Prime Minister Modi set the absolutely right tone by inviting all SAARC leaders to his inaugural swearing-in ceremony in 2014. This highlighted his Neighbourhood First policy that he enunciated shortly thereafter. He followed up with a surprise visit to Nawaz Sharif in December 2015, on his way back from Afghanistan. This was in line with Prime Minister Vajpayee’s thinking, when he had declared that while we can choose our friends, we cannot choose our neighbours. He too made a famous bus trip to Lahore. Sadly, his efforts were derailed by Pakistan’s Musharraf’s reckless Kargil attack. And then Musharraf deliberately destroyed any further Indian attempts with his Agra visit, post Kargil.
Sadly, the history of our relationship with Pakistan is that each time both take a step forward, extremist elements, both within and outside the Pakistani government, derail and wreck the chances of moving forward. Terrorism must be dealt with harshly, more so when it is State-sponsored. At the same time, we ought to recognise that rogue elements, both within the government of Pakistan and outside government, have wreaked terrorist havoc within Pakistan, so much so that literally hundreds of lives are lost to terrorist attacks within Pakistan, severely damaging Pakistan itself. Unfortunately, the reaction of the Indian government has been to pull down the shutters and cut off all ties and contact between the countries. This is exactly what the terrorists want. The result has been that over the last decade, an iron curtain has descended between India and Pakistan.
Nor has India been very successful in building wonderful relations with its other neighbours, too. Many in Nepal, in spite of our open border and extensive people-to-people ties, still haven’t forgotten the ill-advised blockade that Modi imposed for a short while on Nepal. In Bangladesh, our government focused only on Sheikh Hasina and did little to encourage people-to-people contacts. It doesn’t help that Central government ministers, including the powerful Home Minister, call Bangladeshis illegally in India termites and ghuspetiyas. If Trump or UK politicians or Middle Eastern Sheikhs used such terms even for Indians illegally in their countries, one can imagine the indignant furore it would set off in India.
There is also the equally important issue of trade. India runs a trade surplus that ranges between 3 to 8:1 with each of its neighbours, including Pakistan, when we traded. For years, India pleaded with the West for duty-free or concessional duties on Indian exports. There is nothing our industry or agriculture needs to fear from such even one-way free trade. Yet we haven’t, as the much bigger and more powerful neighbour, shown willingness to offer duty-free access to our markets to all our neighbours. This would be a concrete first step if we truly believed in Neighbourhood First.
Last and above all, our successive governments have failed to encourage people-to-people contact at all levels, including trade, travel, academic and medical linkages with our neighbours. If we can have normal trade relations with China, then why not with Pakistan? Such people-to-people linkages, which ironically the whole region had pre-independence, would be the best guarantee for a truly forward-looking and integrated neighbourhood policy.
We must never forget that a great power must first have a friendly and secure neighbourhood.