Book Title: Everything all at Once: India and the Six Simultaneous Global Transitions
Authors: Rajiv Kumar and Ishan Joshi
Publisher: Rupa
Everything all at Once: India and the Six Simultaneous Global Transitions, jointly authored by former Vice Chairman NITI Aayog, Rajiv Kumar and veteran journalist and media scholar, Ishan Joshi, provides an easily comprehensible yet sophisticated picture of the shifting balance of power globally with an extra focus on the Asia-Pacific Region. Even in the use of this nomenclature, “Asia-Pacific Region”, the authors bring out the nuances of the geostrategic frictions, for while this phrasal noun is preferred by China, the United States and allies would rather call it the “Indo-Pacific Region”.
The book makes it clear that there is an inevitability about the emerging new geostrategic power equation, even as an increasing number of postcolonial nations begin to shake off their economic and psychological colonial shackles to reclaim their rightful places in the geoeconomic and geopolitical canvases. The sense conveyed is, there is nothing very much the Western powers, in particular the United States, can do about this, other than come to terms with the new emerging reality.
Within the rising developing world where India is a prominent member, there are also plenty of readjustments and reconning called for too. The book is unambiguous on what India’s approach should be. It has to be one of pragmatism derived first and foremost from the doctrine of realism, this especially in its relations with its neighbour China. This is to be coupled with the constructivist approach to look for ways to climb down from adversarial postures to instead forge a partnership both can mutually benefit from.
What is also a constant refrain in most of the chapter is that this is a post-ideology era and history is no longer defined by a clash of the Capitalist and Communist world. The authors however are quick to reassert that the dismantling of this world order however is not the end of history Francis Fukuyama foreboded, but history leaving the old trajectory and assuming a new one. The refrain is also that India must come to terms with this changed world and shed old deterministic paradigms that divided, and seek new open ended and benign relationships.
The book sketches six different global transitionary scenarios. The first predicts the end of a unipolar world in which US held supreme. Although US is still ahead both in economic and military power, this dominance is now increasingly strained by challenges from emerging economies, in particular China. Indicators for this are plenty in trade balances, military expenditures and very importantly in technological innovations. For instance, the book says that China is already overtaking the US in patents filed for innovative technologies. It cites official figures to conclude that “out of 64 critical technology categories, China took the top sport in 57 in 2024, compared to 2023 when China was leading the US in 37 of 44 cutting-edge digital technologies tracked.”
The dilemma of both intermediate and smaller powers in this great powers struggle is that US still cannot be written off, and quite obviously, China too cannot be ignored. India too must understandably be cautious but it would be prudent for it to engage with Beijing although in ways that do not compromise its own interest, the book recommends.
The second scenario is of Asia’s inevitable rise, predicted to radically change the global power balance, shifting the fulcrum away from the West. The US, has so far remained the undisputed pivot in this global power equation, but this is now under strain because of Asia’s phenomenal rise. Asia’s growth, the book summarises, is only a reversion of the status that once was in the precolonial era. Citing from a study in Madisson Historical Statistics, University of Groningen, it points out that “in 1700, India accounted for 24.5 per cent of the world’s GDP and China 22.3 per cent, while Europe’s share was 11.8 per cent (UK, France, Germany).” Asia’s economy was still expanding, and by 1750, China’s share of the world’s manufacturing output had gone up sharply to 32.8 percent, while India’s remained static at 24.5 per cent and Europe’s grew to 23.2 per cent. China and India therefore accounted for 57.3 per cent fo the world manufacturing output in 1750, and if Asia as a whole were to be taken, the total jumps to 70 per cent.
However, two centuries later, by 1950, the ravages colonialism and quantum leaps of technology in the wake of the Industrial Revolution in Europe, depleted India’s global GDP share to 4.2 per cent and China’s to 4.6 per cent. The US had by then emerged as the world’s strongest economy with a 27.3 per cent share of global GP, followed by Europe at 15.6 per cent.
Now that the shackles of colonialism which bound them down have been shed, Asia is on the rise again, with China leading the way. For three decades spanning 1990 to 2020, China’s economy clocked a stupendous 10 per cent annual growth. Although not as spectacularly, India’s economy too has seen robust growth during the same period. After two and half centuries, Asia is once again becoming the centre of gravity for the world. The most profound consequence of this is the visible churning in the existing equilibrium of strategic and trade balances of the world.
The coming of China plus ASEAN in the shape of Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, RCEP, China Pakistan Economic Corridor, CPEC, China Myanmar Economic Corridor, CMEC, India’s Look/Act East Policy etc., are some evidences of these. The West too are reciprocating, pushing for strategic alliances such as QUAD or Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, an informal strategic forum of India, Japan, Australia, and the United States, and AUKUS, a trilateral security partnership between Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States intended to promote a free and open Indo-Pacific.
Under this circumstance, evolving a far-sighted engagement with China is predicted to remain a challenge for India’s policy makers. The authors suggest India to frame its economic ties with China not in terms of ‘decoupling’ or ‘de-risking,’ and instead to strengthen its linkages within the Indo-Pacific region, including with the Chinese economy. The book, acknowledges India’s security and territorial concerns regarding China but all the same emphasises that working out an engagement model with the latter is vital.
The next scenario “Imagine there’s no Heaven” is a continuation of the earlier scenario of Asia’s rise and the manner it has unscrambled the existing geostrategic landscape. This one also deals with the radical transformation of geoeconomics in the postcolonial world after the closure of the Cold War. This is a brave new world which is no longer divided and polarised into the two dominant ideological poles of Capitalism and Communism. All along it has been the “Darwinian self-interest-driven state behaviour” that defined inter-state relations but this has changed. The book cites Antonio Gramsci to say this era where the old world dies and the new world struggles to be born does not necessarily have to be a time for monsters.
The chapter charts out the possible routes for India to grow its economy to what it was in 1850, when it was pegged 18 per cent of the world GDP. It is predicted to be an arduous and unprecedented task for India considering this accomplishment would also have to come together with reducing its carbon footprint. The challenge is even more daunting for it has to also negotiate post-Second World War international institutions such as the UN, the Bretton Woods, World Trade Organisation, etc., where the Western world, led by the US, holds all the key levers. It is against this that China is spearheading the effort to create “a parallel universe of multilateral institutions where its voice, along with those of some other emerging economies, and not those of the West, is dominant.” The book also does not miss mentioning the manner in which US President Donald Trump is undoing the American economy, however adding the caveat that the US is known for its resilience and can reinvent itself.
India is now faced with the challenge of negotiating and striking a balance between the Big 2 of the new world, US and China, and the book’s recommendation for India is not to ally with either at the cost of alienating the other, but instead to seriously consider join trade and strategic blocs, of which plenty have come into being, which may have one or the other of the Big 2, or both, as members. The book also suggests ways in which India can attune its own administrative structure to the new world order. One of these is to make provisions for coopting Indian Economic Service officers into the Indian Foreign Service.
The fourth scenario is again a continuation of the same discussion, but giving emphasis on the shift in power balance in the event of the rise of the Global South, with China as the game changer. This is a new world in which the purchasing power and the relative economic heft of nations are on a rapid transition. Illustrating this, the book does a comparison: “This shifting clout is reflected in the fact that even by 2019, the G7 (Group of Seven industrialised nations) had a combined GDP, measured in purchasing power parity, PPP, terms, of 40 trillion dollars, while the Emerging Seven, E7, (Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Turkey and Russia) had inched ahead with a combined GDP in PPP terms of 53 trillion dollars.” It also cites a study of economic power shift by the University of Sydney to predict that by 2030, 4.8 billion people around the globe will be middle class, and of these, two-thirds will be in the Asia-Pacific region.
India will have to position itself prudently in this emerging scenario, and it would be in its best interest to find a way to partner China without compromising its core interests or values, the book suggests. It also hints that this is already beginning to happen.
The next scenario deals with the advent of Artificial Intelligence and the way this is set to transform yet again the global economic and power equations. The authors admit deeper diving on developments in the field of AI will have to be best done by domain experts, but nonetheless they provide the readers with interesting recaps of ongoing debates. AI, they reiterate is certainly much more than “high tech plagiarism” that Naom Chomsky described it as, and is already in the process of taking the state away from the “Weberian bureaucratic state”. AI is also where China and India can lead the way the authors predict.
The last of the six scenarios delves into the issue of Climate Change which can and has begun showing the menacing potential of undoing nations. This too is in the area for domain experts, but again the book provides useful and interesting interpretations of existing debates. The pros and cons of fossil fuels, and the challenges of replacing it with a renewable energy future etc., are discussed. The grave threat posed before India in the event of the Third Pole glaciers disappearing on account of global temperature rise is also highlighted. The Third Pole roughly constitutes the Himalayan ranges and the Tibetan plateau, the glaciers from which feed some of the major river systems of Asia which support one seventh of world population. This is also a chapter in which discourses of generalities of climate change often meanders into homilies of “dharma over development” etc.
There is one technical glitz which makes the narratives in the book a troublesome irritant. Each chapter is replete with abbreviations of myriad organisations and institutions. These abbreviations are expanded only once at their first appearance and then on only the abbreviation are used. This style is fine with a newspaper article where readers need only to go back a few paragraph for a reminder. In a book, the expanded forms get lost and except for the most patient readers, most would probably move on even when they forget what each stand for, diluting their engagements with the debates. The remedy should have been the addition of a extra few pages listing the abbreviations used listed alphabetically for easy reference, but this unfortunately has been overlooked in the first edition of the book. Hopefully this will be rectified in subsequent editions.
In summary, this is an excellent book for students of international relations to get a sense of geopolitical trends, especially those who wish to specialise in the emerging Asia-Pacific theatre. But this will also be a valuable companion for national policy framers and enthusiasts alike. The easy narrative style done without compromising quality or integrity, makes it accessible and at the same time engaging.
Editor, Imphal Review of Arts and Politics and author
