Round The World

New Delhi, 17 January 2025

Enriching India’s Foreign Policy

CREATING NEW STRUCTURES

By Prof.(Dr) D.K.Giri

(Secy. General, Association for Democratic Socialism) 

Recently, External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar urged the non-government strategic community to pull themselves up by their bootstraps to contribute to India’s external relations through Track-II diplomacy or even overtake the Track-I. Jaishankar regretted that the Track-II has sadly fallen behind. A welcome statement indeed coming from the Foreign Minister himself. 

Some of us have long argued that the foreign policy making in India has been an elite exercise as the non-governmental agencies, businesses, or civil society had marginal, peripheral role or no contribution to it. In a democracy, that does not reflect the national opinion or even national interest. In fact, to be more precise, the foreign policy has been conducted only by the party in power and the Opposition was not fully consulted. The logic of foreign policy making is based on national interest. But the question is, who defines the national interest; the ruling party, the foreign ministry or the PMO. It should ideally as well as practically be determined by the country. This structural question needs to be debated. 

However, admittedly, to make the foreign policy making broad-based, it has to be on priority in public discourses and electoral campaigns. Thankfully, the public is getting involved in foreign policy issues as seen in the social media, proliferation of newspaper articles and television debates.

In this piece, the attempt is topoint to a few new structures that need to be created or activated to augment India’s foreign policy. The foremost structure in Track-II is cultural diplomacy. Culture is decidedly stronger than religion, politics or economy. It is a practice and a mindset built over years, decades, and millennia. It is demonstrated by people who embody and embrace it. Cultural diplomacy is conducted through people visiting or interacting with citizens in another country. 

Diaspora is a good strategic asset in this regard. I wrote in this column, last week, about the role and contribution of diaspora in foreign policies. India’s diaspora, the largest in the world in current times, should be optimally harnessed. Also, India used to have friendship associations with most countries. They were quite active. One member, the India-Pakistan Friendship Association, which was promoting goodwill delegations to either country. Asma Jahangir from Pakistan, a lawyer and human rights activist was one prominent figure in this association. Former Economic and Political Weekly Journalist Gautam Navlakha, who was active in this forum has been in and out of jail on Bhima Koregaon case. This is, of course, another matter, as the Laws should take their course, despite so-called politicization of such cases. I was a part of India–Iraq Friendship Association, which folded up in the wake of Iraq war. Such associations need to be built or activated if they already exist. 

Economic diplomacy is another route to strengthen foreign policies and international relations. In fact, economic transactionalism has been the credo of many countries in recent times, and for India, since 1990s. Economic diplomacy in many cases precedes political relations as seen in the integration of the European Union. Trade, commercial, and economic integration happened since 1957 onwards, but the political union took place only in 1992.

There are agencies promoting Indian businesses across the world in a politically neutral format. In addition to the established business bodies like FICCI, CII, Assocham, PHD and others, there are newer but vibrant agencies like IETO – Indian Economic and Trade Organisation, which operates through its 11 trade councils across the world. It leads business delegations on average of two a month to all over the world in order to explore market opportunities. 

Having participated in many of their events in the presence of diplomats, entrepreneurs, traders, manufacturers and other stakeholders of international business, I could see that it is a facilitating Forum that is relentless and on constant move. Such activities and agencies should be encouraged by Government of India with timely and deserving facilitations. 

Conference diplomacy is an emerging area that should receive serious attention. After the successful conclusion of G-20, the entire world is looking at India for more such events. In Track-II, the RaisinaDialogue commencing in 2016, jointly by the Ministry of External Affairs and Observer Research Foundation (ORF) is receiving increasing response from across the world. 

India could be the hub of such dialogues, conferences on multiple themes in various state capitals of the country. Conferences, draw academics, policymaker, and influencers, from many parts of the world. The leading newspapers and TV channels do organise such events – leadership forums, literature festivals, celebration of India’s growth and development and so on. They should be done more and more and quite frequently. 

Think Tank diplomacy is another area that is less developed in India. Recently, a global think tank conference was organised in Delhi by an American think tank. Only a handful Think Tanks from India participated.  As such, there are not many Think Tanks in the largest populous country in the world, certainly not on India’s foreign policy. Also, there is a dearth of journals and periodical of world standard or great reach on India and the world. A new journal called “India’s world” has just been launched. The forgoing remark of Jaishankar was made at the launch of this journal. 

States diplomacy is an unexplored area in India’s foreign policy making. Although foreign policy, defense, energy, and communication, etc. are in the Center’s list and are the domain of Union Government, it will be imprudent to leave out the states in conduct of India’s international affairs. Foreign Heads of Governments do visit the states in pursuance of business and investment opportunities. But there is more that can be done. 

For instance, take the case of Odisha, a mineral-rich, land-surplus, large-coastline, big forest-cover, culture-strong, biggest tribal-population. Yet, it is less exposed to the international community. Since June 2014, as a majority BJP government came to power in the state of Odisha, and sent 20 BJP MPs out of 21, who propped up Modi’s third consecutive term, Odisha is showcased to the international community. It organised the 18th PBD conference from 8th to 10th January. This month itself, on 28th and 29th, an Investors’ Meet is taking place in Bhubaneswar. Odisha, being the leading contributor to Indian hockey, has become the host to international hockey championships. The point is each state or region should be encouraged and empowered to contribute to India’s international engagement. 

These structures are some of the pointers. There may be many others that can be explored to make them a part of Track-II diplomacy to uplift India’s foreign policy.---INFA 

(Copyright, India News & Feature Alliance)