How India Can Win Friends and Influence Nations
n a September 1946 radio broadcast, Jawaharlal Nehru singled out the US, Soviet Union and China as the three countries most relevant to India’s future. Historian Ramachandra Guha records that in 1947, speaking in the Constituent Assembly on how India hoped to be friends with both the US and the USSR, Nehru declared, “We lead ourselves.”
When India attained Independence, there was little doubt among its founding fathers on how the nation will lead. India would find its rightful place in the world by showing how numerous religions, languages, ethnic groups and communities can peacefully coexist and economically prosper without having to take sides in a polarised world. It was a nation that beat back colonialism with Gandhian non-violence. When it ushered in people’s rule, it was determined to marshal its diversity around the idea of India without compromising the principles of equality and freedom even when most outsiders did not give it a chance.
As it prepares to celebrate its 63rd year of Independence, the country remains a laboratory of social, economic and political experimentation within the framework of Parliamentary democracy. All three are works in progress but progress there is. India is the third fastest growing major economy. If it sustains its growth rate, the country will become the world’s largest economy after the US and China by 2040.
Social transformation has been slow but is now picking up pace with political action, positive discrimination and economic growth. It is a clear indication of that change that India’s president is a Hindu, its vice-president is a Muslim, the prime minister is a Sikh, its ruling party president is an Italian-born Christian and its most populous state is ruled by a dalit. It is also an indication of its political maturity that three varied coalitions have provided a relatively stable government in the past decade. Even an advanced country like Japan has had five prime ministers in the past four years.
ICRIER director Rajiv Kumar calls it a triple transition. “This is a huge, complex and expectedly a messy undertaking which purports to change in most fundamental manner the lives and livelihoods of a sixth of humanity,” he says. Kumar points out that countries such as China and Japan went through these transitions in a sequential order, which was more manageable, less complex and also less costly in social and economic terms.
Its hewing open an independent path for itself has in many ways helped India preserve its independence in its relationships with other nations too, and that is reflected in the country’s foreign policy over the years.
Largely, we have been able to ensure an independent identity for ourselves. We have managed to carve out an independent strategic space,” says Shyam Saran, former foreign secretary.
The country’s political class, since the time of Mahatma Gandhi and Nehru and its elite bureaucracy, including the diplomatic corps, has always had global leadership aspirations. This is clear in the organisation of the first Asian Relations Conference in New Delhi in 1947 and India’s leadership of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), which continues in some form even today. The country’s leaders — both politicians and, to a greater extent, senior bureaucrats — are strongly attracted to a role in the global arena as they see it as a continuum from the early days of India’s independence when it was clearly one of the spokespersons for the developing world, say ICRIER’s Rajiv Kumar and Mathew Joseph in a paper, ‘India and Global Governance’.
At last count, NAM had 118 members and 18 observer countries. Leadership of NAM also brought India to the forefront of the Group of 77 developing nations in various international forums such as the WTO. Often India appears to even trade national interest for leadership.
In WTO’s Uruguay Round, for instance, Indian negotiators until almost the very end took the position that India would not talk services and would not allow it to be on the agenda of the round. India’s own interest lay in the services sectors if these were opened up to private investment, given the country’s comparative advantage in highly trained manpower. Ultimately, the Indian position crumbled in the face of sustained pressure from OECD countries and the last minute desertion by major emerging economies. India’s strength in services has since been borne out. India appeared to adopt the anti-services position more to secure its leadership of G-77 than to serve its own interests. However, it is a strategic balance that needs to be maintained.
“It is the leadership of developing countries that has given us political weight and influence,” says Shyam Saran.
Single Page View
