Editorial

In July last year, a joint statement issued by President Ranil Wickremesinghe and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi laid heavy emphasis on “connectivity” as the vision and hallmark of future bilateral relations.

The document categorised the areas in which such connectivity would be forged: maritime, air, power and energy, trade, economic and financial, and people-to-people. Among other things, the two governments signed a memorandum of understanding for cooperation in renewable energy (RE). That ball is now rolling fast.

This week, the first meeting in Colombo of the India-Sri Lanka Joint Working Group on Renewable Energy was attended by the Secretary to India’s New and Renewable Energy Ministry alongside 17 members from the Confederation of Indian Industries representing major RE companies.

Earlier, India’s Deputy National Security Adviser was in Colombo, and last month, Power and Energy Minister Kanchana Wijesekera was in India. And apart from other visits to Colombo by relevant Indian officials, a Sri Lankan team led by President Wickremesinghe’s Chief-of-Staff and National Security Adviser is expected in New Delhi soon.

Plans for bilateral power and energy cooperation aren’t new. Discussions for an Indian-built coal power plant started in the mid-2000s. Other ideas, including oil and gas projects, have been bandied about, and now RE projects, but none has reached fruition. India is getting irritated by the delays. And it is not all to do with energy cooperation; it’s geopolitics too.

Given the proximity of India and Sri Lanka, it makes sense, energy-wise, for there to be connectivity in this sector. The Asian Development Bank in the 1990s even proposed for South Asia a system akin to the European super grid—a series of interconnected localised grids that would allow energy to be traded across borders. Today, Nepal, Bhutan and Bangladesh have connectivity with India, but not Sri Lanka.

India has repeatedly pointed out how it rushed to Sri Lanka’s rescue when the economy crashed in 2022 and nobody else came forward. This reminder makes its way into joint statements, forums, speeches, conversations and basic geopolitical PR spin-doctoring. Colombo has consistently expressed gratitude.

With a vastly under-exploited RE sector in Sri Lanka and an eye on the geography, India has identified Mannar for onshore and offshore wind projects. How will these be packaged? While the Mannar wind power project is window-dressed as a government-to-government initiative, it is very much the typical Chinese model—a government-sponsored private-sector project with heavy geopolitical undertones.

The process is important. And so is pricing. The Indian-Adani project is expected to sell electricity to Sri Lanka at a relatively high rate after accounting for new infrastructure such as transmission lines and country risk, which entails a high premium.

A problem Sri Lanka has consistently had while negotiating foreign agreements is that talks are not based on any national strategy or plan. In the case of Adani, there was no mechanism to figure out the reasonable cost for the project. While donor assistance had been available for a foreign consultant (an expert was even identified) who would make that assessment, Sri Lanka chose not to use it. There was no “price discovery”—nobody to calculate the plant factor, capital cost, interest rate, risk premiums, etc.

Discussions on energy exports are centred on Indian entities using Sri Lanka’s RE resources to produce power. And yet, this country also needs to consider its own energy deficit. As the economy recovers—and the Port City, vehicle and railway electrification, to name a few, take off—demand will grow.

The question then will be whether Sri Lanka will only have low-yield RE resources to bank on. Secondly, how much will these investors pay Sri Lanka? Again, strong, informed, and educated negotiations are crucial. Investors make money. India is looking for a geopolitical foothold. And if those who represent Sri Lanka’s interests are not skilful and savvy enough, at least as much as the Indian side seems to be in getting the best deal, connectivity will only be a one-way street.

Is this, therefore, an equal partnership? When there is the ongoing example of how Sri Lanka is given the run-around—and the cold shoulder—over the fishing issue between both countries and Sri Lanka’s pleas to stop the poaching by Indian fishermen fall on deaf ears in New Delhi, there is every reason to worry.

Ramadan amid a trying time

Followers of the Islamic faith around the world began their annual fast, the Ramadan period, in the backdrop of one of the worst, if not the worst, humanitarian crises of recent times unfolding in the Occupied Territories of Palestine. The United Nations said this week that more Palestinian children—over 12,300—have been killed by the Israeli military than the documented deaths of children killed in all the armed conflicts around the world in the past four years (2019–2022) put together.

The UN agency for Palestinian refugees has called it a ‘war on children’. Yet Washington is expected not to resume funding the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) on the pretext that 12 of its 13,000 employees in Gaza were involved in the Hamas raid into Israel on October 7 last year that triggered the Israeli military reaction. The British Save the Children Fund said on Tuesday that 20 children have already died of starvation in Palestine during this holy month of Ramadan.

Elsewhere, too, the followers of the Islamic faith are facing issues. Islamophobia is sweeping across Europe as the influx of refugees from war-torn states, especially in Africa and West Asia, and up to Afghanistan in South Asia, rises and raises the ire of the locals.

In the UK, the government introduced measures on Thursday to prevent official support from being given to organisations, mainly Muslim entities, that fall within a new interpretation of ‘non-violent extremism’ that leads to hatred and the undermining of democracy. Closer home, the Indian government this week enacted laws amending its Citizenship Act, selectively targeting Muslims from neighbouring countries and excluding them from gaining citizenship.

It is in such a world that the Ramadan fast has begun. While it is a time for prayer for the faithful, it should also be a time to reflect on what is happening to their brethren abroad and why. Meanwhile, all humanity must spare a thought, as nothing else seems possible, to stop the genocide towards those who have so far survived the slaughter in Palestine as they pray in the rubble of Gaza and the West Bank.