Opinion | Opposition and Their Election Manifestos Stuck in a Time Warp

With the first phase of the 2024 Lok Sabha elections underway, every major political party has unveiled its manifestos. As a scholar of international relations, naturally, my first instinct was to flip to the section where each of them has outlined their vision of India’s foreign policy. While the BJP being the ruling party has been able to outline how it plans to push India’s interests forward if elected once again, sadly, the Opposition has left no stone unturned to cause great disappointment with their lack of strategic foresight and a dearth of imagination in putting out a productive vision for the country.

To sum up, in a single sentence, they are still living in a time warp and are just not ready to embrace India’s rise in the 21st century.

First of all, what unites the Opposition parties in their foreign policy outlook is the call to return to the Nehruvian vision (in the case of Congress) or what they also call as ‘non-alignment’. For Congress, this has more to do with the Nehruvian legacy from which the BJP has taken a sharp break through its multi-alignment foreign policy. But for the Left, it is simply the old communist ideological hatred because of which it doesn’t want India to do anything with the West, the cradle of capitalism. Their joint call is as naive as it is outdated.

Even the most vociferous advocates of ‘non-alignment’ would agree that it belongs to an era where the world was divided into two ideological camps and India was a nascent nation-state emerging fresh from imperialism. At that time, Nehruvian dominance over foreign policy made ‘non-alignment’ the de facto choice. But then it didn’t turn out fruitful for India as China sought a rapprochement with the West and India was left simping to the socialist Soviet Union, the losing side of the Cold War divide.

Today, the situation is different. The West has enabled China to become the economic and technological behemoth that it today is. The same China is now undermining the American in almost every single theatre across the world. With India, China has achieved a massive power gap by hoodwinking us through a thirty-year window of relative border peace. Little could have anyone guessed that the tranquillity agreement which PM Narasimha Rao signed in 1993 would enable China to become a $17 trillion economy, while India would nurture a $100 billion trade deficit with it. Today, the same China has risen enough to threaten India with its wolf warrior tactics.

At a time when strategic common sense dictates us to partner with the West in order to externally balance China through a regional security architecture in the Indo-Pacific, CPI (M) is outrightly telling India to exit the Quad and the Congress is extolling it to return to Nehruvian world-view.

Another not-so-surprising convergence between the Congress and the Left is their views on India’s relations with China. Both want to settle border dispute and both want adjustment with China or what the Left calls explicitly as “promotion of all-round relations with China”. It is anyone’s guess that if there is one party which is against the settlement of the border dispute in the India-China equation, then it is China and not India.

As India under Modi has moved to link the border situation with its overall relationship with that country, China’s nefarious designs have been badly exposed, to say the least. For China, an unsettled border dispute is a way to keep India debilitated and confused in order to prevent it from becoming a formidable Asian power. It is squarely a strategy to contain India by making sure key energy and resources are diverted for defence at the border. While China raced ahead of India making full use of the stable situation at the border, it is now employing a reverse strategy to deter India’s ascendence as a great power.

UPA government’s strategy of appeasing China has already cost the country a full decade from 2004-2014. In today’s world, advanced technology is either with the West or China. India’s best bet is to leverage its market access and extract support from the rest of the world to bridge China’s $17 trillion vs India’s $3.7 trillion GDP divide. Naturally, Opposition parties are too strategically challenged to understand this.

The next strategic folly that the Opposition parties want India to make is on the matter of its neighbourhood policy. The Congress, which during the UPA rule, has already exchanged enough dossiers in the name of ‘tough action’ even after the deadly 26/11 attacks wants to engage with Pakistan. With, of course, a small caveat that they must end proxy terrorism directed against India, as if they are listening. The Left is no less as the CPI(M) manifesto mentions how there should be promotion of people-to-people relations and sporting & cultural relations with Pakistan.

Frankly, at this moment, any mention of Pakistan in India’s future vision is problematic. We have too many other neighbours and too many other regions to engage with. Why would we consider engaging with Pakistan when we aren’t to be blamed for the lack of engagement in the first place? Don’t forget it is not India but Pakistan whose leaders were ready to go hungry just to produce a nuclear bomb to threaten India. As if an uncalled reference to Pakistan wasn’t enough, the Congress manifesto’s explicit commitment to aid Tamilians in Sri Lanka reminds so much of the long-gone 1980s.

Today, India’s relations with the neighbourhood are defined by development partnership and not big bully or big brother syndrome which was characterised by interference in their internal matters, thus why go back to it?

Worse of all, the Opposition parties want to surrender India’s tangible power and sovereignty to the external actors. The Congress’ manifesto says they will restore India’s image which is tainted by the current government’s suppression of dissent and human rights. It is anybody’s guess that an international lobby works hard to interfere in the internal matters of other countries in the name of human rights. Also, the anti-India narrative of suppressing dissent is nothing but an attempt to undermine the Indian state. Out of power, the Congress politicians have actively hobnobbed with such elements but it will be a nightmare if they come to power and allow external forces to derail India’s growth and progress in the name of human rights.

Also, the Congress is still hiding such intentions in the veil of human rights but the CPI(M) is unabashedly calling for the complete elimination of nuclear weapons. At a time when the ideological compatriots of communists in China are developing more and more nuclear warheads, they want India to compromise with its national security? What gives?

India must thank its stars that both the Congress and CPI(M) have become electorally irrelevant these days otherwise who needs detractors outside when you have your own Opposition parties drawing up such strategically challenged manifestos.