INDIA’s foreign policy is acquiring newer nuances, adding new thrust to its global connect, opening newer theatres of affirmative action in the past some time -- with a quiet efficiency and confidence that stems from the strength it has been building into its systems and processes well beyond economics. More and more countries are showing a keen interest in establishing a closer connect with India for obvious reasons. Technically, India may not have become a global superpower as yet -- which may take quite some time -- it nevertheless is demonstrating right trappings of one. And the greatest tool in India’s new-thrust foreign policy is its non-dogmatic approach to international relations. The best example of this is Afghanistan under the Taliban regime.

 

In the recent months, senior functionaries of the Taliban Government have visited India to transact important business and set in motion the process to initiate newer collaborative ventures. Rising above any philosophical dogma that may surround a hardline regime, India has been lending a helping hand to Afghanistan so that the strife-ravaged country achieves its fuller potential as quickly possible. Kabul, too, is responding positively. Its latest move is that it would offer a five-year tax exemption to Indian investors in different new sectors including gold mining. On its part, India has chosen to include Afghanistan in its international air-corridor that would facilitate Afghani business to get global market. Another Indian initiative is to include Afghanistan in its trade-route development with the help of Chabahar port it has created in Iran.

 

Via Chabahar, Afghanistan would be able to establish its trade links with several countries by circumventing Pakistan. Kabul realises the importance of such moves since those eliminate its dependence on Pakistan. Being completely land-locked country, at least until now, Pakistan was the only option for Afghanistan to get its international trade going by using the Pakistani routes and facilities. That also gave Pakistan an opportunity to harass Afghanistan -- which Kabul naturally resented. However, with India’s initiative to open air and sea routes to Afghanistan, Kabul has every reason to look forward to building its economy into hitherto untouched sectors. In the ensuing times, Afghanistan, thus, would become an integral part of the international trade scene using the new routes and corridors -- thanks, of course, to India’s pragmatic foreign policy.

 

Pakistan will only keep feeling anxious and jealous ! For years, India poured millions of dollars into Afghanistan’s reconstruction -- building roads, hospitals, schools, railway stations, parliament building ... ! Now, in addition, India is including Afghanistan in its foreign policy initiatives beyond dogmatic notions. Non-reciprocal assistance is India’s foreign policy fulcrum. Yet, as it gets more busily engaged in Afghanistan, India is building collaborations that would benefit both countries without any money-lender value-system (that countries like China operate) with a sly eye on the borrower-country’s assets. India is not lending; it is co-creating opportunities with Afghanistan -- whose importance will get endorsed in long term. The range of Indian foreign policy thought-process is stupendous. Critics used to blame India for its so-called Pakistan-China-centric foreign policy action.

 

Of course, that criticism did not have much substance. Yet in the past few years, India’s expansion in its foreign policy outreach is simply amazing -- and Afghanistan is its latest manifestation. There is little doubt that the Indian initiative will help Afghanistan rise above its dogma at least to some extent. It may not give up the Talibani philosophy altogether. But in every likelihood, it may shed some its narrow-mindedness to accommodate and welcome the benefits of new internationalism that opening up of trade links may bring, thanks to India’s hand-holding, thanks to India’s endearing pragmatism.