A Study of the Potentials and Challenges of India to Become a Major Power with a Futures Studies Perspective

The position of countries like England, China, Russia and France as big powers in international system shows that for becoming a great power one has to activate the domestic, regional and international potentials and the absence of any of these components can impede the process of becoming influential power in international arena. This is also true about India and its position in international system. Although India has an important place in technological field, the world largest democracy and the world second largest population but in terms of economic, political and socio-cultural dimension face serious problems. For example more than 400 million people of the population live with one dollar a day. At the regional level India faces serious challenge from China and Pakistan and there are complicated border problems with these countries which are not resolved easily. Internationally also India is not an influential country. The present paper wants to evaluate the opportunities and challenges facing India to become a great power taking into consideration the economic, political, military and security determinants. The methodology used in the paper is futures studies.