Satire G. Sampath Seven pillars of India’s foreign policy: a handy checklist

The other day I was at a party hosted by a diplomat of a European country when I again ended up in a situation I have come to dread: explaining Indias foreign policy to foreigners...

While it is true that my boundless knowledge and incandescent scholarship cannot but help cast its brilliant light upon the murky realms of Indias foreign policy, besides sundry other fields, my extreme modesty prevents me from holding forth publicly on these matters...

Nonetheless, in the greater public interest, and for the benefit of all UPSC aspirants (especially those keen on the IFS), I am sharing the seven pillars of Indias foreign policy, as it is currently practised.. 1. Foreign trips for The Boss..

This is the #1 goal of Indias foreign policy and is the metric on which every official in the foreign ministry is evaluated during the annual appraisal: how many foreign trips have you organised for The Boss, and what is the cumulative number of days His Highness has spent on foreign soil as a result of your contributions?.

While we could traditionally count on Pakistan to do the needful to keep this enmity strong, that may not always happen, which means India has to work that much harder to keep the fires of hostility burning, and in this respect too, our foreign policy has been a glorious success, with chances of normal relations with Pakistan looking as likely as the chances of Indian wrestlers being feted by the government for standing up to officialdom...

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