Indian Development Cooperation: Aiming High, Falling Short

Abstract

India has largely been understood as a recipient of aid from the traditional donors, despite a seven decade long history of India’s development assistance programme. The volume, scale and scope of its assistance to the Global South have increased considerably in the last seventy years, in line with its growing economic capabilities. This chapter looks at India’s growing role as a development assistance partner and the motivations behind its development cooperation. As an emerging economy, India’s development cooperation initially acted as a tool to support its aspiration to be a legitimate leader of the Global South, and later to support its mission for regional leadership, getting access to markets and its quest for energy and natural resources. As an aspiring global power, India aims to leverage its development cooperation to create desired outcomes—both short-term and long-term gains—by modifying economic instruments as per its priorities and preferences. Even though India’s economic diplomacy ambitions run high, New Delhi has been limited by both domestic and international factors that has not allowed it to realise its full potential.