1Recent years have seen major powers and agencies getting increasingly interested in the GMS. Amongst these external stakeholders, recent years have also seen changing trends in their respective access and proximity (read influence) amongst GMS counties. No doubt the initial opening up and reforms in early 1990s had been encouraged by the United States and the financial institutions – which, in return, obtained increased goodwill in GMS – yet China was to emerge as the greatest beneficiary of the East Asian financial crisis of 1996-1999. Beijing was to emerge unscathed from these financial crises as also to become the first one to respond and to come to the assistance of some of these affected countries. This was to obtain China’s acceptance which is far too substantial to go unnoticed. The pace of China’s engagement can be gauged from the fact that its bilateral trade with the five GMS countries, for instance, increased from being USD25.82 billion for 2005 to a phenomenal USD32 billion for the year 2005.60 This has clearly altered not only their inter-State equations but also lifestyles of local people.

2This strategic shift has clearly altered others and Japan was the other country to re-launch several initiatives to regain some of its lost ground to Beijing.61 From October 2005’s meeting in Vientiane, for instance, despite its Summits and other meetings in the ASEAN + 3 format, Tokyo has re-started regular economic ministerial meetings with four countries of the Mekong region–namely Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Viet Nam or CLMV countries.62 Similarly, Australia, the European Union, Russia have also launched fresh initiatives with GMS countries. Can India stay behind? This has been a question upfront for India’s diplomacy. And this has since compelled India’s academics, experts and policy - makers not only into exploring new initiatives but also in exploring India’s niche and unique selling point vis-à-vis these GMS countries.

1 - Hows and Whys of Engagement?

3As regards India, these developments have sure occasionally alerted New Delhi. Nevertheless, given its other preoccupations, after its initial enthusiastic start in year 2000, Indian diplomacy has often lagged in keeping pace with the increased footwork amongst and with these GMS countries. Apart from the slow down with the change in government in May 2004, more recent years have not seen any effective new initiatives or high-profile visits by Indian leadership. For instance, after back to back two visits by Prime Minister Vajpayee (Laos in November 2002 and Cambodia in April 2003) no high-level politician has visited GMS countries. In conventional wisdom though, Indian foreign policy continues to view engagement with GMS as critical for both its security and prosperity. In operational terms as well, this engagement continues to be appreciated as critical for India to resolve its difficulties in its northeastern region as also in stabilizing its relations with Myanmar in the short run and enable it to deal with rising Chinese influence in the long-run. But what are the positive and direct factors that can explain the hows and whys of India’s engagement with GMS countries? Answers to this question will be the most reliable indicators to the future challenges and prospects in India-GMS ties.

4To go back to the early 1990’s, goaded by its economic reforms in the 1990’s and frustrated by its long non-start with its western neighbor (Pakistan), New Delhi had launched its ‘Look East’ policy of engagement with ASEAN tigers which had clearly leaped over and almost ignored the least developed countries of Indochina whether in GMS or in BIMSTEC.63 This India-ASEAN relationship was driven primarily by economic motives.64 Accordingly, it was only with the similar economic reforms bearing fruit in case of GMS, and especially following its integration into ASEAN, that New Delhi chose to reformulate its Look East policy in its second phase from the late 1990’s. Also, by 1999, ASEAN had not only come to have common land boundaries with India but had also begun formulating Initiative for ASEAN Integration (IAI) which opened new avenues for India to engage in Indochina or GMS. In launching MGCI and later, repeated expressions of this understanding and intent were made from both sides.

5From India’s long-term perspective, engaging GMS is seen to assist India in “furthering its Look East policy” beyond economic relations. In the past, ASEAN had not been comfortable with India’s proximity with the former Soviet Union and India-ASEAN relations had remained only limited until the end of the Cold War.65 Participating in the Second MGCI Ministerial Meeting in Ha Noi, Indian representative, K C. Pant, was to underline ‘limitless possibilities’ for ‘functional’ cooperation with GMS. He also expressed India’s desire to be an equal partner in Initiative for ASEAN Integration (IAI) by undertaking projects in the IT sector and English language teaching in GMS countries.66 The sentiment had also its echo amongst GMS leadership. For instance, then-Viet Nam’s minister of foreign affairs, Nguyen Dy Nien, speaking in New Delhi in September 2001, was to describe MCGI as “very good mechanism that supplements the existing cooperation between India and ASEAN” while it also assists ASEAN in “narrowing the development gap through the implementation of IAI.”67 Similarly, Cambodian foreign minister, Hor Namhong, was to call MGCI “a very important initiative that could bring benefits to all its members including India” and sought India’s support for the implementation of the IAI flagship projects as envisaged under MGCI.68

2 - India’s Core Motivations

6Reciprocating to this new enthusiasm in India’s engagement with GMS in particular, and ASEAN in general, and reciprocating to India’s commitment and engagement, the Seventh ASEAN Summit meeting in Brunei in November 2001 was to invite New Delhi to start annual India-ASEAN summits. And appropriately, the First India-ASEAN Summit was held in Phnom Penh, Cambodia on 5^th November 2002. India used this opportunity to express its appreciation and announced a USD10 million line-of-credit for Cambodia and Laos, entered three agreements on trade, technical education and, for extending a Rs. 25-crore assistance for restoration of the one thousand-year old Ta Prohm temple, and offered also several tariff concessions for CLMV countries.69 But other then these specific gestures it is important to enlist and examine India’s core motivations that will determine the future of India-GMS ties.

7Firstly, India has had rather close cultural and civilizational links with the Burmese and Indochinese people since ancient times. Political divisions between them had come about only recently and were result of foreign colonialism.* This continuity was clearly reflected in their shared national liberation struggle and even in their nation building during their initial years until they were divided again, by the Cold War dynamics. India shares a long border with Myanmar and sees these countries as a gateway and springboard for India’s Look East policy, vision which remains a long-term guide to India’s foreign policy, and one that spans across Asia-Pacific.

8Secondly, India’s long-term interests remain influenced by China’s rise and its indulgence with Myanmar since the early 1990’s and with GMS from the late 1990’s; and it has since been pushing for a highway connecting Kunming to Bangkok.70 Amongst others, China wants to use these links to access the Indian Ocean which remains an issue of serious concern to both India as well as to GMS countries. India and GMS states have also been concerned about China’s manipulation of upstream waters of Brahmaputra and Mekong respectively. Restraining negative outcomes of China’s overindulgence in this region, therefore, becomes crucial though India seeks to achieve this through its peaceful engagement with both GMS and Beijing.

9Thirdly, free flow of people in this larger region had been reality of life throughout history. Discontinuity of these links remains at the core of India’s difficulties with its turmoil ridden northeastern provinces that continue to pose a major economic and security challenge to New Delhi. Therefore, much of the focus of MGCI remains on reviving this ‘connectivity’ and rail and road link have become a major focus of attention as they promise to raise the potential for cooperation with all these six countries. These efficient and affordable rail and road links can also reduce the response time in dealing with insurgents and other problem of law and order and epidemics.

10Fourthly, India-GMS economic cooperation in services sector, especially in the field of knowledge and/or ICT sectors can be beneficial for both sides. This will be equally profitable for Indian private companies which are becoming increasingly competitive. The overall purpose though remains to cement cultural and religious links and treat economic and trade and tourists flows and its influence in building social infrastructure as facilitators to achieve those long-term policy objectives. That is to say: we are friends and therefore we trade, and not that we trade therefore we are friends.

11And finally, from ancient value systems to the modern shared history of decolonization, India has a lot to learn from and lot to offer to Southeast Asian nations.71 Though not all the MGCI projects have taken-off very successfully, and in multilateral and inter-regional format of cooperation yet, it clearly underlines the increased and long-term interest of Indian foreign policymakers in engaging GMS countries.

3 - Mutual Complementarities

12India’s MGCI initiative has been conceptualized as integral part of India’s economic diplomacy with strong cultural underpinnings. By encouraging business contacts between people on both sides, Indian business is expected to get out of its simplistic approach of defining India’s ‘Look East’ policy as engagement with the rapidly developing rich original six of ASEAN. The MGCI intends building bridges with least developed countries where India’s presence had become weak over the years. This also wishes to underline the social responsibility of private sector and to emphasis how this may rebound on them on the long run. Some of them, like Thailand and Viet Nam have been catching up rapidly in recent years. In that sense, MGC presents an opportunity for Indian companies, which can provide world standard products at competitive prices to GMS countries. This will also assist Indian companies in enhancing their competitiveness on global basis.

13India has the capability to assist the CLMV countries especially in the agricultural sector, in terms of technology transfer and skills training.72 Besides initiatives like MGCI are also expected to facilitate the economic development of India’s northeast which has continued to present both a political and development challenge to New Delhi. If there exists sufficient trade and industry in India’s northeastern region, overland trade via Myanmar to many MGC countries will become a worthwhile proposition for India. Besides, there could be indirect long-term benefits. By strengthening relations with Myanmar, India could emphasize Pan Buddhist links with ASEAN. Winning over South-East Asian friends could help India in fighting the problem of Muslim extremist movements in the region. MGCI has the potential to deliver increased volume of trade if the highway linking the countries of the region would be extended to link Singapore with New Delhi through regional capitals such as Kuala Lumpur, Ho Chi Minh City, Phnom Penh, Bangkok and others.73 These can become nodal points for their cooperation and connectivity.

4-Why is China not part of MGCI?

14No discussion on MGCI can be complete without answering a question about the absence of China upfront. Several experts had often raised this issue and, especially at its beginning, many academic and media commentaries had sought to view MGCI as a policy of ‘balancing China.’74 There is no doubt that confining MGCI to a negatively driven exercise–as this remains an underlying and unarticulated sentiment on both sides, will undermine its vision and potential. Chinese leaders were themselves to come forward and discourage any such negative speculations by welcoming MGCI. However, Chinese have also occasionally expressed their desire to joint MGCI. But since no formal request has ever been made, India has not formally responded to these reports. From the Indian side as well this was clarified by the then foreign minister, Jaswant Singh, that the MGCI “was not aimed at China, nor a means of increasing India’s power projection.”75

15Indeed, it is precisely keeping these possibilities in mind that perhaps the MGCI had been so named after two rivers so as to emphasize its cultural and civilizational overtones and to ensure that this is not misunderstood as any military or strategic initiative. India perhaps also wanted to project this as its unique selling point amongst external stakeholders and sought to achieve economic and security partnership but one based on mutual comfort and conformity of two sides and through people-to-people contacts rather than military arrangements or alliances. This point was again sought to be underlined by the then minister of foreign affairs in November 2000. He hoped that MGCI would lead to “closer interactions at the people-to-people level” in view of their “unbroken cultural continuity that formed the bedrock for the fundamental stability of [these] societies.”76 By comparison, China’s policies are still perceived as driven by compulsions and ambitions of a rapidly rising power and by its economic drivers.77 So, despite its rhetoric about ‘peaceful development’, China’s diplomacy with GMS has moved from ‘rule accepting’ to ‘agenda setting’ which often creates a disjunction between China and other GMS countries.78 Often, the GMS countries are not able to keep pace with China in exploiting their common resources and this is especially true for the use of Mekong for navigation, power generation, irrigation, fishing and so on. India, on the other hand, finds its methods and pace much closer to these GMS countries and China’s entry into MGCI, accordingly, could distort its nature and priorities.

16There is no shying away from the fact that the absence of China from MGCI may also be politically driven. Both China and India have been a major influence and concern for each other’s engagement with Indochina since ancient times. For many, the expression ‘Indochina’ had historically evolved to describe territories that had been a buffer between Indian and Chinese expansionism. By extension, the two are expected to confront each other again here in the 21^st century. Almost untill early modern times, China and India had directly or indirectly controlled (or influenced) many of these territories.79 It is shipping between China and India that was the major source of life for at least these coastal communities. During the fifteenth century, the Sultan of Malacca was the richest and most powerful and commanded loyalty from most minor sultans of the rest of the peninsula, thanks to his revenues generated from China-India shipping.80 Therefore it is not unusual that China had been absent from MGCI so far.

17India anyway has an extensive and booming direct relationship with China and both China and India remain engaged with the GMS in their own manner. For instance, despite India’s extensive experience in river navigation and river environment management, India has not been part of China’s navigational and river environment management projects of China that had begun far earlier than MGCI. Also, MGCI is not the only regional forum not to comprise Beijing. BIMST-EC and ACMECS (Thailand) can be cited as other such agencies. Lately though, India-China relations have been improving rapidly and sustained confidence building between China and India have resulted in a sea change in their mutual policies.81 To cite the two most appropriate examples, in year 2005, while China was invited to be an Observer in the India-dominated South Asian Association for Region Cooperation (SAARC), India became an Observer in the China-dominated Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). Time is not far when China would also be welcome in other Sub-regional forums like the BIMSTEC or the MGCI. Already, in the MGCI multilateralism, China was invited to participate in the Mekong Development Forum (MDF) that was held in New Delhi on 10^th November 2005.

5-Future Trends

18In the end, all the experiences of the last decade do portend to an accelerated integration of the Mekong countries into ASEAN as also to India’s growing engagement with these countries. In its outline on Vision 2020 and the Ha Noi Action Plan, which provides a detailed roadmap for socio-economic development of the region, ASEAN remains focused on creating incentives to integrate CLMV countries in the region. India with its traditional and cultural linkages with this region has unique advantage and can play a crucial role in realizing this ASEAN vision. However, in the last five years there has been few high-level visits from the Indian side and, for all the initial diplomatic rhetoric, the MGCI has not received adequate attention to keep pace with growing indulgence by other stakeholder countries. For instance, India’s Ministry of External Affairs has until now not yet designated a single official or desk to focus exclusively on its initiatives with the GMS countries let alone for the MGCI. Its official website has absolutely little to offer in terms of any information or outline on India’s policy or activities with regard to MGCI. This makes it difficult to convert great vision into material reality.

19Given the fact that affordability also remains a major issue in promoting ties with the GMS countries there is need for greater focus on open sources, to follow ADBs strategy. In this direction India’s IT capabilities could be of great help in cultivation of the GMS and in involving non-governmental agencies. Institutions like the Research and Information System for Non-aligned and Other Developing Countries (RIS), Consumer Unity and Trust Society (CUTS), and the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) have done some commendable work in holding awareness workshops and in imparting training to GMS compatriots, further strengthening the official MGCI.

20Secondly, India’s IT and pharmaceuticals sectors have witnessed great demand within MGCI, yet human capital constraint has often adversely affected quality training in these countries. India known for its capacities for institutional arrangements for bringing about high quality manpower can really be of help to these countries.82

21Thirdly, in the area of cultural relations, though there have been exchange of artists, scholars, educationists etc. between India and the GMS, they should not be confined to the respective capitals and big cities alone.

22And finally, beyond periodical meetings and exchanges of officials, academics and experts for training and exposure, greater emphasis needs to be put on people-to-people contacts for enhancing mutual awareness and on technology transfers given our vast overlapping priority areas.83 So, there is need for footwork to fully utilize this vast potential which promises to generate limitless tangible and intangible benefits for both sides.