Positive ties with India, a key foreign policy focus for SL

January 29, 2020, 7:44 pm

Pictures, it is said, speak louder than words and the picture accompanying this column is sound proof of this. It shows India's outgoing High Commissioner to Sri Lanka Taranjit Singh Sandhu warmly welcoming President Gotabaya Rajapaksa to a farewell reception that was held in H.C. Sandhu's honour at India House, Colombo, on January 27. The Indian H.C. is expected to take up duties as India's ambassador to the US shortly.

Among other things, the picture is, to a degree, reflective of India's readiness to not only engage in bridge-building with its closest neighbours but to also steadily bolster these links. The Indian H.C.'s body language itself is positive and one would not be wrong in concluding that it's in some way indicative of the positive orientation that India has been in the process of introducing into its regional policy. It will be in India's neighbours' interests to respond to their economic super power neighbour in the same positive and proactive fashion if there's to be a degree of cordiality and stability in the inter-state ties of South Asia.

Needless to say, India's neighbours' relations with her have continually attracted controversy over the decades on numerous questions, but it needs to be considered that the India of today is not the India of yesteryear. As should be obvious, India has grown into a foremost power in a number of vital respects over the past 30 years and these substantive changes call for corresponding policy changes with regard to India on the part of her neighbours.

Sri Lanka, for instance, cannot relate to India in the same mindset and policy outlook with which it did over the years. The position of India in the world of today needs to be clearly understood and the policy consequences of this process of understanding need to be insightfully worked out by her neighbours if the latter's relations with India are to be placed on a 'win-win' footing. However, it does not follow from this comment that India's neighbours should relate to her in what may be described as a spirit of subservience. On the contrary, there should be no compromising on the principle that India and her neighbours should relate to each other on the basis of equality. But the extent to which this will materialize will depend on the degree to which mutual understanding is achieved between India and her neighbours on the issues that are seen to vitally matter in their ties.

How these inter-state relations could be solidified was lucidly and concisely outlined by H.C. Sandhu at the farewell function and if the smaller states of South Asia are in need of a clearer understanding on how they could strengthen their ties with India, it was all there in this impromptu address by the outgoing H.C. Dwelling awhile on Indo-Lanka economic relations, the H.C. said that in her journey towards economic prosperity, it was the intention of India to take Sri Lanka along with her. There could be no question of India growing and prospering alone. Rather, it would be shared economic well being between her and Sri Lanka.

However, there are things that Sri Lanka ought to do if she is to benefit from this economic growth spurt, it was pointed out. Sri Lanka, on her part, must increasingly link-up with India on the economic plane and make best use of the growth opportunities that are opening up as a result of India integrating steadily with the global economy. The Indo-Lanka Free Trade Agreement ought to facilitate this process, one is inclined to think. And with India increasingly linking with the world economy, these opportunities for Sri Lanka ought to multiply.

Accordingly, the onus is on Sri Lanka to do the needful on this score. She must establish constructive economic bridges with India or integrate her economy progressively with that of India.

What goes for Sri Lanka goes for the rest of India's neighbours. Being, of course, physically the biggest and economically the most dynamic and growing of South Asian countries, it would be self-defeating for India's neighbours to ignore her presence. The most commonsensical thing for these neighbours to do is to link-up with her and make optimal use of the growth opportunities that are opening-up.

It should be considered that India is in the process of becoming a major gateway to the hugely-growing ASEAN region. Underlying India's 'Look East' policy, for example, or her initiative to develop her hitherto relatively economically backward North East region, is the consideration that once developed this region could increasingly open-up to the ASEAN region where the economic opportunities are growing phenomenally. Consequently, those of India's neighbours that link-up with India's North East could in turn enjoy the opportunity of integrating with ASEAN's dynamic economies.

Besides, there are growing economic linkages between India's North-East and China's South-West region. This is as a result of both major economic powers stressing the importance of making their peripheral regions grow with the aim of integrating them closely. These constructive ties between the countries are usually glossed over or ignored by the international and South Asian mainstream media but these initiatives constitute a marked departure from what is considered dominant thinking on regional economic development. The expectation of both countries is that the development of these peripheral regions would lead to 'synergies of growth' between them and countries of the ASEAN region, some of which are at the doorstep of India's North-East.

If the visits undertaken of late by some of Sri Lanka's political leaders to India are anything to go by, the crucial and growing importance of India to Sri Lanka and the region is seemingly dawning on Sri Lanka. However, it is not clear whether the challenges awaiting this country in their entirety in the Indo-Lanka ties context are being addressed by this country's political leadership.

What is absolutely clear, though, is that the local political leadership should outgrow Sri Lanka's old set ways of thinking on Indo-Lanka relations. It is amply clear that India is extending to us a hand of friendship. We must grasp it in our interest.