India's expanding relations with Africa have received comparatively little scholarly or media attention, in contrast to the burgeoning scholarship and popular writing on China's African diplomacy (examples include French 2006, Kurlantzick 2006, Large 2008, Taylor 2008). Exceptions to this include a small but rich repertoire of analyses of the impact that the ‘Asian drivers’ and ‘emerging donors’ are having on Africa, which usually focuses on China and India. But three important gaps remain. First, some of this literature, by conflating China and India into the categories of ‘the Asian drivers’ or ‘emerging donors’, misses out on key differences in the motivations and strategies of the two countries (Lee 2006, Woods 2008). Second, while studies that do draw the distinction between Chinese and Indian diplomacy in Africa are successful in isolating the impact that either country has either individually or comparatively (Goldstein et al. 2006, Jenkins and Edwards 2006, Broadman 2007, Geda and Meskel 2008), an important limitation persists: they do not analyse the equally important flipside of the question of the motivations driving Chinese or Indian foreign policy in the region. Third, very few of these studies, even when focusing on both the motivations and impact of India's interaction with Africa (e.g. Beri 2003), explain these with reference to India's geopolitical ambitions and evolving foreign policy as a rising power (one exception to this is the work of Vines and Oruitemeka, 2007).
In this paper, I aim to address all three gaps. I focus particularly on India's engagement with East Africa (rather than ‘Chindia's’ collective policies towards Africa), and use evidence of the shape that this engagement takes to offer new insights into India's rise to power. The argument proceeds in three parts. First, I explain why a study of India's East African diplomacy provides us with a particularly useful lens into India's pathway to power. In the second section, I summarise the important developments in India's East African relations. While the focus of the paper is on India, I also draw on examples of the diplomacy of established and other rising powers with the same region, particularly China. Such comparisons help us assess which aspects of India's African policy represent the rational, strategic behaviour of a new power with Great Power ambitions. They also aid the discovery of any traits to this diplomacy that are uniquely Indian in the vision that they bring or strategies that they use. In the third and concluding section, I analyse exactly what the continuities and changes in India's African diplomacy add up to, and further what they tell us about India as a rising power.
This paper sits within a broader debate on the impact that new powers have on the system. A central puzzle that surrounds the rise of the new powers of the BRICs (Brazil, Russia, India and China) is the extent to which they are status quo or revisionist powers (Schweller 2006). Or alternatively, whether the rise of these new powers represents conformity to the established hegemonic system or a challenge to it (see for instance, Hurrell 2006, Ikenberry 2008, Narlikar 2010). Amongst the variables that can be studied to better understand the regime-conforming versus revisionist inclinations of a rising power, three crucial ones are negotiation strategy, leadership and vision/ideas of global order.
The refusal to make concessions and instead play hardball (or what negotiation analysts call a ‘distributive strategy’, see Odell [2000]) at the multilateral level and in bilateral negotiations with the established powers usually points to revisionist intentions. In contrast, ‘integrative strategies’ involving a willingness to make concessions, and explore new solutions jointly with one's negotiation partners that are designed to expand rather than split the pie (Odell 2000), suggest greater regime conformity on the part of the new power. Importantly, the use of an integrative strategy with allies of counter-hegemonic coalitions (including Third-Worldist movements such as the G77 or coalitions such as the G20 and G33 in the World Trade Organization [WTO]) can be a part of a broader distributive strategy towards the established powers. Hence for instance, if we see a rising power using conciliatory policies with poorer countries, especially in conjunction with the use of hard bargaining with the North, then we can be certain that the established power is not one that has been socialised into the system.
The second useful indicator of the status quo versus revisionist intentions of a new power is its willingness to provide leadership (Narlikar and Vickers 2009, Narlikar 2010). Leadership involving the provision of public goods such as free trade, climate change mitigation, or freedom from nuclear proliferation all point towards greater buy-in on the part of the new power into the system. In contrast, leadership in the form of provision of club goods1 – such as South–South co-operation, regional arrangements, or Third Worldist coalitions – suggests the persistence, renewal, or even creation of alternative visions of global order. If the new power's provision of club goods involves costs to itself, and even more so if the provision of the club good is likely to deter the new power from taking on leadership of the provision of international public goods, then we have strong evidence of a new power that will pose a challenge to at least some aspects of the dominant hegemonic order.
Finally, if the new power espouses the mainstream ideals of democratisation, human rights, the Washington consensus, and conditionality-based lending, there is a greater likelihood that its rise to power will be system-conforming. In contrast, however, if the new power appeals to an alternative set of ideas, such as heterodox economic policies, developmentalism, and a hard adherence to the principle of sovereignty, then we can expect that its rise will present an alternative vision of global order that challenges existing hegemony.
How the new power behaves with some of its weaker allies where it is already in a position of relative power provides a strong indication on the sort of great power it will evolve into and what sort of impact it will have on the system as its power rises. Hence an analysis of India's role in East Africa, as a region with which India has had long-standing historic links and also as a region which comprises a large proportion of some of the world's poorest countries, offers some promising insights into all three of the above variables and thereby treads the balance between regime conformity and revisionism.
India–East Africa: a lens on India's rise to power
That India is expanding its enterprises in Africa – economic and military – is certain, but the East African case is a particularly important one as it allows us to tackle three key puzzles of Indian foreign policy.
First, even though there is general agreement that India's trajectory is a rising one, there exists considerable divergence of opinion on the kind of power that India will evolve into. Broadly, these different views can be grouped at two ends of a spectrum. One end is represented in the writings of C. Raja Mohan, who traces five changes in the direction of Indian diplomacy since the end of the cold war that ‘are unlikely to be reversed’: (1) the transition in national consensus from socialism to capitalism; (2) the transition ‘from the past emphasis on politics to a new stress on economics in the making of foreign policy’; (3) ‘the shift from Third Worldism to the promotion of its own self-interest’; (4) rejection of the ‘anti-Western mode of thinking’; and finally (5) the transition from idealism to pragmatism (see Mohan 2003, pp. xviii–xxii). At the other end of the spectrum are the writings of Stephen Cohen (2001), who points to the frustrating experience that dealing with India can be for the West, and indeed describes its foreign policy stance aptly in terms of ‘The India that can't say yes.’
Depending on which account we find more convincing, two very different images emerge of India as a new power. If Raja Mohan's picture is correct, then we are likely to see a much more open India, driven primarily by a capitalist ethic, ready to engage with the West, motivated primarily by strategic considerations rather than idealist considerations or past Third-Worldist loyalties, and as ready to join in the ‘scramble for Africa’ as China or any of the other Great Powers. If Stephen Cohen's picture is more accurate, however, then the new India that we are likely to see is one that continues to be a difficult negotiating partner for the West, not yet ready to abandon its old Third-Worldist principles, a leader of counter-hegemonic coalitions, and willing to consider collective gains of coalition allies than simply go it alone as a Great Power.
Of course, between the two extreme positions, there lies considerable middle ground. For instance, India may not be willing to abandon its Third-Worldist alliances just yet, but these may be framed differently, and retained not as a result of a commitment to some Quixotic idealism but because they serve a strategic purpose. It is worth noting that one of the reasons for the divided scholarship on this is that the signals from India have themselves been quite mixed. The India that signed the nuclear deal with the US, for instance, fits perfectly with C. Raja Mohan's model, but India's willingness to block the Doha negotiations at the WTO and espouse the cause of developing countries in multilateral trade fits nicely with Stephen Cohen's model (on these inconsistencies, see Narlikar 2006). The first image is one of a rising power that shows increasing conformity of interests with the established system, and perhaps even tendencies towards greater socialisation as a result of engagement. The latter image, however, suggests the emergence of a power with at least some regime-challenging intentions that represent a traditional Southern vision of Third Worldism (albeit usually couched in very different language from the 1970s; see Hurrell and Narlikar 2006), placed amidst a context where there is far greater scope for contestation and alternative discourses than neoliberal accounts would have us believe (Kahler 1997). A focus on India's policy towards East Africa helps us sift the rhetorical from the real. For instance, grand pronouncements either pro- or anti-Third World are easy to make, but much more can be learnt from the actions of a new power towards some of the weakest and smallest members of the international system. Use of such an indicator can give us a reliable steer on whether India retains its commitment to Third-Worldist ideas and develop further new and alternative norms to the established Western ones as its power rises, or whether its increasing power will be accompanied by increasing conformity to the values and policies endorsed by the established Great Powers. Depending on the costs that India is willing to incur to sustain its East Africa relationships (and particularly its relationship with the least developed countries [LDCs] in East Africa), or alternatively forego certain gains by ensuring that India's involvement in East Africa does not take an exploitative form, we can learn a good deal about whether Indian commitment to professed ideals is real or just what game theorists describe as ‘cheap talk’.
Second, Indian–East African relations provide a useful test of the kind of leadership that India has proven able and willing to provide so far (Narlikar and Vickers 2009, Narlikar 2010). Defined broadly, leadership is the ability and willingness to provide public or club goods, which usually requires a willingness to bear the costs of agenda-setting and free-riding. As mentioned in the previous section, a readiness to provide club goods does not necessarily translate into a willingness to provide public goods. And while a commitment to provide public goods translates into greater buy-in into the system from the new power, the opposite may be the case if the new power invests in club goods that detract from the provision of public goods. At least at the multilateral level, India's reluctance to assume responsible leadership commensurate with its rising power has invited comment and criticism. In the world of multilateral trade, India was grouped into the small list of ‘can't do’ countries by the US in the aftermath of the Cancun Ministerial of 2003, and its trade negotiator was singled out as ‘Dr No’ for his stance in the July talks of 2008. The urging by the Obama administration that India, along with other rising powers, take on greater leadership of the system, reinforces the point that such leadership has not been forthcoming so far: ‘As today's fastest growing economies, China, Brazil and India have enjoyed a new level of influence and will be expected to take on an increased level of responsibility to make the trade-liberalising decisions and contributions that would benefit not only their own economic interests, but also promote global economic growth and development to the benefit of all developing countries’ (USTR 2008, p. 3). A similar pattern is seen in other multilateral institutions. Xenia Dormandy (2007, p. 126), for instance, observes: ‘Aside from its role in the tsunami response group and in UN peacekeeping operations, the government has been less than enthusiastic about burden-sharing mechanisms … Leading pundits in India agree, expressing no great need for India to take on wider responsibilities, considering the costs they involve and the possibility of being perceived as a US pawn.’ Importantly, however, there are other levels besides the systemic one where a rising power may choose to demonstrate leadership.
While reluctant to engage in burden-sharing with the established powers, India has been much more forthcoming in its willingness to take on the leadership of developing countries. This is especially true in the case of certain issue-areas, such as international trade, where India's leadership of coalitions of developing countries has been much more prominent than China's, and also more consistent than Brazil's. India has, since the days of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), willingly borne the costs of coalition formation, incorporated demands of allies in the agenda in which it has no individual stakes, and tolerated free-riding by smaller members. This leadership is well recognised; hence, for instance, references to India being the ‘voice of the voiceless’ in the World Trade Organization (Hurrell and Narlikar 2006). It is worth noting that India's leadership of strong coalitions in the WTO has, paradoxically, detracted from its ability to provide systemic leadership. This is because, for a variety of reasons, the new and strong coalitions (often India-led) find it particularly difficult to make concessions and facilitate compromise; while empowering developing countries by giving them representation and credible voice, they also make the multilateral trading system deadlock-prone. India's major and successful contribution to the club good of coalition stability has ironically also thus detracted from its ability provide the public good of freer trade at the multilateral level (Narlikar 2010).
Placed against this backdrop, India's dealings with East Africa become even more interesting. Any evidence of a greater Indian willingness to lead here reinforces and helps us generalise the finding discussed in the previous paragraph: India may be unwilling to engage in burden-sharing with the West, but its commitment to provide certain club goods to developing countries is not limited to the WTO alone. The details of its engagement with East Africa are discussed in the next section. At this point, suffice it to note that India's aid flows and investments to East Africa are on the rise; it has granted preferential treatment to LDCs (33 of which are in Africa, and 14 in East Africa). While still poor in terms of per capita income and backward in terms of infrastructure, it has still managed to use its limited resources to provide development assistance to the region. By all primary and secondary accounts, India's past and current African relations take a more benign form than Chinese relations with Africa. India's African policy suggests that Indian leadership is more forthcoming in certain forums than others. Understanding the basis of India's ‘Getting to yes’ policy towards Africa can help us better understand its ‘Just say no’ diplomacy elsewhere. The two, in fact, go hand in hand, and point towards a continued tendency to counter-hegemonic behaviour with revisionist tones.
Third, beyond a rhetorical commitment to democracy, pluralism and equality, it is not clear what vision India brings as a rising power, or indeed what vision of world order would India espouse as a Great Power. A comparison with China here is in order. Whether Chinese officials themselves view their policy as propagating a ‘Beijing consensus’ remains disputed, but at least outsiders perceive China as offering an alternative model of development to developing countries (Ramo 2004, Thomas 2005, Lammers 2007). It is worth investigating if a rising India offers an alternative path to development and power to other developing countries. A study of India's engagement with East Africa – an area which has seen the engagement of China as well as the established powers – is further particularly useful to compare the extent to which the Indian pathway overlaps with the Beijing Consensus or the Washington Consensus, or if it represents a third way.
Finally, it is important to point out that while this paper could have focused on India's African policy in general, the case of East Africa provides us with a harder test of India's motivations, leadership potential, and development model as the sub-region excludes the oil-rich economies concentrated in West and North Africa.2 Expanding trade with and investment in West and North Africa are unsurprising, given India's growing energy demands; in contrast, India's East African relations reveal that India's foray into Africa is not driven entirely by the search for energy and other resources. If anything, commitment to East Africa may be indicative of an Indian willingness to lead, support weaker allies, and perhaps even offer an alternative model for development and power. Its historic links with modern-day East Africa, moreover, allow us to trace the continuities in the relationship as well as changes that are occurring in conjunction with India's rise to power.
What continuity and what change? India's East Africa relations
There have been some important developments in the Indian–East African relationships, which are borne out in areas of trade, aid, investment and security. In this section, I provide a snapshot of these developments. However, this snapshot must be located against the long history of Indo–African relations.
Several interviewees based in Delhi (government officials, former government officials, senior researchers in think tanks and journalists) reacted strongly against any suggestion that India was attempting to play a game of catch-up with China, or that its African engagement was driven primarily by its growing need for energy and other primary resources. Emphasising the continuities rather than the changes, they pointed to India's support for the process of decolonisation in Africa (and the struggle against apartheid in South Africa); commitment to Third Worldism citing Nehru's role in Bandung in 1955; and India's technical aid programme in the shape of Indian Technical and Economic Cooperation (ITEC)3 and went back to 1964 when the country was very far from having the status of an emerging power bestowed upon it.4 When pushed on the radical increase in India's recent engagement with Africa, one interviewee argued that: ‘We simply didn't have enough resources to do this in the 1960s. Now we can.’ (Interview, senior researcher in think tank, New Delhi, 19 September 2008).
Besides emphasising continuity in the Indian–African relationship, interviewees also stressed what they saw as the ‘benign’ character of India's engagement. Key phrases that recurred in these accounts were ‘the principle of co-development’, ‘partnership’, ‘South–South cooperation’, and ‘common purpose’ (Interviews, New Delhi, September 2008). On being asked to draw comparisons between the Indian pattern of engagement in Africa versus the Chinese, one interviewee responded: ‘We have the concept of teaching them how to fish rather than to give them fish’ (Interview with Indian journalist working with national press and specialising on Africa, 20 September 2008). Another senior official in the Ministry of External Affairs, pointing to the Indian strategy of training and employing African labour (and contrasting this strategy with the use of Chinese labour in Chinese investment projects) argued: ‘While we also have energy considerations etc., our model is different. The Indian way is the softer way.’5
There are of course alternative interpretations of India's history and current motivations in relation to East Africa that we could point to (Sharma 2008), and debate the accuracy of each version. But for the purposes of this paper, the consistency with which the Indian foreign policy elite see the Indian engagement with Africa as fundamentally benign is significant. Rather than present India's engagement with Africa as one driven by gung-ho realpolitik and self-interest (which Indian policy makers are certainly not reluctant to do when discussing Indo–US relations, for instance) (Interview with senior bureaucrats in Ministry of External Affairs, September 2008, January 2006), we get a much more nuanced, development-friendly, Third-Worldist account of India's relations with Africa that is more akin to the account presented by Indian trade negotiators (Narlikar 2006). In addition, this story finds some support in the numbers too, both in terms of the continued engagement with East Africa (rather than rapid diversion to West Africa) as well as the specific characteristics of this relationship, as highlighted below.
Trade flows between Africa and Asia have increased dramatically in recent years – a significant development in itself, given the overall concern with the decline in African shares of world trade and the well-established positive linkages between trade and development. While exports from Africa to Asia grew annually by 15% from 1990 to 1995, this rate of growth increased to 20% from 2000 to 2005. The World Bank study by Harry Broadman reports that Asia accounts for 27% of African exports, thereby making Asia a comparable trading partner to the European Union (EU) and the US, which account for 32% and 29% of African exports respectively. It is true that between China and India, China has seen a much more rapid increase in African exports, which grew by 48% annually between 1994, compared to 14% for India (Broadman 2007, p. 9). But interestingly, of the seven African countries that constitute 90% of Africa's exports into China, not one is in East Africa. In contrast, of the nine countries that represent 90% of African exports into India, at least two are in East Africa, namely Kenya and Tanzania. Similarly, in the case of the 16 African countries constituting 90% of Chinese imports into Africa, five are East African (Mauritius, Madagascar, Ethiopia, Tanzania and Kenya), whereas of the 14 countries constituting 85% of Indian imports into Africa, five are in East Africa (Kenya, Mauritius, Tanzania, Mozambique and Uganda) (Broadman 2007, p. 80). In other words, East Africa constitutes a bigger proportion of Indian imports and exports than the Chinese import–export basket.
While oil and natural gas constitute the single most dominant African export to China, followed by ores and metals, and agricultural raw materials (62% of total African exports to China, 17% and 7% respectively), the Indian–African trade pattern appears to be more diversified with ores and metals constituting 61% of African export shares to India, followed by agricultural raw materials (19%) and manufactured materials (14%) (Broadman 2007, p. 76). Africa's trade with India thus includes important products besides oil, and it is also less concentrated than its trade with China. A significant portion of Indian imports from Africa are in ores and metals, where the suppliers are predominantly in West and Southern Africa, and agricultural products supplied mainly from countries in West Africa. But some representation even in the category of agricultural products is found from East African countries. Tanzania is thus a major supplier of cotton to India, while Mozambique and Tanzania are major exporters of nuts. Besides West African countries, important importers of Chinese and Indian cotton fabrics are East African countries such as Kenya and Tanzania. In fact, in 18 of the top 20 categories of products that are imported from India, East African countries feature in all categories amongst the top five importing countries; in contrast, seven of the main import categories of Chinese products do not include any East African country amongst the top five importers (Broadman 2007, pp. 111–112).
Besides the above figures which reveal that India's commitment to Africa is not limited to the search for energy and primary commodities, we find further evidence of this at the multilateral level. It was a leading ally of the Africa Group in the run-up to the launch of the Doha Development Agenda, and a party to the successful campaign on access to medicines, which resulted in the Trade-Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPs) and Public Health Declaration at the Doha Ministerial Conference in 2001. It has also submitted several proposals jointly with African states as part of the Doha negotiations (Chaturvedi and Mohanty 2007, pp. 61–64). Very importantly, and at some cost to itself, India has led coalitions of developing countries such as the G20 on agriculture, which have worked in close co-operation with the Africa Group, forming ‘Alliances of Sympathy’ that ensure that their competing agendas are not used by the North to strike side-deals (Hurrell and Narlikar 2006). As part of its Doha commitments, moreover, India has announced a Duty Free Tariff Preference Scheme for least-developed countries (LDCs). The scheme was announced as part of the India–Africa Forum Summit of African Heads of States/Governments in April 2008; with over two-thirds of the LDCs being African states, it will be of considerable benefit to the continent. Products of immediate interest to Africa covered in the scheme include cotton, cocoa, aluminium ores, copper ores, cashew nuts, cane-sugar, ready-made garments, fish fillets and non-industrial diamonds (Ministry of Commerce 2008).
In keeping with India's rising power, its total overseas aid and assistance have expanded, and Africa has benefited from this expansion as have other recipients. In 2007, sub-Saharan Africa received 64% of Export–Import Bank of India (EXIM) loans, making the region the largest recipient of such bank loans, with West Asia following as a distant second and receiving 12% of the loans (Chaturvedi 2008). In the Africa Summit in 2008, India promised to more than double the amount offered in credit lines from US$2.15 billion to US$5.4 billion over the next five years. Admittedly, EXIM bank lines represent tied aid. But at least some recognition and sensitivity is shown in Indian declarations to African needs and priorities; hence for instance the emphasis that these credit lines are to be used ‘to promote projects prioritised by Africa for its development needs and objectives …’ (Sen 2008). Other forms of aid have also been forthcoming. While the Techno-Economic Approach for Africa–India Movement (TEAM-9) initiative of India and eight west African states is targeted towards providing a credit line of US$500 million to improve India's relations with West Africa, East Africa has featured in other ways. For instance, as part of the Enhanced Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC II) initiative, India has agreed to write off the debts of five African countries, four of which are East African: Mozambique, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia, besides Ghana (Jobelius 2007). Accompanying such schemes is India's well-established Indian Technical and Economic Cooperation (ITEC) scheme, which was further expanded to the training of 1600 Africans per year (from 1100) at the India–Africa Summit, and also the launch of the new Pan-African E-Network (Sen 2008). Such training schemes were emphasised in our interviews as unique to India's engagement with Africa and a reflection of the idea of ‘partnership in development’ (and contrasted with China's ‘show-casing schemes’ and ‘prestige projects’).6
Amidst these differences between the Chinese and Indian pattern of development engagement in Africa, one important similarity does stand out: Indian aid, similar to Chinese aid to Africa, is not accompanied by good governance conditionalities (in contrast to Western aid as well as multilateral aid; on both the positive and negative implications of this, see Mawdsley [2010]). In all the interviews conducted by this author, particularly striking was the reference to the double standards of the West in its strategic selection of which authoritarian governments to deal with and which to sanction; a former Secretary of External Affairs said, only half-jokingly: ‘At least we are consistent in our policy towards dictatorships, we don't have the selectivity or the double standards of the US!’ (Interview, New Delhi, 23 September 2008). India's willingness to engage with African governments of different types, with few moral strings attached, was justified using some very traditional logic based on respect for sovereignty and the principle of non-interference (with references to Nehru thrown in). A corollary is that we are unlikely to see the emergence of India as a flag-bearer for democracy in Africa in the near future.
Usually, as Matthew Jobelius points out, Indian aid usually goes hand in hand with investment and trade. ‘Many individual examples do suggest that Indian ODA [overseas development assistance] plays at least a small and not unimportant role in accelerating export trade and foreign investment … India maintains one of the largest bilateral aid programmes outside South Asia with Tanzania, over the course of which both the volume of Indian ODA and mutual trade and investment activities have been increasing steadily for years’ (Jobelius 2007, p. 5). While Indian foreign direct investment (FDI) is generally much smaller than Chinese FDI (for instance, in 2003, Chinese FDI stock amounted to US$37 billion, whereas the India stock was just US$5.1 billion), a significant proportion of it goes to Africa. The share of FDI flows from 1996–2003 from India to Mauritius and Sudan together equalled the share of India's FDI going to the US (which was also the largest recipient of its FDI) (see UNCTAD 2004). Alex Vines and Bereni Oruitemeka (2007) also trace deepening economic relations amongst members of the Indian Ocean Rim Association for Regional Cooperation, particularly India's relations with Mauritius, Seychelles, Madagascar, Mozambique, Kenya and Tanzania.
Very importantly, and supporting the anecdotal evidence based on research interviews, Harry Broadman (2008) writes of Chinese firms in Africa as ‘creating business entities that are vertically integrated, buying supplies from China rather than local markets, and selling in Africa mostly to government entities. They rarely facilitate the integration of their workers into the African socio-economic fabric. Knowing that they can rely on Beijing's deep pockets, they are often able to outbid competitors for procurement contracts from local governments.’ He continues on Indian firms in Africa, which ‘are less vertically integrated, prefer to procure supplies locally or from international markets (rather than Indian suppliers), engage in far more sales to private African entities, and encourage the local integration of their workers.’ Broadman (2007) also reports that Chinese firms employ the largest percentage of workers from China or other East Asian countries, accounting for 17% of total employees, whereas Indian firms hire about half as many (9.8%) of their workers from India.
It is important to note that while all the above examples suggest a spirit of ‘co-development’emanating from the Indian side, they should not be taken to mean non-strategic behaviour. Indian willingness to incur the costs of freeriding (for instance through the grant of preferential market access to LDCs, or the support for the cause of African countries in the WTO via support for their coalitions, capacity building and technical assistance) is not driven by charity. One official in the Ministry of External Affairs stated rather pragmatically, ‘There is no such thing as unconditional aid,’ but then went on to emphasise that India had consciously tried to veer away from the stigma accompanying Western aid by emphasising the importance of ‘partnership’ in the process and steering clear of good governance conditionalities akin to those accompanying aid from the Bretton Woods institutions. Maintenance of friendly diplomatic relations with difficult regimes may fit in easily with India's commitment to the principle of sovereignty and non-interference, but the fact that those relations also fit well with India's self-interest is not incidental. Freeriding by Africa in trade, or aid and investment in East Africa, effectively form part of a bargain that brings important gains to India as well. Most concretely, and in the realm of hard power, an important benefit is improved maritime security in the Indian Ocean Region for India (a gain of considerable importance in the context of a rising China) (Vines and Oruitemeka 2007). Another important gain includes greater legitimacy and prestige in international institutions. Other concrete benefits include the support that India receives from the African politicians and bureaucrats that it trains who go on to occupy high-level positions in Africa. Moreover, there is also the hope of future gain, for instance support for a seat for India in a reformed Security Council.
On balance then, India's engagement with East Africa reveals a commitment to Third Worldism and alternative ideas of sovereignty and economic development than more neoliberal accounts would predict. While not framed explicitly in terms of an alternative ideology, we see a broad commitment to sovereignty and non-interference resembling the Chinese and in contrast to the conditionality-based, Washington Consensus-driven lending policies of the multilateral institutions and bilateral Western donors. Importantly, however, India's African policy displays some significant differences from the Chinese scramble for Africa, and aggregates to a strategic but nonetheless benign form of engagement, which involves greater costs to India and allows more freeriding for the poorer countries of East Africa. The ‘softer Indian way’ in Africa is in fact India's unique pathway to power.
Implications
The last section demonstrates that India remains committed to and invested in East Africa, even as its power rises. Except for a relatively conditionality-free aid policy that it shares with China, India's East African diplomacy shows several unique traits that suggest an alternative pathway to power. Quantitative data, supported by interviews, offer a story of relatively benign engagement rather than an overt scramble for African resources.7 Note that such benign engagement, as was pointed out in the first section of this article, need not and does not go against realpolitik. Rather, it represents an alternative pathway to power, whose main features are highlighted below. Each of these features offers an answer to the three puzzles that were set out at the beginning of the paper. They are further reflected across the three variables that indicate the form taken by India's rise to power, which were discussed in the introductory section of the paper: India's negotiation strategy, its willingness to lead, and the role of ideas.
India's negotiation strategy as a rising power
Indian negotiation behaviour has traditionally been associated with ‘playing hardball’ and highly distributive behaviour (Narlikar 2006). Particularly at the multilateral level, India's inability to say yes has invited comment from analysts and practitioners alike. To some extent therefore, India's ‘softer way’ in East Africa comes as a surprise. But compare this to India's use of traditional, Third Worldist alliances in the WTO, and the results become less surprising. Even as a rising power, and contrary to some expectations that India would abandon its old-style, defensive Third Worldism, India is still very much reliant on its Third World partners. Note that this is not a straightforward replay of the old Third Worldism with its alternative ideology of import-substituted industrialisation. After all, it is worth bearing in mind that the India that signed the nuclear deal with the US is very different from the India that had for decades fought against what it dubbed ‘nuclear apartheid’. But given how contested the deal on the nuclear debate in India was, it is also true that strains of anti-colonialism and Third Worldism remain strong. Additionally, one of the key sources of India's legitimacy as a rising power lies in the coalitions that it has formed with other developing countries, and the leadership that it has provided to the developing world. The old India's diplomacy, represented by at least four of the five features that were highlighted in Raja Mohan's model – socialism, limited stress on economics in the pursuit of foreign policy, Third Worldism, and anti-Western mode of thinking – is very much alive and kicking. Socialism takes the shape of an emphasis of egalitarianism abroad and suspicion of trade liberalisation at home. Economic motivations have certainly not superseded moral or political ones, as India's behaviour with East Africa as well as other developing countries (particularly and interestingly over economic issues) suggests. Indeed, had economic pragmatism achieved primacy, we would have expected to see far greater engagement by India with North and West Africa than East, and we would further have expected this engagement to take a form similar to the Chinese engagement. Third Worldism persists, albeit in a newer form as suggested above. And anti-Western modes of thinking find expression in the refusal to link development aid to ideals of democracy and good governance and instead retain a strong commitment to non-interference and sovereignty (Hurrell and Narlikar 2006, Narlikar 2006). However, this does not amount to the pursuit of idealism over pragmatism; all four characteristics of Indian diplomacy together constitute India's pathway to power.
India's willingness and ability to lead
The above pathway to power is not one where India can abdicate the responsibilities of leadership. But as was discussed in the first section of this paper, this leadership is indirect in that it is forthcoming not at the systemic level, but in coalitions in multilateral forums and in certain bilateral and regional relationships with other developing countries. While reluctant to provide any public goods (e.g. multilateral free trade), India has shown considerable willingness to provide club goods to Africa (e.g. the Pan Africa E-Network, development assistance, technical assistance, preferential trading arrangements) and specifically to East Africa (trade, investment, FDI that creates greater employment in the region). The provision of this leadership is important for India in that it cultivates allies that can support its pathway to power, concretely for instance by supporting its bid for a permanent seat on the Security Council and also through the emergence of broad-based coalitions that back its agenda (e.g. the G90 at the Cancun Ministerial that brought together members of the G20, G33 and the Africa Group). Such leadership moreover also speaks to a wider audience, where responsible leadership in East Africa by India can help it gain greater legitimacy internationally. Note however, as was pointed out in the first section, that the ability to provide certain club goods can detract from a leader's ability to provide public goods. Just as India has successfully managed to lead strong coalitions in the WTO but found it (partly as a result of this leadership) difficult to make the concessions that are necessary if it takes on international leadership, its strategies in East Africa may result in a similar incompatibility between its role as a responsible international power versus a responsible power in Africa. Whether this will turn out to be the case depends on the vision of development and power that India brings.
The role of ideas: an emerging ‘Delhi consensus’?
While much has been made of the Beijing Consensus versus the Washington Consensus, with Africa representing the testing ground for each model, India's engagement with Africa suggests the potential emergence of a different approach. Unlike the Washington Consensus and closer to Chinese engagement with Africa, Indian aid does not come ridden with conditionalities, nor is the Indian engagement framed in democracy promotion. But in many other ways, as the last section has highlighted, the Indian approach differs from the Chinese. This is captured both in terms of its continued and expanding engagement with East Africa (rather than just West Africa) as well as the multiple specificities that were captured in the idea of the Indian way being the ‘softer way’.
A part of the reason for the difference between the Chinese and Indian approach is simply based on resources: as India cannot match China dollar for dollar, it must rely on alternative means that include a deeper level of engagement in Africa (represented by the deeper integration of its firms in African society for instance, as well as the emphasis on partnership and co-development rather than ‘showcasing’ schemes). Lacking the economic clout of China, the ‘softer’ approach is a good alternative for ensuring the support of allies from the developing world. But additionally, India's political culture (shaped by its historical experiences of colonialism and lessons learnt in the post-colonial period) also contributes to the shaping of its East African foreign policy.
Insofar as India's rise to power has been a direct result of its ability to represent the cause of the poor and weak internationally – and this basis of its power is recognised by key sectors in its government as is the case currently – East Africa is likely to form an important part of India's foreign policy as a rising power. Reinforcing this trend is another relatively recent phenomenon, i.e. India's improving relations with its diaspora. As the actual and potential contributions of Indian emigrants acquire greater recognition and respect, East Africa is poised to become an even more important consideration in Indian foreign policy. Secondary writings and primary sources so far have indicated the limitations of an Indian vision of world order, or indeed what India's role might be as it becomes a Great Power. As noted earlier, Indian foreign policy itself reveals some schizophrenia. This is why a study of India's role in East Africa is particularly important. Examining India's negotiations from a position of power and opportunity – and East Africa is indeed a region where India's relative position is of considerable power – provides us with some unusual insights into how it might behave as its power increases further in relation to other states higher up the development ladder.
The conclusion is mixed on what East Africa tells us about India's rise to power. India's use of integrative strategies with its African allies and willingness to provide leadership in the sub-region are in fact paradoxical indicators of its suspicion and potential challenge to existing hegemonies. But this revisionism is less well defined than the Chinese challenge, nor is it quite as ruthless. Not only is the Indian vision of world order not backed by anything quite as coherent as the Beijing Consensus, or the political system that underpins this set of ideas, but its existing commitment to East Africa has been fundamentally benign. In other words, what we see before us is a new power that will certainly not ‘roll over and play nice’ with the West across issue areas, but also a new power that will be driven by a more nuanced political vision than China's (and which, for all the difficulties that it poses, will still pose an easier fit with the West than China). Whether this nascent vision will be developed more concretely and articulated coherently as a Delhi Consensus – an alternative both to the Beijing Consensus but also the established Washington Consensus – remains to be seen.
Note on contributor
Dr Amrita Narlikar is University Senior Lecturer at the Department of Politics and International Studies, University of Cambridge, and Official Fellow of Darwin College. Her latest books include a monograph, New powers: how to become one and how to manage them (Hurst and Columbia University Press, 2010), and an edited book, Deadlocks in multilateral negotiations: causes and solutions (Cambridge University Press, 2010).