India nowhere in the world
After the Narendra Modiled government's grave failure to combat the explosive second wave of Covid19, this wave exacerbated by the Delta variant, Western media, think tanks and academia have shifted their attention to India again.
Earlier, the West projected India as a critical partner of the US to contain China's economic and strategic clout.
That focus gained adherence after India and the US signed the Logistics Exchange Memorandum of Agreement in August 2016, and both countries inked the subsequent foundational agreements. US President Donald Trump's first secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, termed US strategy the "planned partnership for the entire 21st century."
But now, in stark contrast, India is being dismissed in the Western world as an ineligible partner for the Western world to contain China. The Western refocus on India now in the West is the realization of Western strategists that they made a mistake to project India as a global player. They started to recognize that India has power and strategic illusion. But they made an error , misjudging India's proper position.
Last October 20, I wrote an article in Asia Times entitled, "India is nowhere in the world, denial won't work." More than a thousand Indians from India and the Indian diaspora sent me insulting and abusive emails. I didn't feel sad about those emails. Rather, they made me laugh, and I felt pity for those who sent them.
Some of my Indian scholarly friends inside and outside India also expressed their discontent with my article. They said they found my characterization of their country over the top.
However, my comments about India were not baseless. While working at the Nepal South Asia Centre, a Kathmandu-based South Asian think tank, I had the opportunity to observe South Asia very closely.
I have a fair understanding of trade, technology, economy, poli- tics, culture, religion, population, democracy, human rights, international relations, diplomacy and the strategies of India and other South Asian countries. I also have had plenty of opportunity to observe the Indian psyche.
I used to tell my Indian friends to wait and see that my perception of India would be proven correct sooner or later.
The pumped-up
claims
by
Indian political leaders, top bureaucrats, diplomats, think tanks, journalists and scholars for their ideas of India's role on the global stage used to astonish me. I used to believe that they were immersed in a fantasy far away from ground reality.
I now recognize that there is a big difference between the powerful land they have imagined and India's actual economic and strategic position on the global stage.
In exchanging views with my Indian friends, I had always advised them not to believe the baseless claims made by their cleverer-byhalf leaders and babus (top bureaucrats). I kept repeating my assertion: "India is nowhere in the world." Many Indian friends became furious after hearing me say it.
The miserable failure to combat the coronavirus pandemic has exposed India's weakness. The West had a misconception that India is growing and can be a global player and instrumental in countering China. However, the epidemic helped the West to dispel its illusion.
Recall a few facts. India, among the South Asian countries, is at the bottom of the Global
Hunger Index, 2020. India even lags behind literally starving countries such as Congo, Ethiopia and Angola.
One in five Indians still earns under US$37.50 a month - and 88.87 percent of the population or, in other words, nine out of ten, still make less than US$ 165 a month in India.
Economic activity in India is limited to a tiny population. Out of a population of 1.36 billion, only 14.6 million people had taxable income in the fiscal year 2018/2019. India's taxable income is above the figure of US$6,750.
Only 4.6 million Indians earn more than one million Indian rupees, an amount that equals slightly less than US$13,500.
Urban India, known to the West as India, accounts for only about 35 percent of the country's population. Sixty-five percent of India's population lives in rural areas. Thus, the countryside of India is very different from what India looks like in the world.
Despite the economic reforms that began in July 1991, India only grew to join merely the $2.5 trillion economies in 2019.