With a growth rate of over 8% and a billion-plus population, India will undoubtedly play a critical role shaping this new century. But what kind of role will that be?

Last month, India joined Russia, China, Brazil and Germany in abstaining from the vote for United Nations Security Council Resolution 1973, approving “all necessary measures” to protect civilians from attack in Libya.  What does this move suggest about India’s foreign policy, and about its role in the United Nations?

Shashi Tharoor, a member of the Indian Parliament and an experienced UN hand, explains how India's colonial history informed its decision to abstain. He also discusses why the corruption crises rocking India will be healthy in the long-run, and what India can do to stabilize Afghanistan.

Tharoor is a member of the Indian Parliament from Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala.  In 2006, the Government of India nominated Tharoor for the post of UN Secretary-General and Tharoor came a close second behind Ban Ki-moon. Tharoor has served as United Nations Under-Secretary General for Communications and Public Information and as India’s Minister of State for External Affairs. He is also a prolific author.

Amar C. Bakshi: What does India’s abstention on Libya say about Indian foreign policy? How would you respond to those who say India is not willing to shoulder the responsibilities of global leadership, which plausibly include preventing mass atrocities?

Shashi Tharoor: India's abstention has been misunderstood in the West. It is not merely a reflexive assertion of non-interference in the internal affairs of a sovereign Member State of the United Nations, as critics have portrayed it. If that were the case, Indian would have voted against the resolution, not abstained.

India's concern appears to have been that the authorization to use “all necessary measures" could easily permit pro-active military intervention on one side of the conflict. That is indeed what happened.

India is indeed prepared to shoulder global responsibilities, but it considers among them to be the preservation of the rights of sovereign peoples to determine their own political destiny.

Any country that spent two hundred years under colonial rule, with imperial overlords deciding all issues for them, is bound to be acutely sensitive to the implications of foreigners imposing their will on another country.

That does not imply support for Gadhafi’s repressive measures against dissent in his own country - India remains strongly in favor of creating conditions for a peaceful, negotiated solution that takes into account the interests of all the people of Libya.

What does corruption mean for India’s global ambitions? How serious are the multiple corruption scandals rocking India today? Will they undermine India’s economic growth? And what is the solution for India going forward.

The corruption story has become big within India, particularly for a deeply disillusioned middle-class and the country's hyper-kinetic media.

Obviously, the existence of corruption makes a serious dent in India's global image, but the fact that the country is confronting the issue transparently, investigating and punishing wrongdoing, and going through a huge national catharsis over it, is bound to favor India's global ambitions in the longer term.

Corruption is only a negative if you don't deal with it effectively, and the signs are that India is indeed dealing with it (agreement on a new, powerful national Ombudsman, or Lokpal, is a further sign of this).

The irony is that the multiple corruption scandals we are reading about these days appear to have had little impact on India's remarkable growth story - far from "undermining India's economic growth," as you suggest, it hasn't prevented that growth from hitting 9%.

Are extremists on a roll and moderates in retreat in Pakistan? What should India's role be in stabilizing Afghanistan and Pakistan?

It certainly seems as if extremism is running rampant in Pakistan, particularly with the assassinations of Punjab Governor Salman Taseer and Minorities Minister Shahbaz Bhatti for seeking to reform the blasphemy law - and even worse, the widespread applause across Pakistani society for their murderers.

It's difficult to see India playing much of role in stabilizing that country, though, since it is unlikely to be a welcome player in that process.

In Afghanistan, India and Afghanistan share a strategic and development partnership based on historical, cultural and economic ties. We have an abiding interest in the stability of Afghanistan, in ensuring social and economic progress for its people, getting them on the track of self-sustained growth and thus enabling them to take their own decisions without outside interference.

The binding factor in our relationship is that the interests of Afghanistan and India converge. In our efforts towards the stabilization of Afghanistan, our focus has been on development. Our U.S. $1.2 billion assistance program, modest from the standpoint of Afghan needs, is large for a non-traditional donor like India.

We've revived girls' schools and maternal and child hospitals, built a road across south-western Afghanistan, brought electricity to Kabul by stringing cables across a height of 3000 meters, and are now constructing the Afghan parliament building - all symbols of our determination to help that country stand on its own feet.

Should Ban Ki-moon receive another five-year term as UN Secretary-General? How would you rate his first term?

I've been too far away from the centre of action over the last four years to "rate" his first term, but the Secretary-Generalship is a tough and thankless job and Ban Ki-Moon's been doing the best he can with it.

There's now a gathering consensus that he should be re-elected and I see no plausible challengers on the horizon, so I'd say the second five-year term is a done deal.