Public Literacy on Strategic Issues as an Essential National Capability

After the India-Pakistan standoff last month, every generation in independent India has now experienced at least one conventional conflict in their lifetimes.

- MOHITKUMAR DAGA

After the India-Pakistan standoff last month, every generation in independent India has now experienced at least one conventional conflict in their lifetimes. Including Operation Pawan, India has faced a major armed conflict every 11 years on an average; and more regularly if relatively smaller missions are counted. This frequency of conflicts, combined with multiple active insurgencies, two nuclear-powered adversaries in the neighborhood, and national aspirations of global leadership, should have made elementary literacy on strategic issues concerning India among the broader public axiomatic. However, public strategic awareness is more notable for its absence. This has direct implications for India's strategic and national security interests and requires a speedy correction.

Indian citizenry's engagement with strategic issues has been markedly weak since independence. For long, the Indian society was perceived as "insular" (per George Tanham) or "inward looking" (per K.M. Panikkar) in terms of its interest in affairs beyond borders. Indian public's concern for strategic affairs, in the sporadic instances where visible, has been mostly episodic and emotional. Till recently, few among the Indian citizenry have had any stake in global strategic and geopolitical. In a December 2023 Pew Research survey, 55% of Indian respondents said that domestic issues should be concentrated on while paying less attention to problems in other countries. Forces like travel, immigration, trade etc. that promote a greater interest in and understanding of global affairs are limited to a narrow group within the population. Since the 2022 Ukraine conflict, "geopolitics" has become a buzzword in India, as in the world, but its scope and implications are hardly understood well or widely enough.