Russia visit: Is PM Modi accountable to the Indian public on his informal summits?

It is hard to quantify the fruits of diplomacy. The nearest one gets to ascertain how positive a foreign visit of a leader has been is through the list of deliverables at the end of talks.

In the case of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, transparency around his foreign visits has been missing of late, as the Indian leader concluded his daylong visit to Sochi to hold an “informal summit” with Russian President Vladimir Putin at his summer palace.

A statement issued by the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) late on Monday evening said that the summit “provided an occasion for both leaders to deepen their friendship and to exchange views on international and regional issues.”

According to Indian authorities, there was also a consensus on a “strategic economic dialogue” being initiated between the government think tank NITI Aayog and Russian finance ministry in coming days, without a time-frame being specified. Similar ambiguities marked the statement of the MEA, which is duty-bound to justify PM’s “no-agenda” trips.

No deliverables, no revealed agenda in the lead-up to talks, just a broad discussion on issues of regional and global importance, is what an “informal” summit is supposed to be.

Known for his globe-trotting ways, PM Modi spent nearly Rs 300 crore in only chartered flights during his overseas trips in the first three years in office, visiting between 26 and 30 countries in the process. He had something to show the Indian public in the form of agreements at the end of each summit. That is not the case anymore, even as the public money gets pumped into funding the “no agenda” summits.

The PM’s backers claim that holding these talks lend a personal touch to diplomacy, thus helping bilateral relations in the long-run.

“The basic objective of the informal summit was to have an overall discussion on the overarching issues of bilateral and global importance. It was also intended to elaborate on the respective visions and priorities of both leaders for national development in the context of the current situation,” India’s foreign secretary Vijay Gokhale had said after the informal summit between PM Modi and China’s President Xi Jinping last month.

In a geostrategic sense, New Delhi is trying hard to reaffirm its long-standing policy of “strategic autonomy,” which has been viewed as becoming increasingly fluid under the Modi government. But, just how much is achieved through these informal talks remains a matter of debate.

Critics say that in absence of any concrete outcomes at the end of such informal talks, “structural issues” in bilateral relationship remain.

“The Wuhan summit did nothing to address the larger issues of China’s backing of Pakistan, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), geopolitical tensions in the region and India aligning itself with the US in the Indo-Pacific,” India’s former foreign secretary Kanwal Sibal had told National Herald.

Similarly, an international relations professor at the Jawaharlal Nehru University, Varaprasad Sekhara Dolla, was of the view at the time of PM Modi’s China trip that committing to an agenda lends bilateral summits “more value.”

The MEA refused to divulge the specifics of talks of PM Modi’s day-long excursion to Sochi, like it did in the lead-up to the Wuhan summit.

However, the Russia visit, like the Wuhan one, presented enough photo opportunities, with Modi and Putin reportedly heading out for a walk along the Black Sea coast.

The MEA has maintained silence on if the impact of American sanctions on Iran, India’s third-largest oil exporter, came up during the talks. Except mentioning briefly that both sides “reiterated” their support of the ongoing defence cooperation, the MEA statement also didn’t say anything on what measures Putin and Modi decided to take to circumvent US sanctions on Russian defence companies.

What these informal summits do is that they betray India’s increasing insecurities in a fast-evolving regional security environment, where Russia and China seem to be coming together to contain the US under President Donald Trump.

A foreign policy commentator writing in The Print noted that PM Modi’s back-to-back summits with the Chinese and Russian leaders were an expression of dissatisfaction with the Donald Trump administration, whose moves in Iran and Russia have a direct bearing on Washington’s relations with New Delhi.

(The story was updated at 10:34 PM, shortly after the MEA released a statement on PM’s Sochi visit).