Modi at BIMSTEC: Regional Summits Without Substantial Outcomes Help No One

Prime Minister Modi’s visit last week to Thailand to attend the 6th BIMSTEC summit seems to have gone well in the formal sense. Besides reiterating India’s eastern region policy, he also held a number of important bilateral meetings with leaders like the Thai Prime Minister Yingluck Shinwatra, Nepal Prime Minister K.P. Sharma Oli, Senior General Min Aung Hlaing of Myanmar, and the Chief Adviser to Bangladesh government Mohammed Yunus. In his remarks at the meeting, Modi promoted BIMSTEC as a “vital bridge between South and Southeast Asia” and mooted a number of initiatives to enhance ties with member-nations.

The problem is that India’s Look East and Act East policies have been around over 30 years and here we are still in the process of building bridges and laying out visions instead of working on them.

BIMSTEC, for example, has been around in various forms since 1997, and its first summit took place in 2004. But as of now, it largely remains a talking shop. Which is what SAARC was before it ran aground on India-Pakistan bitterness. An indication of BIMSTEC’s infirmity is evident from the fact that it has held just 6 summits in the past 27 years. The BIMSTEC Free Trade Area Framework Agreement (BFTAFA) was signed in 2004 but its enabling agreements remains a work in progress two decades later. Trade within the grouping remains limited compared to its potential.

It took India nearly 20 years to complete the 1300-km India-Myanmar-Thailand Trilateral Highway that was begun in 2002 but it is yet to be utilised effectively given the political situation in Manipur and Myanmar. The Kaladan Multi-Modal project to link Kolkata to Mizoram via Myanmar, launched in 2010, also remains incomplete. The problem India confronts in BIMSTEC is that the country that is key to unlocking the gates to the ASEAN – Myanmar – suffers from a long-running civil war that has now taken a turn for the worse.

Actually, BIMSTEC had been in the backwaters till India supported the creation of its permanent secretariat in Dhaka in 2014 and pushed for the adoption of the BIMSTEC Charter in 2022. It decided to give the grouping greater emphasis in 2016 when ties with Pakistan frayed and India boycotted the SAARC summit after the Uri attack by Pakistani proxies. The organisation contains all SAARC members except Pakistan, Afghanistan and the Maldives, along with Myanmar and Thailand who also happen to be members of ASEAN.

As for SAARC, the idea of a South Asian regional organisation was mooted by the then Bangladesh leader Ziaur Rehman and set up in 1985. But the organisation has failed in its primary mission of integrating the regional countries through ties of connectivity and trade. In 2004, it decided to create a free trade area in South Asia by 2014, but that has yet to yield results. Intra-SAARC trade has risen from 3% of total trade in the 1990s to 6-7% in recent years, but it is well below potential considering the fact that ASEAN’s intra-regional trade exceeds 25%.

With a secretariat in Kathmandu, SAARC has had an institutional framework and had annual summits, at least till 2014. Regional connectivity both physical and digital are patchy and security cooperation is minimal.

The big problem is Pakistan. With its support for proxy forces against India, it has paralysed most initiatives, be they in security or connectivity. SAARC’s cooperation in South Asia’s shared history, geography and economic complementarities remain unrealised.

Geography has given India a good hand in South Asia. All its neighbours border India and none border each other. And all of them combined are smaller than India. India would be the prime beneficiary of a functioning regional organization, but it has not been able to push for the effective functioning of one.

Smaller countries in SAARC worry that their concerns, including those of security, will be over-ridden by giant India. The problem is that the narrative has often been the other way around, where India has spoken about threats from its neighbours and has securitised its discourse with them. This is understandable in the case of Pakistan, which has systematically sent in jihadi proxies to stir up trouble in India, especially in Jammu & Kashmir. But in many cases, say with Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Nepal, there has been an Indian tendency to overstate the problem.

A positive development in recent times has been that India has seen value in de-securitising its approach to some of its neighbours. Instead of worrying about Chinese vessels, it went out of its way to help Sri Lanka when it was affected by a debt crisis in 2022 by coming up with assistance worth $4.5 billion. It has also taken up energy and connectivity projects to bolster Sri Lanka’s infrastructure and been a key partner in its debt restructuring efforts.

Without doubt, this was responsible for the grand welcome that Modi received in his official visit to Colombo last week, on his way back from the BIMSTEC summit in Thailand. The tone and tenor of India-Sri Lanka ties have changed since the government of Anura Dissanayake was elected. Modi was given Sri Lanka’s highest award and the two countries also signed an MoU on defence cooperation.

Also read: Modi Visit: First India-Sri Lanka Defence Pact, Trilateral Energy Deal With UAE, Talks on US Tariffs

Likewise, despite confronting an anti-Indian government in the Maldives, New Delhi showed some patience and without worrying too much about the Chinese, assisted the island state to ease its financial crisis. It enhanced its financial assistance to the Maldives by nearly 30% in the current fiscal year. It also extended emergency financial aid to the island to help avert potential debt default.

As the biggest country in South Asia, the challenge of leading the process of shaping a transformative regional organisation rests on New Delhi’s shoulders. India has its limitations – it has huge internal developmental challenges which constrain its ability to provide greater economic assistance to its neighbours. It also has to deal with failing states like Pakistan and Myanmar where military governments rule, to their own country’s detriment. But New Delhi also has the responsibility of using its given advantages more effectively and not getting caught up, for example, in the needless confrontation that it took up with Nepal in 2015. The biggest challenge is Pakistan, but turning your back on it and refusing any intercourse is a non-policy that will hardly yield any worthwhile results.

The state of BIMSTEC and SAARC therefore remain a major challenge and a reproach to India. They hold a significant potential in the current context – to counterbalance China’s regional influence and a platform for India to achieve its strategic goals. But to realise them, requires sustained and accelerated action, greater funding to generate enhanced commitment from the smaller members and effective policy formulation and execution by the government.

Manoj Joshi is a Distinguished Fellow, Observer Research Foundation, New Delhi.

This piece was first published on The India Cable – a premium newsletter from The Wire & Galileo Ideas – and has been updated and republished here. To subscribe to The India Cable, click here.

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