India has emerged out as an important actor regionally and among the partners of the South. Unlike the OECD/DAC nations which clearly state its development policy, India is yet to officially formalise its principles and declare them in the form of a vision paper or white paper. Development initiatives undertaken by the developed countries are well documented and receive significant interest from its public and the media. However, in India, the scale and distribution of development cooperation can be extracted from a few sources and the budget reports from relevant ministries. This leads to the problem of accountability as it becomes almost impossible to trace the allocation of resources, the effectiveness of development initiatives that are undertaken by India. Formulating a flexible development cooperation policy can be useful in three ways for India. One, in guiding the nascent Development Partnership Administration (DPA) under the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) to expand its role for effective development initiatives. Two, position itself strategically relevant in the region with the rise of China and three, to potentially take on the leadership role within the South-South Cooperation framework.