For India, problems usually come from north and west, rarely from the south.
But the times, as they said, changed, with Sri Lanka, a country with a deep political, cultural and ethnic relationship with India, facing the worst political-economic crisis since emerged in 1948 as Ceylon.
The public’s anger towards the ruling Rajapaksa family had exploded on the streets, forcing Mahinda Rajapaksa who was reluctant to stop as prime minister on May 9.
The South Asian political family has ruled their country for the first few decades after the left of England and Sri Lanka, including.
The fall of the Rajapaksa family from Rahmat was very steep. In November 2019, Gotabaya Rajapaksa convincingly won the presidential election with more than 52 percent of the votes.
A few months later, an alliance led by his brother, Mahinda, who was the President of the State between 2005 and 2015, won the parliamentary election, securing nearly 60 percent of the votes.
That is a layer of sugar in the cake.
Since then, however, the road has been uphill. The crisis determined by a series of non -explained economic decisions, followed by lack of political control, has plunged the country into chaos.
Mahinda’s resignation came three days after her brother Gotabaya was reported to ask her at the cabinet meeting to resign.
Heavy armed forces evacuated the prime minister who came out of his residence in Colombo after thousands of protesters violated the main gate.
The protesters who forced their path to the residence of the “temple trees” of the capital then tried to invade the main building where Mahinda was hiding with his close family.
The question asked by people now is who will ask Gotabaya to resign? For all similarities in stability, it must be considered a necessity.
Twin troubles
With all the available accounts, Gotabaya is attached to his chair, not wanting to leave, which deepens the deadlock.
Sadly for Colombo, economic and political problems are interrelated. The prospects do not look bright enough and even India’s ability to help limited. They must try global sources like the World Bank or IMF but this process requires time,” said Rajiv Bhatia, former Ambassador, Dear partner, foreign policy study program, gateway house.
As for China, helping Sri Lanka in this crisis hour, Bhatia told Moneycontrol that Beijing, if any, seemed very reluctant to help who he considered as an ally.
While Sri Lanka’s debt with China is around $ 3.5 billion, or 10.8 percent of the total, for India, 2 percent.
Time to be a friendly neighbour?
In pursuing the “first policy of its environment”, India, so far, is committed to $ 1.9 billion for its southern neighbors in loans, credit pathways, and currency exchanges. New Delhi also expressed his willingness to give an additional $ 2 billion in currency exchange.
In the last three and a half months, India has provided assistance of around $ 2.5 billion to Sri Lanka, including credit facilities for food and fuel.
In 2021, the Lanka government officially declared the worst economic crisis in the country in 73 years. In August 2021, the state of food emergency was declared, although the government denied deficiencies. The Minister of Energy Udaya Gammanpila acknowledged that the crisis could cause financial disasters.
Anyway, look, it is a mismanagement of finance over the proportion of epic by the ruling party that has caused this crisis.
“It has been caused by several compounding factors such as tax cuts, national policies to switch to organic or biological farming, among others,” said the former Indian Ambassador to Sri Lanka, Ashok Kantha.
Contributing along the way has become a tragic event such as the Easter bombing in 2019 and the destination impact of the Coronavirus Pandemic, with a country that is very dependent on tourism.
Sri Lanka has been allocated for sovereign default, because the remaining foreign reserves of $ 1.9 billion, in March 2022, it will not be enough to pay the country’s foreign debt obligations for 2022, with $ 4 billion intended for payment,” Kantha told Money control.
In April, Sri Lanka announced that they were default, making him the first default sovereignty in the country since 1948.
The level of crisis can be measured by the fact that the country has stopped payment of external debt to ensure that they have enough cash reserves for emergency supply such as fuel, food, gas, medicines, and other important things.
The country, which is very dependent on external debt to run its economy, has been redeemed in the past by its competitive neighboring and Chinese neighbors.
This is, according to BJP’s ideologist and the former editor of the organizer, Seshadri Chari, who made Sri Lanka experience problems.
Family Political Dispensation ‘in the family’ in Colombo seems to have done everything that can be avoided and invited by disasters from all forms. The large -magnitude infrastructure project funded by China under the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) may be the most stringent snares on his neck, “he told Moneycontrol.
According to him, instead of concentrating on local manufacturing, Sri Lanka chose a growth-based strategy based on loans and severe foreign expenses for infrastructure, which only helped China.
In the congress regime, non-strategic thinking from the ruling party caused the Hambantota port to slip from Indian hands and went to China in 2005. However, he believed, everything changed and that India now had to go out of his way to help Sri Lanka to restore balance or Should we say strategic balance?