India's Foreign Relations On Uptick, With New Flamboyance, Promise Of Better Things

NEW DELHI: India's foreign relations appear on a humming, happy front as 2014 draws to a close, with ties with many countries, including the U.S., China and Russia, on the uptick, especially after the Narendra Modi government kicked off a blitz of active foreign policy engagements since it took over in May.

The year dawned with the looming general elections in April-May, lending an air of uncertainty to everything, including foreign policy, as everyone was unsure of the outcome and predictions were rife of the demise of the decade-long Congress-led United Progressive Alliance government.

The international community was waiting and watching to see what would happen in the world's largest democracy.

The year 2014 began with India-US relations on the ebb, with the bitter hangover of the Devyani Khobragade episode very fresh. The arrest and strip search of the Indian diplomat in New York in late 2013 continued to reverberate in early 2014.

Both sides made serious efforts for a patch-up, with then foreign minister Salman Khurshid breaking ice with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and India's new envoy S. Jaishankar moving actively to smoothen the ties. The U.S. also moved quickly to recall then U.S. envoy Nancy Powell, who was perceived to be unfriendly towards the Modi juggernaut that was surely headed towards Delhi.

After Modi was installed at the helm, the outreach with the US started in earnest, culminating in his visit to America, a country that had declared him a pariah over the 2002 Gujarat riots.

Before Modi came to power, India had two important guests - Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe as chief guest of the Republic Day parade and South Korean President Park Guen-hye, who visited in the second week of January. Abe was the first Japanese prime minister to grace the Republic Day and his visit helped reinforce India-Japan ties that got an even higher trajectory under the Modi government.

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