Is India a good neighbour?: 

Is India a good neighbour?: 

Context

• India’s foreign policy of late has come under sharp public scrutiny especially the direction in which it is moving.
• There is no single yardstick to measure foreign policy successes and failures but the absence of crises is broadly viewed as a sound criterion.

Sour relations

• India shares an extremely frosty relationship with Pakistan and on the other, the relationship of stability with China built over three decades has been falling apart despite increased diplomatic engagement.
• Equation with China suffers not only because of Chinese mistakes but also because of the absence of innovative thinking in India to deal with its biggest neighbour.
• India lacks a coherent means to contain China except for nurturing some myopic ideas.
• The old time-tested friendship with Russia has been allowed to slip through our fingers by downscaling the levels of engagements and limiting the areas of interest over time.
• The tragedy is that China has shrewdly neutralised India’s close proximity with Russia while at the same time sustaining its nexus with Pakistan.

Indian Foreign Policy

• Indian foreign policy relied on its deep resources of wisdom and inner strength based on a percept of it being a civilizational state, that was reflected in its international conduct.
• To that effect, foreign policy has been driven by peace rather than security. It gives India a global persona of benign international influence.
• Priority to security has distorted India’s image vis-à-vis its neighbours, especially when policies are pursued through the precolonial security-centric “zero-sum” or “frontier mindset” or even from a Cold War political prism.
•  In fact, this approach has failed to stop China’s influence in India’s neighbourhood despite the “neighbourhood-first policy”.
• There is a clear lack of finesse in India’s approach, more so when the world has moved away from a bilateral to a multilateral context.
• A better option to probe future ties would be to return to the strategic fundamentals.

India – China equation

•  India might not see China as an object of disdain in perpetuity.
• An honest attempt to build a new paradigm of India-China trust grounded on the shared historical and cultural awareness, as also on the collective wisdom of ordinary citizens on both sides, may prove to be more effective.
• For India to emerge as a global power of any reckoning, it has to realize that a narrow tactical pursuit devoid of strategic thinking will lead to nowhere.
• India needs to reframe its terms of relationship with China; rethink its own posture; rescue it from experiencing a delusion of grandeur and instead persevere to emerge as a confident and aspiring regional power.