Modi craves Western approval while pretending to be above it

The Print

6 hours ago

Just consider how US President Donald Trump and the international community have treated India over the past five weeks:
The emptiness of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's PR-focused 'hugplomacy' is becoming only too apparent. At the 2010 G7 summit, US President Barack Obama said of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh: 'Whenever the Indian Prime Minister speaks, the whole room listens to him.' While both Manmohan Singh and Modi have attended these summits on several occasions, it doesn't look like Modi is getting much of a hearing.
Modi's Western orbit isn't working
These are not the actions of someone Modi described as a 'true friend'. The fact is that there are no real friends in world politics. Yes, there is a cosy Western club, but India is unlikely to find an entry anytime soon. Bluntly put, the craving for Western approval, while pretending to be above it, is rather cringeworthy—something Modi displays in spades. While he has clearly moved India into the Western orbit, it is unclear how this is helping us, if at all, in our slowly escalating confrontation with the China-Pakistan axis. By contrast, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi showed self-respect and dexterity while manoeuvring a much poorer and weaker India between two superpowers.
In a recent Foreign Affairs article titled India's Great-Power Delusions, Ashley Tellis, one of the architects of the 2005 US-India civilian nuclear agreement, wrote that India, at its current 6 per cent economic growth rate, will at best be a distant fourth behind the US, China, and the EU by 2047. Modi's divisive Hindutva ideology, he added, further polarises and weakens India.
On this diagnosis, there can be no doubt. India has to speed up economic growth and promote internal harmony if it hopes to balance China in the coming decades.
This has to include a sharper focus on manufacturing. Modi has convinced a section of voters that India's manufacturing sector is thriving because Apple assembles phones in the country—despite the domestic content being only 20 per cent and most parts coming from China. The reality is that manufacturing value added rose 212 per cent to Rs 15.6 lakh crore during the UPA decade, but has increased only 176 per cent to Rs 27.5 lakh crore during Modi's first ten years. The futility of depending on the US is obvious from Trump's threat to impose a tariff of 'at least 25 per cent' on phones assembled by Apple and Samsung in India.
Leaning towards the US with few strategic benefits in terms of capability development has got us nowhere. One could defend Modi's kowtowing to Trump as a short-term necessity—to secure, for example, a favourable trade deal. But drawing closer to the US should be conditional on its support for India becoming a manufacturing powerhouse. If the US wants to use India as a chess piece in its competition with China, it should make it worth our while.
Also read: India keeps making the same foreign policy mistakes. World doesn't think we're being moral
What India should demand from the US
The crux is that successive Indian governments have valued strategic autonomy. The Indian National Congress and crores of Indians did not struggle to liberate themselves from the British empire only to slip into American or Chinese neo-colonialism. This means, above all, a focus on building domestic capabilities and reducing internal polarisation, so that the government and Opposition can cooperate on the basics, even if they disagree on other important issues. India's foreign policy should not be shaped by delusion and narcissism.
Given the increasingly intense competition between the US and China, the Modi government must negotiate a new form of engagement, in consultation with the Opposition and those with experience. If Modi can nick the Congress' policies and rebrand them, surely he can also take its help in crafting a foreign policy fit for these challenging times. After all, the Prime Minister was obliged to deploy Opposition MPs in his recent global outreach.
That means treating the Opposition with respect, and pulling back from the relentless campaign—using private capital and public agencies—to weaken both the Opposition and the country's institutions. It also means holding a special Parliament session to discuss both Operation Sindoor and its consequences.
The world has clearly entered an era of war, which carries huge risks and costs for those who miscalculate, as we are seeing in Europe and West Asia. In his call with Trump, Modi said he reiterated his new policy of treating every terror attack as state-sponsored, a stance that could have serious consequences for India (as I discuss here). These issues demand serious, public discussion.
Indians must now together decide whether to navigate this moment the old way, via non-alignment, or through a respectable alliance with the US. Until India becomes actually indispensable, Modi can forget about being truly respected.
Amitabh Dubey is a Congress member. He tweets @dubeyamitabh. Views are personal.
(Edited by Prashant)