 "Modi, Narendra Modi")
Experts believe that a coalition government at the Centre, with no single party getting a majority in the Lok Sabha for the first time in 10 years, may not prove to be a roadblock in meeting the foreign policy challenges India faces, including the need for a broader engagement with China and resumption of ties with Pakistan.
Apart from a possible reassessment of ties with China and Pakistan, experts feel that foreign policy continuity is likely even under a coalition government.
"It is important for both India and China to emerge from the current cul-de-sac in their relationship. China is India's primary strategic challenge, which will not go away," says Ashok K Kantha, former ambassador of India to China.
"There is need for deep introspection in New Delhi on a broader engagement with China that takes into account not only Beijing's border management policy, which the other side must reassess, but also the balance of trade, India's continuing dependency on China in crucial industries and materials, suspicions about each other’s strategic intentions and more broadly, China’s unsupportive stance towards the rise of India. Talks between the Corps Commanders and at the Working Mechanism for Consultation and Coordination on India-China Border Affairs (WMCC) are sub-optimal platforms for engaging on the current impasse on the border issue, which should be tackled as part of a larger strategic dialogue with China" adds Kantha.
"New Delhi must frankly convey the message to Beijing that it should undo its upsetting of the status-quo in Ladakh and stop viewing India through the lens of China's strategic competition with the United States (US)," says Kantha. He stresses that India and China must engage in a quiet and substantive dialogue through diplomatic, political or back channels, or through special emissaries, as was done in the past, to overcome difficult moments in bilateral relations.
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The relationship between India and China has remained tense since May 2020, when the People's Liberation Army (PLA) amassed troops in eastern Ladakh, leading to a deadly clash between the militaries of India and China at the Galwan Valley in June that same year. The Galwan clash resulted in the deaths of 20 Indian soldiers and at least four Chinese military personnel. New Delhi maintains that restoration of normalcy in its relations with Beijing is not possible as long as the situation at the borders remains abnormal.
Shyam Saran, former Foreign Secretary of India, also believes that India needs a broader engagement with China. But, his assessment is that this will prove difficult, irrespective of who forms the government at the Centre and how.
"India needs to find a new equilibrium in its ties with China, which will be challenging since it is Beijing that has changed the status quo at the Line of Actual Control (LAC)," says Saran. "My understanding is that a possible re-engagement with Pakistan was also being considered in New Delhi even before the general elections. This is the right time to start talking to Islamabad given the security and economic challenges it is facing," he adds.
Islamabad downgraded its diplomatic ties with New Delhi after the Indian government abrogated Article 370 of the Constitution in August 2019, revoking the special status of Jammu and Kashmir and bifurcating the state into two Union Territories.
TCA Raghavan, former High Commissioner of India to Pakistan, also believes that India's major foreign policy challenges lie with its neighbours -- the troubled relationship with China and Pakistan and the internal strife in Myanmar.
"India's continental neighbourhood is troubled. The South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) is in the freezer. The Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC) is facing headwinds due to the Myanmar civil war," says Raghavan, adding, "The regional mechanisms for reducing tensions in India's neighbourhood have been weakened."
Raghavan believes that New Delhi should follow a three-pronged approach to address neighbourhood challenges. First, New Delhi must treat SAARC as a focus area. Second, it should look at its relationship with Islamabad more comprehensively, beyond just maintaining the 2021 ceasefire along the Line of Control (LoC) and counter-terrorism. And last but not least, it should bring China to the table for a wider interaction that goes beyond just the military-to-military level.
"The brittle stability in the India-Pakistan relationship cannot continue. New Delhi must initiate a comprehensive relook into these ties," says Raghavan.
Manjeev Singh Puri, India's former Ambassador to the European Union and former Deputy Permanent Representative to the United Nations, believes that the challenge posed by China could grow.
"The most important challenge will be seriously growing the economy. This will have the most significant impact on India's foreign ties. China will be an even greater challenge as its economy and capability grow and so do its hegemonistic ambitions. We must do all that we can to ensure that our gap with them narrows and, in all cases, doesn’t widen," says Puri.
"A certain amount of global balancing, especially in relation to Russia, should see continuity," he adds.
Puri also says, "India's importance to and leadership of the Global South is acknowledged and appreciated, but a certain degree of work to maintain this would be imperative given the changing global scenario and perceived tilt on India's part."
All four experts -- Kantha, Saran, Raghavan, and Puri -- believe that a coalition government should not prove to be an impediment when it comes to pursuing these foreign policy goals.
In 2008, the Left Parties had withdrawn support to the Manmohan Singh-led United Progressive Alliance-1 (UPA-1) government in protest of the civilian nuclear energy deal with the US. However, Saran believes that the conditions would be different this time.
"The ability of a coalition government to meet foreign policy challenges and pursue ambitious goals depends on its composition. It depends on the strength of the largest party in the coalition and whether its partners have their own foreign policy goals, ideological or otherwise," explains Saran, adding, "For example, a National Democratic Alliance (NDA) coalition government at the Centre will not constrain Narendra Modi and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) from pursuing their foreign policy goals because their alliance partners, Chandrababu Naidu's Telugu Desam Party (TDP) and Nitish Kumar's Janata Dal (United), or JD(U), do not have specific interests in that regard."
The Narendra Modi-led NDA is poised to return for a third term by winning 292 Lok Sabha seats. However, the BJP has suffered a major setback as it fell short of a majority on its own with 240 seats to its name. Therefore, it is now heavily dependent on alliance partners such as the TDP and JD(U) to secure the 272 seats required to form the government. Modi is expected to take oath as the Prime Minister for the third time on June 8.
Saran also believes that while the popular belief may be that a coalition government would see a moderation of what has been described as India's muscular foreign policy towards the West in relation to the Russia-Ukraine war and allegations of targeting Khalistan separatists on foreign soil, that is unlikely to be the case because nationalism still has currency in Indian politics.
Kantha also believes that a coalition government will not necessarily find it more difficult to meet these challenges.
"Our earlier experience with the NDA government under Atal Bihari Vajpayee and the UPA government under Manmohan Singh has shown that a coalition dispensation can pursue effective and innovative foreign policy, including vis-a-vis China," says Kantha.
However, Kantha adds that it is critical that the central government rebuild consensus on foreign policy issues to the extent feasible, taking the Opposition parties on board on matters affecting vital national interests. "In a sense, a coalition arrangement places greater premium on working towards consensus," he says.
Raghavan explains that domestic politics, including the size or power of the government at the Centre, do not necessarily play such a big role in foreign policy. "In the past, India made progress with Pakistan with so-called weak and strong governments both. Coming to the present, India should not shy away from engaging with Pakistan just because of a coalition government," says Raghavan.
Ultimately, says Raghavan, the BJP must form a stronger consensus around foreign policy going forward.
Puri also feels that coalition politics will not have a significant impact on the conduct of foreign policy. "I don't see much change, mostly as not much change is possible. And this would be true if it was any other coalition too," says Puri.
