Has The Dragon Scuppered The India Bhutan Relationship?

When the King of Bhutan state visits India for eight long days, family and official entourage in tow, you can surmise something is amiss in the traditionally warm relationship. The status quo has been threatened by 25 rounds of border talks between China and Bhutan with two agreements signed, one a ‘three-step’ agreement in 2021, and another just a fortnight ago. Bhutan is about to establish diplomatic relations with China according to its Foreign Minister Tandi Dorji who led the talks in Beijing.

Ostensibly however, the King’s visit is to sell a brand new project expected to generate thousands of Bhutanese jobs even as its youth are restive about lack of opportunities in the land-locked kingdom.

Bhutan’s Prime Minister Lotay Tshering said Prime Minister Narendra Modi was the first King Wangchuck contacted on the ‘Gateway City’ project at Gelephu on its border with Assam. It is to become Bhutan’s first Smart City. After King Wangchuck met with Prime Minister Modi in New Delhi on November 5^th, the Bhutanese prime minister announced India will give the project its full support.

Beijing has been leaning hard on Thimpu to settle the issue of the Doklam Plateau that contains the strategic Tri-junction between China-Bhutan and India. It overlooks a narrow strip of land called ‘The Siliguri Corridor’ that connects India with its North-Eastern states.   

Ever since the military stand-off there with India in 2017 that lasted over 93 days, the Chinese have been building roads, bridges and townships on Bhutanese land on the plateau that it claims as its own. It has been seven years. India has done nothing about it unilaterally to avoid a flash-point, and Bhutan has been in no position to resist.

Also, there is a section of the Bhutanese people, particularly when China was doing better economically, who questioned the lack of diplomatic relations with China, a UNSC P5 country, and what they saw as over dependence on India.

Things are a little different again in 2023, when China is in an economic crisis and two countries, Italy and the Philippines, have recently pulled out of its BRI Projects, even as a number of others are in disarray.

Pakistan, China’s so-called all-weather ally, is also facing its own difficulties on the brink of utter bankruptcy, and the China-Pakistan CPEC is in deep trouble. It is also under attack by terrorists, both in Balochistan which contains the expensive China built port of Gwadar, and in central areas of Pakistan including Karachi. Many Chinese have been killed in Pakistan and the parts of the CPEC road that are ready are subject to frequent attack.

Bhutan would, no doubt, like to wriggle out of the dragon’s increasingly uncomfortable embrace under present circumstances. After all, it has the makings of a stranglehold that has been building ever since Chairman Mao claimed not only Tibet, which China occupied in 1950, but Bhutan, as Chinese territory too. Even now China claims large tracts of Bhutan along its borders, and that is what these border talks have been unavoidably about.

To wriggle out of the dragon’s clutches then may be a desire, but how is the question. Would an ambitious economic project, the first of its kind for Bhutan, be a method to balance its situation between China and India?

India is principally concerned with its own national interests, even as Bhutan has been conducting these many rounds of border talks with China, inclusive of Bhutanese visits to China to hold them. So, to an extent, Bhutan seeks to leverage its geographical position, and new found quasi-relationship with China.

However, the matter is delicate, because India has already calculated in the consequences of China capturing the Tri-Junction area and how to deter it in the event it has designs on cutting off Indian access to its North East. The Doklam Plateau and the Tri-Junction Area is in India’s advanced military sights, along with the narrow strip of Indian territory under 30 km wide it overlooks. In addition, India has been building roads, airports, train lines, tunnels and bridges, for faster and better connectivity with its North East. It also enjoys a good relationship with Bangladesh. The neighbouring country is already providing river, sea, and train connectivity to India in multiple places to promote trade and commerce between the two countries.  All this combined with satellite and aerial surveillance, collectively and jointly blunts the Chinese threat at the Tri-Junction.

The King, Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck, looked slightly sheepish of visage on arrival. His government’s border talks with China resulting in an agreement signed barely a fortnight ago, have not been objected to by India.

 The King stopped first in bordering Assam on November 3^rd, where he was received by the expansive Hemanta Biswa Sarma, the dynamic CM of Assam, and major influence in the states of the North East. King Wangchuck discussed infrastructure with Sarma, including a 57 km rail line connecting Korajhar in Assam with Gelephu in Bhutan, where an international airport is to be also built. The King will also visit Mumbai after Delhi, where he will talk to prospective investors in the Gelephu project, called the Sarpang Special Economic Zone.

He was received at the Delhi airport by a slightly stiff S Jaishankar, the storied Indian External Affairs Minister. Pictures have been released of the Prime Minister Narendra Modi walking and talking unctuously with the King in the corridors of his 7 Lok Kalyan Marg residence. The Governments of India and Bhutan have been largely tight-lipped about the actual bilateral and strategic talks between the two sides. This is understandable with China waiting to pick up clues.

 However a lot has changed. If China threatens India at the Doklam Tri-Junction, not only can it expect stiff resistance there, but it could find India acting in PoK where China’s interests in Tibet and the Siachen could be compromised, along with the mouth of the CPEC from Xinkiang through  Gilgit-Baltistan.

Geopolitically, it is India that is the darling of the West now, led by the US. It is not only a member of QUAD, with strong relationships with Japan and Australia in the neighbourhood, but a strategic and military collaborator/ partner of the US and France in particular.

It is increasingly seen in the Western camp opposed to China and its satellites such as North Korea and Pakistan, on the South China Sea and Taiwan. Its relationship with Iran and Russia now brooks alternatives. It has stood firmly with Israel against the terrorists from Hamas, without damaging its friendships with Egypt, the UAE, and Saudi Arabia.

It is steadily drawing away parts of the supply chain from China, as in the production of Apple phones, and has halved  imports across the board from China. It is also banning more and more Chinese apps, Chinese companies, and has practically stopped Chinese investment in India. India is growing at almost 7% in GDP year on year, the best performance amongst major economies in the world while China is struggling below 4%.

The point of Bhutan’s situation is that India may have quietly bypassed its strategic concerns with the Himalayan kingdom. It is up to Bhutan to maintain the traditionally close relationship with India for its own sake. King Wangchuk realises this. Hopefully he will  return to Thimpu satisfied with India’s continuing and abiding interest in his picturesque country.

(1,221 words)

November 7^th, 2023

For: Firstpost/News18.com

Gautam Mukherjee