Category: Journalism

(News reports, analysis, editorials, commentary, interviews, features etc from India and the world)

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Huffington Post (UK) Journalism World Diary

Post Brexit, India Can Be UK’s America To The East

As in personal life, the need for an all-weather friend in the global polity can never be overstated in the scenario of one having to restart a journey away from the comfort zone – irrespective of the reasons behind the loss of the cosy corner.

The United Kingdom has always had the United States for every such possibility. But in the ever-changing global order, and amid diminishing global power, the UK – especially the post-Brexit UK – could do well to more such friends. Luckily, there is one significant one in the east – India, the jewel in the crown of the erstwhile British Raj.

As per a report released by UK’s Department for International Trade on August 30, the US remained the biggest source of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in the 2015/16 financial year with 570 projects; followed by China with 156 projects.

India, significantly, retained its position as the third largest investor in Britain with 140 projects – out of a total of 2,213 projects in investments by a record 79 countries.

Simultaneously, UK is the largest G20 investor into India, contributing around 8% of India’s FDI.

Mr. Liam Fox, UK’s International Trade Secretary, on his visit to New Delhi and Mumbai, India’s political and financial capitals, on August 30 said that Bilateral relationship between the UK and India has the potential to become a stronger partnership, particularly in trade and investment.

Speaking during his first visit to India since taking up his role, Mr. Fox said:

I wanted to come here early in my time as Secretary of State for International Trade to show how important the new government views our trade partnership with India. This partnership lies at the very heart of the strategic relationship between our two nations, a relationship that has never been more important than it is today.

Mr. Fox, apart from meeting leaders of India’s leading industry bodies like the Confederation of Indian Industries (CII), also attended the soft launch of the India-UK TECH Summit. The UK is the country partner for the TECH Summit which showcases British expertise in innovation, technology, and skills to Indian businesses.

Importantly, the visit also served as a preparation for his visit to India later this year to attend the Joint Economic and Trade Committee (JETCO). Addressing the CII, he further said:

“The India-UK Tech Summit in November will be a further celebration of this partnership, where sector experts ranging from smart cities, healthcare, agri-tech and others will come together to boost trade, R&D as well as academic ties between the UK and India.”

With his visit, where he also met India’s Minister for Finance, Mr. Arun Jaitley, there is a renewed enthusiasm about the proposal for an India-U.K. Free Trade Agreement (FTA).

The UK currently has High Commission offices in New Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai and Kolkata and trade Offices in Bangalore, Hyderabad and Ahmedabad. The Department for International Development (DfID) works with the state governments of West Bengal, Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Orissa.

Aiding the trade bodies is the British Council, which has offices and libraries in eleven cities stretching from Thiruvananthapuram in the south of India to Chandigarh in the north and Ahmedabad in the west to Kolkata in the east.

The thrust on India is not misplaced. India is currently the third largest economy in the world (based on purchasing power parity) and is expected to become the second largest by 2050 when the economy would be 30 times the current size.

A British Council report late in 2015 says, “As its economy is transformed, its political, military and cultural power is also likely to increase, elevating India to a 21st Century superpower”.

Former chairman of Goldman Sachs Asset Management and current Conservative government minister Mr. Jim O’Neill, the British economist who had coined the acronym BRICS, has often said that “India will soon be ‘one of the biggest influences on the world’. It is looking for new partners in the global race. This represents a great opportunity for the UK“.

The opportunity would, however, need to be actively tapped by the UK (and indeed by India). The British Council report advises the UK to “continue to up its game if it is to take advantage of India’s rise”.

Currently, Indians account for more than half of UK’s total 93,935 skilled work visas granted, much ahead of the US, which accounted for around 11 percent.

As per a BBC report on the ‘India UK Links’, Indian companies are playing an increasingly important role in the UK economy. “Tata Group, for example, is one of the UK’s largest manufacturing employers, with some 65,000 employees in the UK.”

Nearly 1.5 million citizens of Indian origin make up the UK population, making it the largest ethnic minority group in the UK and the seventh greatest Indian diaspora in the world.

Half a million Indians tourists visit the UK every year, while nearly the same (400,000) Britons visit India.

Age-old overlap of culture, history, and language with India already give the UK a reliable foundation upon which future relations between the two nations can be permanently deepened. India’s burgeoning English-speaking middles class offers the most friendly opening for the UK to become India’s partner of choice for diplomatic, trade, cultural, and education relations. Before the Indian story is courted by other nations, those factors can add to the opportunity for the UK to make inroads into India’s civil society, research, education, and the creative sector.

Most importantly, quite like the US, the Indo-UK partnership can rest assured on the very concrete edifice of both being thriving, liberal, and multi-cultural democracies. That means that the relationship cannot be marred by the whims and fancies of a closed system like, for example, that of China.

The need is for an open heart and active feet.

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Huffington Post (UK) Journalism Sport

The Two Things England Need to Do at Old Trafford

This sports journalism piece was first published on Huffington Post (UK) here.

The second Test between England and Pakistan beginning tomorrow (July 22) at Old Trafford has acquired a strange tension, which is vastly more intense and different from the buzz surrounding the crowd reaction to Mohammed Amir’s return to the stage where he had let the cricketing world down.

The ill feeling, amazingly, has nothing to do with what happened on the pitch for a fluctuating four days, at the end of which Pakistan won by 75 tension runs. What got England’s goat was the visitors’ showmanship after the fall of the last English wicket, in front of thousands of English supporters. The reaction to the act from the host gallery was swift – especially from pacer Tim Bresnan and captain Alastair Cook, who said it would work as a motivation for his team.

But giving the post-match box-office fireworks a miss, one of the reasons why Alastair Cook & Co. lost was because they never believed they were going to lose the test – neither at the beginning of the match nor when they were given a target of 283 to chase in the fourth innings.

And there was a good reason for the confidence. They had just routed Sri Lanka in an easy series win. Add to it their impressive home record in tests this decade.

But they lost – to their own “naive batting”, as Cook put it, and Yasir Shah, in that order. Unless they make a few changes, the result could be repeated.

Play Yasir Positively; Play Seamers Aggressively

There is a difference between ‘going after’ a spinner and playing a spinner with the ‘best foot’. So, the case of Moeen Ali’s horrendous dart at Yasir and Gary Ballance jumping on the sides and getting bowled behind the legs are both prime examples of how not to play a spinner. Jonny Bairstow going to the back foot and getting bowled to a flipper by Yasir is also a form of going after the bowler – because the underlying assumption is that the batsman has got the bowler on the mat and that he can cut the bowler any time.

And yet, the idea is not the opposite – to try to block Yasir away. That was the other extreme that was tried by the English batsmen during the course of the match. Unfortunately for them, they found out that it can’t work for a period spread over 40 overs in an innings.

The best way to play a spinner, as any batting coach would tell you, is to rotate the strike. Yes, with many men around the bat, it isn’t always the easiest of things to do. But that’s when footwork comes into play – something that you ought to possess in a decent amount if you are deemed good enough by your country to face wrist or finger spinners from the Indian subcontinent. A decent footwork allows a batsman to move about the crease while, importantly, covering the stumps in such a way that LBW is taken out of the equation.

Pace bowlers need rhythm to succeed; spinners need that, and a lot of space.

Yasir aside, there is no need to give undue respect to the seam bowlers. If England has to succeed, the batsmen would have to tackle Pakistani pacers aggressively. It should not be impossible for a team that is more used to the mix of pace and swing than most Test-playing nations.

In other words, play Yasir positively and the Pakistani seamers even more so.

Unlock the Resources

James Anderson, who was the world’s number one Test bowler before Yasir Shah overtook him with his exploits at Lords, and Ben Stokes are expected to walk straight into the side after their time out due to injury – replacing Jacob Ball and Steven Finn respectively.

But England needs to bring Adil Rashid in for Moeen Ali – and not just for the ‘that’ shot by the latter in the second innings. Pakistan is filled with right-handers and therefore leggie Rashid offers a much better option than Moeen. Also, Rashid has the confidence of rattling the Pakistani batting line-up once, barely six months ago in Dubai. And he can bat a bit too.

On the other hand, with the pitch at Old Trafford traditionally being receptive to spin bowling, there is a case for playing both of them – at the expense of, perhaps, James Vince. In all honesty, it is a toss-up between Vince and Gary Ballance. But left-handed Ballance should be a better counter to the leg spin of Yasir. Also, he has a better record of the two.

But the most vital part of managing the above resources is the need to unlock – or unclutter – the resources.

Alex Hales, in all fairness, is not going to play for four sessions of a test match in this series. Give him the freedom to express himself without self-doubts about his role as an opener.

The same for Joe Root. He got so bogged down under the pressure of expectations after the departure of Cook in the second innings that it ultimately led to his dismissal. It’s time to remind him that he alone is not expected to win it for England.

On top of that, England will have to fight fire with fire when it comes to expressing it on the field. Get into the Ashes mindset and give it back to the opponent. Most English players would be able to do more push-ups than their Pakistani counterparts. Let it show in the middle.

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India Journalism

Why Gujarat Local Election Results Augur Well for BJP

This political analysis was first published here.

Post BJP’s  dismal performance in large swathes of rural Gujarat, one could be prompted to believe that the party faces not just a resurgent Congress, especially aided by the Bihar steroid, but also a detached, fatigued and unhappy electorate in the run-up to December 2017 state elections.

With Congress capturing 23 of the 31 Zilla (District) Panchayats and 132 Taluka (Block) Panchayats, it indeed sounds like a significant come back story of a party that has been moribund in the state for most part of the last two decades. GSTV, the news TV channel of Gujarat’s leading news daily Gujarat Samachar declared: “Gujarat Congress comes out of ICU.”

That headline should be seen as a sober one on a day that was always going to be about media reaching for the hyperboles.

The performance elated Congress supporters (includes most of English news media personalities) enough to go for the Twitter trend #CongressSweepsRuralGujarat.

The hashtag, however, not only speaks well about the statistics that suit it but also the big picture of the state viz., “Congress sweeps rural Gujarat … (but please don’t ask us about rest of Gujarat)”.

Congress supporters are talking only of rural performance because in one of India’s most urbanised (43%, as per 2011 census) states, BJP won all the six municipal corporations that went to the November 2015 polls – five of them with convincing margins.

Two of those are municipal bodies of Surat and Rajkot – the principal funding bowl of Hardik Patel led (and allegedly Congress and multiple NGOs aided) ‘Patidar Anamat Andolan’ (A mass – and often violent – protest by the Patel caste/community for reservation in education and employment), and the historical, absolute stronghold of Patel community respectively.

While BJP, admittedly, barely scraped through in Rajkot (38/72), it sailed through emphatically (80/116) in Surat, where electoral mapping revealed that it won all the three Lok Sabha and nine Vidhan Sabha constituencies.

In the largest city of the state, Ahmedabad, BJP’s performance was nothing short of a stunning repeat, winning 142 seats out of 192 (151 in 2010).

The BJP’s performance in the remaining three biggest urban centres Baroda (56/76), Bhavnagar (34/52) and Jamnagar (38/64) was equally convincing.

Even better is the performance in 56 Nagarpalikas (Town Councils), where BJP bagged 42. Congress won just 10 Nagarpalikas.

That makes for a BJP control over 48 of the 62 most populous city and town councils of Gujarat.

In other words: The Gujarat local bodies election results has actually thrown up a picture that responds differently from different angles, but is mostly what you want it to be. Trust a community that has business in its veins to keep everyone happy, eh?

Now let’s look into the circumstances in which the elections took place:

First, no issue had found the BJP on as much a slippery ground as the recent ‘Patidar Andolan’. Capping the simmering socio-political pot for over an year, thousands of Patel community members in Ahmedabad and Mehsana districts left the BJP to join the Congress just before elections on November 26.

Mehsana, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s birth district, as it turned out, almost completely wiped BJP off the district panchayat map.

Such was the impact of the agitation that the ruling BJP government, despite having 40 Patel community lawmakers and a Patel chief minister, was scared to go all out politically against the protest. At least one sitting legislator had openly rebelled against the party and joined the protest group, while there were murmurs of discontent among the rest of the Patel MLAs. Most feared being ostracized from their own community for not going against the state government, which, on many occasions, emphatically refused to extend reservation to the Patidar/Patel community.

In the end, the entire campaigning was more or less handled single-handedly by Chief Minister Anandiben Patel. Let’s read that again: Single-handedly.

But she could do only so much. In the absence of any other alternative, the angry Patels either boycotted the elections or voted en masse in favour of Congress. In other words, Congress benefited hugely due to the anger of Patels towards BJP and not necessarily because of its own appeal.

Second, the chief minister ended up fighting a lonely battle also because of the proximity of the Gujarat local elections to the Bihar elections, wherein both BJP national chief Amit Shah and the prime minister, both from Gujarat, had invested heavy political and personal capital – and had no time left for this elections. Neither would’ve directly campaigned for what is after all local council elections, but could’ve helped more with strategy and show of support and encouragement for the cadre that has been left bemused by spectacular failings in Delhi and Bihar.

For a local like me, it would be difficult to explain the significance of the aforementioned factor to ‘national’ news media experts. For the first time in over two decades, the Gujarat BJP cadre had neither Narendra Modi nor Amit Shah around. It was a completely new experience, amid a completely new set of crisis circumstances.

On the other hand, the Congress cadre was infused with a renewed vigour due to the party’s surprisingly good showing in Bihar. Riding the Bihar euphoria was the fresh legs of new Gujarat Pradesh Congress Committee Chief Bharat Sinh Solanki, a former union minister and son of former Gujarat chief minister and party heavyweight Madhav Sinh Solanki. He is said to have acted like a friend of all the workers and volunteers and kept positive energy floating in the camp despite the state-wide party structure being dysfunctional.

Third, and a very big reason for the results in rural areas is farmers’ protest against the union  and state governments for their failure to ensure adequate market prices for their produce, especially the two main cash crops – cotton and groundnut. Even the RSS affiliated farmers body Bharatiya Kisaan Sangh (BKS) has gone against the state government on the issue. Though the agitation dates back to last year, things got particularly worse this year.

Gujarat Agriculture Department officials say that because of erratic rain in 2015, the production of cotton is likely to fall short of average produce by 2.7 lakh tonnes and groundnut by nearly 4.5 lakh tonnes.

With the state government refusing to declare drought in the state, which could enable special relief packages, and the union government not increasing the minimum support price for cotton, anger has been running high recently in Gujarat’s hinterland. And it got reflected in the results.

A silver lining for the BJP was found in more than a dozen villages choosing to simply boycott the elections rather than vote for Congress or others.

And mind you, this also acted as the most fertile ground for ‘Patidar Andolan’. It takes people of all kinds to make a city, but a village is often about more of the same. In other words, the caste/community spirit trumps all in a rural setting. So, amid deficient rainfall led agrarian difficulties, Patel caste dominated areas turned into an absolute no-go areas for BJP.

Last heard, the Gujarat government had constituted a ministerial committee to prepare a report on the impact of poor monsoon on the state’s farmers.  All rightey!

Can a Congress administration in Zilla Panchayats’ solve those farmer problems? The farmers’ stand is more a statement of anger against the BJP and not much an approval rating for the Congress.

And going back to the previous pain areas: Is the Patel reservation protest going to sustain itself till 2017? Seems unlikely; the ‘leader’ is currently in jail, discredited for asking his community members to kill policemen. The entire community was anyway never behind the protest.

Further, is 2017 going to see the Chief Minister fight a lonely battle again? Impossible, obviously. The entire might of the BJP machinery, including both Amit Shah and the prime minister, apart from allied forces like the RSS and VHP would be out again to retain their most proud citadel.

The current local election was an occasion when the iron was hottest for Congress party to strike. A host of sudden and severe circumstances had besieged a BJP that has to now continually face anti-incumbency for its long rule in the state. Worse, the elections featured a BJP that was wary, cagey and on the defensive on all fronts.

That the BJP could still manage to stand on its feet in rural Gujarat and best Congress by good margins in the urban and semi-urban areas of one of India’s most urbanised states augurs well for BJP.

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Entrepreneurship Featured Indian Subcontinent Journalism LinkedIn

So Long, Sabeen Mahmud

sabeen

‘Friend’ is a rather strong word, but I believe Sabeen Mahmud and I considered each other almost that – despite not being in touch lately. We had first got talking in 2006 due to our common links then with The Indus Entrepreneurs (TiE).

A few years into my own business, I was just about testing TiE organization waters via ‘a mere’ ordinary membership of TiE Ahmedabad (India) Chapter, while she was already, among other things, a guiding light of the Karachi (Pakistan) Chapter. But that didn’t stop her from signing off her first email in her uniquely unassuming, unpretentious style: “32 – non-procrastinating female bachelor (what in the hell is a politically correct alternative to spinster, btw?)”

Last night (April 24), two gunmen on motorcycle pumped five bullets into her body while she was on her way home in Karachi. The attack took place shortly after she hosted a talk event titled ‘Unsilencing Baluchistan’, about the issue of human rights in the province that has played host to a bloody separatist insurgency for many years.

As per the New York Times, Sabeen agreed to host the discussion after it had been canceled at a private university in Lahore, “reportedly at the behest of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) Directorate”.

But this piece is not about the politics surrounding the tragedy. Reflecting the DNA of this platform, this remembrance is about Sabeen’s unshackled entrepreneurial spirit.

Though she was already established as COO of Beyond Information Technology Solutions – b.i.t.s, a J Walter Thomson (JWT) associate company, her fierce independent streak reflected in no form better than the place she nonchalantly named The Second Floor (T2F) – “because it was housed on the second floor of a nondescript office building”.

But there was no nonchalance involved with the purpose of the space. Sabeen was clear about what she wanted T2F to be: ‘A community space for open dialogue’.

To gather context about the initiative, read this by NPR’s Dina Temple-Raston:

“If you were in Greenwich Village or SoHo in New York, this would sound like more of the same. But this being Pakistan, the Second Floor is unusual. When lawyers demonstrated after then-Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf fired dozens of senior judges in 2007, demonstrators planned their next moves at the Second Floor.”

One of the more notable recent events of T2F was Pakistan’s first ‘Hackathon’ in 2013 – a weekend-long event with about ten teams focusing on solutions to civic problems in Pakistan.

Organised a few months ahead of the country’s parliamentary elections, the event featured a diverse group of people, from coders, civic planners to private sector executives.  After brainstorming about Pakistan’s three dozen odd problem areas, the selected participants got down to working on nine targeted issues that could be solved with workable, effective apps.

Such was the aura of the enterprise that the administration was more than excited to be a part of it – especially since some of the apps were about identifying, tabulating and reporting government infrastructure and delivery inefficiencies.  Other solutions ranged from crime mapping to emergency services.

Yes, apps for governance delivery – in a region where the latter is still largely non-existent!

But then that’s what set her apart.

A self-confessed ‘tech addict’, she was a ‘Mac snob’ to such an extent that she often gave Steve Jobs credit for shaping her “anti-establishment, anti-war, pro-freedom worldview”. It wouldn’t be too much of an exaggeration to say that design and technology were an extension of her body.

Once during a visit to her maternal uncle (‘Mamoo’) in London, she found herself without connectivity for some reason. “Didn’t mean to not respond – have been in London with no Internet access. […] I tried dialup but his phone line felt like it was from the sub-continent… Any other city and I would have fallen ill but London!!!!!!!! So much to do and see that didn’t miss the lack of connectivity much,” she wrote to me a few days later.

Over a period of 8 years, T2F hosted over 800 events – reaching the current average frequency of about four events a week. The events include corner meetings for independent political candidates, symposia on culture, technology and society, tele-conferencing with exiled leaders and thought leaders from across the world, talks, readings, standup comedy, film screenings, concerts, technology workshops, art exhibitions and pretty much everything that it was approached for. A large number of those events were streamed live, tweeted in real time and digitally recorded for archives.

But it is not about numbers. It is about entrepreneurial spirit being put to effective use in the social sphere.  She once told me, “Street art adds colour and intelligence into a city, without changing the infrastructure”. The context was our conversation about mixing her expertise in design and technology and my understanding of civil engineering and media to good use towards a better society.

With tributes pouring in from New York Times, Pakistan’s current and past leaders and countless admirers on the social and mainstream media, one thing is clear – she added an awful lot of colour and intelligence to her society, despite her abridged stay therein.

“Hatred is inexplicable yet so rampant and accelerating at an appalling pace. You’re right, film/cinema is a potent medium. I’d love to try my hand at it – soon, hopefully” – she once wrote to me.

“It was good to hear that you’re open to the idea of making cinema. Maybe one day we can make a joint production – a lavish musical. What say ya? 🙂” – I had joked back.

Maybe some other time; so long, Sabeen Mahmud!

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Cinema Journalism

Film Review: SHAMITABH


Excerpt: Shamitabh is built upon a novel idea and gifted shoulders of its two principal actors. But soon after enamouring us with an electric start, it begins to overindulge, overreach and meander before eventually falling much short of its promise.

Review: [Spoiler Alert: Some details revealed in the description of basic plot]

A ‘mixture’ (word explained in the film) of an earnest facade and a hidden someone ruling – and fooling – the film industry is quite a tantalising premise. Unfortunately, the narrative doesn’t quite walk as well.

Shamitabh_actorsDaanish (Dhanush) is a dumb (गूंगा) boy from rural Maharashtra, who was born to be a star. Lack of voice never hampered his dreams, till he finally reaches Mumbai. Hounded out by all studios, he meets a young, modern day assistant director Akshara (Akshara Haasan) who (for some reason) pours her life’s quota of compassion on Daanish – going even to the extent of taking Daanish to Finland to get him operated for his vocal chords.

As modern day European technology would have it, the Finnish voice experts enable Daanish to mouth out the voice of any person who is connected with him via a Bluetooth type of gadget! Once back in Mumbai, all that the duo needs is a good voice that can come out of Daanish’s mouth.

Enter old, dilapidated and angry Amitabh Sinha (well…), who lives in a graveyard after having failed in his attempt at making it big in the Hindi film industry. Together as (Daani)shAMITABH, the voice and the man hit gold at the box office. The purple patch gets shredded when the two can’t decide who has a bigger role to play in the success.

Clearly, real life possibilities are not the biggest concerns while putting together the basic idea. The whole point of the farcical writing seems to somehow make the idea happen – somehow, anyhow. And it begins with the very first step that the protagonist takes towards the idea.

And when the writer (R Balki) is also the director, it should barely be surprising that the film as a whole represents a meandering journey.

From the initial frame of reference, it seemed that the film could be about human spirit overcoming all odds. Later, it gives an impression that it is all about human ego coming in the way of acknowledging and accommodating human limitations. And then there are instances of it being a statement on Hindi film industry’s vacuous identity and productions, a linguistic political comment, comedy, satire and the all encompassing tribute to the maker’s favourite actor and his voice.

Eventually, it ends up being all of that together – or nothing in particular. Consequently, while you admire the premise and the attempt, you feel the film getting dragged, especially after the first hour.

Amitabh Bachchan is very good. He looks every bit his part. Remove him from the film and the film would lose, well, its raison d’être. But for how many more times would directors give him forced soliloquies – like the one he has with Mrs. Gomes in the film? Those are neither novel anymore nor add too much to films. At worst, today’s youth lose attention during such sequences.

Dhanush is extremely good and though the plot in the larger public imagination gets buried under the ‘Bachchan baritone’ conversations, the fact of the matter is that Dhanush matches Bachchan for most part. His pre-Mumbai sequences and the farcical first film visuals are a riot. He looks a complete natural and is an asset to the industry.

It is difficult to judge the acting abilities of Akshara from this film. Constrained within a rather implausible scenario, she more or less looks having been herself in the film.

Cinematographer P. C. Sreeram again looks in fine form. He lights up the various moods of the contrived narrative well and makes the film visually quite attractive. Editor Hemanti Sarkar shines with jump cuts and transitions.

This is Ilayaraja‘s 1000th film and he comes up with a score that goes well with the film. The songs might not be hummed for long but they – along with the background score – do the job expected of them. The title song and Pidley are two of the more noteworthy compositions.

Verdict: Shamitabh is quite different from a regular Hindi film. And for that reason (alone) you may want to watch it once.

Categories
Foreign Policy Association (US) Journalism

China saw Modi coming but not Modi’s India

The article was first published on the Foreign Policy Association network here.

Before Narendra Modi became the prime minister of India, some observers in China believed that he could well be “the Deng Xiaoping of India,” comparing him with the Chinese leader who led the economic reform that has transformed China to a global power from a Third World country.

Modi visited China three times during his days as the chief minister of the state of Gujarat (west coast of India) and was always accorded red carpet treatment by the Chinese. During his last such visit in 2011, he was met by but four Chinese politburo members. Though not a norm, most chief ministers get to meet just one. China clearly saw Modi coming.

More importantly, the Chinese also experienced firsthand the probable tenor of future discourse with Modi’s India when he in his discussion with Chinese administrators, including the mayor of Beijing, not only pointed “Chinese activities in Pakistan Occupied Kashmir (PoK)” but also about Pakistan “using China against India.”

While being a provincial leader, Modi was said to have warned China of damage to bilateral ties if China continued to play tango with Pakistan – before going on to tell the hosts that when in India, the Chinese should use Indian maps and not theirs, in a reference to the heat generated in India about Chinese company TBEA having distributed the map of India without some parts of Jammu and Kashmir, as well as the entire Arunachal Pradesh (both Indian states bordering China), at a business function in the Indian capital of New Delhi.

If the Chinese had seen Modi coming, they should’ve seen Modi’s India coming. But, it seems, they didn’t.

They wouldn’t have bargained for the entire South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) leadership to be present at Prime Minister Modi’s swearing in ceremony – not Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif at least. But before they could come out with the final analysis, Modi was already on a whirlwind charm offensive to Bhutan, Nepal (twice), China’s bête noire Japan, and its bitter rival, the United States.

It was more than exchange of business cards: In January, Sri Lanka President Mahinda Rajapaksa, the man who had decisively – and brutally – pulled the island nation out of long and bloody civil war, towards robust economic growth of seven percent a year, was quite remarkably put out of office by the country’s electorate.

Immediately after the election results, the region was awash with talks about the change having been engineered by India’s intelligence agency, Research and Analysis Wing (RAW). India, of course, denied having anything to do with it but many neutrals pointed out to the uncanny coincidence of the expulsion of a RAW official by Sri Lanka during the run-up of the Jan. 8, 2015, Lankan elections. The official was recalled by India in December 2014 amid accusations that he helped shape the campaign of join opposition candidate Maithripala Sirisena – after persuading him to suddenly dump Rajapaksa.

Rajapaksa had long been upsetting India with his overtures to China and allowing the dragon to treat his country as a de facto strategic base – by means of pouring in billions of dollars for massive construction projects. The Chinese President Xi Jinping visited Sri Lanka in September 2014 to lay stone for a USD 1.5 billion port project, something that elicited a quick and unhappy reaction from India.

Despite his allowing China a strategic foothold in the Indian Ocean and despite pressure from the global community, especially the UNHRC, for alleged war crimes, India was cautious in going hard at Rajapaksa – because it could have perhaps him pushed even further closer to China.

But Indian officials believe he pushed things way too far when he allowed in September 2014 a Chinese submarine to dock in Colombo. Sri Lanka is bound by an existing agreement with India to inform the latter if any such actions are taken place. But it did not. And it did not when the submarine was docked again in November.

The Sirisena government has said that India is “the first concern” and has talked of reviewing all projects awarded to Chinese firms. This was a massive round to have won by Modi’s India, but there were many other battles that wherein India has now started pushing China back – at least in South Asia.

While Bhutan has reinforced its stand vis-à-vis India’s concerns, Modi’s two visits to Nepal in double-quick time — his initial visit being the first by an Indian PM after 17 years — has earned him a handle that can help him key in India’s interests into Nepal’s own social, economic and strategic interests. An early reflector of the convergence between the two is the signing of Power Trade Agreement (PTA), which allows exchange of electricity between the two neighbors while opening up other avenues in the hydropower sector.

In Bangladesh, where the China Harbour Engineering Company was expected to walk away with the tender for a $8 billion port power project India has suddenly found itself staring nervously at a rival bid by an Indian company from Modi’s home state of Gujarat.

Most recently, Modi’s India put out a strategic U.S.-India joint statement on “advancing shared security in Asia Pacific region” during the recent Barack Obama visit to New Delhi. China was left seething when Obama, in reference to the South China Sea issue, said that U.S. welcomes a greater role for India in the Asia Pacific, where “the freedom of navigation must be upheld and disputes must be resolved peacefully.” Much to China’s wariness, Obama also showed agreement with India’s entry into the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG).

All of that maneuvering by and in Modi’s India seems to have got under the skin of the notoriously reticent Chinese. An article in the Communist Party of China (CPC) controlled Global Times remarked, “The seemingly enthusiastic approach of the US and India and the romance between the two leaders do not suggest any substantial improvement in the bilateral ties of the two countries.”

The game is on.