The participation of localities in the international arena has been proven to be

successful and to have certain benefits that global diplomacy can’t achieve, this
is known as para-diplomacy, which will be the essence of this essay.

Paradiplomacy can be understood by Denis A. Kuznetsov as the activity of

subnational authorities in international relations in order to protect their interest
and find their own identity; in the same line Stefan Wolff describes it as the
foreign policy capacity of sub-state entities, their participation, independent of
their metropolitan state, in the international arena in pursuit of their own specific
international interests.

While these definitions help building the path towards the right
conceptualization of what paradiplomacy is, it’s important to know what theory
has to say about it’s origins, for Panayotis Soldatos. Emeritus Professor at the
University of Montreal and forerunner of the concept, it’s the result of a crisis at
the level of nation-state’s systemic process and foreign policy performance.

Even Soldatos touches an important trigger for paradiplomacy it is absolutely

clear that this practice it’s unleashed in part as a consequence of globalization,
and the thought “Think global act local” which turned out to be pretty popular
during the 80’s decade, stating that every small action it’s taken in a community
can lead to change certain behaviors in bigger scenarios, the idea it’s great yet
by acting under this premise the importance of communities have been
forgotten.

Even when realism states that the State should be the only responsible for the
fate of a country and their communities, it’s important to recognize that the
States are not the only actors in this global scenario, and also it needs to be
acknowledged when a sole State can’t deal with every single issue presented,
when that happens more elements are allowed to appear in this scene,
communities, NGO’s, private sector and more, by this the projects are divided
and the State has more freedom to act in other situations that might need
stronger positions.
This division of responsibilities it’s not against the hierarchy stipulated by the
realist theory, it’s about recognizing the importance and the strength of State by
also identifying certain soft spots and weakness that can be enforced by the
rest of the actors that make part of a society.

It has been proven that communities and their role in the international arena it’s
quite important and that the premise should change to “think local act global”
making by this a world that considers the needs of communities and according
to that make inclusive public policies, create new ONG’s with a local state of
mind that give projects and solutions that are compatible with communities and
not only with countries and communities with other problems, and also make
the private sector be aware of the panorama so they can invest in useful
projects and propose new ones.

In the present essay it will be studied how the para-diplomacy it’s applied in
India and its communities, India it’s not only one of my favorite countries for it’s
history, culture and profound spirituality, it’s also a relatively young country that
has grown by leaps and bounds and keeps growing even with important
financial needs, wars surrounding it, and with the fact that it’s not easy to
govern and keep in control a country that it’s on the top 10 of the biggest
countries in the world with almost 4 million square kilometers and a population
of 1,412,940,376 habitants.

India has a long story with para-diplomacy, they understood the assignment
from the very start and recognized their areas of opportunity, Indian State tried
as every other country to solve their issues by themselves for many reasons but
the one I feel was the most important it’s that it was a hurt and young country
that once sought for freedom but now was all by itself in the international arena,
they just got their freedom and weren´t disposed to put their trust and
development into the wrong hands.

When India thought that they were alone because they felt that they couldn’t
trust on any external actor, it seems that this country, considered a sub-
continent for its size, turned around and realized that the inner localities and
people could be trusted, slowly but surely India grew and became a more
confident country.

Yet the growth of this country was in big part due to the participation of certain
communities, in the present essay I will focus on Mumbai, better known as
Bombay, as one of the most important para-diplomatic cities in India, a
responsible witness for the growth of this country and executor of the popular
culture and economy.

Mumbai locates in the Indian State of Maharashtra one of the most

industrialized states, due to this industrial development it’s the largest
contributor to the national economy, agriculture and industrial production along
with transport and education are the main sectors of this State and are the
sectors where half of the population works.

It's a State that for the last century has been growing to the point that its capital
Mumbai it’s considered as the economic financial and commercial capital, until
2021 Mumbai’s Nominal GDP is estimated to be around $277.980 billion
American Dollars and the per capita income it’s about $23,000, making this city
the richest in India and one of the wealthiest cities in the entire world.

In 1992 seeking to have economic development and more independence, India

opened the door to private foreign investors, with this authorization given the
Maharashtra government negotiated with Enron, an American corporation
specialized in electricity, natural gas and other services, this negotiation had as
result that India received financial assistance enough to bring to reality the
Dabhol Project which consists in a power plant located 160 km south of Mumbai
in the Ratnagiri District of Maharashtra, India.

Even when this project brought development for the Maharashtra State, the
building of this power plant was quite controversial, first of all it is proven that
this powerhouse can’t operate at full capacity due to the lack of gas that it’s
supplied by Reliance Industries Limited, an Indian conglomerate company
specialized in petrochemicals, natural gas and other areas.

Nowadays the plant continues to work by selling extremely expensive electricity

to the Indian Railways industry, as it was stated before the project was quite
controversial, the lack of service was one of the least shady point of this project
for many citizens and economists; years later in 2001, Enron the company that
entered negotiations with the Maharashtra State went into bankruptcy leaving
behind its back an useless powerhouse even when it was 90% paid by the
State.

As it was seen during the classes, there are certain scenarios where a public-
private partnership don’t work, and this is a clear example as stated by David
Hall on the reading titled “Why Public-Private Partnerships don’t work: The
many advantages of the public alternative” enterprises that promote
privatization of services make false promises.

In the case of Mumbai, in my perception Eron might have known that their
economic situation was in risk and looked for the most needed city and they
found Mumbai, the payment this city made let Eron survive for few more years;
the author also states that PPP’s do not bring any extra money and it makes
clear that it’s not a saving method for the States, because it does not reduce
the overall cost of the project it just divides the debt on many little payments.

In fact on the same reading on page 33 it talks about the corrupt practices that
take place in India and attributes it to many factors one of them is the lack of
legislation and procedures in the matter, around a trillion dollars were invested
between 2012 and 2017 to create projects under the PPP figure, this again
might also be because this enterprises look for countries in need like India.

According to the reading the UNODC reached out to nearly 400 private sector
and government officials to know the actual situation of the projects they
manage and to make a study about the corruption levels that persist in this
field, yet only 100 answered even when corruption it’s a topic that need to be
talked about when it comes to this kind of projects.

In my opinion this PPP project didn´t work for the fact we discussed as a class,
when a city or a country applies the “Think global, act local” most of the times
they are not solving their problems, because the PPP’s in charge of this
projects are not thinking with a city perspective due to the fact that most of the
times they haven’t studied the current situation and apply techniques and
projects that don’t work everywhere and instead of helping this localities solve
their problems they just bring even more issues.

Two of their most important sources of incomes are tourism and the
entertainment industry, the first one supports nearly 640,000 jobs which results
in the 7.3% of its total employment and it’s expected to grow an 8.8% per year
and it’s recognized by the UNESCO as a city that contains world heritage like
the Victorian Neo-Gothic train station named Chhatrapati Shivaji and the
Elephanta Islands along with the tourism entertainment industry.

Mumbai it’s also considered the capital of Indian entertainment since the 19 th
and 20th centuries it produces between 1,500 to 2,000 films each year, in 2019
the movies produced in India had revenues over $2.5 billion American Dollars
which accounts for more than 50% of the Indian economy, once this is stated
it’s clear that Mumbai not only has Indian economy on it shoulders, it also has
the soft power by the hand meaning that this industry and what Mumbai
represents are the ideals for the Indian society.

Another reason I had to pick Mumbai for this essay is that it´s a highly friendly
city it has 15 sister cities around the world, each one with a completely different
background, culture, economy and international interests, these cities are Los
Angeles, St Petersburg, Stuttgart, Yokohama, Honolulu, New York City, Zagreb,
Barcelona, Busan, Port of Odessa, Jakarta, Nadi, Antananarivo, and Shanghai;
sister cities are a great example of what para-diplomacy is, cities and
communities make their own relationships between them, even if their territories
are located in distinct areas, and most of the time this ties main purpose it’s to
promote cultural and commercial ties.

As Yang Fenglian and Pennee Narot stated while explaining the friendship city
agreements between Khon Kaen City and Nanning City, earlier this year the
Maharashtra’s tourism Minister proposed a cultural project to have a better
connection with the urban sisterhood, promote culture and commercial growth
as well share the history of all these countries with tourists and Mumbaiites.

Of course having sister cities it’s not only for cultural purposes only, on March
2021 this Indian sub-continent with a urban population estimated to be over 22
million habitants needed help, COVID 19 hit India hard, economy was not doing
well and people were dying due to the lack of vaccines and medicines to treat
themselves, with this in mind Mumbai asked this 15 cities for help getting
vaccines, help got there quickly and one year later Mumbai became the first city
in Maharashtra to complete the vaccination cycle.

Even when Mumbai and by consequence India are doing good and doing their
best to cope with the daily issues the world faces, inflation it’s a problem for
every single country and city no matter if this is wealthy or not, in colloquial
words inflation it’s a measuring unit that makes everything more expensive but
not immediately it will go higher to a point where it affects directly on their
finances.

The Times of India informed that the Central bank has raised its policy rate to
6.25% making this being the highest in three years, even when the Bank
specified that there won’t be any increase in order to keep the inflation under
control, this rise it’s the fifth on a row, the Indian State asks its habitants to be
patient, because even when the worst peak of inflation is over it’s a very volatile
constant that might change overnight, and this is why so many financial
changes has been done.
Inflation got worse after the effects the Covid 19 pandemic left behind, India
posted that its economic growth represented 6.3%, analyzing this information
India had a good growth because after the pandemic they had a 13.5% of
growth, that prevented this country for going into critical red numbers.

During this inflation crisis it’s normal that the market basket rises on its price as
well other basic products like petrol or in the case of the industrial turn material
like the steel, to deal with this situation three of the most industrialized states:
Kerala, Rajasthan and Maharashtra announced that there would be a reduction
in tax the state impose for combustible and also reduced the import tariff in
basic materials like steel and plastic.

Yet it is known that the industrial turn resents the effects from inflation and that
it surely affects the economy, this turn wouldn’t be able to function without
people and they need to eat, notwithstanding as it was stated before the prices
on the basic basket rise so much that makes it impossible to buy enough for a
family; in the same vein results basic to mention that India it’s the third biggest
Asian economy when it comes to produce agricultural goods like milk, in two
years the production can scale to 50 million tons of buffalo milk and almost 38
million tons of cow milk as well as rice, wheat and other products.

With the adequate strategy India could cope better with this economic
phenomenon, first of all the State has to intervene by taking a protectionist side
reducing the cost of importation taxes of this basic products, and encouraging
the production and acquirement of local goods, by this the economic cycle can
balance at least intramurally; at the same time the amount of products they
export need to be lessened in order to have equilibrated levels of items.

For example during this inflation crisis, India set a limit of certain quantity of
tons on sugar exports to make sure that the whole country had a safe
consumption of this basic goods the same needs to be done with products like
wheat and milk, in the industrial turn while it’s important for the national
development, the country can’t allow itself to expend money on importations,
India imports 82% of its oil needs and while it’s looking to bring that percentage
down it can also be a good idea to increment a bit the importation taxes in
order more money enters to their economy.

As it was stated before the Public-Private Partnership with Eron did not result
as it was intended to be, yet this incident does not mean that PPP’s are not
viable, one of the main purposes of this essay it’s to propose a plan or strategy
to help this cities and by consequence the country cope with inflation and with
the normal changes and mine goes like this:

In order to preserve the economy India and specifically Mumbai need to focus
on their area of expertise which in this case it’s the entertainment, this year the
Bollywood industry left 182,000,000 rupees the equivalent to 2,207,663.50
American Dollars, while when translated to dollars it does not sound as an
exuberant amount it does mean a lot for a country dealing with a fluctuating
economy.

The strategy I propose it’s the creation of a Film Trusteeship that has as main
objective promote the production, postproduction, distribution and exhibition of
films of quality, something that has been quite criticized it’s that while Bollywood
movies are great as a soft power strategy, they do not represent India’s reality,
it only shows the privileged situation of certain social groups.

Clearly with the inflation and the economic fluctuation this project will take some
time to stabilize yet it will promote round economy, this by for example let’s
imagine that Raaj Kamal Films wants to make Devdas 2, with this in mind and
to not spend that much money they ask this trusteeship for its economic
support, the project gets to be explained to this Statewide institution and they
approve it and according to the kind of project the support it’s given.

Once the movie it’s released the profit obtained it’s divided between the Public
and the Private sector, 30% goes to the Trusteeship and with the money
collected more films can be boosted.
It’s important to mention that the economic help should not exceed half of the
average budget a Bollywood movie has, nowadays the budget it’s around 550
million rupees (By the way and as a matter-of-fact Devdas back in 2002 costed
50 million rupees and it was considered as a huge budget) this means that the
economic help should be equivalent to 275 million rupees.

This is project it’s not only about having a healthy economy it’s about making
India’s soft power stronger, not only by showing this beautiful films full of music
but actually opening to the world about the actual situations that can be seen in
this country, as it was stated before, one of the best solutions it’s to actually
think local and act global, this trusteeship also looks for more languages and
Indian cultures to be involved in films.

Most of Indian movies are made in Hindi, this project also has as objective
make Indian market diverse, by making this more cities and in a future more
countries will be interested in working with this film industry, making India’s
economy stronger.

Covid 19 made the world stop all of a sudden, every country and every city
closed its gates, the fear was everywhere, and unfortunately Mumbai wasn’t the
exception, on 2020 around 2.16 million people got infected in the Maharashtra
State and 327,619 were in Mumbai.

According to the World Health Organization on March 11, the same day this
Organization declared the Covid 19 as a global pandemic, the state of
Maharashtra detected 68 patients, when this crisis started the State stopped
the trains for almost 100 days and only allowed essential workers to travel, this
provoked migration between States and cities inside them, yet this crisis it’s
over, most of the population it’s vaccinated.

Mumbai it’s an example of what resilience is about, it’s a city that has gone
through a lot of things, nothing that the entire world hasn’t gone through, but the
difference is that Mumbai has practically India on its shoulders and has
managed to keep India growing.

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