Gurumurthy Says Globalisation Has Collapsed, Calls Rise of Economic Nationalism India’s Moment

Republic Media Network hosted the fifth edition of the India Economic Summit on November 28, 2025, at its state-of-the-art headquarters in Noida — recognised as Asia’s largest news centre. The 2025 edition, themed “India’s Global Moment,” spotlighted the country’s expanding economic weight, the opportunities emerging across sectors, and the long-term ambition of transforming India into a $30–40 trillion economy by 2047.

Addressing the gathering, veteran commentator and economist S. Gurumurthy traced the long arc of India’s economic thinking and how ideas once dismissed at home now find global acceptance. Recalling his days leading the Swadeshi movement in the 1990s, he noted that advocating economic self-reliance was then seen as outdated, even regressive. “To talk about Swadeshi was a demeaning affair,” he said, highlighting how he was often the lone voice challenging the sweeping embrace of globalisation at a time when it was treated as an unquestionable doctrine.

Gurumurthy observed that the global narrative in the 1990s revolved around the supremacy of the Western economic order, with the US shaping both ideology and policy. The world, he said, assumed globalisation was the “American state model” and followed it unquestioningly. Speaking to students even then, he warned that globalisation was inherently unsustainable because it depended on the impossible notion of a global government and a global order controlled by one power.

He pointed out that the very ideas he argued for three decades ago — economic nationalism, strategic self-reliance, and diversified supply chains — are now being openly embraced across the world, including by the US. “Trump’s MAGA is the first major admission of the failure of globalisation,” he said, adding that the global order founded on Western supremacy “has collapsed.”

Gurumurthy noted that nations today are recalibrating their economic priorities around national security, resilience, and domestic capabilities. He said this shift is visible in policy moves across the US, China, and the European Union, driven by geopolitical frictions and supply-chain vulnerabilities. Looking ahead, he projected a dramatically altered global hierarchy: “By 2050 China will be the number one economy. The US and India are neck-to-neck for the second position.”

Swaminathan Gurumurthy (born 1949) is the current editor of the Tamil political weekly magazine Thuglak. Additionally, Gurumurthy serves as a part-time director on the central board of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI). He is a lawyer as well as an activist.

The India Economic Summit 2025 is proudly presented by TVS Motor Company. This event is Co-Powered by Adani Group, and Nippon India Mutual Fund, whilst being held in association with Ravin Group, Bhutani Infra and ProstarM. The special partner for this summit is Engineers India Limited (EIL), and the state partner being Haryana Government.