General studies Civil service: Understanding foreign policy/relations of India

The foreign relations are an area where aspirants are often very confused. There are many aspirants who have these doubts...

Is India opportunistic?

Why India doesn’t severe ties with Israel /China/ US?

Is India a too soft state? Etc,

The list of queries and the confusion prevalent are plenty.

The primary thing to understand is “India’s foreign policy is directed at giving the best for OUR country”. The most important concern is “Benefit for OUR country “.

 In my college days i had a friend who hated Israel like anything. According to him, India should not procure any arms and shouldn’t have any business with Israel. If India’s policy is severe ties with Israel; who will be the looser? . Israel is a country with high end technology in arms and agriculture. If India has to have an edge in technology and other areas like agriculture, then a good relationship with Israel is needed. Here the emotionally charged decisions (seeing palestine’s suffering) may not be in the best interest of India.

And foreign policy is about “give and take”, it cannot always be “take, take”. If US or any country supports us in a particular area A, it doesn’t do it coz of good will. The help in any area is expected to be reciprocated in another area B. (There is no free meal, in life and in foreign relations). The bilateral relations have to be seen in its totality. That is why we see that certain nations are favoured in certain areas.

The foreign relations are long-term based and not based on knee jerk reactions.  After an incident (eg a bomb blast) people would become emotionally charged and call for war. The government at these moments do not go for it because it thinks of many things. It has to keep in mind the financial, political ties and support from other nations before going to war.

When analysing a foreign policy decision made by India, thinking of these questions will help to understand it better.

A.      Is it helping India and its people?

B.      Is the concession is a particular area helping in any other area?

C.      Is the decision made based on emotions (eg: pressure from a party to withdraw support) or is it a rational decision?

The comments in the web, media etc are sometimes one sided, its therefore our duty to look into A,B,C questions before deciding whether a policy is good or bad for us.