The uphill climb to woo neighbours

A MONTH to the date before Sri Lanka’s Sept 21 presidential polls would elect a firebrand Marxist head of state, and disturb the political furniture in the region and beyond, the Indian high commissioner to Colombo installed a free water vending machine at a tourist site in Sigiriya.
At slightly over half the steep climb to the summit of the 180 metres high volcanic granite relic of King Kasyapa’s ancient fort-and-cave spectacle in the heart of Sri Lanka, the Indian envoy announced the RO machine on a metal plaque, which glistened in the sapping heat with the message of neighbourly goodwill “from the people of India”.
If the Indian envoy’s intent was to win friends or impress visitors, the investment fell short of its goal on two counts. A truer point that the water taps missed lies in a six-hour drive to Sri Lanka’s southernmost tip.
It’s here that a strategic port has come up abutting a sea lane seen as more crucial for India’s Western allies than for India. How New Delhi under Narendra Modi’s watch has got itself entangled with the US-led and completely self-centred ‘pivot to the East’ strategy offers an object lesson on how not to rise to the bait in a purely bilateral dispute, this one being essentially between Beijing and Washington. The day the two make up, even if they don’t end up kissing, proverbially, the cheerleaders in the transient stand-off wouldn’t know where to look.
Pakistan has been used selfishly twice by the West, on both turns under the watch of a muscle-flexing military ruler. It’s in an economic mess today, but does the West care? Moreover, in the current context, the ascent of the Philippines as a China-specific military outpost for the US threatens to undercut Delhi’s worth in the Western strategy, say leading US think tanks.
And so, it would seem odd for New Delhi to share Western enthusiasm that the China-built Hambantota port somehow poses a threat to its interests.
The anti-China Quad group of which India is a member, others being Japan, Australia and the US, is as tenuous as the next business deal between the economic and political heavyweights. Yet, it so transpired that as the Beijing-friendly Anura Kumara Dissanayake was leading the Sri Lankan race, the Quad leaders were huddled in a meeting with President Joe Biden at his home in Delaware. India’s recent rapprochement with the tiny archipelago nation of the Maldives, after initial fears of Male veering sharply towards Beijing, may illustrate how mistaken Indian leaders could be about their neighbours’ intentions. The upsurge in Bangladesh also saw Delhi’s chorus boys in the media going out of their way to sow mistrust with another neighbour.
Coincidences apart, there was a starker message from the Sri Lanka polls waiting to ambush India, or perhaps not so much India as Prime Minister Narendra Modi, personally. To its credit, New Delhi was not entirely unaware of the impending defeat of its preferred friend in Colombo, the outgoing president, Ranil Wickremesinghe.
Sensing the mood for change stalking the southern neighbour, New Delhi as early as February this year invited Dissanayake to visit the country, which he did as head of the National People’s Power. The NPP is purportedly a phlegmatic avatar of the virulently leftist JVP, the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna, in which the 56-year old Dissanayake cut his political teeth. The future president was taken on a guided tour of Delhi and Ahmedabad, Modi’s home state, and there’s a picture of him beaming in a frame with India’s External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar from that visit.
The diplomatic soft-soaping from the India visit seems not to have worked, however. Upon his return Dissanayake reiterated his main theme of fighting bigtime corruption he has accused his predecessors of indulging in. One such deal he mentioned in particular involved an Indian tycoon who has been in the crosshairs of Modi’s domestic opponents too — Gautam Adani. Modi has been accused of sacrificing India’s political and economic interests in plugging for Gautam Adani on his diplomatic sojourns. Dissanayake has been quoted as threatening to cancel Adani’s 450 MW wind power project in Sri Lanka if elected. Reports quote him as claiming the agreement was corrupt and skewed against Sri Lanka’s interests.
There are two ways for India to handle the crisis. It could treat it as a business deal between a private individual and a foreign government. Or it could regard the dealings of an individual as a cause to intervene as Indian government.
“Dissanayake highlighted that Sri Lanka is purchasing energy from Adani at a rate of $0.0826 per unit, whereas a nearby Sri Lankan firm supplies energy at only $0.0488 per unit,” a local daily in Colombo quoted him as saying. “The Adani project’s costs should decrease, given its large scale, but it’s the opposite. This is clearly a corrupt deal, and we will definitely cancel it.” The problem is that Adani is facing similar charges in Bangladesh and even from state governments in India.
In February 2023, Sri Lanka’s Board of Investment approved Adani Green Energy’s $442 million wind power project, with plants planned for Mannar and Pooneryn in northern Sri Lanka. The project has since faced legal challenges, local reports say, with its details currently under Sri Lankan supreme court’s review.
The Adani Group, led by billionaire Gautam Adani, is also involved in the development of a $700m container terminal at the Colombo Port, adding to its growing presence in Sri Lanka, reports say.
From all accounts Dissanayake is not a Trotskyite variant of Don Quixote tilting at global capitalism. He says he wouldn’t reject his country’s deal with the IMF, and would prefer to adopt the business model of Vietnam, which doesn’t needlessly ruffle the West. It is India that needs to do more than humour the neighbours with RO utilities.
The writer is Dawn’s correspondent in Delhi.
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Published in Dawn, September 24th, 2024