Table of contents

Long plagued by poverty, India's recent economic growth has vaulted it into the ranks of the world's emerging powers, but what kind of power it wants to be remains a mystery. Our Time Has Come explains why India behaves the way it does, and the role it is likely to play globally as its prominence grows.

A focused and accessible introduction to modern India by award-winning author Mira Kamdar, India in the 21st Century addresses the history, political and social structures, economic and financial system, and geopolitical landscape of a country set to play a critical role in how the world evolves in the coming decades.

This edited volume explores in depth each of the individual relationships between the putative 'poles' of a prospective new multipolar system in the 21st century.

The rise of India as a state with global power attributes is expected to take place before the middle of the 21st century. As its power capabilities, especially in the military and economic arenas increase, India is likely to claim a stake in the global power hierarchy in the emerging multipolar system. Will this claim engender stability or instability in the international system? We contend in this paper that given current trends, while India will make stronger and more frequent claims for a meaningful role in international governance, especially in key global institutions, its rise is unlikely to be destabilizing for the central system. The reason for India's likely peaceful rise is its slow but steady integration into the global order in two most relevant areas-- political/strategic and economic. The persistence of these integrative trends is likely to ensure India's rise as a power somewhat satisfied with the US-dominated international system in the foreseeable future, and as a power interested in a 'managed multipolar order.'

The rise of China and India will be the outstanding development of the 21st century, raising fundamental questions about both the structure of the world economy and the balance of global geopolitical power. Will China still be a repressive and undemocratic regime, embracing free market economics but only when it suits? How aggressive a superpower will it be? And what about India, whose huge and growing population and economic prospects appear to guarantee prosperity? David Smith analyses the ways in which the world is tilting rapidly Eastwards, and examines all the implications of the shift in global power to Beijing, Delhi and Washington - a shift that will creep up on us before we know it.