• DOI:10.1080/0163660X.2017.1328930
• Corpus ID: 157335443

Beyond India’s Quest for a Neoliberal Order

@article{Rej2017BeyondIQ,
  title={Beyond India’s Quest for a Neoliberal Order},
  author={Abhijnan Rej},
  journal={The Washington Quarterly},
  year={2017},
  volume={40},
  pages={145 - 161}
}

• A. Rej
• Published 3 April 2017
• Political Science
• The Washington Quarterly

In many ways, 2016 was a year of reckoning for India’s national security and foreign policy grand strategy. On the domestic front, the year marked the completion of 25 years of India’s economic liberalization project. It also marked the halfway point for Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s term in office, whose government was elected to power with a dramatic popular mandate. Modi had been elected principally on his promise to reform the Indian economy and to remove the final institutional hurdles that have stood in the way of a complete transition to a market economy. Almost three years into his first term, Modi has continued to struggle to complete the economic reforms mission. The year also saw a spate of high-profile attacks on India’s military installations in Punjab as well as Kashmir. These attacks, in turn, led many to question the efficacy of Modi’s Pakistan policy, and the value of restraint when it comes to tackling the problem of Pakistanbased terrorism head on. There was much disquiet on the international front as well, both on India’s east as well as its west. India’s bid to membership in the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) failed last summer, largely due to vocal opposition from the Chinese. Membership in the NSG would have affirmed India’s nuclear exceptionalism in that it would have been the first non-NPT signatory and nuclear-weapons state to be admitted to that cartel. Jarring still for New Delhi was the Chinese blocking of a Pakistan-based terrorist from being designated as such by the UN Security Council. Many in India read this Chinese position as evidence of further collusion between China and Pakistan.