Last week India and Sri Lanka resumed a scheduled ferry service between the subcontinent and the island after a hiatus of 40 years. The ferry service - Cheriyapani, links Nagapattinam, Tamil Nadu with Kankesanthurai in the Northern Province of Sri Lanka. Decades ago, the Indo-Ceylon Express that operated between the port city of Thoothukudi and Colombo through Chennai stopped operating in 1982 when the conflict in Sri Lanka escalated.
The resumption of the service is viewed as a milestone for Indo – Lanka relations, and was part of the agenda to improve linkages with India, discussed between President Ranil Wickremesinghe and Indian Premier Narendra Modi during a recent meeting in New Delhi. In 2020, India and Sri Lanka signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU). The project, under the India-Sri Lanka Joint Committee, is aimed at revitalising regional trade and tourism and fostering stronger people-to-people relations. The resumption of the ferry service was however delayed due to infrastructure issues on both ends, and in the selection of a service provider.
India and Sri Lanka are also in discussions to link the South Indian power grid, with that of energy hungry Sri Lanka and plans are being discussed to establish 600km long bi-directional petroleum pipeline to supply Sri Lanka with its petrol, diesel, and kerosene needs from the Indian Oil Corporation-owned new refinery in Cauvery Basin, Nagapattinam, Tamil Nadu. The envisaged pipeline will likely have a 70km subsea section across the Palk Strait, it is learnt. The oil pipeline project is also viewed as a measure to improve the troubled islands “energy security” by both governments, a view that many trade unions do not share. However, trade unions seldom view any change to the status quo as something positive, and have long pushed a nationalist protectionist narrative, arguing that the State must be in absolute control of all utilities. The experience from the last 70 years post-Independence would argue otherwise.
Improving Indo-Lanka linkages has merit and would certainly help Sri Lanka, as shown during the crisis period of the recent past. President Wickremesinghe and his predecessor, Rajapaksa have both signalled a need for closer ties with India, particularly on security related issues.
However, once Sri Lanka puts aside the habitual naysayers in the political and trade union spectrum, and rise above the inward looking policies, the island nation needs to address a critical shortcoming which Sri Lanka has neglected over decades. The lack of a robust audit programme to vet all foreign projects which involve critical infrastructure and energy security, for compliance with Sri Lanka’s national interest and national security, has got Sri Lanka in trouble before. Over the last three decades, there have been several large scale projects which have clearly not been in the national interest of Sri Lanka.
As such, there is an urgent need for Sri Lanka to have an enlightening discourse on forging a broad census in the policy-making sphere to establish clearly what Sri Lanka’s national interest, goals, foreign policy and national security objectives are. Sri Lanka’s policy making community can ill afford to repeat mistakes of the past. Sri Lankans deserve a clearly articulated, consensus based formulation of national interests, and a foreign and security policy derived from it. Such policies, once a consensus is reached on, should be articulated in policy documents and be long-term in nature. Sri Lanka has been wavering on policy matters, and in the past has failed to communicate them effectively and stick to them with the passage of time. Once national policies and interest are clearly established, along with a robust foreign policy, state regulatory mechanisms can create the vetting systems needed to ensure all International projects, particularly ones that involve critical infrastructure (both physical and digital) are in line with Sri Lanka’s national interest, and delivers the best outcomes for Sri Lankans.