When Gunnar Myrdal coined the term “soft state” in his 1968 classic Asian Drama, he might not have had the foresight on where the phrase would go. Myrdal had used it in a different sense for South Asian countries but in following decades, it was invoked in India to describe a wide range of entrenched infirmities in state capacity and, more significantly, in state response. At the beginning of the current century, opinion pieces in Indian newspapers and seminars in university campuses were grappling with the common question: how soft is the Indian state?

The immediate triggers were manifold. The more important ones for those times were India’s late response to Kargil infiltration by Pakistani troops and terrorists in the final Indian summer of the 20th century; public pressure pushing the government to agree to the release of terrorists in a deal with hijackers of an Indian Airlines plane in the last week of December 1999; and the central government’s sudden invitation to the Jammu & Kashmir Chief Minister after rejecting his government’s problematic autonomy resolution in mid-2000. Later that decade, the Indian government’s arguably rudderless response to a number of attacks by Pakistani terror groups in Indian cities, including local train blasts in Mumbai and the 26/11 attack, reinforced anxieties about the Indian state’s soft underbelly.

Myrdal had seen the soft nature of state in the developing world, particularly in India, because of the low capacity of the state in implementing economic policies and programmes, law enforcement, and the rather limited expectations it had of citizens following rules. Interestingly, this restricted state capacity presents a paradox when seen with another aspect of the Indian state. Scholars like Princeton-based Professor Atul Kohli have talked about the limited ability of the Indian state to act despite immense expansion in its authority. The spawning of spheres of state control in third world countries like India is what Hamza Alvi referred to as “overdeveloped state”. So the soft nature of the Indian state is identifiable more in what it does, rather than what it can do.

Over decades, particularly since the 1980s, the perception of the Indian state being soft has definitely been broadened to mean how ineffective it has been in dealing with threats to internal and external security. In fact, that has become its main connotation, rather than the one Myrdal employed.

Before the approach of the Indian state to Pakistan-sponsored jihadi terror violence in India from the 1990s onward, the weak calibrations of the Indian state was perceived through its response to insurgency-inspired violent cycle in Assam and Punjab of the 1980s. However, it was the terror violence in major urban centres of India—and the evident ineffectiveness of the Indian state in dealing with it—that made anxieties about the state response deeply entrenched in public psyche.

Despite all cynicism about the state apparatus and accepting its incompetence and corruption as extensions of the society they inhabit, Indians have generally been appreciative of a tough approach on matters of security and national defence. Case in point is even at a very micro level of internal security, such as a district, a large degree of popularity is enjoyed by superintendents of police leading a tough crackdown on crime in that district.

In the context of the forthcoming Lok Sabha elections, the role of the post-Pulwama response in shaping behaviour may not be as clear as it seems. If it has to count as a significant factor, the Narendra Modi government’s response in the form of the Balakot air strikes would be gauged on the scale of its distance from the soft-state frame. In the realm of popular perceptions, it’s unsure where it stands. There was always a chance that subsequent quick military de-escalation might make it a captive of the soft state approach after taking a step towards firm response.

With a neighbour using terrorism and proxy low intensity war as instruments of foreign policy, diplomatic routes haven’t worked beyond a short period in the last three decades. The zero sum games of parleys show India punching below its weight and don’t inspire much confidence. The domestic drivers of terror networks in Pakistan, which led to a major attack like in Pulwama, aren’t going to vanish. In fact, there are reasons why they showed a sense of urgency in escalating violence in Jammu & Kashmir.

International terrorism observers see it an answer that Pakistan’s International Services Intelligence (ISI) was trying to give to external jihadi groups like Al-Qaeda and Islamic State, that the Pakistani state retains its high stake in the Kashmir cause through its homegrown terror groups like the Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM). It’s also believed that following US President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw American troops from Afghanistan, Pakistan wants the Tehrik-i-Taliban to either go to Afghanistan and fight Afghanistan’s government forces, or join JeM terrorist activities in Jammu & Kashmir—or be eliminated by Pakistan Army. All this, analysts argue, made a major attack on Indian soil inevitable.

If the designs of hostile state and non-state actors are such, a country of India’s military and economic strength, and global power aspirations, would be expected to make a decisive point of departure from its soft-state roadmap. Realist international politics entails that power to punish the rogue behaviour of hostile countries is one of the key expectations from aspirants of global power. More significantly, the security of territory and people is one of the minimum guarantees that citizens seek from the state.

An assessment, following heightened security anxieties and de-escalation, could again bring the question of whether India recoiled to a soft state mode. This may still worry Prime Minister Narendra Modi as he eyes an early lead in the competitive claims on national security. If Balakot wasn’t enough to remove India’s soft state label in popular perception, he’ll be forced to recalibrate his options in the weeks to come. In that case, the Opposition parties, having equally contributed to India’s persistence with a soft-state approach when in office, would be hoping that he runs out of time.