Author: Manish Chand

The new Indian government’s South Asia diplomacy is poised for an upswing, with New Delhi summoning all heads of missions in the country’s immediate neighbourhood June 23 to map the way ahead for intensified engagement with the region.

What makes India-Bhutan ties special, unique, time-tested and exemplary? Indeed, it’s a long roster of laudatory adjectives that’s generously used to describe the India-Bhutan relationship; they evoke an organic relationship that is grounded in idealism as well as realism.

Putting South Asia first in his foreign policy calculus, India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi is heading on his first foreign trip to Bhutan, a nascent Himalayan democracy and a country that enjoys special time-tested relations with New Delhi.

After high-voltage, headline-hogging South Asia diplomacy, it’s time for the new government to infuse spark in India’s “Look Middle East” policy as it gets ready to host the foreign minister of Oman, the Gulf state which is home to 700,000 Indians who send home $3 billion in annual remittances.

“Out-of-box thinking.” Striking an upbeat note on the trajectory of India’s external engagements in the days ahead, India’s new external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj indicated innovative thinking could well be the mantra of the foreign policy of the new government in India.

Unveiling his desire to transform India-Pakistan relations, Pakistan’s Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif held his first meeting with his Indian counterpart Narendra Modi and underlined the need for both countries to work together to fructify “the common agenda of development and revival.”