Colombo chutney?

27 February 2021

From where India looks, she has lost her Tamil lever with Lankans long ago, when the IPKF became a souring point, and when late Rajiv Gandhi was killed along with score others in Sriperumbudur in 1991. It is actually a sign of immature leadership of our country that we allowed ourselves to be edged out from what Arthashastra clearly demarcates as our chakravartikshetram -sphere of influence of our near abroad. There remain too many complexities, bruised egos, battered ties and blatant mistrust as Tamil people in Sri Lanka were left to their fate largely at the hands of Colombo.

In what can be termed as the Putin model, the Rajapaksa brothers in Lanka have managed to upend the hurdles of constitutional democracy to retain their grip on power, a period when Sri Lanka finally managed to see off the Tamil militancy of LTTE. In signal ways, the Tamil struggle for Eelam was a outer desire for statehood and an baseline desire of autonomy, a people who were equal colonisers of this island from ancient times, whose histories were too intertwined and messy to not be un-entangled unless by mature democratic process. After all this was the basic desire and stratagem of the SLPA signed by Rajiv Gandhi and J Jayawardene as heads of Indian and Lankan governments! Only autonomy and democracy could have integrated Sri Lanka as a multiethnic country with democratic representation.

As Sri Lanka realised from time to time, be it 2004 Tsunami or post war restructuring, the only major player with ability by way of desire and geography is India, to come to the aid of Sri Lanka. Yet, it has not stopped the Sinhala majority from playing the card of canards with India, through Chinese investment in Hambantota, from seeking bilateral ties with Pakistan, seeking armaments from Pakistan, China, Israel, and trying to hedge against India. Unlike Maldives, where there is clearly a India lobby and a China lobby, amongst Sinhala voters and parties across the spectrum of Sri Lanka, from Ranil Wickramasinghe to Gotabaya Rajapakse, there is near unanimity in Sri Lankan polity about how to handle India.

So India tried a new tact, both as a lesson from its dealings with Maldives which involved roping in Americans, to hedging its own commitment to Sri Lanka, by bringing in a neutral third investor whose strategic alignment is solidly with India- Japan.  

The problem with india is also different- India reviewed her approach to bilateral treaty obligations as she suffered reverses in ISDS- Investor State Dispute Settlement. If you scour the UNCTAD site, https://investmentpolicy.unctad.org/investment-dispute-settlement/country/96/india/investor you will find indian investors routinely have benefited by suing governments as disparate as UK and Macedonia, over disputes arising from investments by them in those countries. Likewise, foreign companies like Cairns & Vodafone have disputes in which they have won arbitration against the Indian government https://www.gatewayhouse.in/tpp-isds-new-tests-for-india/#_edn2.

India has been a ‘model’ state, as an international rules based player so far, so much that her armed interventions in Maldives, Sri Lanka, her conduct in wars with neighbours, never once she ran foul of them. However it appears that now, India is seeking a new play field, with exceptionalism and she withdrew from mutual bilateral treaty obligations for such settlements as ISDS mechanism in 2017 https://thedailyguardian.com/bit-by-bit-to-a-big-leap-india-and-the-isds-reforms/. It is not that India is unique, nearly every major player has an issue with this Bilateral Investment Treaty mechanism where Investment Treaty Arbitrations are through Investor State Dispute Settlement. India did it unilaterally across 57 countries including Sri Lanka. In Sri Lanka, under Modi Government, there was a shift from near animosity with Rajapaksa regime to friendliness, which was also aided by the loss of complete power of the brothers when President Maitripala Sirisena and PM Ranil Wickramasinghe assumed office. Then Indian strategic interest in China Bay tank farm in Trincomalee to develop it as a regional hub for ASEAN and South Asia to supply the area between the Straits of Hormuz and Malacca, could get a leg up. What was missed in 2017was how Sri Lanka was meant to be an exceptional neighbour, much like Nepal, which was very much written into the 1987 Indo Sri Lanka Accord, which bound Sri Lanka to not allow military use of any port of Sri Lanka for any country that was prejudicial to Indian interests, which specifically inserted that Trincomalee would be developed as such an oil farm jointly by India and Sri Lanka. India subsequently formed a local subsidiary of IOC the LIOC and invested in the oil farms. However the JVP led an agitation against the operationalisation of this farm, with their campaign that sought to usurp this facility for the local CPC to supply Anuradhapura, Jaffna, Batticaloa and Vavuniya rather than continue to do so from Kolannawa and Muthurajawela in northwest Sri Lanka. This agitation coincided https://www.icwa.in/show_content.php?lang=1&level=3&ls_id=572&lid=514 with India’s withdrawals which many believe was well thought through, but I believe was short sighted in including SAARC countries, where such Bilateral Investment Treaties favoured only India. So JVP was able to further galvanise the unions in cementing their suspicions that Indian investments were not any special and they were equally disadvantageous for the Lankan locals led by the Pavithuru Hela Urumaya(PHU).

So was it surprising when the same bogey was to raise its head with the Eastern Container Terminal at Colombo https ://thediplomat.com/2021/02/sri-lanka-cancels-port-deal-with-india-amid-creeping-signs-of-deterioration-in-relations/? That including Japan as a participant to infuse confidence into Lankan polity has not worked should not surprise Lankan watchers. After all, Sri Lanka looks at India as the country that gave it a national soul and purpose in the form of Theravada Buddhism, a more cosmopolitan Lankan would even accept the Tamil heritage of his country which he views as Sinhala and which Sri Lankan Tamils view as equally theirs. Indian mandarins appear to handle Sri Lanka with none of the sensitivity with which they handle Nepal when Lanka is equally strategic and economically far more critical as a partner. If instead of the Setu Samudram Project India were to use Trincomalee Colombo as land bridge to turn over from its Eastern Coast to Western Coast, transport of goods across India itself would be that much logistically cheaper and efficient, reducing trucking and decongest ing our highways. After all, the Setu Samudram was conceived after feasibility and need for such a sea based transfer from coast to coast, only its ecological impact and viability due to important fisheries and need for continuous dredging has placed it in cold storage. However operationalising this Coast to Coast Transfer through Sri Lanka would be a win win for both India and Sri Lanka. It would also keep Trincomalee at the heart of India’s strategic and commercial calculus, and not surface only when Chinese interests in Hambantota or Galle or Trincomalee itself places it on cross hairs!

India has to acquire the goodwill of its neighbourhood as all weather present, not as ‘big brother who seeks his consent before they act’. A little more spade work with Sri Lanka and the use of an Indian PSU and not the relatively inexperienced Adani Ports to handle this ECT facility on behalf of IndoJapanese JV such as the JNPT would have also reassured the Colombo Port Trust and labour unions. Neighbours are like family, countries cannot chose them, just as we cannot chose our siblings. Worse, unlike family where we can grow apart, become distant and prosper, this luxury of segregation is not available to neighbourhoods. What ASEAN and EU have shown is the potential of being force multiplier when entire neighbourhoods grow, which helps them blow over individual crises. India with its dangerous neighbourhood calculus unlike ASEAN  or EU, needs to deal with her neighbourhoods with much more perspective as this current imbroglio with Sri Lanka shows. Our Colombo Chutney souring so often is because India places less impetus and more impediments!