The winter chill in the capital was offset by the warmth of friendly expectation as Sri Lankan President Aruna Kumara Dissanayake, 56, arrived in Delhi on his first state visit after assuming office.
India got it right when early this year in February, Dissanayake was invited to visit India with a delegation of his National Peoples Power for basic familiarisation and political level contacts.
The body language between President Dissanayake and Prime Minister Narendra Modi during the high-level engagement was markedly positive. As Modi endeavoured to reassure his counterpart of India’s continued support to Sri Lanka, the twenty-year younger Dissanayake did not hide his deference to Modi as a senior politician and national leader.
A Page Has Turned
The delegation level talks were full of “actionable points” as mandarins like to put it, even as the post-summit media engagements reflected hope of a stronger relationship from both sides. The controversial, purportedly anti-India legacy of Dissanayake’s parent outfit, the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna, was nowhere to be seen. Long-time Sri Lanka watchers may even call it a thing of the past. A page has certainly turned in India-Sri Lanka relations.
The China Factor
The focus on security from India’s side was evident. India has been concerned about the regularity of visits to Sri Lankan ports by Chinese naval and research vessels in recent years, including the occasional visit of a satellite tracking vessel operated by the People’s Liberation Army (Navy), dubbed in the media as a “spy ship”. The port of Hambantota, developed and operated by Chinese companies, is also seen as a near-exclusive preserve that can be tacitly used for defence and security purposes by Beijing.
President Dissanayake reiterated Sri Lanka’s stated position of “not permitting its territory to be used in any manner inimical to the security of India as well as towards regional stability”. India has been supporting Sri Lanka in boosting its maritime capabilities by providing free courses for Sri Lankan Navy personnel, as well as helping them develop basic capacity in hydrography, maritime domain awareness and information sharing.
President Dissanayake thanked India for the provision of a Dornier Aircraft for maritime surveillance; and establishment of the Maritime Rescue and Coordination Centre in Colombo. Sri Lanka appreciated India’s role as a ‘first responder’ for Sri Lanka in the field of Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief and the recent naval collaboration at sea in the seizing of fishing vessels trafficking a large quantity of narcotics to Sri Lanka through the Indian Ocean.
Defence Matters
Both sides have pledged to continue work on concluding a framework agreement on defence cooperation. There is already a lot happening in this realm between the two sides. Sri Lanka and India offer training courses for their meritorious officers in each other’s National Defence Colleges. Sri Lanka offers India vacancies at its Command and Staff College.
However, India has not been reciprocating with a similar offer at its Defence Services Staff College for the past decade, due to political objections raised in Tamil Nadu to the “presence of Sri Lankan defence personnel” in the state after Elam War IV.
Notwithstanding this irritant, India has regularly offered defence training slots to Sri Lankan personnel in various other defence training institutions across India. Sri Lanka however, has multiple options in the form of growing offers from China, Pakistan, Australia and Western countries to meet its defence needs, including provision of defence hardware like ships, aircraft etc. free of cost.
How South Block manages to keep India an attractive partner in this backdrop remains to be seen.
The emphasis given by both sides to the Indian Ocean Rim Association, under Sri Lanka’s chairmanship, holds promise of meaningful outcomes for the littoral states of the region. Similarly, the mutual support to the relatively nascent Colombo Security Conclave, headquartered at Colombo, can further cement the ongoing regional cooperation in countering trafficking through the maritime routes, supporting safety of mariners, countering terrorism, radicalism, organised crime and supporting humanitarian needs.
Critical Connections
A special mention needs to be made of the efforts made by both countries towards enhancing connectivity. While resumption of flights between Chennai and Jaffna was certainly a notable step forward, the launch of a passenger ferry service this year between Nagapattinam in Tamil .Nadu. and Kankesanthurai in Sri Lanka was no mean achievement. After the hiatus forced by the dark days of Sri Lankan civil war, added transportation options hold a light for other moves in the same direction, to bring communities closer.
Tourism is an area that holds great potential to boost people-to-people contacts as also to revive the services sector of Sri Lanka’s economy. Indian tourists commonly return from Sri Lanka with admiration and positive experiences about the country, people and its natural beauty. This has the potential to reduce the distrust of the past stemming from negative experiences of the ethnic conflict and civil war.
Amidst the upbeat mood created by the pledges to boost digitisation, implement energy projects, drive up trade and investment, and enhance human resources development with India’s assistance, the fishers’ issue in the Palk Bay remains a sore point and a major grievance from the Sri Lankan side.
It has been a long-standing demand of Colombo to reign in the fishers who rampantly indulge in “bottom trawling” in the Palk Bay, often in Sri Lankan waters across the International Maritime Boundary Line (IMBL).
A rise in the trend has led to the Tamil fisherfolk in the Northern Province of Sri Lanka taking up the issue of poaching by their Indian brethren vehemently with the federal government. This has resulted in a seemingly intractable situation across the Palk Straits that needs high level political attention in Delhi and Chennai.
The issue is strongly perceived by the Sri Lankan Tamil community and threatens to undo the goodwill earned by India through other people-oriented projects in Sri Lanka like the Indian sponsored Housing Project, Railway Line Projects and High Impact Community Development Projects across the Island nation.
Some Options
South Block could perhaps put together a multi-agency team from the Centre that can work closely with the Tamil Nadu government to provide sustainable alternative options of livelihood to the Palk Bay fishers. In the long term, the two sides should look at making the Palk Bay a “peace park”, where fishers from both sides can undertake sustainable fishing by environmentally friendly means, while the IMBL is respected and managed with a joint, cooperative approach.
Duty Calls
India has stood by Sri Lanka like a rock through its financial crisis, offering it emergency financing and forex support worth USD 4 billion. New Delhi is also helping in Sri Lanka’s debt restructuring process, as co-chair of the Official Creditors’ Committee (OCC), and by converting some credit lines into grants. Ordinary Sri Lankans recognise India’s timely assistance in their times of peril and India’s image is at an all time high in Sri Lanka.
In the wider frame, the two nations have set the pieces in the right place, with promises to bring them together to build a pretty picture. The two leaders, leading stable governments, owe it to their mandate to take the bilateral relationship to a new high. With the world in turmoil due to multiple conflicts, India and Sri Lanka need to live up to their civilizational legacy and forge a defining partnership of the Indian subcontinent in the 21st century.
