Comment

Foreign policy of an unnatural coalitional politics

THE Congress-led UPA government unlike its predecessor has failed to carry any conviction with its ally, the Communist bloc of Lok Sabha members, on the basic issue of India’s engagement with the global power system dominated by the current sole military superpower, the United States. The antagonism among the alliance partners is not limited to this issue alone because, beginning with the 1990s, the national and regional political elite along with the leading ruling classes, have made every effort to integrate India with the global capitalist order. The only exception to this prevailing ideological consensus are the Communists who happen to be the ‘outside supporters’ of the government. The prevailing differences on foreign policy between these two ‘alliance partners’ are rooted in and integrally linked to their fundamentally antagonistic perspectives on India’s attitude towards an American-led global capitalist order.

The CPI(M) is not only opposed to the ‘India-US strategic partnership’ and pro-US tilt of the Manmohan Singh government, it has even accused it of being pro-Israel and anti-Iran under US pressure. If the Communists believe that India is under an ‘American shadow’, the Indian political elite and the ruling classes believe that India must play an active role in the 21st century because it is a ‘new emerging power in Asia’. Henry Kissinger, the high priest of foreign policy, sees ‘the drift of the centre of gravity of international affairs from the Atlantic to the Pacific and Indian Oceans.’ The Manmohan Singh government perceives a bright future for India in forging alliances with global centres of capitalism because the Indian economy is on the ‘growth curve’. The prime minister, while defending policies of economic liberalization stated that, ‘We remain committed to economic reform and liberalization… In ancient India, a monarch was regarded as a good king if he did not interfere too much in the life of the people. That has been our guiding principle as well.’

Key ministers of the UPA government have repeatedly asserted that India is fully integrated with global capitalism. P. Chidambaram, the Finance Minister recently observed that ‘…India is not insulated from the world economy and the US subprime mortgage crisis…’ He further stated: ‘Though we are somewhat insulated from what is happening in the global markets, we are not completely de-coupled from the world.’ Every country’s foreign policy reflects the imperatives of domestic needs, demands and aspirations. The pro-American foreign policy of India cannot be visualized without linking it with other politico-economic shifts which have taken place within the country. Shiv Shankar Menon, the Foreign Secretary, articulated the government’s foreign policy by focusing attention on the changing nature of the current world order. ‘What we see is the emergence of a global order marked by the preponderance of several major powers, with minimal likelihood of direct conflict amongst these powers. The result is a de-hypenisation of relationships with each other, of each major power engaging with the others.’

Thus, it is not just a question of differences between the Congress and the Communists on the issue of an India-US nuclear deal or of India deciding to become a ‘strategic partner of America’. The differences are fundamental because the Congress and the Communists have no meeting ground. If the Communists are attacking the Manmohan government for abandoning India’s traditional and time tested policy of ‘non-alignment’, Menon has opined that the present century has given birth to the need for ‘informal alliances among countries.’ The Communists are up in arms against the government’s policy of implicitly supporting the US pressure on Iran to abandon its nuclear programme. It is instructive that the government has repeatedly stated that it cannot accept an Iran with nuclear weapons because it is against India’s national security interest.

What is the explanation for the continuing tug of war between the Congress and the Communist coalition partners? The coordination committee mechanism for the resolution of policy differences between the two has failed to settle the disputes on policy matters, with the Communists publicly, both in and outside Parliament, opposing the government’s basic policy framework. It is important to underline that the Communists have always been political and ideological opponents of the Congress despite entering into a marriage of convenience beginning in 2004. The politico-ideological conflict between the two became accentuated in the 1990s when the Congress opted for a completely new economic policy of globalization, liberalization, privatization, and deregulation of the economy with a view to opening up the Indian market to foreign private investors, leading to the integration of India with the global capitalist order.

The post 1990s Congress, unlike in the Nehru-Indira era, is openly pro-private capital, Indian and foreign. Leaders of the capitalist class have been welcomed with open arms by the Congress leadership in the making of an emerging industrially and technologically powerful country. The Indian capitalist classes, along with the entrepreneurial, managerial, technocratic and upwardly middle classes, have come to occupy the drivers’ seat. Relations between politics and business have now become very close. The leading classes of India, with the full approval and support of the political and bureaucratic leadership, are not only welcoming foreign investors, they are themselves moving around the world and seeking opportunities for capital investment. Joint ventures between Indian and foreign capitalists have become routine. When the Tata Motors clinched the US$ 2.3 billion deal with Ford Motor Company on Jaguar and Land Rover, the Federation of Indian Chamber of Commerce and Industry stated that ‘This is a major landmark for Indian industry.’

Domestic capital cannot cross the frontiers of a country without full support and encouragement of domestic governments and this is happening in a big way under the impact of New Economic Policy framework pursued and patronized by the Congress-led coalition government. The Congress party is even inviting private capitalist classes to play an active role along with the government as partner for investments in infrastructure developmental projects and in social sectors like education and health. This public-private partnership model for investments in developmental projects followed in India has led to a kind of integration of ‘capital, state and the dominant strata of the ruling classes’ and this model has been used to encourage and facilitate the Indian capitalist classes to invest in foreign countries as well. Given the logic of ‘opening up the Indian economy’ to domestic and foreign investors, the Indian state and the ruling classes cannot be adversaries of global capitalism, including the United States of America.

If the Communists are genuinely opposed to US imperialism and wish India to follow an anti-US foreign policy, they will have to dissociate themselves from the Congress-led UPA government, because neither the Congress nor the social classes which support its policies are ready to accept their anti-US prescription. The Congress and the Communists are unable to find any meeting ground because their basic approach towards India in the 21st century is based on ideologies which represent interests of ‘opposite social constituencies.’ Ideologies and policy frameworks of different political parties do not hang in the air, they are solidly integrated with the basic interests of separate social groups which are represented by different political formations.

Coalition governments at the Centre are bound to be marriages of inconvenience because it is unlikely that any coalition partner will abandon the interests of its special social constituency and make basic ideological compromises with competing coalition partners. Though the defenders of coalitional system of governance at the Centre maintain that the NDA was a success because Vajpayee followed ‘coalition dharma’ of accommodating the interests of allies, this assessment is not based on facts. The BJP followed its basic agenda of militarization and nuclear weaponization. It even appointed a Constitutional Review Commission because it never fully accepted the philosophical postulates of constitutional democracy based on the normative structure of pluralism, secularism and respect for cultural diversity. The NDA allies went along with the BJP agenda, mainly because regionalist parties were indifferent to nuclear weaponization of the country. Incidentally, the BJP-led coalition government from 1998 to 2004, with the full support of its allies, followed the Congress party’s policy of integration of India with global capitalist order and its pro-US policies were fully supported by the social classes which stand for free and competitive market economy.

The Communists have accused the Manmohan Singh government of following the BJP government’s domestic and foreign policies, forgetting that both the Congress and the BJP draw their support from similar social constituencies. It is not unusual in the history of capitalist democracies that two major political parties are sustained by overlapping social strata of various segments of the private accumulators of capital. This is the current reality of India, where two major ideologically antagonistic opponents have become two faces of the same coin because they have found a common support base in different segments of the pro-capitalist social groups. Unless the Communists realize that given their core social constituency of the labouring classes, they can only be unnatural allies of the Congress, we will continue to witness the blow hot blow cold nature of their relationship.

C.P. Bhambhri