In a wide-ranging conversation, The Indian Express’s consulting editors Pratap Bhanu Mehta and C. Raja Mohan join Anant Goenka to examine the consequences of the Iran conflict, America’s changing role in the world, China’s rise and India’s place in an increasingly fractured international order. Beyond geopolitics, India’s domestic challenges, economic competitiveness, institutions, business, democracy and the global shift to the political Right are also looked at to understand if in an era of uncertainty, a nation’s greatest strengths are ultimately built at home.2. Is America still the superpower it was?3. India’s constraints are domestic, not geopolitical4. India’s trade policies beyond the US-China binary5. India versus China: Democracy versus Authoritarianism6. What went wrong with the Left, and why global politics is shifting Right ⠀What does the Iran war reveal about the changing nature of military strength, legitimacy and global order?Anant Goenka: Pratap Bhanu Mehta and C. Raja Mohan are, in my view, among India’s finest public intellectuals. I’m obviously biased because both write for The Indian Express, but even without that association, I’d be reading them wherever they wrote.Between them, they cover an extraordinary range—from politics, philosophy, arts and culture to global economy and foreign policy. I’ve discussed all sorts of issues with them individually, but never really had the opportunity to chat with them together. Given everything happening around the world—and particularly the speed at which the geopolitical landscape is changing—I am excited about this conversation.Let’s start with the Iran war. Gentlemen, who’s won?C. Raja Mohan: I don’t think it’s helpful to think of it as a T20 match where one side wins and the other loses.Story continues below this adThe more useful question is: what happens over the longer term?Many people argue that Iran has emerged victorious simply because the regime survived. But survival, by itself, isn’t victory.Iran has lived under sanctions for nearly five decades. It is one of the world’s oldest civilisations, endowed with extraordinary natural and human resources, yet economically it remains deeply constrained. The attacks by US and Israel over the last two years have battered its economy.What often gets overlooked is the nature of the regime itself.Story continues below this adWe tend to discuss Iran only through the lens of geopolitics. But we forget what has happened inside the country. A woman walks past a mural depicting a portrait of the late Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was killed in the US and Israel strike on Feb. 28. (AP Photo)When I was a student, there were many Iranian students in India. They were protesting against the Shah because they wanted democracy. What eventually replaced the monarchy wasn’t democracy but a deeply repressive theocratic state.Over the last decade alone, Iran has witnessed several major protests—including those led by women—all of which have been brutally suppressed.So yes, you could say the regime survived. But surviving isn’t the same as succeeding.Story continues below this adToday, there is an increasingly visible debate inside Iran itself.One group believes the country needs reform, economic modernisation and reintegration with the world.Another believes Iran remains engaged in an ideological struggle and must continue confronting the West, regardless of the economic cost.To better understand the debate inside Iran, think of three competing power centres:Story continues below this adThere are the beards — the ideological establishment that believes the revolution must continue regardless of the economic cost.There are the boots — the security establishment that believes Iran must keep fighting and keep projecting power across the region.And then there are the suits — the technocrats and political leaders who continue to negotiate with the outside world.The ‘beards’ and ‘boots’ are concerned that the ‘suits’ trust America too easily and have sold Iran short.Story continues below this adThat internal struggle may prove just as important as anything Israel or the United States does from outside.And that internal contest is far from over.Meanwhile, the United States still retains overwhelming structural advantages: Its economy is close to $31 trillion. For context, Iran’s entire economy isn’t even half a trillion US dollars. America dominates global finance. Put simply, the costs of American sanctions are severe.Meanwhile, Tehran’s geographic dominance over the Persian Gulf and its ability to disrupt navigation through the vital sea lanes of the Hormuz Strait —certainly gives it leverage.But leverage isn’t the same as long-term strength.Ultimately, military capability cannot compensate indefinitely for economic weakness.That is Iran’s central dilemma.Anant Goenka: So you’re saying America probably comes out of this in a stronger position?C. Raja Mohan: Militarily and economically, yes.Story continues below this adBut that doesn’t mean the story is over. For the political costs of a total American war against Iran are too high and constrain Washington’s policy choices. Therefore, ‘fight’ and ‘talk’ has become Trump’s strategy.Iran too needs relief from the sanctions. Therefore, negotiations haven’t stopped.The real question is whether either side is politically capable of reaching one and, if they do, of selling it to their domestic audiences.Anant Goenka: Dr. Mehta, I suspect you see this rather differently?Story continues below this adPratap Bhanu Mehta: I think there are actually two separate questions here.The first is whether America or Iran is stronger relative to the other. On that question, Raja is broadly right. America’s material superiority is overwhelming. But we also know that superiority does not always translate into success in regional contexts.I agree with Raja on the extent of the fracture inside Iran. I actually think if America hadn’t attacked, the Iranian regime would have internally collapsed faster. So whatever this is, this is not a war for freedom or democracy.But the second question is much more important: Has the world become safer? My answer is unequivocally, “no.”In fact, I think the world is considerably more dangerous today than it was before this conflict.Take the Middle East.Whatever one thinks of the Iranian regime—and I have no illusions about its authoritarianism—the consequences of this conflict are likely to make the region significantly more unstable.Iraq, which had slowly begun recovering after years of war, risks becoming fragmented once again.The tentative political accommodation represented by the Abraham Accords becomes harder to sustain. And rivalry among the states of the region will deepen.You’re now going to see a very tumultuous West Asia. The Iranian regime is despicable, but it is the one country in the region that is practicing sovereignty.Across the region, governments now have to ask themselves whether sovereignty really exists if security ultimately depends on an external power. So the legitimacy of many of the regimes in the region will also come to be questioned over time.This has profound political consequences.There’s another effect we shouldn’t underestimate.Every military intervention strengthens the argument that countries ultimately need nuclear weapons if they want credible security guarantees.Ukraine surrendered its nuclear arsenal in exchange for assurances.Iran has watched that history unfold. Other countries are watching too.That doesn’t necessarily mean proliferation becomes inevitable, but it certainly strengthens the political case for it.The broader consequence is that cumulative global risk has increased. The world is becoming more militarised. More polarised. And more uncertain.Anant Goenka: You’ve also argued that America’s credibility has taken a hit.Pratap Bhanu Mehta: Very much so. The decline didn’t begin with Iran. It arguably began with Gaza.The issue isn’t whether America remains powerful. It unquestionably does. The issue is legitimacy.In spite of its limitless firepower, it’s still somehow unable to achieve its objectives. And leaves the world worse off. Palestinians inspect the site of an Israeli airstrike at al-Aqsa Hospital in Deir al-Balah, central Gaza Strip, Saturday, Aug. 1, 2026. (AP Photo)By way of an example: The one country that has all the prerequisites for successful modernization is Iran.If you talk about cultural change: women are extraordinarily repressed, but it is also the most educated female population in that region. By order of magnitude. And Iran actually has the lowest fertility rate.So the society was ripe for modernization. Now, the more you bring geopolitics of this kind into Iran, the more you delay and subvert that modernization.Repeated interventions have increasingly reinforced the perception that America acts unilaterally, often outside the very international framework it once championed.That changes how the rest of the world interprets American power.It’s no longer simply a question of military capability. It’s about political authority. Those aren’t the same thing.Anant Goenka: Okay… maybe to round off the Iran discussion…Where does China fit into all of this? Has Beijing quietly emerged stronger as a result?C. Raja Mohan: In the immediate sense, China loses one important advantage.For years, it has benefited from buying discounted Iranian oil under sanctions. If Iran eventually returns to global markets, those discounts disappear.So that weakens one important economic relationship. While Beijing might like to see Washington get a bloody nose in the Gulf, it can’t accept the idea that Iran will control a major waterway and impose tolls on the traffic. After all, China is the world’s largest trading nation and wants the freedom of navigation in critical sea lines of communication.But there’s another point that’s often ignored. People describe Iran as standing up to American hegemony. That’s true. But Iran also has hegemonic ambitions of its own. A thick plume of smoke rises from an oil storage facility hit by a US-Israeli strike in Tehran, Iran, March 8, 2026. (AP Photo)Its Arab neighbours know that better than anyone else.Saudi Arabia, the UAE and others don’t simply fear American power. They also fear Iranian influence. Iran has spent decades building networks across Lebanon, Iraq, Syria and elsewhere.It has used proxy organisations to extend its reach across the region.So for many Arab governments, the American security presence remains important—not because they necessarily admire Washington, but because it balances Tehran. That they can’t defend themselves against Iran increases the value of American support and a willingness to tolerate Trump’s difficult diplomatic style. For now, neither China nor Russia is in a position to offer an alternative to the US when it comes to security.Anant Goenka: So if Iran eventually moderates, the strategic picture changes completely?C. Raja Mohan: Exactly. And I think that’s one of the biggest long-term questions. We sometimes forget how transformative 1979 really was.The Iranian Revolution, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the attack on the Grand Mosque in Mecca together boosted political Islam.Imagine an Iran that is religiously moderate, economically modern, and is less confrontational with the region and the world.That would fundamentally alter the politics of the Middle East in a positive direction. And I think it would have implications far beyond the region itself.Anant Goenka: Which brings us to a broader question. Has American power actually grown stronger through all of this—or weaker?Because the two of you seem to be looking at power in rather different ways. ⠀America remains the dominant power—but what kind of power is it becoming? And where does China fit into an increasingly fractured world order?Anant Goenka: Which brings us to a broader question. Has American power actually grown stronger through all of this—or weaker? Because the two of you seem to be looking at power in rather different ways.Pratap Bhanu Mehta: Power is always a relational concept. The question isn’t simply whether America is powerful. It obviously is.The real question is: powerful to do what?If the objective was to stabilise the Middle East, create a durable political settlement or secure Israel’s long-term future, it’s difficult to argue that repeated military interventions have achieved those goals.After World War 2, the big joke was what makes America a “superpower” is not that it can achieve its objectives, but that it can absorb the cost of failure.Look at Afghanistan.Twenty years. Trillions of dollars. Thousands of lives. And ultimately, the Taliban returned to power. The same pattern repeats itself elsewhere.Military superiority doesn’t automatically translate into political success.There’s an old Kissinger observation that “the quickest way to diminish power is by exercising it too frequently”. There’s a great deal of truth in that.So, will America absorb the costs of these failures in Iran today? Probably.Its economy remains remarkably dynamic. Its technological lead remains formidable. But the rest of the world often bears the collateral damage while America absorbs those costs.That’s a very different measure of power from simply counting aircraft carriers or GDP.C. Raja Mohan: I agree that power has to be judged in relation to political objectives. But there’s another dimension we shouldn’t ignore—material capability.On that front, the United States has actually become stronger relative to almost every other advanced economy.Take Europe.In the mid-1990s, the Eurozone’s economy was almost 90% of America’s GDP. Today is barely 60%. Japan has fallen even further behind, it was 60% in 1995 and is now 12% of US GDP.India, you can argue, has also grown relative to US from about $270 billion GDP in 1991 to $4 trillion now.But the only country that has genuinely narrowed the gap with the United States is China, it’s today approximately $20 trillion economy. In 1991, China’s GDP was about $400 billion.Which is why I’m still not convinced that we’re living in a truly multipolar world.The real debate is whether we’re moving from a unipolar system towards a bipolar one. Beyond China, no country comes close to matching the United States in material power.That’s the real structural shift in global politics. This aerial photo shows the port of Umm Qasr empty of commercial ships and cargo ships, near the city of Basra, 340 miles (550 kilometres) southeast of Baghdad, Iraq, Tuesday, July 28, 2026. (AP Photo)America’s relative economic position, apart from China, has actually improved. Recall that most countries except China and Canada did not retaliate against Trump’s tariff war in 2025; they chose to negotiate. This is rooted in the fact that the US is the main destination for the world’s exports. While the US economy itself is not dependent on exports to the world.That also explains why Washington increasingly behaves with a certain confidence and contempt—even towards its closest allies.You see it in its dealings with Europe. He says EU was formed to “screw America”. He uses expletives before describing Netanyahu as “crazy”.With Britain, he announces PM Keir Starmer’s resignation even before Starmer himself does.Material power creates political confidence, the arrogance and impunity to behave badly with his closest friends. Enemies are a different story altogether.So I would separate two questions.Has America become less effective at achieving political outcomes?Perhaps. After all, America has a huge margin for error, and it induces reckless behaviour in Washington.Has it become materially weaker? I don’t think so.Anant Goenka: That’s actually what puzzles me. If America repeatedly finds itself in expensive interventions that don’t seem to achieve the outcomes it wants—Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan and now Iran—why does it keep doing it?If it isn’t producing lasting political success, what’s driving this pattern?C. Raja Mohan: That’s one of the central debates inside America today. For decades, the dominant foreign policy view was that America had a responsibility to lead the world.To maintain alliances, uphold international institutions and preserve global order. That inevitably drew it into conflicts across the globe. The newer “America First/MAGA” argument challenges that entire assumption.Why should America continue paying those costs?Why should American taxpayers fund the security of allies thousands of miles away? Trump campaigned against that idea.Ironically, once back in office, he too discovered how difficult it is for a global power to remain disengaged.As America’s power expanded after the Second World War, so did the temptation—and perhaps the expectation—that it would intervene. A man sits on a surfboard as a container ship and other commercial vessels appear anchored in the Strait of Hormuz off Bandar Abbas, Iran, Monday, July 27, 2026. (AP Photo)George Washington warned against becoming entangled in foreign conflicts. History has taken America in precisely the opposite direction.Anant Goenka: Is that fundamentally about economics? About oil? Or is it really an ideological project?C. Raja Mohan: Oil matters. But I think ideology matters even more.After World War II, America had sent tens of thousands of soldiers to Europe. So when NATO was being formed, there was a lot of opposition to it in the US Senate which said “Look, we (America) have just come back from Europe (in 1945), Why do you want to go back in 1949? What’s the upside?” There were public protests, and disagreements even within the Republican Party. To counter all this, at that time the Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee said to get the US Congress to open up the purse strings, it’s important we scare “the hell out of the American people”. This is what led to the whole anti-communist paranoia and McCarthyism – they had to whip people into a frenzy. It was a classic reflection of the “paranoid style” in American politics.And that contributed to Americans turning their reasonably good image of Russia in the Second World War into a very negative one.During the Cold War, many Americans genuinely believed communism posed an existential threat. That belief shaped an entire foreign policy.Whether historians ultimately agree with those judgments is another matter.The point is that ideology became a powerful organising force. It still is.Pratap Bhanu Mehta: I’d frame it slightly differently.Every great power eventually develops interests around the world. India will too. China already has.The question isn’t whether countries acquire global interests. They inevitably do.What’s distinctive about this moment is something else. For decades, American power rested on three pillars.The first was America’s own democratic appeal—the idea that it represented a model others aspired to. The second was overwhelming economic and military strength. The third—and perhaps the most important—was institution-building.America exercised power through rules. Through alliances.Through institutions like the IMF, the World Bank and the broader post-war international order. Those institutions certainly reflected American interests. America also carved exceptions for itself.But they also created legitimacy. Today, that third pillar is weakening.Increasingly, America appears willing to bypass the very institutions it once created.It questions international courts. Sanctions international officials. Treats alliances more transactionally. That fundamentally changes how American power is perceived.It’s not just that America is becoming more unilateral.It’s that it’s becoming less invested in sustaining the international order it once led. President Donald Trump, centre, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, back left, and Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth, right, attend the dignified transfer of four US service members recently killed in the Middle East. (AP Photo)Anant Goenka: Does that also explain why so many countries now seem convinced that the only real security guarantee is possessing nuclear weapons?Ukraine gave them up.Iran has watched that history.If you’re sitting in Tehran today, isn’t the obvious conclusion that without a nuclear deterrent, you’re ultimately vulnerable?Pratap Bhanu Mehta: That’s certainly one of the structural consequences of this conflict. Any government looking at recent history has to ask itself a very uncomfortable question: Can anyone actually guarantee our security?Moderates inside Iran may well want reconciliation.But reconciliation also requires credible guarantees that military intervention won’t simply recur a few years later.That’s a very difficult promise for anyone to make today.C. Raja Mohan: Although they are important sources of power, nuclear weapons can’t solve every problem.We’ve traditionally assumed that nuclear deterrence guarantees security.Recent conflicts suggest the picture is becoming much more complicated.Look at Russia. It possesses the world’s largest nuclear arsenal. Yet, Ukraine continues striking targets deep inside Russian territory using drones and precision technologies.Look at Israel. It possesses nuclear weapons.That hasn’t prevented sustained conventional attacks on it by Iran.Nuclear weapons, it would seem, are becoming less useful in shaping outcomes below the nuclear threshold.That’s where the technological revolution in the conventional domain has become consequential. Smoke rises over the city centre of Kyiv, Ukraine, after a Russian missile attack Saturday, Aug. 1, 2026. (AP Photo)Anant Goenka: Meaning drones, artificial intelligence and autonomous systems?C. Raja Mohan: Exactly. Ukraine has demonstrated something remarkable.Cheap drones, artificial intelligence and commercial technologies are allowing relatively smaller powers to impose significant costs on much larger militaries.The battlefield is changing. Silicon Valley companies. Artificial intelligence. Commercial satellite systems. Private technology firms.These are increasingly becoming as important to warfare as traditional defence manufacturers. We’re entering a very different era of military competition.Anant Goenka: Which perhaps brings us to the obvious question for India. If the world is changing this quickly, what should India actually be preparing for?What does all of this mean for us? ⠀If geopolitics creates opportunities, what ultimately determines whether India can seize them?Anant Goenka: Let’s bring this back to India. We’ve spent a lot of time talking about the world. The obvious question is: what does all of this mean for us?How should India navigate this changing global order over the next decade? Whether it’s geopolitics, energy security or our broader strategic position, what should we really be thinking about?C. Raja Mohan: The first thing we need to recognise is that India’s greatest vulnerabilities are largely of its own making.Take energy. We remain overwhelmingly dependent on imported oil. For years, we could have built much larger strategic petroleum reserves. We could have invested much more aggressively in alternative energy sources.We could have moved faster on reforms that reduce our dependence on imported fuel.Nobody prevented us from doing any of that.Instead, every time oil prices rise, we rediscover the need for energy security. Then prices fall and the urgency disappears. We’ve repeated that cycle for decades. The same applies to nuclear energy.Nearly twenty years after the civil nuclear agreement, we still haven’t created the regulatory framework that allows meaningful private participation.The legislation exists. Implementation doesn’t. The same story repeats itself in sector after sector. Take space.We celebrate India’s achievements—and rightly so—but we still lack a modern legal framework governing commercial space activity. These aren’t failures of diplomacy.They’re failures on the domestic front.Anant Goenka: So your point is that India’s constraints are fundamentally internal rather than external.C. Raja Mohan: Exactly. Foreign policy creates opportunities. It doesn’t create national strength. Ultimately, what determines India’s place in the world isn’t what happens in the Ministry of External Affairs in Delhi.It’s what happens in Mumbai, in Bengaluru, in Hyderabad, in our universities, in our laboratories.That’s where power is built.People rightly celebrate the fact that India is now among the world’s largest economies. But our per capita income remains relatively modest.If becoming a developed country by 2047 is genuinely the national objective, then every policy should be judged against that benchmark.Are we reforming quickly enough? Are we investing sufficiently in science? Technology? Education? Productivity? Those are the questions that matter.Anant Goenka: How would you assess India’s foreign policy over the past decade? Stepping back from individual events, has India broadly moved in the right direction?C. Raja Mohan: I think it’s important to view this over a longer time horizon. I’d begin in 1991. Different governments came and went. Congress. The BJP. Coalition governments. But there was broad continuity in foreign policy.India improved relations with almost every major power. Trade expanded.Technology partnerships deepened. Our diplomatic options widened considerably.On balance, I think that trajectory has been successful.Where we’ve fallen behind isn’t diplomacy. It’s domestic transformation.The world is changing much faster than we are. Technology is changing. Manufacturing is changing. Artificial intelligence is reshaping industries. Unless India reforms internally, even excellent diplomacy won’t be enough.Anant Goenka: One argument we hear repeatedly is that India’s difficult neighbourhood justifies many of our domestic political choices. Because we live next to China and Pakistan, we need stronger governments, more centralisation and fewer political constraints.Foreign policy is often used to justify domestic policy.How much of that argument do you buy?Pratap Bhanu Mehta: Very little. Of course, the neighbourhood matters. But I don’t think it’s the principal driver of what’s happening inside India. What we’re witnessing domestically is, above all, an ideological project.It’s an attempt to remake the Indian state and Indian society according to a particular ideological vision. That project doesn’t require external justification.The neighbourhood becomes a convenient explanation.But it isn’t the cause.Anant Goenka: And if you were assessing India’s foreign policy purely on outcomes?Pratap Bhanu Mehta: I’d ask three very simple questions.First: Have we narrowed the gap with our principal strategic competitor—China? The answer is no.If anything, that gap has widened over the last decade.Second: Are we more influential in our own neighbourhood? Again, I would say no.Bangladesh is an extraordinary example.Very few people would have imagined ten years ago that India’s position there could weaken as much as it has. Nepal remains unsettled. Sri Lanka continues balancing multiple external powers. Across South Asia, India’s strategic environment has become more uncertain, not less.Now, some of that is structural.China is a much larger player than it was twenty years ago. But not all of it.Some of it reflects diplomatic choices. Relationships matter. Attention matters. Political management matters.Those things haven’t always been handled well. Rescuers search through the rubble of a residential building following an air attack in Lviv, Ukraine, Thursday, July 30, 2026. (AP Photo)Third: Are we less vulnerable to systemic global risks? Do we carry more authority globally? As Raja said, our domestic failures make us very vulnerable. But we are not an influential voice in reducing any global risks and have also lost leadership of the global South.Anant Goenka: Energy keeps coming up as perhaps India’s biggest strategic vulnerability. Do you think we’ve underestimated it?Pratap Bhanu Mehta: Very much so. For a long time, there was optimism about India’s infrastructure story.Beginning with the Vajpayee years and continuing afterwards, we significantly expanded roads, power generation and renewable energy.But somewhere along the way, we stopped planning for the next phase. For the first time in years, we’re once again discussing power shortages.Industrial users are experiencing disruptions that many of us assumed belonged to the past.We were living off investments made years earlier. We haven’t built enough for what’s coming next.Given everything happening globally, energy is probably India’s single greatest strategic vulnerability.Anant Goenka: But Dr. Mehta, India has risen tremendously. Economy, stock market, income and spending. Any which way you look at it, relative to where we were 1991 onwards, and even 2014 onwards, there is growth which dazzled the world.Pratap Bhanu Mehta: That’s precisely my concern. For many years, India’s great advantage internationally was potential.There was always a sense that India hadn’t yet fulfilled it. Today, I’m not sure the world sees it that way. Increasingly, the perception is that this is what India’s maximum looks like with political stability, a majority government and continuity in government. The world is not as optimistic about India’s potential.Whether that’s fair or unfair almost doesn’t matter. Perceptions shape expectations.And I think India’s international standing has quietly weakened over the last few years. Not because we’ve suddenly become a weaker country. But because expectations have changed.Anant Goenka: So where do you see the biggest gap?Pratap Bhanu Mehta: Trade. Manufacturing. Technology. Energy. Political Conflict.Look across those benchmarks and ask yourself where the transformational leap has actually occurred.One of my biggest worries is that we’ve become reluctant to acknowledge our own shortcomings. We are becoming victims of our own propaganda.Every successful country is capable of self-correction. But self-correction begins with recognising that something needs correcting.If we lose that capacity, reform becomes much harder.Anant Goenka: Which brings us naturally to business.Because from the perspective of Indian companies, these geopolitical questions become very practical. If you’re building supply chains or making long-term investments, do you lean towards America—or China? ⠀China built the world’s factory. Can India build the world’s next innovation economy?Anant Goenka: Let’s look at this from an industrialist’s perspective. America wants to sell India defence equipment, technology and capital.China, meanwhile, sits at the centre of so many global supply chains. Much of the raw material and intermediate goods that Indian manufacturers rely on comes from China.Without those inputs, many Indian businesses simply wouldn’t be globally competitive.So if you’re running an Indian company today, which relationship matters more over the long term Should India be moving economically closer to China, even if the political relationship remains difficult?C. Raja Mohan: I don’t think the choice is quite that binary. The real issue is strategic dependence. Take pharmaceuticals. Take electronics. Take renewable energy.Over the past forty years, China gradually became the manufacturing centre of the world. As that happened, India became dependent on Chinese intermediate goods across sector after sector.In many cases, we once had those capabilities ourselves. We simply stopped producing them because importing became cheaper. For a long time, that seemed perfectly rational. Today, almost every major economy is rethinking that assumption.The pandemic exposed the fragility of concentrated supply chains. Geopolitical tensions reinforced that lesson.The question every country is now asking is simple: Which capabilities are simply too important to outsource?That doesn’t mean every product has to be manufactured domestically. That’s neither possible nor desirable.But certain technologies and strategic industries require domestic capacity. That’s the logic behind initiatives such as the Production Linked Incentive (PLI) scheme.Whether we’ve executed those programmes well enough is another question.Anant Goenka: But isn’t that true of every modern economy? Global supply chains exist because they make production more efficient.Sometimes importing intermediate goods from China simply lowers costs for Indian manufacturers and, ultimately, for Indian consumers.Do we really want to produce everything ourselves?C. Raja Mohan: No. Self-sufficiency isn’t the objective. The objective is resilience. Every country has to decide where efficiency ends and vulnerability begins. That’s the difficult balance.Pratap Bhanu Mehta: I’d actually frame the issue slightly differently.Whether a particular component comes from China or Vietnam is, in some ways, a secondary question.The more important question is: What are we doing with those relationships?China never viewed foreign investment or imported technology as an end in itself.Every joint venture. Every technology partnership. Every imported capability.Ultimately served one objective—to move China’s own technological frontier forward.Imported technology wasn’t the destination. It was the bridge.I’m not convinced India approaches these partnerships with the same ambition. Too often, we’re satisfied if imports lower prices today.The harder question is whether those relationships will enable India to become a technological leader ten or fifteen years from now.That’s the ambition I don’t yet see.Anant Goenka: So, the global investors I have spoken to say that China has become very tough to invest in because the Chinese state has deliberately pushed the cost of capital so low that private returns have become much harder to generate.The government is happy earning two or three percent if it helps create global champions.Private investors aren’t. Private investors are always looking for much higher returns. That’s one reason capital has become more selective.Now compare that with India. Global investors would like to invest much more in India, but their problem isn’t necessarily too much government. It’s too much government without predictable rules. That’s what investors struggle with.But the impact of all this is that India is in aggressive competition with China for foreign funding.Pratap Bhanu Mehta: To an extent, yes. Although, I’d frame it more broadly.Every successful manufacturing economy has systematically lowered the cost of production.Affordable energy. Efficient logistics. High-quality education. Skilled labour. Reliable infrastructure.That’s what competitiveness looks like. Our debate often reduces everything to regulation. Regulation matters.But if your logistics costs remain among the highest in the world…If energy is expensive…If human capital isn’t improving rapidly enough…Then deregulation alone won’t make you globally competitive. Those are precisely the areas where government has an indispensable role.So I think an important distinction is that it’s not the size of the state that matters. It’s the quality of the state.China certainly has an interventionist government. But historically, it pursued a coherent industrial strategy.It subsidised capital. Built infrastructure. Created intense competition. Then held firms accountable.In India we’ve often done the opposite.We’ve protected incumbents while simultaneously surrounding them with regulatory uncertainty. Those are very different models of state intervention.Anant Goenka: So, taking a cue from Chinese government’s relationship with Chinese businesses: perhaps we’ve spent decades asking the wrong question. We’ve focused on where government should withdraw.Maybe we should be asking what Government needs to become much better at, instead? People protest near the White House against US and Israeli strikes on Iran, Saturday, Feb. 28, 2026 in Washington. (AP Photo)Pratap Bhanu Mehta: Exactly.One weakness of India’s post-1991 reform debate is that it focused almost entirely on reducing state control. That was necessary.But we paid much less attention to improving state capability. Education. Public health. Infrastructure. The judiciary. Energy. Logistics.Those are the foundations of competitiveness.Without them, markets alone won’t deliver sustained growth.Anant Goenka: Another complaint I get from businesspeople, specifically the investor and startup community, is they’d like to allocate much more capital to India, but the hesitation isn’t due to a shortage of opportunities; it is because the rules often feel unpredictable.Pratap Bhanu Mehta: That’s a very serious concern.India risks moving beyond crony capitalism towards something even more troubling—an expropriatory state, when the state can arbitrarily target private companies.Every investor knows that if a business becomes sufficiently successful, political or commercial pressures will eventually emerge. The state will play favourites for large companies.That changes behaviour.What’s striking is that Indian companies today aren’t short of capital. Balance sheets are healthier than they were a decade ago.What they’re short of is confidence. Investment reflects that.Anant Goenka: One thing that surprises me is how little India’s business community says publicly. I have seen whichever the Government is, in private they’re complaining about policy, but publicly, they’re remarkably silent.Pratap Bhanu Mehta: That’s one of the biggest changes over the past decade.Fifteen years ago, if growth slowed by even one percentage point, leading industrialists would publicly express concern.Today, it’s much harder to find that kind of candour. Worse, prudent silence can be understandable. But capital is subsidising the worst aspects of the authoritarianism that will bind it.That changes the relationship between business and the state.C. Raja Mohan: At the same time, Indian industry also has to become more ambitious. We’re already among the world’s largest automobile producers.Why aren’t we leading the next generation of automotive technology?Why aren’t we investing more aggressively in research and development?Historically, some of India’s greatest scientific institutions were created by private enterprise. There was once a willingness to think far beyond immediate commercial returns.That spirit needs to return.Anant Goenka: So if I were to summarise, the challenge isn’t choosing between America and China. It’s building an India that’s competitive enough not to become dependent on either.C. Raja Mohan: Exactly.Pratap Bhanu Mehta: That’s ultimately the only sustainable strategy.Anant Goenka: Let’s move away from economics for a moment. Another issue that’s becoming increasingly important is India’s diaspora.For years, we’ve described it as one of our greatest strategic assets. But can it also become a liability? ⠀Strong institutions depend not only on governments, but also on the willingness of citizens, businesses and the media to speak honestly.Anant Goenka: Let’s shift gears a little. India’s diaspora is often described as one of our greatest strategic assets. Every Prime Minister celebrates it. Every overseas visit includes a large diaspora event. But you’ve also argued that it can become a foreign policy complication. Why?C. Raja Mohan: Because the relationship has fundamentally changed. For decades after Independence, India’s approach was very simple.If you settled abroad, you became part of that country’s political system.India maintained cultural ties, but largely stayed out of domestic politics overseas. Over the last twenty-five years, that has begun to change.The diaspora has become an important instrument of India’s international engagement. Every major political visit now includes large public events with overseas Indians.That has undoubtedly strengthened emotional connections. But it has also created new complications.The moment internal political issues in India find resonance in the diaspora and become part of the host-nation’s politics, they stop being India’s domestic issues.What happens in Punjab begins influencing politics in Canada.Events in Kashmir become debates in Westminster.Religious and social conflicts inside India increasingly spill into foreign political systems. That’s inevitable when your diaspora becomes politically organised and is actively wooed by local leaders in the host nations.Anant Goenka: So the same communities that strengthen India’s global influence can also internationalise India’s domestic disagreements.C. Raja Mohan: Exactly. Every country eventually faces this dilemma.Ireland experienced it. Israel experiences it. India is now experiencing it too.The larger and more politically active your diaspora becomes, the more difficult that balancing act becomes.Anant Goenka: I’d like to touch on something that often comes up: The perception today that institutions—particularly the media—operate under greater pressure than before. There are many who believe institutions like the press should be constructive and supportive, rather than critical and complaining.What, in your view, should the role of the media be in this environment?In a global environment where countries behave as cut-throat as corporates, how does the media balance the responsibility of informing the public without becoming either reckless or timid?Pratap Bhanu Mehta: The media’s responsibility hasn’t fundamentally changed. Its job is to ask difficult questions. To scrutinise power.To challenge official narratives. To be objective, not necessarily neutral. These are not the same thing.Every democracy depends on institutions willing to perform that role. Once those institutions begin internalising fear, public debate narrows very quickly.And that doesn’t only affect journalism. It affects universities. Businesses. Civil society.The quality of democratic life depends on whether independent institutions retain the confidence to speak honestly.Anant Goenka: If I can offer one perspective from inside the profession…I sometimes think we overstate how difficult it has become.Is it hard? Yes.But perhaps not as hard as people imagine.Just these past few months, The Indian Express published several major investigations. One, involving a Union Minister of State taking a farming subsidy from his own ministry, another that revealed the family of a sitting Chief Minister’s growing real estate portfolio. Another one that exposed one of India’s largest private banks illegally passing on preferential deposit rates, after which the bank CEO was fined by the bank’s board. And another investigation revealed the bureaucrats diverted funds meant for our nation’s elite athletes towards building sports facilities in Delhi’s government housing societies.All these investigations were published. They were absolutely truthful.Nobody was stopped from reporting it. No journalists landed up in jail. Good journalism is still possible.The bigger danger, in my view, is self-censorship.Sometimes institutions become more hesitant than circumstances actually require.Pratap Bhanu Mehta: I agree with that. Fear often becomes internalised. Once that happens, formal censorship almost becomes unnecessary.People begin anticipating consequences before they’re ever asked.That changes the culture of institutions.Anant Goenka: It’s not just the media. I find something similar in business.Privately, many business leaders are willing to express concerns. Publicly, those same people often become remarkably cautious.Why do you think that happens?Pratap Bhanu Mehta: Partly because the incentives have changed. But I think something deeper has also changed.Healthy democracies depend on intermediary institutions—universities, businesses, professional bodies, the press.These institutions aren’t meant simply to react to government. They’re supposed to provide independent centres of judgment.When that independence weakens, governments receive less honest feedback. That ultimately hurts governance itself.Anant Goenka: One example I’ve often thought about is Rahul Bajaj. He openly questioned governments of different political persuasions. He disagreed respectfully, but publicly.Nothing about that diminished either his stature or the success of his business. I sometimes wonder whether we’ve become less willing, as a society, to have those conversations.Pratap Bhanu Mehta: That’s precisely the concern. Democracy isn’t sustained only by elections. It’s sustained by habits. The habit of disagreement. The habit of criticism.The confidence to speak honestly, even when it’s uncomfortable.Those habits weaken long before democratic institutions formally weaken. That’s why they’re so important.Anant Goenka: So perhaps the larger question isn’t simply whether institutions remain independent.It’s whether individuals within those institutions continue behaving independently.Pratap Bhanu Mehta: Exactly. Institutions are ultimately only as strong as the people willing to uphold them.Anant Goenka: Which brings us to politics itself. Across much of the world, governments have shifted to the right.Traditional centre-left parties have weakened almost everywhere. Why has that happened?And is India simply part of the same global trend? ⠀From Washington to Westminster and New Delhi, politics has been reshaped by an ascendant Right. Have today’s political battles become less about ideology than about culture and belonging?Anant Goenka: Across much of the democratic world, politics seems to be moving decisively to the right. There was a period in the 1990s when Tony Blair and Bill Clinton appeared to redefine mainstream politics around liberalisation and progressive values. There was even a sense that the political centre itself had shifted leftwards.Today the mood feels very different.What changed? How did the Left collapse so suddenly, and almost uniformly, across the world?C. Raja Mohan: I’d make one small qualification. It’s not simply that the world has moved to the right.What’s really happened is that many parties traditionally identified with the right have succeeded in winning over voters who historically belonged to the left.Take Donald Trump.Many of the constituencies he mobilised—especially the White working classes—were once the natural base of the Democratic Party. Prime Minister Narendra Modi and US President Donald Trump. (AP Photo)Similarly, Boris Johnson’s victory in Britain came after breaking Labour’s so-called “Red Wall” working-class constituencies that had voted Labour for generations.That’s a profound political realignment.Traditional social democratic parties gradually became parties of educated urban elites. They embraced a more cosmopolitan and culturally liberal agenda, while many working-class voters felt that their own economic concerns were no longer at the centre of politics.Issues such as immigration illustrate the shift.For many working-class communities, immigration has always been an economic issue because it affects wages and employment.But liberal parties increasingly approached it primarily through the language of openness and rights.That created political space for conservative parties to reconnect with voters who had once been the left’s natural constituency.In Britain, people now talk about a “Blue Labour” tradition—combining social conservatism with working-class economic priorities.That’s one of the most important political developments of the last decade.Anant Goenka: So the Right has effectively expanded into territory that once belonged to the Left.C. Raja Mohan: Exactly. The old distinction has become much less clear.Historically, welfare belonged to the Left. Today, many conservative governments are equally willing to embrace welfare policies.The ideological map has shifted.Pratap Bhanu Mehta: I’d go one step further. I think the Left-Right distinction itself has become much less useful.Politics has always involved borrowing ideas from opponents. What’s changed is something deeper. Increasingly, elections aren’t won just through ideology.They’re won through organisational strength and the ability to build durable political identities.That’s where the contemporary Right has gained an enormous advantage. But the Right can also resort to a form of ruthlessness.Anant Goenka: One way I’ve been thinking about it is that politics everywhere seems to revolve around three deeply emotional ideas: Religion. Patriotism. Family.The left appears to have ceded two of those almost entirely: Religion is viewed with suspicion.Traditional ideas of family are often treated as regressive.That leaves patriotism.But even there, many centre-left parties struggle to sound convincing.In India, Rahul Gandhi could spend nine days praying in a temple, but he’ll never be able to convince a religious Hindu that he’d represent them.So why did the Left simply surrender all that space to the Right?Pratap Bhanu Mehta: I would resist reducing this to a simple left-versus-right story. Historically, politics has always been a process of constant realignment. Ideas move. Parties borrow from one another.The first advocates of what today might be called welfare policies were often conservatives. Bismarck introduced social insurance, partly to undercut the socialist movement. Churchill himself supported significant welfare reforms.Similarly, the idea that Republicans are always the party of small government doesn’t really survive close scrutiny. The only recent period in which the United States consistently ran balanced budgets was under Bill Clinton.Politics has never divided neatly into permanent ideological camps.What’s changed today is something different.Government has become increasingly difficult to make effective.People experience regulation everywhere, but don’t always experience competence.That creates frustration, and frustration is fertile ground for political entrepreneurs who promise to cut through institutions rather than reform them.Anant Goenka: So perhaps this isn’t really about ideology at all. It’s about who people believe understands their lives.Pratap Bhanu Mehta: Exactly. Politics isn’t only about programmes.It’s about identity. It’s about belonging. It’s about trust.Parties succeed when people believe they understand those instincts.They fail when they appear merely to be managing systems rather than representing lived experience.Anant Goenka: So organisations matter more than manifestos?Pratap Bhanu Mehta: Very much so. Political identities are built over years. Sometimes decades.They’re built through social organisations, community networks, volunteer structures and sustained engagement—not simply during election campaigns.That’s one of the great organisational strengths of the BJP and the RSS. Their work isn’t confined to elections. It’s continuous.Many centrist and left-of-centre parties allowed those organisational networks to weaken. Once those intermediary institutions disappeared, rebuilding them became extraordinarily difficult. President Donald Trump, left, and Chinese President Xi Jinping, right, shake hands before their meeting at Gimhae International Airport in Busan, South Korea, Thursday, Oct. 30, 2025. (AP Photo)Anant Goenka: So even if public opinion shifts, the organisational advantage remains.Pratap Bhanu Mehta: Exactly. Politics isn’t only about persuading voters. It’s about reaching them consistently.The Congress today often struggles with something as basic as organisational depth. That’s not an ideological problem. It’s an institutional one.Anant Goenka: Do you see any realistic path for the Opposition over the next few years?Pratap Bhanu Mehta: Only under certain conditions.Historically, major political change often begins with divisions inside dominant political formations rather than outside them.That’s true in many democracies. Whether something similar eventually happens in India remains to be seen. The second possibility is organisational renewal.But that requires much more than electoral alliances. Opposition parties would have to demonstrate that they can genuinely function together. Not merely contest elections together. At the moment, I don’t see convincing evidence of that.Anant Goenka: I agree there’s no evidence, and a consistently blunt opposition. Yet, would you say politics has a habit of surprising us?Pratap Bhanu Mehta: It always does. One should never become completely deterministic. Political agency still matters.Look at New York. Few people expected Zohran Mamdani’s campaign to gather the momentum it did.Whatever one thinks of his politics, it demonstrated that disciplined organisation and relentless grassroots campaigning can still produce unexpected outcomes. Politics retains that capacity for surprise.C. Raja Mohan: I agree. Structures matter. But leadership and organisation still matter too. History rarely moves in straight lines.Anant Goenka: Perhaps that’s an appropriate place to end. We’ve spent the evening discussing wars, great powers, economics, institutions and politics. But one theme seems to run through all of it.Countries ultimately succeed not because history is favourable to them, but because their institutions remain capable of adapting to change.Thank you, both. This has been a fascinating discussion.