The Times of India/ by Indrani Bagchi
It was after the first dinner between Narendra Modi and Barack Obama on September 29 that the Indian side received a call from the White House. The president, they said, wanted to go with Modi to visit the Martin Luther King memorial the next day. On Tuesday, Modi rode “The Beast” with Obama and wrote a new chapter in bilateral ties. That journey was powered by a high-voltage show at Madison Square, but involved a level of painstaking planning unusual for the Indian system.
First, Modi succeeded in changing the India narrative. “We are no more a ‘could-have-been’ power,” said many of those present at the various meetings. The scorching pace of 35 meetings set by the fasting PM showed very clearly that Modi went to the US with a clear strategy, one that would stretch well beyond the visit.
Unlike both Vajpayee and Manmohan Singh, Modi went to the US with a strong domestic agenda. Modi’s aim was to converge his domestic priorities with his foreign policy, which explains why the joint statement bears such a strong stamp of the prime minister himself. Modi put his shoulder to the wheel to turn India’s US policy to align itself to India’s domestic transformation and its global aspirations. In many ways, that is his greatest success.
The India story had a global bounce until 2009, but in the past few years, the narrative has wilted, dogged by myriad problems in India. Modi’s primary intention was to inject energy into the India story, and to turn that narrative around. Modi’s big outreach was with the US business community – he met 11 companies together and six CEOs individually. These were no accident. Indian officials had approached each one of these companies weeks in advance, and got..Read more
The views expressed above are the personal views of the writer.
