Analysts in India have tended to view the recent visit to Japan of Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi through a narrow political prism. They see it as an image-building exercise conjured up by Modi’s slick PR machinery to project him on the international stage and appear, well, Prime Ministerial.
Strategic affairs analyst B Raman, for instance, claimed that Modi’s visit had been largely ignored by the Japanese media. “All Jai Ho reports coming from organised NaMo groups,” he said, evidently referring to the positive, even glowing chatter about Modi’s visit among social media platforms by diehard Modi followers.
There is, of course, a history to Raman’s disdain for Modi’s followers on Twitter, whom he has in the past accused of behaving like “Nazi stormtroopers” (as Firstpost noted here).
However, it isn’t entirely true that Modi’s visit entirely slipped past the radar of the Japanese media either. As we had noted here, influential Japanese media had interviewed Modi and had otherwise acquainted their readers with Modi’s record of governance, and his place in Indian politics.
And while he was in Japan, Japanese electronic media had interviewed him – about the industrialisation of Gujarat and had even asked him some probing questions about the 2002 riots, which he did not flinch from.
Additionally, they repeatedly asked him about the perception that he was being projected as his party’s Prime Ministerial candidate. It was to this question that Modi had responded by saying that “there are no ifs and buts in politics.”
Yet, to view Modi’s visit primarily as a PR exercise misses out on some of the more significant aspects of what one columnist calls “a twist” in the way Indian diplomacy is increasingly being advanced by State-level leaders.
Although other Chief Ministers too have been going abroad in the interest of inviting investments to their respective States, Narendra Modi, observes Ashok Malik, is perhaps the first leader to seek a quasi-diplomatic profile to his overseas visit. It was a sentiment that, in this instance, the Japanese were willing to reciprocate, which they acknowledged by receiving him with protocol befitting a Cabinet-ranking Minister of the Union, which in the Warrant of Precedence is higher than that of a chief minister outside the State.
At one level, it is an acknowledgment of the reality that it is the State governments in India today that are shaping India’s economic fortunes. With the Central government in the grip of a policy paralysis, State-level leaders have stepped up to seize the momentum. In that sense, the trend is towards economic decentralisation, in direct contrast to the situation in Europe, where countries are learning that their future lies only in greater economic and political centralisation.
And these “subnational governments” as they are called are increasingly beginning to exercise their influence in international relations in ways that analysts are only just beginning to acknowledge.
Propounding his theory of ‘paradiplomacy’ – or diplomacy that runs parallel to that between nation-states – the political scientist Ivo Duchacek observed that “subnational” presence on the international scene had become a fact of life. In his view, in some fields of international economy, we may have to get used to the idea that the world is not only divided into nation-states but, in some cases, also into their territorial components.
Unlike nation-states, of course, these subnational governments are not sovereign actors, and do not, for instance, command an army or send ambassadors. Nevertheless, since most of the issues that are of critical importance to international investors – for instance, issues relating to land, law and order, infrastructure and human resources – are in the domain of the States (as in India), they will increasingly be more influential in shaping international relations.
The experience of China in this area is illustrative. As China opened up its economy, its provincial governments and leaders have been given a degree of functional autonomy to advance the economy as they deem fit. In recent years, they have become significant players on the international stage, particularly in shaping China’s foreign economic relations.
Of course, not all interventions at the subnational level contribute positively to improving international relations. The Tamil Nadu government’s disproportionate influence – based on Tamil ethnic identity – in shaping India’s foreign policy vis-à-vis Sri Lanka has sometimes been problematic, ignoring larger strategic considerations. Likewise, Mamata Banerjee’s invocation of her veto powers to spike a settlement on Teesta with Bangladesh proved profoundly embarrassing for the Central government.
And as is demonstrated by the Track II diplomacy between India and Pakistan, sometimes these ‘subnational diplomats’ get carried away by bilateral bonhomie that is blind to the larger strategic complexities.
Yet, as Modi’s most recent visit to Japan, and the Japan government’s acknowledgment of its significance, show, this is a trend that will only gather momentum as foreign governments realise that it’s probably easier to get things done by conducting ‘paradiplomacy’ with those States that, as with Gujarat under Modi, mean business. Our State-level leaders will increasingly become India’s Brand Ambassadors.
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