New Delhi's foreign policies toward China and Pakistan can be optimal only if we make adjustment to the new templates that have appeared in world politics in the recent years
As the curtain comes down on the Narendra Modi government, the remains of the day in the foreign policy arena are India's dangerous standoff with Pakistan and its uneasy co-existence with China. Although the Modi government didn't depart seriously from the overall foreign policy trajectory of the UPA government, a sense of failure remains. This must be attributed to certain extraneous factors that impinged on the unthinking foreign policy consensus among the Indian elite regarding China and Pakistan.
Much of Indian diplomacy through the past five-year period prioritised Prime Minister Modi's own political persona and that egotistic journey, which began at Madison Square Garden in New York, had a surreal air. Apparently, Modi regarded life as statesman as a metaphor for his domestic politics. The only plausible explanation can be that Modi felt a constant urge to be seen as dynamic and 'muscular'. In this pointless endeavour, much time and resources were lost and the foreign policy establishment often got sidelined. Populism is antithetical to productive diplomacy.
Narendra Modi and Nawaz Sharif. Pic/AFP
Unsurprisingly, contradictions appeared in India's relations with Pakistan and China. The scope for grandstanding is minimal in such complex relationships. Apropos Pakistan, a profound contradiction appeared insofar as dialogue with that country is basically incompatible with the Hindutva ideology. Besides, there was the crackdown in Jammu & Kashmir and the government's obduracy that talks with Pakistan cannot happen along with terrorism. Meanwhile, the urge to 'give back to Pakistan in the same coin' triggered a lethal turf war in Afghanistan, which complicated matters further.
The probability is that such attacks as in Pulwama will happen again, if Delhi is perceived as playing a 'spoiler's role' in the Afghan endgame, which is a high-stakes project for Pakistan. The Afghan endgame has made it impossible to 'isolate' Pakistan. Thus, engagement with Pakistan is not only imperative but unavoidable. However, engagement to what end? The absence of a Kashmir policy, the Hindutva ideology's 'majoritarianism' and the parallel doctrine of Hindu Rashtra, BJP's anti-Muslim electoral politics - all this has created a Gordian knot.
In comparison, China is neither an emotive issue nor an electoral issue in Indian politics. The challenge in the China policy lies in the adjustments India has to make in the changing regional and international milieu. No doubt, the past 5 years witnessed big shifts in world politics devolving upon China's rise and its emergence as the principal driver of growth in the world economy. Simply put, India's adjustment to these shifts remains insufficient. Thus, the relations with China still remain in a 'competition-cum-cooperation' mode as in the UPA era, and a wrong notion gained ground also in regard of Pakistan - that each passing day adds to India's superiority over that country. Wrong notions engender warped thinking.
True, both India and China have roughly the same population, similar average unemployment rates and current GDP growth rates that are among the highest in the world. But the similarity ends there. China's economy is almost five times larger than India's. In GDP per capita terms, China's figure has ballooned to $8,827 by 2017 while India's stands at mere $1,942. In the annual World Economic Forum Global Competitiveness Report, India lags China in every infrastructure category. Indeed, both countries are today in transition and both have prospered. Having said that, it is a myth that India is in competition with China's unique and remarkably successful combination of politics, people and strategy.
Modi's landmark keynote address at the Shangri La Dialogue in Singapore last June, a month after the Wuhan summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping, underscored that he understands this geopolitical reality. Beijing had signalled high expectations in 2014 that a paradigm shift in Sino-Indian relations might be possible under Modi's strong leadership. But the first three years of Modi government instead turned out to be a chronicle of wasted time. Nonetheless, amidst the heightened tensions in India-Pakistan relations following the Pulwama attack, the Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi still announced a new manufacturing unit in Chennai - a one million square feet facility that boosts production capacity to three phones per second and enhances the value sourced locally from 95 per cent to 99 per cent.
Suffice to say, India's foreign policies toward China and Pakistan can be optimal only if we make adjustment to the new templates that have appeared in world politics in the recent years. For a start, in the backdrop of the US retrenchment, India's 'unipolar predicament' makes no sense. Again, India viewed the deepening Sino-Russian entente with unease. The potential to leverage it for improvement of its relations with China remains unexplored. Most important, we failed to grasp that the Sino-American rivalry involves two economies that are closely integrated both with each other and with the rest of the world, and their most decisive battles will thus be fought on the economic front (trade, technology, and investment), rather than in the disputed waters of South China Sea. Trump already seems to be having second thoughts about further escalation in the "trade war" due to the costs of an economic decoupling from China.
In such a matrix, India should factor in that a winning strategy toward China involves neither ideology nor weaponry but geo-economics. For example, 5G is set to become a defining moment in India-China relations. India should resist the US pressure to keep Huawei – the global leader in next-generation 5G mobile technology – out of its wireless communication networks.
Equally, unthinking consensus in the Indian opinion prevented a creative approach to the Belt & Road Initiative, which carries Xi's imprimatur. It emanated out of the militarisation of our foreign policies, a UPA-II legacy. Modi's economic agenda - devolving upon the manufacturing industry and infrastructure development - would have advanced phenomenally if only India had adopted a resilient and pragmatic approach as Japan and Italy have done. Hopefully, if Modi gets re-elected, it may herald an upward trajectory in India-China relations with seamless possibilities.
The writer is a former diplomat. Send your feedback to mailbag@mid-day.com The views expressed in this column are the individuals and do not represent those of the paper
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