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Abstract
Foreign policy making in India is typically viewed as highly centralised and dominated by the Prime Minister’s Office and bureaucracy. Yet in 2004, the Congress-Party-led United Progressive Alliance government launched a Composite Dialogue with Pakistan which included a place for Indian think tanks in the Kashmir dispute. We suggest that as India liberalised its economy amidst domestic political upheaval, think tanks were given greater access to domestic and foreign funding and adopted new roles in foreign policy making. In the case of the Kashmir conflict, peacebuilding think tanks were encouraged by the government to engage in cross-border activities that would build constituencies for peace with Pakistan and promote economic cooperation as an incentive for peace. While the government aimed to depoliticise the conflict, these think tanks used this opportunity to draw attention to marginalised perspectives and issues. Peacebuilding think tanks nonetheless faced significant challenges in shaping the peace process because of structural constraints regarding access to resources and lack of autonomy to further their agendas. This reflected resistance within the state to depoliticising a conflict that has long been India’s central national security issue.
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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Funding
No funding to disclose.
Notes
1 Kapur, “Ten Year of Instability,” 72.
2 Poulantzas, State, Power, Socialism.
3 Jessop, The State, 215.
4 Chacko, “The Right Turn in India,” 4.
5 Chacko, “New Geo-Economics of a ‘Rising’ India”; Hameiri et al., “Reframing the Rising Powers Debate.”
6 Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 12–13.
7 Wood, “Politicisation, Depoliticisation and Anti-Politics,” 11.
8 Bhatnagar, “Foreign Policy Think Tanks in India.”
9 Schmidt, “Discursive Institutionalism: Explanatory Power.”
10 Sum and Jessop, Towards a Cultural Political Economy, 122.
11 Behera, Demystifying Kashmir, 45–8, 82–3.
12 Mukherji, Globalization and Deregulation; Kohli, “Politics of Economic Growth in India.”
13 Alamgir, India’s Open-Economy Policy.
14 Faleiro, “Changing World Order,” 212.
15 Chacko, Indian Foreign Policy, 163.
16 Raja Mohan, Crossing the Rubicon.
17 Chacko, “Marketizing Hindutva.”
18 Chacko, Indian Foreign Policy, 192.
19 Yadav, “The Elusive Mandate of 2004,” 9.
20 Chacko, “The Right Turn in India,” 9–10.
21 Paul, “Re-Scaling IPE,” 470; McAdam et al., Dynamics of Contention.
22 Baru, The Accidental Prime Minister, 2741.
23 Menon, India and the Global Scene; Singh, PM’s Speech at Banquet.
24 Baru, The Accidental Prime Minister, 2315.
25 Ibid., 3062-3120; Misra, “An Audit of the India–Pakistan Peace Process,” 520; Raja Mohan, “Soft Borders and Cooperative Frontiers,” 17.
26 Padder, “The Composite Dialogue,” 11.
27 DasGupta, “Kashmir and the India–Pakistan”; Sridharan, “Improving Indo–Pakistan Relations.”
28 As stated by Menon during a conference in New Delhi; Bhatnagar et al., Collaborative Explorations.
29 McGann, “2008 Global Go To Think Tank.”
30 Mathur, Policy Research Organizations.
31 Pautz, “Revisiting the Think Tank,” 430.
32 Desai, “Second-Hand Dealers,” 31.
33 Parmar, Think Tanks and Power.
34 Rudolph and Rudolph, “Icononisation of Chandrababu”; Chacko, “New Geo-Economics of a ‘Rising’ India”; Weaver and Stares, Guidance for Governance; Mathur, Policy Research Organizations, 4.
35 Haider, “Foreign Policy Making in India,” 102.
36 In an interview, Gopinath at WISCOMP highlighted that think tanks and NGOs conceptions of security changed from a hard-core state security focus in the early 2000s to one where both people’s security and state security began to be considered coinciding with the MEA and the UN’s emphasis on NGOs.
37 Pautz, Think Tanks, Social Democracy, 7.
38 Pautz, “Revisiting the Think Tank,” 425.
39 Parmar, Think Tanks and Power.
40 Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 3.
41 Ibid., 145.
42 Interview with G. Parthasarathy in New Delhi, October 2015.
43 Stone, “Recycling Bins,” 276.
44 Schmidt, “Discursive Institutionalism: Scope,” 87.
45 Ibid., 86.
46 Chandran, “Expanding Cross LoC Interactions.”
47 Parthasarathy and Kumar, Frameworks for a Kashmir settlement; Manjunath, “Indo–Pak Peace Process”; Patil, “Indo–Pak Composite Dialogue.”
48 Chandran, “New Indian Initiatives,” 1.
49 Dulat et al., The Spy Chronicles, 69.
50 Chandran, “The Hizbul Mujahideen.”
51 Parthasarathy and Kumar, Frameworks for a Kashmir settlement.
52 DPG, Simulation Exercise.
53 Hussain, “Deaths Provoke Kashmir Protests.”
54 Kumar et al., A New Compact.
55 Sewak, “Multi-Track Diplomacy.”
56 Basu, Building Constituencies of Peace.
57 Interviews with Dipankar Banerjee (IPCS) and Sushobha Barve (CDR) in New Delhi, October 2015.
58 Interview with Sushant Sareen (VIF) in New Delhi, October 2015.
59 Gopinath, “Processing Peace,” 5.
60 Kothari and Mian, Bridging Partition; Gopinath, “Processing Peace,” 5, 6.
61 Husain, “Managing India–Pakistan Trade Relations,” 60.
62 Centre for Dialogue and Reconciliation, Beyond Borders, 16.
63 Data from Indo Pak Conflict Monitor.
64 Menon, Earlier Cross-LoC Strikes.
65 Sharma, “Quills and Spills”; Kapoor, “Joint Statement.”
66 Menon, Choices, Chap. 3.
67 Yusuf, “Promoting Cross LoC Trade.”
68 Economic Times, “No Dilution in AFSPA.”
69 Varadarajan, “A Modest Proposal on AFSPA”; Economic Times, “Unified Command to Decide.”
70 Khare, “Hold the Vajpayee Manmohan Line”; VIF, “Press Statement.”
71 Ghatak et al., “Growth in the Time of UPA.”
72 Chacko, “The Right Turn in India.”
73 Jaishankar, “Indian Foreign Secretary Subrahmanyam Jaishankar’s Remarks.”
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Stuti Bhatnagar
Stuti Bhatnagar is an Adjunct Fellow, Politics and International Relations, University of Adelaide. She specialises in Indian foreign policy, especially the role and rising influence of think tanks in India. Additional research interests include the examination of political dynamics that drive India–Pakistan relations and India’s changing foreign policy interests.
Priya Chacko
Priya Chacko is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of Adelaide, Visiting Academic Fellow at the Australia–India Institute at the University of Melbourne and a Non-Resident Fellow at the USAsia Centre at the University of Western Australia. Her research focusses on politics, political economy and foreign policy in India and the Indo-Pacific region.