Strained ties with padosis

Sandeep Dikshit

According to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, we are at the tail end of the demonetisation experiment. No one has any idea which way this cookie will crumble. But each and every citizen of the country has felt the pain and is now waiting for the next set of announcements on demonetisation’s changed goal posts of ushering a digital economy and monetarily empowering the poor.

India and Indians have had little time for any another distraction because of the government’s parallel sideshow of whimsical rules, well-publicised recoveries of humble amounts from the relatively well-placed and the high decibel skirmishing between skeptics and optimists about the endgame of demonetisation.

While we continue to soak in the demonetisation carnival, the current government’s policies are fashioning a neighbourhood that will oblige us to live in a state of anxious uncertainty. Pakistan and China have been the foremost recipients of Modi’s tough-guy approach. No one can fault that tactic because previous governments have also conducted open skirmishing with both countries. But the regimes of the past took care to leave a window open for reconciliation or a walk-back from a position of hostility. There was nothing enduring about their hostility. It was aimed to achieve short-term goals such as ending the Chinese practice of stapled visas.

Modi, however, appears to be creating permanent structures of hostility that promise a blowback or retaliation. The Chinese have already retaliated by ending the unrestricted entry of Indians into Hong Kong from January 23. It is difficult to fathom the trigger because the Modi government has succeeded in creating several: Hafiz Saeed, NSG membership, oil exploration in South China Sea, welcoming the US envoy in Twang and finally, the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC).

In Nepal the installation of the once-suspect Prachanda as Prime Minister has brought no relief from China’s rising influence in its hills. Prachanda’s predecessor KP Oli was a bad dream for India. But he set in motion the transit treaty with China that is impossible to reverse. It remains to be seen how the opening of the Lhasa-Kathmandu trade corridor will impact business on Indian trade arteries to Nepal. Currently the advantage is with India because of Nepal’s proximity to the Kolkata port. But if China decides to relocate production units in Tibet, not just Indian trade into Nepal would suffer attrition, but also impact across the border in UP and Bihar.

With Pakistan, apart from the well-documented differences from Kashmir to Sir Creek, the Modi government has added the emotive issue of water that, as Punjab-Haryana and Tamil Nadu-Karnataka realise, there cannot be enough water to satisfy both parties to a dispute. The best option is always to refrain from raking up a settled water sharing pact. Modi’s plans to construct hydel projects on rivers currently flowing unimpeded into Pakistan via Jammu & Kashmir may have created a decades-long irritant in ties.

Till two years back, Bangladesh had happily allowed itself to be pushed by India to the Russian corner. A nuclear plant was on the anvil and Dhaka began making arms purchases from Moscow. China initiated moves in Bangladesh after it became clear that India was focusing on BIMSTEC, a regional organisation with neighbours on India’s eastern flank to isolate Beijing. Dhaka’s plan to buy a couple of Chinese submarines is an indication that soon technicians and trainers from China will become a familiar sight at the Chittagong port that once India wished to dominate.

Sri Lanka too is giving an anxious time to India’s security managers as a result of India trying to do a Mongolia in Nepal, undeterred by the disadvantages of the 3,000-km distance separating New Delhi and Ulan Bataar, most of it on Chinese territory. South Block had already estranged the Maldives before it started on Nepal. Male has responded by deepening ties with Saudi Arabia and Pakistan.   

Maybe Modi’s strong-man approach in the neigbourhood is seeking to replicate China’s 1960s approach of simultaneously taking on all adversaries. China had done away with the irritation of internal dissent in massive bloodletting during the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution. This is unthinkable in India where demonetisation-related death toll of a comparatively miniscule 100 and serpentine queues have compelled the Prime Minister to frequently respond with assurances and changes in rules.

The Modi government’s abrasiveness in foreign policy towards its neighbours may be boxing India within its subcontinental limits. Russia and Iran’s receptivity to the CPEC contrasts with inveterate Indian hostility to the project and this could reduce the appetite of these regional allies to play a calming role.  

Previous governments have contained an adverse tidal wave by a mix of rhetorical walk-backs, pressure and reconciliation. But the tools unleashed by New Delhi — building up Mongolia to pressure China, total opposition to the CPEC, reopening the water pact with Pakistan, pushing Nepal into Chinese embrace, helplessness in dealing with the Maldives and the inability to reply to Chinese inroads into Bangladesh and Sri Lanka — make for a neigbourhood foreign policy that will be unable to focus on the positives and instead scramble to provide a riposte to the latest provocation.

While China’s deep pockets are helping it play a very open hand in marginalising Indian influence, Pakistan is the designated bad cop with its arsenal of deniable dirty tricks. And it has a rapidly deteriorating security environment around India as an ally. Extremist ferment in Bangladesh is ready for exploitation because it has no avenue for legitimate opportunities for venting after Sheikh Hasina shut out the radical elements from the parliamentary process. In Myanmar, the brutalisation of the Rohingyas for years has spawned a jehadi outfit. The Nagas are also on the warpath. Though their agitation is currently localised, it could unravel the high-decibel peace accord with the NSCN (IM).

In effect, India is set to receive strategic pain from a deteriorating security situation, diminishing of trade with neighbours and the inability to capitalise on the CPEC. When Modi had made his election promises, the trauma of demonetisation was not one of them. On the external front, he had promised to show Pakistan and China their places in the global order. Instead we seem to be heading for a situation where the neighbours are sulking or playing a double game while both legitimate as well as non-state actors have enough grist for their mill to trip India at every opportunity.