Many firsts amid some strained ties: Assessing PM's foreign tours in 2024

PM's visits to Russia, Ukraine, Nigeria, and Guyana were historic for many reasons. But relations with Canada, Bangladesh remained tense in 2024

New Delhi set a frenetic pace in its foreign relations outreach in 2024, with Prime Minister (PM) Narendra Modi, over and above performing his duties as his party’s lead campaigner in the Lok Sabha and Assembly elections, visiting more countries than he had since 2018.

 

In 2024, the PM embarked on 11 foreign tours, visiting 16 countries — more than he had undertaken in a single year since 2019, which also saw a Lok Sabha election. 

 

In 2019, the PM went on 11 foreign tours, visiting 14 countries. In 2018, he embarked on 14 foreign tours, visiting 20 countries.

 

However, during his second term, the PM’s foreign visits were less frequent than the first, partly due to the two years of the Covid-19 pandemic, during which he went on three foreign tours, visiting four countries in 2021. He made no foreign visits in 2020.

 

In 2022 and 2023, the PM’s foreign visits were fewer than they had been during his first term. In 2022, according to data from the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) and the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO), the PM went on seven foreign tours, visiting 10 countries. In 2023, he visited 9 countries during six foreign trips.

 

In 2024, the PM’s domestic responsibilities included extensive campaigning for his party and its allies, the Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance, in the Lok Sabha and eight Assembly polls — four of which took place simultaneously with the Lok Sabha elections and four later. 

 

Throughout the year, he undertook 11 foreign tours, visiting 16 countries. Of these 11 tours, two were before the April-May Lok Sabha polls — one to the  UAE and Qatar in mid-February, and another to Bhutan in late March. He completed nine tours after the elections, visiting 13 countries, including two trips to Russia.

 

Modi was in Moscow for a summit meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in August and attended the Brics Summit in October. A highlight of this summit was his talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping on October 23, on the sidelines of the event. The 50-minute meeting indicated a desire to achieve a thaw in the border tensions that have hobbled bilateral ties for the past four and a half years since the Galwan clash.

 

Since his return as the PM for a third straight term, Modi’s first visit was to Italy to attend the G7 Outreach Summit in mid-June. However, it was his next visits — first to Russia and Austria from July 8 to 10, and then to Ukraine and Poland from August 21 to 23 — that caught global attention.

 

Modi was one of the few leaders in 2024 to visit both Moscow, where he held a summit meeting with the Russian President Vladimir Putin, and Kyiv to meet Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. US and European leaders criticised Modi for meeting Putin in Moscow, where their hug, a dinner, and a ride around in an e-cart took place while Russia was at war with Ukraine. This included a series of airstrikes on Ukraine, including on Kyiv’s largest children’s hospital, during the time the Indian PM was in Moscow.

 

Zelenskyy expressed his “huge disappointment” at the Indian PM hugging the Russian leader. Six weeks later, Modi made a historic visit to Kyiv and hugged Zelenskyy, telling him that he was prepared to play a personal role to bring peace. He said he had told Putin that problems could not be resolved on the battlefield and that only dialogue was the way forward.

 

The year 2025 may again witness closer India-Russia engagement, with Putin likely to visit New Delhi early next year — his first visit to India since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Earlier this month, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh was in Moscow, where he met with Putin. Singh said India had made a conscious decision to deepen its ties with Russia despite geopolitical challenges and pressures.

 

Other key foreign tours by the PM in 2024 included a three-day visit to the US in September, where he attended the Quad Summit and addressed the Indian diaspora. In November, the PM visited Nigeria, the first by an Indian PM in 17 years, and travelled to Guyana, also the first by an Indian PM in 56 years. The year saw India’s ties with Canada reach their nadir, with the two countries expelling their respective diplomats over the issue of the killing of Hardeep Singh Nijjar.

 

In the neighbourhood, the South Bloc looked on with concern as leaders who leaned closer to Beijing were elected in the Maldives and Sri Lanka, though it reached out to the new governments. But in Bangladesh, India repeatedly expressed concerns to the interim government led by Muhammad Yunus regarding attacks on minorities, especially Hindus, in the wake of protests that forced Sheikh Hasina to resign as PM and take refuge in India in August. Earlier this month, Bangladesh sought Hasina’s extradition, a request New Delhi is unlikely to accede to.

 

In October, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar travelled to Islamabad to attend the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation Summit, where he met Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif. Jaishankar had a busy year, undertaking 22 foreign tours compared to 15 in 2023 and 19 in 2022. He ended the year with a six-day visit to the US from December 24 to 29 as New Delhi prepared for the Donald Trump presidency.