India could be a world leader in the near future, Shashi Tharoor said . (Newly Paul)

India's ability to manage its diversity in an age of globalization and wield its "soft power" internationally, especially among its neighboring countries, could well make it a world leader in the near future, author, columnist and former United Nations Under-Secretary-General Shashi Tharoor said at a talk at the University of Southern California Tuesday.

Soft power is a term coined by Harvard scholar Joseph Nye to describe a country's ability to alter the behavior of others through attraction, rather than sticks or carrots.

"Hard power is necessary but has its limitations," Tharoor said. "Afghanistan and Vietnam have taught us that the side with the larger army doesn't always win. But the side with the soft power -- the better story, the more attractive culture, and more numerous channels of communication, always does better than the one which only has guns."

The United States, he said, is a fine example of how soft power does not rely merely on governmental action. "Hollywood and MTV have done more to promote the idea of America as a desirable and admirable society than the Voice of America or the Fulbright scholarships," he said.

India should now give attention, encouragement and active support to the aspects and products of its society that the world would find attractive -- not in order to directly persuade others to support India, but to enhance its intangible standing in their eyes, Tharoor said.

The Indian entertainment industry, especially Indian cinema, is already doing this by bringing its brand of entertainment to the Indian diaspora in Europe and the Americas, Tharoor said.

During the question-and-answer period, Tharoor said although recent Oscar winner "Slumdog Millionaire" had flaws, it depicted poverty and slum life in a dignified and authentic way, which made the movie appealing to international filmgoers. (He discusses the film more here.)

Returning to the topic of India's soft power, Tharoor said the most interesting asset for India in Afghanistan was not diplomacy, but a hugely popular Indian television show that had come to dominate discussions of family issues in Afghanistan. He recalled Reuters reporting that robbers in Mazar-i-Sharif had stripped a vehicle of its wheels and mirrors during the time the serial was telecast, and written on the car, in an allusion to the show's heroine, "Tulsi Zindabad" (Long live Tulsi).

"That's soft power, and India does not have to thank the government or charge the taxpayer for its exercise," said Tharoor.

But Tharoor did say that soft power was credible only if a country had hard power as well.

"A jihadi who enjoys a Bollywood movie will have no compunction about setting off a bomb in Mumbai, and the U.S. has already learned that the perpetrators of 9/11 ate their last dinner at a MacDonald's," Tharoor said, adding, "To counter the terrorist threat, there is no substitute for hard power. But there can be a complement to it."

Where soft power works is in attracting enough goodwill from ordinary people to reduce the sources of support and succor that the terrorists enjoy, and without which they cannot function.

Speaking about the economy, Tharoor quoted a 2003 forecast report by Goldman Sachs that predicted Brazil, Russia, India and China would become powerful economic contenders in the global economy by 2050. Though the current economic crisis has dampened some of the expectations in that report, Tharoor said both China and India are undergoing profound economic transformation.

Now that China has become India's biggest trade partner, the nations' destinies are increasingly intertwined. China's dominant manufacturing sector and India's advanced software industry complement each other. (Tharoor talks more about India and China in this interview.)

"It has become fashionable to speak of China and India in the same breath. Some even speak of Chindia, as if the two are joined at the hips in the international imagination," said Tharoor.  

But he said there was a distinction in the two nations' paths to economic power. "Individuals drive economic growth in India's democracy, while the centralized Chinese government determines the path of China's economic development," he said.

Tharoor spoke to a group of students and professors as part of USC's Center on Public Diplomacy's Distinguished Speaker Series. Titled "The Public Diplomacy of the Emerging Great Powers," Tharoor's talk was based on his recent book "The Elephant, the Tiger, and the Cell Phone."