By Dr JP Singh
Political life in a democracy is noisy. Accusations escalate, elections are framed as civilisational crossroads, and ideological contrasts are amplified.
Yet history, observed with distance, often reveals something steadier beneath the turbulence. Beneath visible conflict, deeper continuities endure—especially in economics, trade, and global positioning.
THE STRUCTURAL PIVOT OF 1991
The decisive turn in contemporary India came in 1991 under PV Narasimha Rao. Economic liberalisation repositioned India within global capital flows and integrated it into the post-war international economic order. Once embedded in such a system, reversal becomes costly and destabilising.
Governments led by Manmohan Singh and later Narendra Modi differed in rhetoric and emphasis, but not in the fundamental direction of market participation. What appeared as ideological rupture often amounted to variation within an established framework.
NARRATIVE SHIFTS AND POLITICAL TRANSITION
The years preceding 2014 were marked by corruption allegations and deep anti-incumbency. The Congress government’s muted counter-narrative created space for the Opposition to consolidate public anger. But this transfer of political agency did not dismantle the underlying economic architecture. It altered the storytellers, not the structure.
POLARISATION: A LONGER ARC
India’s social fragmentation predates any single electoral cycle. The Mandal moment under VP Singh reshaped caste politics. The 1992 demolition of the Babri Masjid transformed communal equations. Polarisation accumulated over decades; its origins cannot be reduced to the present.
DEMOCRACY AS SAFETY VALVE
In developing democracies, sharp political contestation acts as a safety valve. Citizens must feel heard. Parties compete fiercely.
Yet beneath the adversarial theatre, certain structural constants remain:
Integration with global markets.
Dependence on trade.
Engagement with major powers.
The imperative of attracting foreign capital.
The stage is combative; the economic architecture is shared.
FOREIGN POLICY: ADAPTATION, NOT RUPTURE
Domestic liberalisation and foreign policy recalibration were parallel responses to the same global transformation. As India opened its economy, it inevitably repositioned itself internationally.
When the British Empire receded after two world wars, global influence reorganised rather than disappeared. Leadership shifted across the Atlantic. Institutions such as the United Nations, International Monetary Fund, and World Bank structured a new economic order. Power expressed itself less through territory and more through finance, trade rules, and alliances.
India’s independence in 1947 ended colonial rule, but not geopolitical centrality. During the Cold War, New Delhi navigated non-alignment. After 1991, with the Soviet collapse and domestic liberalisation, integration into the liberal global system deepened.
Strategic cooperation with the United States expanded well before 2014. Civil nuclear agreements and defence partnerships matured across administrations. Under Modi, initiatives like the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue reflect strategic balancing in response to China’s rise and Indo-Pacific competition. This is calibrated adjustment, not ideological rupture.
POWER, MARKETS AND ASYMMETRY
In the contemporary order, hegemony operates through markets and institutions rather than annexation. Corporate collaboration in technology, energy, and defence reflects mutual participation in a globalised framework shaped largely after 1945.
Every era has its dominant configuration. The nineteenth century belonged to Britain. The twentieth and early twenty-first centuries have been shaped substantially by American primacy. Foreign policy responds to prevailing power realities, not nostalgia.
Congress governments adjusted. BJP governments adjust. Methods differ; structural continuity persists.
THE LONG VIEW
India’s present trajectory—domestic and external—unfolds within decisions taken decades ago. Political rhetoric may promise rupture, but governance tends towards calibrated adaptation.
To distinguish between theatre and trajectory is not cynicism. It is clarity. History bends more often than it breaks.
—The writer is a retired Associate Professor of History, Department of History, Delhi University
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