Pax Indica: India and the World of the Twenty-first Century Read Online Free PDF

powers’ for granted, no formerly risen power is prepared to fall. Many will seek to stay in place, even if it means continuing the existing inequities in the international order. In some cases new and old powers are busy cultivating the very states whose influence they are simultaneously trying to check. In turn, this will mean an opportunity for other countries to build new coalitions with each other in their efforts to find a better place in the sun. This could lead to clashes, unless the entire international architecture is reshaped cooperatively—an objective India can, and should, work towards, and to which we shall return later in this volume.
    India today disposes of far greater leverage in its extended neighbourhood than before, but arguably bears greater responsibility as well. Our impact on regional issues such as peace and security prospects in South Asia, or even on issues broader afield such as Southeast and East Asian economic integration, is already considerable and will grow in ways that could not have been imagined two decades ago. Our role is also of determining importance on such global issues as the management of climate change, the provision of energy security and the global macroeconomic discussions in the G20 about coordinating ways to pull the world out of recession.
    The world economic crisis, which started as a financial crisis at the heart of the Western capitalist system, has not yet ended. Fortunately, while India has been affected, it has been one of the few economies that continue to show growth, attaining 6.9 per cent in the 2011–12 fiscal year. Nor is it clear that the world economy will return to an expansionary phase any time soon. Our search for markets, technology and resources to fuel our growth will be more complicated than it has been in the recent past. International developments will inevitably affect us. Inflation, for instance, a hot-button political issue in India, is only very partially the result of policies pursued by the elected Indian government. Among the significant causes of rising prices in India is the massive injection of liquidity by the developed Western countries into the world economy to promote their own recovery from the global economic crisis. This hasbeen magnified by a rise in oil and commodity prices, itself partly caused by the availability of more capital but also compounded by the uncertain political climate in a Middle East torn by ‘jasmine revolutions’ and mounting civil strife. To suggest that domestic economics can be pursued without reference to foreign policy is no longer a serious proposition.
    So while India’s strategic goals must remain the same—to enable the domestic transformation of India by accelerating our growth, preserving our strategic autonomy, protecting our people and responsibly helping shape the world—achieving these goals in the present economic climate will be a challenge to our skill and ingenuity. As protectionism grows and closes markets, and as credit is sucked back into developed economies for their own stimulus and recovery, we will have to rely much more on growing our own domestic market. The world of today is not going to provide as propitious an environment for India’s growth and prosperity as the world of two decades ago did, when we first liberalized. This brings me right back to the underlying theme of this book: the importance of using our international policies to serve our fundamental objective of pulling poor people in India out of poverty and into the twenty-first-century globalized economic system.
    What shape should our foreign policy take to enable us to cope with such a world? Decades ago, the scholar Richard A. Falk summarized six broad criteria for evaluating foreign policy in a democracy, which seem broadly relevant to our challenge even today. A country’s foreign policy should, first of all, be a desirable one—approved means (means approved by the general public) must be used in pursuit of