Will 2015 be the year of the dragon?

The year 2014 ended with China not so covertly seeking and obtaining a measure of support for its attempts to gatecrash into Saarc during the Kathmandu summit in November. New Delhi will now face sustained attempts from Sri Lanka and Nepal, trying to enhance Chinese influence and power across India’s land and maritime frontiers.

Sri Lanka is headed for presidential elections on January 8 and Nepal’s Prime Minister Sushil Koirala has served notice that he is determined to adopt a new constitution by January 22, whether or not there is parliamentary consensus on its provisions.

Koirala is evidently ready to use the huge majority in the legislature that he and his coalition partners, the Communist Party of Nepal (CPN-UML), command, brushing aside demands from the Madhesi people who are looking for a federal set-up which reflects the linguistic and ethnic diversity of the country.

On India’s eastern Indian Ocean shores, Sri Lanka’s President Mahinda Rajapakse has sought re-election two years before the end of his second term. Rajapakse was swept back to power in 2010 in the wake of the popular upsurge in his favour, after he successfully brought an end to three decades of ethnic conflict, crushing the LTTE and eliminating its leader, Velupillai Prabhakaran.

But the years thereafter have been troublesome domestically for Rajapakse, who has also faced serious international challenges arising from excesses allegedly committed by the Sri Lankan armed forces in the last days of the civil war.

This has led to moves by the US and its western allies to censure Sri Lanka and demand action against those allegedly guilty of killing innocent Tamils.

Rajapakse faces challenges not only from the opposition UNP led by former prime minister, Ranil Wickremasinghe, but also from within his own Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP), mounted by former president, Chandrika Kumaratunga. The presidential election is being held when Rajapakse’s popularity appears to be waning, with his party candidates recording a distinct fall in their vote share in the recent provincial elections.

Recent communal violence directed at Muslims by the Buddhist clergy has raised concerns. There is disappointment among Tamils at the manner in which the Northern Province government has been denied any meaningful powers for governance, contrary to what Rajapakse had assured earlier. All this is creating a situation wherein the president could well lose the support of minority communities constituting 25 per cent of the electorate.

Despite these developments, the Rajapakse family, now holding virtually all key positions in government and the legislature, is a formidable force. This is, moreover, reinforced by a generally submissive and compliant judiciary and a formidable State machinery. It would be unrealistic to presume that they will not be returned to office.

What India cannot overlook is the growing military and economic cooperation that the Rajapakse dispensation has developed with China. Apart from the massive development of Hambantota and Colombo ports, China is now a major player in key sectors such as telecommunications, rail transport, petroleum refineries, offshore oil and gas exploration, power and energy. Such economic cooperation with China is understandable, given western antipathy to the Rajapakse dispensation.

India cannot, however, ignore either the growing Chinese presence in the Indian Ocean, with berthing facilities for Chinese submarines in Colombo twice in recent months, or the enthusiastic backing for Prime Minister Xi Jinping’s proposal for a maritime silk route in the Indian Ocean. A senior Sri Lankan diplomat spoke recently in India about the need for a South Asian security architecture that includes China and the need to admit China to Saarc.

These are issues that India needs to deal with not just bilaterally, but in consultation with Japan, the US and major European powers.

Koirala’s recent moves on facilitating Saarc membership for China are not very different from the direction taken by the Rajapakse government. He has rightly taken note of a gratuitous comment by an errant British ambassador, calling for Nepal to include the “right to change religion” in its constitution, now being drafted. One wonders if British ambassadors in Pakistan or Saudi Arabia would render such gratuitous advice to their host governments.

But what one cannot ignore is a recent report by a senior Nepali journalist that during a recent visit to Nepal, China’s vice-foreign minister Chen Fengxiang argued that Nepal should reject federalism based on ethnicity and language. Like Sri Lanka, Nepal appears to be very keen on China’s admission to Saarc — a proposal that’s been turned down by India.

The driving force behind these moves is China’s ‘all-weather friend’ Pakistan. Moreover, India cannot ignore China’s growing economic and strategic profile within Nepal.

China is now constructing a high altitude railway line from Lhasa to the second largest city in Tibet, Shigatse, located close to the China-Nepal border. A road link from Lhasa to Kathmandu is also under construction. Nepal has also been pressurised by China to clamp down on Tibetan refugees fleeing from persecution.

The time has perhaps come for New Delhi to tell its eastern Saarc neighbours that given Pakistan’s obduracy, India sees very little prospect for economic integration within Saarc. Bilateral economic integration with these neighbours can be reinforced not through Saarc but through Bimstec (Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation), which brings together landlocked and coastal South Asian States, across the Bay Bengal, with Asean members, Myanmar and Thailand.

Bimstec should become the key organisation linking and integrating South and Southeast Asia economically.

The writer is a former High Commissioner to Pakistan

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