Catch them young is Narendra Modi's new outreach idea. The prime minister, who goes for a two-day state visit to Bhutan next week (August 17 and 18), has ensured that there is a strong element of connecting with the youth in the bilateral relationship, which, so far, was largely hinged on hydropower.
Foreign Secretary Vijay Gokhale said that keeping in mind this focus, Prime Minister Modi will connect the National Knowledge Network (which links partner institutes in India through a high-speed network for resource sharing) with DrukREN ( a high-speed network connecting Bhutan's colleges).
Such a linkage will provide for a youth-to-youth connect in a cerebral environment. Modi will also deliver a talk at the University of Bhutan.
This is Prime Minister Modi's first visit to Bhutan after the Doklam standoff with China in 2017. Clearly, an engagement with the youth is a prudent foreign policy decision to ensure that Bhutan's next generation, too, remains warm towards India. It also helps fob off Chinese overtures.
Modi will also inaugurate the earth station that the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) has set up to help Bhutan utilise the transponder space on the South Asia Satellite. The South Asia Satellite was an idea presented by Modi during the 18th SAARC summit in Kathmandu (2014) to share India's space advances with its neighbours. The satellite was launched in 2017 and is a geostationary communications satellite. India has gifted it to the region, but since Pakistan did not join it, it was renamed the South Asia Satellite. With this satellite, Bhutan can take connectivity to its remotest villages.
The RuPay card launch that Modi will do, too, in a way, connects to the new generation. It will be launched in two phases in Bhutan. In the first phase, Indian travellers to Bhutan will be able to use the card in the Himalayan nation. In a later phase, Bhutanese travellers to India will be able to use the card here for their shopping transactions. Bhutan will be the second country after Singapore where the RuPay card will work. India is in advanced talks with many other countries to have the card working in those countries too.
Even as India makes new engagements with Bhutan, it will continue to consolidate its robust relationship that is based on hydropower. Modi will inaugurate the 720MW Mangdechu power project, a run-of-the-river project in central Bhutan, which India has been helping develop since 2010. India has committed Rs 5,000 crore to Bhutan for the execution of its 12th five-year plan, that begins this year.
