Abstract
It is becoming clear that development cooperation has become a significant aspect of Indian foreign policy discourse and strategic thinking in recent years. Although India has been active in this area for decades, the scale and geographical coverage has expanded significantly in the last ten years. India started its aid activities immediately after independence in the form of loans and technical assistance programmes to neighbouring countries. Later, many of these activities were extended to a number of developing countries within the framework of Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) and South–South Cooperation (SSC). As a result of its own development experience, these activities were more focused on capacity building and technical cooperation. Current Indian development activities abroad could be broadly classified into three major heads. These include Lines of Credit (LOCs); capacity building particularly Indian Technical and Economic Cooperation (ITEC) programme and bilateral grant assistance projects. The institutional mechanism to implement development activities abroad is still evolving. With the establishment of the Development Partnership Administration (DPA) within the Ministry of External Affairs, coordi- nation of these activities has improved significantly. In recent years, effort has also been made to establish triangular cooperation (TrC), bilaterally as well as multilaterally. Under TrC, India is in the process of implementing joint projects in its neighbourhood and in Africa. This is being done in collaboration with the United States, the European Union and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).
There is a growing interest in academic and policy circles to understand growing Indian cooperation activities abroad. This special issue of International Studies is a modest attempt to fill this gap. We are thankful to the Research and Information System for Developing Countries (RIS) and the Forum for Indian Development Cooperation (FIDC) for their collaboration in bringing out this special issue.