A New Foreign Policy For India: The Modi
Doctrine
A book of foreign policy essays, by a clutch 0f eminent
diplomats and analysts, was released on the evening of the 13th of
August, by Union External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj.
In front of a packed hall at New Delhi’s India
International Centre (IIC), speaker after speaker boldly announced the arrival
of a new approach to India’s foreign policy, calling it: The Modi Doctrine.
This book is amongst the first serious attempts to review
the direction India is now taking to pursue its ‘enlightened self-interest’,
after a prolonged spell spent under a Nehruvian world-view, and suffering its
resultant hangover.
This, under successive Congress/UPA regimes, replete with
its peculiar prejudices and conceits. These did not often serve the country and
its interests very well, as is increasingly being pointed out in hindsight, but,
as long as the same party remained in power, all mistakes and missed opportunities were skilfully brushed under
the carpet.
The results, of a more urgent engagement with the world
than ever seen before in Indian diplomacy, led by the prime minister in person,
are beginning to show already, within the 25 months this government has been in
power.
So much so, that it may call for a corresponding
make-over in the ways and means of the foreign-service bureaucracy, in order to
cope with Modi’s blistering pace.
The momentum of the Modi government in the foreign
affairs space has been unmistakeable, right from the swearing-in ceremony in
May 2014, with almost all SAARC heads of government in attendance.
Both the Prime Minister and the External Affairs Minister
have visited nearly 150 countries since, meeting heads of state/government,
business, industry, the Indian diaspora, and high officialdom in each place,
rekindling many dormant relationships.
They have also taken much greater notice of the ordinary
Indian abroad, in need of help, succour or rescue, recognising their yeoman
contribution towards India’s foreign exchange reserves and balance of payments.
Together with the MEA’s professional diplomats, they have
built a broad consensus against Islamic terrorism, helped in part by the
constant depredations of the terrorists, in many countries around the globe.
They have also listened, learned and discussed, while
putting India’s aspirations forward in the comity of nations, urging many to Make
in India, and participate in the modernisation of its infrastructure.
This has resulted in quite a few concrete commercial and
manufacturing/infrastructure building advances, and diplomatic breakthroughs.
India’s membership in the influential Missile Technology Control regime (MTCR)
is a case in point.
And there is a much
admired emerging military and strategic alliance with the United States/Israel.
This, without sacrificing the long-standing and strong
ties with Russia.
Logjams in terms of nuclear fuel from Canada and
Australia have been cleared, and Canadian uranium has begun to flow to Indian
reactors. Australia too is expected to commence supplies soon.
While China has blocked India’s inclusion into the NSG, its own troubles on its claims in the
South-China Sea, turned down by the Hague, and the liabilities of supporting
two delinquent, pariah, mostly insolvent allies, Pakistan and North Korea, may prove too
onerous going forward.
Meanwhile, the other four members of the United Nations Security
Council (UNSC), are far more energised about India’s inclusion as a permanent
member, facing up to geopolitical realities and threats today, posed mostly by
China’s global ambitions.
Closer home, India has forged close links with
Afghanistan and Iran, with a presence at Chabahar, Iran, a heartbeat away from
Gwadar in Balochistan.
It has also balanced its relationship with China, despite
border tensions. And also with Pakistan’s erstwhile supporters : Saudi Arabia,
Qatar, and the UAE, helped appreciably by a more or less permanent crash in
petroleum prices.
Other substantial initiatives have fructified with Japan,
Thailand, Vietnam, Singapore.
We now have warmer ties with Australia, France, Germany,
and with Brexit reduced Britain.
There are also growing possibilities with
African countries such as Madagascar, Nigeria, Kenya, South Africa, and others
in the BRICS and G-20 formations.
Some parts of SAARC
and the immediate neighbourhood, have responded to our overtures, with
Bangladesh, Bhutan and Myanmar, showing bold new promise by way of greater
trade engagement, strategic cooperation, road, rail, maritime and gas-pipeline links.
On the converse side, after being plagued by cross-border
terrorism from Pakistan for decades, the Modi government has decided, at last,
to challenge the very foundations of the existing non-functional matrix.
From being primly on the defensive, India has now decided
to take the battle into the enemy camp. Its mint-fresh approach is to question
Pakistan’s illegal occupation in 1947-48 of POK/Gilgit-Baltistan, and
Balochistan.
These places, forcibly occupied then, are still restive.
In addition Pakistan’s NWFP, bordering Afghanistan, and even Sind, the bastion
of the once powerful Bhuttos, are not happy under blatant Punjabi domination.
Pakistan has resorted to increasingly bloody repression,
Sunni terrorist attacks, and human rights abuses, in all three out of its four
remaining provinces, in a foolish bid to wipe out its 20% Shia minority.
And it also routinely resorts to rigged elections, the
subject of the latest uproar in PoK.
In the hope of breaking India’s resolve, Pakistan has
been sharply ratcheting up its provocations in the Kashmir Valley, hoping to
radicalise the native population.
India, fed up with Pakistan’s nefarious designs, has decided
to go on the offensive, after years of trying to play it with a straight bat.
Part of the softer UPA approach to the extremists in the
Valley, was also influenced by its need to pander to its Muslim vote banks
elsewhere, most notably in infiltrator infested Assam.
But Assam, including its Muslim minority, has recently thrown
out the Congress, and the majority moderate element in the Kashmir Valley also
wants no truck with Pakistan.
India’s new strategy, long advocated by National Security
Adviser (NSA) Ajit Doval, is to begin a process of championing the liberation
movements in PoK/Gilgit-Baltistan and Balochistan.
This, to the absolute joy of the resistance movements there,
as well as their articulate exiles abroad.
China, probably taken by surprise so far, may however not
be over keen to wade into the upcoming mess. It will probably also rethink its
major investments in Pakistan under the circumstances.
Pakistan,
identified as the terrorist factory to the world, is not very popular anywhere
now, and has lost its strategic value to America. That leaves China, which has
its own isolation and internal pressures to consider, with a significantly
slower economy.
Will Pakistan, which declared the liberation of the
Kashmir Valley as its 70th independence day objective, drop its belligerence?
Perhaps not, even though it is likely to
break-up without proactive Chinese support, its nuclear weapons status
notwithstanding.
For: The Pioneer
(1,097 words)
August 15th, 2016
Gautam Mukherjee
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