The following article originally appeared in The Print on March 8, 2019.
It is commonplace for foreign officials, journalists, and
academics to visit India for a few days, meet with a handful of Indian
policymakers, and try to derive from these conversations a sense of Indian
views on contemporary international affairs. The end result is often
impressionistic, and the conclusions drawn can be misleading. Indian
commentators are often guilty of the same phenomenon, frequently projecting an
imagined Indian consensus around a certain issue when one may not exist.
In the Survey of India’s Strategic Community, undertaken
in December last year, 127 members of India’s strategic community – ranging
from current and former politicians, bureaucrats, diplomats, military officers,
and spies to members of the media, scholarly and business communities –
anonymously answered questions related to India’s relations with the United
States, China, Pakistan, Russia, and West Asia, as well as strategic challenges
and policy priorities.
The results reflected some clear areas of consensus.
Domestically, respondents perceived inequality and lack of opportunity (42 per
cent) and the absence of education, skills, and employment (29 per cent) to be
India’s biggest challenges. These economic issues overshadowed matters of
governance and security, such as sectarianism and identity politics (11 per
cent), law and justice (6 per cent), and separatism and insurgencies (3 per
cent). Addressing these economic challenges, it was believed, would require
sourcing investment and financing (31 per cent), technology (29 per cent) and
education and skills (11 per cent) from abroad.
Externally, China’s assertiveness (54 per cent) was
widely seen as the biggest challenge facing India, ahead of cyber and new
military technologies (14 per cent), economic protectionism (12 per cent), and
state-backed terrorism from Pakistan (11 per cent). The boundary dispute and
China’s ties with Pakistan were perceived to be the main causes of difference between
New Delhi and Beijing, rather than trade and economic ties. Seventy-three per
cent believed that the China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) constituted a
major security challenge for India, while 63 per cent worried about Chinese
investment in Sri Lanka and the Maldives. However, relatively few Indians
believed that China would dominate the world (6 per cent) by 2035 and only 5
per cent thought that India would next use overseas military force in a limited
conflict with China.
A third major conclusion to draw, is that the United
States was widely seen as India’s most important partner on global issues (75
per cent), well ahead of Russia (12 per cent), Japan (6 per cent), China (2 per
cent), and France (2 per cent). While a majority believed that India should
remain equidistant between the United States and China in the event of greater
competition between the two, a large minority (43 per cent) said that India
should collaborate more closely with the United States and only 2 per cent
thought India should work more closely with China in those circumstances. The
US relations with Pakistan (31 per cent) and trade disputes (31 per cent) were
believed to be the primary obstacles to better Indian relations with
Washington.
Finally, the Indo-Pacific (74 per cent) – with an
emphasis on the maritime domain, and collaboration with the United States,
Japan, Southeast Asia, and Australia – was seen as the best definition of
India’s extended region, over the Asia-Pacific (17 per cent), Asia (8 per
cent), and Eurasia (1 per cent). This is reinforced by the fact that 74 per
cent saw Southeast Asia as a very important region for Indian interests (the
highest outside South Asia), and eastward-leaning institutions such as the East
Asia Summit and ASEAN (73 per cent) and BIMSTEC (61 per cent) featured
prominently among institutional priorities. Further consistency could be seen
in policy areas, where cross-border connectivity (52 per cent) and naval and
maritime capabilities (49 per cent) were perceived to be top priorities.
But despite these areas of broad consensus, there were
also important differences reflected in the survey. When asked about whether
India should contain or isolate Pakistan’s military, civilian government, and
civil society, or engage these actors, opinion was divided. While a majority
(87 per cent) favoured engagement with Pakistani civil society, a majority (54
per cent) also favoured containing or isolating the military. Similar
differences emerged over West Asia, with large numbers identifying Israel (31
per cent), the UAE (31 per cent), Iran (18 per cent), and Saudi Arabia (13 per
cent) as India’s most important partners in the region.
Other differences were apparent. Decision-makers – those
who currently or formerly served in politics, the civil services, or the
military – tended to be slightly more in favour of military interventionism,
containing or isolating Pakistan, seeking technology from abroad over
investment, and investing in Indian military rather than diplomatic
capabilities. Generational divides also made themselves felt: those over 60
placed a greater emphasis on the United Nations, those between 40 and 60 were
more in favour of trade and the partnership with the United States, and those
under 40 expressed greater interest in Europe and the Indo-Pacific.
Overall, the strategic community reflected somewhat
similar views to the Indian public, when compared to a 2017 survey that asked
questions of average Indians. The public too saw the US as India’s most
important partner (53 per cent), followed by Russia, Japan and China. The
Indian public was also more supportive of closer collaboration with the United
States (48 per cent), but also saw China as less of a challenge, with 14 per
cent in favour of greater collaboration with Beijing in the event of great
Sino-American competition. And while the questions posed were different, there
are suggestions that the Indian public is overwhelmingly more critical of
Pakistan than India’s strategic community.
This is just the beginning of an attempt at
systematically understanding how the Indian foreign policy and security
community perceives developments in international affairs. A wider or more
detailed study conducted on an annual basis would provide a more accurate
reflection of Indian strategic perspectives, as well as changes over time.