"India's current foreign policy marks significant qualitative shifts from that of the previous regimes." Discuss. (UPSC CSE Mains 2018 - Political Science and International Relations, Paper 2)
India is well known for that fact that its Foreign Policy doesn’t change much with changing of the government. Indian Foreign policy in that regarding is different from the U.S. or U.K. foreign policy outlook where the change of guards from Republican to Democrats (vice-versa) or Conservative to Labour respectively changes the overall foreign policy outlook of the nation. Instead, India has some core ideas and certain set agendas, till now every government aspires to achieve them. Certainly, the path to achieving the agendas somewhat change for example the current Prime Minister believes in personal diplomacy than the previous Prime Minister. In a way, this is something which can be explained best by the behaviourist approach to international relations. The recent informal summit between Modi and Xi Jinping in China and Modi and Putin in Russia are an example of this.
Few changes which are visible in Foreign Policy initiatives to achieve the preset agendas:
- India has become more assertive on international platorms. For example Prime Minister personal out reach to China, Israel and even Pakistan. India also expanded the scope of its engagement with East and Southeast Asia in a year when India and ASEAN observed 25 years of their Dialogue Partnership, 15 years of summit-level interaction and five years of strategic partnership this year. India publicly and vigorously supported freedom of navigation and access to resources in the South China Sea in accordance with principles of international law, including the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.
- In its immediate neighbourhood, New Delhi followed a two-pronged policy. On the one hand, it continued its high-decibel campaign to marginalise Pakistan by repeatedly underscoring the pernicious nature of the terror threat emanating from that country. On the other hand, it started an ambitious undertaking of re-imagining its strategic geography by linking itself more closely with the wider Bay of Bengal community. The Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC) and the Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal (BBIN) Initiative are being revived by New Delhi’s newfound interest. India has taken up the initiative in Afghanistan while using its Soft power tools to connect with the Afghan people. Through participating in Security exercise like Malabar Exercise where along with India, Japan, U.S.A. and Australia participated, India again asserted its presence in the Indian Ocean. It was India’s diplomatic winning that the U.S. renamed its Pacific command Indo-pacific command, this will further assert India’s presence in the region where otherwise China is having Hegemonic aspirations.
- India undertook measures to gather support for its membership of NSG, MTCR, Wassenaar Agreement and Australia group. Except NSG India has been able to receive membership of rest three control regimes and soon it will gather the support of NSG too.
- On Cultural level too, India has taken steps like Getting unanimous support from UNGA for declaring June 21st as Yoga day. This adds another instrument to propagate Indian ideas and way to life to the whole world. Steps have been taken to increase the number of countries to allow visa-free travel to Indians.
- On trade side - The Indian government is assertively showcasing itself to the countries with large coffers in the form of Sovereign funds like U.A.E, Japan and Saudi Arabia, etc.
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