India-Malaysia Joint Commission Meeting: Reestablishment of engagement, revitalisation of old relationships

The India-Malaysia Joint Commission Meeting between EAM S Jaishankar and Malaysian Foreign Minister Zambry Abd Kadir took place on 7 November. It brought back the India-Malaysia relationship to even keel after several hiccups in recent years. Previous FM Saifuddin Abdallah participated in the Special India-ASEAN FMs meeting in June 2022 to mark 30 years of India’s partnership with ASEAN. Since Malaysia’s internal politics stabilised under PM Anwar Ibrahim, a greater intent of partnership is perceptible. The Joint Commission has met for the sixth time, after a gap of 12 years since the last meeting was in 2011. Some of the delay maybe condoned by the pandemic, but somewhere there was a loss of focus and a divergence of views. The JCM is therefore a reestablishment of engagement and a revitalization of the old relationship. Malaysia is one of the original members of ASEAN and will chair ASEAN in 2025, after Laos. This was a good occasion to exchange views on the problems of the world, like the Ukraine crisis, the Israel-Hamas recurrent problem, other functional issues emerging like COP28, and the slow progress on achieving the SDGs. Essentially, there is a need for India and Malaysia to step out of the India-ASEAN rubric and have an ASEAN Plus engagement. On UNGA resolutions on Russia and Hamas, Malaysia and India are not on the same page, though their intent is similar. Malaysia has one of the largest PIO populations globally, about 2.75 million, which is 9 per cent of Malayia’s population. About 2,25,000 Indian expatriates live in Malaysia, mostly IT professionals, engineers, and doctors. This has always given Malysia a special place in Indian policy. India and Malaysia shared a common colonial link. They were close in the post-independence years, to the point that Sukarno of Indonesia believed that India was siding with Malaysia in the Konfrontasi between them in Borneo. However, the comfort that India and Malaysia had with each other slowly ebbed. Progress stalled due to some of Malaysia’s internal policies and the problems created by Mahathir Mohamad’s perspective of India. Though India launched the Look East Policy in 1992, Mahathir never wanted to include India in East Asian groupings, which ultimately led to India not being a member of APEC. Mahathir also adopted positions that were closer to Pakistan and tried to recreate a partnership with Turkey and Pakistan, which perhaps gave him some satisfaction. But the economic progress lies with India, and this is where Malaysia now seems more cognisant and engaging in a fulsome manner, rather than taking a view purely based on religious strategy. In 2018, when PM Modi was visiting Indonesia, Mahathir was re-elected. Modi stopped by Putrajaya on his return and met with Mahathir, showing statesmanship towards a senior leader who had often adopted positions not in India’s favour. It did not help, as Mahathir remained provocative. It was only when he moved out that the relationship started looking up again, and there has been consistent and detailed engagement in the post-pandemic period. Nowadays, when you think of defence cooperation with ASEAN countries, Malaysia’s name emerges strongly, and in 2022, exercises by all the three services took place with Malaysia. Malaysia shows interest in Indian defence exports like the Tejas, though nothing concrete has emerged. Malaysia participated in the first India-ASEAN maritime exercise and holds regular coordinated patrols with India. In 2022, trade increased to about $20 billion, of which $12.75 billion were Malaysian exports to India and $7.25 billion were Indian exports to Malaysia. FDI between India and Malaysia is recorded at $1.12 billion, but given the use of the Mauritius route earlier, it is estimated at $7 billion. Indian FDI in Malaysia is about $3 billion, half of which is in manufacturing, creating 15,000 jobs by 2020. There are areas where India and Malaysia can certainly do more together and adopt ASEAN-approved policies that can be enhanced by Malaysia, like Indonesia, Philippines and Vietnam are doing in their own ways. First, strategically speaking, the AOIP-IPOI agreement between India and ASEAN provides the space for Malaysia to engage India under the Indo-Pacific rubric. Malaysia should agree to adopt a pillar of the IPOI and engage with it, like Singapore, Indonesia, and possibly Philippines intend to do. Secondly, Malaysia should ensure that all its dealings with India on defence procurement fructify into some clear projects and cannot be left at the level of exercises and visits alone. Thirdly, India and Malaysia need to engage more as countries of the Global South. Had Malaysia been chairing ASEAN this year, India would have invited them to the G20 summit. In the event, Indonesia represented ASEAN, and as a guest, India invited Singapore from ASEAN and not Malaysia. Malaysia needs to do more to climb into a closer embrace with India, and for this, they should engage more with the South-South cooperation that India has undertaken. This could include a membership of the International Solar Alliance, which has just seen Chile join it as its 95th member. Malaysia is not a part of the ISA, CDRI, nor the Biofuels Alliance either. Responding to Indian initiatives will bring Malaysia into a special position since other ASEAN countries are also lagging behind. Among ASEAN countries, Malaysia has the largest student population in India, but at less than 3000, it is miniscule compared to others. About 3500 Indian students are in Malaysia. However, the engagement with Malaysia through Indian institutions is good. The second Indian IIT campus overseas will be in Malaysia, and University Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM) agreed in January 2023 to establish a chair of Malay civilizational studies at JNU. Such linkages may be enhanced. Perhaps the best thing that could happen is the implementation of the India-ASEAN Digital Work Plan 2023. The India-ASEAN Digital Work Plan 2023 encompasses capacity building and knowledge sharing in emerging areas of Information and Communication Technologies such as: Artificial Intelligence, Cyber Security, Application of IoT & AI, Next Generation Smart City, Society 5.0, Sustainable Data and Transport Network for Future: Standards and Applications, 5G technologies for IoT and future trends, Role of ICT in implementation of Digital Health and Security, protection and assessment for future network, etc. The ongoing and proposed projects in ICTs, can strengthen collaboration between India and ASEAN by leveraging the complementary strengths of each other. This requires the private sector to engage more intensely. Among the agreements concluded during the JCM were the MOU on broadcasting cooperation between Prasar Bharati and Radio Television Malaysia, the exchange of notes between the Foreign Service Institute of India and Malaysia Institute of Diplomacy for training diplomats, and the letter of intent between the Southeast Asia Regional Centre for Counterterrorism and the IDSA for academic research. An arrangement between India and Malaysian businesses using the Indian rupee has fructified. Razorpay, an Indian payment gateway, has launched a subsidiary operation in Malaysia, bringing economic engagement closer together. Tourism is a great enabler of the partnership. Nearly 1.75 lakh tourists from India visited Malaysia last year, less than Thailand and Singapore but rising. Easier visa access and more direct flights facilitate this. Malaysian Airlines is rapidly expanding to Tier II cities in India and providing connectivity in an unprecedented manner. By adding Amritsar, Thiruvananthapuram, and Ahmedabad recently, Malaysians now fly to nine Indian cities. Malaysia sees the advantage of engaging India’s rapid growth, and beyond tourism, this is anticipated to reach into economic and digital cooperation with a growing strategic congruence. The mutual attention given to each other by India and Malaysia is welcome and needs nurturing. The writer is a former ambassador to Germany, Indonesia, Ethiopia, ASEAN and the African Union. He tweets @AmbGurjitSingh. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely that of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views. Read all the  Latest News ,  Trending News ,  Cricket News ,  Bollywood News , India News  and  Entertainment News  here. Follow us on  Facebook,  Twitter and  Instagram.