In 2007, the researchers Ilona Kickbusch and Mihály Kökény published papers in the bulletin of the World Health Organization (WHO) affirming the need for this kind of diplomacy to be strengthened both in the WHO and in its member states. In the decade to come, several reasons emerged to highlight why health diplomacy was so critical. As Kickbusch and Kökény explained, with climate change and pollution, health has become more than the concern of any one country, and more and more, the need emerged for transnational alliances to battle health crises. Also, new actors were emerging, not state players but non-state (like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, for instance), who were playing a vital role in the cause of global health diplomacy, and new kinds of long-term, sustained, and sustainable programmes were needed for states to engage with one another on health.

India, under Prime Minister Modi, spotted the opportunity to propel health as a significant tool of diplomacy early, when the country promoted an international yoga day (Modi himself is a regular practitioner of yoga), and took up the cause of spreading Ayurveda around the world, and now the Covid-19 pandemic has been an opportunity for India to showcase the best of its pharmaceutical manufacturing talents.

As India seeks to cement a new frontline position in tune with its size and importance, finding new arenas where it can play a definitive constructive role as a provider in the global community of nations is ever more important.

Healthcare has emerged as a clear sector where such leadership can be shown not least because in its neighbourhood demand for good, low-cost healthcare is ever prevalent, and set to grow as climate change concerns heighten.

Health diplomacy, then, is likely to become a powerful and more enduring facet of India’s engagement with the world as the country seeks to tell a holistic story about itself and its contribution for greater common good.

It is one of the most powerful ways that India can show that it is a friend in need, and a friend ‘in deed’.

Views are personal. The author is a historian and a multiple award-winning author of nine books. He is a World Economic Forum Young Global Leader.

health diplomacy

The importance of India’s health diplomacy