The Indo-Pacific Roadmap issued by the two leaders declared that Delhi and Paris will “continue to work together to extend development cooperation to countries in the region, including in Africa, the Indian Ocean Region, South Asia, Southeast Asia and the Pacific”. Modi and Macron have expanded the Indian Ocean regional framework to include the Pacific. It involved discarding the near-sacred principle in the Indian foreign policy liturgy - that colonial and “extra-regional” powers should be kept out of the Indian Ocean. That was the first time that India agreed to work together with a former European colonial power in the Indian Ocean. The statement builds on the ambitious regional agenda in the Indian Ocean that Modi and Macron outlined when the French president visited India in 2018. In Paris, for example, PM Modi and President Emmanuel Macron issued a declaration on the Indo-Pacific Roadmap for wide-ranging cooperation. These include the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN), the ASEAN “plus one” meeting, the East Asia Summit (EAS), the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF), the forum for Mekong Ganga Cooperation (MGC), and the Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC).Īlthough the focus of India’s engagement with the US and France was on defence and advanced technologies, India’s neighbourhood figured prominently in both Washington and Paris. External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar spent nearly a week in Jakarta and Bangkok, engaging with India’s East Asian partners in various formats. Modi’s decision to stop in Cairo on his way back from Washington and Abu Dhabi as he came home from Paris suggests Delhi is in no mood to slow down in Africa, Asia and the waters that connect them - the Indo-Pacific. This is rooted in an important recognition in Delhi that the intersection of great power rivalry with regional geopolitics needs continuous tending. As India’s great power relations gain new momentum - so visible during the recent visits of Prime Minister Narendra Modi to Washington and Paris - Delhi continues to raise its game in the Asian neighbourhood.
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