Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
and it risks weakening India's already poor handling of neighbourhood diplomacy. This is
not new, but it has become more serious in recent years.
There have always been inevitable links between Jammu and Kashmir and India's policy
on Pakistan because Kashmir is disputed territory, and between Tamil Nadu and policy on
Sri Lanka because of links with the island's Tamil minority. India's north-eastern states
and West Bengal have interests in India's relations with neighbouring Bangladesh and My-
anmar, as do Bihar and Uttar Pradesh with Nepal. Further afield and less controversially,
the southern state of Kerala has interests in policy on the United Arab Emirates and other
Middle East countries because of its people working there and its dependence on the money
they send home.
Such issues have become a bigger problem now that state-level political parties are
members of India's coalition governments. The parties have become more assertive and
independent-minded, usually pushing populist policies that win support in their states, ir-
respective of whether they gel with national priorities. The central government has failed
to respond to this and has not developed an approach that would maintain its leading role
on foreign policy. The problems were clearly stated by K. Shankar Bajpai in a December
2010 article: 'Drowning national needs in local politics, emotional or outdated ideologic-
al illusions, playing to the galleries or simple ignorance is mortally dangerous. Consider
some random instances: Tamil Nadu's parties competed to embarrass Delhi's handling of
Sri Lanka, states around Bangladesh connive at illegal immigration, Uttar Pradesh has no
thought for its responsibilities vis-à-vis Nepal.'
Bajpai's Tamil Nadu reference stemmed from the way that, in order to protect the Con-
gress party's political relationships in the state, India's 2004-2014 government allowed two
rival regional political parties to affect diplomacy with Sri Lanka. The parties sought local
popularity by objecting to India working with the island's chauvinistic Sinhalese-domin-
ated government, and disrupted sporting and other links. Their influence even led to Man-
mohan Singh staying away from a Commonwealth heads of government meeting in Sri
Lanka in November 2013. These political sensitivities left space for China and Pakistan
(and Israel) to strengthen ties after they provided aircraft and other weaponry and training
island one of its 'string of pearls' by building a port and airport and other projects with soft
loans and other assistance.
A cross-border treaty with Bangladesh on the Teesta river waters was upset by Mamata
Banerjee, the irascible and unpredictable chief minister of West Bengal, just as it was about
the two countries' 4,000-km border, including India possibly having transit rights across
northern Bangladesh to its north-eastern states. On the other side of India, Narendra Modi,
the BJP chief minister of Gujarat, objected just before his state's last assembly elections
