Sri Lanka election is the latest sign India is losing its neighbourhood | India News

Similar political transitions have transformed South Asia. Just last month, Bangladesh’s long-serving prime minister, Sheikh Hasina, was overthrown and fled to India for refuge. Earlier in the summer, K.P. Sharma Oli, who has always been close to Beijing, returned as Nepal’s prime minister.

New Delhi began the year secure in its relationships with Kathmandu, Dhaka, and Colombo; the only neighbor it can now mostly count on is the tiny monarchy of Bhutan — a decades-old treaty ally that manages its security and foreign policy in close cooperation with India.

While internal developments obviously drove most of these political transitions, Indian policy has done the country no favors. While Indians like to remind people that theirs is the world’s largest democracy, their neighbors complain that New Delhi doesn’t always promote and support democratic values in the region.

Indeed, pro-government commentators openly boast that India’s foreign policy has succeeded by “shaping democratic verdicts” in its neighborhood and “turning a blind eye to democratic deficits.”

Sometimes, though, realpolitik is just short-sightedness. Hasina’s exit in Bangladesh followed elections a few months earlier that most — including the US — did not view as free and fair. India overlooked that and appeared taken by surprise when she turned out to be massively unpopular after all.

Similarly, New Delhi’s courting of the military junta in Myanmar — which memorably led then-US President Barack Obama to upbraid India’s parliament in 2010 for “shying away” from the defense of democracy — might soon turn sour. Indian officials were incensed at the time, insisting that the strong hand of the Burmese military was needed to manage the volatile border. Now anti-government rebels control large parts of that same frontier, making ties to the junta more of a liability than an asset.

It didn’t have to be this way. When Prime Minister Narendra Modi was first elected in 2014, he invited leaders of neighboring nations to his swearing-in. He had an opportunity to reset relations with all of them and to create new partnerships based on economic integration and mutual respect for democracy.

In the years since, diplomats ceded control of relations with those countries — and with China, with whom India shares the longest of its borders — to the security establishment. That has turned out to be a crucial mistake. If you see your neighbors primarily through a security lens, you risk picking allies and condoning behavior that together alienate large swathes of the electorate. When political winds shift, such bets can turn rapidly.

You might think that India’s extraordinary soft power would make up for some of these missteps. But the influence of its movies and media, which are followed closely across South Asia, can be unhelpful. After the Maldives election, popular Bollywood stars declared they would stop vacationing there. And the hyper-nationalist news media focuses relentlessly on stories that citizens of these smaller neighbors feel portray their countries unfairly.

India would be wise to study China’s relations with its neighbors. That would give policymakers some idea of what not to do, as well as what might work. Economic integration is essential: As the region’s biggest market, India needs to be a source of prosperity for its denizens.

First Published: Sep 26 2024 | 7:51 AM IST