Modi woos neighbours

Narendra Modi will step up a charm offensive with India’s neighbours in the hope of stopping them falling into China’s embrace when he travels next week to Bhutan on his first foreign trip since becoming prime minister. A month after his election, the Hindu nationalist premier will pay a 2-day visit to the tiny Buddhist kingdom from Sunday when he will meet his counterpart Tshering Tobgay and King Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck. ‘We’re honoured to have him choose Bhutan as the first country he’s visiting,’ Tobgay said in comments published by the local Kuensel daily. ‘It speaks volumes about the importance he attaches to the region.’ Tobgay was one of seven regional leaders invited to Modi’s inauguration and analysts say the decision to make Bhutan his first port of call is designed to underline the importance he attaches to neighbourly relations, which suffered under the last government. ‘Bhutan may be a small country but it is strategically very important and ... China is on the other side,’ said Ranjit Gupta, a retired ambassador whose postings included Nepal and India’s UN mission. ‘If you aren’t interested in your neighbours, they’ll lose interest in you.’ With the exception of Pakistan, India enjoyed generally close ties with its South Asian neighbours in the 1st 6 decades after independence. But critics say the previous centre-left Congress party government started to take things for granted, allowing China – which shares a border with four of India’s neighbours -- to step into the breach. Relations with Sri Lanka, complicated by India’s large ethnic Tamil population, became so bad that Modi’s predecessor Manmohan Singh boycotted November’s Commonwealth summit in Colombo to protest at the government’s rights record. More evidence of waning influence came during recent election disputes in the Maldives and Nepal, where Indian mediation efforts failed. There was friction with Bhutan when India cut fuel subsidies ahead of elections last year, although they were restored after Tobgay’s victory. The move was seen as a rebuke over Bhutan’s moves to engage more with China but commentators say India is more likely to keep its neighbours on side by reaching out to them rather than punishing them, according to a news agency.