As PM Manmohan Singh heads to the Non-Aligned Summit in Egypt this week, there will be a lot of hot air in Delhi about the continuing relevance of the movement and India?s leadership role in it. When put in its historic context, as below, it turns out that NAM amounts to very little in the conduct of India?s foreign policy and diplomacy.
Dr Singh says he wants to ?revitalise? NAM. Is he serious?
Not really. The PM can surely recognise a dead body when he sees one. Dr Singh, however, is smart enough to know NAM summits are part of the Indian political ritual that all PMs must perform; that while NAM might have been dead for decades, there is no way of burying the corpse. Going to NAM keeps the communists, their clones in the Congress, and left-liberal talking heads happy. Even Atal Bihari Vajpayee, whose party used to denounce NAM, could not stop India from offering prayers to the mummy.
What is PM?s main objective in Sharm el Sheikh?
The PM has only one interest in travelling to Sharm el Sheikh?to dangle the prospect of resumption of bilateral dialogue with Pakistan and extract some concessions from Islamabad on cross-border terrorism. That was exactly what he did at the last NAM summit in Havana three years ago, to revive Indo-Pak dialogue after the terror attack on Mumbai suburban trains in July 2006. This NAM summit will be no different thanks to the enduring tragedies of our bilateral relationship with Pakistan. The Indian media too is unlikely to be interested in anything other than PM?s meeting with his Pakistani counterpart, Yusuf Raza Gilani.
Wasn?t NAM invented by Jawaharlal Nehru?
That is one of the many myths about Nehru?s foreign policy.
India?s first PM certainly invented the notion of ?non-alignment? that emphasised the importance of independent foreign policy. Nehru was all for non-alignment as ?national? strategy, but was against creating a ?third world bloc? that NAM degenerated into after his death. As he travelled to the first and only NAM summit he saw in 1961, Nehru was attacked by the communists at home and third world radicals abroad for insisting that ?nuclear peace? between the superpowers was more important than ?anti-imperialism?.
Hasn?t NAM served many of India?s foreign policy objectives since Independence?
None at all. NAM did not stand by India in any of its national crises. Whether it was China?s aggression against India or Delhi?s many wars with Pakistan, NAM never came out in support. On terrorism, which is India?s principal concern for the last two decades, NAM has ducked by saying it can?t ?define? terrorism. At the Durban summit in South Africa in September 1998, the Indian delegation had to work overtime to prevent NAM from criticising the nuclear tests of May 1998. Vajpayee also had to publicly plead with Nelson Mandela not to mediate between Delhi and Islamabad on Kashmir.
What about the economic front, where NAM and G-77 have helped the third world bargain better with the West?
Nope. For all the noise on the New International Economic Order, most developing states could never bargain on a collective basis with the West. The reason? The third world?s economic interests could never be harmonised. For example, the producers of oil in the South had no empathy with their third world brethren who have to pay dearly for energy imports. Further, there has been growing economic differentiation within the South and there is no way NAM can construct a shared economic agenda.
Can?t we imagine a different future for India in NAM?
Yes, we can; if Delhi stops pretending NAM is about anti-imperialism and third world solidarity. Instead of verbiage about sovereign equality, India should behave like a rising power. In fact many NAM nations expect India to measure up to its new international responsibilities as a provider and not a demander that it has been all these decades.
Instead of accusing the West of protectionism, India should open its own growing market for goods from the least developed countries. The PM can declare a dramatic expansion of India?s international aid. He can offer to promote skills by throwing open India?s education sector to foreign students from the South. He can get the IITs and IIMs to set up shop in Asia, Africa and Latin America. India can offer money to start a special fund to assist the many small island states of NAM in mitigating the effects of climate change and rising sea levels.
Put simply, when India learns how to give, it might yet find NAM a useful place to conduct India?s economic diplomacy.
?The author is a professor at the S Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore