PYQ Vault · Paper 2 · Changing International Political Order

Do you endorse the view that the end of Bipolarity and the rise of multiple regional organisations has made

How the answer moves

The flow snapshot — the routes in, the body, the counter-view and the routes out.

Flow snapshot — how the answer moves
Intro routes

Route 1 non-alignment ≠ neutrality (Schwarzenberger) → negative base: stay out of military alliances → positive base: independence of judgment (Belgrade, 1961) → the question’s two changes hit only the first base → endorse in part

Route 2 NAM born to escape two camps → camps gone, groupings multiplied → real question: was bloc-avoidance ever the whole of non-alignment? → endorse in part

Body flow

the two bases → end of bipolarity empties the negative base → the positive base is untouched → Sreenivasan: freedom of judgment and action, valid whether one bloc or two → Paul: limited soft balancing, naming and shaming → partial credit for decolonisation, containing proliferation, easing bipolar tension → regional bodies work within regions; NAM’s field is the Global South, its work normative

Counter-view

Köchler: NAM fitted the bipolar era alone; objectives redundant; members lean on the US; no charter, statute or secretariat → G-7 / ASEAN / SCO / BRICS carry the economic agenda NAM never built → Raja Mohan: a movement in a “state of coma”

Conclusion routes

Route 1 structural charge sticks, irrelevance charge fails → Jaishankar: independence of action continues as strategic autonomy → less central, not irrelevant

Route 2 relevance has shifted, not ended → from bloc-avoidance to Global South voice and soft-balancing platform → “shifting and variable coalitions rather than settled alliances”

Model answer

Handwritten, in the form it would be written in the examination hall.

Handwritten model answer — UPSC PSIR 2017, Changing International Political Order