stick with carrot and stick?

The  Bhutanese Prime Minister recently said India makes a third in  Bhutan-China unresolved border. Was he speaking politically? Because, geographically, India has little to say regarding the border issue. It's Bhutan's land. Or if Bhutan accepts the package deal, China's. 

 

So, what was the context of his statement? Or was it appeasement which has been Bhutan’s foreign policy since Tshering Tobgay became Prime Minister in 2013? He campaigned on the premise of a strained relationship with India. The DPT government had done the straining by trying to normalise Bhutan’s relationship with China.

Though India denies it, who can say for certain the perfectly timed withdrawal of LPG subsidies did not catapult Tshering Tobgay and PDP to power? Most of us have conveniently forgotten that ancient age of 2013.

But New Delhi’s memory is not so short-termed. The mostly upper-caste, Brahmin-dominated India’s bureaucracy, as indeed the polity, has a good pedigree as far as memory is concerned. They carried their Vedas and Upanishads in a grand memory continuum for thousands of years until the words were committed to letters. New Delhi knows where to hit to get the donkey going.

So, isn’t it a political masterstroke to rope in India in an issue that India got no business getting into, especially since elections are around in Bhutan? And now that Druk Nyamrup Tshogpa wants to re-contest, how will the statement impact its prospects as India doesn't especially pleased with the accommodation he extended?

 

What is unfortunate is that the Indian media spoiled it all. While the statement did really demonstrate the extent to which Bhutan can accommodate Indian interests, often at the cost of its own goals, that Bhutan had spurned India is a dominant narrative. I don’t think it worked as well as it was intended to. So is New Delhi oiling its stick again? Will it withdraw some subsidy or refuse to buy the electricity developed in partnership between India and Bhutan? Something is up New Delhi's covert sleeves if it feels Dr Lotay Tshering has suddenly turned pro-China. The PM was neither pro-India nor pro-China; he was expressing Bhutan's right to exercise its choices. But India can't think beyond the binary of pro-India or pro-China. What is there in the offing anyway?

I am not sure. But roping in India, even symbolically, hasn’t worked well. How will China respond? China’s pressure is growing. Xi is impatient when it comes to the border. The earlier Chinese leaders weren’t as assertive as Xi it seems – at least not as assertive as Xi when it comes to the boundaries in the Himalayas. Xi is moving Tibetans closer to the borders, even inside the lands of other countries, as a way to revert the emptying of the border lands which was presumed to be a security threat to China’s territorial integrity at the boundaries.

Xi’s villages have propped up in Baeyul Khenpajong and other areas inside the disputed border with Bhutan. But until 2015 or about, these border villages weren’t there. The more we delay in settling the borders, the more incursion China will make. It seems China doesn’t wait.

And roping India in at Doklam will invariably lead to delays in border settlement. China will continue to make more incursions in the central north. It may even make its claim more assertive at Sakteng. Sakteng was meant to be a benign pressure point. We can’t say if it is still benign. Recently, it gave Chinese names to a couple of places in Arunachal Pradesh, a region China has consistently claimed South Tibet and hence a Chinese land illegally occupied by India. And this is not insignificant. Oh, they have some villages set up there as well. India’s capacity to defend against China is increasingly tested. Dr Jaishankar’s words on China being a bigger economy to the effect of saying what can I and the 56 inches chest do? weigh a lot vis-à-vis its place in the race with China for the sphere of influence. There we got a few points to think about.

The former international boundary secretary, the formidable late Dasho Pema Wangchuk, were the good soul alive, would confirm for us that every time we delayed talking about borders, China got more aggressive and built villages, roads—and all the paraphernalia it is using also at the South China sea– on the border with Bhutan and inside it.  

 

We are caught between carrot and stick and the fire. The joint statement released following His Majesty’s visit to India also doesn’t address the elephant in the room. Or the elephant in the nation. Indian army’s presence in Bhutan would be a security threat to China as much as China’s presence in Doklam would be to India. Can we wake and prod the elephant? I don’t think anytime soon.