India under PM Modi is ready to align with all countries, linking up with which will advance the interests of the 1.4 billion population of the country.
NEW DELHI: Firm direction and the setting up of guardrails to prevent mishaps have become clearly visible in the foreign policy designed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and ably articulated by External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar. The 10-year US-India defence agreement, combined with the eight-day tour of the PM illustrates the direction of policy.
The countries visited are each immensely significant in various ways. Portuguese-speaking Brazil and Spanish-speaking Argentina play a lead role in South America, a continent that has begun to acquire traction, including in but not limited to the Global South. Ghana and Namibia have the potential of displacing China as by far the lead exporter of Rare Earths, an item of critical importance in much of what we do.
While the two African friends of India would each gain substantially from such a switch from China, so would India, by moving away from reliance on a country that is hostile to India. An innovation of our foreign policy is the effective setting up of a West Asia Quad comprising Cyprus, Greece and Armenia along with India. Such an alliance would pose a serious challenge to the efforts by President Erdogan to make China ally with Turkey, the lead power in a region of vital importance inter alia to sea routes.
The IMEC (India Middle-East Europe Corridor) is also making headway, and in this the Arabian Gulf allies of India such as the UAE are playing a very helpful role. The India-US defence agreement is further proof of the wisdom of President Trump in choosing individuals capable of working jointly with India to secure the Indo-Pacific.
In these ten years, at an accelerating pace during Modi 3.0 and 4.0, the PM will clean away the dirt being left behind by corrupt elements, who are carefully being identified and weeded out. To take an example, as recent prosecutions have shown, SEBI has begun to recover its intended purpose of protecting retail investors, several million of whom had their entire savings wiped out by unscrupulous market manipulators during previous decades. H H Te n z i n Gyatso, XIV Dalai Lama of Tibet has set up the only legitimate authority to choose his successor. Any other socalled Dalai Lama will be accepted only by China and its satellites and certainly not by the Quad members in the Indo-Pacific.
India has remained consistent in supporting the right of the Tibetan people to choose their own spiritual leader and not accept any usurper sought to be imposed by Beijing. The fake Dalai Lama may take up his abode in the Potala Palace in Lhasa, but the building has been bereft of its spiritual centrality in Tibetan culture and beliefs since 1956, when HH the Dalai Lama had to go into exile in India to escape the dragnet being put out for him by the Peoples Armed Police and the Peoples Liberation Army of China.
Wherever the Dalai Lama stays in is the spiritual centre of gravity of the Tibetan people. Someday, if not the XIV Dalai Lama, but the XV Dalai Lama will be able to return with honour to the Potala, due to the efforts not only of external powers but the rebellion of the Chinese people against the CCP regime. Popular discontent is rising, as is hostility to the authoritarian overreach of CCP General Secretary Xi Jinping, who has become the sole individual formally controlling all state policy through the micro-management of the Office of the General Secretary over the different branches of the CCP.
When the Soviet Union imploded within 1991, several foreign policy experts and commentators were writing or saying that it would continue indefinitely. In the same way, at the time when just such an implosion of the CCP has occurred in China, expert commentators would be saying that the party would continue indefinitely in power. They ought not to be faulted, for such would be the situation as seen by them Under the direction of PM Modi and implemented by EAM Jaishankar as well as by the PMO working in synchronicity, India is maintaining equally good relations with anti-Russian European powers such as France under Emmanuel Macron and Britain under Keir Starmer as well as with the Russian Federation.
While Brazil was unwilling to give an assurance that it would not arrest President Putin were he to attend the 2025 BRICS Summit in Rio de Janeiro, India has had no hesitation in extending a welcome to President Putin in his forthcoming visit to Delhi, just as it will welcome President Trump, Prime Minister Ishiba, Prime Minister Albanese and Prime Minister Starmer to the forthcoming Quad Summit in India. Words such as “All-Alignment” have become commonplace in the parlance of several foreign policy experts in India.
Alignment with “all” to those unfamiliar with the subtle shades of meaning of diplomatese imply to the lay public that India is willing to align with any country in the world, which is not what professional foreign policy practitioners mean when they use that word. What it means is that India under PM Modi is ready to align with all countries, linking up with which will advance the interests of the 1.4 billion population of the country, as the few of many examples of such a policy demonstrate.
The years until Modi 4.0 ends in 2034 will be hugely consequential for the world for the rest of the present century. In the churn causing such changes in circumstances, India would play a role rivalled in importance only the US, which by then would emerge as a steadfast partner, most likely under the Presidentship of Trump loyalist Vice-President J.D. Vance. Fasten seat belts, for much turbulence ending not in tragedy but in safety would be the eventual outcome. Each year, the churn, change, significance and outcome would rise, until the same reaches a safe landing for the democracies, the largest of which are the US and India, which by then would have emerged as the second superpower, displacing China.
