Indian Diplomacy’s Next Test Is Intellectual: What Jaishankar’s ICWA Address Reveals

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A rising India cannot outsource the thinking required to understand its own rise. From the Asian Relations Conference of 1947 to the debates unfolding at Sapru House today, the underlying question remains remarkably consistent: what should an Indian understanding of the world look like? This is the most important intellectual accompaniment of India’s rise.

The world is changing beneath India’s feet, and diplomacy must learn to move without losing its balance. For a country whose economic weight is expanding and whose external partnerships are multiplying, diplomatic agility alone will no longer be enough. India will need something less visible but equally consequential: the intellectual capacity to understand a world in which technology, supply chains, finance, migration and geopolitical power are becoming tightly intertwined.

That was the deeper significance of External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar’s valedictory address at the Silver Jubilee celebration of the Indian Council for World Affairs, or ICWA. His remarks went beyond a catalogue of geopolitical challenges. They pointed towards a larger question about India’s rise: can a country acquire greater power without developing an equally sophisticated understanding of how that power should be used?

For ICWA, that question has an unusual resonance. The institution was established in 1943, when India was still under colonial rule, to develop an Indian perspective on international affairs. Parliament later declared it an Institution of National Importance in 2001. The timing is striking. India is now trying to shape the international environment in ways that would have seemed extraordinarily ambitious when ICWA first opened its doors.

A Rising India Needs a Larger Foreign-Policy Imagination

India’s GDP has roughly doubled over the past decade, Jaishankar noted, while national capabilities have expanded across several domains. Yet economic growth does not automatically produce diplomatic influence. Greater national weight creates greater expectations, and the vision of Viksit Bharat by 2047 therefore carries foreign-policy consequences that extend well beyond domestic economic policy.

The central challenge is converting capability into sustained international influence while preserving the flexibility that has long characterised Indian diplomacy. This becomes harder when the international system itself is becoming less predictable.

Jaishankar identified six broad forces that will shape Indian foreign policy in the years ahead. These are economic rise, the movement of people and talent, technology and artificial intelligence, the Global South, India’s civilizational identity and strategic autonomy. The significance of these themes lies in how closely they now overlap.

A passport office, a crisis hotline and an embassy may seem far removed from grand strategy, yet for citizens abroad, they are where foreign policy becomes real. With millions of Indians living, working and studying overseas, consular protection, mobility arrangements and emergency response have become part of the substance of diplomacy rather than peripheral services.

A 2024 parliamentary committee document cited approximately 35 million Indians abroad when discussing the broader diaspora, while UN-based estimates put the India-born migrant population at roughly 18 to 19 million. The differing measures reflect different definitions, but the underlying reality remains that India’s foreign policy operates through people as well as states.

The New Geopolitics Runs Through Technology, Energy and Supply Chains

The instruments of geopolitical competition are changing. Technology now shapes diplomatic communication as much as it shapes economic competition. Artificial intelligence could accelerate that transformation further, particularly as governments struggle to respond to an information environment in which narratives can travel faster than institutions can verify them.

The same logic applies to economic dependence. For decades, globalisation encouraged countries to treat efficiency as the central organising principle of trade. The emerging geopolitical environment is forcing governments to think more seriously about resilience. Manufacturing concentration, tariff volatility, energy dependence and control over critical technologies can all create vulnerabilities that become visible only when a crisis arrives.

The future will belong not merely to countries with resources, but to countries capable of keeping those resources moving. This is why Jaishankar’s discussion of supply chains, technology, energy, finance and connectivity matters. Each can become a source of leverage when concentrated dependencies turn into tactical pressure. Energy transitions will not eliminate dependence either. They will change its geography, creating new questions around minerals, manufacturing capacity and technology. Renewed interest in nuclear power could introduce another layer of security considerations.

Finance is entering the same arena. Connectivity is doing so as well, particularly when infrastructure and transport networks create chokepoints. The phrase Jaishankar used, “leverage, weaponisation and risk-taking,” captures the broader transformation. Strategic autonomy becomes much harder when dependence itself can be converted into pressure.

De-Risking Is Becoming Part of Foreign Policy

India’s answer is framed around de-risking, diversification and greater self-reliance. Make in India therefore carries a significance beyond industrial policy. Building domestic capabilities can reduce exposure to external shocks, but self-reliance cannot mean economic isolation. India still needs international markets, technology, capital and dependable production networks.

This is where concepts such as friend-shoring and near-shoring acquire tactical relevance. Trusted economic relationships can provide alternatives when conventional supply chains become politically vulnerable.

The objective is consequently less about withdrawing from interdependence than about making interdependence safer. This distinction matters for India because its strategic autonomy depends partly on having choices. A country with only one supplier, one market or one technological pathway has fewer options when geopolitical circumstances change.

The same principle extends to the Global South. Jaishankar’s emphasis on developing countries reflects an understanding that international politics is experienced differently by countries exposed to disruptions in food, fuel, fertiliser, finance and supply chains. Vaccine Maitri during the COVID-19 pandemic demonstrated how historical relationships and political goodwill could influence international responses even amid a global emergency.

India’s engagement with the Global South is therefore connected to a broader attempt to shape how development concerns are represented in global institutions.

From Sapru House to the World Order India Wants to Understand

In 1947, before India had formally become independent, the Asian Relations Conference brought representatives from across the continent together in New Delhi. The conference was held under the leadership of Sarojini Naidu and reflected an India already thinking about Asia’s future before sovereignty had formally arrived. ICWA itself describes the conference as one of the defining moments in its institutional legacy.

That historical memory matters because India’s engagement with the world did not begin with economic liberalisation or its emergence as a major power. It began with an effort to understand what kind of international order India wanted to inhabit.

Sapru House continues that intellectual tradition in a different environment. ICWA brings diplomats, scholars, policymakers and thinkers into conversations that sit between formal diplomacy and independent research. Its conferences, bilateral dialogues, lectures, roundtables and publications create what is often described as a Track 1.5 space, where official and non-official foreign-policy communities can engage without the constraints of formal negotiations.

Its statutory objectives include developing informed opinion on international matters, promoting India’s relations with other countries through research and discussion, and serving as a repository of knowledge on world affairs.

That function is becoming more important precisely because foreign policy is becoming harder to compartmentalise, with energy shaping security calculations, technology influencing sovereignty, migration affecting diplomatic priorities, critical minerals determining industrial strategy, and connectivity becoming a central arena of competition. The intellectual infrastructure required to understand these overlapping forces must therefore be equally broad, capable of seeing how developments in one domain can quickly reshape the calculations of another.

India’s Foreign Policy Needs Memory Before It Needs More Vocabulary

Over the past decade, Indian diplomacy has developed a distinctive vocabulary to articulate its priorities. Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam, Neighbourhood First, Act East and Vaccine Maitri have entered the country’s diplomatic lexicon alongside the Indo-Pacific, SAGAR, MAHASAGAR, IMEC, the Global South and Reformed Multilateralism.

Initiatives such as the International Solar Alliance, Coalition for Disaster Resilient Infrastructure and Global Biofuels Alliance have extended that vocabulary into international institutions and practical cooperation. The International Day of Yoga, International Year of Millets and Mission LiFE have added another dimension by connecting diplomacy with culture, society and public participation. But vocabulary alone cannot substitute for tactical thought.

A rising India needs institutions capable of assessing what these initiatives mean over time, how they interact with one another and where their limits lie, which is precisely why institutional memory matters. Governments change, priorities evolve, and crises emerge without warning, but foreign policy cannot be rebuilt from scratch every time the international environment shifts; institutions provide continuity by preserving accumulated knowledge, experience and understanding across political and geopolitical cycles.

ICWA’s India Quarterly, launched in 1945, has evolved alongside India’s expanding global interests and remains a platform for scholarship on international affairs. Its broader publication ecosystem covers subjects ranging from changing world orders and BRICS to the Arctic, cyber strategy, migration, critical minerals and India’s neighbourhood.

The Real Test Begins Before the Crisis

India’s economy will expand further, and its role in the Global South and multilateral institutions will become more consequential. However, these developments will not automatically answer the difficult questions that greater power creates.

How should India manage dependence without retreating from interdependence? How can it diversify without narrowing its economic opportunities? And, above all, how can it preserve strategic autonomy while building durable partnerships?

They require research, institutional memory, intellectual disagreement and the patience to think beyond the immediate crisis. Twenty-five years after Parliament gave ICWA national importance, the institution faces a different kind of expectation. India’s growing power demands an equally ambitious knowledge ecosystem, one capable of studying the world before events force policymakers to react to it.

The next chapter of Indian diplomacy will be written not only in foreign capitals or negotiating rooms. It will also be written in institutions capable of thinking deeply about the world before the world forces India to respond.