India’s West Asia policy

The 11th of February, 2013 marks the second anniversary of the day former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak stepped down from power following protests by ordinary Egyptians. However, the role of the global community in Egypt – and a contiguous West Asia and North Africa in turmoil – has been mixed. Meanwhile, a NATO-led Western intervention in Libya and Syria has virtually destroyed those nations and scattered their peoples.

How has India responded to these geopolitical developments? What role have we played? India welcomes the new era in West Asia, but the certainties of the past decades have evaporated, leaving India looking reactive, vacillating, transactional and mostly concerned with trapped Indian workers in the troubled nations.

On February 11, Gateway House hosted Kumar Ketkar, Editor-in-Chief, Dainik Divya Marathi, and M. D. Nalapat, UNESCO Professor of geopolitics, Manipal University, in conversation with Ambassador Rajendra M. Abhyankar, former Indian diplomat and presently Chairman, Kunzru Centre for Defence Studies and Research, to discuss ‘India’s West Asia Policy: Confronting the Arab Uprisings.’ This is also the central theme of the soon-to-be-released Gateway House research paper, co-authored by Ambassador Rajendra Abhyankar and Gateway House’s Senior Researcher, Azadeh Pourzand.

Moderated by Manjeet Kripalani, Co-founder and Executive Director, Gateway House, the panellists deliberated on the role India should play in the rapidly-evolving changes in the West Asian and North African region, and answered questions on the challenges and opportunities for India in the same.

Ambassador Rajendra Abhyankar is a former Indian diplomat with accreditation to EU, Syria, Turkey, Belgium and Luxembourg. Presently, he is Chairman, Kunzru Centre for Defence Studies and Research, and adjunct Professor, School of Public and Environmental Affairs, Indiana University, United States.

Azadeh Pourzand is a Senior Researcher at Gateway House focusing on Middle Eastern studies and the geopolitics of the region. She has a Masters in Public Policy from the Harvard Kennedy School of Government (HKS) and an MBA from the Nyenrode Business Universiteit.

Manjeet Kripalani is the Co-founder and Executive Director of Gateway House: Indian Council on Global Relations. She is also the former India Bureau Chief of Businessweek magazine. During her extensive career in journalism (BusinessWeek, Worth and Forbes magazines), she has won several awards, including the Gerald Loeb Award, the George Polk Award, Overseas Press Club and Daniel Pearl Awards.

Kumar Ketkar is the Editor-in-Chief of Dainik Divya Marathi of the Dainik Bhaskar Group of Newspapers. Prior to this, he has been editor for leading dailies viz Loksatta, Maharashtra Times and the Lokmat Group of Newspapers. He is a recipient of the Padma Shree Award, C.D. Deshmukh Award for Excellence in Economic/Financial writing, Giants International Award for International coverage, and the Rajiv Gandhi Award for Media.

M. D. Nalapat holds the UNESCO Peace Chair, and is Director, Geopolitics and International Relations Department, Manipal University, an international private university headquartered in Southern India. The former Coordinating Editor of the Times of India, Professor Nalapat writes extensively on security, policy and international affairs, and is a columnist for the Sunday Guardian and the Pakistan Observer.