The Prime Minister’s personalised foreign policy approach fails to deliver.
AS PRIME MINISTER, NARENDRA MODI HAS patented his own style of diplomacy. He has gone on a record number of foreign visits in the past three years in his efforts to meet the strategic and defence goals the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has laid out for the country.
The External Affairs Minister, Sushma Swaraj, hardly accompanied him on the more than 50 state visits he has undertaken to foreign countries. Sushma Swaraj seemingly is treated with benign neglect by the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO). The only substantive press conference she has held was after she completed two years in office. She is mostly in the news for her tweets on Indians who find themselves in difficult circumstances being rescued by the Indian government. There have been barely any tweets from the External Affairs Minister on the fate of the 39 Indians who have been missing since the fall of Mosul in 2014. Sushma Swaraj is not even part of the Cabinet Appointments Committee and had no role in selecting the Foreign Secretary, S. Jaishankar, after his predecessor, Sujatha Singh, was unceremoniously shunted out by the Prime Minister.
Modi also prefers to talk directly to senior bureaucrats on key issues, frequently bypassing the External Affairs Minister. It is also not a secret that the Prime Minister gives a lot of weightage to the advice given by the National Security Adviser (NSA), Ajit Doval. The inputs of right-wing think tanks that have proliferated in the capital, many of them with close connections with the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS), also play a role. Tibetan and Uighur activists were invited by a think tank run by the NSA’s son Shaurya Doval. Ram Madhav, BJP general secretary and RSS activist, is also known to be playing a key role in foreign policy matters on issues relating to the Indian subcontinent and China.
هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة January 20, 2017 من FRONTLINE.
ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 9,000 مجلة وصحيفة.
بالفعل مشترك ? تسجيل الدخول
هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة January 20, 2017 من FRONTLINE.
ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 9,000 مجلة وصحيفة.
بالفعل مشترك? تسجيل الدخول
How Not To Handle An Epidemic
The lockdowns were meant to buy time to put in place appropriate health measures and contain the coronavirus’ spread, but they have failed to achieve the objective and heaped immense misery on the marginalised sections of society. India is still in the exponential phase of the COVID-19 infection and community transmission is a reality that the government refuses to accept.
Tragedy on foot
As the COVID-19-induced lockdown cuts the ground beneath their feet in Tamil Nadu, thousands of migrant workers are trudging along the highway to the relative safety of their upcountry homes.
Sarpanchs as game changers
Odisha manages to keep COVID-19 well under control because of the strong participation of panchayati raj institutions and the community at the grass-roots level under the leadership of Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik.
Scapegoating China
As the COVID-19 death rate spikes and the economy tanks in the United States, Donald Trump and his advisers target China and the World Health Organisation with an eye to winning the forthcoming presidential election.
New worries
Kerala’s measured approach to the pandemic and lockdown has yielded results. But it still has to grapple with their huge economic impact on its economy, which it feels the Centre’s special financial relief package does little to alleviate.
No love lost for labour
Taking advantage of the lockdown and the inability of workers to organise protests, many State governments introduce sweeping changes to labour laws to the detriment of workers on the pretext of reviving production and boosting the economy.
Capital's Malthusian moment
In a world that needs substantial reorienting of production and distribution, Indian capital is resorting to a militant form of moribund neoliberalism to overcome its current crisis. In this pursuit of profit, it is ready and willing to throw into mortal peril millions whom it adjudicates as not worth their means—an admixture of social Darwinism born of capital’s avarice and brutalism spawned by Hindutva. .
Understanding migration
When governments and their plans are found to be blatantly wanting in addressing reverse migration, exercises such as the Ekta Parishad’s survey of migrant workers throughout India can be useful to work out creative long-lasting solutions.
Waiting for Jabalpur moment
The Supreme Court’s role in ensuring executive accountability during the ongoing lockdown leaves much to be desired. Standing in shining contrast is the record of some High Courts.
An empty package
The Modi regime, which has been unable to control the COVID-19 infection, restore economic activity and provide relief to millions exposed to starvation, trains its sights on Indian democracy, making use of the panic generated by fear and a lockdown that forecloses paths of resistance.
