After Wuhan in China, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Nepal manifests the gradual unfolding of India’s Neighbourhood First.2 policy – a redefined and recast Neighbourhood First.
The need for recasting the Neighborhood First policy has arisen because this policy, launched with a great fanfare in May 2014, got badly derailed.
An unimaginative muscular diplomacy that glorified itself in avoidable physical and diplomatic intrusions in the neighboring countries, and India’s incorrigible delivery deficit between promise and performance did not allow the Neighborhood First policy to flower as envisaged.
The Modi administration had become acutely conscious that a crippled Neighborhood First was facilitating China’s strategic expansion in India’s sensitive periphery. Prime Minister Modi also knew that a failed neighbourhood policy would be a huge electoral liability in 2019.