• Prime Minister Narendra Modi will join US President Joe Biden, PMs of Australia and Japan at a summit of the Quad leaders in Tokyo on May 24.

• The summit in Tokyo is the fourth interaction among Quad leaders since their first virtual meeting in March 2021. They held an in-person summit in Washington in September last year and a virtual meeting in March.

• The forthcoming Quad summit provides an opportunity for the leaders to exchange views about developments in the Indo-Pacific region and contemporary global issues of mutual interest.

• The leaders will review the progress of Quad initiatives and working groups, identify new areas of cooperation and provide strategic guidance and vision for future collaboration.

• PM Modi will also have bilateral talks with US President Joe Biden and Japanese PM Fumio Kishida. 

The Quad journey

• The Quad, or the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, is an informal grouping of four countries — Australia, India, Japan and the United States. It is aimed at ensuring a free and open Indo-Pacific, a strategically vital region that witnessed increasing Chinese military assertiveness in recent years.

• In November 2017, the four countries gave shape to the long-pending proposal of setting up the Quad to develop a new strategy to keep the critical sea routes. 

• The foreign ministers of the four countries held their first meeting under the Quad framework in New York in September 2019.

• The Quad recognises that international law, peace, and security in the maritime domain underpins the development and prosperity of the Indo-Pacific. 

• The countries are determined to deepen engagement with regional partners, including through capacity-building and technical assistance, to strengthen maritime domain awareness, protect their ability to develop offshore resources, consistent with  the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS).

• The Quad is exchanging information on ever-evolving threats and working with Indo-Pacific countries, and in multilateral fora, to counter all forms of terrorism and violent extremism.

• Quad partners champion the free, open, and inclusive rules-based order, rooted in international law, that protects the sovereignty and territorial integrity of regional countries.

• The Quad has been focusing on cooperation in areas such as producing vaccines, connectivity projects, facilitating the mobility of students and looking at promoting startups and technology collaboration. 

• The Quad vaccine partnership was announced in March last year with an aim to deliver 100 crore doses of vaccines to the Indo-Pacific region by the end of 2022.

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