As the curtain comes down on the Narendra Modi government, the remains of the day in the foreign policy arena are India's dangerous standoff with Pakistan and its uneasy co-existence with China. Although the Modi government didn't depart seriously from the overall foreign policy trajectory of the UPA government, a sense of failure remains. This must be attributed to certain extraneous factors that impinged on the unthinking foreign policy consensus among the Indian elite regarding China and Pakistan.

Much of Indian diplomacy through the past five-year period prioritised Prime Minister Modi's own political persona and that egotistic journey, which began at Madison Square Garden in New York, had a surreal air. Apparently, Modi regarded life as statesman as a metaphor for his domestic politics. The only plausible explanation can be that Modi felt a constant urge to be seen as dynamic and 'muscular'. In this pointless endeavour, much time and resources were lost and the foreign policy establishment often got sidelined. Populism is antithetical to productive diplomacy.