Economic Drivers of India’s External Engagement Strategy

In less than a year since assuming office, Mr. Modi has travelled to more than a dozen countries. Most of these travels have been state visits, occasionally interspersed with multilateral missions (e.g. Brazil and Australia in July and November 2014). 2 In what has been a vigorous and robust engagement spanning across continents and regions, Mr. Modi’s travels have generated considerable enthusiasm among the host-country administrations, local media and the resident Indian communities.Unlike the more sedate and relatively low-profile foreign tours by India’s former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Mr Modi’s foreign visits have been wellorchestrated and meticulously-planned for extracting maximum strategic mileage and political capital. Some of the public addresses delivered by Mr. Modi, particularlythose at New York and Sydney, were packaged and presented in styles more characteristic of top-notch global entertainers rather than heads of states and political leaders. The purpose of these high-powered ‘performances’, targeting the powerful Indian diaspora, has been to hard-sell India to foreign audiences for securing longterm strategic dividends, particularly economic.