Maldives should be close to India than China

Jobs come from the Chinese, as does investment, now supplemented by Saudi Arabia

The Indian government has sent INS Vikramaditya to Male on a goodwill visit to awe the locals and show them that they do not, yet, live in the Chinese ocean. It was almost comically inevitable that this would be the ship chosen, not because it is our largest, but because it is the eponym for a historical figure who, according to Hindutva belief, had an empire that extended to what is now Saudi Arabia, and the other being China, of course. The Vikramaditya sailing with its escorts as a carrier task-force will be a vigorous waving of the flag, but sending the odd battle-fleet or the odder battle-axe of a minister is unlikely to wean Maldives from the Chinese, who are not only ubiquitous in the islands but the prop on which that economy now leans.

The tourism sector contributes 33 per cent to Maldives’ GDP. With indirect contributions, the figure is closer to 50 per cent. Tourism directly accounts for 50 per cent of jobs and adding jobs indirectly supported by tourism, it is almost 90 per cent. In 2014, 33 per cent of all tourists were Chinese and only 3 per cent were Indians. China’s Ambassador to Maldives Wang Fukang has announced that half a million Chinese are expected to visit the island nation in 2016, which means they will push the 50 per cent mark, as tourism from West Europe is stagnant and Russian tourism is falling.

Residents of Male, through which most tourists transit and Maldivians who work at the resorts in the atolls, see the Chinese as a cheerful, beneficent and vital presence on whom their jobs depend. If the Chinese stop coming, Maldives will go under, whether the seas rise or not. Without the Chinese government having to invest a yuan, its tourists have made China central to the survival of the Maldives. It is as simple as that, and India has nothing to offer to match it.

Indeed, the Chinese government is now coming in to finance and build the infrastructure Maldives needs to boost tourism. Work on the Maldives-China Friendship Bridge that will link Male to its airport, presently reached by ferry, was started on the December 31, 2015. Sailing in now, Vikramaditya will loom on Male’s horizon as a warning rather than reassurance.

India may think this lets us project ourselves as “a net provider of security”, whatever that means, but this is not the security Maldives needs – the poor want economic security, its civil society and media want the security of rights, which is in tatters under the present dispensation, and the government wants security against the West’s demands that it mends its autocratic ways.

Jobs come from the Chinese, as does investment, now supplemented by the Saudis. India does not and cannot provide this security. We ignore the erosion of rights, fearful that we will drive the government even deeper into the Sino-Saudi embrace if we speak up, though our public silence has not nudged it towards us. Not only do we have no influence on the West, we will now be in a cleft, having had ourselves elected at the Commonwealth Summit last year to its Ministerial Action Group (CMAG),

India sending the odd battle-fleet to Maldives is unlikely to wean the island nation from the Chinese nor will it provide the security the archipelago needs

which monitors members where democracy, the rule of law and human rights are under threat. Maldives is on CMAG’s agenda and a team, which included Indian Foreign Secretary S Jaishankar, was there earlier this month. What will India do in the CMAG? Exhibit a prudent cowardice, in all probability.

This would be a pity, as the idyll to which tourists flock exists only at the resorts they visit. Massive tensions and pressures are building in the islands where the locals live, and the government’s policies are making things worse.