OBOR around India

The Chinese President has called it ‘project of the century’. But India apparently wants no part of it. At the Beijing summit feting One Belt, One Road (OBOR) last week, India chose to boycott. By not sending even its observers, India went way further than other OBOR skeptics. Even the US, South Korea, and many EU countries attended, in some official capacity. Heads of IMF and World Bank were also there.

The Indian government, in addition to its reservations over CPEC, last week started questioning the financial viability of the OBOR projects and the sovereign consequences of Chinese loans going bad in its neighbourhood. As for China, it gave signals from the summit that they are still open to the possibility of India joining the nearly trillion-dollar franchise.

Being an OBOR outlier has stoked heated debate in India. The Indian press seemed divided last week on India’s absence from the summit. Some newspapers and commentators argued that India was right to resist OBOR for many reasons. One is that, CPEC, OBOR’s key flank, passes through highlands India claims as its own. Another is that debt-soaked OBOR masks Chinese hegemonic designs in the region.

The other, more benign perspective coming out was that since OBOR is inevitable and it has great scope for regional connectivity and economic development, therefore India must rethink its opposition as continued resistance may prove futile. This side warns that it is a mistake to sit out while India’s needy neighbours partake in connectivity projects that India is also desperately in need of building.

It is anybody’s guess which argument will eventually pan out. But the talk of India staring at regional isolation (due to it not playing a balancing act on OBOR) is a little premature at this stage. India and China will try to iron out their differences given what is at stake. This, of course, includes a thriving bilateral trading relationship. But also important is the need to maintain regional stability by observing a peaceful conduct on the border between the first- and second-largest nations on earth.

While the Chinese would likely not forget the Indian snub, they are too pragmatic and process-oriented to let it come in the way of potential future cooperation. India, after all, is a key part of BCIM Economic Corridor (another among OBOR’s many corridors) that is expected to connect India with China via Bangladesh and Myanmar. There is already pressure on India to re-start the stalled BCIM talks

.Misgivings are understandable when two large countries are competing to become regional powers, and especially so when they share a disputed land border and distant memories of a short, aggressive war. But being the weaker side, India remains perennially preoccupied with China’s regional influence. And that will keep India away from accepting a project championed by the Chinese.

If the game is indeed about growing one’s regional influence, the Indians seem to be short of diplomatic currency these days. Under Modi government, last year India decisively put the country into American orbit. The election of Donald Trump has made that bet uncertain. Trump wants to do business with China but tighten the noose around Iran – this is precisely the opposite of what New Delhi was hoping last year.

As its neighbours warm up to OBOR, India seems short of good choices. If things don’t change drastically, India would be wise to sign up for OBOR. But will it?