T N Ninan: Top table?

WEEKEND RUMINATIONS

The first serious chessboard moves have been made that might lead eventually to India getting a permanent seat in the UN Security Council.

The G-4 hopefuls took the essential first step by climbing down from their demand for veto rights in the Council, and now the US has said it will stipulate the conditions for qualifying.

Judging by reports on what the criteria will be, Condoleezza Rice may soon deliver one element of what sounded then like a patronising promise, to make India a great power! Two American diplomats are due in New Delhi next week, so more should soon be known about US thinking.

It is as well to keep in mind, though, that newspaper reports in Brazil (one of the G-4) suggest that the US is leaning towards that country and not India.

Besides which, the argument against India would be that it will mean over-representation for Asia, since Japan in any case tops the US list of preferences.

It is also interesting that Japan and India have China between them on the map; so, will a worried Beijing exercise its veto? In short, it isn't a shoo-in by any means.

Let us assume, though, that a permanent Security Council seat becomes reality at some stage""if not now, then even 10 years later. What then? How would India want to define its role?

Time was when India had a clearly articulated worldview, based on peace and non-violence, the "panchsheel" doctrine, non-alignment vis-à-vis the Cold War protagonists, Afro-Asian unity and de-colonisation, and the G-77 grouping for trade and development issues""all of it reflecting the "Third World" perspectives of the time.

Some of these should have been dumped as time went on and situations changed, but thinking in South Block remained ossified. Re-thinking could not be postponed any further when the Cold War ended and India began to see that its interests were no longer aligned with the G-77.

Two initiatives followed: Narasimha Rao's Look East policy (which has had some successes but needs more to happen) and the substitution of the G-77 with a subset of Third World biggies, the G-15 (not a flyer at any stage).

Then came two propositions from the Vajpayee-Jaswant Singh stable: that the US is a "natural ally", and that India's strategic zone of interest stretches from Aden to the Malacca Straits.

So far there has been no traction for a third idea, of a Russia-China-India grouping. What remains therefore are India's regional interests, and the evolving relationships with the US, Russia and China.

These reflect the ambitions and limitations of a country that is really an intermediate power but too big and too independent to be anyone else's surrogate, and yet in need of alliances and cooperative networks.

So what would India want to achieve? One would be the formal expansion of the nuclear club, so that India is not denied technology across a whole range.

Another would be further movement towards open markets (with which, let us be forewarned, will come the need to open up the domestic market more than is the case now).

A third will be to prevent conflict in the race for energy sources and raw materials, as both China and India seek to feed their growth appetites.

And a fourth would be global governance structures for issues that are unavoidably global, like environmental issues. On the regional stage, India has a vital stake in open sea lanes, and perhaps some idea of what it would want to see emerge in Central Asia.

It is interesting that most of these have little to do with a seat on the Security Council, all that can be said is that such a seat would give a little more weight to Indian opinion.

Going beyond national interests, what about ideals and principles? After two decades of stressing these, to the point of their becoming counter-productive (India was always lecturing to the rest of the world, even when no one was listening), Indian diplomacy began to hunker down some time ago to "realist" issues of practical utility.

But if Indian civilisation has any meaning at all, it finds reflection in many ideals and values that are worth keeping in mind, within context, during the practice of diplomacy.