Opinion Christophe Jaffrelot writes: The West, China, a world in flux — and where India stands

The future will tell if it is at the centre of global affairs or stuck between two camps

Jaishankar, S. Jaishankar, BRICS, G20 Summit, G20 meeting, editorial, Indian express, opinion news, indian express editorial

Recent developments, including the BRICS and G20 summits, suggest otherwise. The international scene is becoming more and more bipolar, largely because of the Chinese attitude.

Christophe Jaffrelot

October 25, 2023 01:29 PM IST First published on: Oct 25, 2023 at 07:17 AM IST

In his last book, The India Way, S Jaishankar wrote, “It is time for us to engage America, manage China, cultivate Europe, reassure Russia, bring Japan into play, draw neighbours in, extend the neighbourhood and expand traditional constituencies of support.” This strategy, aimed at maximising India’s national interest the realpolitik way is much easier to implement if the world remains multipolar. But will it?

Recent developments, including the BRICS and G20 summits, suggest otherwise. The international scene is becoming more and more bipolar, largely because of the Chinese attitude. The two summits form a sequence which may lead to a new era. In Johannesburg, Beijing could have its way by including six new members into the BRICS grouping. China had already done something similar in the early 2010s when it had lobbied for the addition of South Africa to what was till then the BRIC. By doing so, Beijing made the IBSA, comprising India, Brazil and South Africa, redundant. Why should these three countries, which claimed to represent the three largest democracies of the three largest continents, continue to meet separately now that they were all part of the same grouping? The 2013 IBSA meeting is still due and India and Brazil have lost an instrument that could have helped them to speak in the name of the Global South.

The Global South is precisely what the new “BRICS plus” formula claims to embody. This new grouping may be the crucible of a larger coalition intended to offer alternatives to existing multilateral architectures. The fact that Xi Jinping skipped the G20 summit in New Delhi fits in well in this scenario. Several countries belong to both groupings, but the two most important leaders of the former, Putin and Xi, did not take part in the latter, as if the grouping in which they invested the most was not that one, but one that had been expanded a few weeks before. This sign of a growing bipolarisation of the international scene is naturally strengthened by the rapprochement between Moscow and China.

How far is India’s plurilateralism — to use Jaishankar’s word — compatible with this new dynamic? In his book, Jaishankar envisaged a “Chindia”-like cooperation (“the ability of India and China to work together could determine the Asian century”) and considered that India could be at the centre of international affairs by taking part in China-led as well as US-led groupings: “If India drove the revived Quad arrangement, it also took membership of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation. A longstanding trilateral with Russia and China now coexists with one involving the US and Japan”. But is such an equidistant situation tenable if China is not giving due respect to India in minilaterals such as the BRICS and the SCO, if the PLA continues to exert military pressure on India in the Himalayas, a strategy which culminated in the 2020 attack resulting in the death of 20 Indian soldiers and finds expression the occupation of territories claimed by India, and if Beijing is acquiring unprecedented influence, with potential military implications, in the countries of India’s immediate neighbourhood, like Sri Lanka and Nepal?

In this context, India may need to take sides and get closer to the West. This trend has already been obvious for quite some time, as evident from India’s role in the Quad, the making of trilaterals like the India/France/UAE and India/France/Australia groupings, as well as many joint manoeuvres between the Indian navy and several western powers. In the margins of the G20 meeting, this rapprochement manifested itself in the announcement of a transport project to link India to Europe via Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Jordan, and Israel. This project, which would help boost trade, deliver energy resources and improve digital connectivity, fits in the plan that had already been announced in the 2021 G7 meeting under the name “Build Back Better World”. It should also benefit from the EU project known as the Global Gateway. Both are clearly responses to the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative that India refused to join. By being part of this new project, Delhi is getting closer to the West.

But how far can India go in this direction? First, in spite of its efforts to diversify, it remains extremely dependent on Russia for energy and weapons. The fact that India failed to develop a proper defence industry is a weakness — this stands in stark contrast with its achievements in space technology. Second, India is increasingly dependent on China in terms of trade. If India exports raw material (including iron ore and raw aluminium) as well as refined oil and fish in large quantities to China, its imports include manufactured products like electronics and telecommunication products, machine tools, organic chemicals, plastics, fertilisers, medical apparatus and even steel. Given the volume of these imports and their high-added value, India’s trade deficit vis-à-vis China has jumped from $ 64 billion in 2021 to $ 87.5 billion in 2022. While this deficit is a problem in itself, it is also the symptom of a critical dependence. Some key sectors of the Indian economy, including the pharmaceutical sector, would not be in a position to export (generics, for instance) as much as they do today without the Chinese supply chains.

After the 2020 incident, India decided to scrutinise Chinese investments on its soil. But in July, Minister of States for Information Technology Rajeev Chandrasekhar said that India was “open to all investment, including Chinese”.

Is India at the centre of international affairs or stuck in the middle because of its dependence on many players who belong to the two camps which are crystallising? The future will tell.

The writer is a senior research fellow at CERI-Sciences Po/CNRS, Paris, professor of Indian Politics and Sociology at King’s India Institute, London