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India’s Myanmar Policy An Alternative Roadmap
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Ann Koppuzha  on August 30, 2008 08:39:00
 
Saffron was the color of the month as thousands of civilians and monks clad in
orange robes dramatically protested in Rangoon last August. Amidst the ensuing
civil disturbance, the Indian External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee
commented, rather anti-climatically, that, “As a close and friendly neighbor,
India hopes to see a peaceful, stable and prosperous Myanmar... Myanmar’s
process of national reconciliation initiated by the authorities should be
expedited.”
The above quote exemplifies India’s policy of “pragmatic engagement”
which, for strategic reasons, entails engaging, rather than condemning and
isolating the Burmese junta. However, those who agree with this position fail to
realize that India’s cooperation with Burma has yet to yield tangible benefits
for New Delhi and may even be hurting India’s long term goals. What should be
India’s interest in Myanmar? To maintain the status quo, or to reform the
Burmese government gradually?
INDIA’S MYANMAR POLICY:  A PROFILE
Initially, India strongly supported the pro-democracy movement in Burma and
Aung San Suu Kyi.  In the mid-1990s, it changed course and began to provide
weapons and tacit support to the Burmese junta. India’s about-face regarding
its policy toward Burma was driven by four motivations: access to natural
resources, desire to expand Indian influence in Southeast Asia, combat
insurgencies in north east India, and balance against growing Chinese influence.
India’s attempts to access Burma’s natural resources and counter China’s
influence have been unsuccessful thus far and are unlikely to succeed due to
Burma’s security considerations. Access to Burma’s oil and gas reserves is
probably the most important consideration in Indo-Burma relations.
Yet despite the fact that India has ignored pressure from Western powers to
speak out and take action against Myanmar, the A-1 and A-3 blocks of gas off the
coast of Burma were awarded to China. The concession went to China, because in
January 2007, China exercised the almighty scepter of international relations,
its Security Council veto, against a joint United States and United Kingdom
resolution to condemn the Burmese government’s human rights violations, urge
them to release Suu Kyi, and encourage the junta to begin the process of
democratic transition.
Although Rangoon’s leaders are known to be suspicious of Chinese influence
over their country, they are also primarily concerned with regime survival and
India does not have the international political influence that China has to
stifle claims for regime change. Therefore, India will never be able to provide
Burma with the security guarantees that China can, so long as the junta is in
power. As a result, it is unlikely that in a competition over resources or
political influence between India and China, Burma would choose India. In such a
situation, India’s interest is in seeing a more politically open and less
repressive Burma, which has fewer reasons to rely on China politically.
Another reason why India believed it was worthwhile to bolster its relations
with Burma is because New Delhi wants to expand its political, economic, and
cultural relationship with Southeast Asia. Building physical links between India
and the region will assist the transportation of goods, services, and people,
which in turn, will strengthen India’s presence in the region. One step toward
this goal was the 2001 opening of the Moreh-Tamu-Kalemyo road, which connects
India and Burma.
India has also initiated and agreed to finance the entire Kaladan multi-modal
project, which aims to develop the Sittwe port in Myanmar’s south-west as well
as waterways and highways along the Kaladan River to receive goods from India.
In the future, India plans to continue expanding its road and rail links with
Southeast Asia through Burma.
However, the problem is that many of the transportation links that India
proposes run through areas controlled by ethnic groups and militants that demand
autonomy or a separate state. Consequently, these groups can disrupt any
peaceful India-Burma transportation and India’s desire to use Burma as a
conduit for Southeast Asia will not be secure as long as the military junta
refuses to accommodate the various ethnic groups within its national framework.
If India does seek to use Burma as a passageway for its expanded presence in
south-east Asia, it has a stake in ensuring that Burma is less repressive of its
ethnic communities and more open to political compromise.
The Indian government also believes that it needs to engage the military junta
and provide weapons that the Burmese government can use against Indian
secessionist groups, such as the United Liberation Front of Assam (ULFA) that
are seeking safe haven in Burma. At least twelve groups are believed to have
bases in Myanmar. India has already provided Burma with military equipment but
Burma has also requested helicopters, submarines, and surveillance aircraft. The
arms vending has not been entirely successful because despite joint
India-Myanmar cooperation in 1995 to evict insurgency groups from Myanmar, the
majority of insurgents still live freely within Myanmar’s borders.
Furthermore, other activists claim that they have witnessed Indian rebels using
Burmese weapons. Such weapons are usually strictly regulated by the Burmese
military, indicating some collusion between the two groups. Moreover, the
Burmese junta has an incentive to continue the north-eastern guerilla campaigns
in order to guarantee that India will supply weapons that it can use both to
minimally fight guerilla groups and oppress its own people. In this situation
the Indian government’s interest is not in supporting the Burmese dictatorship
but in political reform that would allow a government to come to power that had
little reason to support an internal conflict in India.
Thus, India’s current policy toward Burma does not withstand careful
analysis. India has only made minimal, if any, progress at achieving its goals.
MYANMAR: INDIA’S LONG TERM GOALS
India’s support for the Burmese military undermines the country’s long term
foreign policy goals. In a speech given in October 2007, Indian Foreign
Secretary Shri Shivshankar Menon outlined India’s foremost foreign policy
goals. According to the Foreign Secretary, these goals were to help India secure
an external environment conducive to internal economic development. They are,
“Firstly, ensuring a peaceful periphery; secondly, improving relations with
the major powers; and, thirdly, issues of the future namely food security,
water, energy and environment.” On all three of these issues, however,
India’s current position toward Burma goes against its stated objectives.
When Menon emphasized the importance of creating a neighborhood of peace and
prosperity, evaluated the various paths to political stability taken by
India’s neighbors, and discussed India’s role in these processes, he
conveniently ignored Burma. It is the only country that shares a border with
India that goes without mention. This is because Indo-Burmese relations are
obviously a direct challenge to the Indian government’s goal of building a
peaceful and prosperous South Asia. Under the current military junta, Burma is
neither peaceful nor prosperous. Rather, relations between the junta and the
population are tense because the people are suffering. Nearly one third of
children under five are malnourished and malaria and tuberculosis are rampant.
In such a climate, India should fear the same problem that China fears from
Burma: an influx of refugees. Already many Burmese workers seeking work cross
into North East India and there are officially 70,000 Burmese refugees in India.
Authorities speculate that unofficially the number is twice as many. If the
situation in Burma worsens politically or economically, refugees from Burma
could seek shelter in India where they share cultural ties with Indians in the
North East. Since the North East is also not a peaceful and prosperous region,
an influx of refugees, bringing with them disease and other problems, could
threaten the tenuous cease-fire that has recently been reached in the region
with many insurgent groups. Creating additional problems in the seven sister
states is obviously against India’s efforts to develop internally. Hence,
India should not risk this possibility and should work with the Burmese
government to ease the humanitarian situation in Burma.
The second of India’s preeminent foreign policy concerns is strengthening
India’s relationship with the major powers. India’s refusal to budge from
its Burma position has not earned it any friends in the west. Instead, working
to bring about a change in Burma, will win India respect from the major powers.
Portraying itself as a responsible and benign power could even bolster India’s
argument for a permanent Security Council seat.
Furthermore, if India desires to see itself as a major global actor and not
just a second rate nation that is unsuccessfully trying to catch up with China,
India should take strong offensive measures to shape the world according to its
interests. Changing Indian policy toward Burma and leading the reform process
would heighten India’s international prestige exponentially. Any success that
India can achieve in Burma will demonstrate the nation’s political prowess and
thus will only ease India’s acceptance into the elite power club.
Another aspect of this larger goal is improving India-China relations.
Currently, India is pursuing a policy of engaging China rather than directly
competing with it. In Burma, however, India is directly competing with China
both over resources and political influence. India has the opportunity to alter
this relationship by recognizing that China and other major Asian nations such
as Thailand and Japan have an interest in preventing a human crisis in Burma and
making this the basis of dialogue between these nations.
The last goal that Menon mentioned was securing India’s access to natural
resources. As mentioned earlier, as long as the junta invokes the West’s
disapproval, it will rely on China to wield its political power to protect it
from Western military action, additional UN sanctions, or UN resolutions. In
return, China will demand access to Burma’s resources, assuring that India
will lose the battle for resources and influence.
Similar is the situation with Chinese construction of naval bases in Burma as
part of the Chinese plan to establish a naval presence throughout the Indian
Ocean. As long as the Burmese feel that they need the Chinese, they will
continue to favor China over India.
Menon also mentioned food insecurity as a problem facing India. At the time of
Independence, Burma was one of the world’s leading rice producers. Since then
poor policies have led to a sharp fall in rice production. Supporting the
generals and their pitiful economic management has hurt, not helped, India’s
food needs.
THE ROAD AHEAD FOR INDIA
In order to achieve its economic and political goals, India should work to
change the status quo of the Burmese government and persuade them that it is in
their best interest to slowly, gradually, initiate the process toward economic
improvement and democratic transition and avoid a human crisis. As of yet, most
of the economic activity in Burma is strictly controlled by the generals to
their benefit. Perhaps a starting point for reform would be encouraging the
military to reform their economic policies to give average citizens access to
economic opportunity or improve the nation’s agricultural production, both to
feed their hungry population and to sell to neighboring India.
Another starting point could be persuading the Burmese government to reach an
understanding with the multiple ethnic groups that are fighting the military
junta. India can argue that problems with these groups must be resolved before
the Burmese and Indian governments can discuss transportation and economic
linkages.
To incite Burma to cooperate with India on transportation and economic issues,
the Indian government should exploit the xenophobia and suspicion of China that
characterizes Rangoon’s leaders. India should stress the extensive control
that China has now gained over Burma and reiterate that China favors political
and social stability to ensure its economic interests and fears an influx of
Burmese refugees and the spread of diseases into neighboring Chinese provinces.
India can counsel Burmese leaders that if China thinks that the junta cannot
stabilize the country and prevent a human catastrophe, it will not hesitate to
cooperate with Western nations and allow a regime change in Burma. Such an
action will only augment China’s prestige within the international community
and would be in line with Beijing’s recent efforts to develop a positive image
of itself within the international community.
Cooperating with India on infrastructure projects and gradual economic
deregulation and openness will help the regime maintain stability in Burma by
improving the standard of living of citizens, temper calls for a regime change
from Western nations, and counter China’s domineering relationship with the
junta.
At the same time, India should also initiate multiparty dialogues with other
Asian nations, particularly China, to coordinate pressurizing the Burmese junta
toward reform. This action will create a basis of commonality from which India
could enhance its cooperation and downplay its competition with China. If the
efforts of these nations are successful in pursuing gradual economic and
political reform, the Burmese government will have less of a reason to rely on
Beijing. This will give India a chance to access Burma’s natural resources and
limit the construction of Chinese naval bases in Burma. Additionally, initiating
regional cooperation over Burma will demonstrate to the international community
that India is a capable and willing regional power that should be consulted for
the resolution of regional problems.
Regional cooperation does entail a prisoner’s dilemma where the greatest good
to the parties involves cooperation but each party has an incentive to ignore
the others and preserve its own interests. In an attempt to counter this
prospect, India should emphasize that the current situation is not sustainable
and it is only a matter of time before Burma threatens the stability in Asia.
Change is required and since no one nation can urge Burma to change, regional
cooperation is the option that favors the interests of neighboring states.
Perhaps India can try pursing regional cooperation first, and if it fails, move
on to using the xenophobia of the Burmese generals against them.
Ideally, after gradually making economic reforms, the Indian government should
encourage political reform, bearing in mind that an immediate democratic
transition would be unsustainable since there is no group of individuals in
Burma, aside from the junta, who are trained adequately in governance.
Ann Koppuzha is a Research Intern at the IPCS