Date: 23/11/2022

Relevance: GS-1: Effects of globalization on Indian society; political philosophies like communism, capitalism, socialism, etc. their forms and effect on society.

Relevance: GS-2: Effect of policies and politics of developed and developing countries on India’s interests, Indian diaspora.

Key Phrases: Firefighting and fireproofing in foreign policy, Extremism, hyper-nationalism, Diplomacy, Information, Military & Economics (DIME) paradigm.

Context:

• In the emerging global geopolitical, geo-economic and security landscapes national responses to crises can be carried out using 2 types of approaches/ principles of firefighting and fireproofing.

What is the Firefighting approach?

• Firefighting is associated with reactive responses to crises that arise from
  • A lack of preparedness.
  • Lack of capacity.
  • Lack of national will and cohesion between different instruments of statecraft.
• These could act singly, or coalesce together with other factors to dent national power significantly.
• In Spite of its measured success and steady growth in several areas India has experience of firefighting in fixing societal fault lines, plugging economic fissures and scrambling to recover from national security setbacks.
• Over the years governments in power have ridden on the resilience of the Indian people to mitigate the adverse effects of the crisis.
• Good leadership at times have stopped the spread of the fire and initiated measures that have helped in ensuring better preparedness for future contingencies.

What is Fireproofing?

• It refers to developing strategies that sufficiently insulate the country from the plethora of crises that have the potential to slow down or even derail the country’s rise in the upcoming years.
• India, who has ambitions of a five trillion dollar and a 10 trillion-dollar economy in the decades ahead, needs to reflect hard on developing fireproofing strategies.
  • These crises have potential to slow down or even derail India’s rise in the decade ahead.

What are the policy challenges before India?

• Globalization essentially led to widespread economic prosperity but has also led countries to peel off some of the inbuilt insulation that existed within the international economic order and created several vulnerabilities.
• Extremism, hyper-nationalism, the unequal distribution of wealth, migration and the adverse impacts of climate change are driving causes that have impacted the whole world and need to be addressed globally.
• There are specific ones that individual nations need to develop strategies to counter.
• Security challenges and Black Swan/Grey Rhino events indicate that there is a tacit acceptance within the second most powerful nation on the planet that difficult days are ahead.

Two races to handle

• In the next few years India has two choices to maneuver its policy decisions.
• Achieving the status of a developed country by 2047 that will take a long time to achieve.
• The second one being the more daunting middle-distance run that has already begun in the backdrop of the Russia-Ukraine crisis.
  • This is coupled with growing Chinese power that seeks undiluted regional hegemony and power-parity with the United States at the global level.

What can India do to fireproof its interests?

• Fireproofing is one such strategy that India needs to consider across the Diplomacy, Information, Military & Economics (DIME) paradigm, with an added S (Society) creates a DIMES challenge for India to navigate.
• The strategic autonomy in a multi-polar world may be an aspirational outcome, with balancing and hedging emerging as key Indian diplomatic strategies.
• But with rising China’s national power, hard choices must be made on recalibrating existing strategic partnerships and exploring alliances.
• While there is optimism on the economic front that India is resilient enough to weather a global energy crisis or a financial depression, there is still considerable distress at the bottom of the pyramid.
• This is where the fireproofing of the economy in the medium term must concentrate on
  • Poverty alleviation on a war footing;
  • Universal education and health care;
  • Creation of jobs and raising the other parameters of the human development index.

India’s past practices of fireproofing

• Deterrence has always been at the heart of India’s fireproofing against both internal and external threats since Independence.
• However, the flavour of deterrence has largely been reactive and rarely kept pace with the rapidly changing character of war and mechanisms of internal dissent.
• There have been attempts in recent times to migrate to a more proactive and even preventive strategy of deterrence, though a lack of capacity and doctrinal guidance will hamper this in complex situations.

Way forward

• Credible coercive capabilities against external threats and better strategic communication to plug internal fissures and cracks should form the heart of fireproofing strategies in the security realm.
• Significant fireproofing is needed within Indian society and the information domain to stand firm in the face of multiple fissiparous vulnerabilities.
• Evolving societies are subject to periodic churn and India is facing several events on the global stage such as the weaponization of the information domain and social media.

Conclusion

• With its large and ethnically diverse population, multi-religious, multi-cultural and multi-lingual demographic profile, staying cohesive will present the biggest challenge to India’s leaders.
• It demands greater discipline from the Indian people, a small price for India to pay for staying on track in pursuit of its core national interests.

Source: The Hindu

Mains Question:

Q. The response strategy of fireproofing is required for India to stay on track in pursuit of its core national interests, Discuss. (150 words).