India’s inability to secure full membership of the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) at the body’s plenary session in Seoul last month has, quite predictably, invited a great deal of domestic criticism. The criticism — tinged with a large measure of gloating — has broadly centred on two points.
First, it has been claimed that there was no real need for India to approach the NSG for full membership since it had already secured a waiver. It has been suggested that the step was indicative of the showmanship that characterises Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s approach to diplomacy. Secondly, in a similar vein, it has been argued that Modi’s foreign policy is too simpleminded and that the Prime Minister was silly enough to believe that personal contacts with the leaders of NSG member-states would suffice to secure their endorsement. Both Opposition politicians and sections of the think-tank community have argued that India lacks any nuanced policy towards China. It is said that India has outsourced the China issue to the United States and, in the process, raised Beijing’s hackles.
Since serious debates on foreign policy rarely intrude into the larger public arena, the deliberations over the NSG membership are welcome — if only to secure a better understanding of what Modi’s foreign policy is all about.
To begin with, it is worth discarding the self-serving myth that India’s foreign policy is bipartisan. That may well have been the case in the days when the Congress governed with a steamroller majority. Since the appearance of non-Congress Governments, even foreign policy has become more contested, despite the extraordinary amounts of continuity. The issues that flowed from the Pokhran-2 blasts of May 1998, in particular, have divided India along partisan lines.
Overlooking for the moment the debate over the contributions of successive Governments from Indira Gandhi — but particularly PV Narasimha Rao — in readying India for the May 1998 N-tests, what is apparent is that there is a large section of the Nehruvian and left circles that never reconciled themselves to this break. To a body of thinking that believed non-alignment was a permanent doctrine defining India, the N-tests put India in the awkward position of having to choose between international opprobrium and self-assertion. I firmly believe Indira Gandhi and even Rajiv would have preferred self-assertion and the emergence of India as a formidable regional power.
However, there is very little to suggest that the two UPA Governments were inclined in this direction. The recent intervention by former diplomats who occupied important positions during the 2004-14 period suggests that they would have preferred India gradually sliding back to the pre-1998 days, not least by pretending that Vajpayee’s audacity was an aberration that is best forgotten. On China — and the UPA regime had an overload of China experts in crucial positions — the UPA certainly conveyed an impression that India would do its utmost to prevent treading on China’s toes, even if it meant downgrading national ambitions. Their ambitions extended to maintaining India’s position as a mid-ranking power.
There are two important differences between the Modi Government and its predecessor. First, under Modi, India has altered its strategic ambition. It is no longer content to remain a benign, mid-ranking power that earns rewards by securing a large number of well-paid posts for its diplomats and economists in UN and other multilateral bodies. Modi’s ambitions are far more audacious: to prepare India for an entry into the big league. Having learnt its lesson in 2011, when the NSG modified the terms of the 2008 waiver, India understandably felt that the uncertainty could end if it secured a place for itself inside the NSG. Today, India needs to be inside the room.
Secondly, since May 2014, Indian foreign policy has become substantially more business-centric. This approach may go against the understanding of a section of our diplomats that don’t see the necessity of getting their hands tainted by base commerce but it corresponds to the national thrust. At the Climate Summit in Paris last year, there was a commitment by India to meet at least 40 per cent of its energy requirements through non-fossil fuel. In preparing for a clean energy regime, a great deal of importance has been attached to N-power, a subject that formed a significant item of the agreements between India and the US during Modi’s brief visit earlier this year. The need to go full throttle on the N-power has made a formal entry into the NSG a matter of priority, not least to improve the commercial terms for the purchase of components and technological access. There are some 14 N-power reactors in the offing and for India the commercial stakes are high.
Not being able to secure entry into the NSG last month is a disappointment, but it is not the end of the journey. Contrary to those who believe that some of the smaller players have doubts over India’s membership, the reality seems to be a 47 to 1 division. How to prevent China from holding the NSG hostage to its wariness of India is without doubt India’s foremost preoccupation from now to the next NSG Plenum. In the interregnum, international focus is likely to be on the outcome of the international arbitration on South China Sea and whether or not China accepts the verdict.
This is a time for all the pundits in India to put their collective experience together to promote the national interest. This is neither the time nor the occasion to play, what amounts to, the game on China’s terms.