Was it a fair exchange?

The visit of the Indian External Affairs Minister this week to Sri Lanka almost had that viceregal air to it. Unlike in the bad old days of not so long ago when black flag demonstrations heralded India's ham- handed intervention in Sri Lanka's internal affairs, the intercession this time was more subtle though no less insistent in pursuing its own national interest at the expense of Sri Lanka's.

Outwardly, there was a show of a helping hand to a neighbour in distress. In reality, it was a press-ganging to implement long pending agreements for a piece of Sampur near Trincomalee, a piece north of Mannar, to have their 'technicians' installed in Lanka's air and naval bases and for good measure, apply pressure to have their puppet regime installed in a provincial council in the North – all for a billion dollars and a little more, repayable of course.

All this was lost on the general public in Sri Lanka which was prepared to take any handout from even the devil to ease the economic pain they were going through. All the nationalists who paraded the streets against foreign interference stayed home lest they earned the wrath of the public standing in one queue or the other for their daily needs. They even applauded the visiting Minister as he toured Indian assets in this country giving their approval for doing what local Ministers were not doing.

For all the platitudes about friendship with its neighbours, India gave its loan to Sri Lanka only after the agreements were signed in Colombo first. Clearly, there was a trust deficiency and the advantage taken from this country's economic plight. A blanket denial by the Defence Ministry that Sri Lanka's national security has not been compromised impresses no one.

There is a well- orchestrated media blitz in India of Sri Lankan families coming by boat to Tamil Nadu to escape "starvation" in Jaffna which has an eerie ring to the 1987 Indian intervention. Today, India is again portraying itself as the Good Samaritan, but in India's book it was a good time to strike as Sri Lanka was in dire straits and drifting towards a China- centric economic policy that was detrimental to India's strategic interest. As the famous saying goes about the stark realities of geopolitics; "There are no permanent friends, no permanent enemies .... only permanent interests".