Prelims: Current events of international importance, G20, BIMSTEC, BRICS, BASIC etc etc.
Mains GS Paper II: Bilateral, regional and global grouping and agreements involving India or affecting India’s interests.
ARTICLE HIGHLIGHTS
- The External Affairs Minister said that India can play a “stabilizing” and “bridging” role, at a time when the world no longer offers an “optimistic picture”, is fascinating.
- Pax Indica: India and the World in the 21st Century-Shashi Tharoor
INSIGHTS ON THE ISSUE
Context
Multilateralism:
- It refers to a set of governing arrangements of fundamental rules, principles, and institutions among nations.
- The United Nations (UN) is an example of a multilateral international institution which aims at making a sustainable and inclusive multilateral global order.
Role of multilateral global order:
What makes a country a world leader?
- Joseph Nye: Power of attraction means much more than the force of arms or economic muscle in wielding influence in the world.
- Conventional analyses of any country’s stature in the world: It relies on the all-too-familiar economic and hard-power assumptions.
- It is a transformation of the terms of global exchange and the way countries adapt to the new international, interlinked landscape that will shape their future role and direction.
Achievements by India:
- Population: India is on course to top the charts, overtaking China as the world’s most populous country next year
- Military strength: India has the world’s fourth-strongest army
- Nuclear capacity: India’s status having been made clear in 1998(formally recognised in the India-U.S. nuclear deal)
- Economic development: India is already the world’s third largest economy in PPP (purchasing-power parity)
What should be the present foreign policy of India?
- The ultimate purpose of any country’s foreign policy: It is to promote the security and well-being of its own citizens.
- India needs to define a new role that depends on our understanding of the way the world is.
- India has to work through multiple networks: which will sometimes overlap with each other with common memberships, and sometimes be distinct.
How does India maintain multilateralism?
- RIC: India meets annually with his Russian and Chinese counterparts in the trilateral RIC
- BRICS: India adds Brazil and South Africa in BRICS
- IBSA: India subtracts both Russia and China in IBSA, South-South cooperation
- BASIC: India retains China but excludes Russia in BASIC
Present global challenges that need to be addressed:
Way Forward
- Multipolar world: India has to play a critical role in the cooperative networked system in our multi-polar world.
- Pax Indica: India’s role in shaping the emerging global “network” which would define international relations and world politics in the 21st century.
- World leadership: India should become an active participant in a world that is no longer defined by parameters such as “superpowers” or “great powers” exercising “world leadership”.
- India belongs both to the non-aligned movement: which reflects its experience of colonialism, and the community of democracies.
- It reflects its 75 years of experience as a democracy alongside many of the countries it rails against in the non-aligned movement.
- India is a leading light of the global “trade union” of developing countries: The G-77 (Group of 77), and also of the global macro-economic “management”, the G-20 (whose presidency India has just assumed).
- India plays an influential role: Both in the United Nations and in the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) that has only its seven neighbors.
- Vision for world: India is in a position to graduate from a focus limited to own sovereign autonomy to exercising a vision of responsibility on the world stage
- from a post-colonial concern with self-protection to a new role participating in the making of global rules and even playing a role in imposing them.
QUESTION FOR PRACTICE
Q. The long sustained image of India as a leader of the oppressed and marginalized nations has disappeared on account of its new found role in the emerging global order.’ Elaborate(UPSC 2019) (200 WORDS, 10 MARKS)
