While Delhi lets Chennai write its Lanka policy, China scripts new chapter

China, in contrast, has begun to assist Colombo to build a new world class port in the southern part of the island nation at Hambantota. While New Delhi is prepared to sacrifice the gains from economic integration with Colombo in order to appease Chennai, China is drawing Sri Lanka to the centre of its maritime strategy in the Indian Ocean.

In her talks with the Indian leaders tomorrow, the visiting Sri Lankan President Chandrika Kumaratunga would surely want to know if India has any long-term vision for strategic cooperation with her nation. India has justified the Sethusamudram project in the name of shortening the distance between her eastern and western coasts and avoiding the circumnavigation of the island.

In contrast, China is taking a strategic view of Sri Lanka’s geopolitical location across the shipping lanes of the Indian Ocean and is putting up money for the construction of a bunkering facility and oil tank farm at Hambantota. To be sure, India’s unbelievable short-sightedness on Sri Lanka appears to have strong bipartisan support in New Delhi.

It was the BJP-led coalition that sat on the proposal from Colombo to build a rail and road links between Dhanushkodi in Tamil Nadu and Talaimannar in Sri Lanka. The Congress-led coalition has now gone one step further by rushing to clear the Sethusamudram project. Both decisions were shaped by Chennai.

The land-bridge project, which was backed by the Asian Development Bank, would have provided an efficient transport corridor between the ports and road networks of Sri Lanka and southern India. Sri Lanka was also urging India to allow the development of Colombo into a major transshipment hub for South Indian commerce.

If Sri Lanka was looking at cooperative prosperity with India through sub-regional economic integration, Delhi has chosen to protect the parochial interests of Tamil Nadu. Unlike Bangladesh, which has not stopped protesting the controversial Indian river-linking project and Pakistan, which has whipped up concerns about Indian dam building in Kashmir, Sri Lanka has chosen to avoid a public spat with India on the Sethusamudram project.

But the issue is unlikely to disappear from the bilateral agenda. While Indian officials had informed authorities in Colombo last month about the impending decision on Sethusamudram, the project and its underlying premises are of profound concern for Sri Lanka.

Meanwhile China’s Huanqiu Engineering Corp has bagged the contract to develop Hambantota facility. Chinese economic assitance will pay for ten oil tanks and four pipelines at Hambantota. This infrastructure will help Sri Lanka to service the hundreds of ships that ply every week the sea lanes just south of the island.

Probably anticipating the inevitable Indian protests, Sri Lanka’s ports and aviation minister Mangala Samaraweera said last month that Colombo is determined to move ahead on Hanmbantota despite ‘‘vested interests’’ which had scuttled the project in the past. New Delhi can surely complain; but it has no one but itself to blame.