India's foreign policy under the second Modi government will take account of a turbulent world in which the old verities are disappearing and domestic political compulsions exert overwhelming influence on external postures.

India has re-elected the incumbent Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, and the BJP government, with a bigger majority and an increased vote share.
What will this mean for the foreign policy of India in a turbulent world in which the old verities are disappearing and domestic political compulsions exert overwhelming influence on external postures?
The massive endorsement frees Mr Modi to continue his unabashed style and pursuit of the foreign policy objectives he set himself in 2014, which were primarily to raise the global profile of India, including among Indians living abroad.

The first task will be to appoint a new external affairs minister since the incumbent Sushma Swaraj had recused herself from the election process. It is a highly desired but essentially powerless position since Prime Ministers from Jawaharlal Nehru on, have run foreign policy from the PM’s office. Very likely the National Security Advisor, Ajit Doval, will be reappointed and former foreign secretary S. Jaishankar brought in as a minister of state since they had worked together without friction in the previous term.

If the current NSA and the former foreign secretary are reappointed, the continuity theme will be reinforced. At his 2014 swearing-in ceremony, Mr Modi had surprised everyone who had written him off as a foreign policy novice by inviting the heads of governments of all South Asian neighbours, including Pakistan. An even bigger surprise was the presence of Dr Lobsang Sangay, then Prime Minister of the Central Tibetan administration (in Dharamsala).
However, that show of strength against China disappeared with the informal Wuhan summit between Xi Jinping and Mr Modi in April 2018.

The speculation this time is that the PM may shoot higher by inviting the leaders of the Permanent-5 countries and middle powers such as France and Germany. No bets on a convening of world leaders at Mr Modi’s swearing-in — while he may be daring, he is not so foolhardy as to allow himself to be humiliated by no-shows from the likes of Mr Trump and Mr Xi. The two are currently engaged in a high-stakes trade war, overturning the conventional wisdom that extensive commercial dependencies deter hostility. The British PM, Teresa May, does not know how long she will hold her job. French President Emmanuel Macron may have hoped that he has diffused the weekly Yellow Vest protests but his dissatisfaction rating remains at a high of 66 per cent. That leaves Russian president Putin who, if he comes, can only be doing so for old times’ sake and to promote arms sales.

The preoccupations of the P5 portray the disruption underway in the old equilibrium, bilateral and multilateral, which was put in place in the post Second World War period and which held, more or less, till the end of the last century. Today, India must negotiate a totally different world in which the old institutions such as NATO or the EU are imploding, a risen China plays by its own rules and diminished UK and France refuse to leave the world stage. Although India is now the fastest growing large economy predicted to become the third-largest in the world by 2030, it needs western markets and technology, Gulf oil, and foreign investment to build its infrastructure to sustain a high growth economy that can generate enough jobs to satisfy its youthful population.

Mr Modi’s personalised diplomacy will only be enhanced by the confidence of a huge election victory, especially in multilateral forums like G20, SCO, BRICs etc. Strategic relations with the West, principally the US, will strengthen despite the irritants on bilateral trade. India will likely become more open in its participation in the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (QUAD) along with Japan, USA and Australia as a hedge against Chinese pressure. While India must invest in its own infrastructure buildout, it will look to partner with the US and Japan in infrastructure in Bangladesh, Sri Lanka as well as East Africa. The government will move rapidly to put more content into energy diplomacy in the Gulf. Finally, Mr Modi may surprise all by reaching out to China and Pakistan, despite the current delicate state of relations with both.

The largest democratic exercise in history, which saw more than 600 million Indians vote, may have ended in
a landslide for Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), but this election was no formality. It followed perhaps the most abusive, abrasive and ill-tempered campaign in India’s history, in which opposition party Indian National Congress president Rahul Gandhi attempted to do battle on every available faultline in Indian society.

Yet despite the strong and often unfair criticisms leveled at Modi’s policies both throughout his first term and this marathon election, no Prime Minister has united the Indian electorate as much in close to five decades. The last time an Indian Prime Minister was re-elected with a parliamentary majority was in 1971. His coalition won just under 50% of the national vote.

How has this supposedly divisive figure not only managed to keep power, but increase his levels of support? A key factor is that Modi has managed to transcend India’s greatest fault line: the class divide.

Narendra Modi was born into one of India’s most disadvantaged social groups. In reaching the very top, he personifies the aspirational working classes and can self-identify with his country’s poorest citizens in a way that the Nehru-Gandhi political dynasty who have led India for most of the 72 years since independence simply cannot.

His second consecutive term is a victory for meritocracy, and for opportunity, thanks to a slate of welfare policies for the country’s extreme poor. Through socially progressive policies, he has brought many Indians, both Hindus and religious minorities, out of poverty at a faster rate than in any previous generation.
Modi pledged to improve the country’s sanitation and he has more than delivered; from fewer than 40% of households having access to a toilet, almost 95% do now. Close to all Indian villages now have access to electricity, when less than 40% did when he took office.

He has stabilized the volatile economy that he inherited from the Congress government in 2014. From a position as one of Morgan Stanley’s pronounced ‘Fragile Five’ economies most vulnerable to collapse, India is now the fifth largest economy in the world and the fastest-growing major economy.
His embrace of technology is driving transformative programmes in universal healthcare, affordable housing, financial inclusion, and climate mitigation. Intuitively he has understood, like no other predecessor, how the much- admired tech skills of Indians can be used to transform society.

If there was short-term pain for the cash-reliant Indian population through his dramatic decision to wipe out high value currency notes overnight in November 2016 (referred to as demonetization), it has led to long-term gain. The tax base in India has almost doubled, and with it, the amount of tax collected — but with a lower tax burden on individual citizens.

More tax revenue means more funding for welfare programmes that have brought sanitation and electricity to so many. Meanwhile, the move away from cash has seen an unprecedented 200 million plus new bank accounts opened, bringing India’s so-called “unbankables” nearer to full integration within India’s formal economy.

Digitization has empowered the poor, eliminating corrupt middle-men and allowing direct deposits of state benefits, social security and pension payments into the hands of the poor. Modi has also succeeded in bringing the whole of India into one tax union, through the implementation of the Goods and Services Tax, and thereby making India at last a truly single market.

His reforms have helped bring inflation under control, from a record high of more than 12% at the tail end of Manmohan Singh’s government, to below 3% in April 2019; and has reduced the deficit down to 3.42%, when a decade ago it was staggering 6.46%.
Modi still has work to do, of course. Having plugged some horrendous holes in India’s notoriously inefficient and corrupt bureaucracy in his first term, he will now need to focus much more ruthlessly on reforming those institutions and make them fit for the coming decades. This will require him to remain the pragmatic politician he is, and continue to shun the temptations of populism as he sets out his stall for a second term.

Economically, he must deliver on his promise to create the world’s largest start-up eco-system, thereby further unleashing India’s fabled entrepreneurial gene.

All the achievements of Narendra Modi’s government are still works-in-progress. But with efforts recognized by
virtually every single global institute of any standing, including the World Bank, the IMF, and the U.N., Modi’s India is finally progressing at a rate worthy of its size and potential.

Modi may have been criticised for remaining silent during incidents of social unrest. But his work has been given the thumbs up at the ballot box by the Indian voters for directly addressing the root causes of some of India’s divisions. For them, the Modi dream of a New India remains very much intact.

After offering prayers at the holy shrine of Dallada Maligawa, or the ’Temple of the Tooth’, Kandy, Indian High Commissioner Taranjit Singh Sandhu recently promised the Sinhala -Buddhist top clergy New Delhi’s full support to Sri Lanka in dealing with the common threat of ‘jihadi’ terrorism. Ahead of the annual Buddhist high-point of Vesak festival, the High Commissioner also met with Most Venerable Thibbotuwawe Sri Sumangala Mahanayake Thera of the Malwatu Chapter and the Most Venerable Warakagoda Sri Gnanarathana Mahanayake Thera of the Asgiriya Chapter.

An Indian High Commission news release in Colombo said that the High Commissioner ”discussed the prevailing security situation with the Most Venerable Mahanayake Theras and offered India’s full support to Sri Lanka in dealing with the common threat of jihadi terrorism... Both the Mahanayake Theras deeply appreciated India’s unconditional and strong support for Sri Lanka including in the security sphere”.

It is interesting – or, ironical -- to note that the High Commissioner had discussed post-blasts security situation, especially ‘jihadi’ terrorism, when there was no such report about any meeting of the kind with either President Maithripala Sirisena, Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe or Foreign Minister Tilak Marapana – tasked with both security and/or external cooperation in such matters. That is to say either no such meeting took place, or if any of it happened, it was off the media radar.

Ironical coincidence

As irony would have it, Vesak this year fell on 18 May, coinciding with the original ‘Victory D ay’, at the end of the successful war on LTTE terrorism. The ‘Sri Lankan Tamil’ (SLT) community the world over, starting with the nation’s North and East, observed the day as ‘Martyrs’ Day’ just as the LTTE and their successors have been observing ‘Heroes’ Day’ on 27 November, each year. That the Vesak and the ‘Victory Day’ should fall in the Islamic holy month of Ramadan should complete the contemporary Sri Lankan irony. Across the seas, India was observing the death anniversary of Rajiv Gandhi, a victim o f daring LTTE terrorism on Indian territory – cross-border terror of a different kind!

Whatever it be the Easter blasts has made the Sri Lankan nation more responsible and poignant, even if only for the present. It is all a reflection of the nation’s mood and inability to absorb and digest the Easter blasts a decade after Sri Lankans had thought that all forms of terrorism and militancy were well behind them – and for good. Barring President Sirisena celebrating his son’s wedding in the first weeks of the blasts with certain pomp and colour, the nation itself played low -key.

Thus, the annual May Day rallies for political parties to demonstrate their strength and support for one another, the Vesak and the ‘Victory Day’ all remained low-key affairs compared to the past. The politically-messaged May Day rallies did not happen as it fell only days after the blasts, as thankfully no party or leader had the insensitivity or courage, or both, to call cadres to come up to a venue of their choice for demonstrating their power-projections months ahead of the presidential polls, due in December.

Such cancellations did not have anything to do with the memories of a May Day rally years ago when an LTTE suicide-bomber assassinated incumbent President Ranasinghe Premadasa – but was an acknowledgement of a belated realisation that terrorism was back and real even in a Sri Lanka without LTTE.

A full month after the blasts, the Sri Lankan security agencies have made countless arrests, including those of ministerial and gubernatorial aides, and also a parliamentary staffer. Yet, there is no knowing if President Sirisena is going to act against H L A M Hizbullah, his nominee as Eastern Province Governor, any time soon. Likewise, there is no knowing if PM Wickremesinghe intends taki ng cognisance of the references, including a public statement of Army commander, Lt-Gen Mahesh Senanayake, against Minister Rishad Bathiudeen.

Sinister campaign

Sad but true, in the early hours and days of the Easter blasts when media reports spoke about I ndian intelligence agencies alerting their Sri Lankan counterparts precisely to the same, a sinister campaign of sorts commenced in the Colombo social media, pointing fingers across the Palk Strait. Sections of the traditional media also questioned how Indian counterparts obtained an alert on the ‘alert’ before Sri Lankan investigators got wind of the same.

Full four weeks after the event, peripheral socio-political groups have begun making similar insinuations, or so would it seem. After DNA tests, the security agencies in Sri Lanka are convinced that Easter terror master-mind Muhammad Zahran is dead. But now comes peripheral doubts why two suicide -bombers were assigned to Colombo’s prestigious Shangri-La Hotel, when it was only one for other terror-targets. Who knows next someone may ask why Zahran chose to preside over the suicide -attack at Shangri-La and not at another site.

Interestingly, some such groups have also sought to make vague link between the blatant security -failure in Sri Lanka and the Thirteenth Amendment to the nation’s Constitution, if only to bring in India’s name into the discourse. They have pointed to the constitutional bar on President Sirisena, re -introduced by his own hand-maiden of a 19-A, to remove the nation’s Inspector-General of Police (IG), Punith Jayasundara, for not acting effectively on the Indian alert.

Rather than questioning the security failure at their end, they have gone on to point to the re -introduced 19-A provision, restoring the Constitutional Council and High -Posts Committee, supposedly of independent persons. When President Sirisena could ‘sack’ then Defence Secretary Hemasiri Fernando, for his share in the ‘security lapse’, he could not do so in the case of IG Jayasundara, despite pious declarations to the effect soon after returning from Singapore, where he was when the blasts occurred.

Police powers and 13-A

Those who have since raised the issue linked to 19-A have also made what could be termed only as a mischievous reference to India-facilitated 13-A, three-plus decades ago. It was a part of a politico- constitutional package that the government of then President J R Jayawardene offered the Tamils as a natural follow-up to the Indo-Sri Lanka Accord he signed with visiting Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, in July 1987.

Now, however, questions have been raised about the viability of 13 -A, especially in terms of ‘police powers’ for the nine Sri Lankan Provinces. Left unimplemented through and through for the forgotten Constitution Assembly to address the issue, among others, ‘police powers’ for the Provinces meant that they would have powers over the appointment and administrative jurisdiction of the civilian uniformed force at their own disposal.

The current criticism, restricted to peripheral groups just now, is to wonder how would have the situation been if Provinces too had their own police powers and there is no way their own IGs could be sacked for what tantamount to ‘dereliction of duty’ or whatever. “If the President, the appointing authority, does not have powers to sack, or require the resignation of one IG, for what is seen as his failure to secure the
Sri Lankan State from the Easter day carnage, what could be done with nine, or ten IGs, under near -similar circumstances?”. Or, that seems to be the question.
The fact is that answers to questions such as this lie in 19 -A, not in 13-A. In terms of jurisprudential powers, the appointing authority, under any set of administrative laws, should have had powers to terminate the services of those that were so appointed. High-posts committee and such like bodies created or re-created under 19-A should have at best been designated as ‘vetting committees’, not assigned the powers to de facto appointment of persons to high posts in the Government, reducing the President to be only the de jure appointing authority.

Predecessor President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s 18-A sought to correct this anomaly, as inserted into the Constitution by Governments before his. However, owing to apprehensions of misuse and abuse by the Rajapaksas, and also to score yet another political-point over him in the post-war period, the Opposition parties of the time, and also the nation’s vibrant civil society, sought to shout down 18 -A but without success.

When the Sirisena-Wickremesinghe leadership came to power after defeating incumbent Mahinda Rajapaksa in the presidential poll of 2015, 19-A restored the High-Posts Committee and the like. The current crisis, if it was the real one, did not flow from (India -facilitated) 13-A. If at all, multiple persons in responsible persons, with shared responsibility and accountability, might have taken it up with the political administration, if known to them – and not sat or slept over the same, as became the case with the incumbent 19-A appointee.

Job on hand

At the height of the LTTE war and victory, the ruling Rajapaksa clan in Sri Lanka became more alive to, and aware of, the possibilities that awaited the nation if the situation was allowed to remain static. They had inherited a flawed judgment on seeking Indian and international assistance in terms of intelligence -input,

going beyond seeking fighting machines from other nations. The flaw dated back to President Ranasinghe Premadasa, who swung to the other end, worked with the LTTE, instead, to have the Colo mbo- requisitioned IPKF out, and unceremoniously so.

It did not become positive cooperation under later-day President Chandrika Bandaranaike-Kumaratunga (CBK), to who, however, should go the credit of keeping India in the loop after a break. CBK’s successor in President Rajapaksa was willing to shed his past India-centric reservations and opposition to 13-A and also to ‘Operation Poomalai’, the Indian Air Force’s (IAF) humanitarian mission to air-drop food and medicines to the Tamil civilians caught into the Govt-LTTE cross-fire in Sri Lanka’s North.

Not only did the Rajapaksas readily shed their reservations to seeking intelligence support from India and the US, which they otherwise might have despised in terms of Sri Lanka’s domestic politics of the time.
Both President Rajapaksa and his brother and war-time Defence Secretary Gota Rajapaksa, have since publicly and repeatedly acknowledged India’s aid and assistance in neutralising the LTTE militarily and as a terror outfit. Even if politically timed and motivated, their acknowledgement is a reiteration of their approach to working to end terrorism, with Indian and other international help.
It is thus that the Sri Lanka Navy (SLN) sank eight weapons -laden cargo ships of the LTTE away from the nation’s shores. No one has then or since asked if the success story belonged exclusively to Sri Lankan intelligence of the time, or if others too had a (bigger) share to the credit. No one also asked then or since how SLN had the courage and confidence to leave its shores open to possible ‘Sea Tigers’ attack of the LTTE when its main armada had sailed away to tackle the terror outfit’s weapons -vessels in the high seas.

The other instance of international, or regional cooperation related to the arrest of Indian fishing vess el ‘Sri Krishna’, hijacked by the ‘Sea Tigers’ for transferring their weapons and ammunition from their earlier ships in the high seas, to their hideouts on land. The Maldivian Coast Guard played a significant role, based on intelligence alert from elsewhere. It was the ‘Sri Krishna’ arrest that brought to light the LTTE’s habit of hijacking ‘innocent vessels’ for their intermittent use, and also to the fact that the terror -outfit might already been running short of boats for their use. The latter was a ref lection on the efficiency and efficacy of the boat-based SLN commando operations against LTTE’s attack vessels.

In context and in contrast, Sri Lanka Army chief Lt-Gen Mahesh Senanayake, in his first news conference on the Easter Day serial-blasts, indicated that the perpetrators might have travelled to India, visited Kerala, Bengaluru and even the troubled Kashmir, for training. If true, it was too sensitive a matter to have been shared in and with the public, especially if such information had not gone to the Indian counterpart agencies already and there was confirmation that the latter were not acting on the same – a la IG Jayasundara!

Indian agencies, including Jammu and Kashmir police, were quick to retort, saying that Zahran or the rest had not travelled to the State, hence had not trained there in bomb-making and the like. Instead, it would have served the Sri Lankan security agencies’ purposes if they had asked their counterparts if there was any likeness of the Easter blasts’ modus and material used in similar blasts anywhere India, so as to identify connecting points, before making any such non -existent link of whatever kind.

Worse still, Sri Lankan media, including social media, reports also indicated that their security agencies might not have acted upon the Indian tip-off, as they were wary of New Delhi allegedly making non-

existent connections to the Pakistani ISI with every terror-attack in the region, thus possibly jeopardising Colombo’s ties with Islamabad. If true, such assumptions would have to be made at the level of Sri Lanka’s political administrators and Foreign Office, and not at the level of security and/or intelligence agencies.
Two, if there was/is truth in Gen Senanayake’s statement on the Kashmir links of the Easter blasts perpetrators, an ISI link needed to be explored and investigated -– not, overlooked and ignored!