An increasingly assertive, personality-driven approach to external affairs, an effort to boost bilateral relations to build closer economic ties and positioning itself as a leader of emerging economies at multilateral forums.
Those have been the hallmarks of India's foreign policy during Narendra Modi’s eight years in the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO).
Since 2014, India has tried to find its own space to negotiate international issues, recognizing, as China did in the early 2000s, that its expanding economic clout would require a much greater say in global geopolitics to ensure its continued rapid growth.
For four decades since independence, India had adhered to the principle of non-alignment in an increasingly bipolar world while building close military ties with the then Soviet Union, which disintegrated in 1991.
India’s economic liberalization the same year, followed by the opening-up of the economy and a flood of American investments, brought India increasingly close to the US until the Modi government came to power.
Carving out its own course
Since then, South Block has tried to forge its own path, although it has tempered such moves by joining the US-led Quad grouping to safeguard its interests in the Indo-Pacific region.
Despite repeatedly asserting its strategic partnership with the United States, United Kingdom, and the European Union, among others, India's diplomatic engagements with the West have become increasingly fraught.
The latest example of this was External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar’s riposte to European leaders who asked India to stop buying Russian oil after the war in Ukraine. In the past, India has clamped travel curbs on UK citizens for Britain's refusal to recognise made-in-India vaccines.
The government had also taken on the US administration of Donald Trump on a range of issues. These included norms for mandatory data localization in India, an increasing crackdown on e-commerce entities like Amazon and Walmart, and a freeze on trade benefits to India.
To be sure, India did not incur the full force of Washington’s belligerence during the global trade war between the US and China. Even so, India was still embroiled in numerous tariff disputes with the US and slapped retaliatory tariffs on 30 high-value American products.
Even in the neighbourhood, India effectively blockaded the Nepal border, stopping cooking gas supplies in 2016, provided drinking water to the Maldives only after it acquiesced to some of India's demands, and told Bangladesh to crack down on Islamists criticising India if it wanted to continue receiving economic benefits.
The Modi government has deployed a muscular, no-nonsense foreign policy that has won it popularity at home, where many citizens and experts alike believe India had adopted a passive approach to settling international issues, with few tangible benefits to show for it.
Deeper friendships, old foes
Given the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party's reputation as a hardline conservative force, senior officials had feared in 2014 that New Delhi's ties with the deeply religious Islamic Middle East would deteriorate, possibly even leading to a situation where crude oil would be used to hold India hostage.
The Modi administration has belied such concerns, securing major foreign investments from Saudi Arabia, signing a major trade deal with the UAE, and negotiating multiple others with other economies in the region, and completing intercontinental logistics supply routes through the Iranian deserts.
India has run emergency sorties with Bahrain during the pandemic to carry COVID-19 medical equipment, ensured that Hindu temples come up for the first time in multiple Emirates in the UAE, and secured promises that the livelihood of Indian-origin citizens in Oman would be protected amid demands there for more jobs for locals.
Meanwhile, India's ties with its two biggest foes have deteriorated. Relations with Pakistan had been as rocky as ever due to the sharp escalation of rhetoric by the neighbour on the Kashmir issue. A series of deadly terrorist attacks including in Uri in 2016 and Pulwama in 2019, directed from the other side of the border have led to the loss of lives of security personnel, while also triggering punitive Indian strikes.
Aggression by China since 2020, mainly in the Ladakh theatre, has led to diplomatic ties falling to their lowest point since the 1962 war. The government's refusal to accept the intrusion of Chinese troops into Indian territory, despite evidence to the contrary, has drawn flak at home. India has also been unable to reduce its trade dependence on China despite cracking down on Chinese investments, companies and goods.
Bilateral vs multilateral
The government had initially doubled down on its foreign policy goals at multilateral forums such as the United Nations, World Trade Organization (WTO) and the G20. From raising the pitch of its demand for a permanent seat at the UN Security Council to successfully sidelining Pakistan through a series of aggressive rebuttals on the floor of the UN, the first few years under Modi had seen India reaching out to a large group of nations to rejuvenate ties.
This particularly included the large bloc of least developed nations, most of them African. The Modi government has constituted an annual conclave for African nations, ramped up aid and lines of credit to its East African partners and tried to compete with China on trade finance for infrastructural and humanitarian projects.
At the WTO, while India and the rest of the developing world had historically been pitted against the developed bloc, the government has increasingly taken a more hardline position on a range of issues such as the stockpiling of foodgrains and food security, rights over fishing and subsidies to industry, and rules on global e-commerce, among others.
The biggest show of strength for the Modi government in this context has been the introduction of a proposal to temporarily suspend global rules protecting intellectual property rights for manufacturing COVID-19 vaccines to make them more accessible.
As the developed world dug in its heels against the proposal, arguing that drugmakers will face losses, the Modi government has spearheaded an unprecedented fightback, teaming up with more than 100 nations.
On matters of economic diplomacy, India has junked the multilateral approach. Case in point, India exited talks on a Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) in 2019 at the last minute, arguing that it was doing so to safeguard its national interests.
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Interestingly, the government had earlier deputed its Central ministers to convince their constituents and industry of the benefits of the pact.
Billed as the largest regional pact including both India and China, the mega trade pact also included the 10-nation Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean), along with developed economies such as Japan, Australia, South Korea, and New Zealand.
India's unique economic and demographic situation meant that it would not fit in with the trade agenda of most other nations in the grouping, officials said.
The Modi government has, however, reacted positively to almost all requests for independent, bilateral trade deals with other nations. As a result, this led to the government beginning 2022 with the target of completing at least 7 trade deals, either fully or partly.
Functional foreign policy
In 2019, the government for the first time roped in the army of officials serving at India's 202 diplomatic missions globally to actively promote Indian exports. Trade facilitation and securing new business had for long been handled by a desk at every Indian embassy, but the Prime Minister's Office has now put in place guidelines to judge embassy officials on the parameters of enhancement of trade, procurement of technology and selling India as a tourism destination.
Modi has also become the most traveled Prime Minister of India so far, with 118 trips to a total of 63 countries until May 2022. While his frequent overseas trips have attracted criticism, foreign service officers say they have increased India's visibility on the global stage. They cite the Prime Minister’s attendance at major town hall events organized by the Indian diaspora in most countries he has visited.
India's foreign policy has also increasingly relied on the Prime Minister's personal popularity back home to push its agenda abroad. Live-streaming engagements with the diaspora in disparate places -- Argentina, Turkmenistan and Israel, to mention some – has enabled the Prime Minister's Office to actively use people of Indian origin abroad to push Indian foreign policy interests.
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