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India an opportunity, not a threat, to neighbours: Saran

Special Correspondent

`We have to give them a stake in our own economic dynamism'

New Delhi: Describing the country's borders as "arteries of commerce, exchange and movement of people," Foreign Secretary Shyam Saran on Saturday said the message India wanted to send to its neighbours was that it represented an economic opportunity for them and not a threat.

In a major address to the Indian Council of World Affairs on India's regional policy here, Mr. Saran said the treatment of the country's periphery as somehow less important than its heartland was a "relic of the past." Borders, he said, were connectors and that was why the government in recent years had made a conscious attempt to treat the country's border regions as integral to its foreign policy.

Though this is not the first time the Foreign Secretary has enunciated such a view — he first dwelt on this theme at the IDSA in February 2005 — his latest formulation betrayed no sense of impatience with what he had then described as the display by some neighbours of a "narrow nationalism based on hostility towards India."

What Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said at the last SAARC summit in Dhaka on making borders irrelevant applied not just to India's frontiers with Pakistan but to the entire South Asian region, Mr Saran said. But in order to effectualise that, infrastrucure which could serve as "transmission belts" of connectivity was needed. "The sobering reality is that despite the initiatives of the past few years with Pakistan, Bangladesh, China, Myanmar and others, we have not even been able to get back to the connectivity which existed in South Asia before 1947," he noted. That is why the "first order of business" is to resume the traditional linkages and even upgrade them.

Cultural centres

The second aspect of India's new regional policy was the recognition of cultural and people-to-people contacts as a tool for furthering regional integration. Apart from a more liberal visa policy, especially for Pakistani nationals, the government planned to set up cultural centres in all the neighbouring countries, he said.

Mr. Saran said India had also been able to get away from the "mechanical reciprocity" which governed bilateral, cultural and consular relations. The government, for example, was more than willing to encourage cultural exchanges without insisting that others fund Indian visits.

Politically, India had realised that what would help secure the country was the number of linkages it could build with its neighbours, especially centred on economic interdependence. "We have to give our neighbours a stake in our own economic dynamism." He also stressed the importance of local-level initiatives at the borders. "If we focus only on the shadow play taking place in the capitals, we will miss out on a lot of opportunities."

India was also aware that there would always be elements of change in neighbouring countries which it could not control but to which it would have to adjust. Pointing to the recent upheaval in Nepal, the proposed constitutional changes in Bhutan, as well as the situation in Pakistan, Mr. Saran said, "In many of these cases, we have to get used to dealing with a more diffused political leadership." India had to deal with General Musharraf because he was Pakistan's leader. "But we have to be capable of reaching out to others," he said.

Pointing to the fact that more than 200,000 visitors had crossed the India-Pakistan border last year, Mr. Saran said people-to-people contact was an important key. "We should be prepared to go as far as the comfort level of our neighbours allows."

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