Hands full: Modi’s foreign policy is on track.

PRIME Minister Narendra Modi is on a five-nation trip, making on June 4 a whistle-stop in Afghanistan — to inaugurate the Salma Dam on the Hariud, which will irrigate 640 villages around Herat, besides generating power — en route to a two-day stopover in Qatar. He then swung through Switzerland on June 6, before arriving in the US for his seventh meeting with President Barack Obama in the PM’s two years in office. The joint statement calls it the “third major bilateral summit” between the two leaders. He would return to India via Mexico, having crunched five countries in a week or less. Gone were the diaspora hooplas or extended detours into the hinterland. Modi, the working statesman,  had arrived.  The underlying themes were those  etched during earlier visits — consolidate past work; explore economic advancement and dovetail it into the PM’s vision, like ‘Make in India’; reposition India in a world witnessing the rise of China, radical Islam and economic slowdown; and seek, as the joint statement’s title spells it, ‘enduring global partners’. There were, however, specific reasons for each stopover or longer engagement on the way to the US, on which the trip was focussed.Afghanistan has been for India,  since Independence, an important counter-balance to Pakistan, and since 1996, when the Taliban captured Kabul, and specifically 1998, when a hijacked Indian plane ended up in Kandahar — a region where Pakistan influence via surrogates had to be curtailed. The Salma Dam was part of India’s strategy, denied by the US a security role since its intervention in 2001, to use development projects to consolidate partnership. The dam construction in the face of Taliban attacks, sponsored mostly by Pakistan or allegedly even Iran (which as a lower riparian beneficiary resents the blockage of water), was the victory of resolve over disruption. The PM’s presence and hyperbolic address went down well in a nation seeking pacification and stability. The visit to Qatar was part of Modi’s  outreach to Gulf nations, balancing between the Sunni and Shia powers, the latter led by Iran. Qatar has been a principal supplier of LNG and LPG to India, despite neighbouring Iran having competing large reserves of gas. Qatar has deep pockets and a small population, though as an adherent to the Wahabbi brand of Islam of Saudi Arabian provenance —  albeit more tolerant — it has boxed above its international weight by two means: the ruling family-owned crusading Al Jazeera news channel; and sponsorship of disparate extreme right-wing affiliates in the post-Arab Spring battles in Libya, Syria, etc. Unmentioned during the PM’s visit was the need to consider a sub-sea natural gas pipeline, aligned from Oman to Gujarat, to carry both Iranian and Qatari gas, as the source is a shared gas field. India has invited Qatar to join the second phase of Indian strategic oil reserve storage. Besides the usual homilies about India’s visionary conceptions about smart, clean and connected cities, the  Qatar Investment Authority was approached to open its purse strings and direct investment in India. The success of this and approaches to other five Gulf Cooperation Council nations depends on the follow-up and creation of an enabling environment for them to look at India as more than a supplier of manpower, a civil aviation junior partner and the exporter of select commodities. The Swiss refuelling halt and meeting with the Swiss President was focussed on obtaining support for India’s membership of the NSG, which, with Mexico, are the few remaining nations with reservations; and to seek better cooperation in investigating black money transfers. On the first there was success; on the second there was dissimulation and promise of an early agreement on an automatic exchange of information. Switzerland, some years ago, had already agreed to cooperate if India could establish criminality of account holders. The problem is that India is often on a fishing expedition based on sketchy evidence. The US was the prime reason for the visit. With time running out for the Obama presidency and with over 50 sub-groups devoted to examining different aspects of the bilateral engagement, there was a dire need to consolidate, give a top-down push and recommit to a strategic vision adumbrated in the declarations during Obama’s India visit in  2015. Foreign Secretary S Jaishankar called it sketching the road map for the vision statements of the past. President Obama pushed legacy issues like climate change, fearing that a Trump victory could unravel the Paris Accord, which the US wants made operational before December. India, in turn, has sought financial and technical commitments to move to cleaner non-fossil fuel energy before it ratifies the accord. The additional burden of curtailing hydrofluorocarbons under the amended Montreal Protocol puts India in a further financial and economic conundrum. But it is crucial the two largest polluters — the US (17.89%) and China (20%) — ratify it first. For the Paris Accord’s operationalisation, at least 55 signatory states, out of the 190-odd signing, and whose total emissions exceed 55 per cent of global emissions, must ratify it. The US has a long list of demands concerning trade, intellectual property rights, market and financial reforms, which perhaps the Obama administration realises it no longer has time to pursue. Two issues, however, needed addressing. One was to bring the civil nuclear cooperation — the US having done the heavy lifting to get India the waiver from the NSG — back on track. A significant announcement was, after steady effort to address the issue of suppliers’ liability, that contracts relating to six AP 1000 reactors of Westinghouse would be finalised within a year. The related issue of Indian membership of the NSG was flagged. The US will push China, but ultimately, China would want to extract some promise of a similar deal later for Pakistan. India, too, will have to bilaterally soften China, which would not want to be isolated or push India more stoutly into US arms. The second issue was defence cooperation, including co-production, transfer of technology and inter-operability of forces and logistics. “Strategic independence” has been a cornerstone of Indian foreign policy since Independence. Post-Cold War, India has been evolving towards selective partnerships. The finalisation of the Logistics Exchange Memorandum of Agreement and Modi laying a wreath at the tomb of the Unknown Soldier were signals that India was moving towards a new kind of big power engagement. The raison d’etre has been the rise of China, its unabashed transfer of weapons of mass destruction technology and delivery systems to Pakistan and mutating radical Islamist groups which have degraded the Indian and South Asian security environment. The Modi visit has taken the next logical step in that direction. Ironically, while the joint statement talks of “shared values of freedom, democracy, universal human rights, tolerance and pluralism”, a caucus of the US Congress examines India’s poor record on this count. Highlighting the same paradox has been the fracas over the ham-handed censoring of Udta Punjab, depicting the nexus between politics and drugs. The media attention that the director got, distracting from Modi visit’s coverage, demonstrates that Modi the politician and Modi the statesman cannot function in silos. Hopefully, he would have deduced during his tete-a-tete with his “friend” Obama that what endangers democracies the most are not external threats, but the Trumps within. The writer is a former Secretary, Ministry of External Affairs