NEW DELHI // India's premier will begin a visit to the United Kingdom on Thursday as he continues his quest to drum up foreign investment in India amid a storm of criticism at home following the loss of a key state election.
Prime minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) lost an assembly election in Bihar on Sunday, after a campaign closely supervised by Mr Modi himself. The BJP won only 53 of the 243 seats in the legislature, far behind a grand alliance of opposition parties including the Congress.
Top BJP leaders – particularly Mr Modi and his long-time campaign lieutenant Amit Shah, who is also president of the party – have faced heightened anger and resentment from their colleagues in the party since the Bihar defeat.
On Tuesday night, a team of BJP elders released a strong statement denouncing the party’s mishandling of the election. Although the statement did not mention Mr Modi and his long-time campaign lieutenant Amit Shah, who is also president of the party, it hinted strongly that they were the targets of the criticism.
The elders called for a “thorough review” of the reasons behind the defeat, pointing out that it “must not be done by the very persons who have … been responsible for the campaign in Bihar”.
Mr Modi arrives in London on Thursday to meet prime minister David Cameron, and together they will address the British parliament.
Mr Modi is also expected to attend a banquet hosted by Boris Johnson, London’s mayor, and visit the Jaguar Land Rover factory, owned by India’s Tata Motors.
On Friday, he will have lunch with Queen Elizabeth II at Buckingham Palace before proceeding to the centrepiece of his visit – a welcome reception from the Indian diaspora at Wembley stadium, expected to draw nearly 70,000 spectators.
When Mr Modi was in New York last year, 18,500 people of Indian origin from across the United States and Canada packed into Madison Square Garden to hear him speak.
The Indian diaspora in the UK numbers nearly 1.5 million, forming one of the most influential and wealthy communities in the country.
“This Olympics-style reception he will receive at Wembley stadium will not only reflect the respect and adulation [Mr Modi] has within the British Indian community, but will highlight and celebrate his vision for a peaceful and prosperous India,” said Nath Puri, a founding member of the Europe India Forum, the organisers of the event.
Ahead of the visit, India’s foreign secretary S Jaishankar said that the UK trip will have important economic ramifications.
“The UK and India are leading investors in each other’s countries,” Mr Jaishankar said on Tuesday. “Our ballpark figure for the UK’s investments in India is in excess of US$22 billion (Dh80.8bn). It amounts to 9 per cent of the current [foreign direct investment] level in India.”
In turn, India has been investing about $500-600 million annually in the UK, Mr Jaishankar added, but trade in goods and service between the two countries remains surprisingly feeble.
Mr Modi’s visit to the Jaguar Land Rover factory – the largest private sector manufacturing employer in the UK – “drives home the message that we are job makers, not job takers”.
The trip comes close on the heels of a visit by Chinese president Xi Jinping, whose visit to London last month saw £40 billion (Dh223bn) worth of deals signed with the UK.
By comparison, roughly £10 billion worth of deals are expected to be signed during Mr Modi’s visit, including a sale by Britain’s BAE Systems to India of 20 Hawk trainer aircraft.
Having left rough weather behind in India, Mr Modi may run into a little turbulence in the UK as well.
Several Indian groups have scheduled mass demonstrations to protest alleged discrimination against minorities by his government and party.
The Awaaz campaign network has planned a protest outside 10 Downing Street on Thursday, urging people “not to buy the stage-managed internationally orchestrated hype around Modi”.
Forty British parliamentarians, including Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, have also signed a motion demanding that Mr Cameron raise human rights and free speech issues with Mr Modi.
Their concerns include the Indian government's ban on India's Daughter – a BBC documentary on the fatal gang rape of a woman in New Delhi in 2012 and its prevention of a Greenpeace campaigner from travelling to the UK.
After his trip to London, Mr Modi will proceed to Turkey for the G20 summit on Saturday.
ssubramanian@thenational.ae
