National Security Index Ranks China 2, India 8
OUR ECONOMIC BUREAU
NEW DELHI, FEB 10: India ranks 8, with the United States on top and China at second position in a newly constructed National Security Index (NSI) put out by India’s National Security Council Secretariat (NSCS). Pakistan ranks 49 in a list of 50 countries.
The NSI has been estimated for the NSCS by Professor Satish Kumar of the Jawaharlal Nehru University and has been published in India’s National Security Annual Review, 2003, to be released this week.
The NSI is a composite index based on five different indices of development and national power. These are the Defence Index (DI), the Gross Domestic Product Index (GDPI), the Human Development Index (HDI), the Research and Development Index (RDI) and the Population Index (PI).
Based on the concept of “national power” developed by strategic analysts in the US and China, India’s NSI is a variant of the Chinese Comprehensive National Power (CNP) index and an American index constructed at the Rand Corporation. The Rand index measures national power on the basis of (a) national resources (technology, enterprise, human resources, financial/capital resources, physical resources); (b) national performance (infrastructure capacity, ideational resources); and
The Chinese concept of CNP developed by scholars at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences includes eight components, namely, natural resources, domestic economics, foreign economics, science and technology, military affairs, government capability, foreign affairs capability, and social development. India’s innovation to the concept of CNP is the population index which is not a measure of the size of population as much as it is a measure of a country’s “people power”.
While all analysts agree that all these concepts are not quantifiable, attempts have been made to try and quantify national power in all three countries based on available and published data. Interestingly, in all three studies the United States comes on top and is followed by China at second position. The Chinese CNP index also places India in the world’s top ten powers.
The top countries in the NSI rankings are USA, China, Japan, South Korea, Sweden, Russia, Germany, India, France and the U.K., in that order. While Israel ranks 11, Brazil is at 24, Iran at 27, Singapore 28, South Africa at 38 and Pakistan is 49 in a list of 50 countries with Angola at 50.
Not surprisingly, in the defence capability index Pakistan ranks 6, after US, China, Russia, India and Korea, while in the R&D index it is at 43, with India ranked 27, ahead of China’s rank of 37. However, China is marginally ahead of India in the Patents index.
The ultimate differentiator between nations remains per capita GDP, which places China way ahead of India and has taken India ahead of Pakistan in recent years. The NSI and CNP indices underscore the point that real power lies in a country’s economic, technological, scientific, political and administrative capabilities and not just in its military and defence capability.
financialexpress.com |
