New Delhi: Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is on a diplomatic overdrive, partly to check China’s aggressive rise in the region. Weeks after stealing the limelight at the BRICS summit in Brazil he is due to address Nepal’s parliament on August 4 during a two-day visit.
Modi is the first foreign leader to address Nepal’s parliament since democracy was restored in 1990, while it is his second time addressing international parliament since addressing Bhutan’s a month ago.
With increasing pressure between the nations on power trade, Modi’s visit is likely to underscore economic prosperity for both nations with an eye on greater regional integration. Modi’s intentions of ‘neighbour-first’ diplomacy is clear as opposed to Former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh who never visited Nepal in his 10 year tenure. Nepal is also important for India given the long open border India has with that country and has security dimensions for India. Besides China has made strategic inroads in the country and India needs to counter it.
This trip will be the PM’s third since taking office and will mark the assertion of ‘political ties’, a departure from Nepal-India relations that, of late, have been dominated by bureaucracy and security agencies.
Amongst PM’s other trips on the agenda are a quick trip to Japan scheduled for September and then the one to the US and that to Myanmar.
Modi’s Asian push and especially in the neighbourhood has been prompted by strategic realisation that India needs to reinforce its dominant position in the neighbourhood, besides it has to provide an effective counter weight to an aggressive China.