With Greater Economic Strength, India Believes Its 'Time Has Come'
"I don't think India wants to be a formal U.S. ally," says Alyssa Ayres, author of Our Time Has Come: How India Is Making Its Place in the World. "It sees alliance relationships as too constraining."
Once poverty-stricken and reliant on international aid, India opened up its economy in the early 1990s and has since seen steady, sometimes remarkable, economic growth. Today, by most measures, India is one of the world's largest and fastest growing economies.
Millions have been lifted out of abject poverty, though millions more continue to lack access to basic services like power, sanitation or decent schools.
Today's India is also a place of technological innovation, a huge market to global businesses and a more confident player on the world stage on issues ranging from global trade to climate change. But it hasn't yet reached the stature it feels it deserves in global governance institutions — most notably, it has never had
