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There is less than a decade left before the deadline set by the international community for itself to make the world a better place and achieve the 17 Goals and 169 targets of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The SDGs aim to “end poverty, protect the planet, and ensure that all people enjoy peace and prosperity” by 2030. Since the UN General Assembly adopted the SDGs in 2015, much of the world is lagging in many of the goals and there is an urgent need to mobilise resources and enhance implementation. In this context, India is emerging as a potential game-changer in the international development cooperation efforts, not only because its population is a massive 17 percent of the world’s, but given that it is a key development partner to many countries, especially in the South Asian region. Indeed, its development cooperation engagements in recent years have leveraged its position in the broader development cooperation narrative. India institutionalised its development cooperation in 2012 by creating the Development Partnership Administration (DPA) under the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA).

This brief evaluates India’s development partnerships and weighs them against the theme of sustainability. The objective is not to provide a description of the development cooperation initiatives per se; there is sufficient existing literature in this regard (among them, Sachin Chaturvedi, T. Fues and E. Sidiropoulos, 2012; Urvashi Aneja, 2015; Kashyap Arora and Rani D Mullen, 2017; Gareth Price, 2013; and Vijaya Katti, Tatjana Chahoud and Atul Kaushik, 2009). Rather it is to identify a co-relation between India’s development partnerships and objectives of sustainability. To pursue this enquiry, the brief examines India’s development partnerships in three phases (Phase I, 1947-1990; Phase II, 1991-2008; and Phase III, post-2008). It then ponders the most fundamental imperatives for India’s DPA in the run-up to the Agenda 2030 deadline.

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