With a raging pandemic, Afghanistan in ruins and majoritarian violence, a bad year ends

There is little to cheer at the end of a bleak year, which could rank as one of the worst, particularly for India’s foreign policy and global image. While some of the blame must be attributed to the Covid-19 pandemic that continues to rage across the world even today, India has only itself to blame for being thrown out of the reckoning in Afghanistan, possibly its biggest foreign policy debacle in recent years, despite being in the UN Security Council. India’s image problems, too, are largely of its own making.

The year 2021 began with vaccines emerging to take us out of the throes of the pandemic. India, having two of its own, decided to play good Samaritan and launched a ‘Vaccine Maitri’(Vaccine Friendship) initiative, from January, to provide COVID-19 vaccines to friendly countries around the world. After encouraging Indians to drown out the virus through decibel power, Prime Minister Narendra Modi tried to revive the flagging SAARC (South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation) forum to exchange best practices to combat the disease, set up a fund for its neighbours to counter Coronavirus and even informed the World Economic Forum at Davos that India was on the road to economic revival, having overcome the disease, and ready for investments.

However, the Corona virus returned with a vengeance and, with it, the Indian  government found itself seriously under-prepared and, for months, appeared totally unable to cope, leaving its SAARC neighbours unimpressed and looking elsewhere for help. Also, having miscalculated on ordering adequate quantities of vaccines for the domestic population and, faced with alarming casualty levels at home, the government suspended vaccine exports from May, leading to considerable loss of face, and income.

After delivering around 66.3 million doses of vaccines to 95 countries by May, of which 10.7 million doses were gifts to 47 countries and 54 million were supplied by the Serum Institute of India under its commercial and COVAX obligations, India stopped vaccine exports while it struggled to cope and vaccinate the domestic population. Vaccine exports have recently resumed, but a fresh onslaught of a Covid-19 variant again threatens any resumption of normalcy, economic or otherwise, with flights and vaccine delivery schedules again going awry.

Suspending Vaccine Maitri led to some embarrassment and even lawsuits being threatened by disillusioned friends and close neighbours, including Bangladesh with which India marked important anniversaries, thereby causing serious setbacks to the Neighbourhood First policy. Ties with countries in the neighbourhood, including China, are at a new low and will take a great deal of effort to fix. China’s gradual encroachment of territory and threatening postures along the boundary with India is unresolved and worrisome.

Even the Quad (quadrilateral of four democracies, Australia, India, Japan and the USA) initiatives, among them for India to manufacture vaccines primarily for South East Asian countries, failed to take off, leaving the ASEAN nations miffed. As ASEAN (Association of South East Asian Nations) is at the core of India’s ‘Act East’ policy and the pivot of the Quad Indo-Pacific policy, the strategic imperatives of the relationships have not exactly looked up.

But all that paled in comparison with what happened in Afghanistan and the absence of any plan to deal with the rampaging Taliban takeover of that war-ravaged country. India was the first country with which Afghanistan signed a formal Strategic Partnership Agreement, in October 2011, even before the United States and Afghanistan signed a similar deal. Yet, declining to establish contact with the Taliban until too late, India appeared to be guided only by Washington’s assessment of events occurring in Afghanistan and, with the abrupt US military defeat, found itself without any backup. When August 15 came around, New Delhi was completely wrong-footed and even had to evacuate all its citizens and abandon its diplomatic missions.

Sadly, it has also fallen in the estimation of the average Afghan citizen for whom India was once the most popular country. Since the Citizenship Amendment Act was passed, India is no longer a destination of choice for Afghan citizens, despite thousands of them being desperate to get out of that country.

Notwithstanding its efforts to align positions on security issues post the Taliban takeover with Russia and the ‘stans of Central Asia, it will take New Delhi a very long time to overcome the debacle of losing an ally and conceding strategic space in Kabul, not only to Pakistan, but also China.

Domestic legislation similar to the CAA and other acts of omission and violence focused against institutions and Indians belonging to minority communities, along with a harsh crackdown on critics of the government, have robbed much of the sheen off the government of India’s proclaimed democratic credentials. Given that India chooses to proudly flaunt its status as the world’s largest democracy to attract both foreign policy benefits and investment, the increasing numbers of unchecked acts of violence and hate speeches against minorities are seeing India being referred to globally as an elected autocracy. India was invited to US President Jo Biden’s first global summit on democracy but, according to the White House, “Inclusion or an invitation is not a stamp of approval on their approach to democracy.” For friends and well-wishers who have long admired this country, meetings between Modi and Pope Francis, followed soon by official silence after acts of violence against churches and hate speeches against Muslims, and the unabashed descent of many parts of India into majoritarian bullying has perhaps been the most unkind cut to India’s credentials as a vibrant, diverse country. It has the potential to ruin much more than just India’s image in the coming years. – INDIA NEWS STREAM