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India will continue to play a constructive international role in, among other things, the nancial diplomacy of the G20, and it certainly has a soft-power story to tell as a model of liberal political and economic development. Perhaps even more signicantly, the cultural impact of Indian cuisine, literature, lms, music and sporting events will increasingly be felt globally through and beyond Indias vast diaspora. Yet the hopes of those in the West who would build up India as a democratic counterweight to Chinese superpower are unlikely to be realised anytime soon. As LSE IDEAS Philippe Roman Chair Ramachandra Guha argues here, it is doubtful whether India should seek to become a superpower. The bright lights of great power diplomacy may serve only to distract from the pressing requirements of Indias domestic development, which to date has neither locked in its successes nor laid out a sustainable path for the future. This report forms part of an LSE IDEAS series on the topic of Power Shifts. In some senses, power shifts are axiomatic: they reect the direction of wealth, status and capabilities. Yet in other respects power is a matter of national politics, of how countries seek to dene their identity and how expansively they articulate their interests in the world. Whether India will be willing or able to resist the calling of superpower status remains to be seen. The United States, in particular, is placing India at the very heart of its strategic reorientation and with it, the orientation of the rest of the world towards Asia. Indias importance for others will undoubtedly create the temptation to play the superpower role; detached and considered judgment should counsel India to regard such entreaties with due caution.