India’s neighbourhood first policy needs a push
With ties with Pakistan in a limbo, Delhi can’t afford the fraying of ties with others
The controversy over a purported bid to assassinate President Maithripala Sirisena blew over after the Sri Lankan leader rejected reports about alleged Indian involvement in the plot. Ideally, such a controversy should never have arisen, given the long-standing ties between the two countries. The reports about the alleged plot hint at some sort of lack of communication between the leadership of the two countries, especially at a time when India’s relations with some of its key neighbours appear to have been affected by various irritants. China has established a foothold in Sri Lanka, having taken over the strategic Hambantota port and 15,000 acres of land around it.
In Nepal, despite the scrapping of several big ticket infrastructure projects involving Chinese firms, Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli has indicated he expects both China and India to play a role in development projects. In the Maldives, former president Abdulla Yameen was able to defy pressure from India and other countries opposed to his autocratic ways because he believed the Chinese had his back. In Bangladesh, there is growing disquiet among the political leadership over threats by Indian politicians to push back people excluded from the National Register of Citizens to the neighbouring country.
One cannot help but get the feeling that while India has been able to take the lead on global issues such as climate change, trade and building a multipolar order and defy pressure from powers such as the US on strategic matters, somehow the country’s neighbourhood has slipped from the radar of policy planners and decision makers. This is all the more surprising in view of the government’s stated “neighbourhood first” policy. At a time when India’s relations with its largest neighbour, Pakistan, are completely in a deep freeze and there has been an uptick in the violence in war-torn Afghanistan, New Delhi can ill afford the fraying of ties with any of the other countries in the region.