Modi’s mission: strengthen the Chicken’s Neck

The decision of new Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to make his first overseas visit to the Kingdom of Bhutan has come as a shock to other countries in the region.

Bhutan, a tiny landlocked nation of around 740,000 people tucked in at the eastern end of the Himalayas, at first sight seems a strange choice of destination, rather as if a new Australian PM had chosen Kiribati or Tuvalu for a first visit.

Look a little closer and there are good reasons Modi made Thimphu the first capital to pay his respects as Indian leader. The country shares a border with both India and China and it is Beijing which has been making the diplomatic headway there in recent times.

While India has been preoccupied with internal problems, China has stolen several diplomatic marches on the country’s doorstep, establishing its presence in Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Pakistan. Only this year it overtook India as the biggest foreign investor in Nepal.

While Bhutan has so far resisted Beijing’s attempts to cosy up – the countries have a disputed border with no resolution in sight – its normally close relations with New Delhi received a setback when the previous Government suspended the supply of subsidised kerosene and liquid petroleum gas to the kingdom.

Modi’s aim was to get relations back on track. He promised to speed work on three hydro-electric projects, which will benefit both countries, double the number of scholarships for Bhutanese students in India and create an e-library containing more than two million books and periodicals.

All this is aimed at strengthening Indo-Bhutan ties and fortifying Thimphu’s resolve when its border talks resume with China next month. The nightmare scenario for New Delhi would be Bhutan being bullied into concessions, especially on its western borders, which would put more pressure on the Siliguri Corridor, or Chicken’s Neck, a narrow sliver of territory that is the only connection with India’s seven north-eastern states, one of which, Arunachal Pradesh, is claimed by Beijing as ‘Southern Tibet’.  

If mending fences was the Indian Prime Minister’s principle aim, his visit appears to have been an unqualified success. At a state banquet, Bhutan’s Prime Minister, Lyonchen Tshering Tobgay, praised his counterpart and called for India to be given a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council.

China’s reaction to the visit was muted with the state-run Xinhua news agency quoting Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying as saying China was glad to see its neighbours developing friendly relations with each other.

However, it is clear that China’s diplomatic offensive in South Asia has received a small but significant setback.