Modi's foreign policy report card

The minuses of his government exceed its pluses

India is in the midst of a frenzied electoral exercise but foreign policy rarely excites the voters’ imagination. There may be an exception when it comes to relations with Pakistan but in the past it has not proved possible to sustain the related national security argument as a vote-catching issue. The same appears to be happening with the Balakot adventure where the effort to project the ruling party in tough nationalist colours is fading rapidly. This election, like several others before it, will be determined primarily by domestic issues even though foreign policy is also a point of contention. The rhetoric of parties on foreign policy issues may be divergent, the leadership style may be different and some departures from the past may be evident but the broad contours of India’s external relations have not changed much in the past five years of the Modi government. They are unlikely to change irrespective of the political colour of an incoming government. 

So how should one read the Modi government’s record on foreign policy? There are four distinguishing features which spring to mind. 

One, Modi has displayed strong belief in the value of personal diplomacy and the efficacy of leader to leader engagement in resolving outstanding issues. There is no doubt that his relationship with former US President Obama played an important role in consolidating and expanding Indo-US relations. The obvious and positive chemistry that exists between him and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has helped bring relations between the two countries to an unprecedented high level. But one may argue that Modi was leveraging the very substantive drivers that were already bringing the US and Japan closer to India, the challenge of a rising China being a key factor. Modi has not had much success with Trump in the White House nor has China’s Xi Jinping been ready to go beyond optics, such as the Wuhan summit in June last year, to address India’s real concerns. Personal diplomacy can be an additionality when substantive factors are already driving relations in a positive direction. They are less efficacious when there are strong adversarial elements at work in the relationship. Positive vibes generated in a leadership level engagement may fall flat if there is weak follow up. This continues to be a persistent shortcoming on our side.

Two, Modi has enhanced the profile of the Indian diaspora in Indian foreign policy going beyond the initiatives taken by previous governments. He has reached out to overseas Indian communities in several countries and they in turn have enhanced his domestic and international profile. This may have paid dividends in terms of political funding for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and helped in image building but there has been little impact in terms of the Indian diaspora contributing to India’s development in the manner that the Chinese diaspora has done for their mother country. From a national perspective one should ask whether the investment made in terms of time and energy, particularly of our overstretched diplomats, has been worthwhile.

Illustration: Binay Sinha

Three, Modi is the first prime minister in recent years to welcome foreign investment unreservedly. He has sought foreign capital on all his major visits abroad. He deserves credit for this. It is another matter that the Indian market continues to be challenging for a prospective foreign investor and the fact that Indian investors have been reluctant to invest in their own country is not a very encouraging sign to their foreign counterparts. There are regulatory and tax related issues and, more importantly, policy unpredictability and a positive message from the prime minister has been unable to dispel concerns over them. Economic diplomacy has been a priority for this government but results are sub-optimal. This points to the urgent need to address structural and governance related issues which have long plagued the conduct of foreign policy.

Four, success has been achieved in managing a very complex and rapidly evolving situation in the Gulf and West Asia. The Modi government has been able to upgrade its relations simultaneously with Saudi Arabia and the UAE on the one hand and Iran on the other. It has brought the critical relations with Israel out in the open. In doing so, it has safeguarded India’s energy security, found key allies in its fight against terrorism and deflected pressures from the US to alter policy towards Iran and Syria. These have been the objectives of previous governments, too, but the diplomatic deftness evident here has been missing in the past.

It is Modi’s Pakistan policy which has left India more vulnerable internationally despite claims to the contrary. The temptation to make Pakistan a domestic political issue has been damaging in foreign policy terms and is sharpening the communal divide in our society. We are unable to deal with Pakistan as yet another state because foreign policy calculations are coloured by domestic political compulsions. Pakistan occupies so much of our mental space that little attention is directed to our other critically important neighbours. China has taken advantage of our distraction to penetrate our neighbourhood. Furthermore, the public escalation of hostility towards Pakistan and rising tensions make India vulnerable to international intervention, thereby bringing back hyphenation with that country. The mis-handling of Jammu and Kashmir, the allegation of pro-Pakistani sympathies among ordinary Kashmiris, all these have brought relations with Pakistan into a dangerous stalemate. A bold regional and global posture lacks credibility if the country remains tied so firmly to the sub-continent.

India over the past 70 years has accumulated invaluable international political capital as a vibrant democracy which has successfully held together a very diverse population professing different creeds and faiths and celebrating dissent and debate. The holding of yet another general election is a reaffirmation of democracy but the political discourse accompanying it is not. We are in danger of diminishing what makes India unique as a country, held up as a model of plural and secular democracy. On this count, the minuses of the Modi government exceed its pluses. 

The writer is a former Foreign Secretary and is currently a Senior Fellow at CPR