Explain the major features of India’s Foreign Policy in the 2ist century.
How the answer moves
The flow snapshot — the routes in, the body, the counter-view and the routes out.
Route 1 21st-century IFP breaks from Cold War non-alignment → proactive engagement on many fronts
Route 2 defining feature = multi-alignment → strategic autonomy held with many partners at once (Raja Mohan)
multi-alignment (Raja Mohan: US, Russia, France, Japan, ASEAN) → Neighbourhood First (co-existence, connectivity, development) → Act East (from Look East, balance China) → economic diplomacy (Pant: Make in India, Digital India, FTAs) → multilateral activism (Tharoor: UN, BRICS, G20, SCO, UNSC bid) → security (Quad, maritime, counter-terror) → soft power (vaccine diplomacy, ISA, diaspora, Indo-Pacific)
features look like a qualitative break, but rest on continuity → autonomy now pursued through engagement, not distance (new means, old value)
Route 1 many new instruments, one constant thread — strategic autonomy
Route 2 move from reactive non-alignment to proactive multi-alignment reads as evolution, not rupture — old principles carried into new priorities
Model answer
Handwritten, in the form it would be written in the examination hall.
Also asked on this head
Indian Foreign Policy — 10 questions in the Vault.
- Critically analyze the different phases of India’s foreign policy since independence. How justified, do you think, is S. Jaishankar’s classification of the current phase as the...
- Would you concur with the view that of late, India’s foreign policy has been in a transition mode from Nehruvianism to Neoliberalism? Support your answer with...
- Critically examine the major factors responsible for a turnaround in the trajectory of India’s foreign policy in the post-cold war period.
How this is taught
The same flow snapshot, built for every head of the syllabus, with the answer written in class.
The first session of Foundation 2027 is published in full.
Six programmes across three levels.