Hello and welcome. I'm Amitabh Mattoo and the director of the Australia India Institute and Professor of International Relations at the University of Melbourne. Today, we're going to talk about India's foreign policy. But before I take you through the various dimensions of India's foreign policy, I think it's a good idea to try and see why India is interesting or why should Indian foreign policy be interesting to the rest of the world? And of course, India and Indians think of themselves as exceptional, but then almost every other country thinks of itself as exceptional. American exceptionalism is an area where thousands of scholars have written hundreds of books. But why is India interesting? India is interesting for some of the following reasons. It's a civilisation state, it's a rising power, it's a stable democratic polity. It has a largest demographic population of young people, and it is the third largest economy in PPP terms. Now what is a civilisational state? A civilisational state simply is a state which through history has had high level of achievements in economics, art, thinking, and sees itself as part of a continuing tradition of that thinking. Now, Indian civilisation goes back at least 5,000 years. There are multiples accounts of the Indus Valley Civilisation, for instance, and the great achievements there. Similarly, there are the famous ethics which are part of the Indian Civilisational discourse. The Madhvacharya and the Hiriyanna. There is established schools of Indian philosophy. Then there are Vedas. Which are some of the deepest contemplations on the state of life, on spirituality, and continue to have contemporary practitioners and thinkers who believe in those traditions. So civilisationally Indians see themselves as the Chinese often do states, but which existed as civilisations before they were states in a Westphalian sense. India is seen as a rising power today. What is a rising power? A rising power clearly is a power which can make a difference to its region and beyond. Of course, super powers can make a difference to the whole international system. But a rising power certainly has the ability and influence economically, militarily, politically, to be able to make a difference to use its power, to carrots, sticks, and soft power. To be able to modify, change the behaviour, or at least, influence the state of the region. The India Pacific region, as it were. So India has seen, on the one hand, is a civilisational state, on the other hand, it's a rising power. Both of these things make India interesting enough to study, especially India's foreign policy. But perhaps the most interesting part of India is the fact that it is a democracy. Sure, there are many democracies in the world, but when India became a democracy in 1947 after winning power from British colonial rule. Few political theorists, or analysts, gave Indian democracy much of a chance. Democracy had thrived, succeeded, survived only in states which are relatively homogeneous and which had given its citizens a relatively high standard of living where basic needs had been met. India on the contrary was one of the most heterogeneous states internationally in the globe, linguistically, religiously, in terms of ethnicity there were few countries in the world, or there are few countries in the world today which can compare with India. India has about 500 different languages. It's home to the world's, all the world's major religions. Buddhism was one in India. 85% of Indians are Hindus. India has the largest, third largest population of Muslims. India is a home to the Sikhs. The Sikh faith was born in India. The Jains were also set up and created in India. So India is home to all these multiple faiths, and languages, and different ethnicities, and different regional differences, and it is also home to some of the poorest people in the world. Not many people, as I said, gave Indian democracy much of a chance. And yet India has not just succeeded, but also greatly prospered as a democracy with strong institutions except for a brief period between 1975 and 1977 there has not been an occasion when Indian democracy has been toppled. Why is India succeeded and survived as a democracy? Now political theorists later on suggested that if maybe the accident of a gifted leadership which is committed to the democratic like Naro and Gandhi, others suggest that because India has a comprehensive constitution with checks and balances that was the reason why Indian democracy survived and succeeded because few people could undermine the constitution which had these elaborate system of checks and balances. Others suggest that because India put into place a comprehensive system of affirmative action, that ensured that the anger, at the grassroots level, at the mass level, at the popular level, did not activate itself in some kind of revolutionary zeal. Because the affirmative action policies allowed for considerable social mobility. Some others argue that it may will be the fact that the steel frame of the Indian bureaucracy prevented the new political leadership from taking radical actions unlike other states where there wasn't a strong bureaucracy, populous actions often undermined the democratic order itself. Finally, there are those like the Nobel laureate Amartya Sen, who believe that the only way you can govern India is democratically that heterodoxy descend debate has been historically a part of the Indian tradition and there may will be a gene. A democratic gene within the Indian people that you cannot really govern India, unless you do so democratically. I talked about why India is interesting. Because it's a civilisational state, because it's a rising power, because it is a stable democratic polity. And in fact against all odds has survived and succeeded as a democracy. But there are two other reasons why it's interesting. One, that it has demographically today about 550 million young people under the age of 25. Much of the rest of the world is getting older. United States, much of the west, Australia, Japan are ageing. And in contrast, India is getting younger and younger. China, because of its one-child policy, is also ageing. But because India has this huge youth bulge, as it's say, this youth bulge could become India's greatest demographic asset. Skilled, trained, given the right values of global citizenship, they could potentially be the global workforce of tomorrow. But unskilled, and angry if they are not been trained, and educated, and given the values, they could become the world's greatest nightmare, demographic nightmare. The jury is still out, but I think it's fair to say that if India invest in the kind of education, training, and skilling that is needed, this could be their most important asset in the days to come. That's what makes this feature of India exciting and interesting. Finally of course, India's economy has done phenomenally well in the last two decades, except for the last three years when growth has gone down to about 5%. India grew at nearly 10% for over a decade. Which is comparable only to China and some of the other BRICS countries like Brazil, Russia, and South Africa. Today, India's economy in PPP terms, in, purchasing power parity terms is only third next after the United States and China. Which doesn't mean that there isn't poverty or that India has been able to address the issue of stark deprivation. India's also home to the world's largest number of poor people with poverty often worse than Sub-Saharan Africa. It's also because of these contradictions that some people think that there are two India's. I'd like to say there are multiple India's. And that's what, this multiple cities, this diversity, this heterogeneity makes India special, interesting, and especially it's foreign policy.
