[image: Foreign Secretary during Raisina Dialogue]
NEW DELHI – For the first time in history India has publicly and officiallyaccepted strategic shift in foreign policy of non alignment.
Indian Foreign Secretary Vijay Gokhale said Thursday India has moved beyondthe policy of non-alignment in foreign relations and is currently alignedwith various countries and groups, but on issues concerning nationalinterest and not on ideological terms, Press Trust of India has reported.
Speaking at the Raisina Dialogue, India’s flagship event on geo-politics,organised by the Ministry of External Affairs and think tank ObserverResearch Foundation (ORF), Gokhale said there has been a broad consensus inIndia on its foreign policy for the past 70 years.He said foreign policy isdetermined by India’s resolve to maintain its decisional and strategicautonomy.
“In the early part of our time, it worked with non-alignment. We have movedbeyond that. I think at this stage, we are aligned, but the alignment isissue-based. It is not ideological. That gives us the capacity to beflexible, gives us the capacity to maintain our decisional autonomy.”At thesame time, we are not the India of 1950s and 60s. We have big stakes in allparts of the world, on all issues concerning the world. And therefore, weought, in my view, to align with groups, countries, with issues wherenational interest is involved,” the foreign secretary said.
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He noted that as the “most diverse country on earth”, India will set anexample to the world on the aspect of democracy.”As the most diversecountry in the world we Indians know there is no alternative to democracy -and we demonstrate it every five years,” he said.
The foreign secretary said he was looking at partnerships like G20, whichhe said should be a “global rule-making partnership”, the Indo-Pacificpartnerships and at a philosophical level, a tie-up between science andhumanities.Gokhale said there are three main challenges that the world isfacing today –unilateralism versus multilateralism, fourth industrialrevolution and jobs, and science versus ethics.
“You have a huge benefit that comes out from the fourth industrialrevolution, but the question is for a country like India, is themanufacturing wave over? Are we in an era of jobless growth? And if we arein the era of jobless growth, how do we ensure that how do we grow on onehand and how do we maintain social stability on the other?…There is acontradiction between industry 4.0 and jobs,” he said.
