ANALYSING INDIA’S NEIGHBOURHOOD

India’s ‘Neighbourhood First’ policy has renewed impetus on strengthening relations with its immediate neighbours. The policy aims to ensure peace, prosperity and tranquillity in the sub-region.

India struggles to forge sustained relations with neighbours despite numerous advantages of geo-proximity and historical cultural and religious bondages. India is yet to shape the enduring, long-term strategic convergence on mutually benefiting relationships. However, recent initiatives towards strengthening bilateral ties are steps in the right direction in the era of interdependence.

How India Is Perceived

India’s neighbours view India as a strong regional power enjoying a geopolitical sweet spot, a peer competitor to China in the Indo-Pacific region, and successfully nurturing close relations with both the USA and Russia while retaining strategic autonomy. India is seen as a stable political entity with strong democratic institutions and an aspiring tech-savvy youth dividend. India’s sustained economic growth with rapid capability building towards becoming a self-reliant nation is also a source of admiration (and envy).

There are also some misgivings; fear of Indian dominance and subsuming economic and cultural activities.

There are certain irritants in the bilateral relationship of India with her neighbours. The foremost is the regional security framework. The region is seen as the least integrated, having complex security challenges. The regional geopolitical situation is uncertain owing to external players such as China, USA, Turkey and Saudi Arabia.

This is essentially fuelled by the huge differential between the Indian economy, military and technical domains and that of its neighbours. When India raises bilateral issues, this is more often seen as a ‘big brotherly’ attitude or even plain meddling in their internal affairs. Another nagging issue is accusations that while the Indian government makes big promises in bilateral and multilateral intercourses, the delivery remains suspect.

Challenges To Cooperation

There are certain irritants in the bilateral relationship of India with her neighbours. The foremost is the regional security framework. The region is seen as the least integrated, having complex security challenges. The regional geopolitical situation is uncertain owing to external players such as China, USA, Turkey and Saudi Arabia. India’s historical rivals, China and Pakistan, also lose no opportunity to fuel anti -India sentiments amidst India’s neighbours. The traditional security issues have broadened to non-military issues of human security concerns, including water, food, energy and refugees. South Asia is potentially one of the worst impacted by the climate crisis, and there is little being done jointly by the countries to stem the tide. Smaller nations expect India to take the lead, but India, too, is hamstrung by resource limitations.

Growing Chinese influence in the region, including a Blitzkrieg infrastructure development in the Indian neighbourhood through CPEC / BRI with large-scale construction of roads, railway lines, habitation camps, energy pipelines etc., worries India. This invariably brings a large presence of Chinese engineers and workers and increasingly Chinese private security contractors closer to the border region, presenting fresh challenges of hegemonism and power politics. The curse of political instability resulting from convoluted political perspectives has plagued the region for last so many decades. This has led to frequent regime changes, many through violent means. India suspects the Chinese hand in the festering internal politics of many of its neighbours that tend to assume a distinct anti-India flavour.

It is clear that the South Asian region is important for Beijing, both militarily and economically, and the latter has been steadily expanding its influence to encourage pro-China leanings amidst India’s neighbours. With Pakistan, its ‘Iron Brother with a friendship higher than the Himalayas, deeper than the ocean, sweeter than honey, and stronger than steel,’ China has succeeded in boxing India from both its flanks. If other neighbours, especially Sri Lanka and Nepal, also toe the Chinese line, then India would be truly encircled. Therefore, India is justifiably suspicious of Chinese attempts to woo these countries.

The region is susceptible to economic turbulence and faces numerous hurdles in economic integration owing to a lack of free trade and transit agreements, levying of import taxes, persistent trade imbalance and non-tariff barriers. Huge Chinese loans for BRI projects are turning into debt traps, a situation that economically stressed countries like Pakistan and Sri Lanka refuse to acknowledge to their people.

Radicalisation and Social Dissonance are yet another fault line inflicting almost all South Asian countries. Be it religious and ethnic/ social fissures or an externally supported terror campaign, or social upheavals due to a failing economy and social and financial equalities in a collapsing social structure, all of India’s neighbours barring none suffer from few or all of these malaises, including India. Consequently, governments lay the blame on their neighbour(s) for these real or perceived interferences, adding fuel to the existing disharmony between countries within South Asia.

Common sense dictates that a region that was once a single entity under the British Raj should have inherited the advantage of common road, rail, inland water and air connectivity, like modern Europe. However, except for a few strictly regulated border crossings, connectivity within the South Asian region remains pathetic and even worse than during British rule. Mutual suspicions and narrow political compulsions have ensured access denial and refusal of transit rights, keeping the entire region locked into individual silos with little commercial flow of goods and services between them. As a result of this access denial to India (and by India), the enormous potential for regional trade is sub-optimally utilised.