by Sina

Created on: January 13, 2009

India gained independence in 1947. Since then India has had a meteoric rise becoming a powerful force in world politics. India will have to create policy that reacts to the domestic as well as foreign spheres. The greatest points of conflict for India can be defined as religious, economic, and geopolitical. All three issues are linked and all three issues have equal weight to being points of conflict.

Religious conflict stems from the two largest religious groups in India: Hindus and Muslims. Tensions between the two groups are very strong often spilling over into violent riots that claim the lives of both religious groups. This tension has been present since
colonial times but came to a powerful and violent head with the partition of West and East Pakistan from India in 1947 and the resulting various wars between the two states. Both states, even though their governments were secular, created an explicit and resilient identity that centered around their respective religion, Indians predominately practicing Hinduism and the Pakistanis practicing Islam.

The economic point of conflict comes from the India's recent change from a socialist, state owned enterprise-driven economy to a more liberalized, market-based economy that encourages private ownership. Liberalization of Indian's economy has produced a great amount of wealth in a relatively short time. The expansion of wealth has lifted a great amount of Indians out of poverty and into the middle class, with the accompanying increases in education, literacy, and life expectancy. As much success the economy has brought India, it has also brought a great amount of pressure domestically, with an increasing gap between the wealthy and poor. Liberalization of India's economy has also caused the central government to roll back the social welfare programs it had in place prior to liberalization. This gap and the weakening of social welfare programs has lent it self to the radicalization of the poorer populace.

India's rapid economic growth has resulted in putting the country in direct competition with China. Both have sustained high amounts of annual GDP growth and brought a vast amount of their populations out of poverty. Though, the caveat here is that each respective country needs to maintain that growth to survive and thrive. This involves competition between the two parties over energy, trade deals and access to markets. This competition is a point of conflict as each side views their economies as essential to their

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