India recently withdrew transhipment facility for Bangladeshi goods through Indian ports and airports, citing congestion creating problems for Indian exports. In reality, India was sending a strong signal to Bangladesh’s interim government led by Muhammad Yunus about limits to India’s tolerance towards its hostile acts.
New Delhi has been patient in not reacting hastily to Dhaka’s many provocations since Sheikh Hasina was ousted last August. But Yunus’s invitation to China to refurbish a Second World War airbase at Lalmonirhat in Rangpur division may have crossed India’s red line, forcing the decision on stopping transhipment. The airbase in northern Bangladesh is no more than 10 km from the Indian border and 160 km from the Siliguri Corridor, which connects India’s northeastern states to the rest of India.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s meeting with Yunus in Bangkok on the sidelines of the BIMSTEC summit, days prior to the decision to stop the transhipment facility, was marked by lack of any warmth.
In contrast, Modi’s interaction with Thailand’s leadership and his subsequent tour of Sri Lanka served to bolster India’s Act East and Neighbourhood First policies, reflecting the mixed nature of India’s immediate and extended neighbourhood. In Bangkok, India, along with Thailand, took the lead to reenergise BIMSTEC, the grouping that straddles the Indian subcontinent and southeast Asia, besides elevating the India-Thailand relationship to a strategic partnership.
In Sri Lanka, President Anura Kumara Dissanayake, popularly known as AKD, went out of the way to assure India about not allowing his country’s territory for any act inimical to India’s security interests. A defence pact—elusive for decades—signed during Modi’s visit is testimony to a newfound comfort between the countries. The optics as well as outcomes during the visit, were evidence enough that India’s unconditional assistance of over $4 billion to Sri Lanka during its worst financial and political crisis three years ago is not forgotten in Colombo.
AKD, new to governance and power politics, conferred Sri Lanka’s highest award for a foreign dignitary on Modi, showing respect to the elder statesman. No other Indian leader had so far received this honour.
In more concrete terms, a trilateral agreement between India, Sri Lanka and the UAE to develop the Trincomalee port as a strategic energy hub and India’s assistance to Sri Lanka in further strengthening its digital infrastructure cements India’s position as a major development partner to countries in the region.
Essentially, India has been generous to friends and cold to those who show signs of hostility or hubris, adopting a carrot and stick policy coupled with enormous patience in dealing with recalcitrant neighbours such as Maldives and Nepal, and of late, Bangladesh.
The PM’s recent visits abroad indicate India’s relentless focus on the neighbourhood. A month ago, Modi’s trip to Mauritius was marked by a deeper engagement with the strategically located Indian Ocean island. On the visit to Mauritius exactly a decade after his first trip on its National Day, Modi announced the formulation of MAHASAGAR (Mutual and Holistic Advancement for Security and Growth Across Regions), which appears to be an upscaling of his 2015 SAGAR initiative (Security and Growth for All in the Region), also announced in Port Louis.
While the specifics of MAHASAGAR are yet to be spelled out, it could be harbinger of a new phase of Indian leadership in the Indian Ocean focused on trade, development and security assistance. The PM reiterated India’s commitment to supporting the security of Mauritius’s Exclusive Economic Zone. He pledged to extend assistance to the Mauritius Coast Guard, which has been mentored by India since inception.
Besides Mauritius, India has laid special emphasis on engaging with and providing security to smaller but important countries like Comoros, Seychelles, Madagascar and Mozambique to extend its reach in the western Indian Ocean.
In a period of heightened geopolitical uncertainty, India’s MAHASAGAR articulation is a timely reminder of its focus on multidimensional cooperation with the Global South. The challenge for New Delhi would be to consolidate the gains of SAGAR and bring together the efforts of various arms of the government to deliver on its promise of trade for growth, capacity building for sustainable growth and activities for mutual security across the region whose shores are washed by the waters of the Indian Ocean. If the Modi government is successful in achieving a synthesis of its diverse sectoral efforts under the MAHASAGAR rubric, it may well herald a new, bolder role for India in the region.
European countries, buffeted by the Trump storm, are increasingly looking to India as a more reliable partner in the technology, security and economic spheres. Individually, European powerhouses such as France have invested heavily in their relationship with India, thanks to PM Modi’s personal chemistry with President Emmanuel Macron. The recent visit of the EU president and 22 commissioners to New Delhi has given a new impetus to India-EU relationship and an India-Europe free trade agreement is likely to deepen it.
There are challenges, of course. The ties with China, for one. Or balancing between Russia and the US at a time when none of the old templates of conducting foreign policy may apply. Overall, the strategy of multi-alignment adopted by India of late has resulted in beneficial outcomes. Navigating uncertain times that Trump’s tariff war has unleashed will be a big challenge to the Modi government in the short term.
Nitin A Gokhale
National security analyst and founder of the BharatShakti group
(Views are personal)