As the London-headquartered International Institute of Strategic Studies (IISS) explores the theme “India as a Rising Great Power” in New Delhi this weekend, we have a paradox. The world is prepared to deal with India as a rising power. But is India ready for big time?

In the last few years, the popular opinion among the country’s middle classes has moved away from the self-perception as a weak third world nation to that of a great power on the make. A recent survey across nine major countries by a German foundation reported that nearly 79 per cent of India’s urban population believes the nation will become a great power by 2020.

This popular enthusiasm within India and the strategic expectations of the international community stand in marked contrast to the entrenched fears among the nation’s political elites about the proposition that India is rising. The Indian leadership, three generations of which have grown up with a pessimistic view of the nation’s prospects at home and abroad, appears utterly incredulous at the optimism regarding India’s strategic future.

If it can sustain the recent high economic growth rates, India will inevitably emerge as the third largest economy in the world after the US and China in the foreseeable future. With economic growth, India’s defence and diplomatic resources too will rapidly expand.

The question is no longer whether but when India might become a great power. That in turn has begged the question, what kind of a great power will India be? Will it be a “responsible stake-holder” in the international system? Or will it choose to remain an opportunistic “free rider”?

To be sure, some of this questioning reflects both fear and condescension of the current great powers to the rising ones. As the newest great power, India is under no compulsion to pass any test designed by the declining ones.

As a democracy, India, however, owes itself an answer to an important question: to what purposes should New Delhi deploy its accumulating national power and international prestige?

In an analysis last year of the changing global balance of power, External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee affirmed that India will not fall short of the new expectations of it from within the nation and abroad.

“As the world comes to terms with a rising India, we must, in turn, bear the burdens that come with being an important power... Whether it is in addressing the new global challenges — from trade to environment to international security — or in the new regional opportunities for peace and prosperity, India is ready to fulfil its obligations,” he said.

Since then, of course, the UPA government’s foreign policy has been thoroughly shaken by its Left allies who insist India think small. The Congress leadership’s vacillations on the civil nuclear initiative and its confused response to the Tibet question have confirmed the suspicion that the government may have lost the plot.

Whether the Congress leadership can measure up to India’s new opportunities or not, the nation will have to eventually shift from its traditional emphasis on the notion of “autonomy” towards “responsibility”.

In India there is a strong intellectual attachment to the idea of strategic autonomy. One could, however, ask whether the focus on autonomy is the product of a specific historical circumstance or a permanent organising principle of India’s foreign policy.

Great powers, defined as those who enjoy global economic, political and military reach, do not demand autonomy. They simply enjoy it and constrain the autonomy of others.

In the absence of a world government, it is the function of great powers to construct and sustain a measure of order in international affairs. Put another way, great powers define rules for the rest.

Weaker states tend to accept the rules, given the knowledge that a rule-based order serves their interests better than anarchy. It is only large states with national ambitions to improve their relative power position which insist on their freedom of action.

The emphasis on strategic autonomy was natural for an India that emerged out of colonial rule in the middle of the last century. Yet the nation’s founding fathers had a vision for India’s decisive future role in world affairs. As a weak post-colonial state, India had a strong motivation to prevent other powers from limiting its own room for manoeuvre. It therefore refused to abide by rules it considered discriminatory or unequal.

Six decades later, as India inches towards becoming the world’s third largest economy, there is little reason for it to obsess about strategic autonomy. As India ineluctably acquires great power capabilities, it will have to accept the responsibility to shape the international system and share the costs of managing it.

It might be too much to expect that the UPA government, which wants to serve its time out rather than exercise power, will give us a sense of how India hopes to engineer this great foreign policy transformation.

The writer is a professor at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore iscrmohan@ntu.edu.sg