Vishal Sharma
India’s foreign policy challenges have registered themselves even before prime minister designate, Narendra Modi, has been sworn into the office of the prime minister of India. Before Nawaz Sharif, Pak premier, or his representative, flies down to New Delhi for oath ceremony of Modi, there has been an attack on an Indian consulate in Afghanistan. Since in the past, attacks on Indian interests in Afghanistan have had a Pak imprint, an invite to Sharif has handed Modi-baiters an opportunity to berate him on his soft Pak posturing even though it may have been made entirely in good faith.
The wide ranging opposition in Tamil Nadu to the invite extended to Sri Lankan premier, Mahinda Rajyapakse, is also not unexpected. It is not believable though that Modi and his advisors would not have known about the possible fall out of such a decision. In such a scenario, it is difficult to conjecture whether it is a conscious decision or it’s just happened. The BJP though has come out strongly to defend the action ‘as taken in good spirit’.
The messaging underneath the above two actions apart, Afghanistan and Sri Lanka represent two of the India’s biggest foreign policy challenges today-Afghanistan being the bigger of the two. And it is here, amidst host of other challenges that the new Government will have to put its best foot forward.
India has done enough infrastructural development in Afghanistan. It has built roads, bridges, hospitals and schools- all under the threat of perpetual terror attacks from Taliban. But it has not been easy. Indian workers had to be embedded in the military and paramilitary units based there so that they could work under protection.
India has even trained Afghan armed and police forces. It is also bankrolling the Afghan’s weapon procurement from Russia. Despite this, Indian influence is limited to a few pockets there. And even though, Indians are by and large liked in Afghanistan, its diplomats do not move in and around Kabul with a great degree of freedom and, of course, without fear. In comparison, Pakistan mission, despite not being liked as much, struts around fearlessly. This is put down to the influence that the Pak backed militant groups wield in Afghanistan. Conversely, it is also indicative of the fledgling Afghan national army’s influence in Afghanistan.
India has done the critical threshold work in Afghanistan. The new Government would now have to do the directional shift by entrenching its work processes and culture in Afghan bureaucracy and armed forces. An army and the civil administration that is engineered by another nation will always be organically dependent upon its benefactor. Thereafter, it is hard for the changing political executives to toe a different line.
Trade and commerce is another area where the new Government can cause Afghan institutional deepening in its mould by opening liberal credit lines and offering tariff concessions. This one way conciliatory push can veer away Afghans from their eastern neighbor whom they greatly distrust any way.
Such multipronged Afghan policy can seriously contain Pak. There are tremendous legacy issues between India and Pak- some of which are apparently intractable. Therefore, even in a scenario where Indo-Pak relation steadies, it would never be to an extent where they lurch towards a stage of living happily ever after. In such a situation, good relations with Afghanistan, which Pak uses as a strategic depth against India, can help India keep its western flanks in check. Of course, there is also an added advantage of Afghanistan not being used as another front by Pak. So far Pakistan has also used Afghanistan to send a message to India by attacking Indian interests there.
Sri Lanka, on the other hand, is an entirely different ball game. India’s foreign policy towards SL is presently constrained by the aspirations of its Tamils who don’t want India to have any truck with the Government there because it is involved in gross human rights abuses against SL Tamils. While the Tamils’ concerns on the HR abuses by the SL Government are legitimate, it can’t equally be denied that it’s an internal matter of that country. Nonetheless, India is working with the international community on the issue to see that some kind of accountability is enforced in the matter. Hence, it will be outright stupidity to dumb down the multifaceted SL-India discourse to only one issue of HR violations of SL Tamils.
Such an approach is also certain to produce the zero sum game matrix in the SL-India relation, as SL can turn around and do its own moralizing on the India’s HR record thereby leading the relation nowhere. And it will certainly do no good in assuaging the wounded sentiments of Indian Tamils. The right way forward, therefore, is in engaging SL and advising it to devolve the promised autonomy to the Tamils in their settlements and also identifying and penalizing the troopers involved in the gross HR abuses. As a substantive step forward, SL can also be advised to consider setting up truth and reconciliation commission to help heal the festering wounds of both the Tamils, who have suffered in the SL military offensive, and Sinahelese, who have suffered in the long drawn militant campaign by Tamil separatists.
Sadly, no union Government has ever brought home to the Indian Tamils the futility of adversarial approach vis-à-vis SL. The new Government will have to buck his trend. It will have to open a frank and no-frills dialogue with the Indian Tamils to help them see the relevance of engaging SL for bettering the lot of SL Tamils. The success or failure of Modi’s SL policy will largely depend upon how he chooses to do so; and whether he wins them over or not.
It is good that Modi has had his brush with some of his most immediate foreign policy challenges early; even before he has become the PM. This gives him some time to mull over the ensuing myriad foreign policy challenges from a perspective that is still not coloured by the slanted briefings and reportage from the MEA’s diplomats. Infact, this also gives him some time to think up ways in which to reconstruct the foreign policy narrative in his publicly announced mould- which envisages synergizing the trade imperatives with the foreign policy objectives; and shelving the undimensional shibboleths of the federal narrative by syncing it with the thought processes or discourses of the States of the union.
Modi has always said that the perspectives and the demands of the States of the union should have adequate representation in the MEA’s policy pursuits. While the intent to drive the foreign policy agenda largely on the States’ perspectives is good, it can’t happen unless the MEA, which is facing crippling man power shortages, sources its staff from the State civil services of various States as well. If and when it happens it will be a ground breaking reform, but at this stage it is difficult to believe that the union and States’ discourses which have mostly been at cross purposes will, and can, cohere.
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