Over the past year, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has made it unequivocally clear that he favours states’ active participation and partnership in his development agenda through his stated policy of ‘cooperative federalism’. Not just in the domestic policy arena, he has now extended this partnership in the international arena through the involvement of states in promoting India’s broader interests abroad.
‘Cooperative Federalism’ In Foreign Policy
While the Modi government’s willingness to partner with states in the promotion of India’s interest overseas is a new toolkit in India’s foreign policy, Modi cannot be credited for inventing this wheel. But he is certainly the one who has acknowledged and promoted the importance of this actor and is trying to deploy this resource which other leaders before him failed to harness sufficiently, and carried out foreign policy in the conventional manner.
As international relations today have become complex and multilayered, national governments alone do not possess adequate resources to effectively represent their countries’ interests and promote them overseas.
Far from being courageous enough to represent their interests overseas in competition with the national government, Indian states have been largely inactive in their international engagement even in non-controversial areas such as trade and cultural exchanges. As Gujarat chief minister, Modi was among a handful of CMs who began to recognise the importance of connecting their states to foreign countries in pursuit of trade and investment.
States Have Stakes
Chandrababu Naidu in Andhra Pradesh has been another internationally active CM. States bordering Pakistan, like Jammu and Kashmir and Punjab and north-eastern states bordering Bangladesh and Myanmar have emerged as stakeholders in neighbourhood policy, and this was recognised even by the UPA government. At times it was argued that states like West Bengal and Tamil Nadu were in fact accused of having a veto over India’s ties with Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, respectively.
In the economic sphere, states apart from Gujarat – such as Tamil Nadu, Madhya Pradesh, West Bengal – have been organising investor summits with the aim of seeking foreign investment.
Modi is rightly trying to strengthen the partnership between Centre and states. This can be seen clearly both before and during his China visit. Chandrababu Naidu was chosen by the Ministry of External Affairs to lead an Indian delegation in April. Modi himself was accompanied by two CMs – Anandiben Patel (Gujarat) and Devendra Fadnavis (Maharashtra).
Not only did the CMs meet Chinese provincial leaders and potential investors but they were also part of the India-China State and Provincial Leaders Forum which shall be a dialogue between governors of Chinese provinces and CMs of Indian states. It will be along the lines of the US-China Governors’ Forum which was begun in July 2011, and a host of issues – economic, environmental and research and education will are discussed. The India-China Provincial Leaders Forum seeks to expand, not just to be a forum for enhancing economic ties, but also strengthening people-to-people contact and cultural and educational ties. Besides, it will give a chance to Indian states and provinces to explore ties according to their complementarities and needs.
During Modi’s visit agreements were also signed for twinning of one Indian state (Karnataka) and a Chinese province (Sichuan) and similarly between cities Chennai-Chongqing, Hyderabad (Telangana)-Qingdao (Shangdong) and Aurangabad (Maharashtra)–Dunhuang (Gansu). Twin city partnerships between US and China, such as the city of San Francisco and Shanghai, have been helpful not just for removing misunderstandings between citizens of both countries, but during the recession helped in drawing Chinese real estate and tech investments to the US.
Sub-National Linkages
It is not just Modi who understands the relevance of sub-national linkages. During his visit to India in September 2014, Chinese President Xi Jinping landed in Ahmedabad and an agreement for sister state-province partnership was signed between Gujarat and Guangdong, while an agreement for sister city partnership between Ahmedabad and Guangzhou was also signed.
Diplomacy today no longer starts and ends in national capital cities, nor is it the sole preserve of national leaders and national foreign affairs officials. Hopefully, mechanisms such as the Provincial Leaders Forum will ensure that interactions between provinces help in creating strong linkages at the sub-national level which will contribute to a substantive bilateral relationship.
(Purnendra Jain is Professor in Asian Studies at the University of Adelaide. Tridivesh Singh Maini , who co-authored the article, is a Senior Research Associate with The Jindal School of International Affairs, OP Jindal Global University.)
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