By Aloke Sen,Eurasia Review
At a recent seminar in Kolkata on what the foreign policy priorities should be for the new government in Delhi, I was somewhat startled to hear from the delegate of a neighbouring country that the general view there of India was of an ‘indecisive and inconsistent big neighbour’.
While India can justifiably be held guilty of having often displayed a condescending attitude to its smaller neighbours (except Pakistan that continues to consume, quite unproductively, a disproportionate share of our diplomatic energy), to be additionally charged with inconsistency and indecision was a little overwhelming. For good measure, the delegate added it was time India changed its image of a “big brother” to one of an “elder brother”.
From available indications, the Narendra Modi government has identified the neighbourhood as a priority area for India’s diplomatic efforts, and started work on improving relations. I assume the definition of neighbourhood would at some stage transcend only those countries with which India shares a physical boundary, and embrace a swathe of South, Southeast and East Asia, the focus of India’s Look East Policy (LEP). They form a composite whole and not seeing them as a single ‘extended neighbourhood’ would be a mistake.
The LEP was launched on the watch of P.V. Narasimha Rao, a vastly underrated but visionary prime minister, who was also at the time putting the country on a transformational course of economic reforms and liberalization. Throwing open of the gates for India’s economy and external relations came in the early 1990s, coinciding with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the official end of the Cold War. It was a time of upheaval and re-adjustment. LEP that heralded India’s intention to pay greater attention to its Southeast Asian neighbours was India’s re-adjustment mechanism.
This policy has since enjoyed bipartisan support. If Rao (Congress) was its author, former prime ministers Atal Bihari Vajpayee (National Democratic Alliance) and Manmohan Singh (United Progressive Alliance)’s governments pursued it seriously. Trade with India’s Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) partners, now at $80 billion, has expanded impressively. Most importantly, close institutional links already forged with the ASEAN provide India with the strategic wherewithal to firmly ensconce itself in an emerging Asian economic community, whatever final shape it may take.
So utility of the LEP is not in question, but from my experience of having served in two ASEAN countries, I would suggest there is a need for more purposeful implementation.
A few suggestions:
One, the government can do with a cost-benefit audit. There is no reason to get carried away by the impressive growth in trade with the Southeast Asian countries; the question is if that is benefiting India as much as the partner countries. Otherwise, India’s openness would only lead to competitive pricing and sleeker packaging of products from many of these countries, dislodging Indian products from store shelves. The India-ASEAN free trade agreement on services is still elusive with, at last count two ASEAN countries holding it up.
Meanwhile, the agreement on trade in goods is fully operational. It is believed that the benefits of the goods agreement are largely to accrue to the ASEAN countries (with which India already has an increasing trade deficit), whereas India’s gains would come from the services agreement. From personal experience, I know how difficult it can be to get ten disparate members of the ASEAN to agree on a document that is designed to largely serve an outsider’s interests. But conclusion of the services agreement remains unfinished business for India, badly disadvantaged by the arrangement to sign the free trade agreements sequentially.
Two, the two neighbouring countries most relevant to the success of LEP are Bangladesh and Myanmar. The first has always received due attention for both positive and negative reasons; but Myanmar, in my view, has not seen the kind of investment in relations that it merits. Even a few years back, it hardly figured on Delhi’s political radar, so it is heartening to see the recent high-level political traffic. But that alone is not enough.
Economic relations with Myanmar are no less important than the upgrade we are seeking in political relations. The over-emphasis on PSUs (the white elephants) for furthering business needs to be discarded in favour of the private sector, provided of course they can be persuaded to be less timid in entering a yet-fluid market. At the macro level, the unique location of Myanmar as a physical land bridge between South and Southeast Asia and consequently, the exciting opportunities it can generate for India, need to be properly realized. Myanmar not only offers, through the Kaladan project, a workable transit route between India’s North Eastern states and the rest of the country, but also an outward route to reach broader ASEAN markets if the existing surface transport links can be improved in Myanmar.
Three, the hybrid platforms India had co-created by combining select South and Southeast Asian countries for more political than economic reasons – Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC) and Mekong–Ganga Cooperation (MGC) – are more talk than action. But if used properly, they can have merit.
Four, a stop should be put to the fiction that the North Eastern states are the pivot to India’s LEP. At this moment they are nothing of the kind. They have simply not been prepared for this grand role thrust upon them. Unless a domestic development plan for them is executed urgently and synchronically with India’s external strategy under the LEP, not much can be gained from the availability of this crucial gateway.
On my visits to the North East, I have been struck by these states’ belief that LEP is Delhi’s business and that they are only incidentally involved. Meanwhile, they have continued to take great pride in their cultural ‘uniqueness’ that has actually hampered collective developmental efforts to benefit from the LEP. I have come to believe that LEP, if it is to serve this disadvantaged region, has to be a states-driven policy rather than one formulated and prescribed from Delhi. What prevents the chief ministers of the North East from discarding their bureaucratic ways and sitting down by themselves to offer a ‘grand vision’ of their states under the LEP?
(Aloke Sen is a former Ambassador of India. He can be contacted atsouthasiamonitor1@gmail.com)
This article appeared at South Asia Monitor.
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