Prime Minister Narendra Modi is back home from Vladivostok, Russia, having announced a billion-dollar credit line to a former superpower, even as former home minister P. Chidambaram spent his first night at Tihar jail and Kashmir just completed a month in lockdown after the abrogation of Article 370.
Modi prides himself on breaking new frontiers, creating new paths and basically, going where no Indian has gone before. He just visited tiny Bahrain – no Indian PM has ever been to Bahrain. He is out again, soon, to the US, where he will attend the UN General Assembly and visit the mother of all Indian diaspora cities, Houston. As of September 2019, the PM has travelled across six continents. Only Antarctica is left.
But even the peripatetic Modi may not have realised why his Vladivostok trip is such an ace. Of course, there is the welcome fragrance of vindication, of ridding oneself from the East India Company syndrome and lending to a country whose per capita income is higher than that of India.
There is the clever sloganeering of converting India’s ‘Act East’ policy into ‘Act Far East’.
Also read: How India can benefit from a mineral-rich but sparsely populated Russian Far East
It’s about economy
And there is the hope that the tied credit will spur despondent Indian companies back home to kickstart manufacturing and do business with a part of the world that is so rich in minerals that it is floating on almost every element that exists on Dmitri Mendeleev’s Periodic Table, first published in 1869.
Kickstarting the home front is key to his survival – Modi knows that. At 5 per cent, the GDP is at a six-year low. It is more than likely that this is the reason why the PM got rid of his principal secretary, Nripendra Misra, because he was interfering in financial matters far beyond his ken. Since he was seen as Modi’s favourite bureaucrat – remember the ordinance Modi pushed in Parliament in his first few weeks in office in 2014 to retain him? – the finance ministry was hardly able to refuse him.
But if Modi’s second tenure has to work, then he has to turn around the economy. Asking Misra to go and likely replacing him with his other favourite, P.K. Mishra, is a signal to the business community that Modi is looking for help.
Perhaps, some of that may come from Modi’s Vladivostok trip.
Also read: Modi and Putin tell the world India and Russia still need each other
The Chinese threat
Russia’s Far Eastern Federal District is nearly 7 million sq km in size – India, with 3.28 million sq km, is less than half the size. The Federal District consists of 11 regions, including the Jewish Autonomous division, each with their own flag – a reminder from Putin to Modi that having your own flag in Jammu & Kashmir or in Karnataka, where some independent-minded people want to resurrect another reminder of their distinct identity, is hardly a challenge to a strong Centre.
It is only when the Centre cannot hold that things fall apart. Whether or not he is a history buff, Modi knows the present well. He knows that the perception of strength is important in a country as diverse as India – and that this is where the ageing but highly respected Manmohan Singh, who opened up the economy and gave India possibly its highest growth rates, could still score one up on him, even in a party as rapidly falling apart as the Congress.
Certainly, the reference to history is important and it’s impossible not to be charmed by the 150-year-old cycle. The Second Opium War came to an end in 1860 – it had not only put conditions on opium trade from India to China, but forced the Qing dynasty to sign humiliating treaties with Russia, Britain and France. It is the Convention of Peking in 1860 that gave China and Russia their border in the Far East.
The Chinese never forgot, of course. And as it grew to become the shopkeeper to the world in recent decades, China sent expeditions to the Russian Far East, threatening to excavate the raw minerals the region had in plenty. A nervous Putin quickly put in place the Eurasian Economic Union – it has only four other countries as members so far – and insisted, much like Catherine the Great did in the 18th century, that Russia was also a Pacific power.
What is Modi’s plan?
Enter Narendra Modi. If India can send a few thousand farmers to take over vast acreages in Canada, if Indian big business like the Adanis can be ambitious enough to build a Rs 10,000 coal mine in Australia, and if Russia’s Rosneft-led consortium can take over Essar Oil, perhaps Modi and Putin could invite the Ambanis to further their oil-based petrochemical industry in the Russian Far East?
In Blagoveshchensk, which is located on the banks of the Amur river and is the administrative centre of the Amur federal subject and is 18 hours by road from Vladivostok, Putin modernised a triumphal arch first built in 1891. The arch has a plaque proclaiming, “The earth along the Amur was, is and always will be Russian”. But on the other side of the Amur is the Chinese city of Heihe – both are part of a free-trade zone. Putin knows the Chinese are coming.
Whether or not anything comes of Modi’s Vladivostok trip, fact is that some out-of-the-box thinking has taken place in South Block. Fluke or deliberate, the timing is perfect. Backed by Putin’s welcome, Modi goes to the US later this month and welcomes China’s Xi Jinping next month.
As for domestic matters, like Jammu & Kashmir and the ‘jail’ sign over P. Chidambaram, home minister Amit Shah seems fully in command.
Also read: In Modi era, France has replaced Russia as India’s new best friend
Jyoti never stops amusing her readers with her out of box (read stupid) comments like reasons for Nripen Mishra retiring, Modi wanting to turn around decelerating economy by offering USD 1 billion loan to Russia etc. It seems Nripen Mishra was running the show on his own and Modi had to wait for 5 years to realize that he is the main hindrance for granting financial approvals to projects and then manage to get rid of him. Of course, good thing is that since last few months, her hatred for Modi seems to have subsided and instead, her anger is turned on others who support Modi. It would be interesting to wait for her piece next week on success of Chandrayan and its linkage perhaps to Modi’s plan for Ram Temple!
One of the first columns one has read which draws a bead between turning the economy around and making a success of the second term, retaining political power. To a lot of the loyal base, the two exist in a parallel universe. It has helped no one to have created a vast echo chamber where grim reality seldom intrudes. So if there is a clear eyed recognition that high popularity ratings need to be sustained by genuine high growth, that is a welcome change of focus. It will require an iron will to wave away distractions like the NRC, focus on job creation.