India from Friday will sit in the 15-nation United Nations Security Council (UNSC) for the next two years.

This is the eighth time out of nine attempts that India has won the elections as a non-permanent member of the UNSC. Its only loss was to Japan in the early nineties. “Not a single thing has moved. Is this the type of process we want or can we collectively come to a slightly better process which will yield results,” asked T S Tirumurti, India Permanent Representative to the UN about India’s aspiration to become a permanent member. “We would like to have a more cooperative structure in which we genuinely look out and find solutions and go beyond the rhetoric,” he added. PM Narendra Modi’s plans to convert India’s non-permanent presence at UNSC from 2021 to 2022 into a permanent membership is in disarray due to hostilities with China and a quasi-estrangement with Russia.