Increasing calls for India to play a peacemaker

Even as he has been criss-crossing the country during the very hectic campaign, Prime Minister Narendra Modi found time to focus on the affairs of the nation and received an invitation to attend the G7 summit at Puglia in Italy in June. Even Ukraine President VolodymyrZelenskyy and Russian President Vladimir Putin want India to play a peacemaker after the elections. Whoever be the PM, right after swearing-in, he will be attending to the most pressing issues facing the world.

The World Economic Forum meet at Davos from 15th to 19th January 2024 apprised the world leaders that key risks for the world, such as recession, environment degradation, geo-political, technological, are expected to worsen over the next decade. Two raging wars in West Asia and Eastern Europe are sending very alarming signals to the world leaders, but are sadly going unheeded. Peace is more imperative than ever before.

When a gradual thawing of frozen ties between Arab nations and Israel was taking place – after UAE, Egypt, Jordan, Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco moved toward Israel – Iran’s attacks on Israel in April left the global peace teetering on the edge.

It was in retaliation to a needless attack by Israel on Iranian facility in Syria. The attacks could have been devastating and would not have gone without very painful consequences for Iran, with huge implications for the global peace.

Despite famine and lack of basic amenities such as food, water, medicare, and electricity in Gaza amid the Israel offence, which killed thousands and crippled many times more, Israel and its allies remain unmoved. The latest attacks on the southern Gaza city of Rapha are threatening to be catastrophic for the besieged people there. Any more casualties will endanger the hard-won Abraham Accords and the very nascent ties of Israel with Saudi Arabia – for a ‘deal of the century’ to stop any more annexation of West Bank.

And for the world at large, ‘crude’ shocks in form of disruption of fuel supplies through Red Sea have become the order of the day, stoking inflations risks and pushing nations into economic recession when they should be pumping more and more funds into climate change mitigation efforts.

India has a stake in the Middle East peace; it imports most of its oil and gas from the region. Not only the Gaza war, even the raging war between Russia and Ukraine also fails to elicit any global efforts fr a ceasefire between the two.

The UN which had helped end many a conflict has turned a helpless onlooker. With world powers, the West, Russia, China, solely focussed on their interests in the high-stakes wars, it falls to India’s lot to play a peacemaker that the world direly needs. India has a reputation for being a responsible global actor and has contributed more personnel to UN peacekeeping missions than any other country. The fact that India is friendly to all the sides in both the conflicts can greatly help its cause.

Being the fastest growing economy consistently, and also a great democracy to boot, India has emerged a champion of the Global South i.e., the developing world. It has capacity to moot and help evolve a mechanism not only to assuage the warring nations, but end the wars itself. Whoever becomes the Prime Minister of India should earnestly take up a key role for peaceful denouement to world’s most intractable conflicts at present.More than a measure of altruism, it is India’s national self-interest to broker peace between the warning nations. There can be no progress without peace.