Nothing awkward in Modi’s travels, says Sanjaya Baru

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s travels abroad during the first year of his ministry are similar to travels abroad by former Prime Ministers in their first years. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh too travelled extensively in his first year in office, his media adviser, chief spokesperson, and author of the book The Accidental Prime Minister Sanjaya Baru has said.

He was delivering a lecture on India’s foreign diplomacy in the Modi age organised by the city-based Centre for Public Policy Research here on Wednesday.

Mr. Baru said the Prime Minister had no big exposure to the world unlike his predecessor and therefore he was trying to get to know the world better through his travels.

Media storm over Mr. Modi’s travels had no much substance to it, he said.

The core and focus of India’s foreign policy was its economic development and Mr. Modi was only following in the footsteps of Jawaharlal Nehru and Narasimha Rao, who, without any doubt had laid the cornerstone of India’s foreign policy and its relationship with other countries.

However, the Cold War created confusion about our goals and strategies. India took an almost isolationist stand looking at imports and exports as creating a dependent State. But the fall of Russia, the balance-of-payment crisis, and introduction of the economic liberalisation process had helped India realise that today’s world is one of inter-dependencies, Mr. Baru said.

For this reason, India’s relationship with China and Pakistan cannot be decided by the border issue alone because a prosperous China needed India just as a prosperous India needed China and its other neighbours, he added.