Terms of Trade: The real and perceived in India’s international standing

FOur years agone, on a reporting trip up during the 2022 Uttar Pradesh assemblage elections to a preponderantly Dalit resolution in Mirzapur district on the state’s southeastern border, this writer met a poor middle-aged Dalit man who was a committed voter of the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP). He reiterated his support for the BSP but added that his vote would go to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in a national election. Why? The Narendra Modi government has added to the country’s standing in the world, that is why, said the man.Prodded, the man came up with specifics. When the (Russia-Ukraine) war erupted, the government was able to get the war stopped and extract our students. Even superpowers such as the US and China were not able to extract their students, he said. I realised that it was futile to argue with him that American and Chinese students do not go to study in Ukraine. But when the BJP made this into a campaign point in the 2024 elections, I was neither surprised, not scandalized, unlike many self-righteous but cocooned observers of Indian politics. That Narendra Modi’s government had substantially boosted India’s national standing was an idea which has been systemically and relentlessly propagated by the BJP’s campaign machinery in the country. While one can argue about the magnitude of its political impact on the BJP’s electoral fortunes, it has definitely been an integral part of the regime’s attempt to create a halo around the Prime Minister’s persona.To be sure, there is nothing wrong about such an attempt. Political parties are free to choose issues they want to campaign on and shape popular sentiment. The BJP was remarkably successful in cultivating positive sentiment around India’s foreign policy prowess. It was portrayed as muscular against Pakistan, India’s rouge neighbour which has been waging an asymmetrical war against India for decades. It was described as benevolent vis-à-vis its smaller neighbours and other poor countries in the global south. And it was shown as being more equal than it had been in the past vis-à-vis richer countries, be it the US or European nations or even the petrodollar states.Occasions, even if regular, were converted into spectacles for the public. The Delhi G-20 Summit, Prime Minister’s public events with Donald Trump in 2020, his big-bang state visit under the Biden Presidency and the now forgotten spectacle with Chinese president Xi Jinping in Tamil Nadu are all part of the same pattern. One can give more examples, if needed, to support the personification of diplomacy argument.Not everything in this approach is entirely cosmetic. There have been tangible deliverables from many of this government’s external engagements. Trade deals, supply-chain linkages, security partnerships have been forged.These gains notwithstanding, one can also argue that India has made errors of both omission and commission. These include failure to rein in our biggest ally in the region Shaikh Hasina from committing atrocities and political excesses which fueled public anger leading to her downfall and the Prime Minister visiting Israel days before it launched a war on Iran along with the US, which, made us look like we were on Israel’s side. Then there are miscalculations. Trump 2.0 making India one of the biggest targets of its trade war, while the Indian state considered him a good friend who would be happy to strike a deal with the country, is the biggest example on this count.How did these mistakes come about? The point of asking these questions is not to criticise the ruling regime. That is the opposition’s and not an analyst’s job. And frankly speaking, the former has been quite inept in scoring such points across a range of issues in the last 12 years. This question is important is because answering it is essential to conduct an objective appraisal of India’s strategy under the current government.Three major factors come to this author’s mind.1. A miscalculated leap of faith suggesting congruence of foreign relations based on similarity in domestic political rhetoricIndia’s right-wing loved Donald Trump not because of his policy outlook for what the US should be. They liked him because he was loudly anti-woke and sounded much more palatable compared to the woke Democrats and their other western peers who were often critical of India on things such as Hindutva. That Trump’s right-reactionary traits will also be deployed against Indian exporters and H1B workers was not something which crossed their minds until the shoe was on the other foot.A similar argument can be made vis-à-vis Israel. The Palestinian conflict, partly because of its historical evolution and partly its representation in the Indian public discourse, is often seen as a religious rather than a nationality question. The celebration of Israel’s military prowess against an Islamic threat had blinded India’s right-wing to the (now obvious) painful economic consequences of a large military precipitation in West Asia.This is a lesson which Indians, irrespective of political ideology, both on the right and those against it, need to learn well. Larger ideological affinity does not always lead to congruence of national interest among countries.2. He came, He had an offer one could not refuse, He conquered always works better than He came, He Saw, He conquered in geopoliticsIn geopolitics, there are no permanent friends and enemies. Relations become warm and cold depending on who is necessary for whose interests at what moment. Donald Trump realised it the hard way when he had to seek a trade détente with the Chinese after the latter threatened to cut rare-earth supplies in retaliation for Trump tariffs. Sri Lanka, after having played a promiscuous game between India and China realised that it needed India on its side in the IMF debt restructuring negotiations where one of the debts being negotiated was Chinese. India realised that the public sentiment about decoupling with China was untenable given our large trade relationship with it.These quid-pro-quos matter way more than personal warmth and photo-ops in today’s geopolitics. As is obvious, the wires of these relationships are extremely complex and mingled in the world and the voltage of geopolitical bonhomie can increase or decrease depending on circumstances. What India needs to do is work on its capabilities to make offers which cannot be refused rather than harbour illusions about some leader’s charisma doing the job for us. The former would require adding to the country’s economic prowess.3. Building international standing requires a collective toil rather than outsourced CaesarismOne of the cliched phrases often heard in foreign policy discussions in India is that the best foreign policy is a sustained 8% GDP growth rate. The experience of past six years, when the world has suffered repeated massive supply chain disruptions, shows that the best foreign policy is also having self-sufficiency in making pharmaceutical APIs, fertilizers, holding adequate reserves of fossil fuels, being able to secure rare-earth supplies and such things.The short point is there is no software bypass to reaching the great power milestone and a country must go back to the physiocratic basics of brick-and-mortar self-sufficiency. Thanks to its software highway to growth, India was tricked into believing the former. While some of these pursuits might face a natural resource endowment hurdle for a country like India, on many fronts, a country as large as ours should have no excuses. The hard reality is that India is still way short of self-sufficiency in many areas. A government which has been in power for the last 12 years with a comfortable majority can do better than blaming its predecessors.What exactly has prevented India from doing better on this pursuit. A fundamental asymmetry in our political economy is to blame.The masses, most of whom face extreme economic precarity, have been kept from becoming restive by a rapid proliferation of economic palliatives. This has happened at the level of both central and state governments and enjoys bipartisan support across the political spectrum. This has resulted in an economic cost. India’s enhanced international standing is the proverbial placebo rather than the effective drug in this political bargain.Domestic capital, without which such self-sufficiency cannot be pursued today, is unwilling to make such commitments because it can continue to make, relatively speaking, risk free profits in other activities which exploit the size of the domestic markets and where no competition is required with foreign producers. This recusal from national interest driving investment is often legitimised by their willingness to provide political finance. The money spent in Indian elections is insanely high for a country with such low per capita income levels.The fragility of this short-termism, survivalist for the underclass and conveniently profiteering for the rich, is often hidden when things are all right in the world. But our vulnerabilities become bare in times of crisis such as the present one.The public discourse, in keeping with its entrenched poverty of truth in the country, often tries to go after the placebo issues rather than raise the more fundamental questions. The disproportionate heartburn and mud-slinging over Pakistan’s role in mediating a ceasefire between the US and Iran, coupled with a complete absence of discussion on why India is not more immune to the material disruptions created by the war and what could correct this, is a glaring example.So, what is to be done?To be sure, democracies, where periodic renewal of power is the primary objective of a political party, are more prone to such asymmetries. An authoritarian country such as China, on the other hand, has been able to prioritize its national interest pursuits better. While this is a rightful alibi, it can become crippling for a country if it is allowed become an apology.This is where political messaging from the highest leadership, whether democratic or dictatorial, matters. Indians, if one were to paraphrase Stalin’s famous 1930 article, acknowledging the excesses under the collectivization of agriculture in the Soviet Union, have become ‘Dizzy with(out) Success’. It is unfair to expect a poor farmer or gig worker to appreciate supply chain complexities and underlying tasks for India’s strategic resilience. They must be educated about the task at hand by politics. It is useful to end the column with another old Soviet joke.Construction for the Trans-Siberian railway started during Lenin’s period. Once when Lenin was traveling with his Polit Bureau on the train, it stopped. What happened? Lenin asked. Comrade, there is no track ahead, he was told. Let us all get down and lay the tracks, he said. Decades later, it was Stalin in the train and the same thing happened. I give you 24 hours to lay down the tracks or all of you will be shot, he said. Then came Khrushchev, and faced a similar predicament. Let us take the tracks from behind and lay them in front, he ordered. When Brezhnev ran into the problem, he said, it is alright if there are no tracks, let us pretend that we are moving.India’s international standing will depend on where exactly our political leadership is situated in the Lenin-Brezhnev spectrum. While all of the four Soviet leaders ruled over a strong country, their contributions to furthering national interest could not have been more different.The views are personal.