Narendra Modi’s whims in our backyard

The second (and more worrying) half of Modi’s report card begins with the neighbourhood, which is where any government must act with the greatest caution and sensitivity to balance our national interests with regional circumstances beyond our control.

The most glaring red herring has been the way Modi’s government has handled India’s relationship with China particularly the complete mismanagement of the situation in Doklam, which the government claimed, had been resolved in August, 2017. But the PR exercise that Modi Inc. managed to spin from that event was undone a few months later when consistent reports and publicly available satellite imagery all pointed out that the Chinese were consolidating their presence at the Himalayan plateau that directly overlooks India’s strategic Siliguri corridor.

But the inconsistency in this government’s foreign policy style and narrative is not new to be sure. In the lead-up to and during his election campaign in 2014, Modi and the BJP had constantly berated the Government of India for being unable to do anything about frequent Chinese incursions across the disputed frontier. Two years later, the same Mr Modi not only embarked on a stream of effusive meetings with both the Chinese President (with who he shared much publicised bonhomie on several occasions) and Foreign Minister, but also invited China to help modernise the Indian Railways and has removed government restrictions on Chinese investment in sensitive sectors like ports and telecoms.

As to the border incursions, the BJP government echoed the very line it had denounced when the Congress government uttered it—that since the two countries have differing perceptions of where the border lies, each patrols in areas the other considers to be theirs. What was excoriated by Modi as pusillanimity and appeasement in the Congress have now, overnight, become wisdom and statesmanship in the BJP.

The story in the rest of the subcontinent isn’t any better.

Since Mr Modi’s swearing in—a pageant of sorts that saw the premiers of Pakistan, Nepal, Sri Lanka, and Afghanistan in attendance and which was lauded as the grand inauguration of a new chapter in our international relations—India’s ties with Pakistan have witnessed more ups and downs than a child’s yo-yo.

The Prime Minister—a man who systematically obstructed the UPA Government’s peacemaking efforts with Pakistan and whose campaign speeches thrived on demonising that country — had excoriated the Congress for “serving chicken biriyani” to a Pakistani visitor. Now he was exchanging shawls and saris with his Islamabad counterpart, along with sentimental letters to each other’s mothers. (I mischievously tweeted my hope that chicken biriyani would be on Modi’s dinner menu for his Pakistani guest: it wasn’t.)