Authors: Disha Bisht, Mitali Upadhyay, Komal Shelar, Mahak Prajapati, Marilyn Anand, Neelam Singh, Pawani Arora, Rosy Rosalin Patra

Table of Contents

1. Abstract

2. Introduction

2.1 Historical Background

2.2 Methodology

3.  Literature Review

3.1 Introduction to Literature Review

3.2 Argument 1

3.3 Argument 2

3.4 Argument 3

3.5 Conclusion

4. Data Analysis and Interpretation

4.1 Introduction

4.2 Method of Analysis

4.3 Quantitative Analysis of India’s UNGA Voting Behaviour

4.4 Theme I: Strategic Autonomy in India’s UNGA Voting Behaviour

4.5 Theme II: Strategic Autonomy and Networked Alignment

4.6 Theme III: Issue-Based Decision Making

4.7 Theme IV: Challenges to Strategic Autonomy

5.  Discussion

5.1 Discussion of Findings

5.2 Summary of Findings

6. Conclusion and Recommendations

6.1 Conclusion

6.2 Recommendations

7. References

1. Abstract

The voting behaviour of India in the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) serves as an important tool for studying India’s changing foreign policy and attempts to find a balance between strategic autonomy and the increasing number of global partnerships. The current study focuses on India’s UNGA voting patterns from 2000 to 2026 in order to evaluate how India’s foreign policy changes from non-alignment to strategic autonomy, multi-alignment, and a networked approach to foreign policy. In order to do that, the study uses a mixed-methods research design, which includes both quantitative analysis of India’s voting record in the UN General Assembly in various issue areas and qualitative analysis of Explanations of Vote (EoV), government documents, and historical case studies of India’s voting in the UNGA. Special focus is put on the most important geopolitical events, such as the Russia-Ukraine conflict, the Israel-Palestine conflict, and India’s relationships with the Global South. The main question that is discussed within the context of this research design is whether India’s flexible foreign policy approach reflects strategic autonomy or a reactive hedging strategy. The research will contribute to larger debates concerning the diplomacy of rising powers, multilateralism, and foreign policy-making in the multipolar international system.

Keywords: India; United Nations General Assembly (UNGA); Strategic Autonomy; Multi-alignment; Global Partnerships; Voting Behaviour; Foreign Policy; Global Governance.

2. Introduction

In the new international order, which is becoming increasingly fractured and increasingly subject to intense competition between great powers, a nation’s vote in the UN General Assembly (UNGA) stands for much more than merely expressing its foreign policy preferences; it stands for a country’s strategic interests, international positioning, and its vision for the new world order. As an emerging economic superpower with a trajectory that is among the highest in the world, India has garnered growing policy and scholarly interest precisely due to its uniquely successful strategy of maintaining autonomy of decision-making in pursuit of an expanding network of ties and partnerships. UNGA, although it has non-binding decisions, is still among the world’s largest gatherings to understand countries’ foreign policy interests, preferences, and actions in major international crises and to make sense of diplomatic engagements (Voeten, 2012). UNGA voting behaviour represents the ideological commitments of emerging powers as well as broader geopolitical calculations, domestic interests, and developing international partnerships. India’s voting behaviour has attracted considerable academic interest, given its status as one of the world’s largest democracies and a rising global actor, and its unique ability to engage simultaneously with competing power centres while maintaining its distinct foreign policy identity.

2.1 Historical Background

Historically, India’s foreign policy has been influenced by the principles of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) emphasising sovereignty, anti-colonialism, peaceful coexistence, and strategic independence (Pye & Mohan, 2004). However, the evolving nature of the international system after the Cold War era, the rise of China, economic globalization, technological competition, and a shifting security environment have led to a shift in the pattern of external engagements of India. Instead of maintaining a strict non-alignment policy, the foreign policy of India is now seeking ‘strategic autonomy’ or multi-alignment and networked alignment through which it is working with many states in the international arena, some of which are competitors, without entering any alliance with them (Hall, 2019; Schottli, 2019). Through such a strategy, India can secure the maximum diplomatic freedom while protecting its national interests in terms of security, economics, technology, and geopolitics.

This evolving foreign policy strategy is reflected in the voting behaviour of India in the UN General Assembly. The current voting behaviour of India, as it presents a range of issues before the voter, is not divided on the basis of ideological opposites. This issue-based, pragmatic voting has allowed India to free itself from the inflexibilities of a fixed bloc-based geopolitical allegiance.  Recent international developments – the Russia-Ukraine conflict, the Israel-Palestine conflict, discussions on Iran, nuclear disarmament, digital governance, climate negotiations, and reforms of international institutions have further showcased India’s preference for calibrated engagement. India has always abstained from resolutions against major powers and reiterated its commitment to international law, territorial integrity, peaceful discourse and the principles of the UN Charter. Such voting behaviour exemplifies India’s endeavour to strike a balance between strategic autonomy and increasing partnerships involving the United States, Russia, Europe, the Global South and regional organisations such as BRICS, the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) and the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad) (Jaishankar, S, 2020).

There is an increasing amount of literature on India’s evolving foreign policy, but many important questions remain unanswered. It includes India’s transition from non-alignment to multi-alignment, defence pacts, Indo-Pacific strategy, and great power relations (Hall, 2019; Pye & Mohan, 2004; Pant & Joshi, 2022). Likewise, quantitative studies have employed UNGA voting similarity indices to examine India’s international alignments (Bailey et al., 2017). However, much of this research is focused on either isolated foreign policy events or bilateral relations with specific powers. Very few studies have attempted to examine India’s UNGA voting behaviour as a comprehensive measure of strategic autonomy over a long period of time on different geopolitical issues. Aggregate voting analyses also tend to ignore the political context, reasons for votes, and issue-specific strategic considerations that shape India’s diplomatic decisions.

Some concepts, while closely overlapping, are not interchangeable. Non-alignment mainly encapsulates India’s decision in the Cold War era not to formally align with one of the two blocs of power; strategic autonomy represents its more enduring and general ability to craft independent foreign policy choices that conform to its national interest; multi-alignment captures India’s simultaneity in its relations with several significant actors and institutions; networked alignment highlights the overlapping issue-specific networks with whom these exchanges take place such as the Quad, BRICS and the SCO; Hedging illustrates managing uncertainty by cultivating ties with adversarial states and keeping various strategic options open. Strategic autonomy remains the broader conceptual frame in this paper, whereas multi-alignment and networked alignment are interpreted as modern manifestations of India’s pursuit of the former, with hedging acting as an alternative way of analyzing India’s risk-management behaviour.

Yet another methodological challenge that the literature raises concerns how the UNGA roll-call voting data can be interpreted. Several scholars have contended that states’ roll-call voting patterns do not accurately capture states’ foreign policy preferences, as states’ votes may be conditioned on procedural factors, negotiations, signalling considerations, or even the evolving character of the UN’s agenda (Voeten, 2012). Hence, using vote-counting measures of similarity can be too blunt an instrument to account for India’s actual motivations behind its engagement in UN voting. Lastly, less scholarly attention has been paid to how states balance the pursuit of strategic autonomy with partnership-building in an increasingly interdependent world, particularly during periods of rising geopolitical tensions.

In other words, this study breaks with previous, predominantly bilateralist, and broadly voting-index studies of Indian foreign policy by combining UNGA vote records with context and official Explanations of Vote (EoVs) to provide a richer picture of how India operationalises strategic autonomy in multilateral Diplomacy and concurrently enhances global relations. If India is, as many imply, on a trajectory to preeminence, but at the same time aspiring to be the voice of the Global South, then India’s voting pattern at the GA should be of significance not just to an analysis of an emergent power maneuvering between geopolitical constraints and avoiding dependency, but for the more general theory of strategic autonomy, hedging, multi-alignment and choice in an anarchic and increasingly multipolar system.

The present research seeks to explore India’s voting patterns in the UN General Assembly within this context to analyze how the country navigates the balance between strategic autonomy and growing global ties between 2000 and 2026. It specifically aims to identify whether India’s voting patterns in the UNGA can be interpreted as either issue-based flexible diplomacy or enduring strategic coherence on significant global issues like Iran, nuclear disarmament, the Russia-Ukraine war, the Israel-Palestine conflict, and institutional reforms. By collecting evidence on India’s voting history alongside corresponding geopolitical developments and foreign policy objectives, this study seeks to clarify the extent to which UNGA voting represents a transition in Indian foreign policy. To address the research objectives, this paper utilizes a mixed-methods research approach, where a quantitative assessment of India’s voting behaviour at the UNGA is enriched by a qualitative examination of the official Explanations of Vote (EoVs), Ministry of External Affairs documents, and relevant scholarly work on the strategic and geopolitical context of India’s voting behaviour.

While India’s participation in institutions like the Quad, BRICS, and SCO is viewed as a demonstration of an independent, successful policy approach, this study examines whether India’s multilateral engagement represent an organized long-term approach or a policy of reactive balance, which is the only way for India to gain the maximum of its influence at global level and ends up limiting India’s potentiality in international system.

2.2 Methodology

The study follows a mixed-methods research design, which comprises quantitative (statistical analysis) and qualitative (historically situated discussion) methods to explore the role of India in the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) and the linkage between strategic autonomy and global partnerships of India. The quantitative component allows for a structured examination of India’s voting patterns in the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) over time; the qualitative component offers a window into the political and diplomatic significance of these voting patterns at various points in time. The methodological approach is further justified by the international literature, which is abundant with studies of India’s strategic autonomy, networked alignment, and global partnerships. Yet, there has never been a systematic effort in the international literature to investigate how these foreign policy orientations manifest in India’s voting patterns in the UNGA over time.

The quantitative part of the study will be based on secondary data that has been taken from the United Nations Digital Library, and vatic has introduced the UNGA voting record. Resolutions will be reviewed on such key topics as international peace and security, human rights, climate change, sustainable development, disarmament and major conflicts. Here, India’s voting behaviour will be categorized as favours, opposes, abstains, and absents. Patterns of voting over issue areas and time periods will be analysed by using frequencies, percentages and trend analysis methods.

After identifying the broad trends in India’s voting patterns through quantitative analysis, the study takes a qualitative turn to explain the factors underlying these patterns. The study has a qualitative component which aims to find out the reasons behind India’s voting patterns. It uses documents from the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) such as statements on the UNGA explaining the vote, parliamentary debates, and government policy documents. It also heavily depends on other academic journals, books, and reports from think tank organisations for secondary data. It selects case studies based on their relevance to the changing foreign policy context, in particular, the cases of the Russia–Ukraine conflict, the Israel–Palestine conflict, and the Global South. Themes like strategic autonomy, national interest, multilateralism, and global partnerships are identified by means of content analysis of these case studies. The examination of these case studies corroborates the literature that India’s foreign policy has seen a transformation from classical non-alignment to issue-based multi-alignment or networked alignment.

Data gathered from both will be cross-validated to enhance validity and reliability in the research. The voting pattern will also be analysed in conjunction with the qualitative data, for a wider (overall) picture of India’s foreign policy behaviour. In using quantitative data and interpreting the policy, the research can articulate the trends across India’s voting patterns.

The scope and extent of this research is limited to the voting of the Indian delegation in the United Nations General Assembly and relies exclusively on secondary sources, which have been made public. Although the voted positions in the General Assembly of the United Nations represent the voting behaviour of India, the prelude to such votes is not feasible to ascertain from subsequent official records. Notwithstanding, it does serve as an essential piece of evidence to understand India’s overall foreign policy postures and the nature of its regional affiliations, since voting is generally correlated with India’s geopolitical levers and diplomatic alliances, including G77 and BRICS.

The mixed-methods approach still offers a holistic analytical framework to analyse India’s voting pattern in the UNGA in relation to strategic autonomy and outward investment in global partnerships.

3. Literature Review

3.1 Introduction to Literature Review

To examine the structural evolution of the contemporary Indian grand strategy, this literature review organizes the existing scholarship across three thematic arguments. In the beginning, it explores the empirical voting trends within the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) to showcase how New Delhi utilizes its doctrine of strategic autonomy to reposition its sovereign decision-making amidst a highly polarised world crisis. The review then navigates the issue-specific behaviour of India, marking a formal strategy of pragmatic, networked multialignment. Ultimately, it unpacks the critical perspective of scholars who position their argument against this approach, arguing whether India’s flexible balancing act truly represents a durable, rule-shaping framework or a policy draped in vagueness that risks indecisiveness and over-fragmentation.

3.2  Argument 1

At the centre of India’s grand normative diplomatic strategy lies the pursuit of strategic autonomy, defined in contrast to the Cold-war era passive neutrality, and finds its truest expression as an active, issue-specific mechanism of multi-alignment. Moving beyond the paradigm of “Equidistance” from the global power centre, India, through its contemporary 7 multilateral footprint, aims to leverage partnerships selectively based on immediate national interest (Council on Foreign Relations [CFR], 2023). Among this power game, the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) serves as an ideal laboratory to observe this approach in motion. To sustain the forte of “Strategic autonomy,” India expresses a deliberate refusal to be absorbed into any single institutional orbit. Longitudinal data tracking the U.S.A – China alignment Score reveals that India’s approach shifted from a pronounced non-Western consensus score of -1.52 in 2008 to a near-zero score of 0.07 by 2024 (Model Diplomat, 2026). This mathematical “Dead heat” reveals an illicit truth. While India has undeniably deepened its defence and technological relations with Washington to counter regional security challenges, it has simultaneously strengthened its multilateral posture to prevent a complete dependency on the Western powers. In the voting pattern, this is highly evident, where India maintains a 78.3% voting alignment with the regional majority and diverts the remaining votes among the G77 core (Lowy Institute, 2024). Hence, we can conclude that India treats multilateral forums like the UNGA as a space to establish a systematic equilibrium rather than conforming to any ideology blindly, giving it enough maneuvering space to navigate the dynamics between the North and South. “Strategic autonomy” works as a shield guarding India’s long-term national interest during major systemic crises where global superpowers demand binary alignments. Despite intense Western diplomatic pressure, most recently seen during the Russia-Ukraine conflict, India maintained its autonomous opinion through a series of abstentions on key outcomes, including UNGA Resolutions ES-11/1, ES-11/3, and ES-11/7 (National Institute for Defense Studies [NIDS], 2022; The Hindu, 2025). When we glance at it analytically, these votes reveal the “Priority pattern” of Indian diplomacy, which supports long-term national security to override external normative pressure. New Delhi’s stance is hence bounded by long-term structural realities, including legacy reliance on Russian hardware, composing 50% of its arms imports, and preventing an isolated Moscow from creating a hostile Eurasian axis with Beijing that may forge India into a tricky situation in the near future (Model Diplomat, 2026; NIDS, 2022). India didn’t hesitate to use its vote to champion the UN Charter and call for ceasefires, protecting regional interests from the hands of impulsive military interventions. India continues to express its “Strategic Autonomy” through realistic pragmatism in West Asia. It aims to balance a deep defense partnership with Israel, being the recipient of 42% of Israeli arms exports, countering its absolute dependence on the Gulf monarchies for 88.5% of its 8 crude oil imports (Center for Joint Warfare Studies [CENJOWS], 2026). This dual swing shows an “issue-by-issue calibration”. However, upon a deeper look, this dependency is not completely unbiased, dictated by resource-based necessity. India’s policy could only be dubbed as “Multifaceted issue-based support/alignment”. To exemplify this, India’s abstention on Resolution ES-10/21 in October 2023, reflecting a zero-tolerance policy toward terrorism due to the omission of Hamas’s actions and a later pivot to a “Yes” vote once a multilateral consensus on civilian protection emerged, can be taken into consideration (Middle East Council, 2024). This transactional approach is further mirrored in the Iran corridor. In January 2026, India voted “No” on a UNHRC resolution condemning Tehran, directly contrasting the geo-economic tariff pressure of the “Global Hegemon” U.S.A., protecting its transit access to the Chabahar Port (The Wire, 2026).

Ultimately, the literature confirms that India’s UNGA voting pattern is the true embodiment of strategic autonomy expressed in a fluid, interest-driven geometry (IJFMR, 2026), making it safe to conclude that India treats its UNGA votes as a stringent diplomatic currency to tackle the “Tokenism” that most developed powers often impose on the Global South, reducing them to mere “Rubber stamps”. However, this issue-based balancing drags India’s voting pattern towards a structural question of the “long-term evolution of India’s grand strategy”. As New Delhi finds itself navigating its national interest amidst institutional frameworks like the Quad, BRICS, and the SCO, it is yet to be seen in completion whether this flexible behaviour is the embodiment of absolute autonomy, or whether such a reactive, vague approach risks systemic overfragmentation, leading India to be dismissed in global discussions. Reinforced by the evidence in the existing literature and India’s Voting pattern in the UNGA as a valued commodity, helps to tackle the popular “Indecisive” or “Vague” critique of India’s foreign policy. The literature shows that the dynamic of bilateral respect is used by New Delhi to reverberate its own national interest across various international issues and boundaries. Hence, the paradigm of “Strategic autonomy” does not function as an isolated conclusion, but serves as the foundational prerequisite to realize India’s grand strategy of “Multi-alignment”.

3.3  Argument 2

Increasingly, Indian foreign policy has proven that it has shifted away from the Nehruvian idea of non-alignment and towards what recent literature calls multi-alignment or networked alignment. The post-Cold War evolution of classical non-alignment has not been as neutral as thought, as Mohan (2006) argues, but it has increasingly shown elements of power-balancing instead, whereas classical non-alignment was a normative reaction to the bipolarity of the Cold War, as explained by Acharya (2014). This historical history shows that the main theme of Indian foreign policy has never been the loss of autonomy in policy, and the way to achieve it has varied depending on the international system. In between this evolution, Tripathi (2020) argued for Non-Alignment 2.0, and the new concept of multi-alignment represents a new phase towards engaging multiple centres of power. The transition toward multi-alignment can be unpacked through the Notion of strategic autonomy. With this in mind, multi-alignment does not abandon the idea of non-alignment; rather, it implies a new approach, as India does not wish to compromise its autonomy by favoring too close a relationship with a handful of power blocks.

George (2025) captures this approach with the idea of India maintaining multiple relationships and military ties and, in this way, strategic diversification. However, some scholars take a different view and stress the idea of multi-alignment as a means of responding to the idea of strategic autonomy. Zajączkowski and Pulami (2025), for example, argue for maintaining continuity in the sense that India’s engagement with the liberal international order (LIO) is characterized by the employment of LIO principles selectively and out of self-interest. In another article, Pant and Joshi (2016), mention a shift toward a higher regard for sovereignty in contemporary Indian foreign policy. These views need to be incorporated as they bring a more critical view to the idea of multi-alignment and the break of non-alignment. Strategic autonomy might be more about the type of relationship that India is going to use to achieve it all, than about its essence. Multi-alignment can then be considered as an adaptation of strategic autonomy, in the sense that cooperation in one domain is not always incompatible with cooperation in another domain. This is especially true of India’s simultaneous engagement with the United States, Russia, European powers, and emerging power groupings, where the concept of a permanent bloc isn’t based on relations, but on overlaps in interests. This is seen more starkly in India, where states and various agencies meet at various levels. According to Tarapore (2023), India’s engagement in the Quad allows it to continue its cooperation in order to build regional resilience without forming a military alliance. Analytically, it is significant that the Quad shows how India can enhance its security cooperation with the United States and its partners, while also maintaining relations with other nations, not members of the Quad. Concurrently, Hall (2025) notes soft balancing of some sort in institutional arrangements like the Russia-India-China trilateral, BRICS, and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation. The difference in the workings of these institutions indicates that multi-alignment does not have to manifest itself in terms of one consistent alignment strategy in India. Rather, India can work with, fight or put on the back burner specific programs based on the institutions and interests, respectively. The literature thus suggests a model where institutions play a variety of roles as vectors of promoting overlapping national agendas. This also helps to differentiate between multi-alignment and the previous non-alignment logic, where the former was linked to being active in multiple competing institutional and strategic networks while the latter was linked with avoiding bloc politics. The multi-alignment concept is also a part of reality, especially beyond the diplomatic arena where India’s structures have immense constraints. While India has an estimated defence budget of around US$86.1 billion, a significant portion is allocated to military salaries and pensions, which may explain the military imbalance. Tiwari (2025) states that China’s Defence budget is estimated at US$314 billion. In this sense, the “portfolio approach” that George (2025) proposes, which is based on technologies from three NATO countries, Russia, and France, could be seen as a way to reduce strategic dependence, as well as dependence on only one source. But such diversification does not necessarily indicate independence, and reliance on technology from outside also means constraint in material. Other tension is seen in the digital realm. Ramesh (2026) and Zajączkowski (2025) conceptualize Digital Public Infrastructure as ‘Digital NAM’ which presents UPI and Aadhaar as alternatives to both Chinese and Western technologies for the Global South. Despite this, there is evidence that India is seeking to strengthen its economic position, as these initiatives suggest a move toward expansion through cooperation and technological exchanges, with Rekhi (2024) and Rajawat (2025) citing ongoing economic vulnerability in India, including its trade imbalance of US$99.2 billion with China in 2024–25. The examples, taken together, indicate that multi-alignment widens the scope of Indian partnership possibilities, but does not remove limitations inherent in the structure of partnerships of other sorts. Analyzing the voting pattern in the UN General Assembly offers important insights into the degrees of multi-alignment of India’s foreign policy. The ambiguity that exists in the interpretation of data brings this into sharp focus. A plethora of studies based on globalization and shifts in global power positions use data from the UNGA voting pattern. Júnior and Branco (2022) indicated an increase in cohesive votes within BRICS, reflecting a greater similarity among the emerging countries. However, Voeten (2012) asserts that there is scope for the annual agendas to change, which will consequently affect the voting process and thus make it challenging to reflect the preferences of the states involved. Voting in the UNGA is, therefore, not about voting in support of an international foreign policy doctrine, but about assessing the extent of the multi-alignment of foreign policy. Consider the Indian government’s abstention from votes condemning Russia’s actions in Ukraine. For Patrick (2024) and Torri (2022), it is a case of India remaining a “swing state,” retaining a liberal, post-Western preference as opposed to its Western Counterpart. There are, however, other ways of explaining this voting behaviour. It might come as a part of India’s strategic autonomy, or the goal of preserving the India-Russia partnership, or it might be Indian specific calculated vote incentives. Thus, we cannot expect that abstention is always indicative of multi-alignment. One has to identify similar patterns of selective cooperation and divergence, even convergence, in such a way that it systematically focuses on the issues of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) and across different time periods.

3.4  Argument 3

Though strategic autonomy provides India with the means to safeguard its freedom of choice, an important area of research raises the question of whether multi-alignment remains meaningful amid India’s strengthened ties with rival powers. Wulf and Debiel (2015) maintain that India’s simultaneous activity in some organizations like BRICS calls for a more straightforward foreign policy doctrine. Their critique undermines the notion that institutional diversification constitutes autonomy. Absent clearly set preferences, active participation in rival platforms may not lead to a clear and focused direction.

Torri’s (2023) contribution to this discussion consists in introducing a difference between formal non-alignment and actual autonomy. Through investigating India’s relations with the United States since 1991, Torri argues that the growing military and security cooperation in fact leads to limiting India’s strategic freedom. While India does not render itself a part of major alliances, it becomes reliant upon its partners in such a way that restricts its choices. Similarly, Abraham and Purushothaman (2024) suggest that increasing cooperation enhances India’s capabilities; however, constraining the country towards its strategic partners.

Jaybhay (2025) raises the important question of whether India can be said to practice “multi-alignment,” especially as its partnerships with the US and other Indo-Pacific countries are on the rise, and those with Russia and China are becoming tense. In this context, it is essential to differentiate between having several partners and remaining in a strategically equivalent position vis-à-vis the partners. Being a member of both Quad and BRICS constitutes evidence of diversification, but does not assure a moderate position either. Thus, the essence of multi-alignment may be less about its evenness, but rather about its selectivity.

The fact that China is involved makes this contradiction even more obvious. Following the Galwan incident, India has had security reasons to strengthen cooperation with the US, Japan, and Australia, which Patel (2026) describes as a shift from strategic ambiguity to a confrontational stance. Hence, India can maintain its autonomy in the economic field and diplomacy while already behaving like an aligned country in the security area. A similar paradox can be seen in the Russia-Ukraine conflict. Although Mohan (2022) believes that India’s refusal to side with either front proves its strategic independence, the situation pushed India. Solanki (2025) enhances this argument by revealing how multi-alignment can produce contradictions across sectors like defence, technology, trade, and regional security. A partnership that is beneficial to India in one sector might bring negative repercussions in another, which makes coordination across relationships a more complex task. Pant (2009) and Pant and Bommakanti (2019) discuss the institutional aspect, noting that the fragmentation of bureaucracy and lack of strategic planning can undermine policy coherence. Ollapally (2011), through the concept of India as an “ambivalent power,” points out the tension related to well-maintained flexibility and specific long-term intentions. Therefore, Solanki does not bring in a new paradox, but rather supports the notion that the accumulation of partnerships makes strategic autonomy harder and harder to achieve.

On the one hand, India needs many partnerships because there is no one power that meets all its needs in terms of security, economy, technology, and diplomacy. On the other hand, these partnerships can also create different expectations in regard to policies. Thus, the paradox highlighted by Solanki (2025) seems to back up the broader autonomy-coherence quandary. Multi-alignment does not get rid of alignment problems, but it instead transfers the problem from selecting one bloc to handling contradictions of multiple alignments. A key question that arises would be how much ambiguity can exist before flexibility makes coherence impossible to maintain.

In the end, the literature indicates that limitations of strategic autonomy arise not because of ambiguity itself but rather due to ambiguity without a definite strategic aim. India’s immediate relations with the US, Russia, China, Japan, BRICS, and the Quad obviously show flexibility, although one can only achieve that flexibility when one is able to formulate non-negotiable interests and clearly define strategic priorities. The gap in research lies in the question of whether the increasing number of partnerships of India represents either a coherent form of strategic approach or a newly expanding fragmented form of foreign policy.

3.5  Conclusion

The examined literature suggests that the voting behaviour of India at the UN General Assembly has changed India’s foreign policy away from non-alignment towards pragmatism and strategic autonomy. Instead of being tied to rigid ideological blocs, India has increasingly used its UNGA votes as diplomatic tools to protect its interests while also balancing the interests of other world powers. India’s issue-based approach enables it to retain its strategic flexibility at a time of increasing polarization in world politics, for example in relation to the Russia-Ukraine conflict, the Israel-Palestine conflict, and other problems concerning the Global South. At the same time, an apparent academic division concerning the sustainability of this approach is noted in the literature. While one school of thought considers India’s voting pattern to be an illustration of a mature and adaptive grand strategy confirming India’s status as an emerging global player, another emphasizes the fact that excessive strategic ambiguity, encroachment of numerous institutional commitments by India, and ongoing geopolitical polarization may destroy the credibility and consistency of India’s foreign policy. The identified discrepancies between these viewpoints indicate that strategic autonomy is still an evolving concept in modern international relations, rather than a finished concept. By studying India’s voting patterns in the UNGA to understand how global partnerships and strategic autonomy coexist in its contemporary foreign policy. The study is expected to connect empirical voting behaviour with broader discussions of India’s grand strategy, enabling a better understanding of the extent to which India’s foreign policy balancing is a coherent and stable framework versus one of ever-growing complexity in a multipolar world.

4. Data Analysis and Interpretation

4. 1 Introduction 

This chapter examines and interprets the data collected for the study, “India’s Voting Pattern in the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA): Balancing Strategic Autonomy and Global Partnership.” This analysis is based on two complementary forms of evidence. First, it presents a quantitative assessment of India’s roll-call voting behaviour in the UNGA, undertaken using the United Nations General Assembly Voting Data compiled by Voeten (2024) along with related public UN resolution records. This analysis identifies measurable patterns in India’s voting alignment with major global powers over time. Second, a thematic analysis of government policy documents, statements, academic literature, and institutional reports is used to provide context and explain the strategic considerations underlying these voting patterns. By combining these two forms of evidence, the chapter evaluates how far India’s voting pattern shows its commitment to strategic autonomy while developing and strengthening global partnerships. It also tests the qualitative arguments presented in the literature review by comparing them with observable patterns in India’s UNGA voting record.

4. 2 Method of Analysis 

The study draws primarily on secondary and documentary sources, which are examined through two categories of data. The first category consists of quantitative evidence derived from UNGA roll-call voting records for India and three comparator states, the United States, Russia, and China, for the period 1990 to 2019. The years 2020-2021 are excluded from the quantitative analysis because disruptions associated with the pandemic may have affected UNGA voting patterns and nature. To supplement the longitudinal analysis, a documentary review of India’s votes on specific high-profile resolutions between 2022 and 2026 is also undertaken. These include resolutions concerning the Russia-Ukraine conflict adopted during emergency special sessions, the Israel-Gaza resolutions, and the 2026 UNHRC resolution concerning Iran. The quantitative component relies on the Voeten/BSV dataset, which specifically records roll-call votes and therefore excludes resolutions that were adopted without a recorded vote. Accordingly, the analysis is restricted to recorded roll-call decisions available for UNGA Sessions 45–74, covering the period from 1990-2019. Since the number of recorded roll-call votes differs across individual years, a uniform denominator is not assumed when making comparisons across years or broader time periods.

Instead, annual dyadic agreement scores are calculated independently for India and each of the three comparator states. For each year, only those resolutions for which both India and the respective comparator country cast a recorded vote are included in the denominator. This approach ensures that the agreement measure reflects comparable voting observations and avoids treating unrecorded votes as instances of disagreement. The basic agreement score was calculated as follows:

Agreement Score(%) = (Number of resolutions on which India and the comparator cast the same vote ÷ Number of resolutions on which both countries cast a recorded vote) × 100

A vote was classified as an agreement when both countries recorded the same voting position – Yes, No, or Abstain. Accordingly, combinations such as Yes-Yes, No-No, and Abstain- Abstain between India and a comparator state were coded as instances of agreement. Abstention was therefore considered as a substantive recorded position rather than being automatically interpreted as disagreement. In contrast, differing voting choices, including Abstain-Yes, Abstain–No, and Yes–No combinations, were coded as disagreement. Where either India or the relevant comparator state was absent or did not cast a vote on the resolution, that observation was excluded from the denominator used to calculate pairwise agreement. Such cases were therefore not classified as either agreement or disagreement. This methodological approach is consistent with the logic of dyadic agreement measures, which are based on jointly observed voting behaviour and prevent absentions from being conflated with non-participation. The UN itself distinguishes between Yes, No, Abstain and cases where a Member State did not vote.

The resulting decade figures are averages of the annual agreement scores for the relevant decade, rather than a simple assumption that every year contained the same number of roll-call decisions. The scores are consequently sensitive to the composition of the UNGA agenda in each year and should be interpreted as broad indicators of voting convergence rather than as direct measures of foreign-policy alignment. Existing research similarly cautions that UNGA vote-agreement rates are useful for descriptive purposes but are sensitive to the issues placed before the Assembly.

The second category is qualitative: government policy documents, official explanations of votes and diplomatic statements, peer-reviewed scholarship, and institutional reports, which were re-analysed through thematic content analysis. This approach was chosen because voting data alone cannot establish why a state selected a particular vote. Official Indian statements are therefore examined alongside the voting record to determine whether India’s stated positions are consistent with the interpretation of strategic autonomy. Recurring patterns across sources were organised into four themes: strategic autonomy, networked alignment, issue-based decision-making, and challenges to strategic autonomy, and are presented with supporting tables in 1.4 to 1.7. Each thematic table is interpreted alongside quantitative findings in 4.3 onwards, so that the qualitative claims found in the literature are checked against both measurable voting evidence and India’s own stated diplomatic positions.

4.3 Quantitative Analysis of India’s UNGA Voting Behaviour 

Table 1.1 presents India’s decade-averaged agreement rate with the United States, Russia, and China across three decades of UNGA roll-call voting (1990–2019). The figures are calculated from the recorded-vote dataset using the dyadic agreement procedure described in Section 4.2. They therefore indicate the extent to which India and each comparator selected the same recorded voting position when both countries participated in a vote. The figures should not be understood as direct evidence of India’s strategic motivations. Rather, they indicate observable empirical patterns that can subsequently be assessed in relation to India’s official diplomatic explanations and foreign policy statements.

Table 1.1: Decade-Averaged UNGA Voting Alignment Scores, India (1990–2019) 

Three key findings can be identified from Table 1.1.

• Convergence between the US and India grew as India’s voting agreement with the US increased steadily, from 12.9% in the 1990s to 19.6% in the 2010s. However, the level of convergence remained lower than India’s agreement with Russia and China. Thus, the findings suggest evidence of increasing convergence instead of any political or strategic alignment with the US.
• Agreement with Russia and China remained substantially higher throughout the period under study, ranging between approximately 63% and 82%. This shows that India continued its voting convergence with both countries despite its agreement with the US gradually increasing in parallel. However, the quantitative voting data alone cannot determine the significant factors responsible for this convergence. The observed convergence may have reflected strategic partnerships, similar stances on specific international issues, or similar areas of interest on the UNGA agenda.
• Abstention rate noticeably rose across this period from 13.0% in the 1990s to 18.6% in the 2010s. This record simply confirms that India abstained more often in the later decade, but this does not give us any explanation. Thus, this voting record, by itself, cannot confirm that these abstentions were driven by a strategic approach to protect its national interests or to avoid external pressure from major powers. Such an interpretation needs examination of India’s stated explanations of the vote and broader diplomatic statements and cannot rely on voting data alone.

Together, these trends are consistent with the possibility of issue-based multi-alignment: India appears to have increased its voting convergence with the United States without abandoning its comparatively high levels of agreement with Russia and China. The pattern therefore provides quantitative evidence relevant to the strategic-autonomy argument, but does not by itself establish the motives underlying India’s choices. 

Table 1.2 extends this analysis to the specific high-profile resolutions discussed in the literature review, since the roll-call dataset used above does not yet cover 2020–2026. These cases were compiled from public UN resolution records and institutional reports and news sources. The following cases are presented as qualitative documentary case studies and are not included in the 1990-2019 quantitative UNGA dataset.

Table 1.2: India’s Vote on Selected Named Resolutions (2022–2026) 

Source: NIDS (2022); The Hindu (2025); Middle East Council (2024); The Wire (2026).

The pattern in Table 1.2 is consistent with the decade-level trend in Table 1.1: 

• India abstained on major Russia-Ukraine resolutions (2022-2023). These votes can be interpreted alongside India’s stated emphasis on dialogue, diplomacy, and strategic autonomy.

• India’s voting behaviour on the Israel-Gaza conflict reflects its balanced and issue-specific approach. Though India abstained on the Israel-Gaza humanitarian truce resolution to maintain its relations with Israel alongside its support for Palestine, it later stood for the Gaza follow-up resolution on civilian protection, demonstrating humanitarian concerns and international consensus.
• India votes ‘No’ on the January 2026 UNHRC resolution condemning Iran, which reflects its emphasis on sovereignty and strategic interests, including the protection of the Chabahar transit corridor, as it holds great strategic importance for India. 

 These cases provide illustrative documentary evidence for the “issue-based calibration” argument and evidence of pragmatic foreign policy guided by national interest and geopolitical considerations.

4.4 Theme I: Strategic Autonomy in India’s UNGA Voting Behaviour 

Table 1.3: India’s Voting Behaviour on Major UNGA Issues 

Table 1.3, analysed together with the quantitative findings in Table 1.1, indicates that India’s abstentions cannot automatically be interpreted as indecision. In several high-profile cases, Indian representatives provided official explanations of several of these voting choices that emphasised dialogue, diplomacy, sovereignty, territorial integrity, humanitarian concerns, and the need to avoid escalation.

For example, during the vote on ES-11/1 concerning Ukraine, India’s representative stated that India supported the principles of the UN Charter, international law, sovereignty and territorial integrity, while arguing that the conflict required dialogue and diplomacy. India consequently abstained from the resolution. Similarly, in its explanation of vote on ES-11/3, India stated that its abstention reflected considerations of both substance and process, while reiterating its call for a ceasefire, dialogue and negotiations.

These statements provide stronger evidence for interpreting India’s abstentions than the voting record alone. They suggest that, at least in these cases, abstention was publicly presented by India as compatible with its emphasis on diplomacy, peace and an independent assessment of the issue. Therefore, the quantitative increase in abstention can be interpreted as consistent with the use of abstention as one instrument through which India preserves policy flexibility, rather than being categorically characterised as either indecision or a deliberate strategic manoeuvre in every case.

The relationship between abstention and strategic autonomy should therefore be understood as an interpretive inference supported by both voting behaviour and official explanations, rather than as a causal conclusion derived from voting percentages alone.

4.5 Theme II: Strategic Autonomy and Networked Alignment 

Table 1.4: Evidence of India’s Multi-Alignment Strategy 

The pattern in Table 1.4 is consistent with the argument that India has moved from a classical conception of non-alignment towards a more networked or multi-alignment approach (Tripathi, 2020; Saran, 2017). India participates simultaneously in multiple forums, including the Quad, SCO, BRICS and G20, without these memberships necessarily requiring identical positions on every international issue.

This institutional pattern is also broadly consistent with the quantitative evidence in Table 1.1, where increased agreement with the United States occurred alongside continued high levels of agreement with Russia and China. Nevertheless, the voting data alone cannot demonstrate that India’s participation in these forums caused particular voting choices. Rather, the parallel trends indicate that India’s engagement with multiple strategic groupings has not resulted in consistent or exclusive voting alignment with any single major power.

India’s official foreign-policy priorities help us explain the reasons behind its voting behaviour in the UNGA. The Ministry of External Affairs has identified India’s UNGA priorities as encompassing domestic development, national security, collective international action and sustained engagement with a broad range of political and socio- economic issues. At the same time, India has emphasized cooperation with developing nations and active engagement with G-77. These officially stated priorities support the interpretation that India’s strategy is to adopt the policy of multi-alignment, which involves engagement and cooperation with multiple institutions and groups, rather than taking the side of one major power bloc.

4.6 Theme III: Issue-Based Decision Making 

Table 1.5: Nature of India’s Voting Decisions 

Table 1.5 and Table 1.3 analyse India’s voting behaviour differently. Table 1.3 analyses India’s voting behaviour on different geopolitical issues, whereas Table 1.5 analyses the reasons and India’s national interest behind those voting decisions. But if we study both of these tables together, the findings from these show that India’s voting behaviour depends on the issue which is considered, instead of consistently aligning with one major geopolitical block.

The interpretation is also supported by the official explanations of its voting behaviour. In the case of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, India publicly gave importance to sovereignty and territorial integrity, while advocating the need for dialogue and diplomacy, and abstained from a number of significant resolutions. Likewise, in the case of the Israel-Gaza conflict, India’s official statements significantly emphasized humanitarian concerns, protection of civilians, international humanitarian law, and continued its diplomatic engagement. In its explanation of its vote on resolution ES-10/21, for instance, India indicated it’s support for the unfolding humanitarian crisis, while simultaneously raising concerns about the balance of the resolution’s language and the potential wider regional implications of the conflict.

These statements further strengthen the argument that India’s voting behaviour is shaped by the specific characteristics of individual issues. However, they do not conclusively demonstrate that each vote is determined exclusively by considerations of national interest. The evidence is more appropriately understood as showing that India’s voting behaviour is compatible with a flexible, issue-sensitive approach in which strategic, humanitarian, legal and diplomatic considerations can operate simultaneously.

4.7 Theme IV: Challenges to Strategic Autonomy 

Table 1.6: Emerging Challenges to India’s Balancing Strategy 

Table 1.6 highlights the key challenges that increasingly complicate India’s strategy of maintaining strategic autonomy in its foreign policy. When these challenges are studied alongside the rising abstention trend shown in Table 1.1, the evidence may be interpreted as indicating that India’s balancing strategy operates in an increasingly complex strategic environment. The increase from 13.0% to 18.6% in abstention therefore should not automatically be interpreted as growing indecisiveness. Equally, the available voting data cannot by itself demonstrate that each abstention was specifically motivated by the challenges identified in Table 1.6.

The interpretation becomes stronger when the voting record is considered alongside India’s official diplomatic statements. In relation to Ukraine, India’s representatives repeatedly linked their position to dialogue, diplomacy, sovereignty, territorial integrity, and the avoidance of escalation. In the Gaza context, official Indian statements similarly referred to humanitarian concerns, civilian protection and the need for diplomatic efforts. These statements indicate that India’s voting positions can involve several considerations simultaneously rather than reflecting a simple choice between the United States, Russia, or another major power.

Accordingly, the criticism of “vagueness” in the literature (Pant, 2009; Ollapally, 2011; Wulf & Debiel, 2015) may be understood in light of the increasing number of circumstances in which India must reconcile competing strategic, legal, humanitarian and diplomatic considerations. The evidence in this chapter therefore supports a more cautious interpretation: what may appear as ambiguity in voting behaviour can, in some cases, be consistent with an effort to preserve policy flexibility under conditions of competing external pressures. This should nevertheless be treated as an interpretation supported by the combined quantitative and qualitative evidence, rather than as a definitive causal explanation of India’s voting behaviour.

5. Discussion

5.1 Discussion of Findings

The combined quantitative and thematic analysis suggests that India’s UNGA voting behaviour cannot be explained through either a pure alignment or a pure non-alignment framework. The decade-level voting data show a real, measurable rise in agreement with the United States alongside a persistently high, only slightly declining, agreement with Russia and China; this introduces a pattern that matches the literature’s description of an issue-based approach, networked alignment rather than a shift towards a unilateral approach. (Section 1.3; Tellis, 2021; Ranjeev, 2025). 

The thematic analysis in sections 1.4 – 1.7 further explains this quantitative pattern. India’s abstentions on the Russia-Ukraine resolutions and its initial abstention on the Gaza resolution, before pivoting to a Yes vote once the resolution’s framing changed (Section 1.3), illustrate the same issue-based logic documented across BRICS, SCO, and Quad engagements. 

5.2 Summary of Findings 

Table 1.7: Summary of Major Findings 

This chapter analysed India’s UNGA voting behaviour using both quantitative roll-call voting data and thematic analysis of documentary and secondary sources. The quantitative analysis demonstrates a measurable, decade-wise evolution in India’s voting alignment, while the thematic analysis provides insights into the strategic logic underlying these changes. When considered together, the findings suggest that India’s foreign policy continues to anchor strategic autonomy while simultaneously adapting to an evolving geopolitical landscape through selective and issue-based global partnerships rather than through permanent bloc commitments to any particular bloc. These findings also reveal a continuing tension between the “adaptive strategy” and “strategic ambiguity” readings of the evidence and provide the foundation for the concluding chapter.

6. Conclusion and Recommendations

6.1 Conclusion

This study examines whether India’s voting behaviour in the UN General Assembly shows a coherent grand plan of strategic autonomy coupled with networked global relationships or a move towards ambiguity and over-fragmentation. The evidence from the decade-long roll-call voting data and the thematic analysis of named resolutions from 2022 to 2026 clearly supports the former interpretation. India’s voting record reveals a quantifiable slow rise in agreement with the United States (12.9% in the 1990s, 19.6% in the 2010s), but a consistently high and slightly diminishing agreement with Russia and China (63–82% during the same era). This pattern is better explained not as indecision but as issue-based multi-alignment: India calibrates each vote in the context of the specific national interest at stake – defence ties with Russia, energy security with the Gulf and Iran, technological partnership with the West – without permanently aligning itself with any one power bloc. This early evidence of support for the literature’s “vagueness” critique is built on the increasing rate of abstention, from 13.0% in the 1990s to 18.6% in the 2010s. However, when read together with the thematic findings of this study, abstention rather emerges as a deliberate diplomatic instrument applied precisely to resolutions that would compel a binary choice among strategic partners, as seen in India’s handling of the Russia-Ukraine and Israel-Gaza resolutions. Therefore, strategic autonomy and networked alignment are complementary, not opposing policies. India’s dual involvement in the Quad, BRICS and SCO illustrates a robust architecture of simultaneous engagement rather than confusion. At the same time, the findings of the study validate that this balancing act is under real and aggravating pressure. Structural constraints – persistent dependence on Russian defence hardware, the rise of US-China rivalry and India’s growing leadership role in the Global South – mean that strategic autonomy in its current form will have to be constantly recalibrated rather than being a static doctrine.

6.2 Suggestions

The following recommendations are made to the policymakers, diplomats and future scholars based on the findings of this study:

• Institutionalise issue-based review mechanisms: The Ministry of External Affairs should institutionalise the case-by-case assessment process already implicit in India’s voting behaviour, so that voting decisions on emerging issues – such as digital governance, artificial intelligence, and climate finance – are based on a transparent, documented framework of national interest rather than ad hoc judgement.
• Boost defence partnerships: India’s dependence on Russian hardware limits its room to manoeuvre on Russia-related resolutions. India should therefore accelerate the diversification of arms imports and indigenous defence production, increasing its latitude for independent positioning in future crises.
• Improve public communication of Explanations of Vote: In response to frequent criticism of “vagueness” from scholars and the media, India’s diplomatic missions should more regularly disseminate detailed and accessible Explanations of Vote, explaining the strategic rationale for abstentions and dissenting votes.
• More systematically leverage Global South leadership: India should use its rising convening influence within the G77 and Global South coalitions to proactively set global agendas, rather than just reacting to resolutions framed by other great powers.
• Develop longitudinal data infrastructure: Future research should extend the roll-call voting dataset used in this study beyond 2019 as updated data becomes available, allowing for a more comprehensive quantitative analysis of India’s alignment trends during the 2020s, in conjunction with the qualitative case studies presented here.
• Disaggregate voting behaviour by issue area (security, human rights, climate, disarmament) rather than using aggregate agreement scores, to better reflect the issue-specific calibration this study finds to be central to India’s strategy. Future research should explore voting patterns by sector. Together, these recommendations suggest that India’s challenge in the future is not to resolve the tension between autonomy and partnership, but to manage it more transparently and adaptively so that strategic flexibility continues to be an asset, not a liability, in an increasingly polarised international order.

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