My first visit to the Maldives was in 1988 in rather dramatic circumstances. A coup d’etat had been made against the government of the President of Maldives, Maumoon Abdul Gayoom. It was led by businessman Abdullah Luthufi with the help of armed mercenaries of a Tamil secessionist organisation from Sri Lanka, the People’s Liberation Organisation of Tamil Eelam. The mercenaries had taken control of Male, the capital, the airport, port, television and radio stations. On the request of the Maldives government, India intervened, and its armed forces, in an operation codenamed Operation Cactus, defeated the attempted coup.
I was then posted at HQs, in the Ministry of External Affairs, and was asked to escort a large media party to Male. I recall we went on a military plane, landing in a country still in turmoil, but recovering. It was my only visit abroad, thus far, where in the confusion, my diplomatic passport had an entry stamp of 6 November, and an exit one of 4 November!
India has been a friend of Maldives for decades. But there is an old Chinese proverb that says: ‘Why do you hate me? I have not helped you!’ This often happens when smaller countries whom India has gone out of its way to help, begin to resent the presence of a much larger and powerful neighbour. Something of that nature seems to be unfolding in Maldives now.
The fact is that Indo-Maldives relations have been close. This is not surprising considering the two countries share a common maritime border, which has been duly demarcated. India has always stood by Maldives in moments of need and was the first country to recognise its independence from British rule in 1966. Apart from Operation Cactus, India came to the help of Maldives when a serious water crisis hit it in 2014, after the collapse of the island’s only water treatment plant. India sent heavy-lift transporter planes, like the C-17 Globemaster and the IL-76 with bottled water, and also sent ships which could produce fresh water through their onboard desalination plants.
India and Maldives signed a Comprehensive Trade Agreement as far back as 1948. A substantial percentage of Maldives’ imports come from India, which is also building the $500 million Greater Male Project that connects Male with three adjacent islands through a 6.74 km long sea bridge. India has built the landmark Indira Gandhi Memorial Hospital, gifted a Fast Attack Naval Craft, provided concessional loans including grants and is working to set up 26 radars on Maldives’ 26 atolls for coverage of approaching aircraft and vessels. Above all, during the Covid-19 pandemic, India airlifted 6.2 tonnes of essential medicines and hospital consumables to Maldives under Operation Sanjeevani.
This is only a glimpse of the kind of neighbour India has been. Why then did President Mohamed Muizzu come to power in November 2023, based on an ‘India Out’ campaign? An objective assessment does not reveal that we were overbearing, as we have been accused of being with some of our other neighbours. There is, of course, the perennial China factor, which like India, recognises the strategic importance of the location of Maldives, and as part of conscious design meddles in our relations with neighbouring countries. Approximately, 70 per cent of the Maldives total external debt is owed to China, which is 10 per cent of the country’s national budget. As China expands its presence in the Maldivian infrastructure, trade and energy sectors, the country’s Opposition leaders have raised concerns about the by-now-familiar syndrome of Chinese entrapment in developing countries. And yet, Muizzu’s first visit after becoming President was to China and Turkey, not India, as has been traditionally the case.
India has done well to react strongly against the anti-Prime Minister Modi tweets of ministers in the Maldives, who have now been suspended by Muizzu. But our response cannot stop at just this act of token atonement. Today we are a financially significant power and a neighbour that cannot be ridden rough-shod upon. High-end tourism is the mainstay of the Maldivian economy. In 2023, Indian high-net-worth individuals and celebrities accounted for 11.2 per cent of all tourist arrivals in the island nation. If this number were to dip, it would seriously affect the Maldives economy. That is why the country’s tourism apex body has condemned the anti-India stance of Muizzu, as have Opposition leaders.
Lakshadweep is the new destination that is being projected as an alternative to Maldives. I visited this beautiful island some years ago and was taken aback by its pristine beaches and crystal-clear waters. But Lakshadweep has a very long way to go before it can compete with Maldives. There is hardly any tourism infrastructure on the archipelago—although some hotels have now been announced—and connectivity is very poor.
The real question is: Why did we need this unprovoked snub from Maldives to discover Lakshadweep? The answer is that we have not yet optimally developed the vast and unparalleled avenues of tourism in our country. India received some 11 million tourists in 2019; in the same year, China received some 50 million. In 2022, India was placed as low as 54 out of 117 countries in the World Economic Forum and Tourism Index. This neglect is all the more glaring because, even at this sub-par performance, tourism contributes to 8 per cent of total employment and nearly 7 per cent of the GDP in our country.
Our relations with Maldives will hopefully stabilise soon, given our strong response, and the interests of the island nation itself. But what we need to ponder is why a photograph of Prime Minister Modi sitting on a serene beach and snorkelling in the azure waters of Lakshadweep awakened us to the infinite tourism potential of our own country.
The author is a former diplomat, an author and a politician. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely that of the author. They do not necessarily reflect News18’s views.
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