Why does United Nations’ blue flag dwarf India’s own tricolour in New Delhi? India pleads for permanent membership of the Security Council. It extends unconditional support for UN style multilateralism. It frequently contributes forces to UN missions. It even rationalises repeated UN rebuffs by pointing to future UN reform that, supposedly, will enhance India’s status.

What has the UN done for India that merits such fawning? This is not to criticise Indian aspirations. It is to challenge the orthodoxy that the UN is a multilateral force for good that will — post-reform — give India the meaningful global role it seeks.

The permanent membership of the UN Security Council protects privileges of entrenched powers

— ‘‘the five families of New York’’ — not global security. Its total membership represents significantly less than half the world population. Seven of 15 Security Council members, per World Audit, rank among the worst 40 per cent of global democracy offenders.

Cajoled with carrots and threats, the Council’s non-permanent 10 carry water for their five godfathers. Ironically, even this cosy arrangement sometimes boomerangs. On Iraq, for instance, where the antagonists’ sabres — American shock and awe, Iraqi defiance — were irrevocably drawn, godfather rivalries made the Council irrelevant.

Post-Holocaust genocide in China, East Pakistan, Cambodia, Rwanda, Iraq, and the Balkans represents UN failure. The multilateral Shangri-La it pretends to be is a hoax.

What we have instead is the Security Council’s oligolateral tyranny sitting atop the General Assembly’s hyperlateral noise. On substantive matters, the UN is slave to selfish whims of its five godfathers — thus oligolateral — and on trivial matters, to the cacophony of 191 member nations — thus hyperlateral.

The Security Council rarely ventures into matters of concern to India, a non-member. When it does, it hurts Indian interests. Cross-border slaughter in Jammu and Kashmir, for example, owes its rhetorical cover to resolutions that equate Pakistani aggression with Indian self-defence.

Some argue that India’s ascent to the Security Council will resolve many of these issues. In truth, future UN reform is unlikely to help. No mafia has ever admitted new godfathers willingly, and without force. Even if this were to happen, Pakistan — nuclear, Islamic, and larger than the United Kingdom, France, and Russia — has as much of a case as India does.

Real power is not begged for, it is grabbed. No great power — especially the permanent five — achieved that status without humbling rivals. China’s 1962 defeat of India is a recent, resonant example.

Many Indians are reluctant to acknowledge this bitter but time tested reality. Further, godfathers make credible those institutions that serve their interests. For example the US makes NATO credible. In contrast, institutions neither anoint nor make credible new godfathers. A hand-me-down Council membership is like a doctorate honoris causa. It will not make India an equal of those whose charity will make such membership possible.

Instead of aspiring to such status in an unrepresentative and often ineffective oligolateral mafia, India should find ways to discredit it. Forging multilateral coalitions of the willing — a la Cancun — to obstruct oligolateral initiatives is a terrific way to grab a meaningful veto. Humbling a major rival, militarily or economically, is another approach.

A review of the UN’s current India initiatives disappoints. These initiatives, while individually valid, appear not worthy of their high cost. Initiatives like ‘‘gender mainstreaming’’, ‘‘moral support for HIV + Indians’’, ‘‘mobilisation of disadvantaged women’’ abound. Surely India can do these itself, without UN ‘‘expertise’’.

For resource-starved poor nations, the permanent five promise — if poorly deliver — both security and largesse. For them, this is likely a good bargain. For emerging powers, the UN offers little value.

Caught in the middle — neither powerful godfathers, nor helpless supplicants — nations like India are victims of UN oligolateralism. They end up subjugating their national security interests in return for minimal economic gains.