The Unfinished Quest: India's Search for Major Power Status from Nehru to Modi

by T.V. Paul

In The Unfinished Quest , T.V. Paul charts India's checkered path toward higher regional and global status, and sheds important light on its significance as the "swing power" that can mitigate China's aggressive rise in the Indo-Pacific region.

In 2022, India surpassed the United Kingdom, its former colonial ruler, as the fifth largest economy in the world. Since the 1990s, a series of US presidents and secretaries of state have all acclaimed India as a rising major power that deserves to be recognized as a lead actor in the international arena. All five permanent members of the UN Security Council except China have openly acknowledged the need to include India among their ranks. But even now, India has not attained the status of a globally recognized great power.

In The Unfinished Quest , leading international relations and South Asia scholar T.V. Paul charts India's checkered path toward higher regional and global status, covering both the successes and failures it has experienced since the modern nation's founding in 1947. Paul focuses on 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. He carefully specifies what counts as indicators of greater status and uses these as benchmarks in his assessment of each era. In this manner, he also brings forth some important insights on status competition and power transitions in the contemporary international system.

Paul's analysis of India's quest for status also sheds important light on the current geo-strategic situation and serves as a new framework for understanding the China-India rivalry, as well as India's relative position in the broader Indo-Pacific theater. As the economies of China and India grow rapidly, the power balance between them will be determined by each country's ability to develop the hard and soft powers needed to outpace the other and solidify their place in the global hierarchy. 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. This sweeping account of India's uneven rise in the global system will serve as the authoritative work on the subject.

Genres: History, India

280 pages, Hardcover

Published May 9, 2024

About the author

T.V. Paul is James McGill Professor of International Relations in the department of Political Science at McGill University. Paul specializes and teaches courses in international relations, especially international security, regional security and South Asia. He is the author or editor of 18 books (all published through major university presses) and nearly 60 journal articles or book chapters.

T.V. Paul was elected as the 56th President of International Studies Association and on March 17, 2016 he took charge as ISA President for 2016-17. He delivered the presidential address on the theme: “Recasting Statecraft: International Relations and the Strategies of Peaceful Change.” In the presentation, he called for the International Relations discipline and its theoretical paradigms to devote more attention to strategies for achieving enduring peace among states.

As ISA president, he spearheaded the Global South Task Force whose report and recommendations were adopted by the ISA Governing Council in San Francisco in March 2018.

Paul was born in the Indian state of Kerala (Mevellor, Kottayam District) on November 10, 1956 and his early education was at institutions in Kerala. He completed his Masters in Political Science from Maharajas College, Ernakulum (affiliated to Kerala University) in 1980 and then worked as a journalist for the Press Trust of India (PTI) news agency in New Delhi from 1980 till 1985. During this period, he completed his MPhil from the School of International Studies (SIS), Jawaharlal Nehru University. From July 1985 till July 1986 he spent a year at the University of Queensland, Australia, as a research scholar. In July 1986 he was admitted to graduate studies at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) from where he completed his PhD in Political Science in June 1991. In September 1991, he began his teaching career at McGill University where he was appointed as an assistant professor, promoted and tenured to associate professor in 1995, and full professor in 2000. In 2003, he was awarded the prestigious James McGill chair, instituted in the name of the university’s founder. He has been a visiting professor of National Security Affairs at the Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, California (2002-03), visiting scholar at the APEC Study Center, University of California, Berkeley (2013), East-West Center, Honolulu (2013), Center for International Affairs (CFIA) and the Olin Institute for Strategic Studies, Harvard University (1997-98), and James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, Monterey (2002-2003). He was the founding Director (2009-12) of the McGill-University of Montreal Center for International Peace and Security Studies (CIPSS), which originated from the Research Group in International Security (REGIS) which he co-directed for over a decade. Between 2009 and 2011 he served as the Chair of the International Security Studies Section (ISSS) of the International Studies Association (ISA) and during 2013-14 as ISA’s Vice-President. Currently, he serves as the editor of Georgetown University Press’ South Asia in World Affairs book series and on the editorial boards of many scholarly journals. He has travelled widely and given scores of seminars at leading academic institutions worldwide.

Paul has made a number of contributions to the study of international relations, especially broader international security and South Asia. He is especially known for rigorous puzzle-driven scholarship utilizing case studies as opposed to paradigms. He has been a proponent of eclectic modeling which he uses in several of his works. He is also a conceptual innovator and has made contributions to topics such as asymmetric conflicts, soft balancing, tradition of nuclear non-use, and status accommodation of rising powers. His first major book: Asymmetric Conflicts: War Initiation by Weaker Powers (Cambridge University Press, 1994) was pioneering as it addresses a neglected question of materially weake

Reviews

[Debbie · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Unfinished Quest is about more than India’s search for major power status from Nehru to Modi as its subtitle suggests. T.V. Paul gives readers an overview of India’s challenges while reading about the lengths its politicians have gone through to gain recognition as a global power. They yearn, according to the author, to be considered a major power in the geopolitical realm, along with the United States, France, Germany, the European Union, and more. Paul gives specifics about India’s pursuit of power that include their space missions, military expansion, and nuclear weapons acquisitions, in addition to their stance on the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Paul breaks it down further in two chapters that describe hard and soft power. He describes succinctly India's historical issues, including the conflicts with Pakistan and Kashmir, its political system, and their stance on nuclear weapons, as well as their relationships with China and Russia (pp. 45–85).

Yet, India's national challenges are disconcerting; for instance, the disparity in per capita GDP across regions (one of the highest is $7,029 and the lowest is $659), the poor living conditions, the contrast between conditions in rural and urban settings, and the persistence of mass poverty despite recent improvements. Furthermore, poverty and malnutrition appear higher than in other developing countries at a similar stage of economic growth (p. 165). Paul also describes the prevalence of poorly built and maintained infrastructure, which stymies, among other things, the delivery of basic services and efforts at proper sanitation. Yet, with respect to the latter, it’s not that India doesn't have the capability to build state-of-the-art infrastructure, as India is home to world-class airports, including its second busiest in Mumbai. Ironically, Mumbai’s airport is surrounded by the world’s largest slum—Dharavi! These issues, and more, are described in the chapter “State Capacity." In the final chapter, “The Future,” despite India's challenges, Paul makes an argument that “India deserves a place among the major powers” (p. 201).

For readers interested in India's culture, politics, or literature, The Unfinished Quest is an excellent read.

[Evan Resnick · Rating 5 out of 5]

Although India has been a colossus in South Asia since its independence and now boasts impressive military and economic capabilities, preeminent states have been reluctant to grant it the status of a major power. TV Paul, one of the world’s foremost scholars of international security and the international politics of South Asia, addresses this lingering puzzle in his excellent new book The Unfinished Quest: India’s Search for Major Power Status From Nehru to Modi. Paul persuasively explains that India has lacked key rudiments of both hard and soft power necessary for its Cold War and post-Cold War leaders to achieve their overarching ambition of attaining great power status. His comprehensive empirical analysis demonstrates that India’s rise has been undercut by a range of impediments operating at the international, domestic, and societal levels of analysis. Paul astutely concludes that despite significant recent advances on India’s part, including its important rapprochement with the United States, India “has miles to go in many measures of global status.” He warns that Delhi’s continuing anxiety on this front is likely to stoke tensions with China, whose own great power status has been increasingly called into question. Paul’s book, which is written in a highly engaging and accessible manner, is a must-read not only for students of International Relations, but also for policymakers who must navigate mounting geopolitical frictions in the Indo-Pacific and general interest readers seeking to better understand the turbulent events roiling that pivotal region.

[Kabith Sivaprasad · Rating 3 out of 5]

The first few chapters were good. But it all went downhill from the state capacity chapter. The state capacity chapter was bad for the reason that it was simply a mishmash of facts with no coherent theme. His analysis of infrastructure was especially weak, and I work in that space. Could have been better.

[J · Rating 5 out of 5]

Interesting read. Still reading, but this is clearly a well thought out & well-written argument.