After Bangladesh crisis, is India now resetting its ties in southern neighbourhood? - report

Two high-level Indian visits to as many neighbours in the southern Indian Ocean, and it is business as usual for New Delhi in South Asia after the whirlwind mass protests that toppled Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina in Bangladesh.

External Affairs Minister (EAM) S Jaishankar’s was a ‘return visit’ after Maldives President Mohamed Muizzu and Foreign Minister Moosa Zameer had met him in New Delhi, jointly and separately—the former on the occasion of incumbent Narendra Modi’s swearing in as Prime Minister for the third time in a row. National Security Advisor (NSA) Ajit Doval was in the Sri Lankan capital not very long after participating in the annual NSA-level meeting of signatories to the 2020 Colombo Security Conclave (CSC).

The first was bilateral in character, the first one by a senior Indian dignitary after President Muizzu and his government had introduced avoidable strains in bilateral relations with consequences for regional security and stability. The latter focused directly on regional security and stability, where the NSA took time off to meet with the four major candidates in the Sri Lankan presidential poll, scheduled for September 21.

EAM Jaishankar’s visit centred on the need for greater Indian involvement in crisis-hit Maldives’ economic recovery before it became even more critical. It was so when circumstances necessitated India as the regional power, with regional responsibilities going beyond national boundaries, to step in and fund Sri Lanka’s recovery, starting with the immediate supply of food, fuel, medicines, and whatever it required for the Colombo dispensation to overcome the dollar crunch that was at the centre of the import shortages since two years back.

Against this, NSA Doval, in Colombo, co-signed a MoU for setting up the CSC Secretariat in the Sri Lankan capital. The August 30 ceremony was to formalise the ad hoc arrangement, as it would also make sense even more if there is a change of elected leadership in Sri Lanka. Significantly, the Maldivian NSA too signed the MoU after the nation had stayed away from the previous NSA-level meeting in Mauritius only weeks after Muizzu had become President in mid-November last. This time, as expected, Bangladesh, still going through the transition process, did not sign the MoU. It is another matter that Bangladesh and the Seychelles still remain ‘observers’ at the CSC.

As an Indian official statement from the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) noted, the CSC’s core objective is to promote regional security by addressing transnational threats and challenges of common concern to the Member States. ‘There are five pillars of cooperation under the CSC, namely, Maritime Safety and Security, Countering Terrorism and Radicalisation, Combating Trafficking and Transnational Organised Crime, Cyber Security and Protection of Critical Infrastructure and Technology, and Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief’, the MEA statement said.

That is to say, the current mandate of the CSC is centred on non-traditional security cooperation, including terrorism and cyber security. However, the scope for furthering the objectives and expanding the scope are phenomenal, as South Asia is witnessing choppy waters and disturbed land borders, especially owing to the not-so-benevolent presence of China, which sees both India and the US as twin adversaries—the former for historic reasons and the latter as a part of Beijing’s global ambitions as a wannabe superpower, which title no one is willing to confer it as yet. That includes some of the nation’s client states, like Pakistan and North Korea, and lil’ pockets of influence elsewhere across the world.

Market panic

According to media reports, EAM Jaishankar’s visit discussed ways for India to help out the Maldives to whatever extent possible from an imminent economic crisis, which is a legacy issue at one level and an inevitable customary hand-me-down from before the democratisation of the Maldives in 2008. By the government’s own admission, despite the post-Covid recovery of the mainstay tourism sector, there is both a debt crisis and a dollar crunch.

A recent development involving joint sector Bank of Maldives (BML), the nation’s main commercial bank, has the potential to trigger a market panic that in turn can discourage overseas suppliers, including those from India, the main source of all essentials, including rice, sugar, flour, eggs, and medicines. In such a scenario, if one were to develop, the way New Delhi intervenes to ease the evolving situation as it did in Sri Lanka two years back would be of great import on bilateral relations in the coming months, if not years.

In contrast, NSA Doval had seemingly convinced his listeners in Colombo that India would work with the President that Sri Lankans elect and had no special or specific preference among the front-runners. The message seems to have gone down well and convincingly so. Yet, there are issues that both Colombo and New Delhi would have to grapple with under the post-poll Sri Lankan President, even if the incumbent gets an elected, five-year term, as against the Parliament-nominated two-year term just now.

Sri Lanka is also becoming a sort of touchstone for Indian investments, often routed through or by private sector entities like the Adani Group. Their green energy projects in Tamil North of Sri Lanka are caught in environmental controversies, among others. The Sri Lankan Supreme Court is set to hear the same in October, after a new president has been sworn in. How the post-poll dispensation addresses the court case and allied issues, pending the parliamentary polls that are to follow soon thereafter, will be keenly watched.

Apart from addressing Sri Lanka’s immediate concerns on the food, fuel, and fiscal fronts, New Delhi took the unprecedented step of Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman personally arguing Colombo’s case for a bailout package with the IMF bosses during a regular visit to their Washington headquarters.

This is the kind of gesture that should keep the India flag flying high in Sri Lanka, but that is not always the case. Despite Indian High Commissioner Santosh Jha recently handing over a cheque for the first installment of funds for the hybrid power projects that New Delhi has promised, there are historic critics of India in Sri Lanka who would not give up.

It is, however, not correct to paint them with a China brush, as many are home-grown and have been around long before Beijing began taking a strategic interest in the region. Thus, yes, a post-poll president will have to decide on the fate and future of the one-year moratorium that the present government has imposed on overseas research vessels’ presence in the Sri Lankan waters and ports. The moratorium was imposed earlier this year, purportedly under pressure from India and the US, which felt uncomfortable with Chinese research ships making an annual sojourn to these waters.

India is a neighbour, whose waters, land, and airspace the Chinese ships were believed to spy upon—even while studying the mineral deposits and other characteristics of these waters with both an economic and strategic future in mind. The US has the famed Diego Garcia base in these waters and suspected or anticipated that the so-called Chinese research vessels would be spying on the American military capabilities in these parts.

It thus remains to be seen how, after Jaishankar’s visit, the Muizzu government in the Maldives handles future Chinese requests for berthing those research vessels in the Male port, supposedly for restocking and rotation of personnel, as claimed during the two brief sojourns in the shared waters.

What made news but went mostly unreported was the fact that the ship, possibly diverted from Sri Lanka after the moratorium, was ‘researching’ in the waters outside the Maldivian EEZ for a full month—that is, between the two berthings. At the time, the Maldives claimed that the Chinese vessel did not undertake any research activity in its waters.

Gateway to landmass

Independent of the presidential poll results in Sri Lanka, current indications are that bilateral ties, especially in the economic sphere, will strengthen on the lines outlined in the ‘Vision Statement’ and the MoUs signed between the two sides during last year’s New Delhi visit by President Wickremesinghe. They focused on further facilitating and strengthening the people-to-people contacts between the two countries. The decision for a sea-bridge connecting the two nations, originally floated by Wickremesinghe as Prime Minister in 2003, in the post-modern world connects the island nation not only the south Indian markets but would also be Sri Lanka’s gateway to the Eurasian landmass.

As a follow-up to the Wickremesinghe visit, the two nations have recommenced flights linking southern Tamil Nadu cities to Jaffna town (Palaly air base, to be precise). There seems to be a greater welcome to air connectivity. Likewise, the two sides have also restored the forgotten ferry service linking northern Sri Lanka with southern Tamil Nadu, and it is said to be picking up momentum.

Yet, there are grey areas that the two sides will have to sort out when the next government is in place in Colombo. It relates to the induction of private sector Indian corporations for undertaking development works in Sri Lanka, either through funding by New Delhi or otherwise. Foreign investments in key sectors of the economy are what Sri Lanka needs at the moment to revive the economy, which is yet to recover from the shocks and strains of 2022. India needs to address institutionalised troublemakers in that country and find solutions that are foolproof.

It will be the kind of approach New Delhi would have to adopt in furthering bilateral economic ties with the Maldives, too. Despite the current economic crisis, there are internal limitations for any elected leader in Male, especially someone like Muizzu, whose strong electoral base comprises traditional conservatives who also revel at asserting ‘Maldivian nationalism’. Some among them identify it as ‘Maldivian Islamic nationalism’. The two are different, and Muizzu, for instance, seems to be wanting to draw the line if he has to become more acceptable to a neighbour like India, which continues to be uncomfortable, if not suspicious, about his China commitments.

As and when stabilised, such a reorientation to neighbourhood economic ties in the south would go a long way in New Delhi, bridging the gaps and divides in the north, rather north-eastern neighbours. Now, during the transition in Bangladesh, anticipated complaints about India identifying with the disgraced Sheikh Hasina in Dhaka are beginning to be heard from that country.

The problem for India is to convince the neighbours, their political parties, and the larger population that New Delhi intends to deal only with the leadership that they elect in democratic elections. This is what India did in the case of Sheikh Hasina in Bangladesh and President Ibrahim Solih in the Maldives, for instance. But it got misinterpreted because New Delhi stayed away from talking to the other side(s), as it could have had the potential of ‘interfering in the internal affairs’ of those countries.

In Sri Lanka, NSA Doval seems to have won the first round for India. Such a strategic approach, rather than tactical preferences, could go a long way in mending fences between India and every one of its neighbours, maybe barring Pakistan and Afghanistan for now. But consistency in the policy approach and a nuanced expression of the same, along with inevitable economic support as a part of regional responsibility, is what could make the change. But change, it will be—and it will also have to be.

Source: Firstpost
--Agencies