Former Prime Minister of India Shri Atal Bihari Vajpayee once said, “you can change your friends but not neighbours”. Logically, the only option we are left with is having friendly relations with our neighbours. To his credit, Vajpayee Ji tried and was quite successful to an extent. He set up the base on which Shinzo Abe and the successive Indian governments built the India-Japan relationship of the modern-day.
But he had to face failure as well. For one, Pakistan backstabbed India. The contrast in the result shows that there can’t be a unanimous approach to the neighbourhood problem. The Sri Lankan crisis is another situation where we need to rethink our Foreign Policies. Let’s look at what our neighbours are up to with respect to our national interest.
Sri Lanka is tricky
For the time being, Sri Lanka is done and dusted for all intents and purposes. It will take it years to resurrect its economic strength, simply because the debt-trap of China is too huge. While other debtors may forgive it, China most like will not. In that scenario, it has only two options. Either take massive loans from institutions like IMF and surrender your economic policy like India did in 1991 or take another bailout package from China and move an inch closer to surrendering its sovereign and strategic interests to the Communist nation.
No matter how things turn out, it is not good for India. Neither Western powers are particularly fond of us, nor is China. In fact, the paper dragon wants to eat the Indian Tiger. It won’t be a surprise if China starts to use Sri Lanka as a strategic base for launching an anti-India offensive. Though India is trying to avoid the situation, it is always tough to predict the future.
Not tough to control Nepal
But Sri Lanka is not the only one. Nepal is another such country which has been playing hide and seek with India and China. The Communist Party of Nepal is particularly fond of Xi Jinping. The bonhomie had gone to such an extent that K P Sharma Oli went to make exorbitant claims like those of China. Just like China tries to browbeat countries near the South China Sea, Oli also tried to do the same with India by asserting Nepal’s unsubstantiated claims on regions like Lipulekh, and Kalapani among others.
Later the government changed, but the outrageous claims did not die down. Sher Bahadur Deuba was supposed to be anti-China and pro-India, but even he started to parrot the same line as that of Oli. It seems as if China has made a deep impact on Nepal’s polity. India is trying its bit through the Beti-Roti bond. Unlike Sri Lanka, Nepal is likely to stay in India’s sphere of influence.
Pakistan is and will be our arch-nemesis
But, when it comes to bonding with India, Nepal and Sri Lanka have common historical roots to build trust. That is why both countries are more likely to trust India in long term. However, the situation gets even trickier when it comes to our explicitly Islamic neighbourhood. Bangladesh and Pakistan are the ones which can give sleepless nights to our security agencies. To be frank, both have been doing it for the past 5 to 6 years.
It won’t be far-fetched to say that Pakistan will soon accept China’s supremacy. Why am I saying it? Well, just like Sri Lanka, Pakistan is neck-deep into China’s debt-trap. The CPEC portion of China’s BRI has cost Pakistan a lot. According to an estimate, unless Pakistan pays $14.5 billion to China, it won’t be free of it. Taking advantage of the situation, China is coercing Pakistan to use Yuan. To avoid it, Pakistan is falling into USA’s arms, which again is not a good development for India.
The situation is not so good in Bangladesh as well. Bangladesh exports commodities like Jute, finished garments, and finished electronic products among others to India. While Bangladesh earns Dollars from India, it is using it to import arms from China. In fact, between 2016-2020, Bangladesh is the second-largest arms buyer of China. The talks of China setting up military bases in Bangladesh have also been surfacing.
To sum it all up, India is surrounded by non-supporting and opportunistic countries. These countries have their animal instincts on. They see the benefit and run towards it. It is here that India can make a dent in China’s leftover clout. With the increasing power, we also need to use more of our money for scoring strategic goals
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