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No prime minister of India has travelled to as many countries in the first year of his tenure, or hosted foreign guests with as much fanfare, as Narendra Modi. Many, including his supporters, had feared foreign policy might turn out to be the Achilles’ heel of the former Gujarat chief minister. But Modi, ably assisted by a low-profile and largely unsung external affairs minister in Sushma Swaraj, has taken to foreign policy as consummately as he is said to have to his work as a Sangh pracharak in the 1980s.
The hallmark of his tenure has been outreach to India’s smaller neighbours. This has included visits to Thimphu, Kathmandu, Colombo and Naypyidaw; quick footedness in organising assistance to earthquake-hit Nepal; and delivering to Dhaka the long-awaited Land Boundary Agreement. A visit to Bangladesh is scheduled in the coming weeks.
The prime minister is also known to cut through bureaucratic hierarchy in South Block and engage directly with junior diplomats. He has been ruthless in finding suitable officers to run key desks, and in weeding out those he considers not in step with his scheme of things. In end-January, the Modi government dismissed foreign secretary Sujatha Singh and replaced her with S Jaishankar, who was to retire within the next 72 hours. The move was typically cold-blooded, with Modi ignoring pleas that Singh be accorded a more honourable exit.
The prime minister has also emerged as an energetic globetrotter. He has visited 17 countries in the past year, including two visits to Kathmandu, and has spent 53 days, or one in every seven days, outside India. To put these numbers in context, predecessor Manmohan Singh, by far the most travelled occupant of the prime ministerial office, spent 47 days outside, visiting 12 countries, during the first year of his second term. Modi’s have been more of bilateral visits while those of Singh were mostly to attend multilateral events.
Modi, the good event manager that Bharatiya Janata Party senior leader L K Advani considers him to be, has a panache for exploiting his foreign sojourns to showcase his popularity as a world leader by addressing well-attended meetings of the Indian diaspora, a community he has cultivated assiduously. Modi has also addressed over half a dozen parliaments.
He has turned hosting of foreign dignitaries into much publicised occasions, announcing the events with the dexterity of a magician pulling a rabbit out of a hat. Modi amazed foreign policy wonks by inviting heads of states and governments of South Asian neighbours, including Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, to New Delhi to attend his oath-taking ceremony. His breaking the news on Twitter of US President Barack Obama attending the Republic Day parade as the chief guest left the media breathless.
But the surprise, if any, at his dynamism in handling foreign policy issues has stemmed primarily from low expectations. Historically, nearly all Indian prime ministers, from Jawaharlal Nehru to Manmohan Singh, have found it easier to stamp their presence on the international stage than grapple with messy domestic politics.
In Modi’s case, the aftermath of the 2002 communal riots under his watch in Gujarat, when he was denied a visa to visit the US and criticism from much of western European nations, have contributed to the vengeance with which the prime minister has courted the world. The prime minister has visited France, Germany, Canada, the US and Australia. He has also paid attention to New Delhi’s Asian interests by visiting Japan, Mongolia, China, South Korea and Brazil, as also Seychelles, Fiji and Mauritius.
There have been mis-steps. It caused the Modi government some blushes when Chinese troops intruded into the Ladakh sector just as the prime minister was hosting Chinese President Xi Jinping in Ahmedabad, or when the US president lectured India about religious tolerance in the wake of attacks on churches. Modi’s wearing of a monogrammed suit during Obama’s visit and exuding embarrassing familiarity with him were avoidable. The flip-flop on Hurriyat leaders meeting the Pakistani high commissioner revealed muddled thinking.
Modi’s agenda for the next year is likely to be consolidating India-Africa relations by hosting a summit, visiting Teheran and some Central Asian nations. According to a minister in the government, the prime minister’s ultimate ambition is to replicate Atal Bihari Vajpayee by visiting Pakistan and possibly even have a shot at the Nobel Peace Prize.
