On May 16 this year, prime minister Narendra Modi will remember and savour the first anniversary of his spectacular triumph in the 2014 general elections.But instead of celebrating that red-letter day in India with his associates in the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), he would be halfway through yet another high-profile foreign tour to China, South Korea and Mongolia.Just as he took over India’s reins with an external affairs bang by getting the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) countries’ heads of state to attend his swearing-in ceremony, the jet-setting Modi is concluding one year in power with a few more foreign policy feathers in his cap.Having travelled to a whopping 18 countries over the last 12 months, he has set a record as a roving prime minister who prioritises international engagement through ever multiplying personal footfalls. In his folksy words, “We are hardcore Ahmedabadis [reference to his hometown in the state of Gujarat]. We believe in single fare, double journey.”By deploying the full political will of the nation’s highest office at the service of India’s interests abroad, Modi has done justice to what the BJP labels as one of the five pillars of its foreign strategy — Samvaad — or a diplomacy of continuous, frequent and sustained interactions with the world. In the rare few months when Modi was not boarding and descending Air India One planes, he was embracing US president Barack Obama for camera flashlights or swaying Chinese president Xi Jinping on a traditional swing.Endowed with quintessential Gujarati streaks of entrepreneurship and an outgoing personality, Modi has reveled in international settings and reified the slogan of ‘bringing the world to India and taking India to the world’. For foreign policy aficionados, he has been a dream prime minister who is constantly, consistently and innovatively global in vision and action. Enjoying an absolute majority in Parliament and free from the pressure of any opposition party worth its salt at home, he has been able to devote much time and energy to strengthening India’s position overseas than any Indian prime minister since Jawaharlal Nehru.Modi’s impact is not limited to increased attentiveness to external affairs. He has also tried to reimagine and present India as a country on the march to great power status in the hierarchy of nations. True to the BJP’s other foreign policy pillar — Sammaan — or national dignity and honour, he has carried on his shoulders the burning ambition of Indians who crave for global recognition and prestige.British journalist Lance Price’s new book, The Modi Effect, cites the prime minister expressing pride in “communicating what we can do for the world, which is so different [from the past] when our leaders have communicated what India wants”. Modi’s stirring speeches before foreign and domestic audiences about India being a vishwa guru or teacher of the world are expressions of his realisation that the time has come for India to give and lead, rather than take and follow.On other occasions, he has issued realistic caveats that “the whole world is looking at India with great expectations but we are not ready”. By psychologically prepping the nation to assay a bigger role as an international problem solver and a ‘net provider’ of security and prosperity, he has recast India’s image from a self-absorbed and domestically preoccupied country into a force for good on a planetary scale.That Modi’s rebranding of India is echoing is apparent from the accolades pouring in from influential foreign quarters. Obama’s tribute to him in Time magazine as a symbol of “the dynamism and potential of India’s rise”, and a Chinese government-backed publishing house’s naming him as “the highest ranked global leader in handling domestic and international affairs”, speak volumes. The sleek public relations offensives for which Modi is famedhave put India on the world map as a happening and upcoming country, especially in economic terms. In his first year, Modi has aced what the BJP terms as a key pillar of its foreign policy — Samriddhi — or shared economic prosperity. The Economist has argued that “amid the disappointment” and gloom enveloping China, Russia, Brazil and South Africa , “one big emerging market stands out: India”.Modi’s vigorous pursuit of foreign direct investment (FDI) during his foreign jaunts and the sizeable inward financial commitments he has secured from Japan, China, the US, Canada, Australia and Germany have reversed the investor alienation that had plagued India.Set an Aggressive Target Foreign inflows from April 2014 to January 2015 have risen by 36% compared to the corresponding period in the previous fiscal year.Since India’s baseline for inbound FDI flows was at rock bottom when Modi took over, it will take more than a few years before we can actually reap a China-style foreigninvestment-driven sustained GDP spurt. But Modi’s initial efforts to convince international stateowned and private investors to “come and feel the change in India’s regulatory environment”, an invitation buttressed by across-theboard easing of onerous visa restrictions, have piqued global interest about India. Critics rightly point out that the ground realities in India are still extremely hostile and nearly impossible for foreign investors, but Modi’s plea to the world to “not go by old perceptions” is being taken seriously. A foreign economic policy premised on a huge domestic restructuring agenda, whose acme is the ‘Make in India’ campaign, will need time to mature.Modi has also set an aggressive target of doubling India’s annual goods and service exports to $900 billion by 2020. For India to become a trading power, he knows that our exports have to be highly competitive in niche areas and our regional connectivity corridors with extended neighbours have to fructify. Modi’s pithy formulation of the ‘three Cs’ (connectivity, commerce and culture) mantra is meant to harness the potential for trans-border commerce and enhance India’s role in world trade.Here too, the sceptics would contend that India’s slackness in building long-promised roads, railways, economic corridors, pipelines and ports in south Asia and southeast Asia belies the Modi government’s rhetoric of operating a “fast-track diplomacy”.As China leaps like an agile cat across the world through its Silk Road diplomacy, Modi in his second year in office will need to give flesh to our own sketchy but grand plans for developing the Spice Route and Project Mausam, which position India as a revived centre for spreading economic gains in an extended web of connected regions.The trust that Modi has reposed in state governments within India, evidenced by his recent dispatch of Andhra Pradesh chief minister Chandrababu Naidu to China, is a force multiplier in this connectivity quest and it must be integrated into national-level planning. One major letdown of India’s foreign policymaking over the decades has been a paucity of strategic goals, doctrines and blueprints for medium and long-term futures. Our international approach has been based on low expectations, muddling through and seat-ofthe-pants improvisation. With a larger-than-life leader like Modi who is his own de facto foreign minister and strategic thinker rolled into one, fears arise about a personalised external policy that lacks institutionalisation and skirts direly needed systemic reforms.Devoid of concrete, timebound measurable mandates, our foreign policy bureaucracy remains unimaginative, overcautious, reactive and prone to missed opportunities and national losses abroad. Modi’s righthand man, foreign secretary S Jaishankar, has touched the right chords by talking up a revamped Public Policy division within the ministry of external affairs to “formulate long-term policy visa-vis issues as well as countries” and to speed up India’s foreign connectivity projects.Modi’s intent to shape new capacities and attitudes in our foreign policy mandarins and his openness to tapping into “lateral entrants” are hopeful harbingers of a more fundamental reorganisation of India’s hidebound foreign policy establishment.Need Geostrategic Direction Given his all-out affinity for economic diplomacy, Modi could end up neglecting what the BJP labels as the crucial pillar of Suraksha — or regional and global security. It appears that he lacks a geostrategic direction on what kind of world order India should be shaping.We have not yet grappled with the grand strategic questions of whether or not India is content to see China rising as a new hegemon or letting the US still dominate some regions of the world.In his second year, Modi must also address how exactly India must intertwine its military modernisation drive with its potential to offer solutions to problems of war and state instability further away from our immediate neighbourhood.Modi’s intense focus on consolidating India’s hitherto slipping influence in south Asia and the Indian Ocean region is indeed a plus point of his first year, but he has bypassed Africa and Latin America thus far. India cannot really dream of leading the world if we are absent or underplaying ourselves in the emerging dynamics of ‘South-South cooperation’ among developing countries. One arena where Modi can be awarded a flawless ‘A’ grade is cultural diplomacy, or what the BJP calls Sanskriti and Sabhyata.The electrifying manner in which he has galvanised the 25-million-strong Indian diaspora , propagated Yoga as an international public good, and emoted about Buddhist and Hindu linkages during foreign visits have boosted India’s soft power as a transnational civilisational entity. It has also brought India into popular consciousness of the masses around the world as a fountainhead of ancient truths that is governed by a modernist leader.In the final reckoning, prime minister Modi has completed a stunning debut year in international affairs. The standout vignette of him spontaneously thumping Japanese Taiko drums in Tokyo says it all: the rock star has arrived on the world stage and it is not all hype.The writer is a professor and dean at the Jindal School of International affairs