#dnaEdit: On global stage

Unlike the usual official visits, Narendra Modi’s first visit to the United States as Prime Minister has been electric. His earlier visits to Bhutan, Nepal and Japan were positive and revealed the personalised style of the Prime Minister who does not trim his sails as it were to the formalities of the international diplomatic circuit. There is a higher valorisation of the Modi way in his US visit   — choosing to speak in Hindi, not keeping to the officious script, and striking a personal equation. But it was not just the man and his style. 

Modi showed himself to be adopting the careful official tone as he did when he read out the prepared text of his speech at the United Nations General Assembly before going extempore. His performance at the Madison Square where he addressed the non-resident Indians showed him in his natural elements — connecting with the audience more easily and informally. But it would be a mistake to see the Madison Square event as the centrepiece of his visit. It is not. 

The meeting with the top honchos of American business was his first real engagement, and the Prime Minister made his sales pitch for India as an attractive investment destination with characteristic diligence. He showed himself better at the Council of Foreign Relations, where he fielded some tricky questions from feisty and liberal American wonks at the council who are forever on the look out to play up India against China, and who needled the Prime Minister about the status of women in India. He was candid and incisive in pointing out that the Americans should not leave Afghanistan in a hurry. It was quite an impolitic thing to say in the context of inane diplomatic discourse. So, Modi is making himself out to be the man who speaks the blunt truth and who would fall back on inanities when he feels the need for them. It is an interesting style and strategy. At the end of the interaction, Richard Haas, the chairman of the council, said in a friendly and exasperated tone that Modi knew how not to answer questions. 

It is now clear that Modi is quite uninhibited in speaking freely about his thoughts though critics might consider them to be rather naïve in the face of the complexities of the issues. He reiterated many of the ideas he has been talking about ever since he has become  the Prime Minister and even much before that. He has talked about the three Ds — democracy, demography and demand — yet again. And he is quite unembarrassed to say that he considers India to be a great reservoir of manpower to meet global demand. He is like one of the CEOs who is fired up by the agenda and he can repeat with unwonted zeal for the umpteenth time the elements of his programme and vision. Americans as well as political and business leaders in other countries understand and appreciate the simplified,   power-point format of Modi. He combines talk about India’s antiquity and wisdom with a hunger for technological up-gradation of Indian Railways. He couches his stand on the spectre of terrorism in West Asia as a defence of civilisation which even partisans opposed to him will find unexceptionable. 

It will be much too early to ask whether the visit is successful. The expected investments will take time to flow into India if they do. The expectations on both sides about prickly issues like trade and immigration are unlikely to vanish because of the good spirits all round.