The India growth story is fascinating. During the middle of the Mughal regime in 1700s, India accounted for 24 per cent of global GDP. In the next 190 years of brutal British colonialism, it had become an impoverished economy accounting for just 3 per cent of global GDP. For half a century after gaining Independence in 1947, India had too small an economy worth taking note of. However, after several years of steady GDP growth since, it overtook Britain and is on track to overtake Japan and Germany as the world’s third-largest economy by 2030.

Using empirical data and research evidence, Minhaz Merchant argues that there won’t be any European country among the world’s three largest economies. The US believes that as India is on economic ascent, it will be the third economy alongside China to drive global growth. Much will, however, depend on how towards the middle of this century, India upgrades itself with digital technologies and artificial intelligence to lead the world. It is expected that by year 2030, an estimated 70 per cent of Fortune 500 companies will have their capability centres located in India. Its technological infrastructure and expanding consumer market will provide a perfect ecosystem for these companies, and through them India to grow.

It isn’t as linear as it may seem. The ongoing trade and technology war between the US and China is recasting global alliances. In such a situation, will India act as a balancing pivot between the two-warring factions? At this crucial time when the US is pushing ‘America First’ policy for seeking revival of its hegemony and China is rising as both an economic and military power, not much can be expected from a third party. The geopolitics of global change is turbulent, with the US playing a vital part in its strategic calculations.

Era of India provides an immensely readable perspective on the social, religious, political and economic history of the world. It traces the rise and fall of civilizations from antiquity to the present. History has been complicated as the weapons of war allowed for invasion and colonisation. Much has changed since then, the stockpile of weapons are used instead to influence and enforce change. The book goes a step further to assess the shift in power, triggered by the decline of the West and the rise of the rest. It is an engaging assessment of shifting global power.

Global power triad

History will come full circle, argues Merchant, and applies growth data to prove that three countries — the US, China and India — will exert centripetal force in world affairs in 2050. However, despite economic and military superiority the three may not be without their own weaknesses and vulnerability. Counting India in this global power triad will favour the US. With India being a major consumer of a variety of products, the US will explore the markets by enforcing favourable tariff regime to dump its products. Incidentally, India may not have any choice.

As the title suggests, Era of India narrates all that favours the rise of India. But the questions worth asking are: where does India stand in this emerging world order? how can China’s role in reshaping the world be ascertained? The homogeneity of Chinese society should be an advantage in taking decisions whereas the noisy multicultural societies in the US and India may act as deterrents. Understanding China is critical, strategically. It has not only lifted more people out of poverty faster, but is also the only economic power that has moved closer to the size of the US economy.

Leveraging soft power

How India leverages its soft power will determine its status amongst the triad? Merchant leaves it for the reader to take a call. Era of India offers insights on the geopolitical imagination of India’s rise as an economic power. Recent debates around trade have put the spotlight on the deep structural challenges that the power triad may need to address. In addition, it should seek to address equity, territorial resilience and ecological sustainability. Just counting numbers (pertaining to economy) alone would not add value to the power triad.

Without fail, the world will be integrated economically and technically in a way it could be scarcely imagined. Therefore, exerting military supremacy or enforcing trade restrictions may remain a strategy of the past. Will India emerge as an architect of change by leveraging its soft power? Merchant leaves the reader to imagine such a scenario and argues further that nations rise and fall to the levels guided by their history. Need it be said that the balance of global power will shift decisively over the next few years.

Era of India is an ambitious undertaking on the geopolitics of change that the world has gone through in the past. It views history, geopolitics, economics, and demographic sociology from a socio-cultural lens in presenting the civilisational evolution of nation-state. It examines human society as interlinked civilisations set living standards. It is readable as it helps capture the finer nuances of change, but to forecast a future on the basis of the past may remain elusive.

The reviewer is a writer, researcher and academic

Published on March 22, 2026