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India sees in Ranil a partner with whom it can do business
“The smiles were wide, the body language was great, everyone was happy.” So said an Indian official of Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe’s visit to New Delhi. “It couldn’t have been better”. The absence of a joint statement, raising eyebrows in Sri Lanka, was barely commented upon in India.
Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe shakes hands with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi at a joint media conference following their meeting in New Delhi on Tuesday. AFP
Wickremesinghe is what the former US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld would have described as a “known known” in New Delhi. Much was made in the Indian press about how India was his first port of call after assuming office in January 2015 — it’s easy to flatter Indians. But then, this is what all Sri Lankan leaders do — even Mahinda Rajapaksa, before he became the bad boy of the Indian Ocean, visited Delhi upon his election in 2005, and although he did not rush there after his re-election in 2010, he was quite a regular.
Ranil has been a regular visitor to the big neighbour through his years in the political wilderness and has many friends and well-wishers there. Given the recent bitterness between the two sides, the welcome was bound to be warm, as it was for President Sirisena as well when he flew in fresh from his election victory.
But more than perhaps Sirisena, in Ranil, New Delhi has a friendly South Asian leader who shares its strategic vision for the Indian Ocean and Sri Lanka’s place and role in it, and its economic vision for a connected region.
India sees a Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement with Sri Lanka as the way forward in this vision. Wickremesinghe needs no conversion to the concept. He has been promoting it even before becoming Prime Minister. As an economic liberal (what is now known as neo-liberal), Wickremesinghe clearly does not suffer from the nationalistic panic of the Sinhala-Buddhist hardliners who were accusing him of having finalised to sign the CEPA even before he left Sri Lanka.
Still, New Delhi understands that with the Wimal Weerawansas of Sri Lanka kicking up heat and dust on the issue, Wickremesinghe will need time and space to work on it, perhaps even a change of terminology.
It’s what a wag described as Sri Lanka’s Pakistan moment – when the Pakistan government decided at long last to grant Most Favoured Nation status to India (and this is not even a favour, it’s required under WTO rules), the infamous Hafiz Saeed used the Urdu translation “sabsey pasandeeda mulk” (most loved/liked nation) to rally public opinion against it. It reached a point where the Pakistanis were telling the Indians, let’s just call it something else.
So, without explicitly mentioning CEPA, the two sides had wide discussions on trade, investment and infrastructure development. Wickremesinghe met Shipping, Roads and Highways Minister Nitin Gadkari, Energy Minister Piyush Goyal, Railways Minister Suresh Prabhu and Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, apart from Prime Minister Modi and External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj. The thinking in India is that even the Free Trade Agreement had its opponents in Sri Lanka, but even the Sri Lankan side now concedes that it played an important role in increasing trade between the two countries.
On Sri Lankan concerns about being overrun by “indian barbers”, Indian officials say that with the hindsight of the FTA, both sides would be better placed to negotiate a text that would address the concerns of both sides. To take a hypothetical example, the agreement could bar all but high-end Indian professionals to take up jobs, and in a few earmarked sectors only.
There were reports that could not be confirmed by the writer that with Gadkari, Ranil discussed the possibility of constructing a land bridge that he floated back in 2002 in a previous term as Prime Minister. India is also gung-ho about the bridge, and Indian strategic experts have begun talking up its advantages for Sri Lanka. Apart from cheaper parippu and other commodity imports from India, a causeway from Rameswaram to Thalaimannar has endless possibilities for Sri Lanka — India does not have a land route through Pakistan of course, so a connection to Central Asia via Afghanistan is still a road too far, but it could connect Sri Lanka to Nepal, Myanmar, Thailand — all Buddhist countries, and Bangladesh.
India is also interested in the planned development of the Western Province. According to The Indian Express, which ran a report called “Why India is Excited about Sri Lanka’s new Ministry of Megapolis”, India sees in it both an opportunity for economic partnerships in infrastructure, transport, Information technology, energy and real estate development, and an opportunity to address a prime strategic concern — the Chinese-funded Port City Project, work on which has been suspended since March (see box). From the Indian point of view, the Chinese project is unacceptable unless the freehold clause is removed. Meanwhile, the megapolis project, with its ambitious scale and goal of transforming an entire province through planned urbanisation, and through that the entire country, could effectively take the glamour out of the Port City Project and make it look like a pale shadow of itself, that too with no Chinese ownership of land in the project. The two sides discussed defence ties, and also the situation in the Maldives.
First though, the Indian side would like Sri Lanka to hurry up on a resolution of the Tamil issue. The Tamil Nadu Assembly elections are next year. The Tamil National Alliance is of the view that progressive decisions on devolution by the Sri Lankan parliament could take the sting out of any politicking by Tamil Nadu parties on this issue. This is what they have conveyed to New Delhi as well. What steps Sri Lanka takes with regard to the recommendations of the OISL will also be crucial. For New Delhi, the bottom line is this: A peaceful Sri Lanka where the Tamil minority lives in equality will keep Tamil Nadu from making ambitious proposals to scale up ties a hostage to the Tamil question; and Sri Lanka can partner India in its strategic outreach in the Indian Ocean.