India’s economic diplomacy in the post-cold war era

The twentieth century was marked by tension and conflict, as it witnessed two world wars and the Cold War. After the end of the Cold War, it saw the disintegration of the erstwhile superpower, the U.S.S.R. This was followed by Fukuyama’s elated claim of the ‘End of History” and the cautious refrain from Samuel Huntington about the impending ‘Clash of Civilizations’. It also saw two major changes across the world in the form of the democratization of regimes and the adoption of the Western open-market-based liberal economic system in place of state-controlled autarkies. After the end of the Cold War, India also had to restructure its economy as well as its relations with the major powers of the world, keeping in tune with the changing world order. This paper therefore focuses on the economic diplomacy of India after the adoption of the New Economic Policy in 1991 in a world marked by the growing integration of economies across the globe as a consequence of liberal democratization and globalization. Hence, this paper analyzes the trends in the economic diplomacy of India after the Cold War by assessing the same of the different governments that have come to power, beginning from the Narasimha Rao Government to the existing Narendra Modi regime. By way of conclusion, it maintains that economic diplomacy has been the thrust of India’s foreign policy since the end of the Cold War.