But this ability to draw in from a wider pool is premised upon the second aspect of soft infrastructure: a robust, serious and deep culture of academics, think tanks and a vibrant university system. Without the widespread and rigorous knowledge base that comes from having a rich gamut of institutions, the preparedness and quality of our engagement with the outside world is very thin. There is colossal frustration across the world at the fact that India has relatively little absorptive capacity in higher education, the principal means through which nations have historically projected their point of view and their soft power. Hundreds of international institutions are dying to collaborate with Indian institutions; the capacity at the Indian end to effectively utilise these opportunities is dismal. While there is great appreciation of the possibilities of doing business with business, there is palpable disappointment that huge areas where India’s advantages can be projected on to the rest of the world remain unexploited. In the rest of the world, they see a great disjunction between India’s entrepreneurial confidence and its still apparent lack of intellectual self-confidence. When being charitable, this gap is seen as something of an enigma. But it also raises more doubts about how real the India story is.

Perhaps it is too much of the world to expect from India. But one very eminent Brazilian academic and politician recently made the observation that India is hampered in a couple of ways. Although it is an emerging power, it does not yet have the capacity to project what it stands for. Second, on a large number of important issues, India’s role ought not to merely be to maximise its gains; it also ought to be to provide some intellectual leadership. Raymond Aron once made the perceptive observation that the legitimacy of a great power diminishes if that power is also not associated with a vibrant set of ideas. What the rest of the world sees in India at the moment is a lot of contention, but relatively little serious argument and debate. Business dynamism can sustain interest in India. Ultimately its power will be a function of how it manages its internal challenges. But there is a sense that political drift, state incapacity and intellectual impoverishment still cast a long shadow over India’s credibility.

... contd.