India should rethink global partnerships

The Covid-19 pandemic has devastated India in ways that no other disease has since Independence. The devastation wrought by the second wave this year has been especially acute and has brought about significant public health, political, economic, and diplomatic challenges for India. A lot was expected from India’s global strategic partnership with the US, however, it can be said that India got the short shift from its partner. To make matters more complicated, India had to tackle its own policy conundrum surrounding disaster aid.

India usually stresses self-reliance and its own emerging-power image to decline aid to tackle challenges posed by disasters. However, the most significant development since the advent of the second wave has been India's overturning of its disaster aid policy, 16 years after it was first conceived by the then prime minister Manmohan Singh government, in order to receive emergency material support for both the country's vaccination drive as well as for meeting the urgent medical requirements of the suffering millions in India.

The change in policy has translated into emergency disaster aid being eventually received from the US, China, the EU and a host of other countries. But there was a clear divide in the sense of urgency shown by countries such as the US— seen as close partners in India— and the others. This clear divide is at once baffling and mind-numbing given the scale of the public health emergency. The US has been accused of dragging its feet, especially for its ban on the export of chemical raw materials used in the production of vaccines to India hampering the vaccination process. India's policy reversal did not mean that disaster aid to India would be without the usual geopolitics.

US aid to India

Gayle E Smith, the US State Department Coordinator for Global Covid Response and Health Security, highlighted that India is a “major priority” for the US, and that is the reason why it received Covid-19 emergency aid to the tune of $100 million. This decision came after an excruciating delay in releasing the necessary raw materials for vaccine manufacturing in India.

After intense criticism of the Biden administration’s ‘America First’ strategy, both domestically and internationally, the Biden administration reversed its decision. However, there is a lack of clarity on how many vaccines India will receive from the US. The Biden administration has not made any commitments on the export of any of the vaccine types produced in the country and there has been no announcement on the provision of surplus vaccines either.

The foreign policy establishments of India and the US have been vocal about their global strategic partnership in the past year. It has been a disillusionment for India with the harsh reality of the much-hyped partnership coming to the fore. The US has failed to live up to the expectation of millions of Indians who were counting on the close partnership, especially for vaccine research and production. On the contrary, India, in the months prior to the onset of the second wave, was generously donating nearly half of its domestic vaccine production to nearly 90 countries. But it had to face shortage after the second wave of infections with no substantial support from its strategic partner, the US. The US dragged its feet and fell back on the platitude of ‘America First’ until the situation in India got out of control.

This episode highlights the hollowness of India’s much flaunted “global strategic partnership” as also the hollowness of cooperation under the banner of the ‘Quad’ (India, US, Australia, and Japan).

India must retain the reversal of its disaster aid policy to be prudent about need-based disaster aid instead of looking at it from the lens of geopolitics. Aid from foreign governments and intergovernmental organisations must be welcomed in the interest of the disaster-affected as well as in the interest of robust multilateralism.

The Indian establishment must seriously introspect about the level of dependence on the so-called global strategic partnerships. If such partnerships cannot be counted on during severe disasters such as pandemics, then it raises critical questions about the kind of partners India needs to look for.

(The writers are foreign policy researchers)