MODI GOVERNMENT DOES NOT HAVE ANY FOREIGN POLICY
Radhakanta Barik
The rise of right-wing politics all over the world has been encouraged by the USAID, be it Egypt or India. The way they sponsored the ANA movement (the July 2025 revolt that dethroned the Hassina government) in Bangladesh, and the coming of the BJP in 2014 explains the attack on the Minorities, Dalits, farmers and the working class. The USAID’s (United States Agency for International Development) saas-bahu politics in India is well known.
We are using this sociological framework to explain the politics of the decade and more. For example, the attack on Urdu as language spoken by people of India under the Hindutva leader, Yogi Adityanath, in the State assembly is a case in point.
The BJP and the RSS have taken money from USAID to do their Hindutva politics and accuse the opposition party Indian National Congress of taking US funds to fight the 2024 elections. Jay Mazamudar’s report in The Indian Express clearly tells us that USAID of $21 trillion has gone to Bangladesh and has been used for supporting the NGOs to destabilise the elected government in Bangladesh. The Indian state under Modi knew this, but used the figure to create false propaganda and a hate narrative against the Congress Party.
USAID HAS NEVER improved the economic growth of any less developed country. It has increased corruption in the receiving state. A 2017 study conducted by leading economists show that those countries that received USAID have not succeeded in improving the quality of life of their citizens. On the contrary their life has declined with the coming of foreign aid (Mash Rahnama and two more, Texas Tech).
USAID of 21 million dollars to Bangladesh has been used for political participation in the state and established an academic centre in Dhaka University as a Centre for Applied Democracy which played a destabilisation role in the state. In India, this can be termed saas-bahu politics. Smriti Irani to the Anna movement, all have been financed by them. Study shows Anna Hazar as a proponent of fascist policies. He never allowed a village panchayat to be organized in his ashram locality. Leaders of Hindutva use abusive language of saas-bahu kind against the opposition and academia.
Prof Ashutosh Varshney, ae leading political scientist on India from the USA writes in his column in The Indian Express and about Modi’s visit to the USA, pointing out India’s subordinate role. Modi belongs to Savarkar tradition who wants to serve the imperialist forces. Indi’s economy is in a bad shape, for which he wanted to save his skin by going for an agreement with Trump to charm the Indian middle class. He could not open his mouth regarding the handcuffing of migrant labour and the second plane carrying migrants that reached Amritsar, travelled in chains. Modi is buying F 35s which have lost their utility in India. He is ready to reduce Tariff for satisfying the greed of ‘imported goods and services’ from America. In the present budget though, there is provision for reducing the tariff for imported motorcycles from America.
America looks at Russia as a second Iraq and they want to destroy Putin so that Russian oil and gas can be America’s freely. America pushed NATO to reach the border of Russia and forced Ukraine to wage war against Russia. Russia is a strong country with nuclear power and military strength. Now America feels that they cannot win the war against Russia and so, after five years, they are seeking compromise with Putin.
For the first time in the diplomatic history of India, its Prime Minister is playing the role of a subordinate to American hegemony. Modi came to the Prime Minister’s office as a sales man and sold all public sector industry to Adani; he even told in press conference in the USA, that his dealings with Adani was a ‘personal matter’. But in the process, all public sector industries have gone to one single Modi favourite. He turned into a good buyer also by buying F 35s, the most expensive fighter plane which cannot be used in India, makes the economy poorer.
Noticeably, this year’s Indian budget has reduced the health, education and other social sector spends and increased the defence budget to satisfy American interest. As a buyer, he is forgetting his own national interest and now he is ready to buy gas and oil from America too.
Prime Minister Modi does not give any interview to journalists here in India but he gave an interview in the White House of America to a question regarding Adani, and he answered that he is concerned with each family in India. In his eleven years of rule, the bottom fifty-five percents of families have stagnant income. With the rise in inflation, their income has fallen further and their life has turned into a disarray because of economic difficulties. The poor are pushed to eat only rice or chapati without any vegetables and vegetarianism is an ideology of the ruling party. Modi does not stand with these fifty-five percent Indian families.
By giving come tax exemption up to 12 lakhs, he has pushed the middle class too into a precarious situation – they have been pushed up the ladder without resources. They are now told to imagine themselves as belonging to the top ten percent of the rich. This demonstrate the truth that Modi stands for these ten percent of the rich and the powerful, where Adani is the leader.
Modi government’s handling of migrant labour to America is not based on a perspective, Trump does not respect labour. Both Trump and Modi do not have respect for labour. For instance, America is proud of respecting the human rights and here they failed to respect labour rights in general and migrant labour rights in particular. By keeping them in chains, the USA has resurrected the memory of slave labour from Africa.
In India, today basic respect for a citizen does not exist. The Supreme Court of India needs to take up the case of the migrants who were returned to Amritsar in chains. There aught to be central compensation for them. Even though the highest number of 33 Gujaratis had been sent back by the USA, why did the American plane stop in Amritsar instead of going to Gujarat? When Trump came, he went to Gujarat first. Many more heads of state went to Gujarat. But now, why did the American military plane go to Punjab with Indians? Obviously, the dignity of Gujarat is being saved here by the government.
The way Trump behaved against migrant labour from India and other countries, the Modi government should have taken a stand over such issue but instead, India bowed to American dictates which perhaps is the most humiliating aspect of this event. The RSS, BJP and the Modi government does politics in the name of illegal invaders in the country, so this is expected. However, this is not the foreign policy tradition of India and it is because of lack of policy affecting the Modi government that such incidents occur; this government belongs to Savarkar’s tradition of aligning with the British when a national freedom movement was going on
When Prime Minister Indira Gandhi had gone to meet President Lyndon Johnson, he told her, ‘You have come with a begging bowl’ ass it was the time for renewing the food aid from America under PL 480. She came back to India and searched for the best agricultural scientist Prof M S Swaminathan, Agriculture Secretary was B Shivaraman, the chief secretary of Odisha government and she invited C Subramaium as Minister of Agriculture and all three were given responsibility for reviving the agriculture which resulted in a food-surplus state in 1971, which took just three years.
Had Modi a proper foreign policy, his government should have developed BRICS to confront the American hegemony in the world. That needs imagination which the present establishment lacks. Their narrow vision is making Indians suffer humiliation abroad.