Source: The Times of India via Indian Economic Business News
India is among the top 10 most powerful countries in the world. In a first-of-its-kind study of “national power” a group of eminent strategic experts and scholars have placed India at the eighth position among a group of 27 most powerful countries in the world. The study, conducted by the New Delhi-based Foundation for National Security Research (FSNR), judged “national power” by various indices, including energy security, population, technological capability etc. An interesting index of national power was judged by “foreign affairs capability”, which includes self-reliance in defence, membership of multilateral groupings, role in global rule-making and soft power. Interestingly, though China comes out as the second most powerful nation in the world after the US, Chinese foreign affairs’ capability is comparable to India’s, even though in terms of total power New Delhi comes way below Beijing. Professor Satish Kumar, introducing the study, said, “The Group of Experts evolved a criterion consisting of the following elements for the selection of countries which could be regarded as actually or potentially the most powerful: (i) Population above 50 million; (ii) GDP above US$ 500 billion; and (iii) defence expenditure above US$ 5 billion.” The effort, he said, was to have an Indian assessment of indices of power. The US is by far the world’s most powerful nation, several notches ahead of its nearest competitor, China.