Subject: Bilateral Relations

The article deals with India’s strategy to deepen the ties with African nations and suggest a critical review of the implementation of India’s strategy.

Need for review of India’s foreign policy for Africa

• Africa is considered a foreign policy priority by India.
•  Even as the COVID-19 era began in March 2020, New Delhi took new initiatives to assist Africa through prompt despatch of medicines and later vaccines.
• But now the policy implementation needs a critical review.

Four factors that explain need for a review of policy implementation

1) Declining trade

• Declining trade: Bilateral trade valued at $55.9 billion in 2020-21, fell by $10.8 billion compared to 2019-20, and $15.5 billion compared to the peak year of 2014-15.
• Decline in investment: India’s investments in Africa too saw a decrease from $3.2 billion in 2019-20 to $2.9 billion in 2020-21.
• The composition of the India-Africa trade has not changed much over the two decades.
• Mineral fuels and oils, (essentially crude oil) and pearls, precious or semi-precious stones are the top two imports accounting for over 77% of our imports from Africa.
• India’s top five markets today are South Africa, Nigeria, Egypt, Kenya and Togo.
• The countries from which India imports the most are South Africa, Nigeria, Egypt, Angola and Guinea.

2) Covid impact

• COVID-19 has brought misery to Africa.
• As on June 24, 2021, Africa registered 5.2 million infections and 1,37,855 deaths.
• A recent World Health Organization survey revealed that 41 African countries had fewer than 2,000 working ventilators among them.
• Despite these shortcomings, Africa has not done so badly.
•  Sadly though, with much of the world caught up in coping with the novel coronavirus pandemic’s ill effects, flows of assistance and investment to Africa have decreased.
• While China has successfully used the pandemic to expand its footprint by increasing the outflow of its vaccines.
• Unfortunately India’s ‘vax diplomacy’ has suffered a setback. 

3) Global competition for influence

• Africa experienced a sharpened international competition, known as ‘the third scramble’, in the first two decades of the 21st century.
• A dozen nations from the Americas, Europe and Asia have striven to assist Africa in resolving the continent’s political and social challenge.
• These nations, in turn, stand to benefit from Africa’s markets, minerals, hydrocarbons and oceanic resources, and thereby to expand their geopolitical influence.

4) Geopolitical tensions in Asia

• Geopolitical tensions in Asia and the imperative to consolidate its position in the Indo-Pacific region have compelled New Delhi to concentrate on its ties with the United Kingdom, the EU, and the Quad powers, particularly the U.S.
• Consequently, the attention normally paid to Africa lost out.
• This must now change.

Way forward for India-Africa relation

• For mutual benefit, Africa and India should remain optimally engaged.
• The third India-Africa Forum Summit was held in 2015.
• The fourth summit, pending since last year, should be held as soon as possible, even if in a virtual format.
• Fresh financial resources for grants and concessional loans to Africa must be allocated, as previous allocations stand almost fully exhausted.
• The promotion of economic relations demands a higher priority.
• Industry representatives should be consulted about their grievances and challenges in the COVID-19 era.
• To impart a 21st-century complexion to the partnership, developing and deepening collaborations in health, space and digital technologies is essential.
• India should continue its role in peacekeeping in Africa, in lending support to African counter-terrorism operations, and contributing to African institutions through training and capacity-enhancing assistance.
• To overcome the China challenge in Africa, increased cooperation between India and its international allies, rates priority.
• The recent India-EU Summit has identified Africa as a region where a partnership-based approach will be followed.
•  When the first in-person summit of the Quad powers is held in Washington, a robust partnership plan for Africa should be announced. 

Conclusion

India should review the policy implementation and make changes in line with the changing geopolitical realities.

Pandemic know no borders. So, dealing with it has necessited global cooperation. The article introduce us to some of the cross-country collaborations in dealing with the pandemic, igniting the hope for new era social partnership to the advantage of South Asia.

Regionally-coordinated strategy against pandemic

• Containing Covid pandemic has necessitated global cooperation.
• The deadly pandemic surge in 2021 makes a regionally coordinated, evidence-driven strategy critical.
• It is necessary to construct multi-stakeholder regional coalitions to devise new solutions and frugal innovations that can be applied across South Asia.
• Given our shared and mostly similar social, economic and cultural contexts, local successes must be amplified across South Asia.
• Despite wide variation in how nations have responded to the pandemic, the most successful strategies find commonality in their adherence to science and attention to local context.

How successful interventions could be applied across the subcontinent

• Beliefs, priorities, traditions and aversions to behavioural change are more similar across South Asia.
• This means that interventions that are successful in changing behaviour in one place are highly likely applicable in other parts of the subcontinent.
• For example, Community-Led Total Sanitation (CLTS) campaigns to solve the problem of open defecation, developed by Bangladeshi NGOs in partnership with an Indian consultant is now broadly applied across South Asia and beyond.
• The Grameen Bank microcredit model was an indigenous South Asian innovation that spread rapidly.
• India’s digitised social protection ecosystem with Aadhaar ids and Jan Dhan accounts serves as a model for the region.

Changing social norm around mask-wearing

• The new pan-South Asian consortium in response to Covid-19 evolved out of an experiment conducted in Bangladesh around mask-wearing in rural communities termed as NORM.
• It was observed that a combination of no-cost distribution, information, reinforcing the message, modeling and endorsement by community leaders (NORM) leads to large, sustained increases in mask usage.
• NORM implementation teams based in Lahore, Ahmedabad, Peshawar, Hyderabad, Dhaka, Kathmandu and Delhi are learning from each other’s successes and failures.
• The Self-Employed Women’s Association (SEWA) quickly implemented the model to reach over one million members in Gujarat.
•  Additional 1.5 million masks were shipped from Bangladesh to support SEWA’s outreach to other states.
• Lahore’s commissioner worked with the research team to adapt the NORM model to an urban setting.
• To manage mild and moderate cases of Covid-19 in rural India, where institutional health care access is limited a host of physicians, scientists and community-based organisations created the Swasth Community Science Alliance.
• The Masking-Treatment-Vaccine Preparation (MTV) approach offers a sensible strategy to mitigate the pandemic until universal vaccination is achieved.

Conclusion

We need to come together to solve problems that affect us all. Let the lasting legacy of this pandemic be a new era of partnership in social innovations that can benefit all South Asians.

What happened in Galwan?

• The Indian and Chinese armies are engaged in the standoff in Pangong Tso, Galwan Valley, Demchok and Daulat Beg Oldie in eastern Ladakh.
  • A sizable number of Chinese Army personnel even transgressed into the Indian side of the de-facto border in several areas including Pangong Tso.
  • The actions on the northern bank of Pangong Tso are not just for territorial gains on land, but enhanced domination of the resource-rich lake.
• The stand-off at Ladakh’s Galwan Valley has escalated in June 2020 due to the infrastructure projects that India has undertaken in the recent years. India is building a strategic road through the Galwan Valley – close to China – connecting the region to an airstrip.
  • China is opposed to any Indian construction in the area. In 1962, a stand-off in the Galwan area was one of the biggest flashpoints of the 1962 war.
• The border, or Line of Actual Control, is not demarcated, and China and India have differing ideas of where it should be located, leading to regular border “transgressions.” Often these don’t escalate tensions; a serious border standoff like the current one is less frequent, though this is the fourth since 2013.
  • Both countries’ troops have patrolled this region for decades, as the contested 2,200-mile border is a long-standing subject of competing claims and tensions, including a brief war in 1962.
• Reasons: The violent clash happened when the Chinese side departed from the consensus to respect the LAC and attempted to unilaterally change the status quo.
  • It is part of China’s ‘nibble and negotiate policy’. Their aim is to ensure that India does not build infrastructure along the LAC. It is their way of attaining a political goal with military might, while gaining more territory in the process.

The current situation in Ladakh

•  With a continued deployment of 50,000-60,000 soldiers, the Indian Army has been able to hold the line to prevent any further ingress by the PLA.
• There has been no progress in talks after the disengagement at Pangong lake and Kailash range in February.
• Outside of Ladakh, the Indian Army remains in an alert mode all along the LAC to prevent any Chinese misadventure but the bigger change has been its reorientation of certain forces from Pakistan border towards the China border.
• The Ladakh crisis has also exposed India’s military weakness to tackle a collusive threat from China and Pakistan.

External balancing

• To deal with the threat of combined China and Pakistan, the Government opened backchannel talks with Pakistan which led to the reiteration of the ceasefire on the Line of Control.
• The Ladakh crisis has also led the Government to relook external partnerships, particularly with the United States.
• The U.S. military officials have earlier spoken of the intelligence and logistics support provided to the Indian forces in Ladakh.
• The military importance of the Quad remains moot, with India reportedly refusing to do joint naval patrolling with the U.S. in the South China Sea, the two treaty allies of the U.S., Japan and Australia, also refused.

Challenges for India

• India attempts to counter the growing Chinese influence in the neighbourhood have faltered, exacerbated by the mishandling of the second wave of the novel coronavirus pandemic.
• With the widening power gap between New Delhi and Beijing, the challenge is as much economic as it is geopolitical.
• Despite the border crisis and the Indian restrictions on Chinese technology companies, China displaced the U.S. to be India’s biggest trade partner in 2020-21, up to nearly 13% of India’s total trade compared to 10.4% a year ago.
• For the past few decades, Indian planners operated on the premise that their diplomats will be able to manage the Chinese problem without it developing into a full-blown military crisis.
• Militarily, Chinese incursions in Ladakh have shown that the idea of deterrence has failed.
• India has learnt that it can no longer have simultaneous competition and cooperation with China.
• A new reset in bilateral ties, àla the early 1990s, is difficult because China is now in a different league, competing with the U.S.

Conclusion

The events of the past one year have significantly altered India’s thinking towards China. The relationship is at the crossroads now. The choices made will have a significant impact on the future of global geopolitics.

B2BASICS

Line of Actual Control

• Demarcation Line: The Line of Actual Control (LAC) is the demarcation that separates Indian-controlled territory from Chinese-controlled territory.
• LAC is different from the Line of Control (LoC) with Pakistan:
  • The LoC emerged from the 1948 ceasefire line negotiated by the United Nations (UN) after the Kashmir War.
  • It was designated as the LoC in 1972, following the Shimla Agreement between the two countries. It is delineated on a map signed by the Director General of Military Operations (DGMO) of both armies and has the international sanctity of a legal agreement.
  • The LAC, in contrast, is only a concept – it is not agreed upon by the two countries, neither delineated on a map or demarcated on the ground.
• Length of the LAC: India considers the LAC to be 3,488 km long, while the Chinese consider it to be only around 2,000 km.

The article highlights the contrast in India’s diplomacy during the first wave of the pandemic and the second wave. It also discusses the challenges ahead for India.

India’s diplomatic structure in two Covid waves

•  In the past month, the focus for the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) and Missions abroad has shifted.
• During the first wave of the pandemic, focus was on coordinating exports of COVID-19 medicines, flights to repatriate Indians abroad through the ‘Vande Bharat Mission’ after the lockdown, and then exporting vaccines worldwide- ‘Vaccine Maitri’.
• After the second wave, Covid Diplomacy 2.0 has a different order of tasks, both in the immediate and the long term.
• The immediate imperative was to deal with oxygen and medicine shortages that claimed the lives of thousands.
• The Ministry of External Affairs has had to deal with internal health concerns while galvanising help from abroad for others.
• Despite difficulties, the Ministry of External Affairs has completed the task of bringing in supplies in a timely manner, and with success.

Dealing with vaccine shortage

• Companies manufacturing AstraZeneca and Sputnik-V are stretched as far as future production is concerned.
• The Chinese vaccines are out of consideration given bilateral tensions.
• So, it is clear that India is looking to the U.S. to make up the shortfall.
• This could be done in the following ways:
• 1) Requesting the U.S. to share a substantial portion of its stockpile of AstraZeneca.
• The U.S. government is holding up its AstraZeneca exports until its own United States Food and Drug Administration approves them.
• 2) Asking the US to release more vaccine ingredients which are restricted for exports.
• 3) To buy more stock outright from the three U.S. manufacturers, Pfizer, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson, and to encourage production in India of these vaccines.
• Production of Johnson & Johnson single-dose vaccines in India, as had been announced during the Quad summit, will take some time.
• The U.S. companies seem set on getting both an indemnity waiver from India as well as Emergency Use Authorisation prior to supplying them.
• The Government may also need to make a change to its publicly announced policy that States in India will need to negotiate purchases directly, as the U.S. manufacturers want centralised orders, with payments up-front.

2) Patent waiver

• The promise of patent waivers, from India’s joint proposal at the World Trade Organization (WTO) will not reap early benefits.
• Even though it has received support from world leaders such as the U.S., Russia and China.
• Many countries including Japan, Australia, Brazil and EU are still holding out on the idea of freeing up intellectual property rights on vaccines for three years.
• That could ultimately hold up proceedings at the WTO, as it works by consensus.

3) Diplomatic fallout of vaccine collapse

• The Government has defended its decision to export more than 66 million vaccines doses to 95 countries between January and April this year.
• All exports were stopped as soon as cases in India began to soar.
• Both India’s neighbours and partners in Africa as well as global agencies depending on India for vaccines have been left in the lurch by the Government’s failure to balance its vaccine budget.
• For example, once India completed delivery of the first batch, of 550,000 Covishield doses, Bhutan completed the administration of the first dose to 93% of its population in a record 16 days.
• Two months later, Bhutan does not have any vaccines to complete the second dose and has been left requesting other countries for vaccines.
• It is no surprise that each of India’s neighbours has now sought help from China and the U.S. to complete their vaccination drives.

4) Tracing virus pathways

• India, as one of the worst pandemic-hit countries, must be at the forefront of demanding accountability on the origin of the virus.
• The World Health Organisation (WHO) which studied “pathways of emergence” of SARS-CoV2 in Wuhan, listed four possibilities:
• 1) Direct zoonotic transmission.
• 2) An intermediate host.
• 3) Cold chain or transmission through food.
• 4) A laboratory incident.
• China appears adamant on blocking these studies.
• Even the U.S. appears to have dragged its feet on a conclusive finding, possibly because the U.S. National Institutes of Health had funded some of the Wuhan Institute’s research.

Way forward on virus pathways

• India must call for a more definitive answer and also raise its voice for a stronger convention to regulate any research that could lead, by accident or design, to something as the current pandemic.
•  It is necessary to revamp the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention to institute an implementation body to assess treaty compliance, and build safer standards for the future.

Consider the question “How different was the impact of two Covid-19 waves on India’s diplomacy? What are the challenges India faces in the near future in dealing with the fallout of the pandemic?”

Conclusion

With its seat at the UN Security Council as non-permanent member and its position on WHO’s Executive Board, India could seek to regain the footing it has lost over the past few months of COVID-19 mismanagement, by taking a lead role in ensuring the world is protected from the next such pandemic.

The article explains evolution of Pakistan’s approach towards forming alliances and maintaining strategic autonomy against the backdrop of U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan.

New dynamic Pakistan has to face

• As the US withdraws its troops from Afghanistan, Pakistan is eager to build a relationship with Washington that is not tied to US stakes in Afghanistan.
• Pakistan does not want to be totally alienated from U.S. in the new geopolitical jousting between the US and China.
• How Pakistan copes with the new dynamic between the US and China as well as manages the deepening crisis in Afghanistan would be of great interest to India.

Striking the balance between autonomy and alliance

• Autonomy is about the basic impulse for enhancing the degree of one’s freedom.
• Alliances are about coping with real or perceived threats to one’s security.
• Both are natural trends in international politics.
• Joining an alliance does not mean ceding one’s sovereignty.
• Within every alliance, there is a perennial tension between seeking more commitments from the partner in return for limiting one’s own.

Explaining Pakistan’s approach to alliances

• Pakistan’s insecurities in relation to India meant it was eager for alliances.
•  And as the Anglo-Americans scouted for partners in the crusade against global communism, Pakistan signed a bilateral security treaty with the US and joined the South East Asia Treaty Organisation and Central Treaty Organisation in the mid-1950s.
• Rather than target Pakistan’s alliance with a West that was intensely hostile to Beijing in the 1950s, Chinese premier Zhou Enlai saw room to exploit Pakistan’s insecurities on India.
• While Pakistan’s ties with the US went up and down, its relationship with China has seen steady expansion.
• Pakistan’s relations with the US flourished  after the Soviet Union sent its troops into Afghanistan at the end of 1979.
• The US and Pakistan reconnected in 2001 as Washington sought physical access and intelligence support to sustain its intervention in Afghanistan following the attacks on September 11.
• Now the US wants Pakistan to persuade the Taliban to accept a peaceful transition to a new political order in Afghanistan.

Pakistan’s ability to adapt to shifting geopolitical trends

• Pakistan worries that its leverage in U.S. will diminish once the US turns its back on Afghanistan and towards the Indo-Pacific.
• Pakistan does not want to get in the Indo-Pacific crossfire between the US and China.
• It would also like to dent India’s growing importance in America’s Indo-Pacific strategy.
• India should not underestimate Pakistan’s agency in adapting to the shifting global currents.
• Pakistan has been good at using its great power alliances to its own benefit.

Three problems that complicates Pakistan’s strategic autonomy

• 1) Relative economic decline: Pakistan’s expected aggregate GDP at around $300 billion in 2021 is 10 times smaller than India’s.
• 2) Obsession with Kashmir: Pakistan’s enduring obsessions with separating Kashmir from India, and extending its political sway over Afghanistan; both look elusive despite massive political investments by the Pakistan army.
• Unsurprisingly, there is a recognition that Pakistan needs reorientation — from geopolitics to geoeconomics and permanent war with neighbours to peace of some sorts.
• 3) Using religion as political instrument: Turning Islam into a political instrument and empowering religious extremism seemed clever a few decades ago.
• However, today those forces have acquired a life of their own and severely constrain the capacity of the Pakistani state to build internal coherence and widen international options.

Conclusion

It will be unwise to rule out Pakistan’s positive reinvention; no country has a bigger stake in it than India. For now, though, Pakistan offers a cautionary tale on the dangers of squandering a nation’s strategic advantages — including a critical geopolitical location that it had inherited and the powerful partnerships that came its way.