India and the World

Juggling US and China: Modi to visit Beijing

- by Manish Chand

In a delicate diplomatic waltz, after rolling out the red carpet for US President Barack Obama, India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi is set to visit China by May, underlining the new Indian leader’s foreign policy of multi-alignment, which entails forging closer ties with the world’s leading power centres.
India’s External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj, who is currently on a three-day trip to China, has told Indian journalists in Beijing that Mr Modi will visit China before the end of his first year in office. Government sources indicated that the visit is expected around April-early May.

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Is India firmly aligned with the US now?

- by India Writes Network

After the high profile summit with US President Barak Obama, has Prime Minister Narendra Modi placed India firmly in the US camp, much to the chagrin of the old foreign policy establishment in Delhi that reveled in the business of non-policy making under cover of non-alignment.At the outset, our so-called non-alignment was not really so, as we were clearly in the Soviet camp for reasons not entirely of our own making. Pandit Nehru was ideologically sympathetic to the Soviet Union while his daughter went a step further and cemented the relationship with Moscow with the Indo-Soviet treaty in 1971 prior to the launching of war to liberate East Pakistan. The fact that Nixon-Kissinger led America at that time was openly ’tilting’ in favour of Gen. Yahya Khan and towards Mao’s Communist China instead of a ‘socialist democracy’ in India was one of the contributing reasons for our alignment with the USSR. In fact, before signing the Indo-Soviet Treaty, Indira Gandhi went to London and Washington to seek their support to end the massacre in East Pakistan, but returned empty handed.

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Reappraising Relations with China: From Strategic Ambiguity to Recognising Mutual Interests

- by India Writes Network

As global economic and strategic concerns shift to Asia, Chinese analysis of global trends has resulted in a strategic shift in China’s approaches to foreign and security policy. This is, for instance, reflected both in the call for a ‘new type of major power relationship’ with the United States as well as in the new outreach initiatives towards Asian countries. Beijing has been among the first to reach out to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and our relations with China should not respond merely to its re-emergence but also engage with it in shaping the future regional and global orders.

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India-Africa summit: Making Ideas Work

- by Manish Chand

Resurgence, Renewal and Renaissance. Democracy, Development, and Demographic Dividend. Trade, Technology and Training. 2015 promises to be a year when the narratives of a rising India and Afro-optimism are set to intersect, and impart a fresh resonance to the emerging vocabulary of the multi-faceted India-Africa engagement. The increasing convergence of interests, values and a burgeoning web of win-win opportunities will be crystallised in the third India-Africa Forum Summit New Delhi will host later this year. This will be the first India-Africa summit to be hosted by the Narendra Modi government, and will reflect the mantra of “skill, scale and speed” in dynamic and evolving relations between the two growth poles of the world.

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