NonAlignment 2.0: A Foreign and Strategic Policy for India in the 21st Century Read Online Free PDF

markets in order to secure access to sophisticated technology, and so to develop domestic capacity, is something India has not been able to do as effectively as it must, especially with developed countries. By way of example, when an airline company like Indigo signs a $16 billion deal with Airbus, technology transfer should be a part of the terms of negotiation. Even India’s defence offsets have been quite disappointing in terms of technology transfer, with only the lowest value addition activities being sourced domestically.
    China has managed to deal with these issues quite well, mainly because the government is able to coordinate the actions of various companies (many of which are state owned)—a luxury India does not have. It may in fact be easier to negotiate technology transfer deals with China itself than with other developed countries, which are intensely possessive about their intellectual property. China’s Huawei telecom company has recently agreed toset up a research facility in Bangalore to ensure that none of its imported devices contain any kind of covert listening technologies.
    India’s China strategy has to strike a careful balance between cooperation and competition, economic and political interests, bilateral and regional contexts. Given the current and future asymmetries in capabilities and influence between India and China, it is imperative that we get this balance right. This is perhaps the single most important challenge for Indian strategy in the years ahead.
South Asia
    Within the Asian theatre no region is more vital for India than South Asia. India cannot hope to arrive as a great power if it is unable to manage relationships within the subcontinent. South Asia is holding India back at many levels. India has to expend enormous resources managing a conflict-ridden neighbourhood. Interstate politics in South Asia has direct spillover effects into domestic and regional politics in India. India’s ability to command respect is considerably diminished by the resistance it meets in the region. South Asia also places fetters on India’s global ambitions. Our approaches to international law and international norms are sometimes overly inhibitedby anxieties about the potential implications that our commitment to certain global norms may have for our options in the neighbourhood. Overall, the opportunity costs of this unhappy regional situation are immense for both India and the region’s other states.
    South Asia is home to the largest number of poor people in the world. This poverty has complex causes, but in a region where natural geography and cultural–historical linkages could provide great advantages, the political factors that have kept South Asia one of the least economically integrated regions in the world are an immense obstacle to its economic development. One of India’s top strategic and foreign policy priorities must be to deepen economic engagement in South Asia.
    India is the major power in the region. But this is of ambivalent strategic value. On the one hand, it is the economic dynamo that has the potential to drive better economic performance and social development across the region. On the other hand, we cannot neglect the fact that the history of interstate relations in South Asia is such that India’s neighbours fear it or chafe at its perceived condescension. The reality of these perceptions matters less than the strategic challenge they present. At the very least, they make it more difficult for all our neighbours to act on policies of mutual economic benefit. Theprospects of regional integration will depend not merely on a cold calculus of material interests but on whether countries in the region can reach a state of maturity and self-confidence—where they do not need a fearsome ‘Other’ to secure their sense of self and identity. South Asia is a strategic challenge because its problems lie as much in the realm of collective moral psychology as that of conventional