In any evaluation of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s record so far – and there have been drearily many – one dimension has come in for universal praise. The government’s neighbourhood policy, the conventional wisdom tells us, was both wise and strong. He reached out to Pakistan, solved problems with Bangladesh, was received rapturously in Nepal, and so on.
Today, the opposite is being said. If there is one genuinely disastrous aspect of the government’s foreign policy, it turns out it has been its actions – or inaction, in some cases – in India’s neighbourhood.
True, there are some major successes. Modi corralled his own party into agreeing to the Land Boundary Agreement with Bangladesh – something that could not have happened under the previous government, which was less able than a BJP prime minister to convince the BJP to see the agreement as being in the national interest. And the first truck from Kolkata to Tripura via Bangladesh – a DHL truck carrying electronic equipment – arrived in Agartala last week. It is also true that, first, Bangladesh has the most pro-Indian government imaginable, one willing to take severe political heat for “slashing” transit fees; and, second, there have been few follow-ups to these success.
And, as far as I know, things with Bhutan are A-OK. Given the tiny Himalayan kingdom has bet big on Indian demand for its hydro-power, I think it is safe to assume things will stay A-OK.
But that’s where the good news ends.
The bad begins, surely, with Nepal. India has long felt secure that “location, location, location” – and, I suppose, “logistics, logistics, logistics” – mean that it can exert control over Nepal that no other country can. This has, in the past, tempted Indian governments into bullying Nepal. Many of us had hoped that New Delhi had learnt the folly of this. But, apparently, it hasn’t.
There is no doubt in Kathmandu that the protests by Nepal’s Madhesi residents, and the informal blockade of imports from India into Nepal, are co-ordinated from New Delhi. Many from there question why idling trucks at the land border – one visitor to the Indian side described it as “a vast town of trucks” – are not on the front pages of Indian newspapers, the way they were when Rajiv Gandhi blockaded Nepal in one of his ill-advised “strong PM” misadventures. Perhaps the story that got most traction – because it could be clearly traced back to India’s central government – was that Indian Oil Corporation refused to refill tankers going to Nepal, citing security concerns. Fuel-starved Kathmandu was quick to blame New Delhi – and, in a far-from-subtle move, Beijing stepped in with fuel shipments.
Many in the foreign policy community claim this is one of the worst-handled crises in decades. What happened?
First, domestic politics intervened. Had the BJP not being soliciting votes from the Madhesis’ Indian cousins in Bihar, then India might not have felt the need to go to the mattresses in defence of the Madhesis’ rights in the Nepalese constitution. On those rights: Let nobody imagine New Delhi is acting for reasons of international morality; we are well known for our inability over the past decade to do so. Oddly, India has even taken Nepal, for the first time ever, to the United Nations Human Rights Commission. There isn’t a foreign policy wonk who didn’t hold their head in their hand when they heard that one.
Second, the ministry of external affairs took its eye off the ball. It is known that S Jaishankar, the foreign secretary, is an extremely competent officer. And yet, during the last few months of Nepal’s Constitution-writing process, when Madhesi rights were essentially diluted, the Nepalese claim the MEA was silent, its attention elsewhere. In defence of the MEA and its leadership, they are stretched thin –even thinner, now that the planning of the mega-events that are the current government’s top priority has been added to the MEA’s responsibilities
Whatever the reason, the MEA was not just absent, but allowed other voices within the government and the Sangh Parivar to convey to Nepal the impression that what really mattered to India’s government was their attitude to the establishment of Hinduism. (Which is why, in a hopeful compromise with the Indian regime, the ostensibly secular Nepali constitution now defines “secularism”, hilariously, as the “protection of sanatan dharma”. Now we know how the BJP claims to be more secular than anyone else; you just change the definition.)
And, when India realised what it had allowed to happen, the consensus opinion is that instead of opening quiet channels to control the damage, it has over-reacted – in the process hurting the Madhesis’ cause by making them seem like Delhi’s pawns, and not so coincidentally losing Nepal’s friendship for a generation. Rajiv could do so with impunity. Modi may not have that luxury; “logistics, logistics, logistics” loses its power as a mantra when faced with the extraordinary feats of infrastructure-building performed by the People’s Republic of China in the 21st century.
Meanwhile, Myanmar, on the cusp of transformation, thinks of India – if it does think of India at all – as an unreliable partner still unable to move forward quickly enough on shared infrastructure; and a partner that is quick to humiliate its allies by claiming it can and will conduct raids on their territory with impunity.
Worse, in Colombo, a nominally pro-India government we supposedly were glad to see elected has turned on a dime and has upheld many of the pro-China decisions of its predecessor, to relative silence and disengagement from New Delhi. Well, Sri Lanka is kind of short of cash. Finance Minister Ravi Karunanayake told the South China Morning Post: “I urge China to put the acrimony of the past behind us and come and help us”.
Finally, there’s Pakistan. There is widespread, almost comic confusion as to what India’s Pakistan policy is – is it engagement and sari-swapping? Is it relentlessly adversarial, as the junking of the long-held and valuable ceasefire would suggest? Is it an attempt to isolate the troubled country? We don’t know for sure. I suspect it’s the latter. But, if so, things aren’t working too well. Certainly, the US’ decision to stay longer in Afghanistan means Pakistan’s army still has geographical leverage over its cheque-writers in the US military; and the vast new investments that Beijing recently promised Islamabad indicate a policy of isolation is not likely to succeed in the presence of such powerful and wealthy patrons.
To these assorted disasters, add a few petty humiliations – such as, for example, the prime minister’s office of the tiny Maldives issuing a stern warning to India, barely hours after our foreign minister left its capital, to not “meddle” in the Maldives’ internal affairs. If this is how we’re respected under a Strong PM, give me a bit of intelligent weakness any day.
mihir.sharma@bsmail.in
Twitter: @mihirssharma
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