Modi and his foreign visits

It’s been a year of Modi Sarkar and probably the only thing we remember this year, about the Sarkar is the foreign trips of Modi.  The PM was more out of the country than in. It’s a good thing in terms of foreign policy, no doubts about that, something which the earlier Govt lacked miserably.

So if foreign trips were the PM’s biggest achievement this one year, where all did he travel? Including his current China visit + Myanmar +Manoglia and now South Korea, the PM will have been abroad for 53 of 365 days in 17 countries during his first year as Prime Minister. As against this, Manmonhan Singh, during his first tenure of UPA was out 30 days and in second tenure spent 47 days of 365 days in 12 countries.  Now that’s a huge gap indeed!

And the big difference is that Singh made more “Summit” oriented visits while Modi made more state visits – Modi made just 5 summit visits which were BRICS Summit in Brazil, UN Gen.Assembly, Bilateral visit in USA,  East Asia/ASEAN-India Summit at Myanmar, G20 Summit in Australia and the SAARC Summit in Nepal. Rest 48 countries were all state visits.  As against this, Singh attended 10 Summit visits.

A total of 57 bilateral treaties/conventions/agreements were signed during Modi’s first year (May 26, 2014 to December 31, 2014), compared to 37 and 22 bilateral treaties during Dr. Singh’s first year of UPA-II (May 22, 2009 to December 31, 2009) and UPA-I (May 22, 2004 to December 31, 2004), respectively.

And in terms of foreign leaders coming visiting India, Modi’s first year saw 23 visits compared to 30 and 29 visits during Dr. Singh’s first year of his first and second terms respectively.

Now we hope that the performance on home turf will be as impressive if not better starting second year.