Sceptics and Modi-baiters were in his initial months in prime ministerial office mocking at his frequent foreign trips, making those out to be worthless jaunts meant for his personal pleasure. It was indeed wrong for them to do so considering the strategic inputs and the hard work the prime minister and his key advisers including then External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj had been putting in and the impact he (Modi) had been creating among audiences abroad and key governments overseas.
Leading the pack of cynics was Congress president Rahul Gandhi whose understanding of international affairs suffers from serious limitations and who had a tendency to not look beyond his nose. The recent Lok Sabha election results have shown that Modi’s popularity rating among the people remains high five years after he assumed office in his first term which is unusual in these times of high expectations. By inference, the ‘Modi pleasure jaunts’ theory fell by the wayside.
The response of the Indian diaspora in the countries in which he chose to address the ethnic Indians was breathtaking. There was a euphoria that had no parallel. There was a perceptible sense of pride that got generated among Indians abroad after a long time.
After the impressive poll win, Modi’s stature among world leaders has improved further. It is remarkable how a grassroots man is today admired the world over and carries the day among world leaders with felicity.
While the prime minister’s record in his government’s handling of the economy has been called to question and it is recognised on all hands that demonetisation proved a disaster due to poor preparation and implementation, it is external relations in which Modi has held his own.
At the recent G-20 Tokyo summit, in an atmosphere characterised by US-China trade tensions, it was India that exerted a sobering and in fact a warming influence. Modi joined Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe and US president Donald Trump in a trilateral grouping. He, then, met Chinese president Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin where the focus was on globalisation, on maintaining “liberalisation of trade”, “free trading system, an open trading system, a rule-based trading ystem, to oppose the tendency towards protectionism and to give a proper direction to WTO reform.”
Modi also joined a meeting of BRICS leaders (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) and followed that up with a series of bilaterals with Abe, Trump, South Korea President Moon Jae-in, Saudi Arabia Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, among others. This was more than any other leader could have achieved in a space of two days of summitry.
The benefits from such pro-active diplomacy were seen in the way the Chinese caved in a few months ago to persistent Indian pressure to declare Pakistan terror mastermind Masood Azhar as an international terrorist. Had the Chinese not seen that they were isolated in the international community on this issue, they would never have succumbed to Indian pressure which amounted to swallowing their pride. That Indian pressure has ebbed as Masood Azhar roams around freely in Pakistan is, however, a reality which we cannot ignore.
At the Tokyo summit, Donald Trump sang a different tune from the shrill rhetoric against Indian trade policies when he described current Indo-US relations as the best ever and sounded conciliatory on trade issues. Trump is an unpredictable species, but apparently, he was taken in by the wide acceptance that Modi enjoyed at the Tokyo summit.
As Foreign Secretary Vijay Gokhale said in a media briefing after Modi’s meetings with Xi and Putin, India was out to promote a “multipolar world” with “many centres of influence and stability.”
There was a renewed Indian consciousness to play a stellar role to influence international affairs. How that would pan out in a world in which the Americans leave no stone unturned to assert their superior status and China seeks to assume a greater role as a counterpoise to the US remains to be seen.
There is no doubt that the getting together of US, Japan, Australia and India has made Chinese hegemonic actions in the Asia-Pacific more muted and less assertive. It is also all quiet on the South China Sea front where Beijing had been very assertive in the past. Though Beijing cannot be trusted beyond a point, the recent Chinese assertion that India has nothing to fear from China gives an indication of India’s growing clout and of its heightened military preparedness to meet any eventuality.
The Russians had for some time been leaning towards Pakistan but that process has been halted with the Modi government’s recent S-400 missile deal with Moscow in the face of US pressure to opt for an American alternative.
All in all, Modi’s brand of diplomacy is reflected in many strands, the most notable of which is the virtually universal acceptance that Pakistan is a sponsor of terror against India. That even among some Muslim countries there is a grudging acceptance of this is a plus for India.
The writer is a political commentator and columnist. He has authored four books.
