Modi's diplomacy focus is at the right place - in the neighbourhood
IndIa’s foreIgn policy priorities under Prime Minister Narendra Modi are at the right place. They are where it should have been all along — in its neighbourhood. The ties are dictated by economic benefits, and rightly so.
In the past ten months, Modi has changed the way India looks at its neighbours, and how the neighbours perceive India. Being the largest and the most affluent of the South Asian nations and its extended neighbourhood, India, under Modi, has offered to carry the responsibility of taking along others to prosperity. That has generated hope. His inclusive approach helped him give a call to India’s scientific community to prepare a SAARC (South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation) satellite, displaying eagerness to share India’s superiority in space technologies with the neighbours for the benign purposes of education and economic progress. He has also virtually declared that the neighbouring nations would have the first right to benefit from India’s economic prosperity and that his priority would be to share the riches by creating opportunities for the smaller SAARC nations.
Amid China’s economic slowdown, India has raised its own bar by aiming high for a double digit growth in the days to come, allowing for other South Asian nations to draw some trade benefits out of the affluence of their larger neighbour. Finance Minister Arun Jaitley has already predicted a nine to ten per cent consistent growth in the coming days, so as to help meet the country’s multifarious development challenges. This economic growth and development in India are expected to rub-off on its neighbours such as Bhutan, Nepal, Sri Lanka and the Maldives. Bilateral visits and reciprocation from and to most of the neighbouring countries in the first ten months of the Modi government has had the effect of India easing back into the leadership role in the region. The previous ten years had seen difficulties in this regard. Most of India’s neighbours were miffed with New Delhi for not being magnanimous enough.
Whoever advised Modi — his National Security Adviser Ajit K Doval is being credited for it — in this regard or it could have been his own idea, the Prime Minister displayed his astuteness in diplomacy by inviting the South Asian leaders, including Pakistan’s Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, to his swearing-in ceremony.
Modi’s stature increased the moment most national leaders from SAARC and the extended neighbourhood arrived in Delhi to greet the new Indian prime minister. The bilateral, handled deftly, on the first day in office only added to Modi’s aura as an emerging global leader. That has been on ample display in these months, as Modi is comfortable in the company of global leaders, including American President Barack Obama, at bilateral and at multilateral levels such as the United Nations, G-20 or the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). At the Thimpu SAARC Summit, Modi had reminded the leaders that the idea of SAARC invited cynicism and scepticism as reactions. He showed how this can be changed for the better. Amid efforts by some nations within the SAARC to scuttle a larger cooperation agreement towards economic integration of the region, India handled the situation with tact to ensure an energy cooperation agreement as an outcome.
Modi also made a strong pitch for open borders and collective economic responsibility among SAARC nations. He also raised valid questions about how much the member states had done in SAARC to turn natural wealth into shared prosperity — or borders into bridgeheads, for that matter. He also displayed leadership when he declared that India would anyway forge ahead with better economic ties with friendly nations in the regional grouping, whether others would like to come on board or not. India under Modi has given five South Asian nations duty-free access to over 99 per cent of their goods. As the biggest nation in the South Asian region, India is now ready to do its part.
Modi also indicated the South Asian region is his priority when he chose Bhutan for his first official visit abroad. Since then, his visits to Nepal, Sri Lanka and Myanmar, either for bilateral or multilateral meets, have evinced keen interest in those nations for larger, friendly ties with India. These visits have also helped in deflecting the Chinese impact on these nations in India’s neighbourhood, increasing New Delhi’s influence in those nations, if not reducing China’s. For reasons rooted in cultural similarities and history, India’s neighbours would be more than happy to reignite their strong ties with New Delhi.
Borrowing from what Modi said in a different context: If the neighbouring nations take one step towards India, India needs to take two steps towards these nations. The only hurdle seems to be Pakistan, with which India has a blow-hot-blow-cold relationship. The days to come should make the Pakistani leadership realise the benefits that may accrue for their citizenry if there are better ties with India. It is in Pakistan’s interest to ensure terror groups do not gain an upper hand and lead Islamabad down the path of destruction, as is being witnessed in West Asia.
Terrorism and the support it gets within Pakistan, and to a larger extent Kashmir, seem to be the two major sticking points in the India-Pakistan bilateral narrative. If terrorism is addressed by Pakistan, then it will only lead to the Kashmir question being discussed between the neighbours and a possible solution to the satisfaction of all. Modi, as the strongest Indian prime minister in three decades, has the mandate to ensure peace with Pakistan. India aspires to get its rightful place as a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council. For that, friendly and benign relations with its neighbours are a sure shot way to attain greater status among the comity of nations. India under Modi is emerging as the undisputed leader, if not of Asia, at least of South Asia.