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

The new government launched its foreign policy with a bang - by inviting eight South Asian neighbours, including Pakistan, to the swearing in, a step that was lauded all round. It gave Modi an opportunity to get to know his immediate neighbours and also reassured them of the new government's intentions.

While the Modi government's outreach to neighbours appears to have worked well to assuage the concerns of most, in the case of Pakistan the blow hot, blow cold relations between the two continue, despite the early promising noises in the wake of the Modi-Nawaz Sharif handshake and the shawl-sari and twitter diplomacy.

The relations with Pakistan, in fact, witnessed a major downslide after the continuous border firing incidents and after India called off the foreign secretary-level talks over Islamabad dabbling with Kashmiri separatists.

The horrific Peshawar school terror attack last week helped bring both neighbours together in sharing concerns over terrorism and sympathy over the great loss. A Pakistan court's decision last week to grant bail to 26/11 Mumbai attack mastermind Zaki-ur Rahman Lakhvi came as a shocker, and India will have to wait for three months to know if the Lashhkar-e-Taiba terrorist will get off the hook or Islamabad will heed India's concerns and bring him and other perpetrators of the 26/11 carnage to book.

In the over six months that Modi has been in power, he has met all the Permanent Five members of the United Nations - the U.S., Russia, China, Britain and France - some more than once, including U.S. President Barack Obama, Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

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