From his debating days at the Jawaharlal Nehru University, External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar has had a knack for wit and repartee. Not surprisingly, therefore, when he found a European interlocutor wonder whether India, like all European powers, was a “middle power”, not a Big Power like the United States and China, Jaishankar was quick to respond with a clever one-liner — we are a “power in the middle”.The rapid rise of China over the past two decades and the slowing down of the Indian growth process over the past decade have raised new questions about India’s place in the world. Economic status alone does not define either power or influence in world affairs. But it matters. It was not a happenstance that the view of India within the international community began to change at the turn of the century when the economy began to perform better and India’s skills in the then new field of information technology were globally sought after.AdvertisementRecall the fact that the Goldman Sachs report on emerging economies, clubbing India with China, Brazil and Russia, the famous BRIC report, was published in 2001. In the same year, the influential American foreign affairs analyst, Stephen P Cohen, published his book India: Emerging Power. Through the first decade of this century, several such books were published overseas and in India. The Japanese diplomat Hiroshi Hirabayashi went to the extent of titling his book, India: The Last Super Power. By 2007 an India sceptic like Singapore’s founder-mentor Lee Kuan Yew referred to China and India as “two engines” that would power the rise of Asia.Also Read | America’s struggle between exclusion and inclusion is far from overWhat made the difference? Clearly, the increase in India’s long-term growth from 3.5 per cent in 1950-80 to 6.0 per cent in 1980-2010, with a peak of over 8.0 per cent growth achieved during 2003-2010, made the world look at India with new eyes. India was beginning to show the potential to catch up with East Asian Tigers and the then rapidly rising China. The economy also demonstrated the capability to survive economic sanctions imposed by the US, Japan and other US allies in 1998 after the country conducted nuclear weapons tests and made public her nuclear power capability.Conscious of the impact of economic performance on the country’s power status, the strategic affairs guru, K Subrahmanyam, tasked me to write a paper for the National Security Advisory Board in 2000 that was eventually published as “Strategic Consequences of India’s Economic Performance”. The strategic affairs community recognised that strong economic performance is key to India’s global status.There was, to be sure, a time when the world did view a poorer India as a “great power” because of what it had come to represent as the first post-colonial, democratic nation in the developing world. India’s support for anti-colonial movements and record as a plural, secular democracy imparted a global stature that was not yet warranted by economic performance. In the long run, however, economic performance and capability matter.AdvertisementDevelopments over the past decade have contributed to the present scepticism about India’s global status. First, the non-fulfillment of the exaggerated claims made by Prime Minister Narendra Modi about India’s place in the world. Not only did Modi claim an ideological pre-eminence for India as a “Vishwaguru”, but also made premature claims on economic performance by stating that by 2020 national income would be $5 trillion. Last year his officialdom rushed to claim that India is now the third largest economy, when in fact it is still the sixth largest.As a purely political slogan in a contentious democracy, one can understand such claims. However, these claims were then buttressed by books and conferences that may well have made the PM believe that he was prescient in his declamations. Senior officials, scholars and journalists joined the bandwagon. Many westerners worried about the rise of China went along with the narrative in the hope that India would join the West in standing up to China. India’s decision to join Quad and enhance military engagement with the US added to such expectations.The problem is that, between 2010 and 2025, not only did China’s economy take off, a la WW Rostow, but China emerged as a knowledge power with advanced capabilities in science and technology. On the other hand, the BJP’s obsession with electoral dominance at home and the unleashing of bigotry, majoritarianism and antediluvianism have combined to damage the narrative of India’s rise.The fact that economic growth rate has not been able to significantly rise above the long term average of around 6.0 per cent only affirmed the view that India’s emergence as a Big Power will take more time. It is now evident that Modi’s other slogan about a Viksit Bharat by 2047 is also tall talk since the economy would have to grow well above 8.0 per cent per annum over the next decade for that goal to be met.There is in fact no harm in conceding that in the foreseeable future we will remain a “middle power”. Our time will come but effort is required. Meanwhile, it is India’s status as a middle power and as a developing country that will in fact empower its voice in world affairs. Even to get elected to the UNSC, a diplomatic objective that Jaishankar has been tasked to meet, it is an India that speaks for the weak that will fetch the votes. Not an India that desperately courts the powerful.you may likeIn the foreseeable future, the global balance of power system is best seen as a “bi-multipolar” system, with the US and China as the two dominant powers with global reach and several other middle powers defining the many ends of a multipolar power structure. In this system, there is no point in India pretending to be a third big power. It is best to build alliances with other middle powers including Russia, EU, UK, Japan, Brazil, South Africa and other like-minded countries.Both the US and China pose a challenge for India. Neither is an option in dealing with the other. Neither can be weaponised against the other. Ensuring stability in relations with both should remain a priority in the present phase of bi-multipolarity.The writer is Distinguished Fellow, Takshashila Institution and United Services Institution of India