The Unsaturated Reader

Tag: news

  • A New India in the eyes of the world

    (Originally published on December 16th 2024)

    Last Sunday afternoon, I had the good fortune to attend the launch of a magazine that broaches India’s outlook on world affairs, appropriately titled, “India’s World.” Listening to the always insightful and upbeat Honourable Minister of External Affairs S. Jaishankar speak was a pleasant experience. The pearls of wisdom he shared on the nuances of (new) India’s foreign policy was illuminating. I will not deny the sense of pride and thrill I felt to be a part of the 1.4 billion people driving the new narrative about India.  

    Prof. Happymon Jacob, one of the founders of the magazine, remarked in his welcome note, “arguments and narratives matter in world politics.” Perhaps Britain’s Keir Starmer needs reminding of this fact whose government has been accused of lacking idealism and crucially a plan. The prim man is averse to media-swashbuckling but a little touch with reality (and politics) wouldn’t hurt. Often more than the work on the ground, it is how you shape the narrative around it that influences public perception and determines the measure of your success. Going back to Prof. Jacob’s remark, the simple adage struck me for its forthrightness. It’s a truth that is sometimes overlooked, and sometimes for its own sake misinterpreted and taken too literally, to the satisfaction of any shrewd world leader who perhaps intended to provoke such a reaction — take Trump’s statement on Ukraine for instance. He proclaimed he will end the war in a day; geopolitics analysts have proven too naive in reading too much into it and basing their (which will soon turn out to be baseless) theories of probable outcomes for Ukraine. 

    That said, returning to the plot line, and the bottomline, of Jaishankar’s speech, which was that India’s current undeniably proactive foreign policy is rooted in pragmatism and historical context. Times have changed, actors in the international arena have ebbed and flowed, the tools for conducting geopolitics have upgraded making space for new unlikely but welcome entrants in the field.  Keeping pace with this rapidly changing kshana-kshana world, the way India leads its foreign policy must also change. The present model is neither a break from the past nor an attack on it. It underlines how foreign policies are shaped by contexts, and why a strict adherence to age-old principles that may be outdated for the present, is misguided. It is perhaps time, a section of thinkers, commentators, academicians changed their mindsets. 

    India boasts of a 4-trillion dollar economy and its growth looks unstoppable. To take a tiny statistic, there are around 13 million Indians working abroad and several more, if we add the Indian-origin workers to it — a sign of India’s growing global cultural footprint. She’s a strong, assertive power with significant clout— even a sought-after player in conflict mediation— and the much vaunted (and equally challenged) ‘strategic autonomy’, the shining light. But this is no new-found success. It is buttressed by decades of careful policy-making, calibrating and timely decisions, that set it up for the success it is known for today. 

    Ideally, this burgeoning economy that burst into the global scene in 1991 needs an equally ambitious foreign policy, along the lines of a Viksit Bharat we envision for 2047. That demands proactivity in a world slowly manifesting multi-polarity. We are far from the days of a revamped version of an old-school bipolar world —the place of the diminished Soviet Union being occupied by People’s Republic of China — and may never see it materialise either, at least in our lifetimes. 

    The push into the whirlwind of geopolitics known for its brute realism, is not without its risks and anxieties. As Jaishankar aptly put it, it requires a multifaceted approach which involves striking the right balance between elements of hedging, prudence, collaboration, accelerating multipolarity, juggling between the West and the non-Western world and so on. India is now at a place where it can lead a dialogue on the Global South, find a seat in a G7 meeting, while maintaining its principled-distance and play the role of a peacemaker in the wars and conflicts that ravage the world. 

    On the other end of the spectrum, there are thorny issues or “hangovers” from the past that still ruffle us once in a while, notably the issue of border security. It is imprudent to expect of a country to peacefully pursue its developmental goals insularly while forming well-meaning alliances across the world like your standard homogenous European country, when 38,000 square kilometres of its area has been encroached upon by, if I may drive up the emotional overtone here, an over-bearing neighbour that is on a mission make its mark in every sphere, for good and bad, across the world. 

    Alas, as with any pragmatic relationship, much of the quandary is also about money. China is our biggest trading partner and with whom we run a widening trade deficit. It is definitely a cause for concern but it’s also a fact that cannot be overwritten by ‘hawkish’ narratives, as much as narratives matter. This is why economic diplomacy is just as important. Supply chain remodulation, digital era, enhancing mobility and connectivity for an intermingling world et al are some of the new kids on the block, governments need to be alert and cater to. 

    In the beginning of the lecture Jaishankar noted how Track 1 diplomacy had outpaced Track 2 in the last decade and that too for the good. Think tanks are after all an outlet for ideas of several people that closely tune in to this field. As with any individual therefore, their aggregates too suffer from biases and vestiges of conservatism.

    We should think for the long term and plan for the generations ahead because much is at stake. Importantly, far removed from the elite foreign policy discussion circles and (sometimes) aloof spaces of think tanks and academia, it wouldn’t go amiss to lend a ear to the voice on the Indian street, what the plain old common sense of ordinary folk reveals about India’s role in the world. 

    These are neither trivial nor easy objectives. The truth often lies in the plain and simple, and requires an approach that is direct and discerns the truth and enlivens it. It has only been less than a century since this little nation home to more than a billion, became independent. To have soared so high and outlived the colonial baggage is an indelible achievement. As befits her legacy, a regional hegemon status will add to her laurels. 

  • A Trump 2.0 shouldn’t be a surprise

    With just over four days to go for the election, much is at stake for the United States and the world. The numbers are confounding, and the race painfully close. If it’s abortion for Harris, for Trump it’s immigration. Two subjects the Pope is displeased with (as the Pope expressed last month . the former more so than the latter. He exhorted the Catholic faithful to choose the “lesser of two evils.” 

    While it may seem inarguable that many would want someone prudent helming the White House, voter choices go beyond mere testimonies of competency and sound policies. Donald Trump may be all wack and rubbish to the dispassionate observer sitting afar on the other side of the globe. But to his domestic conservative-leaning audience, he’s a messiah. Somehow he has mastered the art of discerning people’s fears and putting them in sensible*, digestible terms even if it may sound stupid. GDP, growth, figures, indices etc are important in governance but they matter less when it comes to the behavioural influences that make up a voter’s mind. It’s easy to blame the economy’s woes on the people who don’t look like you, even if it is neither rational nor ideal — concepts that matter little to those running the Republican campaign. A quick-fix solution by throwing sand on people’s eyes. These are the classic tricks and manoeuvres every demagogue has up their sleeve. 

    Trump has the uncanny ability to translate the banal to one that pricks the collective conscience, like in the case of Haitians allegedly eating pets. His simplistic rhetorical style, that could only vie with that of a middle-schooler, void of any turn of phrase, something similar to rambling, IS for all its shortcomings, appealing to voters. It appeals to the average red-neck American who looks at the glitzy Democratic National Conventions with a feeling of derision and envy. He may be a tycoon, but his assurances speak to countless working-class Americans, home-makers, unemployed youth and reflect their deepest concerns. 

     It would be hard to deny there’s also a tinge of sexism at play here albeit in indiscernible ways since Harris took over. An increasing number of African-Americans, Latinos, even Indian-Americans too have been flocking to the Republican camp.

    As much as one may haver on about the economy, what voters irrespective of their education or financial status immediately understand without any subject-specific prerequisites and might have an opinion about are social issues. The age of wokeism has begun receding and people are becoming more conservative in their social outlook. Had this been only a phenomenon observed in boomers it would have been less a cause for concern. But data suggests that young men are moving to the right (while young women are among the most progressive cohorts). A polarisation in worldviews across genders and age-groups await us. 

    All of which points to why a second Trump presidency is not unthinkable. Harris is also seen as being light on policies and harping on the abortion narrative excessively despite its growing irrelevance for a fair share of the women population. Contrary to conventional thinking, abortion rates have declined since Roe v. Wade in 1971. Nor are all women hinged on the liberal women’s rights outlook. The sneer at ‘childless cat ladies’ has found favour among many middle-aged women in the US, Swifties’ lamentations regardless.

    A second Trump homecoming was touted to be dark and dangerous for the future of the country during the start of Harris’ campaign, and given how she had catapulted into fame after the gigantic convention at Chicago, Trump 2.0 seemed like an impossibility. Now the world is looking at the face of the very same darkness and danger that Americans seem to have unabashedly embraced. MAGA may not have seen its time yet.