To what extent is India’s policy in regard to Afghanistan dictated by a vision of ‘Global South’, rather than compulsion? (2009, 20 Marks)
The Global South vision descends from Bandung (1955) and the Buenos Aires Plan of Action (1978). It frames development cooperation as horizontal partnership among post-colonial states: demand-driven, free of conditions, and respectful of sovereignty. India’s Afghan programme speaks this language fluently. Yet the size, geography and timing of the programme are better explained by strategic compulsion, chiefly Pakistan. The answer is that the vocabulary is solidarity and the driver is compulsion.
The case for a Global South vision
- Model of assistance: over US$3 billion in commitments after 2001, mostly grants. Projects were requested by the Afghan side, with no policy conditionality or structural adjustment, setting it apart from Western donor practice.
- Spread and scale: by India’s own 2020 count, 400-plus projects in all 34 provinces, many of them small community works chosen by local authorities. This reflects a partner deferring to local priorities, not a great power buying influence.
- Human capacity: ITEC training and ICCR scholarships made capacity-building the largest and least visible component, the hallmark of India’s South–South model. India later codified these principles (priorities set by partners, no debt burden) in the Global Development Compact offered at the third Voice of the Global South Summit (August 2024).
- Continuity beyond politics: after August 2021 India kept sending wheat, vaccines and medicines through the WFP and WHO to a government it does not recognise. Since October 2025 it has added maternity clinics and hospitals, which pure interest calculation struggles to explain.
The case for compulsion
- Security first: every Indian official statement puts terrorism first, keeping Afghan soil from sheltering groups aimed at India, a lesson of the post-1989 transfer of fighters into Kashmir.
- A strategic map: the Zaranj–Delaram highway to the Iranian border and Chabahar, the Salma Dam in the west, and Kabul’s power line were choices about routes and leverage around Pakistan, not just need.
- Means set by geography: with no land access and no appetite for a military role, development was the only instrument available.
- Exclusion as a driver: in 2009 itself, Washington’s AfPak framing tied Afghanistan to Pakistan, and India lobbied to keep Kashmir and India out of Richard Holbrooke’s mandate; the July 2008 bombing of the Kabul embassy showed that India’s presence was itself contested by force.
- Timing tracks Pakistan: Indian engagement has risen and fallen with Pakistan’s position in Kabul. The post-2021 re-entry, including the embassy upgrade (October 2025) and the Taliban chargé d’affaires (January 2026), came as Pakistan–Taliban hostility deepened.
- Realist reading: Kautilya’s mandala, under which the neighbour’s neighbour is a natural ally, explains the relationship better than solidarity does.
Weighing the two
Avinash Paliwal (My Enemy’s Enemy, 2017) argues that Indian policy has sought a stable balance across the Durand Line rather than merely an anti-Pakistan position, which places interest, not solidarity, at the core. A constructivist would note that identity and interest are not opposites: India’s post-colonial self-image shaped how it pursued its interests. Development without conditions reflected both conviction and the limits of Indian power. The vision is also more than rhetoric because Afghans treat it as real; India retained public goodwill across factions, which made the 2025 re-entry possible. The counterfactual is decisive, though: without Pakistan, India would likely have only a modest, warm, low-priority relationship with Afghanistan.
Conclusion
India’s Afghanistan policy is driven largely by compulsion and expressed through a Global South vision. That combination is not hypocrisy but normal middle-power statecraft: the vision shapes the method and legitimacy, while compulsion sets the scale and priorities.