India’s heft depends on relations with neighbours: former foreign secretaries

New Delhi: India’s rising economic profile besides Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s “activist foreign policy” had made it a major “go to” destination in the world, with leaders of different countries making a beeline for Asia’s third largest economy.

But India’s continued rise and heft in the world was dependent on management of ties with countries in the country’s periphery or neighbourhood especially like those with China and Pakistan, said former foreign secretaries Shyam Saran and Nirupama Rao at the session on India and the World at the Rising India Conclave in New Delhi on Saturday.

Panellists at the session included Shaurya Doval, who heads the New Delhi-based India Foundation think tank, and Vijay Chauthaiwale, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)’s foreign policy head.

Unsurprisingly, it was how to deal with Pakistan that brought out the differences between Saran and Rao on one hand and Doval and Chauthaiwale on the other.

“India has become a must go to place,” mainly because of its economic profile, an emerging power and a country which because of its size, “it’s a country to be reckoned with,” Saran said. “So I am not surprised that there is much more traffic today to India than perhaps we have seen before. It is also a reflection of a much more activist foreign policy which prime minister Modi has pursued,” he said.

Saran however also urged a “follow up” on “these very important events” ie visits by foreign leaders “so that there is a substance to the relationship that we are trying to establish with our partners.”

“With respect to the kind of relationships—network of relationships—we are developing around the world, which is a very good thing, the focus has to remain on our neighbourhood. Because if you do not manage your own periphery well, then it is difficult to think of a credible regional or global role. This is fundamental. So I think the focus over the next several years needs to be to manage the relationships in our subcontinent in a manner that frees us to focus attention” beyond the region, Sharan added.

On 26 May 2014, Modi had invited all the heads of state and government from South Asian countries—adjoining India’s periphery—for his inauguration. Almost four years down the line, China, India’s strategic rival, has made deep inroads into South Asia with countries like Sri Lanka, the Maldives and Nepal signing onto Beijing’s ambitious Belt and Road Initiative that India opposes. Beijing is also making substantial investments in these countries, mainly in infrastructure. China’s presence in countries like Bangladesh, which is seen as favourably inclined towards India, and Myanmar too, is increasing much to India’s chagrin.

According to Saran, managing ties in the neighbourhood and beyond at this point was crucial because “we are in a sense in a moment of geopolitical opportunity. Because when the world order is settled there is very little opportunity left for you to expand. The advantage for us is that there is a great deal of transition... taking place in the geopolitical landscape and that is creating opportunities for emerging countries like India. So this is a moment for us to seize.”

Former foreign secretary Nirupama Rao concurred with Saran’s views on neighbourhood diplomacy saying that “everything has to begin and end with the neighbourhood. India maybe the place of every arrival... but we have to open our windows and look at our relations with our neighbours.”

Doval on his part was of the view that India had increased its leverage vis a vis its neighbours. “I also think that the gap between India and China economically is significant. It is also a reality that China uses its leverage and its buying power excessively in these small countries,” he said adding that India needed to look at an alternative economic model to increase its linkages with India’s smaller neighbours.

The soft power of cultural and other linkages with countries like Sri Lanka, he said, had to reach them with an economic narrative. This is what India was trying to do with its soft loans and development projects, he said.

“Now that India is a bog common market with the advent of the GST (goods and services tax rolled out on 1 July), can we find ways and mechanisms of linking them up into our supply chain? And make then compete equally on terms with other Indian states? If we are able to do that, we are able to bring them into the loop of what is a huge market for them,” Doval said.

When asked if India and South Asian countries could really form a seamless bloc for trade and commerce like the European Union, Vijay Chauthaiwale of the BJP said: “I don’t think we can delink terrorism from the rest of our relationship with Pakistan.”

“But can we think of a South Asia minus Pakistan and bring other countries on the table,” he asked suggesting that this could be a possibility.

India and Pakistan share adversarial ties with New Delhi accusing Islamabad of using terrorism as an instrument of state policy to weaken India. Peace talks between the two countries have been suspended since 2013 and efforts to revive them have come to nought.

Prime Minister Modi had travelled to Pakistan in December 2015 as did Indian foreign minister Sushma Swaraj—raising expectations of a thaw in ties. But a spate of terror attacks in 2016 derailed those efforts. India has since then refused to attend a summit meeting of the heads of state and government of South Asian countries that was to be hosted by Pakistan in 2016 stating that terrorism and engagement with Pakistan cannot go hand in hand.

Saran disagreed with the view of the Indian subcontinent “abstracted from Pakistan” as he described as an “admission of defeat for India.”

“That means that there is no way you can deal with Pakistan,” he said pointing to the fact that India could not move away from Pakistan. “You have to find a way of at least managing, what is I acknowledge, an adversarial relationship with Pakistan which is likely to remain adversarial for quite sometime,” he said.

On ties with China, Saran said that as two countries of continental proportions whose footprints were expanding, it was natural for India and China to have “points of intersection.” These could become “points of contention” or “points of convergence and cooperation.”

The key was to ensure management of relations so that the points of convergence remained dominant, he said.