Shivshankar Menon –
One year after coming to power, the first thing that strikes one about the foreign policy of the Narendra Modi government is its remarkable consistency with that of its predecessor.
Even on issues like the Land Boundary Agreement with Bangladesh and the Nuclear Cooperation (or ‘123’) Agreement with the United States – where the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in opposition had prevented or opposed their implementation – Prime Minister Narendra Modi has carried through the policies of (former Prime Minister Dr) Manmohan Singh.
In this, the current government is not very different from previous Indian governments, all of whom carried on the policies of their predecessors while putting their own gloss on them.
I find this reassuring, for it reflects the fact that what is being executed is the foreign policy of India – and not the policy of one party or individual (which would suggest a certain flightiness) – and that this policy is mature.
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Shivshankar Menon was India’s National Security Adviser from January 2010 to May 2014. The above article, which appeared in ‘The Wire,’ June 15, 2015, has been reproduced here with the permission Siddharth Varadarajan, a Founding Editor. Established in India on May 10, 2015, as an editorially and financially independent entity, ‘The Wire’ committed to promoting the values of democracy and journalism.
Photo :
Narendra Modi with US President Barack Obama at the Oval Office, White House in Washington on September 30, 2014.
