India’s Narendra Modi is executing a classic strongman tour of global photo-ops, turning every handshake and ribbon-cutting into a message: India has arrived, and so has Modi. The Prime Minister’s visit to Cyprus was equal parts charm offensive and strategic chess, culminating in the receipt of the Order of Makarios III, the Mediterranean nation’s highest honor—a moment splashed across Indian and Cypriot headlines as proof that Modi’s foreign policy is as much about symbolism as substance.
In Cyprus, Modi advanced talks on the India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor, a signature scheme that promises to reroute regional trade and energy—if the various geopolitical landmines can be tiptoed around. For Cypriot leaders, the corridor is both a lifeline and a gamble; for Modi, it is the perfect platform to brand India as an indispensable, rising power with one foot in the “Global South” and the other in the rarefied air of G7 summits.
Modi’s diplomatic sweep continued in Canada, where he attended the G7 as a guest, rubbing shoulders with world leaders and projecting India’s status as a near-peer on the world stage. Indian outlets noted that the G7 invite was both recognition and opportunity—a chance to pitch India’s market of 1.4 billion as the solution to everything from supply chain headaches to global security. Behind the photo-ops, however, are the perennial complications of Modi’s brand: deepening ties with the West while still posturing as a leader of the “non-aligned” world, all while touting India’s future as the world’s third-largest economy.
For Cyprus, Modi’s trip was a diplomatic jackpot. Local media celebrated the visit as proof of deepening ties, with the Indian diaspora providing a ready chorus of flag-waving. The corridor talks, meanwhile, are hailed as a harbinger of new economic possibilities, though critics note that actual progress remains tethered to a complex web of regional disputes, Turkish-Cypriot relations, and the realities of hard infrastructure. If Modi excels at anything, it is making grand announcements and trusting that the world will forget the fine print by next quarter.
In Canada, Modi’s G7 debut played out like a campaign rally on a global stage, with trade, uranium, and diaspora politics front and center. For Western leaders, India’s presence is a hedge against Chinese influence and Russian adventurism; for Modi, it is a chance to present himself as the only man in the room who can deliver 1.4 billion customers—and votes.Editorials back home are already musing about a “Modi decade,” with pundits debating whether India’s rise is thanks to statesmanship or mere luck of demographics. Yet the spectacle is carefully choreographed: Modi on stage, garlanded by the global elite, performing the dance of the indispensable nation. In an era where personal branding is foreign policy, Narendra Modi is determined to ensure his is the face that launches a thousand headlines, even if the substance remains somewhere in the fine print.