Indian Foreign Policy

India’s foreign policy management and delivery critically need improvement. Going beyond incremental improvements, straightforward and clearly delineated foreign policy objectives should be developed. Coordinating with non-state actors, nurturing relations with neighbouring nations, and a diplomatic overhaul should be the key elements of India’s foreign policy.

The author would like to thank the anonymous reviewer who helped improve this article.

The web version of this article corrects a few errors that appeared in the print edition.

As a rising power, India needs a foreign policy that projects its interests and its future possibilities. As a country that has a seat at the global table, projecting confidence to shape events on a large canvas should be the hallmark of India’s foreign policy. India should not restrict its foreign policy scope to a narrow or proximate horizon. Moreover, it needs diplomatic structures and methods that effectively deliver on those objectives. This perspective has been formed on the basis of a 35-year-old career in the Indian Foreign Service (IFS) and my independent study of diplomatic processes. This is not a perspective that Indian diplomatic elements have considered and applied in a consistent manner (Rana 2005, 2011, 2013b, 2016).

Consider the 2013 edited monograph, Non-Alignment 2.0: A Foreign and Strategic Policy for India in the 21st Century, with contributions from social scientists, diplomats, and journalists. The authors of this book recommended that Indian diplomacy should be based on strategic autonomy. Reviewing the book, I summarised its narrative of India’s foreign policy, in the words of the authors,
as follows: