90 THE WEEK • JUNE 30, 2019
PMO BEAT
R. PRASANNAN[email protected]N
arendra Modi-2 seems more moderate and
mellowed than Narendra Modi-1. He is
waving more white flags these days, than
red rags.
Listen to what he told the opposition: Your words
will matter more than your numbers. Pretty Nehru-
vian! As Rajni Kothari once observed, Nehru gave
the opposition more respect than their numbers
commanded.
Modi’s foreign policy, too, is getting circumspect.
The rough edges are getting polished. In 2014, he
had got the Tibetan ‘prime minister’ and Taiwan’s
mission head to his swearing-in. The sight of the
two T-chiefs was red rags to the
Chinese. Ties with China swung
like a pendulum, from a dhokla
lunch with Xi Jinping on the
Sabarmati banks to a military
standoff on the Doklam pla-
teau. It needed much delicate
diplomacy at Wuhan to avert a
showdown.
Modi does not look inclined
to taking such risks this time.
His approach appears to have
matured. With a former career
diplomat as his foreign min-
ister—an old China hand to
boot—we may now see quite a
lot of nimble-footing with the Chinese.
We had a glimpse of it at Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan.
Modi met the rest of the Shanghai gang there, who
were all praise for the Second Belt and Road Forum
that Xi had hosted in April. Not Modi. He agreed
with Xi and the rest on other issues—ending the
dollar reign, denial of market access, and such other,
but kept away from the chorus of praise over the Belt
and the Road.
Modi also did a bit of diplomatic plainspeak (par-
don the oxymoron; diplomats cannot speak plain
English). Connectivity projects, he told Xi, should be
“transparent” and “inclusive”, and should respect the
“territorial integrity” of others. He meant two things.
One, Xi should not get his poorer neighbours, wholive on the sides of the Belt and the Road, into debt
traps by making them sign contracts whose terms and
conditions are in small print. Two, Xi should not build
roads, bridges, factories and power lines for Pakistan
on territory that is India’s.
The Chinese, too, seem to be getting off the high
Mongol horse which they have been riding down the
Belt and the Road. ‘Inclusive growth’, they are finding
out, cannot happen if it excludes India.
‘Inclusive growth’ was the overarching theme of the
Second China-South Asia Cooperation Forum held
last week in Yuxi City in Yunnan Province, where this
columnist, too, was invited to speak. Once a hub of
the southern Silk Route, Yunnan is
emerging as the hub of the Belt and
the Road to south and southeast
Asia. It is linked, or getting linked,
by road to Vietnam, Myanmar,
Laos and even Kolkata, by rail to
the entire Eurasian landmass, by
waterways to Laos, Myanmar and
Thailand, with gas pipelines to
Myanmar, Laos and Vietnam, and
through data lines to India, Sri Lan-
ka and Bangladesh.
Xi has four sub-projects for South
Asia—a Bangladesh-China-In-
dia-Myanmar economic corridor,
a maritime Silk Road across China,
Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and the Maldives, a trans-Him-
alayan corridor linking China, Nepal, Bhutan, India
and into the Indian Ocean, and the China-Pakistan
Economic Corridor. Which ones have a chance for
getting India’s nod? No prizes for guessing.
TAILPIECE: Fiction-writers often borrow real place
names for their work. But Yunnan province has a
place which has borrowed its name from fiction.
Claiming that James Hilton’s 1933 novel Lost Horizon,
which talked of an imaginary land called Shangri-La,
was inspired by Zhongdian in Yunnan, the Chinese
have renamed the county as Shangri-La, just to attract
tourists.
That is like naming a real town in Karnataka as Mal-
gudy. Any ideas, Kumaraswamy?Dragon on the yellow brick road
PHOTO MODI AND XI AT THE SHANGHAI COOPERATION ORGANISATION SUMMIT IN BISHKEK, KYRGYZSTAN/PTI