Aditya Sinha: Paying for our bull in a China shop

In the two days of staged photographs there is not one photo of Modi hugging Xi his trademark personalised diplomacy of forcibly embracing other leaders PicAPOne of the better things during the Karnataka Assembly election no matter who emerges the single largest party tomorrow was Congress president Rahul Gandhis press conference in Bangalore You may not have seen it on TV It is on YouTube however Rahul again comes across in a light different to the whispers about him during the past two decades proving how it was all the doing of a welloiled BJP machine My favourite part was Rahuls take on Prime Minister Narendra Modis recent visit to Wuhan in central China for an informal summit with President Xi JinpingHeres what he saidI expected the PM to go to China as the leader of our country and speak to them about Doklam He didnt say a word He had a conversation with the Chinese President with no agenda Are you telling me theres no agenda There is an agenda its called Doklam there is an agenda its called the Maldives there is an agenda its called Nepal The agenda is that were surrounded on all sides its pretty clear But you guys dont like to raise that I dont know whyOur foreign policy has been completely decimated And its because the PM views foreign policy as an individual exercise Hes of the impression that he can go have a conversation with the president of China or he can go have a conversation with the president of Nepal and everything will magically happenThe PM needs to carry his own people with him Are there any conversations going on with the finance minister with the defence minister about this type of strategy No Its a oneman showBriefly China tried to seize the Doklam plateau in Bhutan last year but after a 73day standoff against our troops it backed down It has reportedly since built an infrastructure leading to Doklam In the Maldives China is displacing India President Abdulla Gameen last year welcomed three Chinese warships and last month hosted the Pakistan army chief In Nepal despite Modis visit this weekend to promote Janakpur Sitas birthplace as a religious tourism spot the Nepalese have drifted from us after Indias fivemonth blockade in 2015 we were pushing for greater political inclusion of the Madhesis Modi is a villain for the Nepalese as evident on social mediaChina has seized advantage of Indias pathetic neighbourhood behaviour and as Rahul said has India surrounded No wonder many think Modi went to beg Xi to keep relations calm in the runup to the 2019 parliamentary election That Modis governance is electionoriented is no secret Will the Chinese will play ball When the twoday informal summit ended the Indian side issued a statement and reportedly urged the Chinese to issue their own Compare the two and you see a difference while India mentioned a strategic direction to our respective armies to avoid tension on the Line of Actual Control China only said the armies would follow past protocols Joint statements are never easy but individual statements are a piece of cakeModi had to supplicate himself because he cannot afford to go into the 2019 election after a showdown with China Even a short skirmish will humiliate India Unlike tension on the Line of Control with Pakistan which benefits Modi since it can be dovetailed into communal rhetoric tension with China gives Modi no benefit Modi cannot help but humour ChinaThe Chinese were amenable to being humoured since they have now what they wanted in Doklam China nowadays also wants to be seen as a responsible global power hence it has nudged North Korean leader Kim JongUn into meeting his South Korean counterpart and next month with Donald Trump China has also reached out to Japan with whom relations are more complicated than with IndiaMainly it was because Modi agreed to humiliate the Dalai Lama the Tibetan Buddhist spiritual leader who has lived in India since 1959 India prohibited its ministers from attending a Dalai Lama function ironically to thank India and asked him to shift it from Delhi to his base in Dharamsala Himachal Pradesh It was an insult worse he privately expressed the fear that he might be expelledThe Chinese gave us time but they did not give Modi a hug In the two days of staged photographs there is not one photo of Modi hugging Xi his trademark personalised diplomacy of forcibly embracing other leaders Rahul Gandhi is right Modi has decimated Indias foreign policy Its too bad that this and other aspects of his press conference were ignored by the TV media But then after Gujarat Karnataka has been good practice for him Modis obsession with the 2019 election means that governance will suffer so Rahul will get more occasions to show the public his mettleAditya Sinhas next book The Spy Chronicles RAW ISI and the Illusion of Peace cowritten with a former RAW chief and a former ISI chief is out next week He tweets autumnshade Send your feedback to mailbagmiddaycomCatch up on all the latest Mumbai news crime news current 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