india the next superpower essay

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Is India the World’s Next Great Economic Power?

• Bhaskar Chakravorti
• Gaurav Dalmia

Historically, the country’s expected rise has remained elusive. Here’s a look at what’s different now.

Is India’s economic rise inevitable? There’s good reason to think that this latest round of Indo-optimism might be different than previous iterations, but the country still has major challenges to address to make good on this promise. In terms of drivers, demand — in the form of a consumer boom, context appropriate innovation, and a green transition — and supply — in the form of a demographic dividend, access to finance, and major infrastructure upgrades — are helping to push the country forward. This is facilitated by policy reforms, geopolitical positioning, and a diaspora dividend. Even so, the country faces barriers to success, including unbalanced growth, unrealized demographic potential, and unrealized ease-of-business and innovation potential.

In 2002, India’s government launched a ubiquitous international tourism campaign known as “Incredible India.” Were it to launch a similar campaign today, it might as well be called “Inevitable India.” Not just enthusiasts within the country, but a chorus of global analysts, have declared India as the next great economic power: Goldman Sachs has predicted it will become the world’s second-largest economy by 2075, and the FT’s Martin Wolf suggests that by 2050, its purchasing power will be 30% larger than that of the U.S.

• Bhaskar Chakravorti is the Dean of Global Business at The Fletcher School at Tufts University and founding Executive Director of Fletcher’s Institute for Business in the Global Context . He is the author of The Slow Pace of Fast Change .
• Gaurav Dalmia is the Chairman of Dalmia Group Holdings, an Indian holding company for business and financial assets.

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Reimagining India: Unlocking the Potential of Asia's Next Superpower

India's rising economy and burgeoning middle class have earned it a place alongside China as one of the world's indispensable emerging markets. But what is India’s true potential? And what can be done to unlock it?

In Reimagining India: Unlocking the Potential of Asia's Next Superpower , McKinsey brings together leading thinkers from around the world to explore and debate the challenges and opportunities facing the country.

The book's contributors include CNN's Fareed Zakaria; Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates; Google chairman Eric Schmidt; Mukesh Ambani, the CEO of India's largest private conglomerate; Harvard Business School dean Nitin Nohria; and Nandan Nilekani, cofounder of Infosys and chairman of the Unique Identification Authority of India.

A host of leading executives, entrepreneurs, economists, foreign-policy experts, journalists, historians, and cultural luminaries contributed to the book as well.

As the foreword notes, "While McKinsey consultants have contributed a few essays to this volume, Reimagining India is not the product of a McKinsey study; neither is it meant as a 'white paper' nor coherent set of policy proposals. Rather, our aim was to create a platform for others to engage in an open, free-wheeling debate about India's future."

From the book

Butter chicken at Birla

Thinking outside the bottle

How to win at leapfrog

Toward a uniquely Indian growth model

The rediscovery of India

Will India Surpass China to Become the Next Superpower?

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India is quietly laying claim to economic superpower status

India recently overtook UK as the world’s fifth biggest economy – and it could be third by 2030

T he rise of China has been the biggest story in the global economy in recent decades. But amid concern about its stumbling property market and global fears about inflation, the emergence of its neighbour, India, as a potential new economic superpower may be going under the radar.

You won’t find mention of it in Liz Truss’s blueprint for a “modern brilliant Britain”, but the UK has just been overtaken by India as the world’s fifth biggest economy. The nation of 1.4 billion people is on track to move into third place behind the US and China by 2030, according to economists.

And while the world became familiar with Chinese business titans such as Alibaba founder Jack Ma , the staggering wealth accumulated in recent years by Indian billionaires Gautam Adani and Mukesh Ambani has been less well publicised.

Adani, in particular, has come to represent India’s growing economic strength thanks to the rapid expansion of his Adani Group conglomerate, which covers everything from ports to airports, and solar power to television. Having entered the global Top 10 when he became Asia’s richest person in February , he is now ranked third with a fortune of $143bn (£123bn) and is closing fast on second-placed Amazon boss Jeff Bezos .

India was for many years seen as the poor relation to China, held back by a sclerotic, sprawling state sector and labyrinthine bureaucracy. It still has enormous problems of poverty and poor infrastructure, but it is beginning to emerge as a rival to its large neighbour with the kind of economic growth figures that were once the pride of Beijing.

Gross domestic product (GDP) grew by 13.8% in the second quarter of this year as pandemic controls were lifted and manufacturing and services boomed. Although double-digit growth is unlikely to be repeated in subsequent quarters, India is still on track to expand by 7% this year as it benefits from economic liberalisation in the private sector, a rapidly growing working population, and the realignment of global supply chains away from China.

“India has overtaken the UK to become the world’s fifth-largest economy,” says Shilan Shah, senior India economist at the consultancy Capital Economics , citing recent updated figures from the International Monetary Fund. “Looking ahead, India looks set to continue its march up the global rankings. In all, we think India will overtake Germany and Japan to become the third-largest economy in the world within the next decade.”

A key part of India’s continued rise will be its ability to grow its manufacturing sector and challenge China as the world’s No 1 exporter. India has already benefited from a large, well-educated, often English-speaking middle-class, helping the country to develop world-class IT and pharmaceutical sectors. It also has strong consumer demand, which accounts for about 55% of the economy compared with less than 40% in China.

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Now the trick will be to benefit from its youthful working population to position itself as a manufacturing power to rival China, where an ageing labour force and rising pay levels are reducing its competitive edge. With a geopolitical wedge opening up between China and the west, India also has the opportunity to grow in reshaped international supply chains.

Nguyen Trinh, emerging markets economist at Natixis bank in Hong Kong, says the outlook is promising for India if it can keep investing.

“Indian demand is expected to be strong due to its demographics,” she says, “which is rather favourable with rising working-age population that will push for demand for essentials such as food and energy as well as infrastructure investment. The normalisation of activities post-Covid as well as an increase in government spending, particularly in infrastructure investment, is helping growth. Consumption rose in double digits and investment is accelerating.”

As with many aspects of India’s economic rise, Adani’s story is instructive. Now 60, the billionaire dropped out of Gujarat University, moved to Mumbai, and began trading diamonds before expanding into ports, construction and – latterly, but very profitably – renewable energy.

These widespread industrial interests have dovetailed perfectly with the country’s thirst for growth and seen his Adani Group holdings on the Indian stock market rocket in value. His main listed company, Adani Enterprises, has grown 50-fold in value in the past five years, while Adani Green Energy, which looks after its push into solar power, has doubled in value in the past year. The group is ploughing $70bn into green energy projects by 2030 with the aim of becoming the world’s largest renewable-energy producer – ironic given the controversy over its plans to expand coal mining in Australia.

Another important symmetry comes from Adani’s origins in the western state of Gujarat, which is also the power base of the Indian prime minister, Narendra Modi . Modi’s market reforms, which have included cutting corporation tax from 35% to 25% and opening up India to more foreign investment, have freed up entrepreneurs such as Adani and the man he overtook as the country’s richest person, Mukesh Ambani, head of Reliance Industries, and another Gujarati. Adani is close to Modi who has been known to use the tycoon’s private jet for campaign trips.

Nowhere is the local and global ambition of Adani more clearly illustrated than in Mundra, the Arabian Sea port which he wants to become the world’s largest by the end of the decade. With Modi’s government rolling out a 100tn rupees ($1.35tn, £1.1tn) infrastructure programme – it aims to build 25,000km of new roads in the current financial year alone – Adani is well placed to profit at every stage as the necessary raw materials are shipped in, turned into goods and services, and then sent back out around the world through Mundra.

• South and central Asia
• Adani Group
• Narendra Modi

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What Kind of a Superpower Is India Becoming?

The 2024 Indian general election is already underway, and the popular and controversial Narendra Modi looks to be the favorite. How is India changing under Modi?

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Today’s episode is all about India. You don’t have to believe that demography is pure destiny to appreciate the fact that the future of India is the future of the world. In 2024, today, India is the largest country by population on the planet, having surpassed China two years ago. In 2050, India is still projected to be the largest country in the world. In 2100, when I am 114 years old and this podcast is hosted by my cryo-frozen vat brain, India’s projected to be larger than the next two biggest countries combined: China and Nigeria.

This spring, nearly one billion Indians are eligible to vote in India’s election, and the big winner is almost certain—the highly popular and highly controversial Prime Minister Narendra Modi. What kind of a country is India becoming under Modi? Ravi Agrawal, the editor-in-chief of Foreign Policy magazine, joins us to discuss.

If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at [email protected] .

In the following excerpt, Derek and Ravi Agrawal explore how India has defined what it wants to be and the main differences between Jawaharlal Nehru and Narendra Modi.

Derek Thompson: The latest issue of foreign policy is devoted to the rise of India. At the biggest-picture level, what is it that you think Westerners, and maybe Americans in particular, don’t understand about India?

Ravi Agrawal: Well, I think one of the things in general is that in the West, we tend to think that every other country in the world wants to be more like us: more Western, more democratic, necessarily, more free. And that didn’t work out with China, and I don’t think it’s true of India either. I think India has its own sense of what it wants to be in the future. When it thinks about models of what it wants to be, there’s an element of envy in the way it looks at America and also Britain, but also China and also Singapore and also its own history. So it’s very complicated. Indians are going to chart their own path for what they want their country to be. It is democratic in that sense, and it’s what the people want.

Thompson: Your new essay on India and Prime Minister Narendra Modi, which anchors the new India issue of Foreign Policy magazine, is called “The New Idea of India.” And as long as we’re discussing the new idea of India, maybe we should start here. What is the old idea of modern India according to you?

Agrawal: So, as with any country, all countries have foundational myths. All countries have ways in which they have debated and contested ideas about who they really are, who they really want to be, what their vision is. And India is no different in that sense. It has always had a vibrant debate and discussion about what it really is. And in the 20th century, the early 1900s, when India was beginning to put forward a freedom-fighting movement to overthrow British colonial rule, there were many different ideas for what India could be. The idea that ended up winning out was an idea of a progressive, liberal, secular country. And the country’s founding fathers who put together this idea of what India could be, they had a profound understanding that India was a very divided country. India today, as well, is a collection of states where people speak different languages. There are different cultures and micro-histories, certainly different cuisines. You travel 100 miles, and there’s an entirely different dialect that people might be speaking.

And in many senses, in 1947, the year India became independent, the idea of uniting all of these groups together was an unlikely idea. And so what India’s founding fathers tried to do is that they united the country through an idea that, for this to work, it has to be secular; it has to be liberal; it has to be a vision that is evolving and inclusive and, in many senses, different from, say, Pakistan, which was founded as a homeland for Muslims. So in that Pakistan was exclusionary, India would be inclusionary. And that was the vision and the idea of India that prevailed for several decades of version 1.0 of India’s existence. I picked the phrase “idea of India,” by the way, from a book that was a very famous book that came out in 1997, the 50th year of India’s anniversary. And it was written by the historian Sunil Khilnani. And his point was exactly this, that India was an unlikely democracy. What knitted it together was secularism and democracy, basically.

Thompson: So India’s progressive, liberal, secular identity was embodied in many ways in its first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru. He was anglicized, you write. He was Cambridge educated. He went by Joe in his 20s. And that stands in sharp contrast to the current prime minister, Narendra Modi. Before we talk about Modi’s policies, let’s maybe spend a little bit of time on his biography. How do Modi’s upbringing and his early history compare or stand in contrast with Nehru’s?

Agrawal: Oh, they were so different, and without ascribing any value judgments, good or bad, to any of this, as you point out, Nehru was very anglicized, came from a rich family, upper middle class at the very least. Before Cambridge, he went to Harrow. So he was as anglicized as it gets. And in many ways, in the first few decades of India’s existence as a country, people like Nehru were seen as the ideal of what Indians could be: fluent English speakers, insider outsiders, but also speakers of an Indian language, deeply knowledgeable about the country with a vision for what the country could be. Modi is different primarily in that he doesn’t come from Nehru’s world; he doesn’t come from an elite background. His family was lower caste, lower middle class. His father was a tea seller. Modi was not a fluent English speaker, still isn’t really. He speaks English. But really what he is known for when it comes to his oration, which he’s very good at, is Hindi.

He’s a fantastic Hindi speaker. But when you look at Modi’s formative education, yes, he spent some time at a university, not a very well-known one. He joined the RSS, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, which is best described as a Hindu social movement, also a paramilitary group, that has about 5 million members. And Modi essentially traveled around the country as a Hindu community organizer. He’d sleep in ordinary people’s homes, really got a sense of what the anxieties of the average Indian middle-class family were like, of what their hopes and dreams and aspirations were like. In many senses, if you speak to biographers of Modi, that was the thing he often grew on as the source of his thinking, as his formative education, as it were. So he could not be more different from Nehru. He comes from a totally different world.

This excerpt was edited for clarity. Listen to the rest of the episode here and follow the Plain English feed on Spotify.

Host: Derek Thompson Guest: Ravi Agrawal Producer: Devon Baroldi

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As a rising global power, what is India’s vision for the world?

India has the opportunity to put in place a new framework for its own security and growth, and that of developing countries around the world. Image:  REUTERS

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Seventy-one years ago – on 15 August 1947 – India gained independence. Over the subsequent decades, the country has managed its evolution in an international system largely created and guided by the United States and its partners. While it was not easy for India to pursue independent domestic and foreign policies within this system, the American-led order was preferable to the British Empire from which New Delhi had liberated itself.

Today, this global system is under serious threat. Washington, along with capital cities across the European Union, finds itself caught in a polarizing debate on the social contracts of its society – questions of domestic inequality and identity have left the US and its allies incapable of effectively championing the values of the international order. Simultaneously, the balance of global economic power has once again tipped in favour of Asia.

Within this shifting global landscape, India has the opportunity to put in place a new framework for its own security, growth and development, and that of developing countries around the world. As a rising global power, this must be India’s principle endeavor in the coming decades.

The changing international order

The extraordinary rise of countries in Asia has spawned at least two new dynamics. First, political boundaries – many of them colonial legacies – are steadily becoming more porous through economic cooperation. Markets are converging across the Eurasian landmass as well as facilitating the geo-economic “union” of the Indian and Pacific oceans. This has resulted in new integrative dynamics; as cultures, markets and communities aspire for development and new opportunities. Second, even though territorial considerations acknowledge economic linkages, political differences are still being reasserted – not just to contest the consensus of the past, but to shape a new order altogether.

Asia is coming together economically but is also threatening to grow apart politically; market-driven growth in the region sits uneasily with a diverse array of political systems.

China is, in large part, responsible for both. While offering a political vision that stands in sharp contrast to the “liberal international order”, China has been equally assertive about advancing free trade, raising new development finance, and offering a new model for development and global governance. The prospect of China using its economic clout to advance its own norms is worrying for India.

A consensus to shape a new order

Given the velocity of change underway, the challenge for India on its Independence Day is to shape an inclusive and equitable international order by the centenary of its independence. To achieve this, India must prepare to act according to its capabilities: by mid-century it must build the necessary state capacity, industrial and economic heft and strategic culture that would befit its status as a leading power. The country could present this as a model for much of the developing world to emulate, and anchor faith in the liberalism and internationalism of the world order.

India, then, requires a “consensus” – a new proposition that will not only guide its own trajectory for the better part of the 21st century, but one that appeals to communities around the world.

What then are the tenets of a “New Delhi Consensus”?

First, India must sustain and strengthen its own trajectory of rapid economic growth, and show to the world that it is capable of realizing its development goals within the rubric of liberal democracy. No argument for the New Delhi Consensus can be more powerful and alluring than the economic success of India. By IMF estimates, India already accounts for 15% of global growth. Even though nearly 40% of its population live in various shades of poverty and barely a third are connected to the internet, India is still able to proportionately shoulder the world’s economic burden. Imagine the possibilities for global growth if India can meet, and even exceed, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

States in the developing world yearn for replicable templates of growth, yet they find themselves with a binary choice between Western democracy, which is ill suited for deeply plural and socially stratified societies, and autocratic systems that have little room for individual freedom.

India, on the other hand has “emerged as a bridge between the many extremes of the world”, as former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh once remarked . India’s plural and composite culture, he said, was “living proof of the possibility of a confluence of civilizations”. The global 2030 development agenda, for the most part, may as well be a story of India’s domestic economic transformation and of its defence of diversity and democracy.

Second and flowing from the above, Delhi must claim leadership over the global development agenda. It is worth pointing out that India sits at the intersection of the world’s two most dynamics regions, Eurasia and the Indo-Pacific. The largest bulk of development finance will emerge from, and be invested in, these regions. It is incumbent on India to ensure that this is not a new means to maximize political interference, but a moment to offer unfettered opportunities.

In his recent address to the Ugandan Parliament, Prime Minister Narendra Modi affirmed that “India’s development partnership will be guided by [African] priorities” – a position that contrasts sharply with the West’s evangelical focus on governance reforms and China’s economic policies in the region. India’s recipient-led partnership framework will allow states to secure development pathways that are economically sustainable and politically acceptable. India now needs to articulate its intentions and the principles that will shape international development cooperation in the days ahead.

Third, Delhi must create and protect the space for equitable and inclusive global governance. For too long, leadership in the international system was considered a free pass to monopolize the global commons. India has always bucked this trend, emerging as a leading power that has never tempered its idealism of “having an interest in peace, and a tradition of friendliness to all”, as one official put it. Whether it is on free trade, climate change or international security, India’s non-interventionist and multilateral approach is well suited to support and sustain global governance in a multipolar world: the new reality of this century.

Finally, India must incubate a new social contract between its own state, industry and civil society. At the turn of the century, former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee lamented that India’s democratic growth was held back by three failures: of the government to heed industry voices, of industry to appreciate the objectives of government, and of both in their commitment to the common individual.

Nearly two decades later, the imperative for India to correct these failures is even greater. The spread of information communication technologies and global supply chains implies that businesses and civil society must be made equal stakeholders if India is to develop its own unique consensus. Not only will this add greater legitimacy to India’s proposition, it will also create natural and grassroots champions for the country around the world.

For the first time since the end of the Second World War, a nation state that is wary of hegemonic tendencies and identifies itself with the equitable governance of the global commons is in a position to shape the international order. India is home to one-sixth of the global population and has sustained a unique democratic ethos and a foreign policy that is defined not only by national interest but also by solidarity with the developing world.

As a leading power, India must look beyond raw indexes of economic, political and military might, and craft a consensus that is consistent with its ancient and historic view of the world.

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India: The next superpower?

A year ago, India’s future looked bleak. Anemic economic growth, inflationary fears, and a lack of credible leadership in New Delhi had fostered uncertainty and pessimism. That changed dramatically when Narendra Modi became Prime Minister on the promise of reforming India’s government and jumpstarting its floundering economy.

On Sunday, President Obama begins a three-day visit to India. As he meets with Modi to cement America’s relations with India, all eyes will be on the world’s largest democracy’s potential and what it could mean for investors worldwide. Most signs point to a bright future and to the possibility that India could well become a superpower.

There are challenges, of course. The reforms that Modi has initiated are still in early stages. Political, cultural, and macroeconomic factors could slow down or derail progress; government corruption could be harder to eradicate than imagined, and oversized economic ambitions could crash against the hard reality of poor infrastructure and widespread poverty. At the same time, rising tension with its nuclear neighbor Pakistan and the growing military might of China could require India to spend heavily on defense, create internal strife between Hindus and Muslims, and distract from other priorities.

But despite all this, the promise of a brighter future for India still holds firm. There are three reasons for this:

The first is economic. Modi’s initiatives aimed at revamping India’s restrictive business regulations and creating a real free market seem to be working. Even though GDP growth in the third quarter of 2014 slowed slightly from the summer to 5.3% , it was still much higher than that of the last several years. India’s $1.9 trillion economy is projected to expand by 6.4% this year, according to the International Monetary Fund, and the country has already outpaced Japan as the world’s third largest economy in terms of purchasing price parity, a measure that adjusts for price differences between economies, according to the World Bank.

In addition, falling oil prices have reduced the risk of inflation and will enable the country to cut its costly fuel subsidies. Every a $10-a-barrel decline could increase GDP by 0.1%, lower inflation by 0.5%, and narrow the current account deficit, Nomura economists led by Sonal Varma wrote in an October report. Further bolstering the economy is the billions of dollars in increased foreign investment s , including $33 billion from private and public sources in Japan, aided by the raising of investment caps by the government and a stable interest rate environment.

The second part of Modi’s plan is to improve India’s national infrastructure. This includes a proposed increase in infrastructure spending of $800 billion to reach targeted economic growth of 7% as well as enabling banks to buy infrastructure bonds to spur trading activity in the debt markets. Late last year, Modi also secured a $20 billion infrastructure investment from China. Collectively, these initiatives could enable India to upgrade its overtaxed transport system, bring stable water supply and electricity to more areas, and expand the use of technology throughout the country.

But the most important aspect of India’s infrastructure is its human capital. What makes India’s population so valuable is its large pool of young workers — 65% of India’s population is 35 or under , giving the country a strong competitive edge in the coming decades.

To realize the potential of this human capital, the government has launched several initiatives aimed at improving education, retraining rural workers for skilled jobs in other sectors, providing bank accounts to all Indians to teach personal financial planning, offering free life insurance, encouraging the wider use of computers and the Internet, and generally modernizing the workforce for the big jobs boom coming up in the fast-growing healthcare, information technology, telecom, and retail sectors.

The final factor that could position India as a superpower is its geopolitical advantage. Since his election, Modi has made a concerted effort to strengthen ties with Russia, Japan, and the U.S. For each of them, India is a valuable trading partner with a vast consumer base and labor pool waiting to be tapped. But even more significant is the strategic importance of its alliance with all those nations.

Reeling from Western economic sanctions and low oil prices, Russia needs India’s partnership more than ever to bolster its economic foothold in Asia and counter U.S. influence. Similarly, the U.S. would like to expand bilateral trade with India, which reached $95 billion in 2013, while also using the democratic nation to balance the power of China in the region. By extending the hand of friendship to all of them, Modi is being diplomatic; but he is also keeping his options open to forge partnerships that will maximize the benefit to India, both financially and politically.

India may not reach its desired destination in a straight line or in the timeframe that Modi has set for it, but odds are pretty good that it will become a leading player in the economic and geopolitical spheres fairly soon.

Sanjay Sanghoee is a business commentator. He has worked at investment banks Lazard Freres and Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein, at hedge fund Ramius Capital, and has an MBA from Columbia Business School.

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…..India's story of seven and a half decade

Asia’s next Superpower

• Categories International Relations: Growth & Connectivity
• Published 29th Sep, 2022

Introduction:

• On a visit to India in 2009, the US Secretary of State’s verdict was unequivocal: ‘I consider India not just a regional power, but a global power. ’ Since the turn of the century, India’s economy has surpassed those predictions, expanding fourfold in the course of a decade.
• Over the same time, expectations that India might increasingly define its political interests to match its economic clout have in turn grown. The same is the case with its democratic heritage and potential for strategic partnership.
• Political experts have also considered India as one of the possible emerging superpowers of the world along with China, Brazil, Russia, and the European Union. Currently, only the United States fulfills the criteria to be considered a global superpower. India's rising economy and burgeoning middle class have earned it a place alongside China as one of the world's indispensable emerging markets and offer it offers a position of superpower in Asia. But what is India’s true potential? And what can be done to unlock it? We shall be dealing with India’s performance in various sectors and understand how far we are from becoming a superpower.
• More than sixty years ago, in the summer of 1948, the Indian nation, then newly-born , was struggling for its very survival. It was pierced from the left by the Communists and pinched from the right by Hindu extremists. And there was no dearth of problems. Eight million refugees had to be resettled; provided with land, homes, employment, and a sense of citizenship. Five hundred princely states had to be integrated, one by one, a process that involved much persuasion, and just a little coercion.
• In the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s economic growth was stunted by excessive controls and the economy’s insulation against foreign trade. India owes its current economic miracle to the reforms launched in 1991 under Manmohan Singh, then Finance Minister and now Prime Minister N.Modi. The reforms heralded the advent of India’s successful participation in the globalization process.

What is being a superpower?

• Being a superpower can be defined as the extensive ability to exert influence on an international scale. It is the state of possessing the might, both economic and military that is superior in comparison to other countries.
• Superpower status is achieved by combining means of technological, cultural, military, and economic strength as well as diplomatic and soft power influence.

Why India is a potential contender for being a superpower among its counterparts in Asia:

• India is considered one of the potential superpowers of the world. This potential is attributed to several indicators, the primary ones being its demographic trends and a rapidly expanding economy and military.

FOREIGN RELATIONS:

Non-Aligned Movement and India :

• The Non-Aligned Movement had become an effective means of promoting India’s diplomatic presence and the means of securing economic assistance internationally.
• India’s proud nonalignment during the Cold War had given it a leadership role in the developing world, its 21st-century position places it at the heart of superpower geopolitics.

Role in international politics:

• The Middle East region plays a vital role in India's economy as it supplies nearly two-thirds of India's total oil imports, bilateral trade is also flourishing in recent years, particularly with the UAE and other Arab states of the Persian Gulf. India’s institutionalized ties with Arab League have further strengthened India’s relations with Arab countries
• Middle East quad: Middle East quad is a reflection of the understanding that the China challenge is not just a military one but a far broader matter including political and economic aspects.
• India, the US, Israel, and the UAE is coming and it is a strong manifestation of the changes in West Asian geopolitics and the formation of another Quad-like grouping in the Middle East. India’s involvement in this new grouping reflects a shift in its foreign policy.
• The four-nation meeting suggests India is now ready to move from bilateral relations conducted in separate silos toward an integrated regional policy.

India's Evolving Position In UN:

• United Nations should undoubtedly, have the most significant position in establishing today's world order, the foundation of which was laid in the year 1945. Presently 193 countries are registered as members State in the UN. There are 6 main organs of the UN which include the UNSC, UNGA, and ICJ.
• India is sitting in the 15-nation UNSC for the 2021-22 term as a non-permanent member — the eighth time that the country has had a seat on the powerful horseshoe table. India is a strong voice for the developing world in the UNSC.
• Young Population: India enjoys the advantage of having a young population. It is estimated that, in 2020, an average person will only be 29 years old in India, which is much younger when compared with many developed countries such as the US, and EU.
• A critical mass of English-speaking workers : At present, English-speaking workers are estimated to be beyond 70 million. Such linguistic skills are important to allow Indians to connect with the rest of the world and benefit from the opportunities in the global marketplace.

Changing nexus between Indo-ASEAN countries post covet:

• The new phase of the Indo-ASEAN relationship began with the change in India's views towards the south-east Asian countries, this view of India is reflected in its 1991 foreign policy of Look East, which in 2018 was renewed to Act East Policy. In addition to its policy of Act East India is also concentrating more on other organizations like the Quad-Groups, SAARC nations &, etc, which satisfies more of India's security interests.

ECONOMIC FACTORS:

India’s Economy History:

• When the British left India, many wondered whether the Indian subcontinent would remain as one country or divide into dozens of more-or-fewer sovereign states. India is a nation of nations. Historically, each region had developed under its own political system, being united only because of foreign imperialists. The British managed India through a system of patronage that preserved a certain amount of independence regionally.
• British interests in India were principally economic, so they left the politics to the locals – as best they could. As a result, when India began to contemplate independence, it was far from certain that it would be a single country. Despite the legacy of fragmentation, Gandhi, Nehru, Patel, and many of India’s leaders envisioned a united India surviving the British.

Economic growth of India:

• It is the world's fifth-largest economy by nominal GDP and the third-largest by purchasing power parity (PPP) and it is the fourth most powerful country in Asia, as per the Lowy Institute Asia Power Index 2021. India finishes in 4th place in four other measures: economic capability, military, capability, resilience, and cultural influence.

India and the Asian Scenario:

• India is considered one of the potential superpowers of the world. This potential is attributed to several indicators, the primary ones being its demographic trends and a rapidly expanding economy and military. In 2015, India became the world's fastest-growing economy with a 5% estimated GDP rate (mid-year terms).

Free Trade and Manufacturing Superpower:

• It is clearer that trade can only be free and fair if it is based on the values that democracies largely have in common.
• ‘Make in India’ aims to increase the share of manufacturing in GDP from 16% to 25% by 2020 and create 100 million jobs.

Net Remittances from Indians employed overseas:

• Net Remittances are part of the Current Account in the Balance of Payments statement published by RBI. Net remittances from Indians employed overseas have been constantly increasing year after year.
• According to the World Bank’s Migration and Development Brief, India has become the world’s largest recipient of Remittances, receiving USD 87 billion (a gain of 4.6 % from the previous year) in 2021. The United States is the biggest source, accounting for over 20% of all Remittances.
• The projection for 2022: Remittances are projected to grow 3% in 2022 to USD 89.6 billion , because of a drop in overall migrant stock, as a large proportion of returnees from the Arab countries await their return.

World Bank’s Migration and Development Brief: This is prepared by the Migration and Remittances Unit, Development Economics (DEC)- the premier research and data arm of the World Bank. The brief aims to provide an update on key developments in the area of migration and remittance flows and related policies over the past six months. It also provides medium-term projections of remittance flows to developing countries. The brief is produced twice a year.

LOCATION FACTOR AND DEMOGRAPHICS:

Geographical Location:

• India lies in the South Asian portion of the Indian Ocean – a zone with unprecedented potential for growth in the scale of transoceanic commerce, with many Eurasians and increasingly Afro-Asian sea-trade routes passing through or close to Indian territorial waters.

Favorable demographics:

• Demography isn’t destiny, but having a growing population with lots of working-age people is a great place to start. On this critical dimension, India is in much stronger shape than China.
• The Skill India Mission aims to unify skill-training initiatives across industries and states. By integrating and coordinating skilling efforts and expediting decision-making across sectors to achieve skilling at scale with speed and standards. The Mission offers beneficiaries the following benefits.

MILITARY FACTORS:

• Indian Armed Forces: The Indian Armed Forces, India's main defense organization, consists of two main branches: the core Military of India and the Indian Paramilitary Forces. The Military of India maintains the largest active-duty force in the world as of 2020 while the Indian Paramilitary Forces, over a million strong, is the second largest paramilitary force in the world. Combined, the total armed forces of India are 2,414,700 strong, the world's third largest defense force.
• Integrated Guided Missile Development Program: India started the Integrated Guided Missile Development Program (IGMDP) to be a self-reliant nation in missile development.

PROGRESS IN SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY:

• Chandrayaan 2: It is a highly complex mission, which represents a significant technological leap compared to the previous missions of ISRO. It comprised an Orbiter, Lander, and Rover to explore the unexplored South Pole of the Moon.
• Mission Shakti: It makes India a space superpower, live satellite shot down.
• Demonstration of free-space Quantum Key Distribution (QKD): For the first time in the country, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) has successfully demonstrated free-space Quantum Communication over a distance of 300 m. only a few countries have such capabilities.
• NavIC: NavIC (Navigation with Indian Constellation) is the name of the independent stand-alone navigation satellite system of India. This system was earlier known as IRNSS (Indian Regional Navigation Satellite System).
• Currently, GPS (United States), GLONASS (Russian Federation), Beidou (China), and Galileo (European Union) have such capabilities.
• National Supercomputing Mission: In 2015, the National Supercomputing Mission was launched to enhance the research capacities and capabilities in the country by connecting them to form a Supercomputing grid, with National Knowledge Network (NKN) as the backbone.
• The Indian Institute of Science (IISc) has installed and commissioned Param Pravega, one of the most powerful supercomputers in India, under the National Supercomputing Mission (NSM).
• Its supercomputing capacity of 3.3 petaflops (1 petaflop equals a quadrillion or 1015 operations per second).

India currently has an expanding IT industry which is considered one of the best in the world. India is already on its way to being a technology superpower.

CULTURAL AND SPIRITUAL ASPECTS:

• India has given spiritualism, not communalism to the world: India is a country that has never followed sectarian tendencies. India has never given communalism but spirituality to the world.
• Yoga Day: On June 21, 2022, in India and throughout the world 8th International Day of Yoga was celebrated. Indian diplomatic missions , the Ministry of External Affairs, and the Prime Minister of India himself have ramped up their social media diplomacy on yoga. Yoga is seen as one of the best examples of soft power .

International Yoga Day was declared by the UN General Assembly on 11th December 2014. Yoga is a mental, physical, and spiritual discipline or practice that has its origins in India.

VIBRANT DEMOCRACY:

Democratic superpower:

• India has emerged as a democratic superpower , more than capable of providing leadership that the world often needs and that America, Europe, China, or any other bloc has failed to give.
• India is a democracy that has improved its relations with other democratic nations and significantly improved its ties with the majority of the nations in the developed world.

FIGHTING AGAINST CLIMATE CHANGE:

'Global superpower' in fighting climate change:

• India can lead the world's transformation to clean energy and become a "global superpower" in the war on climate change if it speeds up its shift from fossil fuels to renewable energy.
• "India can be the business hub to achieve the UN Sustainable Development goal of ensuring access to affordable, reliable, sustainable, and modern energy for all by 2030.
• India's decision to take forward the International Solar Alliance in the form of 'One Sun, One World, One Grid'.

LEADERSHIP DURING GLOBAL CRISIS & REGIONAL COOPERATION:

COVID-19 Management:

• India has administered more than two billion Covid vaccination doses , becoming the second country to hit the milestone after China. This not only signifies the planning part to tackle a once-in-a-century kind of situation but also represents India's immense capabilities in helping neighbors in times of adversity.
• Vaccine Diplomacy: Vaccine diplomacy is the branch of global health diplomacy in which a nation uses the development or delivery of vaccines to strengthen ties with other nations. It is in line with India’s neighborhood first initiative.
• India had shipped vaccines to Maldives, Bhutan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Myanmar, and Seychelles under the vaccine diplomacy plan.
• While the affluent western world, notably the US and Europe, are focused almost exclusively on their own problems, India is being appreciated for helping its neighbors and developing countries, who could not afford US and European vaccines. This further strengthens India’s standing to become the next superpower of Asia.
• One Earth, One Health : At the G20 Summit in 2021, Prime Minister Narendra Modi put forward the vision of ‘ One Earth, One Health’ to the world, and said that India is preparing to produce more than five billion Covid-19 vaccine doses for the world next year. This not only showcases the leadership capabilities of India but also highlights the humanitarian facets of Indian polity.
• Vaccine Superpower: The indigenous, inactivated vaccine is developed and manufactured in Bharat Biotech's BSL-3 (Bio-Safety Level 3) high containment facility. The vaccine's success story gives us hope for the future "India is heading towards becoming a vaccine superpower.
• In 2018, India doubled its contribution to Gavi committing USD 8 million for the 4-year period from 2018-2022. At the Global Vaccines Summit on 4th June 2020, PM Modi pledged USD 15 million for Gavi 2021-2025 program. GAVI, the vaccine alliance which co-manages
• Co-WIN, a cloud-based IT platform : is supposed to handle minute details of India’s Covid-19 immunization program, including registering beneficiaries, allocating vaccination centres, sending text messages with the name of their vaccinator to beneficiaries, and live monitoring of vials in cold storage.
• CoWin platform was later made open source , available to any and all countries

Operation Ganga:

• Operation Ganga is a combined civil and military effort to ensure all Indian nationals return home safely. India brought back its nationals from Romania, Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, and Moldova after they had crossed over to these countries from Ukraine via land border transit points. The world has appreciated India's proactiveness in setting aside regional enmities.

India believes in Participatory Alternatives to BRI:

• Indebting Countries: China is using debt rather than an aid to establish a dominant position in the international development finance market. China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is plunging nations into massive debt.
• Economically and strategically the global center of gravity is shifting to Asia. Groups like ASEAN will have to collectively approach China and stop its aggression and debt trap diplomacy.
• Alternative connectivity arrangements : India has a role to offer to its partners in the region to offer alternative connectivity arrangements to its neighbors. As India’s ability to act alone in South Asia and the larger Indian Ocean is limited. It doesn’t shy from asking for help from partners like Japan when necessary to build and upgrade its infrastructure and create an alternative to Chinese-led connectivity corridors and infrastructure projects.

Why China is facing competition from other countries?

• China is facing intense scrutiny for its role in the pandemic , geopolitical competition, trade wars, and economic coercion.
• China’s business practices are exposed to international value chains. The People's Republic of China has arbitrarily detained more than one million Uyghurs, using them as forced labor.

The Uyghurs are a predominantly Muslim minority Turkic ethnic group, whose origins can be traced to Central and East Asia.

• India’s competitors [like Bangladesh, and Vietnam] are trying to attract the businesses shifting out from China.
• These countries are highlighting their regulatory predictability, stable tax policies, and fewer trade obstacles.
• While India remains outside the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, competitors are wooing companies seeking lower trade barriers.
• Asian countries are pushing ahead : Vietnam just inked a trade deal with the European Union that threatens to eat into India’s exports.

STRONGLY FACING CHINA

India and the Quad:

• The group has been organized to resist Chinese aggression. And Australia is the key member in this pursuit. The Quad, while not being given a military dimension yet, will be the most important grouping in the Indo-Pacific. It will have to set an economic program to help smaller countries in the region.

Counterbalancing China in the strategic Indo-Pacific region:

• India’s Act East Policy: It which was launched as an effort to integrate India’s economy with South-East Asian nations. It has been used to make important military and strategic agreements with Vietnam, Japan, the Philippines, South Korea, Indonesia, Singapore, and Thailand helping India to counter China.
• Building Coastal Radar Networks:
• Bangladesh – India has recently signed an agreement with Bangladesh to install 20 Coastal Surveillance Radar Systems along the coastline of Bangladesh.
• The Maldives – India will install 10 Coastal Radar Systems in the Maldives.
• Sri Lanka – 6 Coastal Surveillance Radars (CSR) have been installed in Sri Lanka.
• Mauritius – 8 Coastal Surveillance Radars have been installed in Mauritius.
• Seychelles – 1 Coastal Surveillance Radar (CSR) has been Installed in Seychelles.
• Indian diplomatic investment in the region: Furthermore, India has invested a lot diplomatically in countries like Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, and Mongolia. All these countries surround China in the North .
• Signing pact with France : India and France recently signed a strategic pact opening up their naval bases to each other’s warships across the Indian Ocean. It grants the Indian navy access to important French ports including one in Djibouti, home to China’s single overseas military base.
• Setting up the Information Fusion Centre : Indian Ocean Region (IFC-IOR) that will share real-time maritime information with friendly nations, which will be based out of Gurgaon. All the Coastal Surveillance Radar Systems are connected to provide a comprehensive real-time picture to Indian Defence Establishment regarding the Chinese presence in the region.
• Naval bases and airfields : India finalized an agreement for a new base in Seychelles and negotiated military access to naval facilities at Oman’s port and airfields. With expanded bases on the Andaman and Nicobar Islands at the end of the Malacca Strait, India is raising the stakes in the fight over the waters of Southeast Asia.
• Avoiding China's lithium trap : China controls 97 percent of the world’s lithium supply at the moment. We are simply substituting China for Saudi Arabia since we do not produce our cells. In addition, the government’s 50 Gwh PLI scheme for advanced cell chemistries , is going to help.

Changing views and interests of the ASEAN countries:

• The increasing aggression of China, towards its neighbours', be it India in the Himalayas or the ASEAN countries in the south China sea is now forcing these countries to change their strategy toward China from passive resistance to now active aggression.
• For example, the repeated intrusion of the Chinese into the Vietnamese Exclusive Economic Zone, which lead to the death of a few Vietnamese sailors in the past few months has aggravated the whole situation to the next level and the accusation of the Chinese to have intentionally started this pandemic, doesn't make things any better for the ASEAN-China relation but on contrary to this, it has brought India and ASEAN a lot closer, due to the mutual threat for both which is China.
• These recent incidents have created a drastic change in the views and interests of the ASEAN countries toward China. Earlier, where there we use to see the failure of ASEAN to gather uniform consensus on this matter, now we observe a sought off uniformity among them.

Challenges:

• Regional Disparity: The enrolment ratios vary across Indian states, with the southern and western states faring better than their eastern counterparts. The problem in the education sector has further compounded the lack of proper teaching facilities and best practices, especially in rural areas.
• India’s Deteriorating Environment: The rapid deterioration of India’s air, water, land, and other natural resources is hard to refute.
• Inequalities: The still-entrenched divisions of caste structure are being compounded by the emergence of new inequalities of wealth stemming from India’s economic success.
• Corruption: India’s democracy may have thrived in a manner that few ever expected, but its institutions face profound challenges from embedded nepotism and corruption .
• Disastrous damage to the environment: India’s economic success continues to come with an unsustainable environmental cost. But PM Narendra Modi's announcement at COP-26 to achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2070 goes a long way.
• Huge Diversity : The Indian state has a huge diversity of languages, religions, and cultures. It isn’t built according to the classic European recipe of “one language, one religion, and a common enemy”.
• Jobless growth: India can’t be a superpower if it can’t create jobs. If India wants to play a bigger role in its region and in the world, it will first need to fix the problem of all-time unemployment. If the increased labour force is not adequately skilled, educated, and offered gainful employment, we will face a demographic disaster.
• Informal Economy: The informal nature of India’s economy is another barrier to the country’s ability to reap the benefits of its demographic transition and a hurdle in the path to becoming a superpower.

Conclusion:

• Before it can be considered a superpower, India must overcome many economic, social, and political problems and it also needs to be as influential on the international stage when compared to the United States, European Union, China, the former British Empire, and the former Soviet Union. India’s rise has certainly been impressive and warrants the attention that it has commanded. India has been one of the world’s best-performing economies for a quarter of a century, lifting millions out of poverty and becoming the world’s third-largest economy in PPP terms . India has tripled its defence expenditure over the last decade to become one of the top ten military spenders. And in stark contrast to Asia’s other billion-person emerging power, India has simultaneously cultivated an attractive global image of social and cultural dynamism.
• India will continue to play a constructive international role in, among other things, the financial diplomacy of the G20 , and it certainly has a soft-power story to tell as a model of liberal political and economic development. Perhaps even more significantly, the cultural impact of Indian cuisine, literature, films, music, and sporting events will increasingly be felt globally through and beyond India’s vast diaspora.
• Back in 1948, doubts were also being cast about the Indian experiment with nationhood. Never before had a new nation not based its unity on a single language, religion, or common enemy. As an inclusive, plural, and non-adversarial model of nationalism, the idea of India had no precedent or imitator.
• India was not expected to survive as a democracy nor hold together as a single nation, but it has. These manifest successes, achieved against the odds and against the logic of human history, have compelled worldwide admiration. India has emerged as a democratic superpower capable of providing the leadership that the world needs. India, which is celebrating its 75th year of independence, has to be a global leader during its 100th year and the next 25 years would be the transformational age for India

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Essay on “India Becoming a Superpower” Complete Essay for Class 10, Class 12 and Graduation and other classes.

India Becoming a Superpower

A potential superpower is a state or a political and economic entity that is speculated to be , or to be in the process of becoming, a superpower at some point in the 21 st century. Presently, it is widely considered that only the United States currently fulfills the criteria to be considered a superpower. States most commonly mentioned as being potential superpowers are Brazil, China, the European Union (a supranational entity), India and Russia, based on a variety of factors.

Several media publications and academics have discussed the Republic of   becoming a superpower. Is India really shining? Is it really on the path of becoming a superpower? Optimistic Indians would assert an affirmation but it is time one had a reality check India is surely marching ahead, but are all the Indians marching ahead or is it just a small fraction of the population doing so? India can surely boast of a growth rate of around 8-9 per cent, but one needs to ask if this growth is trickling down to the lower strata of the populace.

Sixty three years ago in 1947 when India got independence , the question then asked was ‘ will India survive’? today, India’s economic profile has changed. At over a trillion dollars, it is a force to reckon with not just in Asia but in the entire world. With its new currency symbol to be internationalized soon, India now flexes its financial muscle.

Soon after independence our nation was in turmoil. Assassination of Mahatma Gandhi, tragic partition rendering millions of people homeless tribal invasion in J&K coupled with problem of consolidation of five hundred princely states, to build a new nation was a mammoth task. After going through different phases of lows and highs, the doubtful query ‘will India survive’ has been replaced by more hopeful query, will India become a superpower?

Today India is recognized as an emerging powerhouse by the world community. Form a nation known to the world as a county of snake charmers to a front line developing nation , image of our country has undergone a dramatic change. The  pace leading to full transformation may be slow but consistency will lead to the desired goal. The key to the extraordinary resilience lies in India’s stable and successful democratic institution. India, a home of several religions and several hundred spoken languages is a garland of multitude of diverse communities woven together in a common thread of democracy. Unlike other European nations whose unity is based on a common languages and largely a common faith. India presents a picture of unity in diversity. With multiple of democracy in India was always in doubt. Despite abstruse dislike and mistrust between the two major communities  of the nation, India has emerged as multicultural democracy.

Withhold economic reforms India’s GDP is on a sustained growth path. India has become third largest economy in Asia to keep its high rate of growth. Despite the growth story, India has yet to cross over many plateaus before it becomes a superpower in league with big nations. I shall discuss here some of the core issues that if not attended to with strong political will and time bound action may rock the boat of country’s economic rejuvenation.

Escalating Population

India is second most populous country in the world, with over 1,210,193,422 people more than a sixth of world’s population. Already containing 17.31 per cent of the world population, India is projected to be populous country by 2025 surpassing China. India occupies 2.4 per cent of the world’s land and supports 17.5 per cent of world’s population. It seems the Govt has stopped all efforts to control the population explosion. Fearing public unrest and possible loss of vote bank after Sanjay   Gandhi the successive Governments abandoned  family planning programmes if at all some programme is being executed it is only as tokenism without political will.

Increasing Unemployment

India is facing massive problem of unemployment. The incidence of unemployment is much higher in urban areas than in rural areas. The incidence of unemployment amongst the educated is higher than the overall unemployment amongst the educated is higher than the overall unemployment. Economic reforms may have given a boost to industrial productivity, but the boom has not crated enough jobs. India’s performance on this front has fallen short of target in the past. India’s labour force is growing at a rate of 2.5 per cent, but employment is growing only at 2.3 per cent. The country is faced with the challenge of not only absorbing new entrants in the job market (estimated at seven million people every year), but also clearing the backlog. Unemployed youth is likely to translate his frustration into criminal and illegal activates.

 Poverty Concerns

Poverty as measured by the new international Multi- dimensional poverty Index(MPI), about 645 million people or 55 per cent of our country’s population is poor as measured by composite indicator made up of ten markers of education, health and standard living achievement levels. MPI attempts to capture more than just income poverty at household level.

It is comprised of ten indicators: years of schooling and child education; child mortality and nutrition(health); and electricity, flooring, drinking water, sanitation, cooking fuel and other assets. This may be a gimmick of the Western Countries to project themselves as superior to other developing countries but certainly the indicator denote quality of life of the citizen of a nation. India needs faster pace of growth to achieve these standards for its teaming millions who are yet untouched by the Country’s economic renaissance. India’s number of millionaires grew by 51 per cent to 126700 in 2009 according to Merill Lynch and    consultants, boosted by buoyant economy which grew 8.6 per cent in the last fiscal quarter. But increasing wealth has not trickled down to the common man. Newly built multi storied buildings  symbol India’s growing economic power stand in contrast close to the slums presenting a pathetic picture of inequality. Poverty eradication still seems far away.

Literacy Issue

Literacy in India grew to 74.04 per cent in 2011 from 12 per cent at end of British Rule in 1947. Although it is more than five fold improvement, the level is well below the world average literacy rate of 84 per cent. India currently has the largest illiterate population of any nation on earth. India’s literacy rate is increasing only sluggishly. Besides low literacy rate there is a wide gender  disparity in the literacy rate.

Health Concerns

Great improvement has taken place in public health since independence, but the general health picture remains far from satisfactory. The government is   paying increasing attention to integrated health, maternity and child care in rural areas, but the efforts on health front needs to be intensified with spread of health awareness through education through education and mass movement.

 Extensive corruption

The license raj in India from 1950s to 1980 sowed the seeds of corruption in the socio- economic structure of our country. Nexus between politician and business community and criminals is known to all. In recent times criminalization of Indian politics has assumed alarming proportions. Some parliamentarians face criminal charges, including human trafficking, embezzlement, rape and even murder. Candidates with criminal records win election on the strength of their ‘Bahubali’ status. Paying to get a job done is a common phenomenon experienced by majority of our countrymen. In recent time food adulteration has stolen limelight in the news Channels, even fruits and vegetables are not left  to grow normally, toxic injections are administered for their quick growth.

Tons the tons of synthetic milk and milk products are confiscated every other day by the HEALTH Department officials but the perpetrators of these crimes who play with the health of unsuspecting masses are set free without any exemplary punishment. There is a parallel flourishing market of spurious in the country. Spurious medicines, beverages , cosmetics, good items all are sold without fear as greasing palm to get away is very easy. Scarcity may be the mother of corruption in general , but what do you say about politicians who have been found sleeping with currency notes under the mattresses and those who wear currency notes garlands made up of taxpayers’ money and those who accept bribe for raising questions in the parliament and those who openly accept    bribe in the name of party Fund. ‘yatha Raja, tatha Praja’

Terrorism and Insurgency

India is faced with terrorism and insurgency both form across the border and from within. Partition of India and Pakistan was a parting gift from the British Empire before leaving the country forever. First it was large scale invasion by the ‘Kabailis’ in J&K, then widespread armed insurgency in Kashmir after disputed state election in 1987. Terrorism and insurgency has left more than 53000 people dead till July 2009. Several militant groups backed by ISI of Pakistan are operating in Kashmir. Many a times the militants have targeted people in other cities and towns of the country in suicide attacks. Mumbai attack was an example of their immaculate planning and preparedness to terrorize the entire nation.

There has been proliferation of militant groups in recent times, with as many as 33 identified in J&K . currently the country is facing most significant challenge form Islamist fundamentalist groups. If India is facing terrorist attacks form the militants trained from across the border, threat from across the border, threat from the Naxalite groups within the country  is no less. Maoists are killing people in several districts of the country.

Half hearted approach  to tackle their insurgency and lack of political consensus on this issue has encouraged them to attack paramilitary forces and common people at will. Unfortunately these Naxalite groups have tacit support of some politicians. With more and more successful attacks, the Maoists’ menace has already grown big.

Competitor China

China which is India’s competitor in becoming superpower is empowering its youth by opening up high number of universities, imparting education and teaching English. India, on the other  hand, is still fighting implementation of quotas for students and faculty. Meanwhile, students with potential have to resort to continuing education in private universities which often fail to meet the required standards.

Gender Bias

Gender inequalities, female feticide and the treatment meted out to Women in rural areas, child marriages, continuing practice of dowry and sati take away the leftover sheen from the Shining India. The major divide between the rich and the poor, lack of proper rural infrastructure even basic amenities like potable water, toilets, two meals a day, suggest that India has a long route to tread   in becoming a superpower.

Upsurge of Regionalism

A strong wave of regionalism is threatening  the social fabric Nav Nirman Sena (MNS),. A Maharashtra based political party is operating on the motto of ‘Bhumiputra’ (son of the soil). Division of state population on the basis of birth and language is most unfortunate trend fraught with danger of disintegration and civil strife. If virus of this trend is transmitted to other states it will cause irreparable damage to ‘unity in diversity’ 

Social Security

According to a recent survey around 400 million persons in India are in the working age group, less than 7 per cent are in the organized sector and 93 per cent of the worker s are unorganized. While organized sector workers have sufficient and reliable access to social security in the form of protection under the law against loss/ stoppage of income on account of illness, disability, old age, death, maternity, the unorganized sector which has been contributing more in GDP in the last five decades is deprived of sufficient and reliable access to promotional and protective social  security. As the average number of the senior citizens increases the concerns about social security will become more pronounced.

Monsoon and Agriculture

Agriculture and allied sectors like forestry and village industry account  16 per cent of GDP and despite a steady decline of its share in GDP, is still the largest economic sector which plays a significant role in the overall socio-economic development of the country. Slow agriculture growth is a major area of concern is tow- third of country’s population depends on rural employment for living. Monsoon plays a crucial role in agriculture production. Due to lack of adequate irrigation system, increased dependence on monsoon has tremendous impact on  Indian agriculture; failure of monsoon, as we have seen in the past, has the capacity to destabilize the entire economy of the country.

Any country on a growth trajectory has to face several hurdles created by external and internal factors during transition period. It largely depends on the collective will power of the citizens who face these changing’s and overcome all obstacles that may come in the way of their country becoming a superpower. However, going by the slogan, ‘ man mai hai vishawas pura hai vishwas hum hongay kamyab aik din’ ,   we shall overcome someday.

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mmm India is not going to be able to get rid of those problems……good essay

Also need to declare cultural socialised pattern with overall movement to 3-tier system for security and selfreliancy

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Stormy Daniels Takes the Stand

The porn star testified for eight hours at donald trump’s hush-money trial. this is how it went..

This transcript was created using speech recognition software. While it has been reviewed by human transcribers, it may contain errors. Please review the episode audio before quoting from this transcript and email [email protected] with any questions.

It’s 6:41 AM. I’m feeling a little stressed because I’m running late. It’s the fourth week of Donald J. Trump’s criminal trial. It’s a white collar trial. Most of the witnesses we’ve heard from have been, I think, typical white collar witnesses in terms of their professions.

We’ve got a former publisher, a lawyer, accountants. The witness today, a little less typical, Stormy Daniels, porn star in a New York criminal courtroom in front of a jury more accustomed to the types of witnesses they’ve already seen. There’s a lot that could go wrong.

From “The New York Times,” I’m Michael Barbaro. This is “The Daily.”

Today, what happened when Stormy Daniels took the stand for eight hours in the first criminal trial of Donald J. Trump. As before, my colleague Jonah Bromwich was inside the courtroom.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

It’s Friday, May 10th.

So it’s now day 14 of this trial. And I think it’s worth having you briefly, and in broad strokes, catch listeners up on the biggest developments that have occurred since you were last on, which was the day that opening arguments were made by both the defense and the prosecution. So just give us that brief recap.

Sure. It’s all been the prosecution’s case so far. And prosecutors have a saying, which is that the evidence is coming in great. And I think for this prosecution, which is trying to show that Trump falsified business records to cover up a sex scandal, to ease his way into the White House in 2016, the evidence has been coming in pretty well. It’s come in well through David Pecker, former publisher of The National Enquirer, who testified that he entered into a secret plot with Trump and Michael Cohen, his fixer at the time, to suppress negative stories about Trump, the candidate.

It came in pretty well through Keith Davidson, who was a lawyer to Stormy Daniels in 2016 and negotiated the hush money payment. And we’ve seen all these little bits and pieces of evidence that tell the story that prosecutors want to tell. And the case makes sense so far. We can’t tell what the jury is thinking, as we always say.

But we can tell that there’s a narrative that’s coherent and that matches up with the prosecution’s opening statement. Then we come to Tuesday. And that day really marks the first time that the prosecution’s strategy seems a little bit risky because that’s the day that Stormy Daniels gets called to the witness stand.

OK, well, just explain why the prosecution putting Stormy Daniels on the stand would be so risky. And I guess it makes sense to answer that in the context of why the prosecution is calling her as a witness at all.

Well, you can see why it makes sense to have her. The hush money payment was to her. The cover-up of the hush money payment, in some ways, concerns her. And so she’s this character who’s very much at the center of this story. But according to prosecutors, she’s not at the center of the crime. The prosecution is telling a story, and they hope a compelling one. And arguably, that story starts with Stormy Daniels. It starts in 2006, when Stormy Daniels says that she and Trump had sex, which is something that Trump has always denied.

So if prosecutors were to not call Stormy Daniels to the stand, you would have this big hole in the case. It would be like, effect, effect, effect. But where is the cause? Where is the person who set off this chain reaction? But Stormy Daniels is a porn star. She’s there to testify about sex. Sex and pornography are things that the jurors were not asked about during jury selection. And those are subjects that bring up all kinds of different complex reactions in people.

And so, when the prosecutors bring Stormy Daniels to the courtroom, it’s very difficult to know how the jurors will take it, particularly given that she’s about to describe a sexual episode that she says she had with the former president. Will the jurors think that makes sense, as they sit here and try to decide a falsifying business records case, or will they ask themselves, why are we hearing this?

So the reason why this is the first time that the prosecution’s strategy is, for journalists like you, a little bit confusing, is because it’s the first time that the prosecution seems to be taking a genuine risk in what they’re putting before these jurors. Everything else has been kind of cut and dry and a little bit more mechanical. This is just a wild card.

This is like live ammunition, to some extent. Everything else is settled and controlled. And they know what’s going to happen. With Stormy Daniels, that’s not the case.

OK, so walk us through the testimony. When the prosecution brings her to the stand, what actually happens?

It starts, as every witness does, with what’s called direct examination, which is a fancy word for saying prosecutors question Stormy Daniels. And they have her tell her story. First, they have her tell the jury about her education and where she grew up and her professional experience. And because of Stormy Daniels’s biography, that quickly goes into stripping, and then goes into making adult films.

And I thought the prosecutor who questioned her, Susan Hoffinger, had this nice touch in talking about that, because not only did she ask Daniels about acting in adult films. But she asked her about writing and directing them, too, emphasizing the more professional aspects of that work and giving a little more credit to the witness, as if to say, well, you may think this or you may think that. But this is a person with dignity who took what she did seriously. Got it.

What’s your first impression of Daniels as a witness?

It’s very clear that she’s nervous. She’s speaking fast. She’s laughing to herself and making small jokes. But the tension in the room is so serious from the beginning, from the moment she enters, that those jokes aren’t landing. So it just feels, like, really heavy and still and almost oppressive in there. So Daniels talking quickly, seeming nervous, giving more answers than are being asked of her by the prosecution, even before we get to the sexual encounter that she’s about to describe, all of that presents a really discomfiting impression, I would say.

And how does this move towards the encounter that Daniels ultimately has?

It starts at a golf tournament in 2006, in Lake Tahoe, Nevada. Daniels meets Trump there. There are other celebrities there, too. They chatted very briefly. And then she received a dinner invitation from him. She thought it over, she says. And she goes to have dinner with Trump, not at a restaurant, by the way. But she’s invited to join him in the hotel suite.

So she gets to the hotel suite. And his bodyguard is there. And the hotel door is cracked open. And the bodyguard greets her and says she looks nice, this and that. And she goes in. And there’s Donald Trump, just as expected. But what’s not expected, she says, is that he’s not wearing what you would wear to a dinner with a stranger, but instead, she says, silk or satin pajamas. She asked him to change, she says. And he obliges.

He goes, and he puts on a dress shirt and dress pants. And they sit down at the hotel suite’s dining room table. And they have a kind of bizarre dinner. Trump is asking her very personal questions about pornography and safe sex. And she testifies that she teased him about vain and pompous he is. And then at some point, she goes to the bathroom. And she sees that he has got his toiletries in there, his Old Spice, his gold tweezers.

Very specific details.

Yeah, we’re getting a ton of detail in this scene. And the reason we’re getting those is because prosecutors are trying to elicit those details to establish that this is a credible person, that this thing did happen, despite what Donald Trump and his lawyers say. And the reason you can know it happened, prosecutors seem to be saying, is because, look at all these details she can still summon up.

She comes out of the bathroom. And she says that Donald Trump is on the hotel bed. And what stands out to me there is what she describes as a very intense physical reaction. She says that she blacked out. And she quickly clarifies, she doesn’t mean from drugs or alcohol. She means that, she says, that the intensity of this experience was such that, suddenly, she can’t remember every detail. The prosecution asks a question that cuts directly to the sex. Essentially, did you start having sex with him? And Daniels says that she did. And she continues to provide more details than even, I think, the prosecution wanted.

And I think we don’t want to go chapter and verse through this claimed sexual encounter. But I wonder what details stand out and which details feel important, given the prosecution’s strategy here.

All the details stand out because it’s a story about having had sex with a former president. And the more salacious and more private the details feel, the more you’re going to remember them. So we’ll remember that Stormy Daniels said what position they had sex in. We’ll remember that she said he didn’t use a condom. Whether that’s important to the prosecution’s case, now, that’s a much harder question to answer, as we’ve been saying.

But what I can tell you is, as she’s describing having had sex with Donald Trump, and Donald Trump is sitting right there, and Eric Trump, his son, is sitting behind him, seeming to turn a different color as he hears this embarrassment of his father being described to a courtroom full of reporters at this trial, it’s hard to even describe the energy in that room. It was like nothing I had ever experienced. And it was just Daniels’s testimony and, seemingly, the former President’s emotions. And you almost felt like you were trapped in there with both of them as this description was happening.

Well, I think it’s important to try to understand why the prosecution is getting these details, these salacious, carnal, pick your word, graphic details about sex with Donald Trump. What is the value, if other details are clearly making the point that she’s recollecting something?

Well, I think, at this point, we can only speculate. But one thing we can say is, this was uncomfortable. This felt bad. And remember, prosecutor’s story is not about the sex. It’s about trying to hide the sex. So if you’re trying to show a jury why it might be worthwhile to hide a story, it might be worth —

Providing lots of salacious details that a person would want to hide.

— exposing them to how bad that story feels and reminding them that if they had been voters and they had heard that story, and, in fact, they asked Daniels this very question, if you hadn’t accepted hush money, if you hadn’t signed that NDA, is this the story you would have told? And she said, yes. And so where I think they’re going with this, but we can’t really be sure yet, is that they’re going to tell the jurors, hey, that story, you can see why he wanted to cover that up, can’t you?

You mentioned the hush money payments. What testimony does Daniels offer about that? And how does it advance the prosecution’s case of business fraud related to the hush money payments?

So little evidence that it’s almost laughable. She says that she received the hush money. But we actually already heard another witness, her lawyer at the time, Keith Davidson, testify that he had received the hush money payment on her behalf. And she testified about feeling as if she had to sell this story because the election was fast approaching, almost as if her leverage was slipping away because she knew this would be bad for Trump.

That feels important. But just help me understand why it’s important.

Well, what the prosecution has been arguing is that Trump covered up this hush money payment in order to conceal a different crime. And that crime, they say, was to promote his election to the presidency by illegal means.

Right, we’ve talked about this in the past.

So when Daniels ties her side of the payment into the election, it just reminds the jurors maybe, oh, right, this is what they’re arguing.

So how does the prosecution end this very dramatic, and from everything you’re saying, very tense questioning of Stormy Daniels about this encounter?

Well, before they can even end, the defense lawyers go and they consult among themselves. And then, with the jury out of the room, one of them stands up. And he says that the defense is moving for a mistrial.

On what terms?

He says that the testimony offered by Daniels that morning is so prejudicial, so damning to Trump in the eyes of the jury, that the trial can no longer be fair. Like, how could these jurors have heard these details and still be fair when they render their verdict? And he says a memorable expression. He says, you can’t un-ring that bell, meaning they heard it. They can’t un-hear it. It’s over. Throw out this trial. It should be done.

Wow. And what is the response from the judge?

So the judge, Juan Merchan, he hears them out. And he really hears them out. But at the end of their arguments, he says, I do think she went a little too far. He says that. He said, there were things that were better left unsaid.

By Stormy Daniels?

By Stormy Daniels. And he acknowledges that she is a difficult witness. But, he says, the remedy for that is not a mistrial, is not stopping the whole thing right now. The remedy for that is cross-examination. If the defense feels that there are issues with her story, issues with her credibility, they can ask her whatever they want. They can try to win the jury back over. If they think this jury has been poisoned by this witness, well, this is their time to provide the antidote. The antidote is cross-examination. And soon enough, cross-examination starts. And it is exactly as intense and combative as we expected.

We’ll be right back.

So, Jonah, how would you characterize the defense’s overall strategy in this intense cross-examination of Stormy Daniels?

People know the word impeach from presidential impeachments. But it has a meaning in law, too. You impeach a witness, and, specifically, their credibility. And that’s what the defense is going for here. They are going to try to make Stormy Daniels look like a liar, a fraud, an extortionist, a money-grubbing opportunist who wanted to take advantage of Trump and sought to do so by any means necessary.

And what did that impeachment strategy look like in the courtroom?

The defense lawyer who questions Stormy Daniels is a woman named Susan Necheles. She’s defended Trump before. And she’s a bit of a cross-examination specialist. We even saw her during jury selection bring up these past details to confront jurors who had said nasty things about Trump on social media with. And she wants to do the same thing with Daniels. She wants to bring up old interviews and old tweets and things that Daniels has said in the past that don’t match what Daniels is saying from the stand.

What’s a specific example? And do they land?

Some of them land. And some of them don’t. One specific example is that Necheles confronts Daniels with this old tweet, where Daniels says that she’s going to dance down the street if Trump goes to jail. And what she’s trying to show there is that Daniels is out for revenge, that she hates Trump, and that she wants to see him go to jail. And that’s why she’s testifying against him.

And Daniels is very interesting during the cross-examination. It’s almost as if she’s a different person. She kind of squares her shoulders. And she sits up a little straighter. And she leans forward. Daniels is ready to fight. But it doesn’t quite land. The tweet actually says, I’ll dance down the street when he’s selected to go to jail.

And Daniels goes off on this digression about how she knows that people don’t get selected to go to jail. That’s not how it works. But she can’t really unseat this argument, that she’s a political enemy of Donald Trump. So that one kind of sticks, I would say. But there are other moves that Necheles tries to pull that don’t stick.

So unlike the prosecution, which typically used words like adult, adult film, Necheles seems to be taking every chance she can get to say porn, or pornography, or porn star, to make it sound base or dirty. And so when she starts to ask Daniels about actually being in pornography, writing, acting, and directing sex films, she tries to land a punch line, Necheles does. She says, so you have a lot of experience making phony stories about sex appear to be real, right?

As if to say, perhaps this story you have told about entering Trump’s suite in Lake Tahoe and having sex with him was made up.

Just another one of your fictional stories about sex. But Daniels comes back and says, the sex in the films, it’s very much real, just like what happened to me in that room. And so, when you have this kind of combat of a lawyer cross-examining very aggressively and the witness fighting back, you can feel the energy in the room shift as one lands a blow or the other does. But here, Daniels lands one back. And the other issue that I think Susan Necheles runs into is, she tries to draw out disparities from interviews that Daniels gave, particularly to N-TOUCH, very early on once the story was out.

It’s kind of like a tabloid magazine?

But some of the disparities don’t seem to be landing quite like Necheles would want. So she tries to do this complicated thing about where the bodyguard was in the room when Daniels walked into the room, as described in an interview in a magazine. But in that magazine interview, as it turns out, Daniels mentioned that Trump was wearing pajamas. And so, if I’m a juror, I don’t care where the bodyguard is. I’m thinking about, oh, yeah, I remember that Stormy Daniels said now in 2024 that Trump was wearing pajamas.

I’m curious if, as somebody in the room, you felt that the defense was effective in undermining Stormy Daniels’s credibility? Because what I took from the earlier part of our conversation was that Stormy Daniels is in this courtroom on behalf of the prosecution to tell a story that’s uncomfortable and has the kind of details that Donald Trump would be motivated to try to hide. And therefore, this defense strategy is to say, those details about what Trump might want to hide, you can’t trust them. So does this back and forth effectively hurt Stormy Daniels’s credibility, in your estimation?

I don’t think that Stormy Daniels came off as perfectly credible about everything she testified about. There are incidents that were unclear or confusing. There were things she talked about that I found hard to believe, when she, for instance, denied that she had attacked Trump in a tweet or talked about her motivations. But about what prosecutors need, that central story, the story of having had sex with him, we can’t know whether it happened.

But there weren’t that many disparities in these accounts over the years. In terms of things that would make me doubt the story that Daniels was telling, details that don’t add up, those weren’t present. And you don’t have to take my word for that, nor should you. But the judge is in the room. And he says something very, very similar.

What does he say? And why does he say it?

Well, he does it when the defense, again, at the end of the day on Thursday, calls for a mistrial.

With a similar argument as before?

Not only with a similar argument as before, but, like, almost the exact same argument. And I would say that I was astonished to see them do this. But I wasn’t because I’ve covered other trials where Trump is the client. And in those trials, the lawyers, again and again, called for a mistrial.

And what does Judge Marchan say in response to this second effort to seek a mistrial?

Let me say, to this one, he seems a little less patient. He says that after the first mistrial ruling, two days before, he went into his chambers. And he read every decision he had made about the case. He took this moment to reflect on the first decision. And he found that he had, in his own estimation, which is all he has, been fair and not allowed evidence that was prejudicial to Trump into this trial. It could continue. And so he said that again. And then he really almost turned on the defense. And he said that the things that the defense was objecting to were things that the defense had made happen.

He says that in their opening statement, the defense could have taken issue with many elements of the case, about whether there were falsified business records, about any of the other things that prosecutors are saying happened. But instead, he says, they focused their energy on denying that Trump ever had sex with Daniels.

And so that was essentially an invitation to the prosecution to call Stormy Daniels as a witness and have her say from the stand, yes, I had this sexual encounter. The upshot of it is that the judge not only takes the defense to task. But he also just says that he finds Stormy Daniels’s narrative credible. He doesn’t see it as having changed so much from year to year.

Interesting. So in thinking back to our original question here, Jonah, about the idea that putting Stormy Daniels on the stand was risky, I wonder if, by the end of this entire journey, you’re reevaluating that idea because it doesn’t sound like it ended up being super risky. It sounded like it ended up working reasonably well for the prosecution.

Well, let me just assert that it doesn’t really matter what I think. The jury is going to decide this. There’s 12 people. And we can’t know what they’re thinking. But my impression was that, while she was being questioned by the prosecution for the prosecution’s case, Stormy Daniels was a real liability. She was a difficult witness for them.

And the judge said as much. But when the defense cross-examined her, Stormy Daniels became a better witness, in part because their struggles to discredit her may have actually ended up making her story look more credible and stronger. And the reason that matters is because, remember, we said that prosecutors are trying to fill this hole in their case. Well, now, they have. The jury has met Stormy Daniels. They’ve heard her account. They’ve made of it what they will. And now, the sequence of events that prosecutors are trying to line up as they seek prison time for the former President really makes a lot of sense.

It starts with what Stormy Daniels says with sex in a hotel suite in 2006. It picks up years later, as Donald Trump is trying to win an election and, prosecutors say, suppressing negative stories, including Stormy Daniels’s very negative story. And the story that prosecutors are telling ends with Donald Trump orchestrating the falsification of business records to keep that story concealed.

Well, Jonah, thank you very much. We appreciate it.

Of course, thanks for having me.

The prosecution’s next major witness will be Michael Cohen, the former Trump fixer who arranged for the hush money payment to Stormy Daniels. Cohen is expected to take the stand on Monday.

Here’s what else you need to know today. On Thursday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu issued a defiant response to warnings from the United States that it would stop supplying weapons to Israel if Israel invades the Southern Gaza City of Rafah. So far, Israel has carried out a limited incursion into the city where a million civilians are sheltering, but has threatened a full invasion. In a statement, Netanyahu said, quote, “if we need to stand alone, we will stand alone.”

Meanwhile, high level ceasefire negotiations between Israel and Hamas have been put on hold in part because of anger over Israel’s incursion into Rafah.

A reminder, tomorrow, we’ll be sharing the latest episode of our colleague’s new show, “The Interview” This week on “The Interview,” Lulu Garcia-Navarro talks with radio host Charlamagne Tha God about his frustrations with how Americans talk about politics.

If me as a Black man, if I criticize Democrats, then I’m supporting MAGA. But if I criticize, you know, Donald Trump and Republicans, then I’m a Democratic shill. Why can’t I just be a person who deals in nuance?

Today’s episode was produced by Olivia Natt and Michael Simon Johnson. It was edited by Lexie Diao, with help from Paige Cowett, contains original music by Will Reid and Marion Lozano, and was engineered by Alyssa Moxley. Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsverk of Wonderly.

That’s it for “The Daily.” I’m Michael Barbaro. See you on Monday.

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• May 3, 2024   •   25:33 The Protesters and the President
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Hosted by Michael Barbaro

Featuring Jonah E. Bromwich

Produced by Olivia Natt and Michael Simon Johnson

Edited by Lexie Diao

With Paige Cowett

Original music by Will Reid and Marion Lozano

Engineered by Alyssa Moxley

Listen and follow The Daily Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music | YouTube

This episode contains descriptions of an alleged sexual liaison.

What happened when Stormy Daniels took the stand for eight hours in the first criminal trial of former President Donald J. Trump?

Jonah Bromwich, one of the lead reporters covering the trial for The Times, was in the room.

On today’s episode

Jonah E. Bromwich , who covers criminal justice in New York for The New York Times.

Background reading

In a second day of cross-examination, Stormy Daniels resisted the implication she had tried to shake down Donald J. Trump by selling her story of a sexual liaison.

Here are six takeaways from Ms. Daniels’s earlier testimony.

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The Daily is made by Rachel Quester, Lynsea Garrison, Clare Toeniskoetter, Paige Cowett, Michael Simon Johnson, Brad Fisher, Chris Wood, Jessica Cheung, Stella Tan, Alexandra Leigh Young, Lisa Chow, Eric Krupke, Marc Georges, Luke Vander Ploeg, M.J. Davis Lin, Dan Powell, Sydney Harper, Mike Benoist, Liz O. Baylen, Asthaa Chaturvedi, Rachelle Bonja, Diana Nguyen, Marion Lozano, Corey Schreppel, Rob Szypko, Elisheba Ittoop, Mooj Zadie, Patricia Willens, Rowan Niemisto, Jody Becker, Rikki Novetsky, John Ketchum, Nina Feldman, Will Reid, Carlos Prieto, Ben Calhoun, Susan Lee, Lexie Diao, Mary Wilson, Alex Stern, Dan Farrell, Sophia Lanman, Shannon Lin, Diane Wong, Devon Taylor, Alyssa Moxley, Summer Thomad, Olivia Natt, Daniel Ramirez and Brendan Klinkenberg.

Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsverk of Wonderly. Special thanks to Sam Dolnick, Paula Szuchman, Lisa Tobin, Larissa Anderson, Julia Simon, Sofia Milan, Mahima Chablani, Elizabeth Davis-Moorer, Jeffrey Miranda, Renan Borelli, Maddy Masiello, Isabella Anderson and Nina Lassam.

Jonah E. Bromwich covers criminal justice in New York, with a focus on the Manhattan district attorney’s office and state criminal courts in Manhattan. More about Jonah E. Bromwich

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