India had a good start - the Nehru years. But thereafter, this country has lacked a global diplomatic thrust that has matched India's national advancement in different phases of the post-Independence era. The weakness lay in lack of a cutting edge in foreign policy. The prompter of this pattern, it could be said, was a weak national economy. Consequently, Indian diplomacy has been hitched to a foreign policy that lacked forceful thrust, resulting in an ambiguous direction. Pakistan, for most of these years, has been the prime obsession of Indian foreign policy : fitted into the non-alignment pattern of relationship with the super powers, and a disjointed relationship with the rest of the world.

Not the leader shaping events, but a nation led by events outside its ambit. Thus, Indian diplomacy, flowing from an inept foreign policy, had a meek appearance. But the time has come to break this straitjacket pattern and devise foreign policy and reshape diplomacy that promotes initiatives in realizing national objectives - with the economy in the forefront.

We are witnessing the changing face of global diplomacy. It is economic clout that now provides the core of foreign policy world over, and that should be India's prime methodology too. India has risen from the shambles to a surging economy with a global standing. It must therefore use its economic clout to restructure its foreign and diplomatic policy in sync with its national advancement.

Ties with the sole super power, the United States, and with China - a close neighbour and a rising world power - with Russia, Japan, the European powers, the developing nations, and with Pakistan have to be appropriately structured. There has to be a link in this pattern, and a chain reaction, which India has to take into account while devising its foreign policy setting.

Much work and painstaking scrutiny of the ingredients is called for in the foreign policy exercise. Restructuring ties with the United States, should of course be a priority. But alongside, among the priorities, must also be reshaping relationship with two nations in our immediate neighbourhood - China and Pakistan. One is termed a 'failed' state, and the other a fast rising world power with a mighty economic clout. It is here that special attention is needed to give a new direction to our ties. Pakistan is in the melting pot, while China's upward mobility is a phenomenon by itself. Appropriate relationship with the two neighbours will give India a big punch both on the international and domestic spheres. It is the Indian economic clout which will open the way forward in both cases.

With China, the relationship is complicated by the boundary dispute and the 1962 border conflict. Meanwhile, economic ties have received a big boost - despite rivalries of two big developing nations in their bid to surge forward. Despite all the hurdles, China has become India's number one trading partner. Both countries have to learn that the world is big enough to accommodate India along with China. India has a lot to learn from China's economic dexterity, just as China has been silently taking a leaf from India's upswing in information technology - even Indian advances in nuclear technology.

For a breakthrough in their relationship, the two countries have to get past the boundary dispute. Bilateral talks have already laid the basis for a solution - nearer than ever before. It is a package deal, based on the position expounded by the veteran Chinese statesman, Chou Enlai, in 1961, which alone can clinch and seal a solution. To get past the lingering dispute on small patches of land, India should use its vast economic leverage in economic interaction, to win over adamant Chinese postures.

With Pakistan too, it is India's economic clout that can serve as a lever to win friends and power. If economic interaction and trade can register a big leap with China, despite the border dispute, similar can be the result in ties with Pakistan.

History and geography dictate that we give a bigger priority to relationship with Pakistan - a state and a people, with whom India has been tied by an umbilical chord for centuries. The partition based on the criterion of religion - the two-nation theory - has not completely snapped this umbilical chord. But it is this two-nation theory that has plunged Pakistan into a maelstrom. It is the undefined concept of an Islamic Republic that has placed Pakistan in peril, a resolution of which cannot but have a profound impact on Indo-Pakistan relationship.

Is the struggle of Pakistan with the Taliban, claimants to the throne of an Islamic state, the climax of the model of statehood that Pakistan chose while separating from India? Yes, it is. The model presented by Mohammad Ali Jinnah - an Islamic republic with modern secular governance - has not worked anywhere, least of all under a democratic framework that Pakistan has sought to imbibe in small periods of its 50-year existence.

It is Kemal Ataturk who put the issue to test in Turkey - and he selected the secular model under a democratic framework. This secular democratic model does not fit the two-nation theory on which Pakistan is based, the prime impediment being the anti-India plank that guides Pakistan, particularly its army. The result is Talibanisation. Its horrid face frightens the people of Pakistan, including the political class - with the result that a big majority of the people of Pakistan support the battle to eliminate the Taliban. The consequence is seen in the first-ever army drive against the Taliban in Waziristan.

Aside from taking the Taliban head-on, Pakistan needs to end the anti-India hatred ensuing from Partition. Indications are that much of the political class is keen on beginning a new chapter in ties with India. But the Indian response is faltering. The demand that the terror outfits based in Pakistan must first be eliminated is unrealizable. And so, there is an impasse.

It is India which is better placed to make a new beginning in Indo-Pakistan ties. India's economic clout, stepping up bilateral trade in a big way, is the potent weapon for an opening. Use a small part of Indian foreign currency reserves. A dollar trade loan can be the lever that produces wonderful results. Add to trade, cooperation at the level of the people - in music and culture. Even cricket : a sport that excites millions in India and Pakistan. That is the onset. Hereafter, Indian policy should be two-headed - one directed towards the Pak government and the army, another towards the people. A back-channel diplomacy is needed to break bottlenecks on all other issues of dispute - including the Kashmir issue. (IPA Service)