Has the Non-Aligned Movement lost its relevance in the present-day situation and how has India evolved its foreign policy goals to the changing international scenario? (2001)
Non-alignment named a position between two blocs. In Kenneth N. Waltz’s structural terms (Theory of International Politics, 1979), the collapse of bipolarity in 1991 removed the system that gave it meaning. The relevance question is answerable only by separating three things: the doctrine of autonomous judgement, the movement as an organisation, and the ethos of Southern solidarity. The organisation has declined; the doctrine and the ethos have not, and India’s foreign policy reflects exactly that split.
Has NAM lost its relevance?
The case for decline
- With no second bloc, the bargaining room and the intermediary role have gone.
- With some 120 members, no secretariat and decision by consensus, NAM produces declarations rather than outcomes; it could not stop Iraq invading Kuwait in 1990.
- Former Foreign Secretary Jagat S. Mehta (1991) urged declaring the mission accomplished, since independence had been secured. C. Raja Mohan (2016) goes further: the movement was dysfunctional well before the Cold War ended.
The case for continuing relevance
- At Jakarta (1992) the movement turned to development, debt and reform of global institutions, issues that still divide North and South.
- T. V. Paul (Restraining Great Powers, 2018) argues that renewed great-power rivalry makes soft balancing by weaker states, through norms and coalitions, rational again.
- Its ethos of sovereign equality and opposition to unilateral coercion is the idiom of Global South diplomacy, echoed in the BRICS New Delhi Declaration (September 2026) against unilateral tariffs and sanctions.
How India evolved its goals
- Reformulation: P. V. Narasimha Rao redefined non-alignment as a state’s right to independence and development irrespective of blocs.
- Economics first: the 1991 reforms replaced self-reliance with integration; Look East (1991–92), upgraded to Act East in 2014, pursued Asian capital and markets.
- Recalibrated partnerships: full relations with Israel (1992) alongside support for Palestine; the 1993 treaty with Russia dropped the 1971 security clause; the US opening led to the civil nuclear deal (2005–08).
- Capability: the 1998 nuclear tests sought autonomy through hard power rather than collective moral pressure.
- Strategic autonomy to multi-alignment: NonAlignment 2.0 (2012) called strategic autonomy India’s continuous goal. S. Jaishankar calls non-alignment “a term of a particular era” yet rules out alliance. India sits in the Quad, BRICS, which it chaired in 2026, and the SCO; it abstained on the February 2026 UNGA Ukraine resolution and absorbed a US penalty tariff over Russian oil from August 2025 until the February 2026 interim understanding.
- From NAM to platforms it leads: the G20 presidency (2023) secured the African Union’s seat, alongside the Voice of the Global South summits and the International Solar Alliance. Harsh V. Pant (2020) reads India’s NAM outreach since as pragmatic, not a return to the old paradigm; India sent only ministers to Kampala (2024, 2025) and Belgrade (2026).
Conclusion
NAM as an organisation has lost much of its relevance; non-alignment as decisional autonomy has gained it in a multipolar world. India has evolved from leading a movement of the weak to practising multi-alignment as a rising power, keeping the founding credential while pursuing its goals through capability and coalitions it steers.