Kanti Bajpai and Harsh V. Pant have edited this book for the benefit of graduate students studying Indian foreign policy, those teaching the subject as well as the general reader interested in its key aspects. It is a compilation of 14 essays, apart from the introduction, written over the last 15 years by noted scholars and specialists, mostly people of Indian origin.
The focus of the book is contemporary foreign policy, which is why the editors have excluded historical writing. India’s relations with Europe, Africa, Latin America, West Asia, Japan, Russia or the UN are excluded too because all these relations are considered of secondary importance in India’s foreign policy, the core of which, in the view of the editors. is relations with China, Pakistan, the US, the extended neighbourhood in Asia as well as WTO and climate change issues. This is a highly contestable view.