Opinion - News Analysis   

A neighbourhood strategy

By C. Raja Mohan

NEW DELHI Aug. 4. As the External Affairs Minister, Yashwant Sinha, continues his travels in the subcontinent, he will need more than goodwill to impress India's smaller neighbours. After visiting Maldives and Nepal in July, Mr. Sinha is in Bhutan this week and later this month he heads to Nepal. Bangladesh and Afghanistan, too, are on the Minister's itinerary.

India's smaller neighbours are mighty pleased that the new Foreign Minister is paying attention to them. But they are also sceptical if New Delhi can really deliver on the vast and complex agenda with each one of them. Mr. Sinha's problem lies in the near impossibility of getting the rest of the

Government to implement the promises that the Foreign Office makes.

The number of Governmental agencies, Central Ministries and State Governments involved in policy-making towards the neighbours is numerous. Making them act purposefully to achieve declared strategic objectives towards the smaller neighbours has always been an uphill task.

If Mr. Sinha wants to make a big success of his neighbourhood diplomacy, he needs to get the broad elements of that strategy approved at the political level and create inter-agency task forces that will be obliged to implement the economic and political decisions relating to smaller neighbours with speed and efficiency.

* * *

No, India is not rattled by the Pakistan President, Pervez Musharraf's economic diplomacy with India's other neighbours. Unlike China, Pakistan is no trading state. Islamabad can bring little economic clout or incentives to bear on its relations with Sri Lanka, Bangladesh or Nepal.

Free trade arrangements of the kind announced during Gen. Musharraf's recent stopover in Sri Lanka are more symbolic than substantive. Meanwhile, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka already figure among India's top export destinations. And trade deficits in favour of India are surging every year

in New Delhi's favour.

India's challenge in dealing with the smaller neighbours comes less from Pakistan or even China. It comes more from the mandarins of the Commerce Ministry, whose tunnel vision and tight-fistedness make it impossible to realise the emerging opportunities for regionalism in the subcontinent.

Caught in a warped world view that emphasises reciprocity, the Commerce Ministry is the principal obstacle to India's economic diplomacy in the South Asia. Geography, if nothing else, makes India the natural trading partner of its smaller neighbours. And globalisation will ensure that the economies of the subcontinent will eventually be integrated with that of India. All that New Delhi needs to do is to facilitate the integration, through unilateral actions if necessary.

India today is in a position to end the economic partition of the subcontinent. With a bit of vision that elevates economic integration with the smaller neighbours into a strategic priority, New Delhi could transform the regional dynamic in South Asia.

* * *

Mega projects, such as pipelines and transportation corridors, could help accelerate the economic integration in the region. Colombo, which has shown a new interest in interlinking its economy with that of India, is proposing the construction of a land bridge between Dhanushkodi in Tamil Nadu and Talaimannar in Sri Lanka. If New Delhi is serious about regional cooperation, it should be pushing this project towards a quick implementation.

The one billion dollar project, tracing the mythical bridge that Lord Rama had built on his way to Lanka, will physically connect the two nations through a four-lane highway and a rail line. The linking of the transport networks in southern India with those of Sri Lanka will boost trade between the two nations as well as make it easier for ordinary people to travel across the waters.

* * *

Staying with the neighbours, India will soon have to do something about the unfortunate situation that has arisen in its mission in Kathmandu. The Indian ambassador to Nepal, I.P. Singh, is ill and unlikely to resume his duties any time soon.

India cannot afford to do without an envoy in Nepal, at a time when the Himalayan Kingdom is going through turbulent times. India should appoint a new envoy or a senior person to perform the ambassadorial functions in Kathmandu on an interim basis.

***

Maleeha Lodhi, the high-flying Pakistani journalist who recently returned from Washington as Islamabad's Ambassador to the United States, is caught up in an ugly controversy about plagiarism.

A web-based journal in the U.S., the South Asia Tribune (www.satribune.com) , alleges in its latest issue that Ms. Lodhi's Ph.D. thesis submitted to the London School of Economics in 1981 and an article she published in an American journal were plagiarised.

Ms. Lodhi had apparently lifted considerable portions without attribution from the unpublished dissertation of one Philips Edwards Jones.

Ms. Lodhi has already apologised to Dr. Jones for the transgression. But her detractors in Washington are taking up the issue with the LSE in London.

Printer friendly page  
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Opinion

News: Front Page | National | Southern States | Other States | International | Opinion | Business | Sport | Miscellaneous |
Advts: Classifieds | Employment | Obituary |

Stories in this Section

• A sensitive exercise
• Ministerial impropriety
• Winning the battle over Kashmir
• Eklavya loses thumb again
• West views on Kashmir has crystallised
• A neighbourhood strategy
• Not a good sign
• Not black or white
• Homage to martyrs
• Mute allies of NDA
• Kashmir & Gujarat
• The Kashmir imbroglio
• Engineers respected
• Avoidable accident

Copyright © 2002, The Hindu. Republication or redissemination of the contents of this screen are expressly prohibited without the written consent of The Hindu