Indian Army Chief General Upendra Dwivedi spoke on Tuesday at a seminar called “Security to Prosperity: Smart Power for Sustained National Growth”, held by the Centre for Land Warfare Studies (CLAWS). He said the world is becoming more unclear and tense, and that “world around us is sending a more complex signal— disorder, distrust, and dichotomy in alliances”. He also said that power politics is still active, and now it is being used to shape prosperity in the world.
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What “Smart Power” means?
Gen Dwivedi pointed to the idea of smart power, which was popularised by Joseph Nye. In simple terms, it means using both hard power and soft power together. The Army chief said India should use its national strength with wisdom so it can protect peace, support growth, and shape the world in its favour. He also said, “I use the word ‘SMART’, the acronym not as a management construct, but a living framework for how we must think, prepare, and act in the world we now confront under the umbrella of the new normal of hard power,”.
He broke the word SMART into five parts. The S stands for statecraft. The M stands for manufacturing depth. The A stands for accelerating innovation. The R stands for resilience. The T stands for technology primacy. He said a country must handle diplomacy, information, military strength, and economic tools in a careful and joined-up way. He also warned that if a nation cannot make what it needs, it may slowly lose the power to choose its own future.
Why manufacturing and innovation
The Army chief said India must build stronger industry and faster innovation at home. He linked this to the Prime Minister’s call for jointness, self-reliance, and innovation. In his words, “We must not merely absorb emerging technologies. We must indigenise, operationalise, and lead in them,”. He said the country must not just buy new technology. It must learn it, build it, and lead in it too.
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Gen Dwivedi said Operation Sindoor was the clearest example of smart power working in real life. Reports from the seminar say he described it as a carefully planned response where military action, information control, diplomatic messaging, and economic resolve all worked together as one national act. He said India gave the world a “partial answer” to the smart power question earlier, and Operation Sindoor showed the full idea more clearly.
