NEWS HIGHLIGHT
Theme : Bilateral, regional and global grouping and agreements involving India or affecting India’s interests.
Paper:GS - 2
The External Affairs Minister said that India can play a “stabilizing” and “bridging” role, at a time when the world no longer offers an “optimistic picture”.
TABLE OF CONTENT
- Context
- What is Multilateralism
- India’s Role in the World Order
- Areas of India’s Accomplishment
- What makes a Country World Leader in the Global Forum
- What shall be the Foreign Policy Stance of India?
- Challenges
- Road Ahead
Context : The External Affairs Minister said that India can play a “stabilizing” and “bridging” role, at a time when the world no longer offers an “optimistic picture”.
What is Multilateralism :
- It refers to a set of governing arrangements of fundamental rules, principles, and institutions among nations.
- The United Nations (UN) is an example of a multilateral international institution which aims at making a sustainable and inclusive multilateral global order.
India’s Role in the World Order :
- India belongs both to the non-aligned movement, which reflects its experience of colonialism, and the community of democracies, which reflects its 75 years of experience as a democracy
- India is a leading light of the global “trade union” of developing countries, the G-77 (Group of 77), which has some 120 countries, and also of the global macro-economic “management”, the G-20 (Group of 20 developed and developing countries whose presidency India has just assumed).
- India plays an influential role both in the United Nations, a universal organization that has 193 member states, and in the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC).
- India has the great ability to be in all these great institutional networks, pursuing different objectives with different partners, and in each finding a valid purpose that suits us. India has moved beyond non-alignment to what is called multi-alignment.
- India’s External Affairs Minister meets annually with his Russian and Chinese counterparts in the trilateral RIC; he adds Brazil and South Africa in BRICS; subtracts both Russia and China in IBSA, for South-South cooperation; and retains China but excludes Russia in BASIC, for environmental negotiations.
Areas of India’s Accomplishment :
- Population: India is on course to top the charts, overtaking China as the world’s most populous country next year
- Military strength: India has the world’s fourth-strongest army
- Nuclear capacity: India’s status having been made clear in 1998(formally recognised in the India-U.S. nuclear deal)
- Economic development: India is already the world’s third largest economy in PPP (purchasing-power parity)
What makes a Country World Leader in the Global Forum?
- Joseph Nye: Power of attraction means much more than the force of arms or economic muscle in wielding influence in the world.
- Conventional analyses of any country’s stature in the world: It relies on the all-too-familiar economic and hard-power assumptions.
- It is a transformation of the terms of global exchange and the way countries adapt to the new international, interlinked landscape that will shape their future role and direction.
What shall be the Foreign Policy Stance of India?
- The ultimate purpose of any country’s foreign policy: It is to promote the security and well-being of its own citizens.
- India needs to define a new role that depends on our understanding of the way the world is.
- India has to work through multiple networks: which will sometimes overlap with each other with common memberships, and sometimes be distinct.
Challenges :
- India is yet able to feed, educate and employ all people.
- Too many of our people continue to live destitute, amidst despair and disrepair.
- The old binaries of the Cold War era are no longer relevant.
- At the same time, the distinction between domestic and international is less and less meaningful in today’s world.
- Institutions of global governance have failed to unite the world.
- The World Trade Organization (WTO) was already in the intensive care unit before the novel coronavirus pandemic, with rich and poor countries unable to agree on equitable rules, when COVID-19 froze global supply chains.
- The war in Ukraine in February 2022 has put the final nail in the coffin of the boundaryless global economy that seemed to be emerging with the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.
Road Ahead :
- India can contribute towards de-risking the global economy and in political terms, in some way, help depolarise the world.
- Far from evolving into a “world leader”, India should become an active participant in a world that is no longer defined by parameters such as “superpowers” or “great powers” exercising “world leadership”
- We cannot simply be non-aligned between two superpowers when one of them sits on our borders and nibbles at our territory.
- But nor can we afford to sacrifice our strategic autonomy in a quest for self-protection.
- We need to define a new role for ourselves that depends on our understanding of the way the world is.
- India should present itself as a natural stabilizing power in South Asia and the Indian Ocean Region.
FAQs :
-
What is Multilateralism ?
ANS.
- It refers to a set of governing arrangements of fundamental rules, principles, and institutions among nations.
- The United Nations (UN) is an example of a multilateral international institution which aims at making a sustainable and inclusive multilateral global order.
-
What are areas for India’s Accomplishment ?
ANS.
- Population: India is on course to top the charts, overtaking China as the world’s most populous country next year.
- Military strength: India has the world’s fourth-strongest army.
- Nuclear capacity: India’s status having been made clear in 1998(formally recognised in the India-U.S. nuclear deal)
- Economic development: India is already the world’s third largest economy in PPP (purchasing-power parity)