The Post-American World - Fareed Zakaria [64]
In thinking through how to approach China, American political elites have fixed their gaze on another rising power, close to, and close on the heels of, China—India.
5
The Ally
In the fall of 1982, I took an Air India flight from Bombay’s Santa Cruz airport to go to college in the United States. The preceding decade had been a rough one in India, marked by mass protests, riots, secessionist movements, insurgencies, and the suspension of democracy. Underneath it all was a dismal economy, one that combined meager growth with ever-worsening inflation. Economic growth barely outpaced population growth. It would have taken the average Indian fifty-seven years to double his income, given the rate of increase in per capita GDP at the time. Many talented and ambitious Indians believed that their only real future lay in leaving the country. Over 75 percent of the graduates of the Indian Institutes of Technology in the 1980s emigrated to America.
The decade since 1997 could not have been more different. India has been peaceful, stable, and prosperous. The fires of secession and militant nationalism have died down. National and state governments changed hands without incident. There was even a thaw in the perennially tense relations with Pakistan. And underpinning it all was the transformation of the Indian economy, which grew at 7.1 percent over the entire decade and 8.3 percent in the second half of it. If this latter rate can be sustained, the average Indian will double his income in less than nine years. Already, the cumulative effect of this new economics is apparent. More Indians have moved out of poverty in the last decade than in the preceding fifty years.
The world has taken note. Every year at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, there is a national star—one country that stands out in the gathering of global leaders because of a particularly smart prime minister or finance minister or a compelling tale of reform. In the twelve years that I’ve been going to Davos, no country has so captured the imagination of the conference or dominated the conversation as India did in 2006. It goes well beyond one conference. The world is courting India as never before. Foreign leaders are now flocking to India pledging to form deeper and stronger relations with the once exotic land.
Yet most foreign observers are still unsure of what to make of India’s rise to prominence. Will it become the next China? And what would that mean, economically and politically? Will a richer India bump up against China? Will it look on the United States as an ally? Is there such a thing as a “Hindu” worldview? Perplexed foreigners might be comforted to know that Indians themselves remain unsure of the answers to these questions. India is too full of exuberance right now for much serious reflection.
Exuberance worked well enough at the World Economic Forum. As you got off the plane in Zurich, you saw large billboards extolling Incredible India! The town of Davos itself was plastered with signs. “World’s Fastest Growing Free Market Democracy,” proclaimed the local buses. When you got to your room, you found a pashmina shawl and an iPod shuffle loaded with Bollywood songs, gifts from the Indian delegation. When you entered the meeting rooms, you were likely to hear an Indian voice, one of dozens of CEOs of world-class Indian companies in attendance. And then there were the government officials, India’s “Dream Team”—all intelligent and articulate,