Srinivas Kamat
Narendra Modi’s hurriedly cobbled up trip to China in April to meet President Xi is one of those empty gestures like dropping in on Nawaz Sharif for a cup of tea in Pakistan while returning from an overseas trip a few years ago. Nothing happened with Pakistan and importantly our relationship deteriorated to the extent that today it is at the nadir for the last two decades or more. One hopes that the same thing does not happen in the case of China.
The lack of maturity being shown is coupled with the fact that Modi always wants the spotlight on himself and will go to any extent to ensure that, fully well knowing that sometimes these gestures will fall flat.
Thus the April China trip was on the same day when the two Koreas were meeting and the whole of Asia, the US and the rest of the world would be looking towards that meeting.
Modi wanted to rub off some of that shine onto himself by scheduling a meeting with Xi. It is a wonder that Xi agreed for Modi to come over since the Korea issue was an important issue for China and Xi would at most have probably given a cursory ear to Modi during their meeting.
The way the world looked at the Modi-Xi meeting was reflected in the BBC news the next day when the coverage was all about the Koreas meeting and there was absolutely no mention of the Modi-Xi meeting.
From the media photos in the Indian press that were carried one can see Modi and Xi’s pictures with dancers, visiting an exhibition etc. which are of the kind that are done at retreats on the sidelines of summits. One can safely say that it was an opportunity completely wasted.
With no major issue touched like Dokalam or others as one newspaper put it, Modi had expressly gone to request Xi not to rock the boat on the shared borders between the two countries until the 2019 elections in India were over.
