Indian foreign policy : did we learn from mistakes in the past

Author - Manoj Kumar
There is an urgent need to renovate the Indian mindset how we look this world. The old hippocratic and dilapidated foreign policy need to be thrown out. We will have to realize that this world in which we are living has transformed a lot and we are way behind the people around the globe because of our inflexibility to change ourselves. We should not repeat the mistakes of the past we did. Like, we got our freedom at the cost of partition of the country, and the result of partition is that the other part treats us as number one enemy in the world, fought three wars with us directly. It is fighting a proxy war in the form of terrorism for last three decades, has taken lives of millions of people from both sides till date in this enmity. The thirst is getting stronger with each passing day. In fact it’s like a cancer that can never be cured.

When India needed to make herself stronger, we were busy in infighting. Without judging our abilities and strength, we just took the position of non-align movement not going to any side of then bipolar world of which one side was led by the USA and another by USSR. At relatively minor dispute with China on the border issue, we declared that we would not move an inch to settle the issue. We saw a brutal battle with Chinese only to meekly surrender thousands of square kilometers to them. This was the reward of our non-alignment.

But the truth is that we never learn from our mistakes, we repeat the same mistakes again and again. Our foreign policy has remained a big failure for long. Smaller countries like Singapore, Japan, Malaysia, Thailand, South Korea, all in Asia and number of countries in Europe and America are way ahead us in per capita Income, infrastructure development and Human Development Index. Earlier they were as poor as Indians. But, today they have prospered despite all odds; Mind it they are small countries with little resources at their hands as compared to ours. They could do so only because of their sheer determination to achieve what they wanted. They made a liberalized and hassle free environment for the industries and offered number of sops for the investors around the world to invest in their countries.

These countries became major hub of production and distribution for big multinational companies resulting in all around peace and prosperity in those parts of the world. If the stomach is full and people are satisfactorily employed, it’s but natural that there would be peace in that country. This is what happened in these countries. We should take their example and learn from them to build our future.

We still hesitate to welcome foreign investments. We will have to understand the today’s reality that Nuclear might is not the greatest might for which we are desperately running. Today’s might is peace and prosperity. Once we will have multinationals making India as hub for their productions, all the powerful nations of the world will have their stake here, and then they would automatically give a cover to us as they will never want their billions of dollars of investments to be lost due to a war.

For Indians they have proved their worth outside the country, they will do here also if the opportunities arrive and proper nurturing of the talent is done. Being a billion plus population, reeling under the severe unemployment crisis, it would be a boon for them. Ultimately who will get benefitted with it, the poor and the middle class!

Nine out of ten heads of Indian operations run by these multinationals are Indians. There is a negligible presence of the foreigners in their workforce here. What else we need to prove better than these examples! We are prospering on their investments. We need to be realistic enough and change our foreign policy looking at our own interest, current and the future both.

Our interest is there to extend our hands of friendship with the powerful nations. The old rhetoric to India- China Bhai Bhai, Indian Irani culture ties for centuries and closer ties with Islamic countries, is always going to give us pains. Need of the hour is to look beyond this and to adopt a new policy and strategy to make India stronger in the eyes of those countries who have always wished us to remain weaker.

--------------------------------------------------------------------

मित्रों यदि मेरा यह पोस्ट आपके दिल को जरा भी छू कर गुजरा हो तो मुझे विश्वास है कि आप मेरे इस प्रयास को लाइक दे कर मुझे और भी अच्छा लिखने की प्रेरणा, स्नेह और आशीर्वाद देंगे। आप अगर मुझे मेरे फेसबुक प्रोफाइल पर फॉलो करते हैं तो आपको मेरे शेयर किये सारे पोस्ट्स आपके नोटिफिकेशन्स में मिलते रहेंगे।