Critically examine the major factors responsible for a turnaround in the trajectory of India’s foreign policy in the post-cold war period.
How the answer moves
The flow snapshot — the routes in, the body, the counter-view and the routes out.
Route 1 Cold War’s end unsettled post-1947 assumptions → two pressures (systemic + economic) forced a reframing, not a rupture
Route 2 1991 the hinge → external shock meets domestic breakdown → doctrine reworked, core aims kept
systemic shock (Ganguly: USSR collapse + Cold War’s end → nonalignment lost meaning) → unipolar adjustment (accommodate US, full ties with Israel, economy at centre) → economic crisis (1991 fiscal shock: oil, Gulf repatriation, lost remittances → end of import-substitution) → Baru: economy the necessary foundation of power → doctrinal reframing (Nirupama Rao: strategic autonomy from growth, energy/maritime security, technology, all-power ties) → non-alignment → strategic autonomy + multi-alignment (polycentric order) → Indo-US civil nuclear deal as marker
Menon: sovereignty & territorial integrity remain foundational → India cautious on coercive norms (R2P) → limits of the turnaround
Route 1 real in posture and method → but older ideals reworked, not discarded
Route 2 strategic autonomy the constant thread → change as evolution, adapted to a transformed order
Model answer
Handwritten, in the form it would be written in the examination hall.
