Envisioning India’s Role in Redefining Power in Global Healthcare Architecture

The recent advances in healthcare facilities within the country and the ability to perform a global endeavour like Vaccine Maitri proves that India is a power to reckon with. By restricting power as a pressurising phenomenon, these endeavours of Indian foreign policy cannot be comprehended. Specifically, talking about the SDGs related to healthcare and environment it can be argued that India is becoming a global power. As information and technology, artificial intelligence, non-traditional threats to security, issues of global justice, and poverty gain importance, the understanding of power cannot only be restraint to American realism. The central argument of this article is that India does not validate the understanding of becoming a global power in the sense which Eurocentrism subscribes to. As India’s economy and soft power propels forward it will not only become a global power but also redefine the meaning of this term. These changes are bound to be reflected in global healthcare architecture led by countries like India. A combination of paradigms of knowledge produced during enlightenment and modernity have influenced the discipline of global politics normatively. To comprehend power, the dominant school of thought is American realism, which was set free from both moral restraints and dynamic nature of power in twenty-first century. Lately, after post-modernism re-analysed the nature and role of power, new schools of thought from within and outside of positivism stemmed emphasis on indigenous understanding of the concept of power. For example, when a country like India is labelled as an emerging power, the ideal type is imagined within the confines of American understanding of power. However, it outperformed various developed countries in containing the COVID-19 pandemic. The infrastructural gains India has made in fields of healthcare are technologically advanced and inclusive in character. In times to come the global community will learn from Indian government’s initiatives like Swachh Bharat, mass vaccination, and welfare activities during the pandemic era and otherwise.