Modi government is going about this now has shifted a bit.

So what would I expect to see change with a Trump administration? Well, I certainly was surprised when the Trump administration came in and identified steel and aluminum imports from India as a challenge in our relationship, because nobody ever talked about that before. It might have been a challenge for our bilateral econ relationship with China, but certainly this was not on the India agenda. And yet, India was among those top ten countries that received a set of tariffs as a result of the steel and aluminum imports in the United States. 

I think that what we might see change with the Trump administration is an increased focus on the use of tariffs in retaliatory ways, in ways to fight back for unrelated foreign policy developments, who knows what they might be, but that was something that characterized the Trump administration’s approach to statecraft and economic statecraft. And I think we would be likely to see a walking back of even publicly noting the importance of a strong civil society, the importance of talking about democracy, and the importance of democracy as part of the inherent warp and weft of the U.S.-Indian relationship. I just, that was something that was not on the Trump administration’s agenda, and I imagine that all of that language and prioritization, even if it’s taking place in the diplomatic channel behind closed doors, would probably disappear.

ASHLEY TELLIS

And I would add one more thought to that list that Alyssa identified, and that is immigration.

ALYSSA AYRES

Yeah.

ASHLEY TELLIS

India has been an important beneficiary of U.S. immigration policies, right, and so given what we know about Trump’s proclivities on immigration, I don’t think India will be immune.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

We will go to questions from others on the line. Let me remind everyone that you are on the record, and that includes your question. And for those who are asking questions live, please identify yourself and ask a brief, crisp question so we can get a few in. Let’s go to the first one.

MARSHALL BOUTON

Hello, everybody. I want to refocus the conversation a little bit on the domestic outlook, understanding all of what you’ve said about the likelihood of the Hindutva project moving forward, and the deepening and consolidation and so forth—what are the principal risks to that project? And I have in mind two issues, particularly, I might comment on. One is, are they going to resurrect the CAA, the Citizenship Amendment Act, or really enforce it? And along with it the National Register of Citizens, which could reliably, I think, produce a lot more violence, as it did post. The second is the north-south divide; who will be in Modi’s watch this time around? The delimitation in 2026, and that, as an economist wrote today, has certain dangers and errors, so the south is really where the economic dynamism is. Thank you.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

Pratap, why don’t we go to you on the first one of those? If you could just also give a little context for those who are not as expert as Marshall is.

PRATAP BHANU MEHTA

So just very briefly, India passed the Citizenship Amendment Act, which created a special part for refugees, non-Muslim refugees from the subcontinent from getting citizenship. And what was significant about this law was it was the first time there was a kind of citizenship law that sort of, you might say, gave religious preference. It’s a bit more complicated than that, but that’s the idea.

And the second point that Marshall referred to was the growing divergence between north and south India in terms of development indicators. But it also has political ramifications because the distribution of political power is supposed to be based on population; because north India’s population has been rising faster than south India’s, does it get more political power, and does the south then feel penalized. 

To take the second one first, I’m actually more optimistic that they will handle the north-south issue much better than I think people are realizing. I think there is an investment in one or two political parties, particularly the DMK (Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam), to raise the issue and polarize it. But frankly, if you look at the nature of the north-south economic relationship—I mean, you can always point to the fact that the south is paying more taxes. On the other hand, it is actually using cheap BRE (Belt and Road) labor. 

I think India has actually, on this issue, had a pretty good history. And I actually still am not convinced that India will radically deviate from that history, because I think it’s very important for the Hindu nationalist project. I mean, Mr. Modi is making such an effort to reach out to the south, and they are probably going to make inroads into Tamil Nadu politics, that I actually don’t think the north-south issue is actually going to be the axis on which you see deep major strains. There will be some bargaining maneuvers by different political parties, but they will come around. 

I think the question of—so, they are going ahead with the implementation of the CAA. And to be fair, the implementation of the CAA itself, I don’t think is going to generate the kind of backlash that Marshall is anticipating in terms of violence. What happened last time was that they had linked the Citizenship Amendment Act to a different project, which is creating a national register for citizens. And there the apprehension was that minorities might be systematically excluded from being recognized as citizens. So for example, most Indians don’t have adequate identity papers. Will minorities be treated differently? And certainly, there’s bits of that going on in states like Assam, which is where this problem is in a sense concentrated. 

So I think that their agenda of kind of doing these things in a gradual manner so that they can control the political narrative, I think that’s still going to be the strategy. But I think Marshall's larger point, which is, if you create an India where minorities do not feel at home, does that have the potential of unleashing divisive politics? I think that that poison remains quite potent in this regime.

MODERATOR

Our next question will be a written submission from Genevieve Mallet, who asks, “Do you believe that China’s Belt and Road and India’s Act East are policies that conceptualize their vision of an international world order? And are India and China therefore doomed to be rivals in Asia?”

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

Alyssa and Ashley, let me go to each of you briefly on this. Alyssa, you can start.

ALYSSA AYRES

That might be the case for China. I’m not sure that India’s Act East represents a vision for a world order in the same way. It’s a more circumscribed foreign policy initiative. But I do think that it showcases the way that India has long sought to ensure that it is not outmaneuvered in its own region. And as Ashley noted earlier, a longstanding area of convergence between India and the United States on foreign policy is the desire to ensure that there is an Asia not dominated by China. 

So India’s Act East certainly is a plan to focus and strengthen India’s ties with its neighbors in South Asia and Southeast Asia going on into East Asia to ensure that it has a voice, that it is seen as a partner. I think the Belt and Road initiative does clarify China’s vision of itself as playing a global role shaping the way infrastructure develops in ways that ultimately benefit China. And we have seen how that’s evolved since it was launched formally in, what, 2015, 2016?

ASHLEY TELLIS

Actually, I agree with everything that Alyssa said. I would just add that the Belt and Road does not have any genuine competitors in the international system simply because the scale of the investment simply overshadows everything that competitors like Japan, the United States and India can do. 

Having said that, however, I think China’s own slowdown and its gradual shift from an investment heavy economy to something that moves closer to consumption—I think it’s a long way away—inevitably means that China will not invest as much in the BRI as it did in the last two decades. So, you know, that project may have run its course in certain ways simply because of the evolutions of China’s own domestic economy. But as things stand, I think there is no other international competitor, including from the major multilateral development banks, that can simply compete with China’s BRI, globally.

PRATAP BHANU MEHTA

I think one important point, just to add to something Alyssa and Ashley said, which is, you know, the real opportunity here in countering BRI is one of the big challenges for the global South, is debt relief, right? And in a small way, at least, India has demonstrated that that is actually one avenue by which you can actually counter the cumulative effect of Chinese investments. And this is something where, frankly, I think the United States is, again, not exploiting an opportunity in the global system. If countries like India, the United States, and Japan can get together and really chalk out a meaningful debt relief program for the global South, it actually neutralizes a lot of the effects of BRI. And that’s, I think, where India is trying to take some leadership and push. I mean, obviously, in its neighborhood, it did it for its own reasons, in relation to Sri Lanka. But there is a real opportunity, that debt restructuring issue, for the international system to push back.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

Teagan, let’s go to another question.

MODERATOR

We will take our next question from John Sullivan.

JOHN SULLIVAN

Thank you for a terrific program, this is really fascinating. My background is, I used to run a group called the Center for International Private Enterprise, which is an affiliate of the U.S. Chamber. We were involved in a number of countries, including India. 

I’ve recently read, I think it was in The Economist, that the Modi government is cracking down pretty hard on NGOs, and cutting off international access to NGOs and support for them. What effect do you think that’s going to have on India’s development, including foreign policy?

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

Pratap, you know this quite personally, so I’ll let you start.

PRATAP BHANU MEHTA

So, you know, of course, the crackdown is, from a point of view of democratic rights, extremely ominous and dangerous. And it’s, I think, a harbinger of things to come. But I actually do think it’s very hard to make the case that in the short to medium run it is going to have any major consequences for India’s economic development, as much as we might like to think that we are actually very important. Because the most important thing is going to be whether India can attract investment. 

India will attract investment if there’s money to be made. And I think one of the interesting things the Modi government is trying, even as it’s raising tariffs on trade—remember, a lot of the companies it’s trying to attract are actually foreign companies. I mean, if Apple shifts 20 percent of its production to India over the next seven to ten years, right, big investors like that come—that will be the real driver of this relationship. So I don’t think in the short- to medium-term—I don’t think the Modi government will see this as entailing any economic price for India.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

And Ashley and Alyssa, do you see any potential geopolitical or foreign policy price?

ASHLEY TELLIS

I don’t see that suddenly at the U.S. end. I mean, we are concerned about the trends that are obviously, you know, transpiring in domestic politics. But at the end of the day, you have to judge how much capital you want to put into pushing back on these trends relative to the other equities you have with India and global geopolitics, right? And at the end of the day, the equities we have with India vis-à-vis China, vis-à-vis the rest of the global system, quite outweigh our immediate interests on investing and pushing back against the adverse trends in domestic politics. Hal Brands has this wonderful article in the most recent—the most recent Foreign Affairs piece. And I think it is a—it is a piece that people should read carefully, because it unpacks the dilemmas that they have. And all those dilemmas apply in full with respect to India.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

And that piece is called “The Age of Amorality,” and it’s in the March/April issue. Alyssa, anything you would add, on the U.S. dimension that especially?

ALYSSA AYRES

I would just note that there could be a space in which companies may say, “Well, we have concerns about application of rule of law, freedom of expression.” Those are going to be individual company decisions, but you can imagine a company that deals in expressive arts—media, for example, or platforms—where these become real issues that have business implications, too. And I would think that that would play a role at that time.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

I would note that, you know, not to overdo the analogy between China and India here, but there were a lot of companies that did not think they had concerns about Chinese crackdowns until they suddenly did. So you can imagine this, to Alyssa’s point, becoming an issue at some point.

Teagan, let’s get in one more question before we run out of time.

MODERATOR

We will take our last question as a written submission from Sean Spata. Could you elaborate on India’s vision for a multipolar world? Is India interested in the leadership of the global South, or does their vision of multipolarity consist of a more equitable partnership? How does India view China’s role in the multipolar world order against its own?

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

It’s a very meaty one to end on. So, Ashley, since you first mentioned multipolarity, let’s start with you.

ASHLEY TELLIS

Well, it’s a very complicated question because it has many layers, but I would say at the moment, India’s claims to multipolarity hinge primarily on demands for recognition. That India does not want to be seen simply as a country that has to adjust to the system, where it has no part in the making of the rules. So at least for the moment, India is not thinking of multipolarity in terms of a constellation of equally-sized great powers, because India would have no role in that kind of a constellation just yet. But it does want to be seen as one of the major players on the international stage, a representative of one-sixth of humanity, and so on and so forth. And so it wants recognition in terms of rulemaking.

I don’t think the longer-term complications of what multipolarity entails for India’s strategic interests, its national security, its competition with China have been thought through in their detail. I think, to the degree that Indian policymakers have thought about that, they’ve simply assumed that multipolar relations involve constant log-rolling, that there will be a multiplicity of partners that India will be able to seize upon to deal with threats that may be posed by any one of them. And no matter how discomforting it is, I think this government feels that it’s confident enough to be able to play with multiple players. And therefore, even if genuine multipolarity comes about, India will have gotten the best of both worlds. It will have gotten a seat at the high table, and it would have had a multiplicity of partners that it can play with in order to deal with its most pressing threats.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

Alyssa and Pratap, with apologies for giving you one minute each to bite off one piece of that big question, let me just give each of you a chance to close with any thoughts on that set of topics. Alyssa, you first.

ALYSSA AYRES

Let me just build slightly on what Ashley articulated—India’s desire for recognition on the world stage; that is, a desire for recognition to be seen as one of the powers shaping the world. And I think also to be seen not just as a land of poverty, or a place with many problems, but as a leader, as a place that is dynamic, that is changing, that is offering opportunity. And that is, I think, an important component of the different initiatives that Prime Minister Modi has put in place, and that also previous governments tried to put in place as well. Here, I would just add that to the extent that many domestic challenges remain in India—for example, violence against women—those are real challenges. Those challenges remain. They are not there to simply cast a pall on India’s rise, but rather India’s resolving of these problems—and Prime Minister Modi, to his credit, has talked about these issues very publicly—that is what will help further India’s image on the world stage, solving these problems at home.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

Pratap, let me give you the last word.

PRATAP BHANU MEHTA

Yeah, I think to end with where we kind of began, which is I think if India can maintain a decent growth trajectory, you know—7 to 8 percent for about 10 years—that actually is its single biggest foreign policy asset. It allows it to negotiate all kinds of pressures, multipolarity, you know, great-power competition, and I think that’s going to remain an important focus. I mean, that is the conduit through which India, I think, is going to manage the world.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

That’s a good note to end on. Ashley, Alyssa, Pratap, thank you so much for this conversation. I’m eager to get all of you to write on multiple topics that we’ve discussed today as we go into this third term, so I will bug all of you about that in the future. But for now, thank you so much.