External Affairs Minister Jaishankar’s visit to firm up ties with Maldives

Sandeep Dikshit

Tribune news service

New Delhi, February 19

External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar will visit the Maldives this weekend as India continues its high-level engagements in order to keep it firmly in its orbit after a couple of years of estrangement.

Tellingly, Jaishankar will then visit Mauritius, another island-country in the Indian Ocean, for which India had once nearly launched an operation to keep it in its security orbit.

New Delhi had maintained the pace of meetings and engagements with Male, even during the pandemic. The earlier engagements include Foreign Secretary Harsh Vardhan Shringla’s visit in November 2020, a virtual meeting between the two Foreign Ministers in August 2020 during which several key projects and initiatives were announced and a telephone conversation between PM Modi and President Solih in April 2020.

Solih, ever since he assumed office in November 2018, has taken concerted initiatives to move his country away from the close alignment with China by his predecessor.

India has reciprocated in full measure by rapid and comprehensive assistance during the pandemic, including making Maldives the first destination to receive Covid vaccines.

This was preceded by 5.5 tons of essential medicines, airlifting of 6.2 tons of medicines by the IAF from various India cities through Operation Sanjeevani, supply of 580 tons of food aid by naval ships and the deployment of Rapid Response Medical Team to assist in pandemic prevention.

India also undertook a series of economic and financial initiatives at the peak of the pandemic to revive Maldivian economy and provide budgetary cushion to its dwindling revenues primarily driven by tourism. These were announced by Jaishankar during his video conference meeting with his Maldivian counterpart in August 2020.

These included the extension of soft loan of $ 250 million as budgetary support, supporting the implementation of Greater Male Connectivity Project — the largest civilian infrastructure project in Maldives, connecting Male with three neighbouring islands by construction of a bridge-and-causeway link spanning 6.7 km, through a financial package consisting of a grant of $ 100 million and a new Line of Credit of $ 400 million.

The DPR for this project has been prepared and the tendering process is on. The creation of an Air Travel Bubble has boosted tourist inflow in Maldives and India became the largest tourist sending country in 2020. This trend has continued in 2021 with 30,000 Indians visiting Maldives till mid February out of 1,38,000 foreign tourists.

Both countries are part of India’s security grid including Coastal Surveillance Radar (CSR) station of Indian Navy’s National Command Control Communication Intelligence network.