The Indian story has arrived in the Western media, and America’s most influential journal is looking at it four ways. In a special section called ‘‘The Rise of India’’ in the forthcoming July/August issue of Foreign Affairs, its editors write: ‘‘Once proudly socialist and nonaligned, India is being remade as a roaring capitalist success story and emerging strategic partner of the United States.’’

Saying the country may become the swing state in the global balance of power, they use different axes to track ‘‘the sources and implications of India’s rise — and the policies necessary for it to continue’’.

Put together, the four articles — by Gurcharan Das, C. Raja Mohan, Ashton B. Carter and Sumit Ganguly — present a narrative of great change, but a change that is still to be consolidated and is contingent on important reform and initiatives.

Das, a former CEO of Procter & Gamble India, details India’s enhanced economic profile after the beginnings of liberalisation in 1991. India, he contends, is reaping the benefits of abandoning socialist policies and of straying from the ‘‘classic Asian strategy’’ of relying on exporting labour-intensive, low-priced manufacturing goods to the West. ‘‘India,’’ he says, ‘‘has relied on its domestic market more than exports, consumption more than investment, services more than industry, and high-tech more than low-skilled manufacturing’’.

This has insulated the economy from global crises, but major reforms — especially, in labour policies and the bureaucratic interface — are required to hasten industrial growth, so necessary for the employment creation needed to reverse poverty on a grand scale. The trend right now is somewhat lopsided: “Services account for 50 per cent of India’s GDP, whereas agriculture’s share is 22 per cent, and industry’s share is only 27 per cent (versus 46 per cent in China). And within industry, India’s strength is high-tech, high-skilled manufacturing.”

... contd.