New vigour, change in India’s diplomatic outreach

India’s foreign policy outreach initiatives reflect rapid new changes in the conduct of conference diplomacy as a time-tested instrument of foreign policy

The disruption which descended on the Group of Twenty (G20) countries ahead of its meeting of foreign ministers in Johannesburg this week has brought international focus back on the success of Indian diplomacy in steering the G20 during its presidency amidst severe global turbulence in 2023. With Marco Rubio, the new United States Secretary of State, boycotting the rotating South African presidency of the group, it is at the crossroads.

Simultaneously, BRICS, a growing force multiplier in recent years towards multipolarity in world diplomacy, is in crisis. US President Donald Trump has threatened to impose 100 per cent trade tariffs on the group whose original founders are Brazil, Russia, India, and China as its short name suggests. Internally, Argentina has rejected BRICS membership and Saudi Arabia’s role in the group is ambivalent.

In the thick of such unsettling trends and potential restructuring of global institutions, India’s emergence as a conference superpower promises to have far-reaching diplomatic impact. In the Policy Planning Division of the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA), which is spearheading this superpower drive, its staff no longer uses terms like conferences or events in their descriptions of this effort. Instead, the new catchwords for conference diplomacy are ‘foreign policy outreach initiatives’.

Such a change in nomenclature reflects rapid new changes in the conduct of conference diplomacy as a time-tested instrument of foreign policy. At the Asia Economic Dialogue (AED) in Pune this week, for instance, the agenda represents a break from conventional economic themes of development, gross domestic product growth, inflation or industrialisation. Instead, the focus is on artificial intelligence (AI) for profit, cyber resilience, financial imperatives of cyber security, and on unlocking the potential of micro, small and medium companies instead of nations.

Gautam Bambawale, AED convenor, surprisingly lists India’s success in winning over 100 medals at the Asian Games held in China two years ago as an example of the country’s comprehensive national power, the ability to influence geo-economics through an extension of its soft power. The content of economic diplomacy is changing, and greater awareness of technology is in demand in public discourse. Appropriately, the theme of the ongoing AED, one of MEA’s outreach initiatives executed through the Pune International Centre, is ‘Economic resilience and resurgence in an era of fragmentation’.

Fragmentation has taken many forms, quicker than anyone expected, since Trump’s inauguration as president a month ago. Consequently, there is a need for economic discourses within governments, but also outside of them, to be urgently nimble-footed and imaginative. Globalisation is suddenly synonymous with insecurity. Financial instruments, which did not get second thoughts and market shares are being weaponised. International organisations, which were products of the post-World War II order are unlikely to survive Trump’s onslaught on them, which has barely begun. For decades, India and like-minded countries struggled to restructure them equitably, but failed, as in the case of United Nations Security Council reform, quotas in the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and in the structures of global trade bodies.

Their collapse, which cannot be ruled out, may be a windfall opportunity for India, which has not invested in them excessively. Not for want of trying, but because rich and powerful nations unfailingly showed the door to the Third World whenever they tried to get one foot into them. To use the newfound opportunities, awareness is of high importance.

Foreign policy outreach initiatives are a way of creating awareness so that India does not lose out yet again as it did during centuries when the tides of history were not on its side. Along with the AED, India’s flagship foreign policy outreach initiatives are the annual Raisina Dialogue and a Global Technology Summit, also an annual event. With time, these outreach initiatives are going global.

External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar’s itinerary in the last three weeks bears testimony to this. He was at the Indian Ocean Conference in Muscat this week and prior to that at the first Raisina Middle East. Both events are the work of MEA in association with two Indian think-tanks. Meanwhile, at smaller, regional levels domestically, diplomatic awareness through conferences is growing exponentially. Last month, a Track 1.5 Kochi Dialogue was launched on India’s relations with the Gulf region and the first Technology Dialogue took place in Bengaluru in partnership with the Indian Institute of Science. Last week, the MEA co-hosted the Maharana Pratap Geopolitics Dialogue in Jaipur even as Purvodaya Perspectives, an outreach in Bhuvaneshwar to explore the economic potential of India’s eastern seaboard states, is being developed into an annual event.

The scale of conference diplomacy has demanded a revolving door, like in the US, for India’s former diplomats. Bambawale, the man in charge of the AED, retired in 2018 after being high commissioner in Pakistan and ambassador in China and Bhutan. The services of three former ambassadors were requisitioned during the Kochi Dialogue. Former deputy national security adviser Pankaj Saran chaired a 10-day consultative meeting in Kochi last year on the Antarctic Treaty. India’s plan to set up an Antarctic research station was announced there. Several government-funded think-tanks in India are now headed by retired diplomats.

(K P Nayar has extensively covered West Asia and reported from Washington as a foreign correspondent for 15 years.)

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.