The truth behind the rhetoric: India still holds influence, allies nearby

As the year draws to a close, a new dispensation is set to take over in the United States. The world is changing. What are the prospects for India in South Asia?

 

Many argue that over the year India has done nothing in the neighbourhood but make enemies of friends. They point to Bhutan, where the demand that Thimphu review its options of putting all its eggs in the India basket is rising. In Nepal, a new regime, supposedly bitterly opposed to New Delhi, is in place. Observers there note that “in the absence” of an invitation from India, new(est) Prime Minister K P Sharma Oli will visit China later in December before he comes to India, breaking some kind of a tradition. By hosting the Enemy No 1 in Bangladesh, ousted Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, in India, New Delhi has irredeemably shot itself in the foot. In Pakistan, things have come to such a pass that even seasoned diplomats are asking if India and Pakistan can ever be friends. Sri Lanka’s new President, Anura Kumara Dissanayake (AKD), is avowedly anti-Indian and ideologically pro-Chinese and it is predicted no good will come of it. With the “India Out” campaign, New Delhi has lost every vestige of friendly acceptability in the Maldives. In South Asia, India’s diplomacy is flawed and China holds the whip hand. On the face of it, India is up a gum tree.

 

But are things really that bad?

 

In October this year, India, Bangladesh, and Nepal signed a trilateral agreement to trade 40 megawatts (Mw) of power. For Nepal, selling power to a third country is a first, as India has been the only buyer so far. For now, Nepal will transmit the energy to India before India transmits the equivalent to Bangladesh, acting as an honest broker for the first time. This is a far cry from 1997, when a power-trade agreement between India and Nepal could not even be tabled in Parliament because it met with fierce political resistance (Nepal’s Constitution mandated that foreign agreements involving Nepal’s natural resources had to be ratified by Parliament by a two-thirds majority and suspicions about India were running high at the time). Granted, it is only 40 Mw, but at least a beginning.

 

In Sri Lanka, dire predictions were made about policy shifts when AKD was elected President in September. His and his party’s past — Marxist, Leninist, and Trotskyite, and later ultra-nationalist Sinhala Buddhist — led the Cassandras to predict that India-Sri Lanka relations would be the first to run aground. That hasn’t happened so far. True, the privatisation of state-owned Sri Lankan Airways has been put on hold and reform rather than privatisation will be pursued by the state-owned Ceylon Electricity Board. But the first phase of the Adani-John Keells Holdings (JKH) venture, the West Container Terminal (WCT), will become operational in the first quarter of 2024-25. Red Sea disruptions are directing more business Colombo-wards and hence good money is being made. And no, the government is not nationalising the WCT.

 

In Maldives, bypassing the rhetoric, diplomacy is at work. The country that ordered India out because of the presence of Indian soldiers on the islands agreed to work towards a Comprehensive Economic and Maritime Security Partnership with a distinct defence component during President Mohamed Muizzu’s New Delhi visit in October.

 

India’s foreign minister went to Pakistan in October, a first by a holder of this office in 12 years.

 

Despite demands for her extradition, the new Bangladesh regime appears to have conceded that it is Sheikh Hasina, not India, who is the Enemy of the People. After power supplies were cut by nearly 50 per cent, Dhaka has paid its part of outstanding dues to Adani Power, which exports power to Bangladesh from its Jharkhand plant, making it clear that it won’t let politics come in the way of commerce. The trilateral power agreement above continues.

 

Of course, the elephant in the South Asia room continues to be China. But a strategy of containment that goes beyond banning apps is in place in the neighbourhood. India has told Nepal it will not buy power from entities, public or private, that have Chinese investment. Nepalese investors have begun telling Chinese companies: “Don’t call us, we’ll call you.” Bangladesh was not unfriendly with China even during Ms Hasina’s tenure as Prime Minister. But it’s too soon to say what its future trajectory is going to be. Bhutan’s first elected Prime Minister, Tshering Topgay, chose New Delhi as the venue of his first official foreign visit earlier this year, reversing the previous thinking among the Bhutanese political elite that the country should rethink its geostrategic priorities. India is helping develop Gelephu, a new “mindfulness” city on the Assam-Bhutan border.

 

The rhetoric may suggest otherwise. But in the neighbourhood, India still has influence — and friends.