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Indian Non-Alignment in the 21stCentury

By Saurav Jha in Issue 5 - July 2012

“But India is neither on the US side nor on China’s side, but has its own agenda,”remarked Chinese strategic analyst Wang Dehua recently while reacting to astatement made by an Indian Minister in Parliament about the number of border transgressions attributable to the Chinese in the past couple of years[i].

That agenda he referred to essentially revolves around India sustaining itsinterests in the Indo-Pacific and beyond. It is India’s willingness to balancethese interests with that of other powers, which drives its present day non-alignment posture. In a globalized world, India’s non-alignment has become

more of an issue-based alignment practice wherein India forwards its supporton a reciprocal basis, depending on the context and its own compulsions. If theworld of the twenty-first century is indeed one characterized by a G-Zeroframework[ii], then there are probably few others more adept than India atnavigating it.

Circa 1991, the Indian economy was in its most difficult situation sinceindependence, epitomized by the fact that it had foreign exchange reserves thatbarely covered two weeks’ worth of imports.[iii] The situation was compoundedby the fact that one of its chief trading partners, the Soviet Union, was comingapart while the Washington Consensus loomed larger than ever. In this

background, India embarked on a path of reforms and liberalization which putit on a growth trajectory that has made it one of the engines of the worldeconomy. However, the economic opening up orchestrated by then PrimeMinister P.V. Narasimha Rao was also accompanied by a “Look East Policy”[iv] which sought to integrate India with the Tiger economies of East Asia that hadfollowed a different economic path from India post World War II. Look East wasactually the first articulation of a policy which sought to increase everyone else’sstakes in India’s future. It was a time when India’s Nehruvian foreign policyestablishment had to yield space to various economic ministries that werebeing remolded by Narasimha Rao to understand that trade was indeeddiplomacy by other means.

That India’s market was its biggest hedge in troubled times, characterized by aunipolar moment being enjoyed by the very superpower that India didn’t quitesee eye to eye with during the cold war, was a lesson well internalized by theIndian policy-making establishment. The nineties were characterized with botha Clinton administration admonishing India on Kashmir and pressurizing it toslow down various strategic defense programs,[v] as well as by the fact thatmillions of Indians were now drinking Coca-Cola. Interestingly, it was a time

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when non-alignment was rather easy to project – the world had but onevictorious side left.

Despite the liberalization of the Indian economy, it was clear that China andPakistan, who had both had been on the right side in the Cold War, were

looking to use the unipolar moment to increase their own space to thedetriment of India. The United States was very much in interventionist modeand India’s former fellow traveler on the non-alignment bus, Yugoslavia, wasbeing systematically dismantled. At the same time, geopolitics was once againbeing characterized by non-proliferation, with even a reduced Russia derivingsome traction from its status as a nuclear weapons state. With the ClintonAdministration looking to bring the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty(CTBT) into force[vi], India decided that the window for a nuclear breakout wasfast closing. The Indian economy was in a goldilocks state (not too cold or hot)as far as sanctions were concerned. It was not as integrated with the worldeconomy as was necessary for sanctions to have really hurt, nor was the

potential of its market unknown given the new economic policies institutedalmost a decade ago. Indeed, the call of India’s market did allow it to ride outthe sanctions that followed and the Pokhran nuclear tests of 1998 ultimatelypaved the way for even greater engagement with the world, because ironicallynow the world had to create stakes in India for its own future.[vii]

Indian corporates, who had consolidated in the nineties to weather out thechange from a protected license raj economy to one which had to compete withglobal majors, were now beginning to spread their wings again, and not just inIndia. Globalization had facilitated the growth of various sunrise industries inIndia which were making it the back office of the world. Concomitantly, a

burgeoning middle class emerged, fuelling India’s thirst for resources much thesame way it had in China a decade earlier. The need to secure energy andmineral resources broadened the horizons of Indian industry further as Indiaentered the global hunt for the various juices that drive all economies.

Of course, any hunt by its very nature will be composed of competingpredators. And to keep conflict at bay, it is best if predators demarcate territoryand actively signal their willingness to defend the same. India’s needs havemade it delineate a ‘legitimate’ area of interest stretching from the Persian Gulf to the straits of Malacca, essentially the most navigated part of the IndianOcean.[viii] India’s trade, after all, is overwhelmingly seaborne and this area of 

interest well defines both the routes that trade traverses, as well regions crucialto India’s energy security, both present and future.

To lend credence to its oft-stated goal of being a net provider of security in itsarea of interest, India is currently building up its power projection capabilities.Though India started its current military modernization program post the KargilWar of 1999, augmentation of the navy and air force without-of- areacapabilities has proceeded much faster than commensurate augmentation to

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the army. This actually runs somewhat counter to the rhetoric at the time whichwas focused on securing India’s land borders. However, it clearly shows thatIndia’s military buildup is dovetailed to its geo-economic progress.

Indeed, a majority of diplomatic and military decisions taken by India in recent

times center around securing its geo-economic interests. The fall of the SovietUnion, and the economic rise of China pursuing a capitalistic trading model,convinced Indian policymakers that old-world-styled military power and alliancebuilding would not suffice to guarantee the security and prosperity of a nation,especially in a networked age. The emergence of the internet and satellitetelevision have served to flatten popular aspirations across the globe, and nocountry can pretend to be secure if it is not perceived by its populace to beactively increasing the standards of living. After all, glasnost and perestroikaresulted in accentuating the collapse of the Soviet Union which never really didmatch the United States economically and ultimately went broke trying tomatch it militarily, despite the economic weakness.

Of course, the Soviet Union also lacked a major public good – freedom – whereIndia scores rather high, warts and all. The fact that democratic institutions andthe rule of law are already well established in India mean that the Indian statehas to primarily deliver economic development for its writ to hold greater sway.As such, the Indian polity is typically loath to divert resources away from thatgoal towards cold war-style arms races. This is evidenced by the fact that India’sannual arms expenditures continue to be less than two percent of grossdomestic product.

However, there is little denying the fact that India faces a major constraint to its

development with two nuclear-armed rivals on two flanks, whose friendship isclaimed to be “taller than the tallest mountains”. The Indian militaryestablishment can, therefore, never discount the possibility of a joint attack byChina and Pakistan. Indeed, as the threat of such coordination has grown, Indiahas been forced to once again pay much greater attention to securing itsnorthern borders where Sino-Pak cooperation is heightening, represented bythe recent entry of a division of Chinese troops into the Pakistan administeredGilgit-Baltistan region of Kashmir(GB). [ix]

While not readily evident, Tibet, Kashmir and Afghanistan actually represent ageographic continuum that is of great strategic import to a China looking to set

up a modern-day silk route. But these are also regions characterized byinsurgent violence and unsettled borders, and China has both opportunities aswell as vulnerabilities here. As the Chinese state’s capacities have grown, fuelledby the economic miracle, so too has its attention to these areas. In the pastdecade, Beijing has made massive infrastructural and military investments inboth Tibet and Xinjiang and is now looking to use the Gilgit-Baltistan region tocreate a corridor which will allow it to connect its own transport eco-systemwith that of Pakistan and eventually gain overland access to Arabian Sea ports.

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For India, China’s heightened posture in Tibet has forced it to engage in acounter buildup in the North and North-East. Till about 2005, India had beenrelatively sanguine about the Chinese respecting a couple of agreements signedbetween the two sides in the early nineties that looked to keep the Indo-Chinaborder at a modest level of militarization, with a view to sorting out differences

via dialogue that would keep the possession of so-called settled areasunchanged. However, in 2006, the then Chinese ambassador to India openlystated in an interview to a private Indian news channel that his government wasclaiming all of the Indian state Arunachal Pradesh, including Tawang,[x] which isa settled area. This represented a definite hardening of China’s position on theborder dispute and could not be ignored when seen together with the dual useinfrastructure buildup in Tibet.

India has since responded by markedly militarizing its presence on the India-China border with new detachments and deployment infrastructure.[xi] In away, India’s recent activities on this front mark a departure in the Indian

strategic mindset. Earlier, a wholly defensive stratagem was adopted on theborder with China wherein border areas were left underdeveloped so that itbecame difficult for any ingressing forces to make headway. Now, however, theIndian military is clearly planning for offensive thrusts of its own into Tibet if theneed arises. The idea being that the best way to negotiate would be to grabChinese territory which can later be traded for any Indian territory the Chinesemay have captured.

The infrastructure build also has a development aspect to it. India seems torealize that the best way to secure frontier areas is to ensure the continuedloyalty of the population of that area. After all, the same aspirational argument

that holds for the population as a whole also holds for those in the frontierregions. In fact, it becomes even more of an issue when the opposite side i.e.China, has worked frenetically to develop infrastructure right up to the Indianborder.

Nevertheless, the shift towards a counter-offensive position is also reflective of a larger change in the Indian ethos. For both Indian corporations as well asindividuals, globalization has been a process that has allowed them to tastesuccess abroad and also find that success communicated back home by themedia. The Indian diaspora, over twenty-five-million strong, has also been ableto re-connect with their ancestral homeland at multiple levels, and are, in fact,

instrumental is deepening many of India’s international engagements. TheIndian view of things has therefore moved from being an inward-looking“defend whatever you have” kind of thinking to one that seeks to literally goforth and harness opportunities on a larger world stage.

This new more confident mood is something that is increasingly reflected byIndia’s foreign policy as it is accompanied by a very real enlargement of geo-economic interests worldwide. It also means that India’s non-alignment now is

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different from that in the years just following independence. That policy cateredmore towards insulating India from foreign influences whereas this isdovetailed to embellishing India’s growing presence in various parts of theworld, something which often reaches critical mass via either diasporicinteractions or the emergence of corporate interests, or frequently both.

Essentially, in today’s world of interwoven multi-tiered interests andopportunities, India is simply not willing to be circumscribed by becoming partof any overarching alliance.[xii]

India’s stance on the Iran crisis is the foremost example of this doctrine , if itcould be called that. During Hillary Clinton’s May 2012 visit to India, New Delhi,while apparently agreeing to cut crude imports from Iran by 11 percent,[xiii] simultaneously hosted a massive Iranian trade delegation looking to take Indo-Iranian trade ties to the next level. Least amused by Washington’s pressuretactics on Iran, India actually vacuumed up cheaper crude from Iran earlier thisyear, before agreeing to the 11 percent cut. In contrast, China has reduced

supplies from Iran by 40 per cent. There is simply no two ways about it – Iran isextremely important for securing India’s energy needs and therefore representsan interest that India cannot sacrifice.

Iran, at various times, has supplied between 12 to 18 per cent of India’s energyneeds, and some very big Indian refineries are actually optimized for Iraniancrude. Till very recently Iran was also seen as a key source in enabling India’sstrategy to switch from oil to gas in the transportation sector in order to cutdown on overall emissions. Now, even though the Iran-Pakistan-India pipelineproject has not gone anywhere, and the India supported LNG liquefactionterminal at Tombak remains incomplete, Iran is likely to once again figure in

India’s plans once the nuclear crisis is settled. While India has turned to Qatarand the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India pipeline project in the interimas the chief sourcing option, India’s massive needs mean that Iran, with world’ssecond largest gas reserves, simply cannot be ignored.

Now even as Washington may facilitate India securing its supplies from othersources (which it is already doing on its own anyway) it can never offer asubstitute for Iran’s geostrategic location, which is crucial to Indian ambitions inAfghanistan and Central Asia. Besides helping stabilize Afghanistan, Iran is thesouthernmost node of the International North-South Transport Corridor whichwill facilitate Indian geo-economic aims in Eurasia via market access and energy

sourcing. India has already built elements of the INSTC within Iran and is intalks with other partner countries, such as Azerbaijan, to hasten the project.[xiv]

So just as China wishes to expand westward, by and towards the Indian Ocean,using GB as a conduit, India wants to do the converse – head from the northernIndian Ocean into Central Asia via Iran. And that is the one of the chief reasonswhy the India-China border is back in the news. However, as an Indian militaryofficial recently said while talking about India’s counter buildup, both sides are

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now moving to a newer and higher equilibrium on their mutual border.[xv] India’s heightened spending in the area will nevertheless remain in tune withperceived requirements which, as we have seen, also have a developmentdynamic to it, and India will continue to increase its spending to augment itsnavy since the greatest guarantee of India–China military stability actually lays

in the maritime domain.

 Just as the expanding Indian Navy helps secure India’s sea lines of communication (SLOC), it also serves to put at risk, if necessary, China’svulnerable SLOCs that transit just below the southern tip of India and throughthe 10 degree channel which lies in India’s Andaman and Nicobar island chainon their way to the narrow Straits of Malacca. That the Chinese are extremelyconcerned about their vulnerability is quite clear[xvi] and there is an enduringsuspicion in Indian strategic circles that their heightened force posture on theland border is an attempt to make it difficult for India to allocate moreresources to its Navy.

Nevertheless, the Chinese are at least two decades from credible forceprojection in the Indian Ocean Region(IOR) despite the expansion of theChinese Navy and various China aided port development projects in the region.At the moment, therefore, both India and China are involved in wide-rangingtalks on maritime cooperation and on building a stable framework forcompetition.[xvii] Clearly, while there is strategic competition for resources andinfluence in places such as Central Asia and Myanmar, there is also substantiveconvergence in a variety of domains such as the World TradeOrganization(WTO) and Climate Change talks.

The two Asian giants are also quite keen on unlocking each other’s marketpotential. China has already emerged as India’s largest trading partner andalthough two-way trade is significantly skewed in China’s favor, talks areunderway for greater market access for the Indian side. Beijing is also eyeingIndia’s trillion-dollar plus infrastructure build program as an importantcomponent of future export driven growth. At the moment, both sides seemkeener to focus on their respective core areas of interest rather than gettingdrawn into an unnecessary standoff that may yield no clear results.

So even as the United States pivots to Asia, it is beginning to realize that India isunlikely to become part of any coalition-building exercise aimed at containing

China. India’s cooperation with the United States will continue to be issue-oriented and will depend to a great extent on the kind of favorable geo-economics the relationship is able to engender.[xviii]

For instance, on an issue such as freedom of navigation on seas in the SouthChina Sea (SCS), India’s stand will be in consonance with that of the UnitedStates. India considers the SCS as part of the global commons and a key traderoute given that India exports more to East Asia than any other region [xix]. Any

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proprietary claims by Beijing over the waterway will certainly not find favor inNew Delhi. To that end, India will also partake in multilateral exercises involvingthe United States and Japan to build common approaches for resolvingcontingencies if they so arise.

India, however, will not want the joint exercises to be viewed as a permanentforce consolidation of any sort, aimed at China, and as a confidence buildingmeasure India seems to have pulled out of the Vietnamese block it had beenexploring in the SCS. The basic tenet in Indian policy is to pursue omni-engagement while “tilting” away on issues where a player is being overlyaggressive or destabilizing. So when it comes to instances where China’s risedoesn’t seem particularly peaceful, India will signal its support for consensusaimed at tempering such aims. The idea is that in the international system of today, trying to rein in civilizational impulses is feasible, but not byencumbering a civilization itself. Especially when no one particular power hasonly one kind of diplomacy to offer.

To put things in perspective, the Nixon-Deng compact has ensured that US andChinese business interests are deeply enmeshed with each other and Indiarefuses to be drawn into a formulation where it may simply be used as aninstrument for incremental benefit in an economic arrangement between twohighly involved parties. So while Washington rants about India’s continuingrestrictions on foreign direct investment in multi-brand retail, what India looksto stave off is another avenue for Chinese mass produced goods to flood Indiaat a time when India is trying to boost its own manufacturing sector.

This also means that India will see merit in any US pivot to Asia only if very

significant economic benefits can arise out of it. If the pivot leads to thereordering of the US alliance system in Asia in a way that supports India’seconomic growth, a favorable polity towards it will be generated in New Delhi. Acloser industrial partnership with Japan and unrestricted access to Australianminerals will be the key result areas for India in such a framework and theongoing trilateral diplomacy in Asia may be understood in this context.Interestingly, there is also a US-India-China trilateral on the anvil, an idea thatBeijing at first was lukewarm to but now seems willing to participate in. [xx]

Commentators in the US often like to portray India as a sort of neo-Gaulliststate, with reflexively contrarian stances on a variety of issues. But such

viewpoints fail to see that India is not a part of the Western ecosystem to beginwith, and so dubbing its policies as contrarian is actually non-sequitur. At thereceiving end of various technology denial regimes and kept out from the coremembership of UN governing structures for the better part of the post-independence period, India’s stance, if anything, is always tinged with a certainrealism – that it is essentially on its own and needs to take a decision that willprove durable.

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Support from India, therefore, would always be on doable issues and not ononerous ideas such as regime change. In keeping with its principle of tilting onissues that threaten regional stability, India voted with the US twice at the IAEAto express its concern on Iran’s nuclear program, something that took a fewyears for the Iranian regime to get over. India has also voted alongside the US

at the UN on issues such as Syria and Sri Lanka. Of course, it could be arguedthat both those votes were made due to India’s own compulsions. But thenagain, what this shows is that Indian policy at any point of time is unlikely totake its decisions from an ideological precipice, as it now seems to haveinternalized Lord Palmerston’s mantra that “nations have neither permanentfriends nor enemies, but permanent interests”.

Criticism on the lines that it(India) is not fulfilling its global role whenever Indiahas a different viewpoint on an American chestnut, cuts no ice in New Delhieither. Indian policymakers do not believe that their rise as a power lies inspearheading a West-centric globalization narrative centered around foisting

democracy via regime change if necessary. Especially when the US continues toarm Pakistan under the pretext of the War on Terror, which,to many even in US,seems to be a semi-failed state with terrorism as its only thriving export. Indiabelieves in staying engaged (even with Pakistan) and letting shifts in popularsentiment within the nation decide the nature of its polity. India believes thatinterventionist doctrines only serve to harden the stance of regimes andexacerbate the hardships of the citizens of a country. A pragmatic approach isto work with regimes and help them in transitioning to a more open politicalframework. An example of where such an approach has been vindicated wouldbe Myanmar, which has moved rather rapidly from being a pariah regime toone that is actively wooed by all the major powers of the world. [xxi]

The Indian view of things on Iran is also similar and there have been indicationsthat India is actually conducting back-channel diplomacy between Washingtonand Teheran with Israel in the loop.[xxii] Indo-Israeli coordination oninternational affairs is understated but pretty robust given that their interestsconverge on most issues, not the least of which is the need to keep virulent

 jihadism at bay. Both countries have in the past two decades developed a deepintelligence and defense relationship which is not subject to the vagaries of issues such as Iran and Palestine. Nevertheless, India is keenly sensitive toIsrael’s position in the Middle East as evidenced by its current stance on a two-state solution for resolving the Palestinian issue, and is definitely working

behind the scenes to defuse the Iranian crisis.

A peaceful Persian Gulf is in any case vital to the stability of India’s economicgrowth process, given its dependency on the region for energy. Any significantdisruption in supply, due to a drawn out conflict, is certainly not in India’sinterest. At the moment, India is therefore building a strategic reserve with thehelp of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) that will give it some leeway inmitigating such a situation. Indeed, India’s relationship with the various

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member states of the GCC have warmed considerably in the past decade,reflecting Indian success in building compartmentalized relationships withopposing players in the Middle East. The Middle East, on its part, has beenattracted to India’s rising economic and military heft, and sees India as acredible presence in a region that hosts up to six million Indian nationals.

At the other end of the region that India defines as its legitimate interest,ASEAN, Korea and of course Japan, are seeing India as a crucial balancer in themaritime domain vis-a-vis China. India has, in the recent past, sewn up freetrade agreements with all of them and the trade relationship is expected toflourish considerably in the years to come. India is once again being welcomedin Indo-China and attempts are being made to revitalize historical links. TheLook East policy is beginning to fulfill the potential that was envisaged and inmany ways is happening faster because of China’s not-so-peaceful rise.

An Asian framework for stability appeals quite readily to the Indian mind. It is

something that the current strategic mindset shares with the Nehruvianestablishment and, indeed, with the view of the Indian freedom movementwhich drew great inspiration from Japan’s victory over Russia in the Russo-

 Japanese war of 1905. Any stability construct in Asia today would naturallyrequire the balancing of interests of India, Japan and China. Now while Sino-

 Japanese business ties are massive they are not yielding for Japan the kind of returns that it needs to revitalize Japanese industry. Japanese industry is nowlooking towards India with its younger and cheaper workforce to achieve thataim. India, in turn, is looking to Japan to provide the technology and capitalneeded to increase the share of manufacturing in India’s GDP from the current16 percent to 25 percent by 2020.[xxiii] The conditions for an Indo-Japan

strategic industrial partnership are, therefore, more conducive than ever andthis is likely to be a key relationship for Asia in the coming years.

Ultimately, India would like to create a partnership with Japan that is as durableas the relationship with Russia has been. Despite the fall of the Soviet Union,India and Russia remained engaged, regardless of the fact that in the Yeltsinyears their individual relationships with the US had become more importantthan their mutual relationship. However, Putin’s ascendancy in Russia broughtrenewed vigor in Indo-Russian ties and the former superpower emerged as akey supplier of strategic technologies to India. India also kept Russia as its chief supplier of weapons, partly because of the degree of trust it has on the latter,

and partly to ensure that Russia did not wholly gravitate to the Chinese side.Both sides have also graduated to co-developing weapons, because the Russianmilitary-industrial complex does not have the resources to develop the latestgeneration of weapons. India, for its part, still finds difficult to secure from mostother sources, including the US, the level of technological co-operation it getsfrom Russia.

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Like Russia, France is another old friend of India’s that has continued to be“bullish” on India through the years. France, like Russia, did not condemnIndia’s nuclear breakout in 1998 and has also transferred strategic knowhow toIndia in the past, albeit at a price much higher than that of Russia. Nonetheless,France’s autonomous instincts within the NATO alliance serve to make it a

partner that India has come to trust. In Europe, neither Britain nor Germanyenjoysthelevelof trust that India has with France. This greatly aided Dassault inwinning the coveted multirole medium range combat aircraft (MMRCA)competition, since reliability of spares support, along with technologicalcapability, was a key consideration in India’s book for awarding this contract.[xxiv]

France’s win in the MMRCA sweepstakes has, not surprisingly, piqued the USside considerably since it was expecting one of its own contenders to win, as areward to the US for spearheading India’s re-entry into the world of nucleartrade. India however simply did not find enough value in the US offer, not the

least because of the latter’s track record in sanctioning India. India would alsocontend that it continues to compensate US defense industry by buyingweapons and support platforms upwards of 10 billion dollars at last count.However, India is unlikely to purchase key offensive platforms such as tacticalaircraft from the US because despite the hype about Indo-US ties being adefining relationship in the twenty-first century, neither side is willing tosacrifice clear and present interest at the altar of power politics.

The nuclear relationship between India and the United States is also in aquagmire at the moment. India’s recently passed Nuclear Liability Law, whichhas a provision for supplier liability, makes it difficult for the free enterprise-

oriented US nuclear industry that lacks the sovereign guarantees extended bytheir respective governments to the French and Russian nuclear majors, toparticipate in India’s nuclear market.

A remaking of the international order is clearly underway as the rise of the rest,led by the re-emergence of the Indian and Chinese civilizations, continuesapace. What this has also meant is that South-South cooperation is no longer afeel-good adage in international politics. The emerging countries of the worldhave a lot to offer each other today in terms of both knowhow and markets. Inkeeping with this trend, India has built a so-called IBSA grouping with Brazil andSouth Africa, and all three are sort of a sub-group within the BRICS, with China

and Russia arguably constituting the other sub-group due to their leadershipwithin the Shanghai Cooperation Agreement. IBSA is again a very non-ideological grouping, built around a mutuality of interests between threemaritime nations looking to share their developmental perspectives for geo-economic gains. The fact that Brazil serves as a gateway to South America, andSouth Africa to Africa, is clearly an Indian consideration in pursuing this forum.

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Heading into the new millennium, we find India looking to both widen as well asdeepen relationships, in its quest to secure an international environmentoptimal to its economic rise. It is also a time when India is taking thoserelationships forward that couldn’t be taken forward before. For instance, post-World War II, Nehru could only donate two elephants to the Tokyo zoo, in order

to cheer Japanese children at a time of great deprivation.[xxv] In 2011, Indiaemerged as one of the largest suppliers of Post-Tsunami aid to Japan. India’sgrowing activities in Africa also attest to the very substantial capacity the Indianeconomy has at its disposal to engage in building worthwhile internationalrelations in this mercantile age.

And that is the crux of India’s new age non-alignment. India has the criticalmass today to participate in a complex world of relationships, wheregovernment to government contacts may not be the prime mover in bringingsocieties and economic interests together, at a time when such constituenciescan directly interact with each other, bypassing the State-oriented order. This is

precisely why India and, indeed, most other nations seek to enhance people topeople cooperation and cultural exchange. India realizes that in the comingdecades, State policy will have to overwhelmingly reflect the aspirations of transnational constituencies, perhaps based more in one geographical contextthan another. In that sense, India is developing its foreign establishment as afocal point for economic consultation and arbitration, rather than forphilosophical support, as in the time of Nehru. So while Nehru’s Non-Alignmentat the end was reduced to fighting for a right to disagree to agree, twenty-firstcentury India’s non alignment has expanded to the right to agree to disagree.

—

Saurav Jha was trained in economics at Presidency College, Calcutta, and  Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. He writes and researches on global energy and security issues and is a regular contributor to publications such as World Politics Review, The Diplomat, Le Monde Diplomatique, UPI Asia and Nuclear Engineering International and has written for Deccan Herald, The Telegraph and Hindustan Times. He is also the Consulting Editor of Geopolitics magazine. His first book, The Upside Down Book of Nuclear Power  (HarperCollins), was published in March 2010 to excellent reviews. He is presently working on The Little Green Book (Hachette), a manifesto for a 

 green age .

[i] Hao Zhou, “India PLA Claims Rejected”, Global Times-Agencies , Published onMay 18, 2012 00:30. <http://www.globaltimes.cn/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Print.aspx?tabid=99&tabmoduleid=94&articleId=710104&moduleId=405&PortalID=0> Lastaccessed on 05.06.2012.

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[ii] Alexander Heffner.” Bremmer’s ‘Every Nation for Itself’ explains G-ZeroWorld”, USA TODAY , Published on May 5,2012 3:02 PM<http://www.usatoday.com/money/books/reviews/story/2012-05-14/every-nation-for-itself/54960006/1> Last accessed on 05.06.2012.

[iii] C Rangarajan, “BoP crisis of 1990-91: Overcoming the forex constraint”, The Financial Express , Published July 2, 2001<http://www.financialexpress.com/old/fe20010702/an1.html> Last accessed on05.06.2012.

[iv] V. Jayanth, ”Narasimha Rao and the `Look East’ policy” Published onDecember 24, 2004<http://www.hindu.com/2004/12/24/stories/2004122407541200.htm> Lastaccessed on 05.06.2012.

[v] Raj Chengappa, Weapons of Peace: Secret Story of India’s Quest to Be a

Nuclear Power. New Delhi: HarperCollins India, 2000

[vi] USIS—Wireless File, “Fact Sheet-White House Chronology on Nuclear TestBan Treaty,” September 25, 1996.

[vii] William H. Avery, China’s Nightmare, America’s Dream: India as the nextglobal power. New Delhi: Amaryllis 2012

[viii] R. Bedi, “A New Doctrine for the Navy”, Frontline , 21:14, 3–16 July 2004

[ix] Saurav Jha, “China’s Kashmir Gambit Raises Stakes in India-Pakistan

Dispute”, World Politics Review , Published on September, 2010<http://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/articles/6339/chinas-kashmir-gambit-raises-stakes-in-india-pakistan-dispute> Last accessed on 05.06.2012.

[x] Seema Guha, “China claims Arunachal Pradesh as ‘Chinese territory’”, DNA,Published on November 13, 2006, 21:45<http://www.dnaindia.com/world/report_china-claims-arunachal-pradesh-as-chinese-territory_1063888> Last accessed on 05.06.2012.

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<http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics/nation/india-worried-over-chinas-military-build-up-on-sino-indian-border/articleshow/10739727.cms> Last accessed on 05.06.2012.

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