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Indian foreign policy needs economy of ambition

In capitals across the world, the questions that swirled around India in the 1960s are being asked again.

May 10, 2021 / 07:55 IST
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PM Narendra Modi'

“The emergence of India in world affairs,” Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru told the Constituent Assembly in March, 1949, “is something of major consequence in world history. We, who happen to be in the Government of India or in this House, are men of relatively small stature. But it has been given to us to work at a time when India is growing into a great giant again. So because of that, in spite of our smallness, we have to work for great causes, and perhaps elevate ourselves in the process”.

Less than two years later, New Delhi was forced to accept emergency food aid from the United States—sparking off an ugly confrontation between American critics of Prime Minister Nehru’s non-alignment and bristly Indian diplomats that would run for years. In 1962, military humiliation was delivered by China. That idea of India as a rising giant seemed faintly ridiculous.

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In capitals across the world, and in the pages of the world press, the questions that swirled around India in the 1960s are being asked again: its institutional weaknesses, administrative incompetence and anaemic State capacities ruthlessly exposed by the pandemic that is savaging the country, was the story of India as a rising power just an illusion?

The answer to the criticism is not nationalist ire, nor bluster. New Delhi needs to acknowledge that the questions now being asked of it come from friends, not just enemies. Economy of ambition, and economy with words, will serve to make India’s presence that much more credible.