Nay Pyi Taw, Nov. 13: He rose from poverty to his country’s top executive post promising clean governance this year. He appointed his country’s first woman foreign minister. His supporters have squeezed his name into a neat acronym they chant. And right now, he’s the toast of international diplomacy.

He could be Narendra Modi. But the description equally fits Indonesia’s new President, Joko Widodo.

Joko is doing in the world of diplomacy what the Congress is struggling at in domestic politics — giving Modi a run for his money, in this case for the tag of the most-sought-after world leader.

The Indonesian President and the Indian Prime Minister are this week neck and neck in the numbers of bilateral meetings they have held on the margins of major international summits, including the East Asia Summit that they are both attending here in Myanmar’s capital.

Till Thursday evening, Modi had held 10 bilateral meetings this week while Joko — called Jokowi by his supporters much as Modi’s fans call him NaMo — had completed 12. The meetings counted include those with Presidents, Prime Ministers and the UN secretary-general, who too is in the Myanmar capital.

“The number of such bilateral meetings depends on the leader’s energy levels, of course, but more crucially they depend on how much others are interested in meeting you,” a senior Indian official who has travelled overseas with both Modi and predecessor Manmohan Singh said.

“The numbers the PM and the Indonesian President have racked up this week are, frankly, just amazing.”

The foreign ministry has in the past week repeatedly highlighted Modi’s busy diplomatic schedule on his 10-day trip, which began with the Myanmar visit and will include five days in Australia and a day after that in Fiji.

“India’s ‘Act East’ approach takes off tomorrow,” foreign ministry spokesperson and joint secretary Syed Akbaruddin tweeted on November 10 on the eve of Modi’s departure for Myanmar.

Referring to the Prime Minister’s Twitter handle, he posted: “@PMOIndia meets 40 leaders on visit to Myanmar, Australia and Fiji.”

Some of the emphasis on the number of Modi’s bilateral meetings has at times appeared to overshadow the actual meetings.

“First official engagement of the visit is over,” Akbaruddin tweeted on Tuesday evening after Modi met Myanmar President Thein Sein on landing in Nay Pyi Taw. “Many more to go, including 39 meetings with other leaders.”

Modi’s remaining bilateral meetings — other than the ones held on the margins of the Association of South East Asian Nations meeting and the East Asia Summit here — are scheduled on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Brisbane and a gathering of Pacific island leaders in Fiji.

The Prime Minister’s hectic diplomatic schedule prompted a quip from US President Barack Obama last evening at a dinner thrown by the Myanmar President for the visiting leaders. “You are a man of action,” Obama told Modi as he greeted the Indian.

The number of bilateral meetings Modi will hold this week is indeed staggering, said a veteran diplomat who had travelled extensively with Singh, who too packed every overseas trip with as much diplomatic work as he could.

“You’re not just meeting people, you’re holding serious diplomatic talks where you can’t appear tired or disinterested,” the diplomat said. “That’s why it’s very tough what the PM is doing.”

But by late evening, Joko’s count of bilateral meetings this week had edged ahead of Modi’s, pointing to what could be a nail-biting, back-and-forth comparison till the end of the week, when both will be in Brisbane for the G20.

Some of the interest in both Modi and Joko stems from their novelty as the chief executives of their country.

“When you have a new PM or President at the head of important countries like India or Indonesia, everyone wants to get to know them, build a personal rapport,” a senior Myanmar official said.

That applies even more to Joko, sworn in as President in October whereas Modi took over in May.

Joko has one apparent edge against Modi: the Indonesian attended the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Beijing on Monday before flying to Myanmar. Modi had skipped the Beijing summit, on whose margins Joko held a few of his bilateral meetings this week.

But all the countries whose leaders Joko met in Beijing are also a part of the East Asia Summit, so their leaders would likely have anyway sought meetings with the Indonesian in Myanmar had those not been possible in Beijing, Indian officials concede.

Yet, novelty in office isn’t all that binds Modi and Joko.

Like Modi, who sold tea at a railway station growing up, Joko had to work to pay for his school fees and lived in a shantytown in Surakarta whose residents were frequently displaced by civic authorities.

Joko stepped onto the national stage after his success as governor of Jakarta, much like Modi, who served as Gujarat chief minister.

Both Joko and Modi ran their poll campaigns on the promise of clean politics. And just as Modi has picked Sushma Swaraj as external affairs minister, Joko has appointed Retro Marsudi as Indonesia’s first woman foreign minister.

Some of those personal parallels came up at the meeting between Modi and Joko this evening.