KEEPING INDIA ON THE RIGHT
“RBy N Sathiya Moorthy
elations have improved but they were always good even when Prabhakaran was riding high on the LTTE banner. The Indian Government has never provided overt or covert assistance (to any group) in order to maintain bilateral relations with Sri Lanka… Security-wise, we are dependent on Sri Lanka -- there are large security concerns that can affect both countries in the Indian Ocean. We would like to keep on the right side of Sri Lanka….as far as their (neighbours’) relations with third countries (China) are concerned, we cannot impose our will on them: we respect their attitude to other countries. But we would like to conduct our relations with them on the basis of goodwill and goodneighbourly relations…”
‘Business Standard’ (India), January 1, 2012
The New Year missive from S.M. Krishna, the Indian External Affairs Minister, should set at rest all criticism and speculation in Colombo about New Delhi’s post-war intentions for Sri Lanka. Reciprocity matters, and matters as much over the short-term as over the medium and long-terms. It is one thing for Colombo to count on ‘veto members’ China and Russia in the UN Security Council to play ball. It is another for them to talk Sri Lanka out of trouble. Credibility and connectivity matters -and India matters the most.
In the immediate, this means that Sri Lanka keeps its minority Tamils happy, post-war. This is not from the ‘Tamil Nadu’ perspective. Political stability in Sri Lanka is a pre-requisite for regional stability. Both nations are concerned over it. The LTTE saga showed what extra-regional sources and resources could do to Sri Lanka. The LTTE’S end showed how regional cooperation and advocacy could help nations in the neighbourhood to fend off challenges to nationhood and security.
As post-war events have shown, extra-territorial nations have continued to show more than an abiding interest in Sri Lanka. Minister Krishna’s visit to Colombo in mid-january thus acquires greater relevance than helping the domestic stake-holders to address the ethnic issue with perspective and depth, so as to contribute to national stability, and by extension, regional security. As the de- velopments of the past years have shown, a political settlement to the ethnic issue would also give Sri Lanka’s friends like India the armour and argument to ward off political pressures being brought on the international arena.
In the same vein, Minister Krishna has reiterated the favourable Indian disposition to neighbouring nations like Sri Lanka doing business with China. Post-cold War, post-reforms India is alive to the needs of, and demands on developing nations in its neighbourhood from their respective populations to fast-track development and growth. The demands of popular democracy also dictate and fashion such needs and demands.
Sri Lanka had tasted economic reforms decades before India started off. Blame can partially be laid at the doors of the LTTE for delaying or distracting the nation from the same. That holds only a partial answer. A question should now be asked if fasttracking reforms instead would have taken Sri Lanka to where Singapore is today. Given the historicity of the nation, compared to a young and open society like post-war Singapore, Sri Lan- ka would have still found it difficult to balance growth with equity. This balance still needs to be achieved and is not going to be easy, either.
It is in this context that Sri Lanka’s continuing urge for massive investments needs to be read and understood. The Indian policy-maker, alive from their own experience in the reforms era, acknowledges this reality in the case of Sri Lanka as also such other neighbours. China, as Sri Lankan policy-planners often stress, is the only nation flush with funds and is ready to invest in Third World nations. What they do not want to address is also the reality that China does not ask questions – possibly about the wherewithal for the creditor-nation to repay on time, but surely on human rights and war crimes.
There is an increasing realisation in India that Sri Lanka has as much freedom to do business with China, and literally so, as India has to do so with the rest of the world. It is in strategic terms that some strategic thinkers in India are concerned about the motive of China, and the ability of neighbourhood nations like Sri Lanka on not wanting to be part of it. Here, India will require reassurance and tangible guarantees, in ways that the policy-maker, polity and people in the two nations can understand and appreciate. It is here President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s repeated assertion that “India is a relation, others all are friends” assume significance.