Ch Harshawardan asked: Do states influence foreign policy decision making in India?

Ashok Behuria replies: In South Asia, India is the only country having either land or maritime borders with all its neighbours. Except Pakistan and Afghanistan, other countries in the region do not share borders between them. In this context, it is but natural that a large and ethnically diverse country like India will have ethno-cultural and linguistic overlaps with geographically contiguous areas along its borders.

It follows from this that India gets naturally drawn into political vicissitudes resulting from inter-ethnic power struggles in neighbouring countries. Indian citizens living along the border inevitably develop affiliations with their ethnic cousins across the border and would expect the Indian state to tailor its foreign policy to their needs.

Given the compulsions of electoral politics, all political parties might seek to pander to the demands coming from the peripheries to ensure that the interests of their ethnic cousins are protected in the neighbouring countries. For example, Tamils in the Indian State of Tamil Nadu have influenced the policy towards the island country of Sri Lanka, where their ethnic cousins have alleged persisting discrimination by their parent state.

Similarly, we have seen India going to war with Pakistan when Bengali speaking population in Eastern Pakistan fled their lands in search of safety and sought shelter inside India, adding to India's burden, which led to vivisection of Pakistan. The Madhesis of Nepal and their ethnic cousins across an open border with India do share special linkages that has led the Indian state to adopt coercive diplomacy at times to come to the aid of the Madhesis, which has had an adverse impact on bilateral relations.

Apart from Border States having an impact on India's foreign policy, in certain cases, states with prominent diasporic labour populations tend to carry some weight in the Indian state's policies towards the states hosting migrant labour. West Bengal, for instance, as an upper riparian border state, has stalled inter-state agreement on water sharing between India and Bangladesh.

There is thus clear evidence of states in India influencing India's policy towards its neighbours, which is a subset of India's overall foreign policy.  

Views expressed are of the expert and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Manohar Parrikar IDSA or the Government of India.