India - Sri Lanka: Time for reshaping New Delhi's neighbourhood policy

This article was published by www.rediff.com on 28 March 2014 under the headline "Time for reshaping India's neighbourhood policy" and by www.atimes.com on 31 March 2014 under the headline "UN vote shows strains in Delhi's diplomacy":

President Mahinda Rajapaksa of Sri Lanka and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh of India

Abstaining from voting on a UNHRC resolution on Sri Lanka was dictated as much by necessity and self-preservation as by a desire to place bilateralism at the front and centre of New Delhi’s ties with Colombo, says Ramesh Ramachandran.

In a departure from its hitherto familiar voting pattern on United Nations Human Rights Council resolutions critical of Sri Lanka, India on Thursday abstained from casting its vote on the resolution that approved an independent international investigation into certain alleged war crimes and gross human rights violations committed by the government of Sri Lanka during the 2009 civil war against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam.
The customary ‘explanation of vote’ by the permanent representative of India to the UN offices in Geneva said, among other things, that: 
* “In asking the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights to investigate, assess and monitor the human rights situation in Sri Lanka, the resolution ignores the progress already made by the country in this field and places in jeopardy the cooperation currently taking place between the government of Sri Lanka and the OHCHR and the council’s special procedures. Besides, the resolution is inconsistent and impractical in asking both the government of Sri Lanka and the OHCHR to simultaneously conduct investigations”;
* “India believes that it is imperative for every country to have the means of addressing human rights violations through robust national mechanisms. The council’s efforts should therefore be in a direction to enable Sri Lanka to investigate all allegations of human rights violations through comprehensive, independent and credible national investigative mechanisms and bring to justice those found guilty. Sri Lanka should be provided all assistance it desires in a cooperative and collaborative manner”; and
* “It has been India’s firm belief that adopting an intrusive approach that undermines national sovereignty and institutions is counterproductive.”
After having voted for the UNHRC resolutions on Sri Lanka in 2012 and 2013, India’s abstention this year is indicative of a course correction in New Delhi’s engagement with Colombo that is aimed at retrieving the ground lost in the intervening years, burnishing India’s credentials as a relevant player in the island nation’s affairs and signalling a return to bilateralism as the centrepiece of India-Sri Lanka ties (not necessarily in that order).
If India’s support for the resolutions in the previous years exposed an utter bankruptcy of ideas on how to engage with Sri Lanka (thereby implicitly admitting to a failure on the part of New Delhi to either influence the course of events or bring about the desired change in Colombo’s disposition), the abstention should be seen as a belated attempt to pull the relationship back from the brink.
Of course, it helped that the reaction from the regional parties was muted this year and that gave New Delhi extra room for manoeuvre, enabling it in the process to regain its voice vis-a-vis the states on foreign policy matters.
It needs to be said here that India cannot claim to adhere to a consistent policy towards Sri Lanka. First it nurtured the LTTE and burnt its fingers in the process. Then it extended a tacit support to Colombo -- before, during and after the end of the Sri Lankan civil war in May 2009 -- only to later, in its wisdom, support the UNHRC resolution piloted by the United States. The 2013 Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting summit in Sri Lanka was as much in the news for the renewed focus on the human rights record of the host nation as for the decision by the prime minister of India not to take part in it. In his stead it was left to External Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid to lead the Indian delegation for the biennial event of the 53-nation Commonwealth.
In a letter of regret that was hand-delivered to President Mahinda Rajapaksa, Singh informed Rajapaksa of his inability to attend personally but he did not assign any reasons for it. Suffice it to say that a careful reading of the history of India-Sri Lanka relations would make it evident to just about anyone that India’s policy towards this island-nation in the Indian Ocean can be described as consistently inconsistent, characterised by myopia and self-inflicted crises.
For the ministry of external affairs, what should be particularly worrying is the erosion in India’s standing, in what it calls, its sphere of influence. The recent debate over which way India should vote on a UNHRC resolution on Sri Lanka is instructive to the extent that it illustrated how far India has come from being an influential actor in its neighbourhood to being a marginal or fringe player.
Put simply (not simplistically), some of the key questions were: Is it advisable for New Delhi to vote for the resolutions and risk losing whatever goodwill and leverage it might have had with Colombo? Should not all other options have been exhausted before India (figuratively) threw in the towel and (literally) threw in its lot with the West? Thursday’s abstention has partially answered that question. However, there remains another worry:
The protestations from Tamil Nadu chief minister J Jayalalithaa and her rival and DMK patriarch M Karunanidhi over India’s vote on Sri Lanka in 2012, coming as they did a few months after West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee ‘vetoed’ an agreement on the sharing of the Teesta river waters with Bangladesh, injected a certain degree of dissonance in the conduct of foreign policy. What fuelled the diplomats’ anxiety was the precedent that would be set if the Centre caved in or succumbed to the states on matters that fell in the Union Government’s realm. Already, India’s engagement of Pakistan on one hand and China and Burma on the other are determined to an extent by the domestic conditions prevalent in Jammu and Kashmir and the north-eastern states, respectively. 
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh betrayed his frustration when he said in the Lok Sabha that difficult decisions were getting more difficult because of coalition compulsions. He called for bipartisanship in the interest of the country. At the same time, what cannot be denied is that there exists a view among a section of serving and former practitioners of diplomacy that devolution of foreign policy to more stakeholders than what is currently assumed should not be entirely unwelcome.
As a former foreign secretary told this writer, “Foreign policy today is made not only in New Delhi but elsewhere, too. There are multiple stakeholders and one can’t deny states a say in foreign policy if it relates to them.” In other words, it is argued that if the states assert their rights and/or seek more consultations, then the Centre must respect those sentiments.
Having said that, an impression seems to be gaining ground, erroneously at that, that foreign policy is the worst sufferer of this nouveau phenomenon of the states having their say in matters pertaining to foreign policy. A cursory look at recent years would show that the states have consistently been vocal on a host of other issues, too. The recent examples of certain states or regional parties opposing the policy of raising the cap on FDI (foreign direct investment) in single-brand retail is a case in point. As is the opposition to the Centre’s proposal for setting up a National Counter Terrorism Centre.
In some of these cases New Delhi chose to yield, albeit temporarily, but in some others it had its way. Therefore, it would not be accurate to suggest that regional influences are wielding a ‘veto’ over New Delhi. Also, it would not be fair to either paint the states as villains of the piece or to apportion all the blame for the Centre’s foreign policy woes to regional parties that are, or could be, aligned against it in the political arena.
For instance, the Centre accuses the West Bengal government headed by the Trinamool Congress party of scuttling a river waters sharing agreement with Bangladesh. However, the Congress, which heads the ruling coalition at the Centre and also in Kerala, is guilty of playing to narrow political sentiments, too, as was evidenced by the state government’s and the party’s stand on the two Italian marines who are facing murder charges for the deaths of two Indian fishermen off the Kerala coast.
On balance, it is time for reshaping India’s neighbourhood policy in a manner that it reflects the broadest possible national consensus on the way forward in reshaping ties with countries such as Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Nepal, Bangladesh, Maldives, Bhutan and Sri Lanka. A reset is imperative, irrespective of which coalition forms the next government in New Delhi. India can ill-afford a Pavlovian foreign policy.
Equally, framing India’s foreign policy options as a binary choice can be self-defeating. There needs to be a dispassionate debate and a greater appreciation of various shades of grey (pun unintended.)

CONSULT, NOT CONFRONT

President Mahinda Rajapaksa of Sri Lanka and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh of India

Re-posting my November 2013 piece on the CHOGM Summit and India - Sri Lanka relations (You may want to read it together with my March 2012 piece, headlined "Mamata, Karunanidhi effect: MEA sees red as states veto foreign policy"):

The recently concluded Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) summit in Sri Lanka was as much in the news for the renewed focus on the human rights record of the host nation as for the decision by the Prime Minister of India not to take part in it. In his stead it was left to External Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid to lead the Indian delegation to Colombo for the biennial event of the 53-nation Commonwealth. In a letter of regret that was hand-delivered to President Mahinda Rajapaksa of Sri Lanka, Mr Singh informed Mr Rajapaksa of his inability to attend personally but he did not assign any reasons for it. It was the second consecutive CHOGM summit the Indian Prime Minister has skipped but not many in his own party, the Indian National Congress, or its allies are complaining. The Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK), which was at the front and centre of a campaign in Tamil Nadu to dissuade the Prime Minister from travelling to Colombo, welcomed the move, describing it as “some consolation” to it. Some of the Prime Minister’s own colleagues in the Council of Ministers who hail from Tamil Nadu were relieved, too, after the PM acceded to the decision of the Congress core group, headed by party president Sonia Gandhi, that he must excuse himself from the summit. For its part, the Congress party was guided by the belief that while the DMK had withdrawn support to the government and pulled out from the ruling alliance in March this year, it remains a potential ally as the 2014 parliamentary elections draw near. Besides, Sri Lanka is an emotive issue that resonates with a large cross-section of the electorate in the state. As Mr Khurshid himself pointed out, the Prime Minister’s decision to skip CHOGM had been taken after factoring in a lot of issues. “The Prime Minister has taken a considerate call; he factored in a lot of issues, including the importance of his presence in the country at this time. We are after all facing five elections,” he said, before going on to concede that “there was also a very strong sentiment expressed by our colleagues in Parliament from Tamil Nadu.”

The Indian Prime Minister was not alone in giving the summit a miss. The prime ministers of Canada and Mauritius boycotted it, too. However, unlike the Canadian premier who warned of the boycott at the last CHOGM summit held in Australia in 2011, India cannot claim to adhere to a consistent policy towards Sri Lanka. First it nurtured the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and burnt its fingers in the process. Then it extended a tacit support to Colombo – before, during and after the end of the Sri Lankan civil war in May 2009 – only to later, in its wisdom, support a 2011 United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) resolution piloted by the United States and vote, in turn, against Sri Lanka. It voted against Sri Lanka a second time in the UNHRC in March this year. There can be compelling arguments for and against whether India should have supported such a resolution but it cannot be denied that those acts exposed the limits of India’s influence among its neighbours. Suffice it to say that a careful reading of the history of India-Sri Lanka relations would make it evident to just about anyone that India’s policy towards this island-nation in the Indian Ocean can be described as consistently inconsistent, characterised by myopia and self-inflicted crises.

In a federal structure such as India’s, foreign policy cannot be practised in a vacuum or in isolation or without consultations with all stakeholders concerned, including, but not limited to, the states, particularly those that share contiguous borders with neighbouring countries and/or share ethnic, linguistic, cultural or geographical affinities with them. A foreign policy drawn up in the corridors of the South Block in New Delhi may have served India well in all these decades but contemporary realities dictate that in a federal set-up and in an era of coalition governments the views of the states are factored in at the time of formulation of a foreign policy. Having said that, an impression seems to be gaining ground, erroneously at that, that foreign policy is the worst sufferer of this nouveau phenomenon of the states having their say in matters pertaining to foreign policy. A cursory look at recent years would show that the states have consistently been vocal on a host of other issues, too. The recent examples of certain states or regional parties opposing the policy of raising the cap on FDI (foreign direct investment) in single-brand retail to 100 per cent is a case in point. As is the opposition to the Centre’s proposal for setting up a National Counter Terrorism Centre (NCTC) or the protests against building nuclear power plants at Jaitapur in Maharashtra and Kudankulam in Tamil Nadu. In some of these cases New Delhi chose to yield, albeit temporarily, but in some others it had its way. Therefore, it would not be accurate to suggest that regional influences are wielding a veto over New Delhi. Also, it would not be fair to either paint the states as villains of the piece or to apportion all the blame for the Centre’s foreign policy woes to regional parties that are or could be aligned against it in the political arena. For instance, the Centre accuses the West Bengal government headed by the All India Trinamool Congress party of scuttling a river waters sharing agreement with Bangladesh. However, the Congress, which heads the ruling coalition at the Centre and also in Kerala, is guilty of playing to narrow political sentiments, too, as was evidenced by the state government’s and the party’s stand on the two Italian marines who are facing murder charges for the deaths of two Indian fishermen off the Kerala coast. That the ensuing protests and the government’s response to them were provoked in part by the fact that a crucial by-election was to take place in the state, was not lost on anyone.


What cannot be overstated is that devolution of foreign policy to more stakeholders than what is currently assumed should not be entirely unwelcome. I would go as far as to say that the democratisation of foreign policy and the salience of the states in shaping it cannot be continued to be treated as an exception; and the sooner New Delhi gets used to executing its foreign and domestic policies in a coalition with sometimes competing political interests, the better it will be for all the stakeholders concerned. The irony is unmistakable: If Colombo reasons that Sri Lanka is too small a geographical entity to be governed from the provinces or for more powers to be delegated to them, New Delhi is increasingly finding that administering foreign policy in the extant federal polity which it so recommends for Sri Lanka, coupled with the influence wielded by regional political parties or groups in a country of India’s size and history, is not easy. As recent developments indicate, policy-making cannot remain the exclusive preserve of New Delhi and it behoves of the Centre to encourage various stakeholders to air their views and to enable them to give expression to their concerns. Also, it is time for reshaping India’s neighbourhood policy in a manner that it reflects the broadest possible national consensus.