India's growing geopolitical weight, high GDP growth rate and abundant market opportunities have helped increase its international profile. It is widely perceived to be a key "swing state" in the emerging international order.

Given the political and financial volatility in today's world, geopolitical risks have become higher. As a "swing" geopolitical factor, India has the potential to play a constructive role to help mitigate those risks by promoting collaborative international approaches. It is obvious that new thinking and approaches are needed to bridge the global fault lines and build greater international cooperation and consensus on the larger geopolitical issues.

India has important advantages that it could exploit to play the role of a bridge between the East and the West. Not only is it the world's largest democracy, India also is the most diverse country. With a sixth of humanity living within its borders, India is linguistically more diverse than even Europe. India is where old traditions go hand-in-hand with post-modernity.

Yet India also has its constraints. Its neighbourhood is more combustible than ever, with an arc of failing or problem States posing serious security-related challenges. Democracy may be India's biggest asset. But Indian democracy tends to function by the rule of parochial politics. Furthermore, partly due to its historical experiences, the Indian state intrinsically is cautious and recoils from being proactive.

India, however, has a long historical record of playing a mainstream, cooperative role in international affairs. With its wealth of philosophy and a culture emphasising compromise, conciliation and creativity, India views the world as a stage not for civilisational wars but for building bridges and meeting common challenges. Over the centuries, Indian civilisation has thrived on synthesis. This ability to synthesise is one of the great strengths that India needs to employ internationally.

It is such traditions that explain, for example, why India lacks the "US zeal" to export democracy. Instead, it looks at democracy in practical terms, as "the most effective means to reconcile the polyglot components of the state," according to Henry Kissinger.

Yet India will continue to pride itself as a model of a non-Western democracy. While the concepts of democracy, human rights and the rule of law are normally associated with the West, India can claim as its own ancient traditions bestowing respect to such values.

Another issue relates to India's role in an Asian balance of power. At a time of warming Indian-US relations, too much is made about America's desire to use India to hold China in check. A durable US-Indian partnership can be built not on strategic opportunism but on shared national interests. It appears unlikely that India would allow itself to be used as a foil against another power.

In the coming years, India will increasingly be aligned with the West economically. But, strategically, it can avail of multiple options, even as it moves from Jawaharlal Nehru's non-alignment to a contemporary, globalised practicality. But many Indians rightly believe that the concept of following an independent foreign policy is still relevant.

In keeping with this long-standing preference for policy independence, India is likely to retain the option to forge different partnerships with varied players to pursue a variety of interests in diverse settings.

In other words, India is likely to continue to chart its own course and make its own major decisions. A multi-aligned India pursuing omnidirectional cooperation for mutual benefit with key players will be better positioned to advance its interests and promote cooperative international approaches in the changed world.

In the Asian context, India's interests lie in ensuring that strategic competition among the key players does not deteriorate into a major geopolitical flare-up or confrontation. The deepening mistrust and nationalistic chauvinism in Asia threaten to create conditions that could seriously harm the interests of all the states.

The common challenge thus is to find ways to minimise mutual mistrust and maximise avenues for reciprocally beneficial cooperation. But this can be done not by shying away from the contentious issues in Asia but by seeking to tackle them in a practical way.

India cannot but be concerned about the way the energy competition is beginning to make Asian geopolitics murkier. What is striking is that the new flurry of alliance formation in Asia is being led by Asia's rising powers, not by the US.

In that light, Asian cooperation and security will be very much influenced by the equations between and among the major players. The need to secure stable energy supplies will drive the major players to increasingly integrate their energy policy with foreign policy, as they consciously promote diplomatic strategies geared toward seizing energy-related opportunities overseas.

Energy-driven competition, however, must not be allowed to aggravate interstate rivalries. Given the lack of regional institutions in Asia to avert or manage conflict, the sharpening energy geopolitics makes the need for Asian energy cooperation more pressing. A challenge for India, China and the other important Asian economies is to manage their energy needs through more efficient transport and consumption and more cooperative import policies.

Multinational cooperation on the security of sea-lanes is essential to avert strategic friction in Asia. Where maritime claims overlap, the answer to any such dispute cannot be unilateral drilling or production by one side. Disputes over what are legitimate zones of energy exploration in open seas need to be managed through an agreed code of conduct.

India's interests also risk being affected by growing competition in Asia over another resource - water - whose availability will be seriously constrained by climate change, increasing the likelihood of water-related conflicts, as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has warned.

The sharpening Asian competition over energy resources has helped obscure the fact that water shortages in much of Asia are becoming a threat to rapid economic modernisation. If Asian hydropolitics were to turn ugly and foster inter-riparian tensions through reduced river-water flows from upstream to downstream states, water conflict would be inevitable.

According to a 2006 United Nations report, Asia has less fresh water - 3,920 cubic metres per person - than any other continent outside of the Antarctica. Yet Asia is home to almost 60 per cent of the world's population.

Without China's active participation in regional water-sharing mechanisms, it will not be possible to turn competition into cooperation in Asia on water. That is because of China's control over Asia's water repository - the Tibetan plateau - the source of all of Asia's major rivers, except the Ganges. To play a cooperative role, China needs to overcome its allergy to the use of terms like "shared water resources" and drop its opposition to institutionalised cooperation, such as with India or its participation in the Mekong River Commission.

In an increasingly interdependent Asia, the interests of India, China, Japan and other players can hardly be advanced if they are seen as engaged in efforts to reduce the promotion of security to a zero-sum game.

Without these powers taking the lead, it may not be possible to deal with the increasingly complex security, resource and development challenges facing Asia.

Courtesy: www.asianage.com, September 04, 2008