Eye on the US

Takeaways from Prime Minister Narendra Modi's first interview

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been in power since the end of May. It is only now, as September draws to a close, that he has given his first one-on-one interview. It is significant, therefore, that it was given to an American news television channel - CNN - and to Fareed Zakaria, who is of Indian origin but has worked for most of his life in the United States. Naturally, this indicates that the prime minister's target audience is not necessarily primarily domestic, but in the United States. This is made even more unquestionable an inference as the interview comes just before he leaves for the United States for his first trip as prime minister - indeed for his first trip since the 2002 Gujarat violence that led to him being denied a visa.

Seen from that point of view, Mr Modi's interview was less an opportunity to communicate with India's citizens, and more a public-relations effort directed at the media and political class of a country he intends to win over. Even so, there are some statements that must be taken extremely seriously. For example, Mr Modi provided a robust defence of Muslim citizens of India, saying their patriotism was unarguable. This is a welcome sentiment. Mr Modi and his party should now be held to the standard that he has set through it. Anti-Muslim posturing, such as baseless claims about "love jihad", cannot coexist with the sentiments Mr Modi expressed. If they continue to be central to Narendra Modi's party's agenda for expansion, then it will be clear that either the prime minister deliberately chose to mislead his listeners, or that he has no control over his party or some of its leaders. Either way, the prime minister's credibility will be damaged. He needs to ensure that his words about Muslim Indians are more than mere words.

Sadly, there was little of substance in an interview that seemed set up mainly to allow soft-focus coverage of Mr Modi's hopes from his United States trip. However, when asked about China, the prime minister's answer was instructive. He said India would "trust China's understanding", and "have faith that it would accept global laws". Faith is perhaps not the best attitude for an Indian prime minister to have when it comes to the foreign-policy choices of the People's Republic of China. This comes shortly after China's President Xi Jinping visited India - and his army launched an incursion into Indian territory simultaneously. Clearly, that incident has not caused Mr Modi to want to alter or nuance his positive rhetoric about Indo-Chinese relations. It is also notable that Mr Modi said that India and China are ancient civilisations that rise and fall, as economies, together. This betrays a failure to understand the cause of the relative decline of India and China after the Industrial Revolution in the West, and of China's recent rise. India and China did well when the entire world was an agrarian society; given their size, they naturally dominated output. But they did not industrialise when the West did. And China opened up to reform over a decade before India, after building up higher human capital and governmental capacity. Mr Modi cannot expect that China will either respect global rules, or that China's rise will be paralleled by India. Those two things will only happen if he and his government work hard at making them happen.