Maldives turnaround shows why India's setback in Bangladesh will not be permanent

A wave of pessimism has descended on Indians since the time the ‘pro-India’ leader Sheikh Hasina was ousted from power in Bangladesh, and her opponents, including the Bangladesh Nationalist Party and Jamaat-e-Islami, have become dominant in the new scheme of things. There is no doubt that Hasina’s stay in power helped India achieve its key strategic goals in the region with a stable ally in the east, but not all is lost with her exit either.

In fact, the tendency to declare every day as a doomsday sometimes stretches it too far and closes the avenue for meaningful cooperation with anyone who is at the helm in the neighbourhood. Just like we can’t choose our neighbours, we also can’t choose their leadership, and despite not getting a favourable hand at power sometimes, common sense dictates that the engagement mustn’t stop.

This is because in the absence of India, the vacuum would be filled by another power, and that would not bode well for Indian interests at all. The sense of despair which is dominating our current state of mind regarding Bangladesh is not new. A similar loss of optimism had occurred early this year when our relations with another neighbour had soured due to the implementation by their new leadership of an “India Out” policy. Today India is back in the saddle with a very successful visit by Foreign Minister S Jaishankar that just concluded this week with the general sentiment from the Maldives government being “Welcome India”.

In 2023, when Mohamed Muizzu won the presidential elections with 54 per cent votes, the writing was on the wall for India that relations with this country will definitely hit a roadblock in the new president’s tenure. After all, Muizzu had contested the elections with a jingoistic poll pitch of ‘India Out’, where he had successfully created a narrative around the country’s overt influence in the Maldives’ domestic affairs. The centrepiece of his charge against India was the presence of Indian troops in the Maldives that were actually stationed for non-combat roles and whose only responsibility was to operate the defence equipment and helicopters gifted by India to the Maldives. They were also playing a key role by training the Maldivian National Defence Force for disaster response.

However, Muizzu’s desire to benefit politically from an anti-India sentiment superseded the Maldives’s national interest, and he came to power by accusing India of baseless charges. Once in power, he made sure that he delivered on his promise by actually seeing ‘India Out’ when the 90-odd Indian military personnel stationed in the country were removed at his behest in May 2024. Interestingly, those military personnel were replaced by Indian civilians only, who were designated as a technical team to assist in the operation of equipment in the Maldives.

The ouster of Indian troops from the country was accompanied by another strain in ties when a section of politicians in the Maldives started terming PM Modi’s promotion of tourism in Lakshadweep island as an attempt to target the tourism sector in the Maldives. It was a very absurd charge that had no factual base at all. A joke by a few Indian social media accounts was taken to this non-sensical level, and the result was a diplomatic fallout between India and the Maldives.

Cut to August 2024, and the relations between the two countries seem to have taken a 180-degree turn. In marking the first high-level visit from New Delhi to the Maldives after Muizzu came to power, S Jaishankar has concluded a fruitful tour of the country just this week. During the visit, he not only met President Muizzu and conveyed the good wishes of Indian PM Narendra Modi to him, but he also took stock of the India-funded projects that are being executed in the Maldives. This includes the Greater Male Connectivity Project, which is being funded by an Indian grant of $100 million and a line of credit of $400 million. Once ready, it will link the Maldives’ capital Male to Villingli, Gulhifalhu, and Thilafushi islands. Jaishankar also launched a new ₹923 crore project for proper sanitation facilities in around 28 islands in the Maldives.

The project will provide climate-resilient and cost-effective water and sewerage systems to around 7 per cent of the Maldives’ total population. Thanking him for this gesture, President Muizzu wrote on X that the partnership between India and the Maldives will continue to endure. Interestingly, Muizzu has also toned down the anti-India rhetoric as observed in the last few months. While delivering a speech on the occasion of his country’s independence day, he expressed his “sincere gratitude” towards India for “easing their debt repayment burden” and enabling the country to ensure its “economic sovereignty”.

This is a complete U-turn from the times when he wanted ‘India out’ and accused the country of breaching the sovereignty of the Maldives. This is not all; in the same speech, he also mentioned that he is negotiating a free trade agreement as well as a currency swap arrangement hinting at broadening trade ties with India.

From India Out to Welcome India, what exactly has changed in the Maldives? First of all, despite simmering anger among Indians towards the Maldives, the Indian government kept its pragmatic side alive by continuing to engage with the Muizzu leadership. President Muizzu was invited to India during PM Modi’s swearing-in ceremony in June with a budgetary aid of $50 million rolled over for another year by India. India even raised its development assistance to the Maldives by around 50 per cent in the interim budget before the Modi government went for re-election.

Despite the tensions between the two countries, India kept its promise to spend around ₹800 crore on various development projects in the country. India’s refusal to let the Maldives slip away into the embrace of any extra-regional power was accompanied by the Maldives’ own predicaments. For all the vitriolic hate that their leadership keeps throwing on India, the truth is that they are in a deep economic crisis with around $1 billion in dues that they have to pay to the market in 2026. They can’t bank on anyone else except India, which keeps easing their debt servicing burden by rolling over its share of debt to the Maldives on a continual basis. It did this in May; it may again do it in September.

Even in terms of security, the Maldives, as an Indian Ocean country with a vast access to 900,000 square km as an exclusive economic zone, is heavily dependable on India for its protection from non-state actors such as drug paddlers, arms smugglers, and pirates. India has been its primary security partner for a long time now, which steadily supplies gifts in the form of defence equipment to the small island nation. Even in terms of economy as well, the tourism sector is the mainstay of the Maldivian economy, with threats of boycott from Indians bringing the country under great pressure. After a 42 per cent dip in tourists, their foreign minister paid a visit to India in May, appealing to Indians to visit the Maldives as their economy is dependent on it. They are even undertaking a fresh attempt to invite Indian tourists to the country by holding outreach campaigns in key Indian cities that say “Welcome India”.

Clearly, there is a marked change in India-Maldives relations now where the latter has finally realised that its dependence on India is too deep to be wished away. Also, the Indian government must also be praised for cultivating as many levers as possible in the Maldives that can be utilised for India’s strategic interests in the region.

Diplomatic relations in a neighbourhood are never set in stone, and the Maldives is a good example of the same. What’s seeming like an end of the road may be just a bad turn, after which the transit will be smoother and much better. So many examples have proven this in the last decade. At one time, India was written off in Sri Lanka as well, but we all saw what happened in 2022. In 2024, we are seeing the same in the case of the Maldives as well.

This brings us to the hot question of the current times: what about Bangladesh? Well, India has again shown pragmatism in giving Hasina a safe passage for a later day when Awami League workers would need a leadership face for revival. At the same time, India is also engaging with the interim government as well. In politics, we can never write off any of the players. The wise course is to build bridges across all sides of the spectrum. No matter who rules Bangladesh, the development assistance from India, the hope of getting bailed out like the Maldives and Sri Lanka from debt-ridden bad days, the charm of the large Indian market, and the security from its military prowess will always be on their minds.

After all, if Bangladesh is such a huge economic success story, then a key role was also played by India, as recognised in their internal vision documents. The people there may have grudges with India today, but they will soon come around, as many of them have admitted to the author in private conservations. Today’s India understands that neighbourhood diplomacy is hinged on continued engagement, and the results are there for all of us to see.

The author is a New Delhi-based commentator on geopolitics and foreign policy. She holds a PhD from the Department of International Relations, South Asian University. She tweets @TrulyMonica. The views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views.