There is a difference between ‘neighbourhood policy’ and India’s ‘Neighbourhood First’ policy. The former pertains to strategy and the latter is a tactic, rather a tool in the successful implementation of the former. As a follow-up of the recently-concluded presidential poll in the Maldives, there is a need for New Delhi to re-visit the former so as to sharpen the latter, to ensure the longevity, positivity and productivity of both and together.

It is not only about bilateral relations with its Indian Ocean neighbour Maldives. Using it as an occasion, India needs to standardise its foreign policy, with particular reference to the immediate South Asian neighbourhood, even more in the context of the immediate IOR as different from the larger Indian Ocean Region. How New Delhi proceeds from here will strengthen or weaken bilateral and multilateral neighbourhood relations, of course leaving aside both Afghanistan and Pakistan for reasons that are very well known.

Because most Indians confuse neighbourhood policy and Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ‘Neighbourhood First’ policy, they tend to conclude that all the aid and assistance that India has been extending during calamities like Covid across the region, or the monetary crisis in Sri Lanka, for instance, is tantamount to the nation’s neighbourhood policy. Hence they tend to assume and expect reciprocation of a kind that substitutes physical and economic assistance with political understanding of a kind that underscores New Delhi’s strategic concerns.

Strong anti-incumbency factor

The recent Maldivian presidential polls have to be viewed from this perspective. The two-phase election saw the opposition PPM-PNC combine’s candidate and Male City Mayor, Dr Mohamed Muizzu, replacing incumbent MDP President, Ibrahim Mohamed ‘Ibu’ Solih by a comfortable margin, in what originally was a multi-cornered context. Under the law, the first two alone got to enter the second run-off round, as the victor had to obtain 50-per cent plus one vote. Muizzu scored a 46-39 lead in the first round over the incumbent to conclude his victory trail with a convincing 54-46 per cent score.

The fact that Muizzu could catch up with Solih’s five-year-long presence with just four weeks of campaigning for the first round should not be missed. It indicated the presence of a strong anti-incumbency factor. It was so despite the Solih government’s good work during the Covid lockdown and in unprecedented infrastructure development across the country of islands and atolls. Nor should the solid support base of the opposition combine’s jailed leader and former President Abdulla Yameen be forgotten, as most analysts and observers seem to have done.

Yet, India was not an election issue as was sought to be made out by a section of the social media, more so in the second round. However, between now and the parliament elections in April next year, a Muizzu government cannot erase the India factor in the country's politics and development overnight. This is because most Maldivians, including those in the Yameen-Muizzu camp and the ‘independent’ social media activists, readily acknowledge the northern neighbour as the "existential ally" in their everyday lives, which include essential food and medicine supplies for the common man when in need. 

If GMR had to go a decade back, it owed to the Indian infra major’s poor perception management that refused to acknowledge the linkages between their Male international airport expansion project and Maldivian independence in living memory. Yameen, who was the author of the nation’s ‘India First’ policy, especially after the ‘GMR fall-out’ in the early weeks and months of his presidency (2013-18) became the wrong man at the right place at the wrong time. Both nations, especially India, would have to re-visit the Yameen years especially to understand what really went wrong, and to apply correctives together.

Distributing dependencies

Then there is the ‘China factor’, when it comes to India’s neighbourhood relations, especially involving such nations as Maldives and common Ocean neighbour Sri Lanka. The Indian street perception is that benefiting from the nation’s ‘Neighbourhood First policy, neighbouring nations should reciprocate in ways New Delhi expects in terms of Chinese presence in these countries.

Being democracies all, elected governments in each of these nations will have to hear out their own domestic constituencies, even more, particularly when it comes to their external dependence for economic survival (as in Sri Lanka’s case last year). As a geo-economic strategy, these States as independent and sovereign entities have always distributed their dependencies to minimise over-dependence on any one source. Thus even when they had gone to the IMF and World Bank for assistance, most nations, and not just in South Asia, have sourced funding from other sources, like friendly nations in the neighbourhood and afar. In the case of South Asia, India and China fit into this slot – the former more than the latter. In the case of China, the neighbourhood’s problems are more in relation to the US, given Beijing’s super-power ambitions and reach.

On development funding and allied affairs, India has long since acquiesced to extra-regional powers participating in the neighbourhood. The reasons are altruistic as New Delhi has not reached a stage in the nation’s economic prosperity to be able to divert more funding than already to support every one of neighbouring nations in their developmental aspirations.  The China-funded ‘white elephant’ expressways in Sri Lanka are a case in point. So are the multiple housing and development projects in the Maldives.

The India issue

Throughout its five-year term that would end on 10 November, the Solih administration in Maldives has not stalled any of the China-funded development projects initiated by the predecessor Yameen government.  The China-funded Sinamale Bridge connecting the capital Male and the airport island Hulhule is a boon to the Maldivian people, who readily relate to the project, and hence to China as a development partner. But China is seen only as a developmental supplementary to long-term friendly neighbour India and not as an alternate in any way.

The same applies even more to their nation not choosing distant China as a strategic partner, especially because it pits their peaceful nation as a suspect if not adversary of the larger Indian neighbour. At a time when the nation has strong relations with India on the security front, no Maldivian in his senses – that begins with the ruling class, whichever party or ideology he represents – would want to provoke the ever-benevolent India, eternally.

It is in this context that the Yameen leadership’s ‘India Out’ campaign while in the opposition recently and the ‘India military out’ call in the closing months of the Yameen presidency should be viewed. Though neither was a serious issue in the first-round poll, social media especially made it an issue, causing Muizzu to reiterate time and again that if elected, he would protect the nation’s independence and also remove all foreign military personnel. Incumbent Solih’s unconvincing reiterations to the contrary have not helped.

In his post-poll ‘acceptance rally’, Muizzu said he would begin to remove foreign soldiers from day one of his presidency. The reference of course is to the Indian military pilots and technical personnel servicing the three helicopters and a lone fixed-wing aircraft that India had gifted Maldives for mid-sea reconnaissance and humanitarian operations in times of rain and cyclones. There is also a hidden reference to the India-funded UTF island harbour project for the Maldivian Coast Guard, where President Solih in his last leg of the campaign promised a civilian housing scheme, thus removing all secretiveness attaching to the harbour, as alleged by the Yameen camp.

New Delhi should have no 'favourites'

In different ways, the Indian approach to individual nations in the neighbourhood has to move away from set agendas and perceptions, giving an impression of New Delhi’s 'favourites’ in the local context. Such a construct has proved to be detrimental to India’s long-term interests as New Delhi’s policies in the last several decades have mostly been reactive, not proactive. It remains so even under the Modi government. Going beyond Maldives and Sri Lanka, there is Nepal and more so, Bangladesh, where Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina is seen as the (only) ‘favourite' of India, thus alienating every other political party and leader in that country. Such a construct does not provide for an alternative anchor if the evolving situation so demands.

All of it implies that India too needs to look beyond the immediate to the long term, where relationships with nations, not individual leaders, matter. It could mean that New Delhi has to be seen as moving to the middle path in domestic political affairs of countries, thus showing that national and collective interests and concerns matter more than personalities and policies. 

(The writer is a Chennai-based policy analyst and political commentator. Views are personal)