20/01/2020 - International Relations

KEY POINTS

·        As the annual Raisina Dialogue, run by the Observer Research Foundation with the support of the Foreign Office, has emerged as an important global forum on geopolitics.

·        More broadly, Raisina is facilitating the development of sustainable intellectual networks between the Indian strategic community and its counterparts in the world.

·        Part of the reason for Raisina’s success is the growing international interest in India amidst its rapid economic growth in the new millennium and the recognition of its salience in shaping the future of international order.

·        It is also due to the fact that it is based on collaboration between the government and a private think tank. This collaboration has helped shed the dull rigidity that has marked the government’s past engagement with the global strategic community.

·        Raisina was part of the strategy to discard the traditional bureaucratic skill that the government knows best.

·        Delhi needs to devote a lot more attention to engaging the strategic and economic elites in the Subcontinent to make a success of its declared policy that puts the “neighbourhood first”.

·        While government-supported forums like Raisina are welcome, Delhi needs to make it easier for the civil society groups to develop trans-border and international conversations.

·        Successive governments in recent decades have tightened the visa restrictions for conferences and made it harder to obtain official clearances to host such events. Only a genuine liberalisation of these rules will help India realise the full potential of its global engagement.

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