Foreign policy experts must listen to the street

In his address at the launch of India's World—a magazine focused on India's foreign policy—on December 15, external affairs minister S Jaishankar made an unconventional argument.

- Happymon Jacob

He urged members of the strategic community assembled at the India International Centre to "listen to the street" when reflecting on and writing about India's foreign policy.

The subtext of Jaishankar's comments was that, despite major domestic transformations like economic reforms, the discussions and debates among India's strategic elite fail to reflect the domestic political pulse and the sentiments of the general public. In his opinion, one important way to think about foreign policy is to observe how society in general thinks about the world around it and makes its own choices, which have implications for the country's foreign policy. Put differently, he appeared to argue that there is a growing gulf between the core belief systems of the country's strategic elite, primarily based in New Delhi, and how the public views India's engagement with the world.

The conventional view about "listening to the street" on foreign policy matters is deeply conservative. The consensus among pundits is that thinking about foreign policy is an esoteric business confined to elite chambers of experts and former officials—also called the strategic community. At the level of practice, foreign policy becomes more exclusive, keeping out even the strategic community from the act of policymaking. Let us unpack this point a bit more.