The India-Bangladesh border talks from June 11-14 (https://bit.ly/3CFjSBt) were a reminder that even friendly neighbours like Bangladesh and Sri Lanka cannot be taken for granted. India’s relationships with these Indian Ocean states points to the strength or weakness of its position in its South Asian neighbourhood, especially as it faces competition from China. This is worrying. Unlike India, China, because of its geography, is traditionally not an Indian Ocean power. Most of the oil imports of China, India, Japan, South Korea, and Australia traverse the Ocean, which is strategically and economically important to all South Asian countries.
Bangladesh and Sri Lanka know that their size and resources, compared to those of India and China, will not make them great powers. But each occupies a strategically pivotal position in South Asia and the Indian Ocean. As Bangladesh’s GDP per capita—$2,687—surges ahead of India’s $ 2,301, it is being cultivated by several powers, including the US, Russia, Britain, Japan, and Australia, apart from rising powers like China and India. Bangladesh sees itself as a key security player in the Bay of Bengal and Indian Ocean region.
Since the 1980s, China has been the largest arms exporter to Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. Each buys more than 70% of its weapons from Beijing. India is advancing security cooperation with both countries to counter China.
India’s smaller South Asian neighbours do not perceive New Delhi as being less overbearing than Beijing. Significantly, a humiliating economic blockade by India in 2015 following a devastating earthquake, pushed Nepal to join China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in 2017. Sri Lanka and Bangladesh are also on board. All three countries aim at reducing dependence on India and diversifying their political and economic options. They wish to expand their rail, road and maritime connectivity and enhance their security. China is the largest FDI source of Sri Lanka and Bangladesh and has strengthened its economic and strategic ties with them. China’s economic footprint is relatively new, but an ascending China has confirmed its ability to push its influence into South Asia.
India’s Adani Ports and China’s state-owned China Merchants Group are developing Colombo Port. And both countries are competing to fund the south-western Bangladeshi port of Mongla.
Generally, how much importance India has given to friendly South Asian neighbours? No South Asian country is among India’s top 25 trading partners. The World Bank has noted that South Asia is one of the least economically integrated regions in the world and intra-regional trade is well below 5% of the area’s international trade.
Over the last decade, China has invested about $3 billion in Sri Lanka, accounting for nearly a quarter of its FDI, while India made up about $1.3 billion. According to the Central bank of Sri Lanka, the total FDI from India so far exceeds $2.2 billion. In 2021, India was the largest source of FDI, which amounted to $142 million.
The better news is that India has extended credit for connectivity. For instance, Sri Lanka has received credit and investments from India as part of New Delhi’s maritime strategy in the Indian Ocean. India extended its $1 billion credit line to Sri Lanka by another year to help Colombo to tackle unprecedented food and medical crises.
But on another plane, India has offended Dhaka by labelling immigrants from Bangladesh as “termites”, or accused them of entering India because they are poor. That’s rich, coming from New Delhi, given that Bangladesh has a higher per capita GDP than India.
When it comes to implementing projects, India has a poor record. For instance, New Delhi and Dhaka have yet to sign a pact on water-sharing from the Teesta river, which flows through the Indian states of Sikkim and West Bengal before entering Bangladesh. The Teesta is Bangladesh’s fourth largest river and also the main river of northern Bangladesh. After turning to Beijing for help in 2020, Dhaka received a loan of nearly $1 billion from China to maintain water levels during the drought season.
Talk of civilisational links will not help India to win over its neighbours. In fact, it has raised hackles in Bangladesh and Nepal because a mural in the new Indian Parliament shows their present-day territories as part of the 3rd century BC Ashokan empire, rather than the frontiers of India after it achieved statehood in 1947. Whether by India or China, such an evocation of ancient “history” invariably sparks unnecessary unpleasantness between neighbours.
In any case, China, like India, asserts the importance of historical ties with contemporary South Asia and is wooing Bangladesh economically and strategically as it moves into the Indian Ocean. Two foreign ministers, Wang Yi and Qin Gang, and Chen Zhou, the deputy head of the International Department of the Chinese Communist Party Central Committee, visited Dhaka between August 2022 and January 2023.
India has yet to establish itself as the partner of first or last resort of Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. That is why the cultural and civilisational ties that New Delhi often lauds have not led to stronger bonds with them. Meanwhile, communal violence in India and Bangladesh does not augur well for their relationship. Apart from keeping the promises it makes to its neighbours, India must realise that domestic peace and progress are essential to achieve the geopolitical aim of countering China in South Asia.
The writer is founding professor, Centre for Peace and Conflict Resolution, New Delhi
.jpg)