A lesson about the neighbourhood

INDIA and the Maldives appear to be working quietly to reset their ties since their low point between January and March this year. External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar’s visit to Male earlier this month came two months after President Mohamed Muizzu visited Delhi for the swearing-in ceremony of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The realisation on both sides that each needs the other is apparent. India had to pull out its military personnel from the Maldives, but the archipelago’s tourism-and-imports-dependent economy is sinking under a twin fiscal and current account deficit crisis and a debt of mountainous proportions.

India tends to dismiss popular movements in its neighbouring countries as orchestrated by foreign hands or political parties, leading to nasty surprises.

Last month, Muizzu announced cutbacks in spending. Public expenditure has been slashed drastically, leaving in the lurch infrastructure projects. The free healthcare system is to be streamlined and loss-making state-owned enterprises face ‘reforms’.

If the Maldives needs Delhi for an economic bailout, the latter remains acutely aware of the strategic importance of the Maldives. At Male’s request, Delhi rolled over a $50-million Maldives Treasury Bill, re-subscribing to it for one more year upon its maturity. The thank-you note came a month later. On a visit to China, Maldivian Minister of Economic Development and Trade Mohamed Saeed noted in an interview to a TV channel the importance of India to his country's economy. It was a 180-degree turn from Muizzu’s “India is a threat to our sovereignty” declaration in Beijing in January.

But Delhi’s more significant ask from the Maldives is a free trade agreement. Saeed told a press conference in Male that India “is asking that there should be a free trade agreement” and that deliberations had been initiated in this regard. He said the Maldives was open to having FTAs with ‘all countries’ for ‘ease of trade’. It already has an FTA with China dating back to 2018, signed during the Abdulla Yameen government. He was voted out before it could be implemented. The successor Ibu Solih government shelved it. It is significant that Muizzu’s announcement on implementing the FTA with China in September came days ahead of Jaishankar’s visit. All this was likely discussed during Jaishankar’s visit.

What this means is that the Maldives-India reset is still a work in progress and it will not be all smooth. But the pragmatism that now informs the relationship between India and a small country like the Maldives is instructive for India's relations across the region.

For one, it shows that putting governments abroad into narrow ‘friend of Delhi’ or ‘anti-India’ boxes only reveal India's own insecurities behind the bluster of a ‘strong’ foreign policy. It reinforces an unflattering image of a Delhi whose diplomacy succeeds only in ideal conditions, that is when ‘loyalty’ from the other government is available on tap. How much the ‘pro-India’ Ibu Solih’s decision to outlaw criticism of India in 2022 was influenced by Delhi is not known. What is clear is that the undemocratic decree played right into the hands of the Maldivian opposition and those behind the ‘India Out’ protests. Just like the much-advertised friendship between India and Sheikh Hasina in Bangladesh exposed bilateral ties to high risk, especially when Delhi could not deliver on her one big demand — an agreement on the sharing of the Teesta waters — and her own turn to authoritarianism began to be blamed on India.

Secondly, change of government is inevitable in democracies, making a diplomatic outreach to opposition parties important. India has been seen reaching out to the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) in Sri Lanka, a party with a history of virulent opposition to India and whose leader Anura Kumara Dissanayake is a strong contender in the upcoming presidential election. He was invited to India recently, given a tour of Anand, the heart of India’s hard-wrought milk self-sufficiency, and Kerala, where the JVP, a party that combines Sinhala nationalism with leftism, could see India’s federalism in action.

Doing this as a matter of course is important rather than six months before an important election, when it sends a message of another kind. In Bangladesh, India has shunned the BNP since 2012.

Thirdly, in a region partitioned along religious lines, communally charged statements at home or violent incidents of communal hate travel swiftly across borders. In June 2022, despite the Solih government’s India First policy, it was forced by the Opposition to issue a statement of ‘deep concern’ over remarks by a BJP spokesperson against Prophet Muhammad.

Sheikh Hasina’s government, on the other hand, declared the matter ‘an internal issue’, reinforcing the perception that she was taking orders from Delhi. India was right in asking Bangladesh to protect its minorities but Delhi's own failure to lead by example is conspicuous. Muhammed Yunus, head of Bangladesh's interim government, has visited a Hindu temple and reassured the country's Hindus that they will be protected. In India, the PM has engaged in dangerous dog-whistling.

Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, for India, which positions itself as a first responder to multiple crises in the neighbourhood - from economic emergencies to climate change, piracy, accidents at sea, water shortages, tsunamis, earthquakes, etc. — the people should be at the heart of the engagement. Nepal, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, the Maldives, civil society and media are strong actors and influence public opinion in no small measure. People’s perceptions and views about India and its role contributes directly or indirectly to anti-incumbency in most of these countries.

A recent statement by mediapersons and civil society activists of Nepal, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka asks India to “be supportive of the democratic aspirations of South Asia’s peoples and let them build their individual paths to the future”. But Delhi’s securitised foreign policy in the region has little place for engagement with non-government actors, mirroring the Modi government’s attitude towards them at home. When was the last time an Indian foreign minister gave an interview to the media in these countries? Instead. there is a tendency to talk down people's agency in these countries and to dismiss popular movements as orchestrated by foreign hands or political parties, leading to nasty surprises.

In Afghanistan, the one country in the region where the people love India unconditionally, Delhi has stepped away deliberately from a robust people-to-people engagement for the sake of its Pakistan/security-driven engagement with the Taliban. But even there, Delhi would be making a mistake by believing that the people will never win back their agency.