send mail to support@abhimanu.com mentioning your email id and mobileno registered with us! if details not recieved
Resend Opt after 60 Sec.
By Loging in you agree to Terms of Services and Privacy Policy
Please specify
Please verify your mobile number
Login not allowed, Please logout from existing browser
Please update your name
Subscribe to Notifications
Stay updated with the latest Current affairs and other important updates regarding video Lectures, Test Schedules, live sessions etc..
Your Free user account at abhipedia has been created.
Remember, success is a journey, not a destination. Stay motivated and keep moving forward!
Refer & Earn
Enquire Now
My Abhipedia Earning
Kindly Login to view your earning
Support
How does a democratic polity build up a sustainable, durable consensus, especially in matters of national security, including foreign and defence policies? This is a problem that all democratic societies face, but in India the height due numerous ethic and regional disparities. Consensus emerging from democratic political system no longer seems to be working. The task becomes much more problematic if the polity happens to apply to as divided a society as India has become.
But what will the outside players — foreign governments, non-state actors and multinational corporations — make of us and our claims to sit at the global high table if every five years a new prime minister were to declare that the slate had been wiped clean and disavow any obligation of continuity?
How and who will develop a national consensus on national security?
A consensus is a convergence on a set of beliefs, ideas and attitudes shaped into a few identifiable objectives. There is a certain durability and continuity about this consensus. There may be differences over the tactics of going about achieving these objectives. The tactical choices are invariably dictated by the changing geo-strategic environment around us. But, there cannot be any grand confusion, within and outside, about what India stands for, what its national interests are and what role it thinks it is entitled to play on the global stage. And, inevitably, a national consensus has to reflect our civilisational ethos. It also necessarily means that a national consensus cannot be a narrow construct. Nor can it be anchored in sectarian prejudices or politics. It must be a positive, forward-looking, inclusive, morally defensible body of prescriptions and proscriptions.
The primary responsibility of forging a national consensus rests on the political leadership. In practical terms, the onus falls on the political leader, who is obliged to mobilise domestic constituencies, marshal democratic resources and energies and excite the national imagination.
Fortunately for India, there was Jawaharlal Nehru at the beginning. He brilliantly tapped the Indian masses’ support and enlisted their endorsement behind a set of foreign policy attitudes and ideas. Once the Indian masses’ acceptance for the “Nehruvian foreign policy” became evident, the middle classes, intelligentsia, even the business community fell in line. And, these days though it seems like a jolly good thing to denigrate Nehru, he had the perfect response to the temper and demands of his times. He secured the acquiescence of an unhelpful, unsympathetic external world as the newly created Indian State consolidated itself.
While only a political leader can take the initiative for rebuilding a broken down national consensus, there must necessarily be considerable elite support for the leader. It is the elite that sustain a consensus even after the leader has faded away. A prime example of such reinforcing elite is the so-called American “eastern establishment” that sustained and carried forward Franklin D Roosevelt’s ideas of a global order. Another example is the Japanese elite’s acceptance of American hegemony and protection after Japan’s defeat in World War II. Both the Soviet (till 1989) and Chinese elites managed to firewall their national interests from domestic upheavals. The elite in India have had a rather mixed record when it comes to the task of first identifying and then persevering with national interests. Strangely, our political leadership has joined forces with the elite only in respect of sorting out a working relationship with China. From the regimes of Rajiv Gandhi to PV Narasimha Rao to Atal Bihari Vajpayee to Manmohan Singh, the political-military-bureaucratic combine has produced firm competence and tactical flexibility to deal with Beijing’s aggressive intent. What is more, the presumably hostile Chinese postures and positions have not been played into our own games of domestic political one-upmanship. The Narendra Modi government, too, has settled down to a calm approach.
In our new insistence that the world should take us seriously, we forget the basic requirement of a national consensus. Neither a divided nation nor a polarising leader is respected. And, the reason for this is also simple: a divided nation can hardly agree upon as to what it takes to build up a kind of national strength that would compel global respect and recognition. That remains our unfinished agenda.
By: Parveen bansal ProfileResourcesReport error
Access to prime resources