NonAlignment 2.0: A Foreign and Strategic Policy for India in the 21st Century (15 page)

Building consensus on long-term objectives and on national interests is of particular importance in devising an effective strategic vision of India’s global opportunities. India will need more non-partisanship and more cooperation between the state, private business and civil society in navigating the unchartered waters of a very volatile international political and economic order. Our politics will have to evolve cultures of criticism, and of trust, where ruling parties and Opposition, state and private enterprise, take each other into confidence. The public assessment of policies must be considered in the context of long-term objectives, not short-term point scoring. It is vital that our public life sustain a critical culture: but criticism must be purposeful, not opportunist.

The need for political consensus is a cliché. But it is absolutely vital. There are bound to be disagreements. And many such disagreements can be strategically productive. They can be used as arguments to strengthen India’s bargaining positions in international negotiations, and very often they help to arrive at sounder, more robust policy
choices. But they can be debilitating as well. When our competitors know that the Government of India cannot deliver on promises, or has little room for manoeuvre, the nature of the bargaining changes. We must be wary of allowing our greatest strength, our democracy, to become an excuse for our dilatoriness and lack of focus.

Democracies elect leaders, and ultimately there can be no getting away from the fact that the political leadership has to take responsibility. In a democracy only a political leadership can have the authority to mobilize genuine consent. The administrative apparatus of the state takes its cues from the example of the political leadership. No amount of structural reform of the state, or continuous economic growth, will yield the necessary dividends if political leadership is indecisive, irresponsible or indifferent.

There is every reason to believe that, if India takes the right steps, it can assume its rightful place in the world. Its principal challenge remains lifting millions of impoverished citizens out of poverty. This should remain the litmus test for policy. There can be no compromises with this objective. When all is said and done, India’s standing will be determined by how much it redeems this promise.

India has to remain conscious of the fact that it has a very long way to go in achieving this objective. But the last three decades have demonstrated that this goal is within India’s grasp. High economic growth is possible. Creating structures that allow more and more citizens to participate in that growth is possible. India has unleashed among its citizens an aspiration and energy that is translating into the kind of dynamism not seen in Indian history for millennia. But much more needs to be done to take full advantage of this opportunity.

India has done all this while maintaining a commitment to a liberal, secular, constitutional democracy. India has held together as a nation because of a commitment to these values. India’s strategic objectives will continue to be framed against the backdrop of both its development needs broadly understood and its constitutional principles.

But India has had a special history in one respect. Its nationalist movement was unique. It was unique in the techniques it deployed. It was unique in its intellectual ambition. All of India’s great leaders—Gandhi, Tagore, Nehru, Ambedkar—had one aspiration: that India should be a site for an alternative universality. India’s legitimacy today will come from its ability to stand for the highest human and universal values. These values gave India enormous moral and ideological capital. Except for our neighbours, with whom we have complicated ties of history, the rest of the world has looked upon India with a certain admiration for holding on to these values.

But as India ascends the world stage, the question will be asked: Will India be like great powers of the past? Or will it work to set new standards in moral and ideological leadership? In many ways the paradox is that precisely at the moment nations become powerful, they are vulnerable to being blindsided by their own ambition. Precisely at the moment they have an ability to shape the world, they shape
it according to imperatives of power. India must remain true to its aspiration of creating a new and alternative universality.

In international relations, idealism not backed by power can be self-defeating. But equally, power not backed by the power of ideas can be blind. India’s adherence to values will be a great source of legitimacy in the international system. It should, as it rises, be clear about what values it stands for. India already has enormous legitimacy because of the ideological legacies its nationalist movement bequeathed to it. But this legitimacy, if squandered, cannot be easily recovered. India should aim not just at being powerful: it should set new standards for what the powerful must do.

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First published in Viking by Penguin Books India
2013

Published in Penguin Books 2014

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Copyright © Sunil Khilnani, Srinath Raghavan,
Rajiv Kumar, Pratap Bhanu Mehta, Lt Gen. (Retd) Prakash Menon, Nandan Nilekani, Shyam Saran,
Siddharth Varadarajan 2013

The views and opinions expressed in this book are the
authors’ own and the facts are as reported by them which have been verified to the extent
possible, and the publishers are not in any way liable for the same.

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ISBN: 978-0-143-42347-8

This digital edition published in 2014.
e-ISBN:
978-9-351-18193-4