Contenstation of foreign policy good for the country: Prof. Harsh Pant

NEW DELHI: Contestation or politicisation of the country’s foreign and strategic policies are good for the country, according to Prof. Harsh Pant whose book new ‘Indian Foreign Policy: The Modi Era’ was launched here on Wednesday.

The book, a collection of articles by Prof. Pant, the Director of Studies at leading Indian think-tank Observer Research Foundation, was released at ORF by former Foreign Secretary S. Jaishankar.

Pointing out that there has been a dramatic shift in India’s foreign policy after Modi came to power in 2014, Prof. Pant said that “foreign policy cannot be out of sync with the aspirations of the people” and hence it is good for democracy that the foreign policy is contested publicly as it is integral to political consciousness.


Dr. Jaishankar, who was the foreign secretary during Jan 2015-Jan 2018, stressed the need for strategic clarity for an effective foreign policy in the times of “updated cold war”. He said “the US now is not the past US and China certainly is not the past Soviet Union. He said the current architecture is much more complex.”

He said India faced security concerns on a daily basis, but in the last five years the coordination between different government wings has improved. He said it has been tested multiple times.