The Hindu Business Line : Economic interests and foreign policy

Based on the essay on India's foreign policy over five decades available on the Web site of the Indian Embassy, Washington D.C., the following is a select list of landmarks in the evolution of our foreign policy.

Policy evolution

India was a founder-member of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), which apparently served the country well during the Cold War era. "In recent years, after the end of the Cold War, our foreign policy has been focused on strengthening the Movement by redefining its priorities in keeping with the changing times."

Of major import is the relationship with our immediate and close neighbours. The following are especially noteworthy: India's role in the liberation of Bangladesh; India helping (in 1988) to preserve the integrity of the Maldives by assisting in preventing an attempted takeover by armed mercenaries; a landmark Treaty with Bangladesh on the sharing of Ganga waters; collaboration projects with Bhutan and Nepal; India consistently pursuing a policy seeking to improve relations with Pakistan; and the key role India played in SAARC and SAFTA. Strong relationships were also emphasised with the nations of Africa, America, Europe and the then USSR, along with an active Indian role in the UN and its operations.

Close relations with the Gulf countries were of political and strategic importance. The region is a major market for Indian exports and employs several million Indian workers.

A relatively more recent development is India's `Look East' policy and developing strong economic links with the members of the Association of South-East Asian Nations (Asean).

Enlightened self-interest

Most discourses on Indian foreign policy, especially until the late 1980s and the early 1990s, thought the approach to be governed by enlightened self-interest. Foreign policy was woven around the economic and national preoccupations of those times — a relatively closed economy, central planning, shying away from foreign investment and a strong bond with China (for a while), the former USSR and low income countries in general and those with a socialist or communist bent in particular. Those bonds also meant a general distaste for the pure capitalism of the United States and its friends.

While the public posture is one of anti-capitalism, despite the encouragement given to private monopolies or oligopolies, private positions were different. In fact, the US and the UK are at the stage where an individual's success has to be proven in any occupation, be it philosophy (including being gurus), science, engineering, social sciences or music.

Thanks to the evolution of the IT industry in the last two decades, many talented and enterprising men and women and even children of a lesser God in large numbers are now able to prove their worth — this time on Indian soil with global recognition as well as in the US.

Friends (who are usually well informed) tell the writer that there are many people's leaders without any party affiliation (with an agenda inclusive of agitation sans violence) and those in the Communist top brass (with a routine of anti-capitalist rhetoric) whose children are now in the US, working, learning and living.

These fortunate ones are, of course, well shielded from the agitations and bandhs, destroying a day's wage for some and the day's gross domestic product for all. Being a very free country, one is permitted to actively work for a socialist or even a revolutionary agenda for this country and let his or her children enjoy the benefits of capitalist opulence.

The country had to wait until now to see a movement towards some semblance of unity in the private and public posturing in our relations with the US. The reference here is only in part to the recent India-US nuclear deal, which is important and significant, for, it has both the prongs of the US undertaking in regard to supply of nuclear fuel and India being free to develop nuclear weapons.

The very deal on the nuclear front may be taken as an indicator of a change for the better, with both countries responding to the new global order comprising a single superpower, global desire for peace and prosperity, populous China and India emerging as economic power houses, India proving its stability via freedom over the past six decades, and the highly visible integration of economies around the world, bilaterally and multilaterally.

Enlightened self-interest continues to be the cornerstone of foreign policy, except that its context and content have changed dramatically in India and elsewhere since the late 1980s and the early 1990s.

Ends justify means

If some think that the nuclear deal is actually one of a subservient India saying yes to the mighty US and thus compromising the nation's independence on policy, superficially the allegation is in the realm of the possible. "They will ask you a lot after giving this" contention needs to be corrected and countered with the understanding that India is not China and no leader can make promises that a government after the next general election cannot keep.

Most notably in regard to the opening up of the country to foreign (US) investment and trade, while India has missed the bus several times in the past compared to China, there is still room within the context of an expanding global economy and expanding US and Indian economies. We need not miss the bus now or in the future, especially when investors from the US and elsewhere look for diversification of supply sources, and large markets outside of China.

If the rate of economic growth in India can be pushed up in a sustained way, if Indians across a wide skill spectrum get jobs at home and abroad, if Indian suppliers and brands are linked to the global market-place via US investments, what more should one look for? Should we celebrate our independent foreign policy at the cost of investment, jobs and income growth?

For many decades, we celebrated our self-sufficiency and independent economic and foreign policy by allowing highly protected industries turn out products for the impoverished domestic market that refused to grow. Then we learnt the need to change tack and we did so from the late 1980s and the early 1990s. We need jobs for the millions who are investing much in education.

Foreign policy, like monetary or fiscal policy, should be seen as the means for the ultimate end of jobs for the millions, not jobs that are `given' as part of a compassionate scheme but jobs that are earned through capabilities, recognised by national and international enterprises.

Rhetoric can never serve the way reason does; language seldom helps the way logic does.

Cool and calculated thinking on the costs and benefits is needed before jumping onto the bandwagon of opposing the US for the sake of opposing or rolling out the red carpet simply because the other side appears remotely red.

Our international relations with countries as well as organisations must be governed by humanitarian considerations in general and by raising the single most important question: What does it mean to the welfare of my people?

(The author, formerly with the National University of Singapore and the World Bank, is Professor Emeritus, GITAM Institute of Foreign Trade, Visakhapatnam. He can be reached at bhanoji@gmail.com)

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