The article analyses the inherent challenges India faces in managing good relations with its neighbours.

Duality challenge

• Even for the Britishers, it was an unceasing struggle to sustain its primacy in the region.
• The notion of regional primacy certainly persisted in the Nehru era.
• Primacy was hard to sustain after Independence even within the immediate neighbourhood.

Five reasons stand out

1) Partition of the subcontinent

• The problems generated by the great division of the Subcontinent on religious lines continue to animate the region.
• Partition created the challenges of settling boundaries, sharing river-waters, protecting the rights of minorities, and easing the flow of goods and people.
• The burden of the Subcontinent’s history is not easily discarded.

2) Unification of China

• The unification of China amidst the Partition of India had profoundly transformed the geopolitical condition of India.
• Beyond the bilateral territorial dispute in the Himalayas, the emergence of a large and purposeful state on India’s frontiers was going to be a problem given the ease with which it could constrain Delhi within the Subcontinent.

3) India’s choice in favour of de-globalisation

• Independent India’s conscious choice in favour of de-globalisation led to a steady dissipation of commercial connectivity with the neighbours.
•  India’s economic reorientation since the 1990s and the rediscovery of regionalism did open possibilities for reconnecting with its neighbours.
• Delhi today is acutely aware of the need to revive regional connectivity.
• There is much progress in recent years — note, for example, the recent launch of a ferry service to the Maldives or the reopening of inland waterways with Bangladesh.
• Integrating India’s regional economic and foreign policy remains a major challenge-Consider the recent fiasco of onion exports to Bangladesh.

4) Rise of political agency in the neighbourhood

• India ignores the rise of political agency among neighbourhood elites and mass politics that they need to manage.
• Their imperatives don’t always coincide with those of Delhi.
• It is unlikely that Delhi can completely insure itself against the intra-elite conflicts in the neighbourhood.

5) Influence of domestic politics on foreign policy

• Can India persistently champion Tamil minority rights in Sri Lanka without incurring any costs with the Sinhala majority?
• But asking that question takes us to India’s own domestic politics.
• Can Delhi ignore sentiments in India’s Tamil Nadu in making its Sri Lanka policy?
• Indian Prime Minister did not attend the Colombo Commonwealth Summit in 2013 because of the Tamil minority issue.
• The Teesta Waters agreement was not concluded due to political reasons.

Ways forward

• Timely responses to problems.
• Preventing small issues from becoming big.
• Aligning Delhi’s regional economic policy with India’s natural geographic advantages .
• These are some important elements of any successful management of India’s perennial neighbourhood challenges.

Conclusion

There are no easy answers to the regional difficulties that trouble all governments in Delhi. The source of the problem lies in the deeply interconnected nature of South Asian societies administered by multiple sovereigns.

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