Author: Manish Chand

“Trust and partnership” –- the two words French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius love to use to describe the India-France relations have acquired a new resonance, with Paris pledging 1 billion euro for bolstering India’s urban development and sustainable development projects.

India is poised to rejuvenate its multi-pronged strategic partnership with France, a top arms supplier and a leading backer of New Delhi’s global nuclear entente, during French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius’ visit to the country. The talks in Delhi June 30 between India’s External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj and her French counterpart are expected to focus on ramping up economic ties, resolving lingering issues to fast-track civil nuclear cooperation and expanding the canvas of strategic partnership between the two countries. The signing of a clutch of preliminary pacts on higher education will underline the increasing salience on bolstering innovation-driven knowledge partnership between the two countries.

It’s time for South Asia and the new government is resolutely pushing ahead with its “neighbours first” policy. The Bangladesh political elite is now looking with renewed hope at the new Modi government to free up India-Bangladesh ties from the vagaries of politics.

The talks will seek to revive the momentum that tapered off in the last two years of the Manmohan Singh government, largely due to the failure of the last regime in New Delhi to sign the Teesta water river sharing agreement and the ratification of the Land Boundary Agreement.

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.