India can’t and won’t bend to global pressure where its foreign policy is concerned. This belief was on full display at the World Economic Forum in Davos where global discussions on sanctions and energy security were held.
Most nations align their policies closely with allies. But India charts its own course.
Parag Khanna, founder and CEO of AlphaGeo, an AI-based geospatial analytics firm, was quoted as saying, “India is looking after its own interests, and its policy towards Russia is a very fundamental case study in this.”
On this, he recalled, “It was even before Trump was elected, the Biden administration that sought to pressure India very heavily to join in the sanctions regime against Russia. But as I told people then, I said, good luck with that.”
He added, “This notion of democracy or driven foreign policy is not going to work when you’re dealing with a country like India that has a very high current account surplus and trade deficit when it comes to commodities imports.”
Further, he pointed to India’s economic structure as the driving force behind its independent global stance. “You can actually, this is a bit wonky, but you can just rank countries by the share of their deficit that is attributable to commodities imports.”
“And if it is high, and spoiler alert, India ranks number one, their foreign policy is not going to be dictated by ideals, right? Because it becomes a question of international cheap commodities imports versus domestic subsidies in your budget.”
Khanna said that this trade-off shapes decisions at the highest level: “That is not a sacrifice that any intelligent Indian leader would make.”
He also highlighted that India is not alone in this approach. “Even Japan, which is truly an American ally, has sought all kinds of ways to circumvent or to take advantage of oil price cap and so forth to still get Russian energy.
“And even Europe itself, which feels fundamentally attacked, has been accessing Russian oil and gas as well, even after Nord Stream was blown up through alternative refineries that, including others, were processed by India and so forth.”
Khanna summed up India’s stance on global affairs: “So the fact is, everyone is practising this multi alignment. India has to focus on its own neighbourhood. It cannot take instructions and will not from others. And I think India has actually been fairly clever in this regard.”
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