3. What is Modi doctrine?

Analyze foreign policy of India based on this doctrine with

examples.
Narendra Modi came to power in May 2014 in a landslide victory, his Bharatiya Janata Party
(BJP) becoming the first party to win an outright majority in an Indian election in 30 years. He
won with the promise that he would turn around India’s economy and raise living standards, as
well as tackle the corruption and graft that bedevil India. He campaigned tirelessly on these
issues, addressing huge rallies—sometimes speaking to several at a time, using hologram
projections where he could not be present in person—and making astute use of old and new
media, from newspapers and television to Twitter and Facebook. He said little, however, about
foreign policy. Moreover, the BJP manifesto devoted just 3 out of 52 pages to India’s
international relations (Bharatiya Janata Party 2014), leaving many Indian and overseas
observers to wonder about exactly what kind of approach Modi and his party had in mind. Since
the election, that approach has become clearer. Modi has now settled his Cabinet and his team of
public servants and advisors. He has made a number of foreign visits, including a trip to the USA
to meet Barack Obama and make an address to the United Nations General Assembly. He has
also attended a BRICS summit in Brazil, an Association of Southeast Asian Nations summit in
Myanmar, and a Group of 20 summit in Australia, and visited a number of foreign capitals,
including Canberra, Kathmandu, Suva, Thimphu, Tokyo and, of course, Washington, DC. In
Sydney, Suva and New York, he attended special events for the Indian diaspora, addressing each
on his government’s domestic and foreign policy agendas. With all this activity, some have
speculated about whether a ‘Modi doctrine’ is emerging in Indian foreign policy (Ayres 2014;
Raghavan 2014). Other have argued that its outlines are already clear (Jaffrelot 2014; Louis
2014; Mattoo 2014). The evidence supporting these arguments, however, is hard to find. Instead,
Modi’s foreign policy in the first six months of his government has reflected his domestic
political priorities rather than any obvious set of guiding ideas. Pragmatism, not principle, and
delivery, not doctrine, are the marks of Modi’s approach.

Domestic priorities and foreign policy Modi’s foreign policy agenda has been pursued along the
broad—if vague— lines set out in the BJP’s election manifesto, which outlined three priority
areas for action: improving India’s international ties with key states (especially in East Asia) in
ways that will aid its economic development; bolstering India’s security with regard to both
Pakistan and China; and leveraging India’s ‘soft power’ in the West and the developing world to
increase New Delhi’s global standing and influence (BJP 2014, 39). Modi has put economics
first, seeking better connections with India’s skilled, innovative and capital-rich diaspora
communities in places like Australia and the USA, touting for foreign direct investment,
promoting his ‘Make in India’ concept of the country as a manufacturing centre for multinational
corporations, and seeking investment in India’s infrastructure. Modi has courted East Asian
states to build factories in India and invest in infrastructure, extracting a promise from Japan to
provide US$35 billion for various projects (Shankar 2014), as well as joining China’s Asian
Infrastructure Investment Bank. At the same time, Modi has reached out to South Asian regional
leaders, inviting all of them, including Pakistan’s prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, to attend his
inauguration, and declaring that he wants to build better economic ties and improve connectivity
in what remains the world’s least integrated region. Modi wants to inject energy into the South
Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC), in particular, boosting the infrastructure
needed to permit greater cross-border trade. When it comes to tackling security challenges,
Modi’s government has been much more cautious than some (for example, Pant 2014) had
expected. The BJP manifesto promised a complete ‘overhaul’ of national security arrangements
concerning terrorism, including using a ‘firm hand’ to deal with cross-border terrorism, an
augmented and accelerated military modernisation program, and revisions to India’s nuclear
doctrine (BJP 2014, 38–39). It also pledged that a BJP-led government would ‘create a web of
allies to mutually further our interests’ (BJP 2014, 40). But what Modi’s government has done
has fallen short of these objectives. It did break new ground in appointing Ajit Doval, erstwhile
head of the Intelligence Bureau, India’s domestic intelligence agency, as National Security
Advisor—a post normally filled by a member of the Indian Foreign Service. It has announced a
shake-up of the intelligence services. However, whether Modi has displayed a ‘firm hand’ in
dealing with cross-border terrorism is less obvious: repeated incursions across the Line of
Control in Kashmir since May 2014 have been met more by talk than by action. Admittedly,
Modi’s government has speeded up India’s program of military modernisation, concluding
negotiations on a series of long-standing acquisitions processes, and we can reasonably expect
that the appointment of a dedicated defence minister, Manohar Parrikar, who took over from the
ill and overworked Arun Jaitley in early November 2014, will lead to further deals being done in
the near future. Moreover, Modi has delivered a series of upgraded strategic partnership
agreements with key partners like Australia, Japan and the USA.1 These fall well short, however,
of being the kinds of ‘alliances’ envisaged in the BJP manifesto. And well-informed Indian
analysts argue that the Modi government is struggling to overcome resistance in the foreign
policy establishment to more binding deals. C. Raja Mohan (2014) has argued, for example, that
the bureaucracy successfully prevented the conclusion of a trilateral security pact with Australia
and Japan in late 2014, preferring to stick with looser bilateral arrangements. When it comes to
leveraging ‘soft power’, Modi’s record has been equally mixed. The prime minister himself has
cut quite a figure in international diplomacy, with appearances not just at the White House and
the Australian Parliament, but also at major rallies at Madison Square Garden and Sydney’s
Allphones Arena. At the United Nations General Assembly, he made a plea for more
international recognition of one of India’s foremost cultural exports, calling for an International
Yoga Day and greater recognition of the ancient wisdom his country can offer the world. But
whether any of this has a significant impact on India’s ‘soft power’ is yet to be seen.

Doctrine or delivery? Modi’s government has said and done a great deal with regard to foreign
policy in the first months of office. But is there a discernable ‘Modi doctrine’ driving it, with a
set of clearly stated principles? It is hard to detect one. In the main, Modi’s foreign policy
represents more continuity than change. Indeed, his approach is best seen as an attempt to deliver
what has long been promised, rather than an attempt to set out a radically new course for India.
Since the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) governments of Vajpayee, India has
pursued a foreign policy much like Modi’s: one that favors economic development, enhanced
regionalism, improved security and greater ‘soft power’. Of course, successive governments
have often failed to meet these objectives. Both of the NDA governments and the Congress-led
United Progressive Alliance (UPA) administrations that followed found it difficult to engineer
the necessary domestic reforms to facilitate ‘Make in India’—and, indeed, trading with India,
investing in India, building in India or providing services for India’s people. Both sets of
government tried to ‘look East’, engaging East Asian states to garner foreign direct investment,
know-how and greater trade. Both also struggled to advance regionalism in a region in which the
economic logic of deeper integration is skewed by external forces: intra-SAARC trade in goods
and services is far outweighed, for almost all South Asian states, by trade with states outside the
region, especially China (Kelegama 2014). Convincing SAARC members that there are more
benefits to be gained by the harder path of improving South Asian connectivity than can be
gained by better bilateral ties with the People’s Republic remains a difficult task. So, too, is
bolstering India’s national security, especially when economic growth is sluggish, as it has been
for much of the past decade. India does not have sufficient police to address domestic security
challenges, nor does it have the military forces necessary effectively to deter its neighbours from
threatening its territory. It remains one of the most under-policed societies in the world, with just
over 100 officers per 100,000 people, and more than 20 percent of posts in the various police
forces presently unfilled (Tiwary 2014). India continues to play host to a number of ongoing
insurgencies, including that of the Maoist Naxalite movement, which until recently affected fully
one-third of India’s territory. And its military lacks the capacity to punish groups in Pakistan that
infiltrate insurgents into Kashmir and terrorists into its cities, and to deter China from aggressive
behaviour. Since the late 1990s, all of India’s governments have tried to address each of these
challenges, but have failed to make much progress. Last but not least, previous NDA and UPA
administrations have also made the pursuit and use of ‘soft power’ policy priorities (Hall 2012).
Under Vajpayee’s leadership, tourists were lured with the ‘Incredible India’ campaign, launched
in 2002, while persons of Indian origin and non-resident Indians were wooed by outreach efforts
by the new Ministry of Overseas Indian Affairs, founded in 2004. The first Manmohan Singh
government created a Public Diplomacy Division in the Ministry of External Affairs in 2006
and, since then, it has been active in promoting India in old and new media. Whether any of this
activity has actually boosted India’s soft power or allowed it to be more effectively leveraged is a
moot point,2 but it must be noted that efforts have been made. Over the past decade and a half,
the NDA and UPA governments both set similar objectives to the ones that Modi now aims to
pursue, with varying degrees of success. Neither one of them established a clear foreign policy
doctrine worthy of the name. They both steered a via media on India’s role in South Asia
between, on the one hand, the Indira (Gandhi) doctrine’s hegemonic interventionism and, on the
other, the (I. K.) Gujral doctrine’s restrained magnanimity. They both aimed at a measure of
‘strategic autonomy’, despite declarations (like Vajpayee’s) of ‘natural alliances’ with certain
states and landmark agreements, like the US–India nuclear deal, agreed in principle by
Manmohan Singh and George W. Bush in 2005. And they both favoured bilateralism in relations
with South Asian states and with others, concluding carefully limited arrangements and strategic
partnerships. Despite the hype and the speculation, what we have seen from India’s new
government in foreign policy is really an attempt at ‘Modi delivery’ rather than the emergence of
a ‘Modi doctrine’. This emphasis on delivery should come as no surprise to students of Modi’s
modus operandi. It fits with the pragmatic approach he adopted as Chief Minister of Gujarat,
when he risked the ire of fellow Hindu nationalists by pursuing development by any means that
worked, rather than adhering to their generally anti-liberal economic thinking (Fernandes 2014).
And, above all, it fits with Modi’s aspiration to be India’s Deng Xiaoping, catching mice with
whatever colour cat is to hand.