Big, poor and rising: Why India is the world’s punching bag

There are two views of India globally. The first sees India as a future superpower, forming the third pole in an international power triad with the United States and China. The second sees India as a dysfunctional state, corrupt and slothful — a country from which both millionaires and the poor are fleeing.

Examine both views. Global investors vote with their money. Foreign direct investment (FDI) is pouring billions of dollars into Indian companies. The Japanese, among the world’s canniest long-term investors, have in the past three months committed FDI valued at $68 billion in the Indian banking, technology and automotive sectors.

American and European companies aren’t far behind. Their China-plus-one strategy is accelerating. India is the only large global economy that can absorb complex supply chains from a slowing, ageing, increasingly authoritarian China.

More from Opinion

Who holds the second, negative view about India? Ignoring racist slurs on social media and racial attacks on Indians in the West (but significantly not in the East), negative views originate from chronic India-sceptics. Ironically, most are Indians themselves. They point to the flight of high net worth investors (HNIs) from India. The facts contradict them. According to the Henley Wealth Report 2025, only 3,500 HNIs left India in 2025, a steep fall from the 5,100 HNIs who left India in 2023.

The second view also points to India’s civic infrastructure — from broken pavements and potholed roads to poor air quality and deeply embedded corruption. The conclusion: India’s growth story is a chimera. This view challenges the statistical veracity of India’s 8.2 per cent growth rate in the July-September 2025 quarter.

How do others see India? McKinsey CEO Bob Sternfels says: “Many have stated that this is India’s decade. I truly believe it is India’s century once we look at a few of the raw components here. India is the future factory for the world. By 2047, India will have 20 per cent of the world’s working population. India has leapfrogged on the digital scale. All these are not only for the Indian economy but for the world.”

The CEO of France’s Dassault, Pascal Daloz, agrees: “India will become the factory of the future with its software-defined economy. Intellectual property will become the new currency in the age of artificial intelligence (AI). India is one of the most innovative nations. Dassault invested more than €100 million to expand its R&D laboratory in Pune and increase capacity by almost 50 per cent.”

What then explains the rising crescendo against India in the West, amplified by a section of Indian journalists, academics and activists? India’s rise is uncomfortable at different geopolitical levels for both the US-led West and China. The West rose to affluence and power only in the past 300 years. Until 1700, per capita income in Western Europe was similar to per capita income in India and China.

The two ancient Asian civilisations had long fascinated Europeans seeking trade. So covetous of India was Britain that it incorporated the East “India” Company in 1600, when neither Britain nor India existed as national entities. Britain was formed only a century later, in 1707, when the independent kingdoms of England and Scotland merged to form the United Kingdom. India in 1600 was still part of the Mughal Empire.

British colonial rule began with the conquest of Bengal in 1757. India wrung independence from a reluctant Britain in 1947. During those 190 colonial years, British per capita income rose from being roughly on a par with India’s per capita income in 1757 to being 70 times larger than India’s per capita income in 1947. British colonialism impoverished India and enriched Britain on a scale unprecedented in history.

The Donald Trump administration’s growing affinity for Pakistan’s terrorist-funding military junta is a continuation of the Nixon-Kissinger tilt towards Islamabad. Washington views India’s political rise only in one context: as a counterweight to China.

India’s strategic autonomy grates on Washington. It has a two-dimensional view of the world: either you are a subservient ally (like Europe, Japan, South Korea and the Middle East’s monarchies) or you are an adversary (like China, North Korea, Russia and Iran).

India does not fit into either category. That unsettles China too. India is rising as a democracy, not a communist dictatorship like China. If India continues to rise, it will discredit China’s ascent based on bartering away its citizens’ freedoms for economic growth.

India thus finds itself in a peculiar position. Its rise unsettles both superpowers. Ironically, their narrative is backed by Indians who are among India’s most savage critics. Some of the criticism is justified. Law enforcement is patchy, civic infrastructure breakdowns are frequent and corruption is widespread. Despite these infirmities, India’s forward momentum is now unstoppable. If the infirmities that slow India are mitigated in the next few years, the number of Western and Japanese companies making a beeline for India will grow.

Being a global punching bag has many precedents: China was reviled for years; Germany for decades; Russia for longer. America itself was widely condemned for war-mongering, regime change and assassinations. They are all today global powers, some diminished (Russia and Germany), others vilified (China). The US, despite Trump’s toxic foreign policy that frequently breaks international law, remains the world’s foremost military and economic power.

India does not have a history that taints it: dictatorship, genocide, invasions. As this century unfolds, the Indian elephant could be the unexpected winner in the geopolitical race with the Chinese dragon and the American eagle.

(The writer is an editor, author and publisher. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views.)