The Indian Government should take the current crisis in Afghanistan as an opportunity for garnering support from the west. This will, of course, mean that it deviate from its ideology of Non alignment. This ideology has only served India to be deemed hypocritical so far, and has not yielded any political weight for herself. The NAM is a total failure. A failure that has to be now rectified. In order for India to gain any political muscle she has to chose sides. The middle path is not an option anymore.
I will not go into details of why the NAM is a failure, but only point out the positive aspects of India's involvements in Afghanistan. There are many in India who would not dare to propose such an idea citing India's need to be involved more in her internal problems and any such intervention by her in a foreign country would serve only to distract her. Its true that India faces many economic and social problems but solutions to these problems require a very long time and cannot be expedited by the resources India currently possess.
One of the biggest threats that India faces is terrorism. By being involved in Afghanistan the Indian army will have a closer proximity to the terrorists in Kashmir most of whom are being supported by the ISI and the extremists entrenched in the Afghan, Pakistan territories. The Taliban and Al Qaeda and the myriad of terrorist organizations present in the tribal areas of Pakistan are unresolvably intertwined, providing each other with tactical and probably financial support. Getting closer to the terrorist dense tribal areas will provide better intelligence to India along with anti-terrorist training for the army. This will of course come at a great expense for the Indian government but not more than the billions she has already spent to keep Kashmir and other disputed areas peaceful. There is an opportunity to disrupt the networks of those who are bent on ending India's governance of Kashmir.
