The Karmic Trajectory of India
How a nation’s means became its destiny
India is now widely regarded as a rising major power or leading power in 2026, transcending traditional “middle power” labels due to its economic momentum, military capabilities, and diplomatic influence. It ranks as the world’s fifth-largest economy by nominal GDP (over $4 trillion) and third by PPP, with 6-7% annual growth making it a top global growth engine.
For two centuries, till 1947, India was a colony of British. Before that substantial part of the India was under occupation of Chugtai Turks who were called as Mughal by British historians. There was a time when signboards outside British-owned estates in India read: “Dogs and Indians Not Allowed.” It was a shameless display of British racism.
Rishi Sunak stood at the podium of 10 Downing Street. Sundar Pichai runs Google. Satya Nadella runs Microsoft. Srinivasan heads Perplexity. The people the signboards tried to permanently exclude now run the institutions the signboards were meant to protect.
The British Empire built its wealth on extraction, exclusion, and the deliberate suppression of Indian enterprise. The end of that wealth was guaranteed from the moment it was accumulated. Power with no Dharmik foundation has no staying power once the external force maintaining it is removed.
Jamsetji Tata was obstructed by British in establishing Iron Factory in India. The descendants of Tata employ more British workers than most British companies, own some of Britain’s most iconic industrial brands, and represent the industrial conscience of a nation that was told it had none. The company British colonialism tried to strangle now keeps British industry alive. Jaguar Land Rover brand is now owned by Tata.
In January 2026, the President of the European Council, António Costa, stood at Hyderabad House in New Delhi and flashed his OCI card (Overseas Citizen of India) to the cameras. It was not a casual gesture. It was a deliberate signal. A man who represents the combined economic weight of twenty-seven European nations was saying, in the most visible way possible: I am one of you.
The turn around of India happened in less than 90 years. The ascension to become 4th largest economy from being the 10th largest economy happened in ten years. The GDP of 2 trillion become 4 trillion in less than five years.
How this happened?
Indian philosophy has a concept that does not require belief to operate. It is called Karma. It is not cause and effect in the immediate transactional sense. It is the force that determines which way the dominoes fall, and how far. The principle that the means employed for any object determine the end. End is a continuation of means. The two are not separate. Not as punishment or reward handed down by a judge, but as the simple, inevitable symmetrical reality.
It works at the level of individuals. It works at the level of families. And as the early decades of the twenty-first century are demonstrating with increasing clarity, it works at the level of nations. Therefore, the right question is: What was the Karma?
Journey of India from 1990
Death is never good news except for nations. The fortune of nations often turns on the death of rulers, for good or bad. After one such tragic moment in 1991, P.V. Narasimha Rao became Prime Minister of India with a minority government that nobody expected to last and an economy that had literally pledged its gold reserves to the IMF to stay solvent. He was in his 70’s when sworn in. A person with Telugu mother tongue yet a polyglot who could speak with opposition party with more ease than his own party men. He whispered the language of reform and before anybody could notice, India was changed.
His Finance Minister Manmohan Singh dismantled the Licence Raj in one budget. Industries that required government permission to produce, import, or expand were freed overnight. They had ‘Open General Licence’ or OGL. The colonial economy, which had replaced British labels with socialism, began to collapse. Crony capitalists were forced to face competition. Capital flowed. Competition arrived. A middle class that had been waiting for decades finally had somewhere to go.
The trend continued through successive governments across party lines. It slowed between 2004 and 2014 under the weight of coalition politics and policy paralysis, but the foundation held. What 1991 unlocked, no subsequent government was powerful enough to re-lock.
Digital India: The Invisible Revolution
In 2014, economy of India was part of weak economies called fragile five. Corruption was rampant. Inflation was out of control. Economy was in tailspin. People decided that era of coalition governments was over. A single party won majority in Parliament. Narendra Modi became first prime minister in 30 years to be sworn in without any need of coalition support. He had room to maneuver what no prime minister of India had, since 1984. He had his task cut out for him.
India, a welfare state that was leaking subsidies meant for poor. A fraction of Government money barely tickled down to its destination. Subsidies were stolen, duplicated, or captured by intermediaries who had built entire political careers on the inefficiency. A ghost economy existed to suck up what was meant for the lowest strata of society.
India needed an exorcist as economists had failed. Narendra Modi took upon himself to disrupt and reboot the economy.
Three steps busted the ghost economy. Together they were called JAM, an acronym for Jan-Adhar-Mobile. Jan Dhan bank accounts were opened for 550 million people who had never seen a bank. Aadhaar, a unique biometric identity registered 1.42 billion people. No duplication was allowed. Both were linked to a mobile phone. In 2016 mobile phone had reached every family. Together they formed what economists now call the JAM trinity. The plumbing that sucked up the ghosts in economy.
Through this plumbing ran UPI, the Unified Payments Interface. It was a central network. A digital public infrastructure. All payments were routed through this digital fortress in which there were no strangers. A payment could reach to any person with a click in few seconds. Mobile number became the payment gateway. Soon India processed half the world’s real time digital payments. China, with four times India’s GDP, managed a fifth of that volume.
The cost of financial transfer fell from thirty dollars to fifteen cents. A revolution swept through economy. Welfare stopped leaking. Direct benefit transfers saved 3.48 lakh crore rupees by 2023, money that had previously disappeared between intention and delivery. Free grain reached 800 million people without a middleman. Houses were built and ownership recorded without a bribe.
The Western development consensus did not predict what happened next. A country growing at eight percent while keeping inflation below one percent violated their models. The IMF questioned the data. Economists questioned the deflators. As always, no ‘expert’ questioned their own assumptions.
What they missed was that India had invented a new form of welfare. It made income edible, housing invisible in GDP, and employment digital and therefore uncountable by old surveys. A family that stopped paying rent, stopped buying grain, and stopped paying a broker to access its own bank account had effectively doubled its real income. But this had no visible footprint for expert Sherlock to look at and trail it.
India’s income disparity fell by several notch. Its measurement marker Gini fell to 25.5 by 2022. The United States stood at 41.8. China at 35.7. Every G7 nation, every G20 nation, every country that had spent a century lecturing India about development, ranked below it. India manged to share its growth with common people, effortlessly.
171 million Indians left extreme poverty between 2011 and 2023. The extreme poverty rate fell from 16.2 percent to 2.3 percent. These are not government numbers. These are World Bank’s statistics.
The karmic dimension of this is precise. India built its digital infrastructure as a public infrastructure. It was not a product which any company may own. A mutual infrastructure shared benefit, and prosperity. It fit no ideological category. The left wanted cash transfers. The right wanted markets. India turned free food into income and identity into access and proved that both were wrong simultaneously.
India in 2020
Covid Virus Pandemic broke from Wuhan. China shared no data. It gave no advance warning. It hoarded relief material and refused supply of gloves and hazmat suits. It was first to create vaccine but shared with no one.
The most visible expression of India’s Dharmik trajectory on the world stage is what happened during the COVID-19 pandemic.
When the world needed vaccines, India produced two billion doses by mid-2021. Under the Vaccine Maitri programme, it supplied over sixty-six million doses to ninety-five countries, including free shipments to Bangladesh, Nepal, Seychelles, and other neighbours. It did not wait for payment. It did not attach conditions. It simply sent what was needed.
This was not charity. It was Seva, selfless service, operating at industrial scale. India is the largest producer of generic medicines in the world. When Western pharmaceutical companies priced their products beyond the reach of the Global South, Indian generics kept hospitals functioning across Africa, Asia, and Latin America.
In 2026, that role continues. Affordable generics and boosters flow from Indian facilities to countries that Western supply chains have abandoned as insufficiently profitable.
The Karma of this is already visible. The countries that received vaccines remember who came first. The countries that priced them out of reach are now seeking partnerships with the country that did not.
First Responder to the World
India’s humanitarian reach extends far beyond medicines.
In 2015, when conflict engulfed Yemen, India evacuated seven thousand people of twenty-six nationalities, including citizens of countries India had no formal obligation to protect. Operation Rahat deployed Navy ships and Air Force aircraft with a speed that bypassed the usual UN timelines.
Evacuation was repeated in 2026 when 1700 flights operated in gulf nations and evacuated people of several nationalities while USA and Israel were attacking Iran and Iran chose to respond by attacking fellow muslim countries of the gulf.
When Turkey and Syria were struck by catastrophic earthquakes in 2023, Indian rescue teams and medical units were among the first on the ground. When floods hit Mozambique and Myanmar, Indian naval vessels arrived before international appeals had been fully processed.
This pattern is not accidental. It reflects a deliberate national character, built over decades, of arriving first and asking for acknowledgement later. The contrast with powers that attach conditions to aid, that use humanitarian assistance as a lever of influence, is not lost on the recipients.
India founded the Coalition for Disaster Resilient Infrastructure. It funds desalination plants in the Maldives and solar projects in Sri Lanka. It shares early warning technology for natural disasters with vulnerable nations that cannot afford to build it themselves.
Each of these acts is a seed. Each seed becomes a relationship. Each relationship becomes strategic depth that no military alliance can manufacture from scratch.
The Refining Shield
India’s Karmic trajectory is not only soft power. It is hard infrastructure deployed with Dharmik intent.
India is the world’s third-largest refiner of petroleum, with a capacity approaching 300 million metric tonnes per annum. At the India Energy Week in January 2026, Prime Minister Modi confirmed the current capacity at 260 MMTPA and announced an acceleration toward 300 MMTPA and beyond, backed by a seventy-thousand-crore shipbuilding programme for domestic LNG transport.
This matters to Europe in ways that are now impossible to ignore. Europe stopped buying Russian energy after 2022 and has since paid double the price for American alternatives. Its own aging refineries are closing under the weight of environmental regulations and energy costs. German cars and French flights now depend on fuel processed in facilities that Europe no longer has the capacity to run competitively.
India can process complex, discounted crude from any source and convert it to Euro-6 standard fuel. It can sell that fuel in euros, through the digital rupee-euro exchange mechanism, without a single US dollar changing hands. For a Europe whose financial back has been broken by American energy pricing, India’s refining expansion is the physiotherapy it desperately needs.
Europe is not praising India because it has become more enlightened about Indian culture. It is praising India because it is looking at a 300 MMTPA refining capacity, a four-trillion-dollar economy, and a blue-water navy, and calculating its own survival.
The Naval Guarantee
Europe relied on the United States Navy to keep its trade routes open for eight decades. That arrangement is now fraying. The same America that guaranteed European security is imposing thirty-five to fifty percent tariffs on European goods and threatening to treat allies as economic competitors.
Come 2026, strait of Hormuz is closed by Iran attack in retaliation to attack on it by USA and Israel. Yet the Iran permitted safe passage to two vessels of India namely ‘Nanda Devi’ and ‘Shivalik.’ India deployed its navy to escort more vessels as USA stayed back. Its Secretary tweeted that USA is escorting ships out of Hormuz but deleted it later.
India is the only four-trillion-dollar economy with a growing blue-water naval capability that is not hostile to Europe. INS Vikrant, India’s first indigenous aircraft carrier, commissioned in 2022, was followed by active planning for a third carrier, INS Vishal. France’s Rafale-M jets on Indian carrier decks represent a physical interweaving of European technology with Indian strategic reach.
When Ursula von der Leyen spoke of Reciprocal Maritime Security at the January 2026 summit, she was not using diplomatic language. She was describing a practical necessity. European trade routes through the Indian Ocean need a guarantor. India is the only candidate both willing and capable. Something which unfolding to be true in March 2026.
The arms and ammunition dimension completes the picture. Europe’s stockpiles were depleted by two years of the Ukraine conflict. It needs 155mm artillery shells, drone swarm technology, and missile systems faster than its own industry can produce them. India’s defence manufacturing, showcased at the Republic Day parade that held Costa and von der Leyen on their feet for nearly the entire duration, is the catalogue Europe is ordering from.
Britain in Back Mirror
Britain built its prosperity on extraction. India, Ireland, Scotland, the Caribbean, Africa, all treated as resources to be converted into English wealth. The Irish famine happened while Ireland exported food to England. The Bengal famine happened while India exported resources to fund a war that was not India’s. The means were Adharmik at civilisational scale.
The end is Britain in 2026, outside the room where Europe’s future is being decided, watching an FTA between its former colony and its former continental partners that it cannot join and was not invited to influence.
War broke out in gulf. Decision was taken sometime on 26/27 February 2026 when Prime Minister of India was in Israel. The British Prime Minister announced next day that it had given access to USA planes to use its facilities in Indian Ocean. Britain reluctantly permitted USA to use its bases for flights after a major news broke out that for decades Europe watched at side lines while its financial systems was used by Iran to launder oil money.
António Costa produced his OCI card. Kaja Kallas travels to New Delhi to discuss security architecture. Alexander Stubb, President of Finland, calls India an emerging superpower and urges the West to engage it on equal terms. Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney, on his first official visit to India, explicitly refuses to group India with middle powers, saying its trajectory and ambition are totally different.
The Dharmik means here are significant. India is not selling arms to create dependency. It is offering partnership on the basis of mutual security, shared interest, and equitable trade. The distinction matters. The British sold arms to create clients. India is building alliances among equals.
Iran War
War kills and disrupts economies. Worse, diplomacy has no room during war. Attack on Iran by USA-Israel forces on 28 February 2026 has similar effect. United Nations disappeared from the scene without notice. But India had the ears of Iran, Israel, and America. Representatives of Iran as well as USA and Europe all appeared at the India Today Conclave in New Delhi and expressed their views. Ambassador of Iran started with thanking India for providing a forum to speak. He concluded with remark that war was not over till Iran decides to end it.
Laura Loomer from USA, was not denied visa while social media wondered why. She announced that she had spoken with President Trump shortly before taking the stage. She relayed a message from him stating that he “loves India,” respects Prime Minister Modi as a “fantastic leader,” and plans to visit India “someday soon”. She also regretted for her deleted tweets about people of India which disrespected them. She denounced Islamic Terrorism.
India became that proverbial riverbank where all animals of the jungle chose to drink water. Superpowers and underdogs, all are welcome. No signboard was put out. None was required. It is left to Karma to decide.
Reference:
- Trouble in Hormuz: https://www.news18.com/world/strait-of-hormuz-under-fire-18-ships-hit-as-war-escalates-full-list-ws-l-9957779.html
- LPG carrying Vessels of India: https://indianexpress.com/article/business/indian-flagged-lpg-tanker-crosses-strait-of-hormuz-10581380/
- Chris Wright deleted tweet: https://www.independent.co.uk/bulletin/news/trump-chris-wright-hormuz-tanker-b2936077.html
- Laura Loomer:
Watch on YouTube - Universal basic income: https://sandeepbhalla.in/indias-economic-growth-with-hidden-universal-basic-income/
- Income equality in India: https://sandeepbhalla.in/india-has-best-income-equality-among-large-economies/