Developing an “India in the World” Framework: Modi Regime’s Political Economy in a Changing World

Abstract

India’s political economy and economic policies can no longer be understood in a purely domestic-oriented or closed economy framework. This paper offers an “India in the world” framework that analyzes how traditional borders of domestic political economy and international politics interact in shaping domestic policy and political economy. In contrast to existing political economy approaches on India, such a framework pays attention to the changing nature of domestic political economy but also how international factors affect and shape domestic imperatives and goals. Simultaneously, domestic developments have important global consequences in terms of increasing (or decreasing) global attention and external economic flows to India, which must be attended to in understanding India’s domestic political economy. I also suggest that the global world is not only a set of exogenous structures and constraints, but rather, the changing global order is deployed and used by state actors to refurbish their political and state power to achieve both domestic and global aims. However, if state actors fail to renew the domestic sources of growth or contribute to crony capitalist or debt-laden domestic growth, then, even attending to global alliances may fail to renew the economic sources of state power and create serious contradictions in India’s domestic and global strategies despite new realignments favoring India at the global level. These ideas help us understand Modi regime’s political economy in a new way.