HYDERABAD
20 MARCH 2012
The protestations from Tamil Nadu chief minister J Jayalalithaa and her rival and DMK
patriarch M Karunanidhi over India's vote on Sri Lanka later this week, coming as they
do months after West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee vetoed an agreement on
the sharing of the Teesta river waters with Bangladesh, has further fuelled anxiety in
South Block, which also houses the ministry of external affairs (MEA.)
The precedent being set by the Centre caving in or succumbing to the States on matters
that fall in the domain of foreign policy is worrying for India, and more so for the
practitioners of diplomacy in the MEA.
Already, India's engagement of Pakistan on one hand and China and Burma on the other
are determined to an extent by the domestic conditions prevalent in Jammu and Kashmir
and the north-eastern states, respectively.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh betrayed his frustration when he said in the Lok Sabha
that difficult decisions were getting more difficult because of coalition compulsions. He
called for bipartisanship in the interest of the country.
However, not everybody is pessimistic. Lalit Mansingh, a former foreign secretary and a
former ambassador to the US, echoes the sentiments of many who believe that this trend
should not be unwelcome.
"Foreign policy today is made not only in New Delhi but elsewhere, too. There are
multiple stakeholders and one can't deny states a say in foreign policy if it relates to
them," Mr Mansingh told this newspaper. So, if the states assert their rights and seek
more consultations, then the Centre must respect those sentiments, he notes.
Equally worrying for New Delhi would be the erosion in its standing in what it calls its
sphere of influence. The ongoing debate over which way India should vote on a UNHRC
resolution on Sri Lanka is instructive in that it illustrates how far India has come from
being an influential player in its own backyard to a marginal or fringe player.
Irrespective of whether India joins the US, France, Norway and others in voting for the
resolution as Prime Minister Manmohan Singh indicated in the Lok Sabha, or abstains,
which is not ruled out if the resolution is not worded to its satisfaction, the non-binding
resolution is most likely to fall through.
Colombo is sanguine about the outcome of the March 23 vote in Geneva. It believes it
has the numbers required to defeat the resolution. China, Russia, Pakistan, Cuba,
Indonesia, Thailand and others from the Asian and the African regional groups in the 47-
member UNHRC have indicated that they would oppose it.
If that is a probability, then is it advisable for New Delhi to vote for the resolution and
risk losing whatever goodwill and leverage it might have with Colombo? At the same
time optimists take the view that Colombo would be helping itself, and India, by agreeing
to some concessions on the language of the draft resolution and by putting forward a
roadmap for a political solution of the ethnic conflict.
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