The ORF Foreign Policy Survey 2022: India @75 and the World reveals that urban Indian youth rate the country’s foreign policy positively.
The survey, conducted between June to July 2022 in collaboration with Impetus Research, covered 5,000 respondents in 19 cities, and invited young people between 18 and 35 to share their views of India’s world.
The questionnaire was administered in 10 languages—i.e., Assamese, Bangla, Gujarati, Kannada, Marathi, Odia, Punjabi, Tamil, Telugu, and English. The sample was drawn using a stratified multi-stage cluster sampling approach.
The report notes:
“India at 75 is keen to show the world that it has the capacity for global leadership. … The findings presented in this report can have profound implications for India’s conduct on the global stage.”
In the current survey, 25 percent graded it very good and 52 percent good. This is an increase from the 2021 survey report where 32 percent said it was very good, and 40 percent rated it good under Prime Minister Narendra Modi and External Affairs Minister Dr S. Jaishankar.
On India’s most pressing security challenges, 86 percent felt terrorism and 82 percent highlighted territorial disputes with Pakistan. The respondents also expressed trust for the country’s immediate neighbours, except for Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Interestingly, 43 percent of respondents named Russia and 27 percent voted for the United States as India’s most reliable partner since Independence. However, more than 85 percent of the respondents were of the view that the United States will most likely be India’s leading partner in the next decade.
Further, 34 percent of respondents chose multilateralism as their preferred mode for India’s engagement with other countries, such as Australia and Canada, over minilateralism and bilateralism.
In addition, of all the forums listed in the survey i.e., Quad, BIMSTEC, G20, and SCO, the SCO got the lowest rank at 6 percent.
The annual ORF Foreign Policy Survey gathers the views of India’s urban youth demographic about the world and the various facets of India’s engagement with it.
The ORF Foreign Policy Survey 2022 has been authored by Prof. Harsh V. Panth, Premesha Saha, Aaditya Gowdara Shivamurthy, Antara Ghosal Singh, Shashank Mattoo, and Renita D’Souza.
