A K Bhattacharya: The PM's 'foreign hand'

He's among our most travelled heads of government but the absence of a Pakistan visit is worth pondering

As the year draws to a close and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh completes yet another of his foreign visits, it is perhaps time to reflect on how peripatetic India’s head of government has been in a year he was under unprecedented political pressure at home. Including his just-concluded visit to Russia, Singh undertook as many as ten foreign visits in 2011, equalling the record he himself set in 2005.

Ten foreign visits in 2011 were more than the seven visits he undertook in 2010, when the government was yet to come under attack from the Opposition and civil society leaders for a series of corruption charges against ministers, ruling party politicians and even government officers. There is perhaps no causal connection between the two, but statistics show that Manmohan Singh undertook fewer foreign visits when his government sailed smoothly at home. The exception was 2005, but then this was soon after he became prime minister — he may have naturally liked to build bridges with important countries.

 

The frequency of Singh’s foreign visits saw a dip after 2005. He went abroad only on six occasions each during 2006 and 2007. The following two years saw an improvement to eight and nine visits, respectively. The rise in visits during 2009 is interesting since the calendar year encompassed the last few months of his first term as prime minister and the start of his second term. Yet the rise is significant because only one of these nine visits – the visit to the United Kingdom to attend the Group of Twenty (G20) meeting in London – took place during the tenure of his first term as PM. In other words, he undertook eight foreign visits in the first eight months of his second term in 2009.

In all these years as prime minister, Singh chose the countries for his foreign visits with some care. Quite expectedly, he visited the US on as many as nine occasions. Now, not all of these visits were taken to meet the American president. Many of them were occasioned either because the US was playing host to a G20 summit or because the United Nations was holding its General Assembly in New York. Yet Singh’s desire to build strong ties with the US is evident from these visits.

But the surprise is that after the US, the country that Singh visited the most is Russia. The Indian prime minister visited Russia on as many as seven occasions. There are good strategic and energy-related issues that explain the frequency of such visits, but that the number would almost match the number of US visits is worth pondering. Clearly, Russia continues to be an important country with which Singh has remained engaged during his prime ministership.

Look at this another way. In the last 91 months of his prime ministership under two consecutive terms, Singh has undertaken 60 foreign tours. In many of these tours, he has visited more than one country. But since he has visited at least ten countries more than once in this period, the total number of countries he has so far visited is 50. This may well be a record.

Of the 50 countries, he visited as many as 34 countries only once. These include Trinidad and Tobago, Ethiopia, Tanzania. Uganda, Cuba, the Philippines, Egypt, Mauritius, Sri Lanka and the Maldives. Whatever be the reason behind it, his primary focus has been on the big countries — four visits each to Japan, the United Kingdom and France, followed by three visits each to China, Germany and South Africa. This may reflect Singh’s strategic vision, but what also comes through clearly is his preoccupation with the more important and key global players in a world that has been changing rapidly in the last few years. The frequency of his visits to these developed countries rose also because many of the international summits requiring his participation in them took place in the capitals of these countries.

Yet, he has not completely ignored the smaller countries in the Asian region, which play a key role in various regional formations. Consider, for instance, Singh’s visit to each of the following countries twice: Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, Bangladesh, Thailand, Bhutan, Brazil and Afghanistan. While Brazil became important since it figured in the new formation of the BRICS countries, all other countries belonged to Asia, and Singh’s visits to these countries reflect his desire to enter into a more durable partnership with them.

There is one country that is notable for its absence from this list. That country is India’s neighbour to its west — Pakistan. It is not that Singh has not focused on India’s relations with Pakistan, but developments during the past seven years have been such that a visit by Singh to a country where he was born has not materialised yet. Singh’s visit to 50 countries as prime minister may be a record. But the absence of Pakistan in that list may be bothering him. This will also be one of the riskiest visits to be undertaken by Singh. Whether 2012 will see Pakistan entering his list of foreign visits is what many analysts and experts will debate as 2011 comes to an end.