India hedges its bets in Myanmar/"Over the past decade, India focused on security and economic co-operation in its interaction

India hedges its bets in Myanmar By Sudha Ramachandran BANGALORE - Under fire for its assiduous courting of Myanmar's generals, India appears to be setting in motion a strategy that will see it simultaneously engaging the Myanmarese people. During the recent visit of External Affairs Minister S M Krishna to Myanmar, Indian unveiled initiatives aimed at enhancing food security, capacity building, etc - areas that will directly impact on the lives of millions in the country. Besides, in an attempt at an image makeover, it reached out to Aung San Suu Kyi. Though low-key, the meeting between Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao and Suu Kyi was the first high-level contact with the leader of Krishna's visit, though, was not only about winning hearts among the Myanmar people. Uppermost on Krishna's agenda were security, connectivity and investment. It was the first high-level contact between the two countries since a new government took charge last year in Naypyidaw, Myanmar's capital. The two sides signed an agreement for construction of an 80-kilometer road linking Rhi in India's northeastern state of Mizoram with Riddim in Myanmar's mountainous Chin province. The US$60 million project is expected to improve overland trade, providing a boost to the local economies. They discussed progress in the $120 million Kaladan multimodal transit and transport project that India has funded and constructed. This project will link landlocked Mizoram with Myanmar's Sittwe port. India is already upgrading Sittwe port and Naypyidaw has reportedly agreed to India's request for a realignment of the project. This will involve moving the jetty at Sittwe a bit upstream. The two sides are reported to have also discussed counter-insurgency cooperation. Several anti-India insurgent groups that are active in India's northeast have bases and training camps in Myanmar and New Delhi has been working on getting the military to support it in its counter-insurgency operations. What set apart Krishna's visit from those of other Indian ministers and officials over the past decade was the announcement of a slew of people-centric initiatives. India pledged $10 million towards capacity building in Myanmar. Importantly, this capacity building will focus on the agricultural sector, which is the backbone of Myanmar's economy, providing employment to two-thirds of Myanmar's people and contributing to 58% of its gross domestic product and 48% of export earnings. Farmers will be provided with funds to purchase agricultural equipment from India. India is also setting up an agricultural research center at Yezin. A team from India's Ministry of Agriculture led by noted agricultural scientist and father of India's Green Revolution M S Swaminathan will visit Myanmar soon to understand the country's needs in the agricultural sector and the nature of help India can extend. In the health sector, India has agreed to provide sophisticated medical equipment to a children's hospital in Yangon and has announced plans to build a state-of-the art general hospital in Sittwe. The port's upgrade is reported to have forced an existing hospital, post office and markets to relocate. It seems that India's gesture in constructing a general hospital in the port town is aimed at reducing public distress over the port project. As part of its efforts to reach out to the masses on issues involving human security, India has donated 10 disaster-proof silos - four in the Yangon region and seven in the Irrawaddy region - to store grain. Capable of withstanding wind speeds of 150 km per hour and resisting earthquakes of an intensity of up to 8 on the Richter scale, the silos could significantly enhance food security in cyclone-prone Myanmar. Months after Cyclone Nargis ripped through Myanmar in 2008 people were still dying of hunger caused by the destruction of crops and grain storage dumps. The silos "will directly benefit the friendly people of Myanmar", Krishna pointed out. "Over the past decade, India focused on security and economic co-operation in its interaction with Myanmar. It is now beginning to broad-base this engagement to include co-operation and capacity building in health, agriculture and education," K Yhome, research fellow at the Observer Research Foundation, a think-tank in New Delhi, told Asia Times Online. India and Myanmar have had strong cultural and other ties that go back several centuries. The close cooperation between their anti-colonial struggles laid the foundation for the warm relationship between the two countries up to the early 1960s. The 1962 military coup in Myanmar changed that. In the decades that followed, with Myanmar's military rulers disinterested in interacting with the world and India preoccupied with its own problems, the two neighbors drifted apart. Yet India continued to enjoy public goodwill in Myanmar. This close relationship with Myanmar's people warmed considerably in the wake of the 1988 mass protests against military rule with India emerging a staunch critic of the military's repression and the sanctuary it provided to democracy activists fleeing the country. It resulted in ordinary people looking to India for support in their struggle for democracy. But that support ceased from the mid-1990s with India adopting a "pragmatic policy" towards Myanmar. It began engaging the generals and diluting its emphasis on a return to democracy there. This shift was prompted by security concerns, economic and energy interests and the need to check China's mounting influence in Myanmar. New Delhi's supply of arms to the military, its silence on its repression of the pro-democracy movement, and its reluctance to speak up against violence unleashed on mass protests resulted in a serious erosion of the goodwill it once enjoyed in Myanmar. While policy makers in New Delhi did recognize this, their hands were tied, they said. India needed to deal with whoever was in power in Myanmar and with Suu Kyi unlikely to come to power, the Indian government needed to continue dealing with the generals. Last year's election, which has put in place a nominally democratic government, has given India space to widen its engagement. The election was undoubtedly deeply flawed. The rules of the game were made to ensure the military's continued dominance over the power structure. Indeed a quarter of those in parliament are from the military and many others are their civilian cronies. Still, the election has set in motion a process of change that few would have imagined possible in Myanmar even a year ago. New political institutions that Myanmar did not have for decades because of military rule - a presidential system, two houses of parliament, 14 regional governments and assemblies - have been created. Civil society groups, which emerged in the wake of Cyclone Nargis, have reportedly grown in number in recent months. During a recent interaction at the Observer Research Foundation between Indian analysts and civil society activists from Myanmar, the latter expressed interest in India's "considerable experience in parliamentary democracy and institution building", Yhome recalled. Since Myanmar's parliamentarians have no experience in democracy, they are looking to India - the government and civil society here - to share with them expertise in democratic processes. They are hoping that India will provide their parliamentarians with exposure to democratic functioning and institution building, he said. India has provided such support elsewhere as in Afghanistan for instance where it has shared its experience of building democratic institutions such as an election commission, a human-rights commission or a strong judicial system with Afghan parliamentarians and officials. Its emphasis on capacity building and human resource development is aimed at helping Afghanistan own and lead its reconstruction, even as it creates goodwill for India. In Africa too, India is emphasizing capacity building and people-centric projects with a view to creating sustainable partnerships with countries. By broadening the scope of its engagement in Myanmar while retaining its focus on security concerns and furthering economic interests, India appears to be winning back lost public goodwill. New New Delhi is no doubt hoping that the people-centric projects and reaching out to the masses will make its relationship with its eastern neighbor more sustainable. However, there is no shift in India's Myanmar policy and it is not about to back Suu Kyi against the government. "Too much should not be read into Rao's meeting with Suu Kyi," cautions Yhome, saying that it is unlikely to have "tangible political consequences". The meeting was aimed at sending out a message that New Delhi has not forgotten democracy in Myanmar. It is "a symbolic gesture of support and respect for Suu Kyi and the cause she represents". Myanmar's pro-democracy movement has been calling on India to change its Myanmar policy. It will have to make do with New Delhi's broadbasing of its engagement with Myanmar. Sudha Ramachandran is an independent journalist/researcher based in Bangalore. She can be reached at sudha98@hotmail.com (Copyright 2011 Asia Times Online (Holdings) Ltd. All rights reserved. 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