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Commentators on Indian Foreign Policy during the last five-six years have noted confusion at best and paralysis at worst. The last time the government took a determined stance on foreign policy was in 2008 when it concluded the civil nuclear agreement with the United States, but then that agreement has become a non-starter. This situation contrasts sharply with the confident views articulated by responsible foreign policy officials less than a decade back. For instance, in a public address at the India International Centre, New Delhi, the then Foreign Secretary Shyam Saran said in February 2005: "India is today one of the most dynamic and fastest growing economies of the world?Countries across the globe are beginning to see India as an indispensable economic partner?Should not our neighbours also seek to share in the prospects for mutual prosperity India offers to them?...The challenge of our diplomacy lies in convincing our neighbours that India is an opportunity not a threat?"
A year-and-a-half later, in September 2006, his successor, Shiv Shanker Menon said at the Indian Council of World Affairs in New Delhi: "Politically, our neighbourhood policy is now based on the recognition that what can best secure India's interests in the region would be building a web of 'dense interdependencies' with our neighbours?We want a neighbourhood policy which is capable of adjusting, capable of shaping events?" (both cited in SD Muni's book, Indian Foreign Policy: The Democracy Dimension).
The presentations of Mr Saran and Mr Menon displayed India's strong confidence especially in dealing with its neighbourhood. Today, only a few years later, we find India to have become wholly irrelevant to the critical phase in its democratic transition that Bangladesh is going thorough, an irritant at best to Sri Lanka, virtually inconsequential with regard to the pregnant internal developments in Nepal or Maldives. Our links with Afghanistan are uncertain and tenuous and there is no forward movement in our relationship with Pakistan. To make matters worse, in all these countries we confront a domineering presence of China. The tragic event of 26/11 and the 2008 global financial meltdown, signifying drastic changes in the global distribution of power, had dramatically altered the optimistic external scenario that India could enjoy till that time.
Such turbulence is not unexpected in any country's foreign policy environment. To get over it, a country needs a strong government, an institutionalised yet supple foreign policy mechanism, and a leadership with farsightedness. While there is an ongoing debate on the first and the third of these parameters, I want to draw attention to the second.
The primary institutions for framing and implementing foreign policy are of course the external affairs minister, the bureaucracy attached to the ministry and also the Prime Minister and his office. As is the normal practice in a federation, in India too, the powers relating to foreign affairs are given exclusively to the Union government. Therefore, the primary institutions mentioned have the ultimate authority to act in the arena of foreign policy in the name and for the interests of the whole country.
The monopoly power and authority of the central government with regard to foreign policy was never in doubt. In the post-Partition years, the country was conceived as a very centralised federation. Constitutional experts in the first two decades after the implementation of the "more unitary than federal" Constitution had to search for operative federal features, and the best they could do was to describe our federation as "a unitary system with some federal features." It was claimed that the distribution of powers in the Indian federation has led to "apoplexy at the Centre and anaemia in the states." It would be fantasy for such 'anaemic' states to ever think of poaching on the Centre's monopoly over foreign policy.
But politics has a certain volatility, perhaps more than other arenas of our life. The process of centralisation in India's federal polity, having peaked in Indira Gandhi's time, started to melt and because of certain well-known factors, the 'anaemic' states started having a strong impact on the Centre since the 1990s. Yet, the conclaves of the Opposition leaders and non-Congress chief ministers in the 1980s claimed broader political space for themselves and larger economic and financial resources, not a say in foreign policy. Hence, in the declaration of the Gujral doctrine or in the initiation of the Look East Policy, no state felt concerned or thought of registering an expression of protest.
More recent events, however, are sending out a different signal. The West Bengal Chief Minister's stance on the proposed Teesta water-sharing agreement or a pact on the exchange of enclaves with Bangladesh and the Tamil Nadu government's insistence that India must boycott the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Colombo are cases in point. In both instances, the position of the states either stalled or substantially altered the Centre's foreign policy construct. More such instances of State intervention in the Centre's exercise of powers relating to foreign affairs need not be ruled out in the days to come.
India has turned 180 degrees from the hyperactive Centre of the Indira Gandhi era to an inactive Centre, so much so that it is incapable of asserting its constitutionally granted authority to make the country interact as a single sovereign entity on the global platform. If this state of affairs is allowed to continue, India will certainly lose out. Yet it is possible to take a more nuanced view as well.
In the early years of the American federal system, the states sometimes defied the central government's demands for meeting its treaty obligations. However, by the 20th century, the US federal government decisively established its grip over foreign affairs. As regards India's policy towards Sri Lanka, Tamil Nadu has always exerted pressure on the Centre. But in the past, while Nehru would give Tamil Nadu a hearing, it was not allowed to dictate policy. Mrs Gandhi, with a highly centralised federation in place, could easily continue with the same tradition. Rajiv Gandhi, before he decided to airdrop food in Jaffna in 1987, had reportedly 'flown in' the Tamil Nadu chief minister, MG Ramachandran, to Delhi for consultations (The Statesman, 5 June 1987). What transpired was never known, but the Prime Minister was not influenced by Mr Ramachandran. On the Farakka treaty with Bangladesh, the Centre accorded considerable weightage to the suggestions of the then Chief Minister, Jyoti Basu.
In our federal structure with so many states sharing international borders and eco-systems with other sovereign states, there is every possibility that India's policy towards a neighbouring country can adversely affect a particular state within this country. Therefore, it is absolutely necessary that the central government must consult the state concerned, take care of its grievances, and take it on board while making a decision. At the same time, an effective foreign policy requires that the Centre will be in a position to draw the line and assert that the national interest must trump any other interest.
(The writer is the Research Head, Kolkata Chapter of Observer Research Foundation, Delhi)
Courtesy : The Statesman
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