Author: Jaganniwas Iyer
Publication: Indiatomorrow.co
Date: January 22, 2015
URL:   http://www.indiatomorrow.co/raisina-hill/2694-the-modi-foreign-policy-steel-clothed-in-silk

South Block is doing some perceptible heavy lifting. Understandable, as it has a heavyweight boss. And it is the not the External Affairs Minister, though she is the incumbent in the seat.

China has suddenly found itself checked in the Island of Serendipity in India’s south. It was hitherto making inroads in the region, much to India’s detriment — and consternation. Mahinda Rajapaksa, Sri Lankan strongman who decimated the Tamil separatist LTTE and under whose watch the separatist outfit’s dreaded supremo Prabhakaran was not only vanquished but also put out for good, has himself met a shocking defeat in Sri Lanka’s Presidential elections, to yield the chair to once his colleague and now rival Maithripala Sirisena.

Rajpaksa’s humbling is not just another chapter in the shifting electoral fortunes of the leaders of Asia’s democracies. Behind the scenes — the customary denials and rebuttals notwithstanding — India has been instrumental in playing a not inconsiderable role in bringing together Sri Lanka’s fractious opposition to unseat the incumbent, who of late, had begun to rile South Block with his barely concealed courting of Beijing.

Mahinda Rajpaksa’s defeat at the ballot is undoubtedly a huge setback in decades for China’s expansion into South Asia. It also marks a remarkable diplomatic victory for India, and particularly Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s “Act East” policy, which seeks to further articulate the late P.V. Narasimha Rao’s Look East Policy. Of course, New Delhi is loath to acknowledge, and understandably so, any role in shaping the domestic politics of neighbours. But many diplomats and politicians in the know are of the near-unanimous opinion that India has played a role in organizing Sri Lankan opposition against the pro-China Rajapaksa.

The victorious Maithripala Sirisena, new President of Sri Lanka, has said India is the “first, main concern” of his foreign policy. Sirisena’s other announcement is with regard to review all projects awarded to Chinese firms, including a sea reclamation development in Colombo that would give Beijing a strategic toehold on India’s doorstep. The pushback against China is happening, and has begun to show perceptible result since Prime Minister Narendra Modi took office in May last year. This hasn’t been confined to a single geography. Modi’s personal stamp on enhancing ties with Japan and Vietnam, both of whom have cause tempers to be ruffled and egos to be bruised in Beijing, for the simple reason that they refuse to kowtow to the Middle Kingdom’s whims, are part of his overarching foreign policy.

Narendra Modi is paying attention to India’s near abroad too. The Chittagong port project in Bangladesh, which could otherwise have been a cakewalk for China, has now been pushed into a grey area. The new robustness in India’s diplomacy, loosely termed “Act East”, has its takers in Washington, as it has the propensity to dovetail with the US strategic rebalancing toward the region.

US assistant secretary of state for East Asia and the Pacific Daniel Russel said in Washington last month. “What is appealing to me and my colleagues is the fact that Prime Minister Modi has undertaken to build from what has been a ‘Look East’ policy to an ‘Act East’ policy. He has shown in word and deed, his interest in involving India in the thinking and the affairs of the broader region. That’s very much to be welcomed.”

The Lankan upset might have been just one among India’s recent pushy resolve in matters of foreign policy and its initiatives. The US has made no attempt to cloak its distaste for Rajapaksa, who is accused of war crimes, corruption and nepotism. But India’s indecisiveness — born party of apprehension of driving a victorious Sri Lankan hero who vanquished the island’s Tamil separatists even closer to China — evaporated in September. This was when Rajapaksa allowed a Chinese submarine to dock in Colombo, without informing India, as Lanka was bound to under an existing agreement. “That was the last straw,” a senior Indian diplomat was reported saying. Rajapaksa had reportedly told Modi: “Next time I will keep you informed,” the diplomat said. The then Sri Lankan President had little qualms in dumping that promise. The Chinese submarine also made a second visit in November.

It was perhaps this breach of trust that hardened Indian attitudes to Rajapaksa. India’s role in uniting Sri Lanka’s opposition in the build-up to the 8 January election has been the talk of much discussion and mudslinging by pro-Rajapaksa quarters, with fingers being pointed at the RAW station chief in Lanka. Perhaps Mahinda Rajapkasa shares the perception too, though the Indian government denies any of its officers was expelled, or to any role in shaping Sri Lanka’s recent electoral outcome. But Prime Minister Narendra Modi apparently come around to the realization that India could no longer adopt a “business-as-usual” with Mahinda Rajapaksa after such recalcitrant behaviour when it came to India’s strategic interests. The mood for a change was now there.

Sri Lanka has, after Maithripala Sirisena’s ascension to power, said it will review a $1.5 billion deal with China Communication Construction Co Ltd to build a 233 hectare patch of real estate on redeveloped land overlooking Colombo’s South Port. In return, China was to get land on a freehold basis in the development. This is of particular concern for India, the destination for the majority of the trans-shipment cargo through Colombo. “The message is clear — you cannot ignore Indian security concerns,” said the Indian diplomatic source.

A measure of Prime Minister Modi’s concern about India’s near abroad can be gauged from the attention he has brought to bear on Nepal. Modi has already visited Nepal twice, becoming the first Indian Prime Minister to travel to our Himalayan neighbour — which also shares a border with China — in 17 years. Nepal has inked power projects with India that had been floundering in limbo during the decade-long UPA rule. The Prime Minister hasn’t been content with just that. Under his watch, India has muscled into an $8 billion deep water port project that Bangladesh wishes to develop in Sonadia in the Bay of Bengal. The likely executors of the project will be the Adani Group, which submitted a proposal in October. The previous front-runner was China Harbour Engineering Company, an early bidder, which had hoped to simply walk away with the prize. Things have changed after Modi’s becoming Prime Minister on May 16. Beijing is learning that it isn’t dealing with a kowtowish Nehruvian bunch anymore.

Richard Rossow at policy think tank CSIS says, “Modi is willing to engage on long-term issues that stretch beyond India’s border, including maritime security in the South China Sea, as well as North Korea and Islamic State militants in Iraq and Syria”. “That’s when we start to think about India as a regional global provider — or as a global provider of security.”

That however, is not the harbinger of a foreign policy environment that is shorn of any challenge. Narendra Modi’s stunning diplomatic coup in getting Barack Obama to become the first American President to visit India twice, with the forthcoming Presidential visit on Republic Day four days from now notwithstanding, Indo-US relations are still a complex work in progress. The mutual bonhomie is still circumscribed by both sides’ vastly differing worldviews on elements like Pakistan, whose foreign policy’s core component is the support of Islamic terrorism, as part of its state vision of asymmetrical warfare against its much larger and incomparably stronger ‘infidel’ neighbour. The substantial funding Islamabad continues to garner from Washington, milking the US over the latter’s strategic requirements in Afghanistan, compounded by the barely concealed blackmail of the nuclearization of the Taliban snakes Pakistan itself has reared, are issues that will not vanish overnight. Then there are the thistles over trade and intellectual property issues, and an Indian bureaucratic machine that has not demonstrated any notable willingness or ability to change, in accordance with a world that has changed beyond its recognition.