The India Myth

In: The national interest, Heft 134, S. 46

Abstract

Over the last two decades, numerous books, articles and press commentaries have hailed India as the next global power. This flush of enthusiasm results partly from the marked acceleration in India's economic growth rate following reforms initiated in 1991. India's gross domestic product grew at 6% per year for most of the 1990s, 5.5% from 1998 to 2002, and soared to nearly 9% from 2003 to 2007, before settling at an average of 6.5% until 2012. In the quarter lasting from April to June 2014, growth ticked back up to 5.7%, but it is too soon to tell whether or not this represents the beginning of a more sustained expansion. The persistent interest also stems from analyses that portray India's and China's resurgence as part of a shift that is ineluctably returning the center of global economic power to Asia, its home for centuries before the West's economic and military ascent some five hundred years ago. Adapted from the source document.