Opinion From ‘rule taker’ to ‘rule shaper’, the evolution of India in international negotiations

After the world finishes dealing with its current preoccupations, it will seek to revive the primacy of the multilateral trading system — anchored in the WTO — to pursue a development-based trade agenda. India’s Moment: Changing Power Equations Around The World by Ambassador Mohan Kumar provides incisive commentary on India’s evolving interests and growing stature at the global negotiating table.

Deep questions need to be asked about how the government arrives at a negotiating position when India contains such a bewildering multitude of stakeholders. How does India advance its national interests and maximise its margin for manoeuvre, despite geopolitical pressures and domestic constraints? Mohan Kumar answers these questions, and many others, in an instructive and enjoyable narrative by introducing a theoretical model called the “Integrated Framework” to analyse India’s negotiating briefs and diplomatic motivations.

In doing so, he provides rare insight into the sophisticated decision matrix that informs India’s foreign policy. Even as he details India’s victories at these forums with nuance, he also talks maturely about the numerous failures. He cogently argues that India’s tag of being a “naysayer” at international trade negotiations is an unfair appellation.

India’s reluctance to cede valuable policy space on matters that could jeopardise its domestic manufacturing and consumer markets as well as the need to cater to the welfare of hundreds of millions of poor Indians — a “poverty veto” as he terms it — should be understood as protecting its national interests.

India’s defensive posturing was a response to the inherent asymmetries of international trade agreements of the time which were generally biased against developing countries. The author contextualises India’s “tough customer” image by explaining the need to balance geopolitical imperatives with the demands of material benefit in an arena where agreements are legally binding and have quantifiable impacts on the economy.

For instance, India had to fight the TRIPS Agreement during the Uruguay Round of GATT because it threatened India’s “pharmaceutical industry that thrived on generic (and not patented drugs), and the impact of patented seeds on mostly subsistence farmers.”

He also makes prescient observations on the future of India’s approach to trade negotiations. Calling its hesitancy to participate in plurilateral negotiations “high-risk”, he suggests that India’s adherence to the multilateral trading system is at risk of losing out to preferential trading systems.

Therefore, a more circumspect approach may be considered even as efforts to revive the WTO continue. He identifies the economic targets India will need to achieve in the near future (10 trillion-dollar economy and less than 10 per cent poverty) to expand its geopolitical might and provide more policy space for broader actions.

Mohan Kumar was India’s ambassador to France in 2015 when the momentous Paris Agreement was signed. He details India’s evolving approach to climate change discussions over the years as well as the geopolitical machinations that made the Paris Agreement possible. India has had a rich history of contribution in this domain: From distinguishing “lifestyle emissions” from “survival emissions”, and underlining the role of historical emissions in the crisis, to being one of the leading voices behind the concepts of “Common but Differentiated Responsibilities” at Rio in 1992 and “climate justice” in 2015.

India’s growing prominence was epitomised at COP26 in Glasgow when Prime Minister Modi’s Panchamrit Action Plan and its long-term strategy for low-carbon development showed a new way forward for developing countries. The author writes objectively on the Ukraine-Russia conflict, explaining India’s stance on the issue, including on supposedly controversial issues such as abstaining from voting at UN General Assembly resolutions and buying discounted oil from Russia.

India’s strategically independent thinking and morally principled position on the conflict has resulted in India strengthening its strategic partnerships with the US, Russia, and the EU while protecting itself from economic repercussions. Where other countries struggled to evacuate their citizens, India showcased its diplomatic deftness to rescue more than 20,000 Indians.

The Prime Minister’s epochal declaration of “this is not the era of war” and India’s strident commitment to dialogue and diplomacy as the only way out burnished India’s moral credentials.

Referencing the notion of a “sui generis India” in his book, Mohan Kumar makes a compelling case for why this is “India’s moment” by highlighting the evolution in the tenor of India’s international negotiations. India has graduated from being a “rule-taker” to a “rule-shaper”; a country which was once viewed as the “poverty veto” is now shaping multilateral and plurilateral negotiations.

Mohan asserts that the successful holding of the G20 Summit is proof that the transformation of India from a balancing power to a leading power is well under way. Who can possibly disagree with that?

Mohan has combined decades-long service in the Foreign Service with experience as a teacher of diplomatic practice to produce a masterful book that will surely be enjoyed by diplomatic practitioners and students alike.

As his friend and colleague, I have admired his intellectual growth over the years. When I was Chair of the GATT Committee on Subsidies and Countervailing Measures in 1982, Mohan was a young Language Trainee in Geneva who delivered India’s statement at breakneck speed in my stead. As his senior colleague at Geneva, I regarded Mohan Kumar to be one of the finest thinkers in the field of international trade. This book provides eloquent reaffirmation of that assessment.

The writer is Union Minister of Housing and Urban Affairs, and Petroleum and Natural Gas in the Government of India