Restructuring India’s Neighbourhood Policy

IN NEWS:

• China hosted a high-level virtual meeting with Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, and Sri Lanka to build up “political consensus" in containing the covid-19 pandemic and boosting economic development. It is seen as China trying to make inroads into India's periphery.
• India’s foreign policy engagements with its neighbourhood is an active topic of debate now, especially in the context of “territorial disputes” with China and Nepal.

INDIA AND NEIGHBOURS:

• The broad geographic expanse of India’s neighbourhood covers the South Asian region, which is home to eight countries, and the Indian Ocean region.
• India’s neighbourhood policy has been through several phases:
  • Pre-colonial period: The phase under colonial times centred on ideas and slogans around anti-colonialism, anti-imperialism, anti-racism,
  • Post-colonial phase: India and its neighbours propelled ideas the ideas of non-alignment, “third worldism”, and “South-South cooperation”.
  • 1960s-1980s: India got involved in border conflicts with Pakistan & China, water sharing issues with Bangladesh, Tamilian issue with Sri Lanka and had to deal with persisting poor economic policies. Hence, its influence in the neighbourhood got marginalised.
  • Post 1991-2015: In the post-Cold War period, India set out to refashion its foreign policy through initiatives like the “Look East Policy” and “Gujral Doctrine” of 1996. The new policy premises began to provide an unprecedented attention to the neighbourhood, through increased trade relations, confidence building measures (CBMs), border agreements/treaties.
  • 2015-Present: India has been expanding its spheres of cooperation with the neighbors through the Act East policy. Act East Policy, launched in 2015, focuses on economic and security integration with countries of South East as well as East Asia.

WHY WE NEED A NEW NEIGHBOURHOOD POLICY:

• Changing global power architecture: The current COVID-19 pandemic is reshaping the global geopolitics and Asia is the center of this change. China’s aggressive actions and action of smaller countries are some of the indicators of a new geo-political situation emerging in the region.
• New areas of concerns with neighbours: As seen in Table 1, India is facing new matters of disputes which were absent a few years ago.  

Table 1: Emerging conflicts with neighbours

• Counter China’s aggressive growth: China is seeking to make strong inroads into the neighbourhood through its cheque book diplomacy measures such as Belt and Road initiative. Since COVID-19 is contracting the global economies, this strategy is expected to gain further momentum.
• Promote India’s internal growth: India today is arguably situated in the world’s least integrated region. As a result, India has become the third largest military spender in the world, after the US and China. But for India to attain its big power aspirations like $5 trillion economy by 2024, she has to cut down on the defence expenses and for this to happen, India need to ensure peace with its neighbours.
• Address the need of post pandemic world:  India is expected to play a critical role in the post pandemic world, particularly in offering an alternative manufacturing hub and diversification of global supply chain. For this to happen, India has to take a proactive stand and foster closer ties with regional powers like ASEAN.
• To strengthen Central and west Asian relations: The rise of Taliban will be a major hinderance to India’s central and west Asian ambitions. Also, with the upcoming Biden government in USA, the regional equations on matters such as Israel-Palestine and Iran-USA are expected to change. The existing policies need to be realigned to best suit India’s interests in the region.

WAY FORWARD:

India must craft a new neighbourhood policy in order to maintain its regional power status and to realise status transformation to the next level in the near future. A new neighbourhood policy needs to focus on:

• Diversifying its foreign policy attention on multiple powers (not only the US, but also Russia, the European Union, Africa and so on) in the global arena.
• Developing a stronger matrix of multilateralism and employing stronger diplomatic communications strategies.
• Ensuring proper backing of efforts by sufficient innovative hard power resources (like defence and economy) and the use of soft power strategies (propelling India’s democratic values and ideas).
• Revival of SAARC as a medium of cooperation among the countries.

PRACTICE QUESTION:

Q. “India must craft a new neighbourhood policy in order to accommodate the new regional realities”. Critically analyse?