Prime Minister Narendra Modi is known to have a busy schedule of engagements with world leaders, both at home and abroad.
In fact, 2020 began with Prime Minister Modi calling on various world leaders to extend his New Year’s greetings. He spoke with up to 11 world leaders in the first two weeks of January 2020, including not only the leaders of neighboring countries, but also those of Australia, the United States, France and Russia.
Visits by Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro as the main guest on Republic Day, and United States President Donald Trump, in February showed that 2020 could turn out to be another year of frenzied global commitments for Prime Minister Modi. Then the Covid-19 pandemic hit the world.
Not only did the pandemic make it nearly impossible for world leaders to travel, it also meant that most leaders shifted their focus to national efforts to contain the pandemic. Prime Minister Modi, however, had other ideas. Aware of the important role that the Indian pharmaceutical industry could play during a global pandemic, Prime Minister Modi wanted to remain deeply engaged with the world. But how?
India commercially supplied 560 million hydroxychloroquine tablets and 53.13 metric tons of active pharmaceutical ingredient from HCQ to 82 countries. It also commercially supplied 154 million units of paracetamol and 1605 metric tons of API to 96 countries to counter the coronavirus.
As early as 2016, Prime Minister Modi told his foreign policy team that he did not want Indian projects to wait around for high-profile openings during VVIP visits. The solution that Prime Minister Modi suggested was to use video conferencing to interact with foreign leaders, without any trips abroad. Of course, this would also help keep expenses low. An initially skeptical South Block emerged after some of these video openings captured the public’s imagination and eased pressure on leaders to travel. Prime Minister Modi held several of these video conferencing events in the following years.
Even in 2020, before the pandemic, Prime Minister Modi participated in a virtual event with the Prime Minister of Nepal, KP Sharma Oli, on January 21. So, Prime Minister Modi was not only comfortable, but also very keen on Indian diplomacy shifting gears and digitizing itself.
The first virtual summit of its kind in the era of the pandemic took place with SAARC leaders on March 15. Some behind-the-scenes contacts with Saudi leaders and suggestions in all the right capitals around the world ensured that a G20 Virtual Summit would soon be held on March 26.
That opened the floodgates.
NAM, SCO, ASEAN, East Asia Summit, BRICS and G-20 were held in virtual formats during the year.
PM Modi himself held a total of 17 such Virtual Summits, with leaders from Australia, the European Union, Sri Lanka, Denmark, Italy, Luxembourg, Uzbekistan, Bangladesh and, most recently, Vietnam. These bilateral Virtual Summits were added to all the Prime Minister’s multilateral commitments.
Prime Minister Modi also made extensive use of phone calls to stay in touch with world leaders, expressing condolences to some, securing medical supplies for many, and congratulating those who took office amid the pandemic. Made and answered more than 90 phone calls from world leaders.
A year in which only five visits from Heads of State and Government were received, all before the pandemic, continues to end in a year in which India’s international engagement and international profile have multiplied.
Whether or not vaccines will make the world safer in 2021, one thing is for sure: PM Modi is likely to remain deeply immersed and engaged in the world of geopolitics.
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