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POWER 50 is fifty capsules across fifty days: the whole PSIR syllabus revised once, in the order the syllabus is actually built. One topic a day. Read the capsule, write the same day, don’t break the chain. PSIR Dynamics 2026 and the PYQ Vault run alongside it, the Vault carrying 560 previous-year questions over the same fifty days, roughly eleven a day.
Day 40 — India & the Non-Aligned Movement
Today’s capsule works through the chapter in four parts. The first takes the idea on its own terms: the core proposition, what non-alignment is not (Georg Schwarzenberger, George Liska and U Nu separate it from neutrality, neutralization and isolationism), its negative and positive bases with Bokaro and the Aswan Dam as the working illustrations, and its record on peace, disarmament and conflict resolution. The second follows the movement itself, from Bandung 1955 and Belgrade 1961 through nineteen summits to Kampala 2024, sets out the Peter Willetts–Keethaponcalan dispute over whether NAM’s roots lie in 1955 or in 1961, and asks why the “third force” never consolidated. The third is India’s own story: why Nehru chose non-alignment, how Henry Kissinger, Aparna Pandey, K. Natwar Singh and J.N. Dixit read that choice, the three phases of India’s engagement, and the New International Economic Order. The fourth is the part you will actually be graded on, with the relevance debate laid out scholar by scholar on both sides, the move from non-alignment to multi-alignment, Non-Alignment 2.0 and its critics, Keethaponcalan’s reform proposals, and a settled position to land an answer on. Between 2016 and 2025 this chapter carried eight questions, twice each in 2024 and 2025.
Write before the evening:
- Does the Non-Aligned Movement have any future in the wake of India’s growing indifference towards it? (UPSC 2025, 10m)
- “India has, of late, chosen to debunk non-alignment in its pursuit of multi-alignment.” Comment. (UPSC 2024, 15m)
- “Non-alignment was little more than a rational strategy on the part of a materially weak India to maximise its interests within a bipolar distribution of global power.” Comment. (UPSC 2021, 20m)
If you go blank on a point, it is covered in full in the Foundation and OGP class notes and handouts. Revise it, then write.
