Modi's rise: the far flank implications: Balaji Chandramohan comments on India's strategic orientation after the general elections and foresees possible problems in the nuclear field.

• Author: Chandramohan, Balaji

The accession to power of Narendra Modi represents a big change of political direction in India, from a left-centre to a right-centre orientation. The outcome of the recent elections will also change India's strategic outreach and strengthen its internal functioning. Its economy and military power will be bolstered. India's more realistic approach will be accepted by countries that are often called India's strategic far flank, such as Australia and New Zealand, which want India to be pro-active in its diplomatic initiatives. These include free trade agreements--though India's conduct of further nuclear tests will no doubt bring complications in the various bilateral relationships.

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In April--May the worlds largest democracy elected a new government. The parliamentary elections proved a triumph for the conservative and nationalistic Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which won a thumping majority. The strategic orientation of the new government under Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi will be of interest not only to India's immediate neighbours but also to countries like New Zealand--and Australia, which is increasingly focusing its attention on the Indian Ocean.

Narendra Modi has assumed power with a popular mandate that reflects a long under-represented view among the general Indian population--a desire to see India's transition from a geographically and demographically large country with marginal power to something more important in the international sphere. In that quest, there is a preference for assertive diplomacy and a shift away from the traditional Indian approach that emphasised limited use of force to a new stance based on robust military power backed by a sound and surging economy.

This world view is opposed to the traditional Nehruvian liberal world view, which also promoted the non-aligned movement, or the neo-liberal world view of India that took shape from the time of India's economic liberalisation in the 1990s. Both world views supposedly provided a caricature of the failure of India's Western-oriented liberal intellectuals, who though small in numbers were very influential, to look beyond India's colonial period, a time when it was influential in the Asian region. (1)

Furthermore, the Nehruvian liberal world view followed by India from Independence in 1947 until 1991 and the neo-liberal world view followed from 1991 had not been generally accepted as a credible way of conducting strategic policy within India. Nor have they helped to secure consensus among India's immediate neighbours, which has ensured that India's voice in international forums has not been effective. These neighbours, which include Maldives, Nepal, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Sri Tanka, began to look to friendly relations with countries like China and the United States as a means of enhancing their interests, despite having their roots in the Indian sub-continent.

The BJP's foreign policy agenda aims to change the above situation and conduct foreign policy in a much more...