The uphill climb to woo neighbours

September 25, 2024

ISLAMABAD – A MONTH to the date before Sri Lanka’s Sept 21 presidential polls would elect a firebrand Marxist head of state, and disturb the political furniture in the region and beyond, the Indian high commissioner to Colombo installed a free water vending machine at a tourist site in Sigiriya.

At slightly over half the steep climb to the summit of the 180 metres high volcanic granite relic of King Kasyapa’s ancient fort-and-cave spectacle in the heart of Sri Lanka, the Indian envoy announced the RO machine on a metal plaque, which glistened in the sapping heat with the message of neighbourly goodwill “from the people of India”.

If the Indian envoy’s intent was to win friends or impress visitors, the investment fell short of its goal on two counts. A truer point that the water taps missed lies in a six-hour drive to Sri Lanka’s southernmost tip.

It’s here that a strategic port has come up abutting a sea lane seen as more crucial for India’s Western allies than for India. How New Delhi under Narendra Modi’s watch has got itself entangled with the US-led and completely self-centred ‘pivot to the East’ strategy offers an object lesson on how not to rise to the bait in a purely bilateral dispute, this one being essentially between Beijing and Washington. The day the two make up, even if they don’t end up kissing, proverbially, the cheerleaders in the transient stand-off wouldn’t know where to look.

Pakistan has been used selfishly twice by the West, on both turns under the watch of a muscle-flexing military ruler. It’s in an economic mess today, but does the West care? Moreover, in the current context, the ascent of the Philippines as a China-specific military outpost for the US threatens to undercut