Analysing India’s Soft Power Functioning in the Twenty-first Century: Possibilities and Challenges

Shrey Khanna and P. Moorthy

India Quarterly: A Journal of International Affairs, 2017, vol. 73, issue 3, 292-311

Abstract: The first decade of the twenty-first century saw the chants of the rise of an Indian superpower. These claims of the twenty-first century as India’s century were not only based on the massive economic growth that the country saw in the post-1991 liberalisation period, and the concomitant boost in military infrastructure, but also by virtue of its having the biggest functional democracy, an influential multi-million plus diaspora, the sway of Bollywood in the region and abroad and the spectacular religious-linguistic diversity of the country. From conducting mega disaster-relief operations during the 2004 tsunami to effectuating the world’s largest civil evacuation during Operation Rahat, India has ceaselessly augmented its soft power potential to project its national power in the region. This article is an attempt to analyse the possibilities and challenges that India faces in the effective functioning of its soft power in the region. It also remarks as to how India’s soft power limitations can be quashed by integrating a smart power approach in its foreign policy by strengthening existent digital and public diplomacy infrastructure.

Keywords: Soft power; India’s soft power; smart power; India as smart power; India’s foreign policy; India’s rise; India’s century; Narendra Modi (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0974928417716224 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:indqtr:v:73:y:2017:i:3:p:292-311

DOI: 10.1177/0974928417716224

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in India Quarterly: A Journal of International Affairs
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().