India’s UNSC permanent seat bid in the slow lane

The most important reason for change in India’s priorities at the UN this year is pragmatic: the landscape in the General Assembly is changing. (File image)

Winds of change are blowing at the United Nations headquarters in New York this year. Every year, June traditionally marks the commencement of the busiest season for Indian diplomats, journalists covering the UN and think tanks which focus on the work of the world body. This season normally lasts till the week before Christmas, when the General Assembly wraps up most of its important annual business.

Since May 2009, when Hardeep Singh Puri joined India’s Mission to the UN in New York as Permanent Representative and pulled up the country’s engagement with the world body by the bootstraps, these seven months have been the window when India gets elected to the Security Council and the UN’s five other main organs. Until this turnaround, India was down in the dumps in Turtle Bay, home to the UN headquarters for many decades. Its nadir was in 1996, when India got a mere 40 votes against Japan’s massive 142 votes in the election of five non-permanent members to the Security Council. In a repeat of this election 18 months after Puri went to New York, India got into the Security Council with a whopping 187 votes. In a similar campaign waged in 2020 by TS Tirumurti, successor to Puri, India was again elected to the Council with 184 votes, despite constraints in voting due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

As a founding member of the UN, and as a large country which has made major contributions to the evolution of global specialised agencies and their programmes, the seven-month window is also when India plants its proxies in the UN system, when and where it cannot get its own people into critical positions. This is never publicly acknowledged for reasons of diplomatic propriety, but it is an open secret in the chancelleries that dot Manhattan’s high-rise skyline that major countries like India, China, Russia, France and the United States of America are constantly attempting to do so.

Yoga at UN

This June, however, Indian diplomats, newspersons and think tankers have new – additional, they would hasten to add – priorities. On June 21, they will be totally preoccupied with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s presence, although brief, on the North Lawn of the UN headquarters to lead the ninth International Day of Yoga session in New York. India’s Permanent Mission to the UN has been busy planning this event for weeks because it is a logistical nightmare for them and for the UN Secretariat. The UN headquarters is just about seven hectares in area on land overlooking the East River, gifted by the Rockefeller family. Most of it is built-up office space. It is not a sprawling open area like Rajpath – now Kartavya Path – where yoga sessions with hundreds of practitioners can be held. US President Joe Biden told Modi in Hiroshima last month that his state banquet for the Prime Minister on June 22 was causing the White House a headache. “Everyone in the whole country wants to come. I have run out of tickets.” Ruchira Kamboj, successor to Tirumurti, has the same problem. Everyone in the tri-states of New York, New Jersey and Connecticut wants to attend the yoga session with Modi on the North Lawn, even those who cannot bend for yoga postures. The UN Secretariat has conveniently passed on the task of vetting and approving RSVPs to Kamboj’s staff and they are still grappling with the challenge.

The importance of the Prime Minister’s presence on the North Lawn for an hour from 8 to 9 am should not be underestimated. The International Day of Yoga is Modi’s initiative. He got the General Assembly to accept it just seven months into his first term as Prime Minister. Until this week, no other Indian resolution in the General Assembly’s history had received 177 votes that the yoga commemoration plan had garnered.

Memorial Wall

Such a historic record was overtaken this week when another Indian resolution to build a “Memorial Wall for Fallen UN Peacekeepers” was adopted with 190 votes. The UN has a membership of 193 countries. Permanent Representative Kamboj said: “The resolution in paying its homage, is also a testimony to the importance that the UN bestows on peacekeeping, and on our peacekeepers, and significantly, is an issue that has brought all member states unitedly forward.” India has lost 177 peacekeepers on UN duty to date. They will now be memorialised on the proposed Wall.

The most important reason for change in India’s priorities at the UN this year is pragmatic: the landscape in the General Assembly is changing. For close to two decades, India has used the Presidency of the General Assembly (PGA) to move forward, step by step, its case for a permanent seat in the Security Council. It is a slow, but vital, process. The PGA appoints every year, two Co-Chairs of an Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee for increasing the membership of the Security Council: actions on equitable representation on the Council are taken by this committee. Most recent PGAs, except Turkey’s Volkan Bozkir, elected in 2020, have been sympathetic to Security Council reform favouring India. On June 1, the General Assembly elected Dennis Francis of Trinidad and Tobago as the next PGA for a year from September 5. Trinidad and Tobago belongs to the Caribbean group at the UN. As island states, this group’s existential challenges are climate change and the environment. The last job Francis had in his country was Senior Advisor to the government on climate change and negotiations for the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Security Council reform will take a back seat for at least a year and a half. India is, therefore, prudent to look for new ways to continue its prominence in the UN.

KP Nayar has extensively covered West Asia and reported from Washington as a foreign correspondent for 15 years. Views are personal, and do not represent the stand of this publication.