 "How re-energised focus on ‘Neighbourhood First’ under Modi 3.0 can work wonders")
After his famous maiden inauguration as India’s Prime Minister in 2014, incumbent Narendra Modi has begun inviting Heads of State and Government from the immediate neighbourhood for his swearing-in for the third time in a row, thus signalling a re-energised focus on his fading call for ‘Neighbourhood First’ a decade ago.
In fact, news reports on the invitation for neighbourhood leaders coincided with the ruling BJP-NDA naming Modi as the Head of Government for a historic third consecutive term, equaling the feat of the nation’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, decades ago.
The formal meeting of his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) electing him as their parliamentary party leader, the presidential invitation for him to form a government were all to follow, indicating how Team Modi had worked backwards to ensure that the invited guests had time to re-arrange their schedule to be able to honour the Indian invitation.
There is a difference, however. There is no news, at least as yet, that New Delhi intends to invite Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif for the Modi 3.0 inaugural. The highlight of the Modi 1.0 inauguration was the presence of Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif. This time around, his PML (N) is back in power, and PM Shehbaz is his brother.
Through the past years of Pakistan’s economic meltdown, ordinary Pakistanis, their media columnists, and even politicians have been commenting positively on India’s economic progress since Partition and Independence, especially since the advent of the reform era in the early nineties, with pointed reference to the growth under the Modi decade. Nawaz Sharif, too, added his bit.
Impact Shorts
More ShortsThe question is whether Modi 3.0 will herald a final negotiated settlement to the India-Pakistan imbroglio that is as old as Partition and Independence. The answer cannot be as simplistic as the question. But, yes, both nuclear powers moving in that direction without any torpedoing intervention by Pakistan’s military command, starting with the ISI, will be an epoch-making moment for both nations and their respective leaders. The region needs respite from the piling-up of arms, which is now possible for Pakistan, but New Delhi has no respite as long as China continues with its encirclement of India, if not brutally bludgeoning Indian soldiers, as happened at Galwan in 2020.
Cynosure of all eyes
The Indian media and people have a special interest in following a prime ministerial visit from Pakistan. In its possible absence this time, Maldivian President Mohamed Muizzu may be the foreign dignitary to be the cynosure of all eyes in New Delhi. It is Muizzu’s maiden visit to India after assuming the presidency in November last year. Earlier, in his official capacity as Works Minister, he had accompanied President Mohamed Waheed Hassan Manik to Delhi at the height of the ‘GMR controversy’ in 2012.
This is Muizzu’s first visit to India. The Indian media has not stopped pointing out how his predecessors, including his estranged ideological mentor and jailed former President Abdulla Yameen, had made New Delhi their maiden overseas presidential destination, whereas Muizzu chose distant Turkey first and later China for a ‘state’ visit, respectively, in December and January. That India was waiting for a suitable moment for a productive presidential visit after bilateral consultations with the new government on matters of mutual interest, including economic cooperation, has not appealed to them as reason enough for an otherwise predictable delay in Muizzu’s Delhi visit.
Yet, there is no denying the continued discomfort bordering on doubts and suspicions in India, as the Muizzu government is seemingly eager to take forward defence cooperation agreements with China, independent of whatever their form and content.
In geo-strategic terms, even an overseas training programme, like military exercises, has multiple purposes and interpretations. In effect, the Muizzu government is keen to proceed with pending and possibly new economic programmes and developmental projects involving India, starting with debt-restructuring, the process of which New Delhi set in motion soon after the recent visit of Maldivian Foreign Minister Moosa Zameer.
Yet, the future course of India-Maldives relations could be set in motion at the bilateral talks that may follow the swearing-in ceremony. Unlike when President Yameen participated in Modi’s maiden swearing-in ceremony as prime minister, Muizzu is visiting at a time when Modi 3.0 can involve itself in substantive talks with this visitor as also others. The joint statement, if any, at the conclusion of the prime minister’s meetings with each of these neighbourhood leaders can provide some insights into the shape of things to come, both in bilateral and regional terms.
New vigour
India’s foreign policy under Modi 1.0 and 2.0 was muscular and sensitive at the same time, driven by what Americans for long have been describing as ‘supreme self-interest’. Overall, these two terms were both arrival statements, good and proper, just as Nehru’s foreign policy and visits were at the turn of Independence and Indira Gandhi’s during and after the ‘Bangladesh War’, which combined geo-political tactics with military strategy. Likewise, Pokhran I & II, under Indira Gandhi and Vajpayee, carried a message of their own: not to leave out India’s forays into space from then on.
Where India needed to respond in words, New Delhi under Modi, with External Affairs Minister (EAM) S Jaishankar in tow under Modi 2.0, did not hold back. Where it had to hold out, it did so with grace and poise. Thus, when it came to putting Indian interests ahead, India did not flinch from procuring Russian oil since the commencement of the Ukraine War (2022), defying the US-led Western sanctions.
EAM Jaishankar had no hesitation in telling Western Europe on a public platform that they could not continue to consider that only their problem was the world’s problem and not vice versa, as used to be the case in their era of colonialism.
Thus, on issues of human rights, New Delhi did not hesitate to tick off the American ‘ally’ and one-time Canadian friend, alike, though the specifics differed drastically. That has not stopped India from doing business with the US on other fronts, and so too with other western nations. This owes as much to India’s inherent strengths as a large market and manufacturing facility at the same time as to PM Modi’s enunciation of India’s overall philosophical approach to foreign policy, by citing the ancient one-liner, ‘Vasudeva Kudumbakam’ in Sanskrit and ‘Yadhum Oore, Yavarum Kelir’ in Tamil. Both imply the same: ‘The world is one big family.’
Nowhere else did India demonstrate the spirit of this adage better than in the immediate neighbourhood. During the unprecedented global lockdown during Covid-19 pandemic, India rushed to provide food, medicines, and testing kits to all willing neighbours (offering them even to Pakistan), apart from financial assistance. Post-Covid, when Sri Lanka slipped into an equally unprecedented economic crisis, New Delhi was ready with food, fuel, and financial assistance of every kind. It has since stood by the pre-crisis commitments on bilateral economic cooperation, which involves massive, risk-bearing investments by the Indian public and private sectors to ensure energy security and tourism revenues in the medium and long term.
India’s developmental commitments to and cooperation with other neighbourhood nations, comprising Bangladesh, Bhutan, and Nepal, are no different. Modi 3.0 may set a new phase and pace in the matter, injecting new vigour into bilateral and multilateral processes. With a fuller understanding between nations and on issues, and with inputs of every kind that India alone is capable of providing owing to its size and taken forward in the right spirit, the South Asian region could evolve into a common market where commonality among the peoples and systems, starting with the shared experience of democracy, can work wonders for individual nations and their individual citizens.
Modi 3.0 can only take the initiative in the matter; it is for the rest of them all to cooperate and collaborate through a frank and full exchange of views, which, however, seems to be lacking.
The writer is a Chennai-based Policy Analyst & Political Commentator. Email: sathiyam54@nsathiyamoorthy.com. The views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views.
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