Consult, not confront

New Delhi
November 2013

The recently concluded Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) summit in Sri Lanka was as much in the news for the renewed focus on the human rights record of the host nation as for the decision by the Prime Minister of India not to take part in it. In his stead it was left to External Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid to lead the Indian delegation to Colombo for the biennial event of the 53-nation Commonwealth. In a letter of regret that was hand-delivered to President Mahinda Rajapaksa of Sri Lanka, Mr Singh informed Mr Rajapaksa of his inability to attend personally but he did not assign any reasons for it. It was the second consecutive CHOGM summit the Indian Prime Minister has skipped but not many in his own party, the Indian National Congress, or its allies are complaining. The Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK), which was at the front and centre of a campaign in Tamil Nadu to dissuade the Prime Minister from travelling to Colombo, welcomed the move, describing it as “some consolation” to it. Some of the Prime Minister’s own colleagues in the Council of Ministers who hail from Tamil Nadu were relieved, too, after the PM acceded to the decision of the Congress core group, headed by party president Sonia Gandhi, that he must excuse himself from the summit. For its part, the Congress party was guided by the belief that while the DMK had withdrawn support to the government and pulled out from the ruling alliance in March this year, it remains a potential ally as the 2014 parliamentary elections draw near. Besides, Sri Lanka is an emotive issue that resonates with a large cross-section of the electorate in the state. As Mr Khurshid himself pointed out, the Prime Minister’s decision to skip CHOGM had been taken after factoring in a lot of issues. “The Prime Minister has taken a considerate call; he factored in a lot of issues, including the importance of his presence in the country at this time. We are after all facing five elections,” he said, before going on to concede that “there was also a very strong sentiment expressed by our colleagues in Parliament from Tamil Nadu.”

The Indian Prime Minister was not alone in giving the summit a miss. The prime ministers of Canada and Mauritius boycotted it, too. However, unlike the Canadian premier who warned of the boycott at the last CHOGM summit held in Australia in 2011, India cannot claim to adhere to a consistent policy towards Sri Lanka. First it nurtured the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and burnt its fingers in the process. Then it extended a tacit support to Colombo – before, during and after the end of the Sri Lankan civil war in May 2009 – only to later, in its wisdom, support a 2011 United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) resolution piloted by the United States and vote, in turn, against Sri Lanka. It voted against Sri Lanka a second time in the UNHRC in March this year. There can be compelling arguments for and against whether India should have supported such a resolution but it cannot be denied that those acts exposed the limits of India’s influence among its neighbours. Suffice it to say that a careful reading of the history of India-Sri Lanka relations would make it evident to just about anyone that India’s policy towards this island-nation in the Indian Ocean can be described as consistently inconsistent, characterised by myopia and self-inflicted crises.

In a federal structure such as India’s, foreign policy cannot be practised in a vacuum or in isolation or without consultations with all stakeholders concerned, including, but not limited to, the states, particularly those that share contiguous borders with neighbouring countries and/or share ethnic, linguistic, cultural or geographical affinities with them. A foreign policy drawn up in the corridors of the South Block in New Delhi may have served India well in all these decades but contemporary realities dictate that in a federal set-up and in an era of coalition governments the views of the states are factored in at the time of formulation of a foreign policy. Having said that, an impression seems to be gaining ground, erroneously at that, that foreign policy is the worst sufferer of this nouveau phenomenon of the states having their say in matters pertaining to foreign policy. A cursory look at recent years would show that the states have consistently been vocal on a host of other issues, too. The recent examples of certain states or regional parties opposing the policy of raising the cap on FDI (foreign direct investment) in single-brand retail to 100 per cent is a case in point. As is the opposition to the Centre’s proposal for setting up a National Counter Terrorism Centre (NCTC) or the protests against building nuclear power plants at Jaitapur in Maharashtra and Kudankulam in Tamil Nadu. In some of these cases New Delhi chose to yield, albeit temporarily, but in some others it had its way. Therefore, it would not be accurate to suggest that regional influences are wielding a veto over New Delhi. Also, it would not be fair to either paint the states as villains of the piece or to apportion all the blame for the Centre’s foreign policy woes to regional parties that are or could be aligned against it in the political arena. For instance, the Centre accuses the West Bengal government headed by the All India Trinamool Congress party of scuttling a river waters sharing agreement with Bangladesh. However, the Congress, which heads the ruling coalition at the Centre and also in Kerala, is guilty of playing to narrow political sentiments, too, as was evidenced by the state government’s and the party’s stand on the two Italian marines who are facing murder charges for the deaths of two Indian fishermen off the Kerala coast. That the ensuing protests and the government’s response to them were provoked in part by the fact that a crucial by-election was to take place in the state, was not lost on anyone.

What cannot be overstated is that devolution of foreign policy to more stakeholders than what is currently assumed should not be entirely unwelcome. I would go as far as to say that the democratisation of foreign policy and the salience of the states in shaping it cannot be continued to be treated as an exception; and the sooner New Delhi gets used to executing its foreign and domestic policies in a coalition with sometimes competing political interests, the better it will be for all the stakeholders concerned. The irony is unmistakable: If Colombo reasons that Sri Lanka is too small a geographical entity to be governed from the provinces or for more powers to be delegated to them, New Delhi is increasingly finding that administering foreign policy in the extant federal polity which it so recommends for Sri Lanka, coupled with the influence wielded by regional political parties or groups in a country of India’s size and history, is not easy. As recent developments indicate, policy-making cannot remain the exclusive preserve of New Delhi and it behoves of the Centre to encourage various stakeholders to air their views and to enable them to give expression to their concerns. Also, it is time for reshaping India’s neighbourhood policy in a manner that it reflects the broadest possible national consensus.