Modi’s Neighborhood, Two Years On

From the day that Narendra Modi was sworn in as prime minister of India two years ago, his government has attached the greatest importance to improving India’s relations with its neighbors in South Asia. This commitment, dubbed the “Neighborhood First Policy,” was made clear from the start of Modi’s premiership on May 26, 2014, when he invited the leaders of other South Asian countries to his inauguration. Most importantly, the presence of Pakistan’s Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif at the inauguration was taken as a sign that India and Pakistan both were ready for an improvement in their relationship.

While India’s neighborhood diplomacy has lead to some breakthroughs, the Modi government’s record in India’s backyard remains mixed. Not all of this can be chalked up to the Indian government’s particular policies – sometimes the goals of a regional hegemon like India, no matter its government, are incompatible with the desire of smaller states, like Nepal, for greater strategic autonomy. Moreover, despite India’s intentions, the actions and domestic politics of India's neighbors have also been a major factor in understanding why the Modi government’s neighborhood diplomacy has yielded mixed results to date.

This can primarily be illustrated with the case of Pakistan, where things have largely stayed in the realm of “business as usual” for India. While tensions between India and Pakistan have mostly been kept under the lid for the past two years, there has been little in the way of improvement either. This is mostly because of internal dissension in Pakistan between the military, which remains wary of India, and the civilian government. Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, himself a businessman, seems particularly interested in normalizing relations with his neighbor so that his government can focus on economic growth and development, but this focus is thwarted by the geopolitical considerations of the security apparatus in Pakistan. After Sharif’s trip to India in May 2014, for instance, gifts were exchanged and relations between India and Pakistan improved for a while until, several months later, the Pakistani High Commissioner met with Kashmiri separatist groups and ceasefire violations increased. It is unlikely that these actions were the result of any deliberate policy by Sharif himself, but rather were a strategy originating in Pakistan’s military establishment with the aim of dampening rapprochement with India. India, being a boisterous democracy with many nationalistic factions in both the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the opposition Congress Party, could hardly have proceeded as though Pakistani provocations hadn’t occurred.

Yet despite this, Modi’s India tried quite seriously to improve relations with Pakistan. This was because, as Narendra Modi and every other serious Indian politician knows, political stability and economic integration cannot occur in South Asia unless Pakistan and India come to a long-term understanding. On a trip back from Kabul in December 2015, Modi stopped over in Lahore, Pakistan where he was well-received by Sharif in an attempt to reset relations yet again. But within a few days of this visit, on January 2, 2016, a heavily armed group of militants attacked the Pathankot Air Force Station, part of the Western Air Command of the Indian Air Force, in India’s state of Punjab. The timing, which was highly suspect, seemed to have been another attempt by some elements in Pakistan to derail closer relations between the two countries. After Sharif promised to cooperate with an investigation regarding the attack by sending a Joint Investigation Team (JIT), relations between India and Pakistan further declined when the team argued – possibly due to internal pressure – that the attack may have been staged by India. Thus, despite the best efforts of the Modi government as well as many elements of the Pakistani government, relations between the two countries remain hostage to the machinations of other players, chiefly the Pakistani military. While, at the very least, the overall vibes between India and Pakistan have become less tense, diplomatically, bilateral relations have a long way to go.

Pakistan’s actions toward India have not only slowed the improvement of the bilateral relationship between the two, but have contributed to the Modi government’s inability to succeed in other areas of its neighborhood diplomacy. For instance, Pakistan has hindered the ability of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) to became a bigger regional or global player, primarily by stalling moves for greater connectivity, including a pact that would allow motor vehicles to travel through its territory, out of fear that greater Indian trade through Pakistan’s territory would lead to strong links between India and Central Asia.

India’s relationship with Afghanistan remains strong, but not as strong as it ought to be, and this is also a function of the rivalry between India and Pakistan. Afghanistan’s president since 2014, Ashraf Ghani, has sought to avoid being as explicitly pro-India as his predecessor, Hamid Karzai, in hopes that this would convince Pakistan to cut support to the Taliban. Given Pakistan’s concerns about so-called strategic depth, it is important for there to be a friendly government in Afghanistan, in the case that the military needs to fall back westward in the face of Indian invasion from the east. However, by the end of 2015, Ghani expressed frustration that Pakistan was still stirring up trouble in his country, which may lead to improved relations with India this year. Moreover, it is somewhat strange that India, along with Iran and Russia, is excluded from the Quadrilateral Coordination Group (QCG), a group set up to coordinate talks between the Taliban and the Afghan government, with the back of the United States, China, and Pakistan.. India needs to push harder to have a say in such matters that bear relevance on its national security and regional role. Hopefully this will be accomplished sometime this year.

As with Afghanistan, India has not been able to fully leverage its regional power and influence into a meaningful impact on relations with the Maldives and Nepal. In the case of those two countries, domestic politics have evolved in a manner that has often caught India off balance. With regard to the Maldives, Modi skipped the country on a tour of the Indian Ocean in March 2015 due to continued political turmoil over the arrest of former President Mohamed Nasheed, which marked the beginning of an inexorable regression of democratic principles there. However, as Chinese influence in the country increased in the interim, India soon reversed course and the president of the Maldives, Abdulla Yameen Abdul Gayoom, visited India in April 2016 and confirmed the “special relationship” of his country with India. While India’s relations with the Maldives remain strong, its previous diplomacy may have opened the door to greater Chinese influence there.

Nepal Relations: An Uncertain Future

Nepal is perhaps the most interesting and uncertain of all of India’s relationships in South Asia. Modi has put a lot of effort into improving relations with Nepal, a country his government considers extremely important for a variety of strategic, economic, and ideological reasons. Modi visited Nepal twice in 2014 and was warmly received by the population there. Indian investment increased during the first year of his tenure and it seemed likely that Nepal would soon be generating hydropower for India. Modi’s diplomacy toward Nepal thus seemed to be reversing several years of neglect under India’s previous Congress government, especially when he appeared as an impartial voice calling for Nepal to finally write a constitution. But unfortunately, this goodwill was squandered away in 2015. First, Nepal was hit with an earthquake in April 2015, and while India stepped in to help almost immediately, many in Nepal decried the manner in which the Indian media covered the tragedy. While there was not much the Modi government could have done about this, it certainly had a chilling effect on how elites in the country viewed India during a subsequent crisis which arose in September of the same year when Nepal finally managed to come up with a new constitution.

The constitution was widely seen as unfavorable to the Madhesis and Tharus of southern Nepal, two ethnic groups with strong cross-border ties who form almost half the population of Nepal. This in turn led to major protests along the border with India and a resulting blockade of goods from India to Nepal. While the Modi government did not instigate these protests, it certainly did little to resolve them, especially as the new constitution was seen as an insult to India, which had urged the adoption of a more balanced, federal system. India’s handling of the blockade, and its public statements, including statements at the United Nations and European Union, served to draw the ire of the Nepalese government. While the constitution was eventually amended to meet some Indian demands, Nepal has subsequently drawn closer to China, which stepped in to meet many of Nepal’s energy needs during the blockade. Subsequently, a visit by the president of Nepal to India was canceled at the instigation of the government of Prime Minister K.P. Oli. It remains to be seen if the bonhomie of 2014 can be restored or if a relationship that was actually on the upswing was squandered away because of poor diplomatic judgement on the part of India. Unlike Pakistan, however, countries such as Nepal and the Maldives cannot completely defy India due to their size. Nonetheless, India should be careful not to take advantage of this fact, otherwise it risks coming across as a bully, ultimately lead more resentment in some circles in those countries. Despite the fact that it has the upper hand by far, India must at least project the image of respecting the sovereignty of its small neighbors. 

Amid these mixed diplomatic results, there are some successes in India’s neighborhood diplomacy. Relations with Bhutan, which was Modi’s first trip abroad after becoming prime minister, remain positive. The defeat of Sri Lanka’s erstwhile President Mahinda Rajapaksa, seen as close to China, and the peaceful transfer of power in January 2015 to Maithripala Sirisena, who was favored by India, was also a triumph of sorts. India’s relationship with Bangladesh, however, improved the most of all its neighborly bilaterals. Under the resolutely pro-India Awami League government, major progress has been made on pending issues. Most importantly, the border between India and Bangladesh has finally been straightened out, eliminating hundreds of enclaves that had persisted since 1947. Additionally, Bangladesh has cracked down on both Islamist militancy and the flow of weapons and cash to rebel groups in India’s northeast. Progress has also been made on water-sharing issues. It seems unlikely that the Awami League will loose power anytime soon, so the Bangladesh-India bilateral is bound to remain on the upswing.

While India’s diplomatic record with its neighbors has not been as good as expected since Narendra Modi came to power, it has hardly been abysmal. While India’s responses to circumstances in the Maldives and Nepal were questionable, those relationships are salvageable with proper management. India’s relations with Afghanistan should also improve again as the government of Ashraf Ghani does not seem to have been able to get Pakistan to cooperate with it in fighting the Taliban. Pakistan remains problematic. If the Modi government continues to emphasize economic development, bilateral integration, and trade (as opposed to region-wide SAARC integration, which Pakistan has blocked), and avoids politically insensitive commentary, it can go far. Culturally and economically, South Asia is ripe for more integration and cooperation. Only India, the region’s dominant power, can make this a reality.