Under Modi, India has chosen dependence as a strategic choice. But from Nehru to Manmohan Singh, India displayed a fiercely independent foreign policy and autonomy.
As Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s global image erodes, he cannot as easily dodge accountability for domestic governance as he did earlier by projecting his larger-than-life capers on the world stage. Between 2014 and 2019, Modi’s ‘Make in India’, ‘Digital India’, and push for infrastructure development created the global image of a rising India. His carefully orchestrated rallies among the diaspora in New York, Texas, London, and Sydney projected him as a moderniser, drawing admiration from world leaders.
Indian foreign policy projected independence from the big power blocs, and was hailed for its strategic autonomy. This global image-building fed into domestic politics as Modi was projected as a leader who put India on the world stage.
Now, Modi’s optics-driven events have come to bite India. The recent AI Summit, for example, in which a Chinese robot dog was presented to the world as an Indian invention, exposed the country’s tech capabilities to global ridicule. The inconsistency of India’s strategic autonomy is apparent when India criticised Pakistan’s bombing of a hospital in Afghanistan, but kept selectively silent on Israel’s genocide in Gaza and the unprovoked US-Israel bombing of Iran….
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