Recipe for India’s growth as global power
Reviewed by D. S. Cheema

China’s Nightmare, America’s Dream: India as the next Global Power
By William H. Avery. Amaryllis.
Pages 244. Rs 595

William H. Avery, former American diplomat and India-watcher, traces the history of the golden era of India and recalls what made India a great economic and military power, just four centuries back. He argues that India under the Mughals had more wealth and was better governed than England, which later became a nation over whom the ‘sun doesn’t set’. By comparing Agra and London of 1605 and the present day, the author dramatises the reversal of fortunes.

The theme of his book is that India can become a world power like America and China, provided its political leadership sheds its timidity and India holds America’s hand. He contends, "This is India’s moment" and goes on to suggest what India needs to do to emerge as a great power. Avery feels that India can become a genuine super-power, if it can muster "courage and speed of action," that it showed in 1991 which spurred its economic growth and again in 1998 when it tested the atomic bomb.

Avery seems possessed with the idea of India joining hands with America to take on the role of defending democracy and promoting the principles of the free market. He sets the tone of his suggestions when in the Introduction he writes, "If there is a Third World War, it will most likely start in Asia. If there is a Third World War, the United States and India, as heirs to the values of the British Crown, will have to win it together; the future of freedom depends on it." The third and final part of the book, "The United States and India: An alliance for the twenty-first century" has been devoted to author’s favourite idea. Some of his suggestions undermine India’s inherent strength and national pride; for example, his recommendation that India "act as America’s eyes and ears in a region far from Washington" is, to say the least, not in good taste; it smells of America’s need to have India as a useful pawn. Another of his suggestions that India, "needs to find a big stick fast" appears to recommend a risky adventurism, which India has been successfully avoiding. Another prescription in his blue-print for India’s path to greatness, that it should "strong arm resource-rich countries of Africa" does not display a mature understanding of the political relationships.The author’s recipe for India becoming a major global power has many lacunae. The assessment that "India’s problem in higher education is quantity, not quality" is certainly flawed. He wants government to invest heavily in university infrastructure and improve pay packets of teachers to "draw some of it academic diaspora back from Western institutions" His suggestion that Foreign Education Bill must not remain in legislative limbo, is welcome. His view of India’s military system as "strong on people, weak on equipment and technology" appears more balanced. The author is right when he says India needs to "look at tomorrow’s markets (China, Africa, South-East Asia and Latin America) which promise more cost-saving and sales growth. The assessment that India was "successfully persuaded" by US not to avenge Pakistan–sponsored terrorist acts and his inference that "India complied" in its own interest, shows how Washington wants to decide for Delhi what is good or bad for it. It is strange that the author visualises a country like India, "committing to a common foreign policy framework" with the US so that it no longer "cultivates relationships with regimes such as Iran." It is demeaning for a proud nation and is likely to hurt many sensitive citizens. questions about India’s growth story, the book is likely to generate heated debate and even controversy over some of the ideas the author has thrown.

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