Raghuram Rajan says India not superpower yet, but doing ‘right things’ can get it there
Speaking to entrepreneur Kushal Lodha in a podcast, Rajan said the narrative that India has already arrived as a superpower risks distracting from the hard work still ahead of us.
According to him, it is too early to call India a superpower today. The real work lies ahead and will require decades of sustained effort.
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Rajan emphasized the need for ambition, but also warned against confusing ambition with success.
“We must be ambitious, we must dream of the world, but we must have the possibility of reaching them, and for that we must do our homework. You cannot dream and say we are there because we are not there,” he said.
He emphasized that repeatedly projecting that India is already dominant on the world stage ignores structural gaps in jobs, skills, education and institutions. “That’s the problem I see when we constantly think that we’re already a superpower. We’re not. We can get there. If we do the right things, we’ll probably get there, but we’re still a long way from there,” Rajan said.
According to Rajan, becoming a true superpower is not about slogans or timelines, but about daily efforts across society. “This means working every day, wherever you are, whether you are in the armed forces, the civilian population, academia, whether you are a doctor. Building India is work that we must continue to do for the next 30 years so that we can get some relief,” he said. The former central bank governor said India’s current growth momentum should not lead to complacency. While acknowledging improvements in macroeconomic stability, infrastructure creation and inflation management, he highlighted persistent challenges in job creation, skills, quality of education and productivity, especially for India’s young population.
Rajan argued that the biggest risk to India’s long-term rise is mistaking headline growth figures or global attention for deep economic strength. In his view, sustainable progress depends on investing in human capital, improving the ease of doing business, creating high-quality jobs and ensuring that institutions continue to operate independently and reliably.
He also made a distinction between ambition as a motivating force and self-congratulation as an obstacle, saying that ambition is only important if it is supported by realism and application. “This is where desire is important. We want to achieve great things,” he said.
India has the potential to become a global power over time, he said, but only if it resists the temptation to declare victory too early and sticks to slow, often low-key reform and capacity-building.
As Rajan points out, ambition must be matched with honesty about where the country is today and what needs to be done before it can truly claim superpower status.
