Narendra Modi’s Three Nation Visit
April 17, 2015
It is no coincidence that the US President Barrack Obama, especially praised Modi for his vision of India in his special article in Time magazine at a time when Modi was still in the middle of of his three-nation visit to France, Germany and Canada.
Business diplomacy, hard-selling India as the best destination for foreign investment to give fillip to his “Make In India” campaign and terror concerns seem the core of Narendra Modi’s foreign policy ever since he took charge as the Prime Minister in May last year.
Besides, India’s quest for a permanent membership of the United Nations Security Council, and to meet its energy concerns through nuclear power are the two other distinctive features of Modi’s foreign visits and negotiations. Besides, the emphasis on India’s youthfulness and the implorations to shun the “old perceptions” about India are important strategic moves. That Modi chose to target the erstwhile United Progressive Alliance government on the coal scam while addressing the Indian diaspora in Paris, could be seen in this light.
Against this backdrop, Modi’s recent three nation tour to France, Germany and Canada could be termed a success. Modi, during his visit, sought to address the problems of complicated procedures for investors and spoke about country desks set up under the aegis of Invest India, which will network with different states to offer a single window to get a walk-through guidance on procedures and norms of doing business in India. He successfully negotiated civil nuclear deals with France and Canada, and also took France on board over the release of the 2008 Mumbai attack’s mastermind Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi by the Pakistani court, which coincided with Modi’s visit to Paris. In Berlin, he raised the pitch against terrorism and while addressing a joint press conference with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, he called for a “comprehensive global strategy to deal with this global challenge (of terror), in which India and Germany can work together”. Germany, because of its superiority in technology, could give a thrust to Modi’s “Make in India” initiative.
During his three-day visit to France, the first European nation that Modi chose to visit as PM, ‘Make in India’ was the theme and both nations signed about 20 pacts, covering areas like civil nuclear energy, urban development, and space and railways (wherein the French National Railways agreed to co-finance an execution study for “a semi-high speed project on upgradation of the Delhi-Chandigarh line to 200 kmph”).
Modi invited investments and technology from France, which responded by pledging 2 billion euros for sustainable development in India.
Modi also visited the Airbus’s manufacturing facility there and the aircraft manufacturer pledged to enhance outsourcing in India from 400 million euros to 2 billion euros over the next five years.
Modi also visited the Airbus’s manufacturing facility there and the aircraft manufacturer pledged to enhance outsourcing in India from 400 million euros to 2 billion euros over the next five years.
Yet an interesting decision that evoked much of criticism as well, and which also marked a departure from the earlier practice of open tender, was the inter-governmental agreement between the two countries for supply of 36 Rafale fighter aircraft from France in fly-way condition, so as to cut red-tapism. The agreement has thus bypassed the log-jammed deal for the supply of 126 such aircrafts which had a thrust on making the war plane manufacturing company, Dassault, lower prices and increase indigenisation to win the tender.
However, there is no clarity on the pricing though there are various reports suggesting that prices could be lower compared to the 126-plane tender bid. Critics of the deal have already started raising question on whether the new agreement shoots down the prospect of building these aircrafts in Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd. and scuttles the prospect of any technology transfer.
Newspaper reports now quote undisclosed government sources saying the government could ask France’s Dassault Aviation to rope in an Indian partner to jointly manufacture the next batch of its Rafale fighters in India, but there is no clarity as yet.
It may be mentioned that the new ruling dispensation under Modi’s has shown a disinclination towards competitive bidding and had earlier also cancelled the light helicopter contract last year.
Another large tender cleared by competitive bidding was to purchase trainer aircraft from Swiss firm Pilatus in 2012. However, the new Modi government reduced the order and gave a large chunk of it to HAL.
The erstwhile United Progressive Alliance government had introduced the L1, or lowest bidder-based competitive bidding process, and the Modi government’s move suggests that this is on the way out and the reasons being attributed to the logic that “choosing the cheapest product after it passes the basic technical evaluation, is not ideally suited to acquiring strategic and cutting-edge systems for the military”. Besides, most military acquisition plans initiated through L1 process, did not see the light of day because of the “the lengthy process of global competition”.
Yet, the reduction in number of purchase of Rafale also effectively means the Indian Air Force settling for three Rafale squadrons instead of the six squadrons of medium multi-role combat aircraft earlier visualised.
In Germany, what grabbed the attention was that Merkel and Modi spent hours together at the Indian and German pavilion at the Hannover Messe, the world’s largest industrial fair. Both the countries agreed to take “proactive steps” to advance collaboration in the field of manufacturing, skill development, urban development, water and waste management, modernisation of Indian railway, cleaning of rivers, renewable energy, education, and research and development cooperation in science and technology.
Symbolisms do work in politics and Modi knows it well. He has used them effectively to make a statement during his foreign visits – whether through the pomp and show at the Madison Square Garden in New York, or by beating a traditional Taiko drum in Tokyo!
Modi has the penchant of making the right noises at an opportune time. In France – a permanent member of the UN Security Council, he not just visited and addressed the UNESCO headquarters in Paris, but also visited a World War-I memorial in the French city of Lillem, where thousands of Indian soldiers were killed during World War-I, to make a strong statement that India wanted the permanent membership of the Council not as a “favour” but as a “right” by virtue of being the largest contributor to the UN Peacekeeping Mission and being the land of Buddha and Gandhi.
It is important that this even prompted China, which is yet to fully endorse India’s permanent membership of the UN Security Council, to support India’s “desire” to play a bigger role at the UN. It said it will strive to work out a “package plan” to reform the powerful organ of the world body. Already Modi has met and made a concerted effort to develop a personal equation with the leaders of at least four of the five permanent member countries – the USA, China, Russia and France, in his short tenure.
Modi is slated to visit China soon.
With regard to India’s civil nuclear programme, an important achievement was India signing two agreements with France, a trusted partner to fast-track the Jaitapur Nuclear Power Plant during Modi’s visit. In Canada too, a country that any Indian PM visited for the first time in the last 42 years, Modi clinched a deal with Ottawa for the Canadian supply of uranium concentrate to India over the next five years that will give a significant boost to India’s nuclear energy programme.
The $ 280 million agreement in this regard was signed in Ottawa during Modi’s two-day visit – the last leg of Modi’s three-nation trip. It is a major achievement considering that Canada had banned the trade of nuclear materials with India in 1976 after India used Canadian technology to make its nuclear bomb. Both countries had, thereafter, finalised a nuclear co-operation agreement in 2012 to pave the way for Canadian firms to export uranium to India but differences over the supervision of the use of uranium in India had delayed ratification of the deal.
Modi termed the deal as a mark of Canada’s “trust and confidence in India”.
The highest level pitch for India’s civil nuclear programme is fetching some results. Earlier, the Indian PM’s visit to Australia had seen similar achievement with Australia offering uranium sale to India. Besides, even China, too, has now shown a keen interest in India’s nuclear energy programme, which had also figured prominently during Modi’s visit to Japan last year, with Modi making a strong case for Japan to consider a nuclear deal to sell nuclear plants and components to India. Modis’ visit to the USA last year, too, fetched a major breakthrough on the issues of Indo-US Civil Nuclear Deal, wherein a Contact Group was set up to explore ways on advancing the implementation of civil nuclear energy cooperation.
Obviously Modi’s international sojourns have been fruitful thus far. The area of concern seem more at the domestic front because of unseasonal rains, farmers’ suicides, spiralling food prices, resurgence of separatists’ activities in Jammu and Kashmir, and so on. He needs to show an equal penchant for resolving these issues too
.
.
Comments
Post a Comment