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- History:
- Having recast many of India’s key bilateral relations, Modi now has an
opportunity to end the defensiveness that had crept into India’s
multilateralism in recent decades.
- 50s: India, under Jawaharlal Nehru,
punched way above its international weight at the UN on issues ranging
from human rights to nuclear arms control. India was not a permanent
member of the UNSC, but it had big ideas on governing the world.
- 60s: By the
1960s though, India’s multilateralism had degenerated into what Shashi Tharoor
called a “moralistic running commentary” on world affairs.
- 70s: As India’s
“third worldism” reached its peak in the 1970s, Delhi’s multilateralism
became increasingly dysfunctional.
- 80s 90s: India often acted against its own interests on the world stage. In
the 1970s and 1980s, Delhi opposed the very technologies that would
empower its people and improve its international leverage — for example,
direct broadcast satellites and transborder information flows — all in
the name of territorial sovereignty.
Delhi’s dysfunctional multilateralism was made more acute by the relative decline of India’s economic weight.
- The situation was only reversed in the 1990s, when India began to post
higher growth rates. That India’s reform era coincided with the end of
the Cold War, however, created political complications. The new hubris
in the West, that history had come to an end, was matched by the
conviction that supra-national institutions could replace the
traditional sovereign units of the global system and fix all problems in
the world through effective interventions.
- If the new Western rhetoric made India nervous about the internationalisation of the Kashmir
question, Delhi was constantly torn between the imperatives of economic
reform demanded by the new era of globalisation and limited domestic
support for structural change. The adaptation, therefore, was grudging
and incremental.
- The new realism guiding Indian diplomacy after the Cold War recognised
that an improved relationship with America was one instrument to fend
off various multilateral pressures. It rightly saw that Delhi could not
end the atomic apartheid against India through pious rhetoric on nuclear
disarmament and the claim that it had an “impeccable record” on
non-proliferation. -2005 deal
- But entrenched opposition to reform, barely concealed xenophobia on the
left and right of the political spectrum, and deep-rooted suspicion of
the West meant it was very difficult to overcome India’s defensive
approach to globalisation. As elsewhere on foreign policy, Modi has
signalled some interesting shifts in India’s multilateralism.
- New initiatives:
- After initially rejecting the Bali accord on food security, Modi
worked with Obama to find a mutually acceptable compromise.
- On climate
change, Modi has hinted at greater flexibility by underlining the
urgency of mitigating climate change and India’s commitment to
constructive outcomes at the Paris talks later this year.
- On internet
governance, Modi has moved India from an excessive state-centric
approach to “multistakeholderism” that recognises the role of the
private sector and civil society.
- These changes fit into Modi’s ambition of making India a “leading
power” on the global stage.
- Any substantive reorientation of India’s
multilateralism, however, must rest on three broad principles.
- The first is the recognition that multilateralism really matters for
India’s future growth and national security.
- India’s expanding economic
interdependence — trade is now nearly 50 per cent of the GDP — demands
that Delhi must actively shape the international environment by becoming
a rule-maker.
- Being a conscientious objector might have been
politically cute once, but it could be rather costly at the current
juncture.
- Second, India cannot treat multilateral diplomacy as a boutique
corner of the foreign office dispensing moral platitudes. It must be a
tool for the pursuit of India’s national interests as well as the
expression of its universalist ideals. Finding a better balance between
the two imperatives is the key to successful multilateralism.
- Third, Delhi cannot forget that multilateral negotiations are deeply
influenced by the nature of international power hierarchies.
- While it
must bargain hard, Delhi must also have the flexibility to make
reasonable compromises.
- Unlike in the past, India today has the economic
weight and the market size to negotiate effectively and generate
sensible outcomes that are in tune with its national interest as well as
global public good.
- Conclusion:
- The world is probably ready to accommodate India’s special interests
on such global issues as climate change and internet governance if Modi
moves Delhi down the path of pragmatic multilateralism.
- For the PM
though, the challenge is really at home, where getting the system to
reform itself or discard the inherited defensiveness has not been easy.
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