155June 2017. No such meeting, however, took place when the G-20 leaders
met in Frankfurt in July 2017 a junior minister headed the Saudi delega-
tion. These meetings took a substantial shape when Modi visited the
Kingdom in April 2017 (discussed in the previous chapter).
Besides his personal style of diplomacy and fondness for personal chem-
istry, Prime Minister Modi has been helped by far-reaching changes both
within and outside India.
decisive MAndAte
For the first time in three decades, the 2014 Lok Sabha elections offered
a decisive mandate in favour of a single party and paved the way for politi-
cal cohesion and direction. The decimation of the Congress Party and the
marginalization of various regional and region-based parties meant that
coalition compulsions would not subvert or undermine more significant
policy issues, as was the case in recent decades. At times, coalition compul-
sions resulted in foreign policy receiving lesser attention than it deserved
and coalition firefighting inhibited a more active engagement with the
outside world. As a result, some of the well-intended domestic and foreign
policy initiatives could not be implemented due to coalition partners pull-
ing the government in different directions (Chakrabarty 2014 ; Sridharan
2014 ; Malik and Malik 2014 ).
During the decade-long UPA government, for example, India had five
external affairs ministers, namely, Natwar Singh (May 2004–November
2005), Manmohan Singh (November 2005–October 2006), Pranab
Mukherjee (October 2006–May 2009), S. M. Krishna (May 2009–
October 2012) and Salman Khurshid (October 2012–May 2014). Out of
them, Mukherjee and Khurshid spent a considerable amount of their time
and energy in managing periodic coalition crises. Hence, ministerial-level
visits to the Middle East during UPA rule were confined to Iran, Israel-
Palestine, Egypt, Iraq, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia Morocco, Tunisia and
Turkey. In addition, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh visited Saudi Arabia
in February–March 2010 and attended the NAM summit in Tehran. After
much delay, Defence Minister A. K. Antony visited Saudi Arabia in
February 2012. As president, Pratibha Patil visited Syria and UAE
(November 2010) and Pranab Mukherjee went to Turkey (October
2013). Otherwise, there were no high-level political exchanges between
India and the Middle East during 2004–14.
TRANSFORMATION