Our Time Has Come: How India is Making Its Place in the World

by Alyssa Ayres

Overview

Over the last 25 years, India's explosive economic growth has vaulted it into the ranks of the world's emerging major powers. India's middle class has grown by leaps and bounds, and the country's sheer scale-possessing what will very soon be the world's largest population and an economy of more than $2 trillion-means its actions will have a major global impact. While it is clearly on the path to becoming a great power, India has not abandoned all of its past policies: its economy remains relatively protectionist, and it still struggles with the legacy of its longstanding foreign policy doctrine of non-alignment. India's vibrant democracy encompasses a vast array of parties who champion dizzyingly disparate policies. And India isn't easily swayed by foreign influence; the country carefully guards its autonomy, in part because of its colonial past. For all of these reasons, India tends to move cautiously and deliberately in the international sphere. In Our Time Has Come, Alyssa Ayres looks at how the tension between India's past and its ongoing integration into the global economy will shape its trajectory. By focusing on how India's unique perspective shapes its approach to global affairs, this new, updated paperback edition of Our Time Has Come helps the world make sense of India's rise.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780190058814
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	12/01/2019
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	368
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.20(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Alyssa Ayres is senior fellow for India, Pakistan, and South Asia at the Council on Foreign Relations. She served as US deputy assistant secretary of state for South Asia during 2010-2013, and her nearly thirty years' experience in India and South Asia crosses the government, nonprofit, and private sectors. She has served as project director for two bipartisan task forces on US-India relations, and co-edited three books on India and Indian foreign policy. Her book on nationalism in Pakistan, Speaking Like a State, was published by Cambridge University Press in 2009.

Table of Contents

PART ONE: LOOKING BACK
Prologue
Chapter 1: Introduction
Chapter 2: India and the World
Chapter 3: Opening to the World

PART TWO: TRANSITION
Chapter 4: Seeking India's Rightful Place
Chapter 5: A Cautious Power

PART THREE: LOOKING AHEAD
Chapter 6: India's Changing Global Role
Chapter 7: A Changing Economic Future?
Chapter 8: How the United States Should Work With a Rising India
Epilogue

Bibliographic Note
Bibliography

Editorial Reviews

07/10/2017
“Now, it is India’s turn,” India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, proclaimed in 2015, adding “And we know our time has come.” Ayres (Speaking Like a State), the former U.S. assistant secretary of state for South Asia, shares that optimism—with caveats—and her impeccably researched book chronicles India’s rise as an aspiring global power, though her suggested policies tend to rely too uncritically on neoliberal dogma, such as opposition to protectionism. The evidence she presents for Modi being right is certainly compelling: India is on track to become the world’s third-largest economy and most populous nation. India also maintains the world’s third-largest military, is a top troop contributor to UN peacekeeping missions, and possesses a world-class IT sector. Nevertheless, Ayres finds India’s economic progress to be tentative, hampered in her view by unions and an electorate dominated by conservative rural voters. Her uncritical support for globalism is evident throughout, and she never misses an opportunity to admonish the Indian government for making the nation less competitive with protectionist policies. Ayres observes that India’s habit of “self-reliance is perfectly understandable as an anticolonial strategy” but fits uneasily into today’s global economy. Her book presents a wonderfully detailed look at India today, albeit from an overly rigid proglobalist perspective. (Jan. 2018)

Publishers Weekly

"In Our Time Has Come, Alyssa Ayres, a former U.S. deputy assistant secretary of state for South Asia and currently a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, describes [India's] astonishing transformation and parses skillfully the political revolution that has accompanied it. . . . Ms. Ayres, always lucid and erudite, is at her best in her analysis of India's foreign policy. . . . Ms. Ayres draws a portrait of India in 2040-50 years after she first set callow foot in New Delhi as a Harvard junior-that takes the breath away." - Wall Street Journal

"A sweeping analysis of India's remarkable recent transformation into one of the world's biggest economies and militaries. . . . [Ayres] ably charts the country's emergence from the straitjacket of socialist policies." - Foreign Policy

"Our Time Has Come provides a fascinating and timely account of a nation growing 'less and less reticent about its global ambitions'." - Financial Times

"Our Time Has Come is a highly readable, acute and thoughtful book." - International Affairs

"A balanced and carefully researched analysis of India's prospects." — Raj Shah, Desh-Videsh

"Impeccably researched . . . [Ayres's] book presents a wonderfully detailed look at India today." - Publishers Weekly

"For a balanced and carefully researched analysis of India's prospects, as seen from Washington, this is a book which will rank pretty high in the years to come. . . . The author has good advice for US policymakers, who will need to accept that India will play according to its own template rather than accept a Washington template." - Shyam Saran, ThePrint

"Ayres, a former US deputy assistant secretary of state for South Asia, covers the territory on this theme very well: from India's well-known caution to the divided attention of its leaders. . . . India could do with more such understanding friends in the US." - Siddharth Singh, Open magazine

"The book . . . all comes together for an absorbing read as Ayres blends her unique perspective of affection and deep faith in India's success with an analytical outsider's lens on where India is headed." - Hindu

"Ayres' latest book is primarily aimed at acquainting American readers with Asia's third-largest economy. But it is also a must-read for Indians and others interested in how this country is making its place in the modern world and how the process is viewed by an astute India-watcher." - Asian Age

"Alyssa Ayres's sweeping amalgam of applied history, contemporary geopolitical analysis and prescriptive policy guidelines on how to deal with India . . . is a brilliantly researched, academically robust and yet easy-to-read book on contemporary India. . . . Personally, I could not put down the book and will argue that it only adds to the author's reputation as one of the most perceptive international analysts of contemporary Indian and South Asian geopolitics." Arjun Subramaniam, Visiting Fellow, Harvard Asia Center, ThePrint

"Ayres has written a lucid and compelling book about India's aspirations and its rise on the international stage that confirms her as one of the pre-eminent international observers of the country. Her expertise, moreover, is not of a sedentary variety: Ayres has taken pains to discover India intimately, and every page of Our Time Has Come exhibits her deep learning." - The National

"Ayres . . . does not brush India's challenges under the carpet. To the contrary, she undertakes a holistic appraisal of India's capabilities by situating its myriad challenges alongside its growing material capabilities since the economic liberalization of the early 1990s. . . . Even India scholars will end up with a better handle on the 'duality' of the Indian state." - Lekh

"Few outsiders know modern India's politics, society and history as well as Alyssa Ayres. In Our Time Has Come, she chronicles India's extraordinary rise and its future as a great global power." - Nicholas Burns, Former Undersecretary of State, U.S. State Department; Roy and Barbara Goodman Family Professor of the Practice of Diplomacy and International Relations, Harvard Kennedy School

"Alyssa Ayres has blended a keen sense of the possibilities with a clear-eyed grasp of the complexities to produce the most cogent and compelling account to date of India's emergence on the world stage. She gives her readers easy access to her perspectives as scholar and policymaker, without shying away from the hard questions. Our Time Has Come is a tremendous piece of work.-" Jake Sullivan, Martin R. Flug Visiting Lecturer, Yale Law School; former Deputy Chief of Staff to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton; former National Security Advisor to Vice President Joe Biden

"Alyssa Ayres has emerged as the country's leading scholar and practitioner on India, and this well-crafted book reaffirms her status. She skillfully captures the moment we are witnessing-India emerging as a leading power-in this exceptionally interesting and important account of the country to watch in the twenty-first century." - Rich Verma, U.S. Ambassador to India, 2015 to 2017; Vice Chairman, The Asia Group

"The great questions India faces have the potential to significantly alter the global economic and political landscape. Alyssa Ayres brings decades of local knowledge and global foreign policy work as she provides an in-depth view on the complexities of India as it seeks to answer such questions and seize its opportunity." - Charles R. Kaye, Co-CEO, Warburg Pincus

"Our Time Has Come is a splendid survey of the possibilities, problems, and prospects associated with India's ascendancy on the global stage. In describing how India is transforming the global order without revisionism, Alyssa Ayres lays bare the uniqueness of India's rise and compellingly argues for a strong U.S. partnership with India to strengthen the liberal international order." - Ashley Tellis, Tata Chair for Strategic Affairs, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

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