Modi’s Foreign Policy: All Optics, No Strategy – A Rebuttal to R Jagannathan

 https://www.business-standard.com/opinion/columns/india-s-diplomacy-needs-to-move-from-demonstrative-style-to-hard-substance-125080501933_1.html

Let’s begin with the obvious. R Jagannathan’s piece titled “India needs to up its diplomatic game” published in Business Standard dated Aug 6,2025 starts with the right note but soon meanders into a muddled defence of the very failures it gestures toward. The title implies urgency, even introspection. But the essay itself does little more than catalogue geopolitical anxieties while clinging to the same photo-op-driven framework that has defined Indian foreign policy for over a decade.

To his credit, Jagannathan does briefly acknowledge the hollowness of Narendra Modi’s personal rapport-based diplomacy, stating that “personal rapport with global leaders is not a solid enough basis for conducting the kind of hard-nosed diplomacy that can deliver net gains for the country.” He nods at the performative spectacles of “Howdy Modi,” “Namaste Trump,” and the Gujarat bonhomie with Xi Jinping — all framed, rightly, as examples of style over substance.

But then, curiously, the piece pulls back. It avoids naming what needs to be named, avoids confronting what is now undeniable: Modi’s foreign policy is an unbroken record of vanity projects, strategic missteps, and institutional atrophy.

The optics — those theatrical hugs and curated summits — may have stirred patriotic fervour on WhatsApp University alumni, but to any serious observer, they resembled two aging uncles clowning at a loud Gujrati wedding rather than statesmen conducting affairs of consequence. The occasional soundbite, when it did come, was either bluster — “MEGA plus MIGA equals mega!” — or empty moralism — “This is not an era of war.” As if war ever had a golden era.

And then, just as it should lean into its critique, the essay wanders. It names the right challenges — deepening ties with Russia, navigating the Israeli assault on Gaza, and the emergent Pakistan–China–Bangladesh axis — but fails to prescribe anything resembling policy. More worryingly, it omits key fault lines: Iran, Myanmar, and the collapse of goodwill in Sri Lanka, Nepal, and the Maldives. So much for “Neighbourhood First.” Eleven years on, it’s “Neighbourhood Lost.”

The author waxes vaguely about India brokering truces, and suggests Ajit Doval (along with some unnamed others) take a more active international role. This isn’t policy — it’s fantasy. Let’s not forget those Russian-released images of Doval perched nervously on the edge of a couch, trying to spin — or apologise for — Modi’s off-the-cuff remarks. If that’s leadership, we’re in trouble.

Modi came to power promising a muscular, self-confident India. What we’ve got is a government addicted to applause but allergic to accountability. The parallels with Indira Gandhi’s India in the 1980s are chilling. Then, too, domestic authoritarianism followed global isolation. But at least Indira operated from a position of constraint — a weak economy, limited diplomatic heft, and Cold War binaries. Modi, by contrast, inherited a booming economy, a respected diplomatic corps, a powerful diaspora, and a favourable global climate. And yet, he squandered it.

At the heart of this failure lies not just political misjudgement, but institutional decay. Power has been dangerously centralised. Even when Sushma Swaraj was nominally the External Affairs Minister, real power lay with S. Jaishankar — then a bureaucrat-now a-minister, operating on Modi’s personal mandate. Shadow diplomacy and opaque hierarchies may work in corporate boardrooms, but they’re toxic in foreign policy.

As for Ajit Doval — a retired intelligence officer now approaching his twilight years — he has become a totem of Modi-era statecraft: unelected, unaccountable, and virtually immune from criticism. Under his watch, India’s regional standing has plummeted, and national security has become a theatre of bravado rather than strategy. And yet, thanks to a pliant media and the absence of parliamentary scrutiny, Doval and his boss remain above reproach.

This ossification — the hardening of the “babu-dom” around Modi’s cult of personality — is perhaps the most damning indictment of all. Bureaucrats masquerading as visionaries, diplomats reduced to Instagram captions, and a Prime Minister more interested in jet-setting  selfie taking tours — this is not a foreign policy. It’s a travelling circus.

Yet foreign policy, at its core, is about more than flags and photo-ops. It is about values. If India wants to be taken seriously — as a voice of the Global South, as a stabilising power in a turbulent region, as a moral force in an amoral world — it must put forward a diplomacy that is grounded in ethics, driven by interests, and consistent in application. Democracy. Dignity. Justice. Peace. Not just for us, but for the world.

On every global crisis that demanded courage — Ukraine, Gaza, Sudan, Myanmar — India under Modi chose silence. This isn’t strategic ambiguity. It’s cowardice dressed up as pragmatism. And it is costing India dearly — in diplomatic capital, in moral credibility, in global trust.

So yes, Mr. Jagannathan, India does need to up its diplomatic game. But to do so, it must first drop the illusion that anything Modi has done on the global stage qualifies as serious diplomacy. The noise has been deafening. But diplomacy is not measured in decibels.

It is measured in results.
And on that count, this government hasn’t just failed.
It’s been a catastrophe.