Breaking foreign policy

The questions that surround the DMK's exit from the UPA

As the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) leaves the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) for the first time since the latter's creation in 2004, and to forego a share of power in New Delhi for the first time since 1996 if a year-long break in 1998-99 is excluded, several questions are being raised. Oddly few of them are about the actual survival of the UPA; it appears more than likely that neither the major opposition parties nor those still in the government - as well as those in the halfway house of "outside support" - are ready yet for a general election. Some of the more pointed questions concern the future of the DMK and whether this departure betokens serious divisions in the party's ranks, merely part of the continuing saga of its first family. In addition, will this conspicuous act of dedication to the cause of Sri Lanka's Tamils help the DMK electorally? Or will it simply not hurt it? In many ways, however, the most potent questions are being asked about what it means for India's foreign policy if a major alliance partner of a fragile coalition in New Delhi chooses to exit a government on an issue of foreign policy. It has long been assumed that external affairs have no immediate electoral impact or political potency in India, allowing them to be seen as a fiefdom for bureaucrats and Delhi insiders far more than any other field of policy making. Is this about to change? And, if so, will a consistent and strategic foreign policy, essential for any country's ambitions, be sacrificed to the policy deadlocks and reversals that dog this age of coalitions?

It is important, first, to see that there are always domestic constraints on what foreign policy is chosen. India has trumpeted its doctrine of "non-intervention" in other countries for so long that it is often forgotten that it was not arrived at for any reason other than domestic - to ensure that New Delhi's policy in Kashmir and the Northeast was never subject to the world's scrutiny. This concern has often forced India to operate with one hand tied behind its back on the world stage for decades - in spite of the fact that realpolitik suggests that a certain amount of equivocation in such matters is almost expected for powerful states. Most other democracies do manage noisy internal constituencies that have strong views on aspects of foreign policy, and an increasingly politically federal India will be no different. The effects of the Trinamool Congress on relations with Bangladesh and of the Left in UPA-I on relations with the United States suggest that India is long past the time when foreign policy was an issue that interested only the national capital and not state capitals.

The problem begins at the fact that there is no structured way in which such issues can be thrashed out other than the straightforwardly political. If a party wishes to help shape foreign policy, then there is no other recourse on hand but to become part of the governing coalition at the Centre and then threaten to walk out. It is essential, as India grows in power and the footprint of its foreign policy grows with it, that some structured way is found to incorporate political considerations such as the DMK's into a longer-term strategic stance, without compromising the interests of the country as a whole.