Hafizzz
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What is Indias foreign policy agenda?
What is India’s foreign policy agenda? - Indian Punchline
I wrote in the morning asking what is Indias foreign policy agenda. We seem to be lurching like morons from one act to another with no real agenda. During May-September, since the Prime Ministers celebrated visit to Africa till his appearance at the UN General Assembly session in New York, India championed the developing world and decried the inequities of the international system.
The PMs visit to Dhaka hinted at an awakening that Indias destiny lies in its neighbourhood and not with the Euro-Atlantic community. But by October the mandarins nosedived. (The release of the Aspen report was the turning point, rehashing a whole lot of neoconservative idiocies.) They abandoned what they were pursuing and swerved to giving a new cutting edge to our celebrated Look East policy, giving it an anti-China orientation by bonding with Vietnam and who else. We all but began a proxy war in Afghanistan.
The visits by EAM S.M.Krishna and Defence Minister A.K.Antony to Tokyo within a week underscored that India is resuscitating the old idea of quadripartite alliance but, perhaps, excluding Australia (which refuses to sell uranium to us) for the time being. If pundits are to be believed, we now have a wholesome strategic doctrine which asserts Indias prowess and influence in the vast swathe of extended neighbourhood, which is the part of the globe stretching all the way from the Gulf of Aden to Vladivostock.
Antony even told the army commanders conference last month that India has mandated to secure the vast Indian Ocean region, while admitting en passe that the priority is of course to acquire the capability to defend the coastline of India. If the IDSA (funded by the defence ministry) is anymore anything to go by as a think tank with credibility, India is preparing for a Kargil War with China.
Who are we kidding? What is this mandating and what is this India-Pacific and what is this Kagil War II and what is this foreign policy as a whole about? Things simply dont add up and we are only making ourselves laughing stock of the world community - politicians, pundits, think tankers alike.
The day PM took off for Cannes for the G-20 summit is ending on a dismal note - underlining once again the core issue, namely, the disconnect between the hyperactivism of our arm-chair foreign policy pundits and the their countrys sad realities. The UNs Human Development Index for 2011 has been released a few hours ago in New Delhi. Indias ranking has further slipped in the last one year and it is now ranked 134 amongst 187 countries.
Look at the social problems accumulating from mounting poverty. The farm suicides have crossed the figure of 250000. Sainath had yet another stunning report from Ground Zero. In gender equality, as per the latest UN figures, India ranks lowest among the South Asian countries. There are horrendous implications, which the world media has begun uncovering.
Bring it on , India !
India will learn another lesson similar to the one in 1962.
