In 2016 India became the world’s fastest growing large economy, overtaking China. India’s resurgence has renewed global interest in the geopolitical implications of India’s economic rise. Sanjaya Baru’s book explores India’s evolving geoeconomic relations with the West and with Asia, particularly China, in the aftermath of the global financial crisis of 2008-09. 

These essays analyse the influence of business and trade on foreign policy, India’s approach to multilateralism and the relevance of regional trade integration for the Indian economy and South Asia. The essays were written after Baru served a term in the Prime Minister’s Office in New Delhi as a key advisor to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh during India’s negotiation of a civil nuclear energy agreement with the United States. They show the author’s intimate knowledge of India’s external economic policies, acquired from his vantage position as an influential newspaper editor and an advisor to the Prime Minister.

It has become almost a settled view that by 2050, India’s GDP will become either the second or third largest in the world and the weight of India in geo-economics and in geopolitics will be increasingly felt. Sanjaya Baru’s collection of essays on India and the World provides the reader with a sense of this unfolding story. There is an inner consistency in his holistic view of India’s economic development which is fundamentally dependent on improvement in the education and skills base of large numbers of human beings. Unlike the US and China, India sometimes comes across as not having ambitions to be a world power, but it will become one almost despite itself and the book helps to explain why.
— George Yeo
Former Minister for Foreign Affairs, 
Trade & Industry, Singapore.

Sanjaya Baru is amongst the pioneers in using the frame of geo-economics to explore with practised skill, the emerging global political, economic and security landscape and India’s place in it. There are novel and compelling insights in this book which would be of value to both academics and practitioners alike.
— Shyam Saran 
Former Foreign Secretary, India.

Although economics is an important driver of foreign policy and a key determinant of national security, this relationship receives inadequate attention by scholars and practitioners. Sanjaya Baru’s book is a major contribution to this subject based on his first-hand role in the Indian government and    his years of thoughtful analysis of India’s foreign policy problems.
— Martin Feldstein
George F. Baker Professor of Economics, Harvard University
President Emeritus, National Bureau of Economic Research, USA

Sanjaya Baru is one of India’s most respected economic and political analysts. He has been Chief Editor of major financial newspapers,   a media advisor and spokesman of a Prime Minister of India; a professor at important universities and think tanks in New Delhi and Singapore, author of best-selling books, inclu-ding Strategic Consequences of India’s Economic Performance (Academic Foundation, 2006) and The Accidental Prime Minister (Penguin Viking, 2014). He was till recently Director for Geo-economics and Strategy, International Institute for Strategic Studies, London. He was a member of India’s National Security Advisory Board.