At the core of India’s foreign policy under Prime Minister Narendra Modi is the mandate that bilateral relations with all would be based on mutual security and economic interests, and that this principle would also be extended to multi-lateral cooperation wherever required — provided that all such pacts would be in consonance with the cause of world peace.

Sequentially, security will always come before economic interest but what Modi’s approach to international relations has achieved is to establish that economic development inherently served the security agenda as well.

In a world given to ruthless politics of one-upmanship, it can be said that Prime Minister Modi has been able to strike the chord of Indian philosophy of ‘Sarvajana Hitaya, Sarvajan Sukhaya’ while handling the affairs of the nation. This can come only from a leader of personal integrity, total devotion to public cause and a nurtural outlook.

The good news is that the merit of India’s policy is already showing up on various fronts — India-US relations marking the natural friendship between the two largest democracies of the world, India’s crucial stand of positive non-alignment on Ukraine-Russia military confrontation based on an understanding of the national concerns on both sides, and the prominent role of Modi at the recent Quad summit in Tokyo where the concept of security-development interface - rather than security and economic growth as separate dimensions - became centre stage at the global level for the first time. Prime Minister Modi always projected Quad as an instrument for promoting ‘rules based order’ in the Indo-Pacific and as a forum for enhancing mutual cooperation among the countries of the region - even as India joined this powerful group of democratic nations of the world to oppose the aggressive designs of China in that maritime zone.