Soft Power Challenges

5.1 Challenges in Yielding Soft Power

While the nature of power us becoming less tangible and less coercive, transformation of power becomes limited especially in societies where no much industrial progress has taken place. As industrial economies are akin to Western society during its booming era, three sources of power i.e. military, economic and soft power become more relevant for it is found in different degrees across different relationships.

Whilst interdependencies are still growing and strengthening in Asia, soft power becomes more and more important due to connectivity in the world where state and non-state actors have the maximum interaction. The interaction platform is so vast that a nation has ample space to generate power and

The first challenge is that there are many remedial works required in a nation so that the performance of soft power variables can be improved. India is a large country with many hindrances in its way to become a superpower. Sashi Tharoor claims that a country cannot be super poor and super power at the same time to describe India in a big picture. While it has been encountering rapid growth in almost all the sectors and creating landmarks, it still lags fundamentally.
First, there is a dire need for remedial work to improve the performance of the factors that determine soft power. This can mean that there’s a need of improvement in expansion of human rights, improvement of economic competitiveness, or investment of in the nation’s cultural infrastructure. Whatever the need might be, a soft power analytical frame helps ascertain where action should be taken. A major problem as of now is lack of infrastructure in most parts of the country as the population is expanding at an unexpected rate and migration has been massive too, This is in contradiction to the recent growth rate of AAA%. Though India has been building infrastructure, it is not being able keep pace with demand. This has led to high productivity losses and also delays especially in urban areas that comprises of emerging cities and

Tharoor states that India dwells in the satisfaction as a better storyteller and also basks in glory achieved through democratic ideologies and the economic growth potential. , However, it has a gap between its capacities and capabilities in both regional and global level due to this. Wagner asserts that India is a defensive soft power as it is soft power by default. It is so in the sense that it ‘does not promote its political model abroad and uses soft power to attract foreign investors rather than exert influence elsewhere’. This trend has made some other scholars like Jacques E. C. Hymans (2009) observe that some attributes of India’s soft power may be also be its ‘soft vulnerability’.
The third challenge exists in leveraging the existing soft power strengths for generating the maximum possible effect. India’s soft power resources are used as a tool for creating image rather than exerting influence. For it to surpass this challenge, it will be necessary to debate on bringing balance of national interests with its political norms and