(Dr Shashi Tharoor is a two-time MP from Thiruvananthapuram, the Chairman of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on External Affairs, and the former Union Minister of State for External Affairs and Human Resource Development. He has written 14 books, including, most recently, Pax Indica: India and the World of the 21st Century.)Prime Minister Narendra Modi has taken to the international responsibilities of his office with gusto, and has generally earned high marks for his energy and style. But it's fair to say that the visit of Chinese President Xi Jinping to India must rank among the first major disappointments of his fledgling forays into foreign policy.
The visit was hyped enormously by the PM's hyperactive PR machinery and an overzealous media. Nothing wrong with that: here was the leader of Asia's biggest economy, who has in a short while impressively asserted his control over a nation gearing up to be the next global superpower, coming to pay court to a renascent India.
Not just that: President Xi had actually rearranged his schedule to accommodate President Pranab Mukherjee's absence in Vietnam; he had cancelled the Pakistani leg of his trip, eliminating the usual hyphenation that so often irritates New Delhi; and he agreed to arrive in Ahmedabad on Mr Modi's 64th birthday. It all seemed to add up to an extraordinary effort by the Chinese leader to warm up to India. The Modi Government's PR build-up at first appeared totally justified.
Headlines and breathless articles in the days leading up to Xi's visit announced that the Chinese would be announcing $100 billion worth of investments into India, almost three times the amount pledged by Tokyo during Mr Modi's recent visit to Japan.
In all fairness to our Prime Minister, the promises came not only from his spin-masters but from the Chinese themselves. Liu Youfa, China's consul-general in Mumbai, told the Times of India (13 September) that "On a conservative estimate, I can say that we will commit investments of over $100 billion or thrice the investments committed by Japan during our President Xi Jinping's visit next week. These will be made in setting up of industrial parks, modernization of railways, highways, ports, power generation, distribution and transmission, automobiles, manufacturing, food processing and textile industries."
Unfortunately, the mountain laboured, and produced a mouse.
India and China signed 16 bilateral agreements, but all they added up to was the promise of some $30 billion, not only not three times Japan's offer, but less than the $35 billion already pledged by Tokyo.
The centrepiece of the visit was a five-year trade and economic development plan signed by the two countries' commerce ministers, under which China committed to investing $20 billion in India over the next five years. (The pre-visit spin was $20 billion a year over each of the next five years.)
In addition, China committed to an investment of $6.8 billion in two industrial parks in Gujarat and Maharashtra, and some 24 Chinese companies entered into agreements with Indian companies that, if and when delivered, would add up to investments of another $3.6 billion.
Do the math: 20+6.8+3.6 = $30.4 billion. Not $100 billion. And even the $30.4 billion is still a set of promises, not actual cheques in the bank.
The Doordarshan newsreader who charmingly referred to President Xi as President Eleven could as well have named him President Xxx, the man who promised a hundred and offered thirty.
If this wasn't disappointment enough, the visit's deflating economic news was overshadowed by fresh reports of Chinese incursions into Indian territory along the two nations' long-disputed frontier. The movement of Chinese troops and civilians into Chumar in Jammu and Kashmir's Ladakh region was now the third such incursion by the PLA in recent weeks. It is hard to believe that President Xi, with his formidable control over the governmental and military machinery in a one-party authoritarian state, was unaware of what was happening, or could not have prevented it from casting a shadow on his hosts' over-the-top bonhomie.
It is true that the two countries have differing perceptions of where the Line of Actual Control lies between them, and that each patrols in territory claimed by the other side. But when so much effort was being expended on the atmospherics of the Xi visit, surely it was not beyond Beijing to tell the PLA not to run their patrols at least for the duration of their President's presence on Indian soil?
It is hard to escape the conclusion that the Chinese were sending a deliberate signal: you Indians want our money and investments, but remember we still claim land you think is yours, and we will assert our claims even while we pursue business with you. Our President may be all smiles and warm rhetoric, but underneath the cuddly exterior, we're reminding you who's boss.
Beijing has for years used the border dispute to its tactical advantage, permitting border incidents to flare up from time to time to throw India off balance. In this case the incursion may have constituted a Chinese riposte to President Mukherjee's Vietnam visit, which concluded with India agreeing to increase its role in exploring offshore oilfields in Vietnamese waters that China disputes. The PLA's strolls onto sensitive ground may well have been to send the message: don't think we haven't noticed what you were doing in Vietnam, and don't think you can get away with it quite so easily.
Whatever may have been the reasons, there is no doubt that a visit that was built up by the Modi Government as a major foreign policy triumph in the making has instead turned out to be a damp squib. Xi's India visit will now be remembered less for the photo-ops of the Chinese First Couple on a swing at the Sabarmati than for the disappointment of the $100-billion-that-wasn't and the Chinese incursions that shouldn't have been.
For Mr Modi, the Xi let-down has taken some of the shine off his burgeoning foreign policy credentials. Of course, it's never too late to learn that in international relations, it's always better to promise less and deliver more. Mr Modi really should give his PR machine a rest before the next foreign visitor comes calling.
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