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‘India must strive for multi-polar world’

KOCHI: “Greater economic growth, improvement of relations with neighbours and harmonisation of positions with the global community will be required” for India to realise its vision of a multi-polar world with “India as one of the poles with half a dozen other major powers,” said India’s former Ambassador to the United Nations T. P. Sreenivasan on Tuesday.

He was delivering the 19th Msgr. Thomas Nedumkallel Memorial Lecture at the Nirmala College, Muvattupuzha, on ‘Indian Foreign Policy: Challenges and Opportunities’.

India has the opportunity now to pursue the cherished goal of a nuclear weapon-free world, “now that the world has acknowledged the validity of our position,” he said, regarding the country’s stand right from the beginning.

Mr. Sreenivasan said that China would be the biggest challenge to Indian foreign policy in the next decade and beyond. Pakistan remained “hostile and recalcitrant” and “the peace process must await more congenial conditions.”

Sri Lanka, on the other hand, presented a different challenge, he said. India should persuade Sri Lanka to grant autonomy to the Tamil regions. “The growing influence of China and Pakistan in Sri Lanka is also a matter of concern,” he said.

The emergence of the Maoists in Nepal and Myanmar’s becoming a client state of China were reasons for concern, he said.

Though Bangladesh, Bhutan and Maldives are warm towards India, the relationship with these countries needed to be delicately managed, he said.

India’s relations with the U.S. are getting stronger. However, the U.S. priority for engagement with China on account of the global financial crisis and its relationship with its longstanding ally Pakistan will influence Indo-U.S. relations.

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