INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Sri Lanka has a new president in nationalist outsider Anura Kumara Dissanayake
Image: Bloomberg4 min read Last Updated : Sep 26 2024 | 8:07 AM ISTBy Mihir Sharma
Sri Lanka has a new president in nationalist outsider
president and prime minister, protest leader Dissanayake prevailed against two well-connected centrists.
For regional behemoth India,
however, the results cap a troubling trend
Dissanayake has worried New Delhi because his party, the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna, made a name for itself in the 1980s with an anti-India
While the new president has tried to mend fences, including during a visit earlier this year, India will consider him a poor exchange for
have transformed South Asia
Earlier in the summer, K.P
current president, Mohamed Muizzu, to power in 2023
and foreign policy in close cooperation with India.
While internal developments obviously drove most of these political transitions,
Indian policy has done the country no favors
realpolitik is just short-sightedness
Indian officials were incensed at the time, insisting that the strong hand of the Burmese military was needed to manage the volatile border
Now anti-government rebels control large parts of that same frontier, making ties to the junta more of a liability than an asset.
It
When Prime Minister Narendra Modi was first elected in 2014, he invited leaders of neighboring nations to his swearing-in
He had an opportunity to reset relations with all of them and to create new partnerships based on economic integration and mutual respect
That has turned out to be a crucial mistake
If you see your neighbors primarily through a security lens, you risk picking allies and condoning behavior that together alienate large
swathes of the electorate
But the influence of its movies and media, which are followed closely across South Asia, can be unhelpful
After the Maldives election, popular Bollywood stars declared they would stop vacationing there
And the hyper-nationalist news media focuses relentlessly on stories that citizens of these smaller neighbors feel portray their countries
That would give policymakers some idea of what not to do, as well as what might work
hand, expecting smaller countries to kowtow is a mistake
Neither would-be superpower, though, can afford to ignore the aspirations of its neighbors.Disclaimer: This is a Bloomberg Opinion piece,
and these are the personal opinions of the writer
They do not reflect the views of www.business-standard.com or the Business Standard newspaperFirst Published: Sep 26 2024 | 7:51 AMIST
