Federalising India's Foreign Policy and Regional Cooperation: State's Role in Foreign Policy

Abstract

This paper is an assessment to determine the role of Indian states in Indian foreign policy making and tries to systematically analyse the factors that contribute to the rise of the state's role in shaping Indian foreign policy. The relevance of the state's role will increase with the geography of India's position in the subcontinent, as most of the Indian states barring a few, share international borders and have historical and cultural connections with trans-border nations. Thus, regional issues impact India's subnational units' interests and influence the decision-making in Indian foreign policy and India's regional cooperation. This is an enquiry about the role of states in Indian foreign policy to see the push-pull effect of states on bilateral foreign policy decisions. It examined and analysed whether the role and influence of states have been different when they were part of the coalition government at the Centre from the case when they were not part of the government in New Delhi. Indian Constitution, parliament discussion, national interests and prevalent political structure have evolved foreign policy decision-making over time, which is dynamic due to the influence of domestic politics and India’s aspirations of emergence in the world order. In India's foreign policy, the Centre has acted dominantly and exclusively based on the philosophy that the Centre should control international affairs without any inferences by the federal units of the Union. The Constitution nowhere describes the polity as federal. However, the features, distribution of powers and characteristics indicate that it predominantly works as a federation in times of peace and acts as a unitary government during an emergency. Lately, with the emergence of the coalition government in India and the changed world order after 1991, it has been seen that states were reaching out from their limited autonomy and actively interacting with external actors for their interests which remained coupled with national interests. Federal polity relations between the Centre and states are crucial in determining the effectiveness of policy and governance. Deeper penetration of democratisation within the society and an open and expanding economy has given space to subunits to influence foreign policy. Later, when India opened its markets for foreign investment, the Centre assumed the role of regulator and patron of the state's ties with external agencies. This changing economic scenario and the advent of globalisation factors like the state's economic conditions, capabilities and cultural ties became important factors, leveraging their role in India's foreign policy. While analysing the role of states in Indian foreign policy, West Bengal's role in influencing the neighbourhood policy with Bangladesh is significant and cannot be neglected. Similarly, Tamilnadu's active role in India's policy towards Sri Lanka is noticeable.