On India-Bhutan ties

(MainsGS2:Bilateral, regional and global groupings and agreements involving India and/or affecting India’s interests.)

Context:

• During Bhutan King Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck’s visit to New Delhi this month, India announced a number of measures to support its neighbour’s development plans.

Strategic neighbour:

• Bhutan is not just a neighbour, but a very important and strategic one as its border with India is over 600 km long, and it plays the role of a buffer between China and India. 
• The relationship has been strengthened from the time of our independence and India didn’t allow the ‘Big Brother’ syndrome to apply to Bhutan as from 1958 when Jawaharlal Nehru trekked across the Himalayas to Bhutan and assured it of independence and sovereignty to the present time where the interests of Bhutan are linked to the interests of India, and vice versa, by an institutional and economic framework.
• India is the largest source of imports for Bhutan and has managed to create this bond not only through rhetoric, but by harnessing hydroelectricity for which the rivers in Bhutan, which come down from the Himalayas to India, have been used.

Support Bhutan’s development plans:

• India has agreed to support Bhutan’s next development plans and extend additional standby lines of credit. 
• Hydropower, the “cornerstone” of India-Bhutan ties, also received a boost, with the government agreeing to consider Bhutanese requests for expediting long-delayed projects (Sankosh and Punatsangchhu), revising upwards the tariff on Chhukha, the oldest project, and buying power from the Basochhu power project. 
• New infrastructure projects include an integrated checkpoint for trucks at Jaigaon, a checkpoint for third country nationals and a cross-border rail link from Kokrajhar to Gelephu. 
• Future partnerships could include space research, skilling, startups and STEM education, and a new Internet gateway for Bhutan, in keeping with the Bhutanese king’s new “Transform Initiative”.

Cause of concern:

• Recent comments by Bhutan’s Prime Minister Lotay Tshering indicating progress in China-Bhutan boundary talks cause concern for India. 
• In an interview to a European paper, he had said that Bhutan and China hope to agree on demarcating their northern boundary dispute in the next “1-2 meetings”. 
• This must set alarm bells ringing as China has offered this demarcation as part of a “package deal” with Doklam, the area near the trijunction with India, and strategically sensitive given its proximity to India’s Siliguri corridor. 
• While Bhutan is clear that all talks about the trijunction would be “trilateral”, India’s concerns extend to any change in the area surrounding it, so there needs to be full clarity on the issue.

Conclusion:

• India’s time-tested ties with Bhutan have been predicated on not seeing each other in terms of the difference in their size but in counting each country’s prosperity as a win-win for both. 
• More importantly, they have always anticipated the other’s interests before taking any step that could affect their long-cherished partnership.