New Delhi: The India-US civil nuclear deal, the G20, Quad 1.0, the Sharm El Sheikh Joint Statement, formation of BRICS, joining the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) as an observer, and a number of Free Trade Agreements—all part of the foreign policy legacy of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh—were the building blocks of New Delhi’s current global positioning.
Singh, during his decade-long tenure at the helm of the country between 2004 and 2014, oversaw India’s growing international footprint.
The “scrupulously honest” Singh, who was called as a “cautious” leader in foreign policy by former US president Barack Obama in his memoir ‘A Promised Land’, staked the future of his government in 2008 on ensuring that the civil nuclear deal with America, also known as the 1-2-3 Agreement, would come to fruition.
The deal first announced in 2005, saw New Delhi place all its civilian nuclear facilities under the safeguards of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), in exchange for a grant of exemption from the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG), which was formed following India’s nuclear weapon test in 1974.
The complex deal saw the US push for the NSG waiver, which allowed India access to civil nuclear technology and purchase of fuel from other countries—the only non-member of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) to be allowed to do so.
The civil nuclear agreement revamped the moribound ties between the two countries. Subsequent to the India-US civil nuclear deal, New Delhi signed a number of similar agreements with France, Russia, the UK, the Republic of Korea, Vietnam, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Canada, Argentina, Kazakhstan, Australia and Japan.
However, the deal with the US in 2008, was not smooth sailing as it probably would have been if it was announced today. The Left parties led by Prakash Karat and A.B. Bardhan, with its 60 Members of Parliament withdrew its support from the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) over the nuclear deal.
Singh opted for a floor test and in July 2008, the UPA managed to maintain its majority in the Lok Sabha, with the support of the Samajwadi Party. It was one of the few times that the Left and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) came together in agreement.
Formation of BRICS
The BRICS grouping comprising Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, first came together during Singh’s tenure as Prime Minister. The first meeting of foreign ministers of the BRIC (without South Africa), happened on the margins of the United Nations General Assembly in 2006.
In 2009, the first BRIC Summit, attended by the leaders of Brazil, Russia, India and China, was held in the Russian city of Yekaterinburg, which saw the four leaders call for the reform of international financial institutions and a “more diversified” monetary system, which has slowly gained global momentum, with New Delhi consistently pushing for more trade in local currencies.
In 2010, South Africa joined the grouping and in 2023, it further expanded to include Egypt, the UAE, Iran and Ethiopia, and has gained interest from a number of developing countries from around the world. One of the major outcomes of the grouping is the formation of the New Development Bank (NDB) as an institution for global development financing.
Engagement with Pakistan
During Singh’s tenure as Prime Minister, India witnessed a number of terrorist attacks stemming from across the border, including the 2008 Mumbai attacks, which left 166 people dead and more than 300 injured.
However, Singh during his tenure reiterated that terrorism cannot impede on the peace process between India and Pakistan, meeting with Parvez Musharaff a number of times, including in the aftermath of the 2006 Mumbai train blasts.
The most significant of meetings with his Pakistani counterparts was at the Egyptian resort town of Sharm El Sheikh in 2009, mere months after the 26/11 Mumbai attacks. The Joint Statement emanating from that meeting with Pakistani Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani was widely criticised in India for its perceived delinking terrorism from the composite dialogue process, which found little support from his own party, the Congress.
The statement also brought Balochistan into the picture, with Gilani making a mention “on threats” in the province, which Islamabad has long blamed New Delhi for fermenting. There has been little progress in ties between India and Pakistan in recent years, especially as the Modi government has maintained that terror and talks cannot go together under
Quad 1.0
On 26 December 2004, two decades to the day of Singh’s passing, an earthquake off the coast of Aceh in Northern Sumatra led to a massive tsunami, which left close to 2,30,000 people dead across the Indian Ocean.
In the aftermath of the tsunami, India, the US, Australia and Japan came together to form the ‘Tsunami Core Group’ to coordinate humanitarian assistance and disaster relief (HADR)—the first coordination amongst a grouping of countries which later became the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue.
Under Shinzo Abe’s premiership between 2006 and 2007, Tokyo led the efforts to institutionalise the minilateral, which eventually petered out for a decade until it was relaunched in 2017 at the level of foreign ministers before being upgraded to a leaders’ level dialogue in 2021.
HADR operations remain a key component of the current-day partnership between the Quad nations in the Indo-Pacific region. However, another result of Singh’s ties with Tokyo and Abe was the “Confluence of the Two Seas”, a speech by the late Japanese prime minister to the Indian Parliament in 2007, which laid the foundation for the understanding of the ‘Indo-Pacific’ region.
WTO, G20, & the SCO
Singh’s ten-years saw India’s international economic engagement increase substantially. In 2008 for example, India along with China was one of the major reasons why the World Trade Organisation (WTO) Doha Round talks in Geneva Switzerland were unsuccessful.
The Indian government was willing to forgo any deal at the WTO in July 2008, if the interests of its farmers were threatened. Kamal Nath, the then commerce minister, missed the early days of the negotiations due to the confidence vote in Parliament over the India-US nuclear deal.
““Do we give developed countries the unfettered right to continue subsidising & then dumping those subsidies on us, jeopardising lives of billions? The position of developed countries is utterly self-righteous: they have enjoyed their SSG [special agricultural safeguards] (and want to continue it) but our SSM [special safeguard mechanism] must be subject to all sorts of shackles and restraints. This self-righteousness will not do. If it means no deal, so be it,” Nath said in his address at the WTO.
In 2008, Singh attended the G20 Summit in Washington D.C., during the global financial crisis precipitated in the wake of the US housing crisis. The G20 has become an important economic forum for leaders of the world’s largest economies. In 2023, India held the presidency of the summit, and brought the African Union (AU), into the forum.
During Singh’s tenure, India also joined the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) as an observer in 2005—the forum which includes Central Asian countries along with China, Russia, Belarus, Iran and Pakistan. In 2017, India and Pakistan were made members of the grouping, which has a number of initiatives including cooperation on terrorism.
(Edited by Tony Rai)
Manmohanji wasa a good ex-prime minister. He lived in a democratic country to express freely his opinion. But he was not God; and not necessarily his opinion was some Gospel truth.
RIP Manmohanji.
Which is why the past should not be disparaged by the present. Notably by those who were part of it. Some things should be left to Ms Kangana Ranaut.