Ranil Wickremesinghe’s mission to India

By Uditha Devapriya

On Thursday, July 21, Ranil Wickremesinghe commemorated exactly one year since he took oaths as Sri Lanka’s President. He remains a president without a mandate, a leader selected by the parliament and not elected by his people. Nevertheless, since his accession, he has effected several reforms, overseeing IMF negotiations and debt restructuring talks. From July 1 to 3 he saw through the first stage of the most difficult phase of these reforms, domestic debt optimisation. These reforms have unleashed a flurry of debates, from both sides. The consensus among Colombo-based economists is that things have improved from a year ago. Yet here, too, some disagreement remains.

Instead of commemorating his accession on that day – reports say he has forbidden any ceremonies – Wickremesinghe chose to travel to India. This has been his first trip to the country since he became President. The delegation involved an entourage consisting of four important Ministers, including Foreign Minister Ali Sabry. According to various sources, the tour included a meeting with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, as well as the signing of five agreements which will have a bearing on bilateral relations. To make arrangements for the visit, and the meeting, India’s Foreign Secretary Vinay Mohan Kwatra arrived in Sri Lanka and met President Wickremesinghe a week ago.

For Sri Lanka, India has become a factor it cannot ignore. This has almost always been the case since independence. Yet India’s aid and assistance to the island nation last year, to the tune of USD 4 billion, complicated this relationship. India, for its part, has recognised that it cannot dictate terms to the country, and has made concession after concession: the latest, announced a few weeks ago, may in effect defer repayments on USD 1.6 billion in debt by as long as 12 years. Moreover, as Rathindra Kuruwita noted in an analysis, India’s assistance to Sri Lanka exceeded its contribution to the United Nations and was just USD 3 billion less than its aid to developing countries in 2021. This is a reality Sri Lanka cannot sidestep.

In other words, India needs a stable Sri Lanka as much as Sri Lanka needs a dependable ally in India. To that end several issues would have been brought up in Wickremesinghe’s visit. These would have included not only subjects like the 13th Amendment, or the plight of Sri Lankan fisherman in the Northern Province vis-à-vis Indian fishermen and bottom trawlers, or continuing economic assistance, but also the two countries’ energy sectors. Indeed, the inclusion of Power and Energy Minister Kanchana Wijesekera in the delegation shows how important investments in that sector have become for India, especially after the suspension of Chinese energy projects in the island’s Northern Province.

A more crucial topic will be the adoption of the Indian rupee for transactions. India may have its sights on outer space, but it is feverishly concentrating on propping up its currency abroad. Its refusal to back a BRICS currency shows that while it is in agreement with the aims of organisations like BRICS, it does not want those aims to prevail over its interests. Sri Lanka seems to have fallen in line with this approach, as witness Ranil Wickremesinghe’s statement that he would like to see the rupee being used as much as the dollar.

China has not ignored these developments. From July 19 to 23, Yuan Jiajun, a high-ranking official of the Communist Party of China, will visit the island. Jiajun is currently Secretary of the CPC Municipal Committee in Chongqing, a strategic stronghold in the Belt and Road Initiative. The timing of the visit is interesting, not only because it coincides with the Indian tour but also because it has been arranged regardless of Wickremesinghe’s absence. The visit may be part of China’s efforts to show it has not let go of Sri Lanka. Beijing, moreover, has emphasised that it opposes all attempts at colonising the country, a point it brought up when Qi Zhenhong, China’s Ambassador in Colombo, paid tribute to Keppetipola Dissawe at a ceremony in the Uva Province on June 29.

India’s image in Sri Lanka improved substantially last year vis-à-vis China because of its assistance to the island. But it will have to be careful in managing the optics. On the one hand, it will have to satisfy its domestic electorate, who may have questions regarding the benefits India can reap from supporting Sri Lanka. On the other hand, it cannot make too many demands on Sri Lanka, since this can exert pressure on the island.

The concessions India has granted so far may be trivial compared to its economic strength. But the assistance it has doled out, and the relief it has conceded, have been substantial. There must be a tit-for-tat arrangement, and for Delhi, the most obvious arrangement would involve promoting Indian investments, especially in energy. That is only to be expected, since unlike Sri Lanka, which has virtually no international business presence, the Indian State uses the private sector to further its foreign policy. At the same time, though, it will have to be careful not to be seen as cashing in on this moment, to the extent where it seems dismissive of fears of Sri Lanka’s resources being auctioned to the highest bidder.

India will also have to resolve any longstanding grievances with Sri Lanka. While Ali Sabry’s and Kanchana Wijesekera’s inclusion in Wickremesinghe’s delegation do not underlie such grievances, Fisheries Minister Douglas Devananda’s participation may.

Sri Lanka’s Northern and Eastern Provinces have always been within India’s radar. But fishermen from there complain about Indian fishermen intruding on their waters, and about the use of trawlers that have damaged marine life and deprived them of their livelihoods. The Indian government’s response has been to force Colombo to compromise. Yet it may be in New Delhi’s interests to make the first move, since it is eyeing the country’s North and East and cannot afford to sour ties with civilian stakeholders in these regions. The fact that even Tamil MPs who are generally predisposed towards India have castigated Delhi over this matter shows that India will have to step up its game there.

All this ties in with the crucial question of what India can and cannot do, what its options are in the world today. Its forays into outer space – if Chandrayaan-3 makes a soft landing on the moon in August, India will be only the fourth country to have done so, after the US, China, and the Soviet Union – underlie its ambitions. To be sure, as the hegemon in South Asia and the Indian Ocean, it does possess much clout. But there are questions about the country’s ambitions for the world beyond its neighbourhood. Foxconn’s recent decision to pull out of an arrangement with Vedanta, despite the geopolitical advantages of a US company shifting production from China, indicate that for all the talk of India’s rise as the next Asian economic giant, the US and the West in general harbour doubts about its future.

India faces hostility from almost all its neighbours in the subcontinent, Pakistan in particular. The crisis in Sri Lanka has in that sense been a fait accompli for Delhi. Through diplomatic manoeuvring, it has managed to keep Sri Lanka from turning into another Lebanon, a point the Speaker of the country’s Parliament noted when he thanked India for having prevented a bloodbath last year at the peak of the protests, or the aragalaya,. What that means is India, through its assistance, has helped stabilise the country, and it can now point at that country as an example of its intentions, altruistic and beneficent, for the region.

All these may doubtless have weighed in on President Ranil Wickremesinghe’s mind as he embarks on his visit to New Delhi. Coming as it does one year after he took oaths as the President, it remains deeply symbolic. On the other hand, it comes weeks after he concluded the first phase of a highly polarising debt restructuring process at home. He may be hoping to show that he has done all his homework, that his country is doing the hard yards, inflicting austerity on itself even as unions and civil society outfits hold protests and campaign against his government. At the same time, the latest surveys register a slight uptick in approval for his regime. This is still a marginal improvement. Yet whatever his future may be, he sees India as a priority. The visit, in that sense, is more than just a visit. It is in fact a mission.

The writer is an international relations analyst, researcher, and columnist who can be reached at udakdev1@gmail.com.