Why Maldives had to make a u-turn on India | Mayank Chhaya Reports
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00:00Welcome to Mayank Shire Reports. I'm Mayank Shire. Since at least 1990, the people of the tiny Indian
00:15Ocean island nation of the Maldives have feared being submerged by rising sea levels caused by
00:22climate change. Nearly three and a half decades later though, submergence by sea has mercifully
00:30not happened, but the submergence of its economy definitely has. The country and its president
00:37Mohd Moizoo, desperately strapped for precious foreign exchange, have had to turn to India,
00:44a country he had dispossessed barely a year ago as part of his India Out campaign rhetoric. Now
00:52that the Maldives is down to barely 440 million in foreign exchange reserves, barely enough to pay
01:00for a month and a half of imports, India looks quite attractive to Moizoo. On a five-day visit
01:07to New Delhi, Moizoo has been bailed out by Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government with 100
01:13million dollar treasury bills rollover as well as a 400 million dollar currency swap deal. While
01:21a year ago, Moizoo was all in on getting India out of the Maldives, including its troops, its dire
01:29economic reality has hit him hard enough for him to totally change his tune. Modi in response has
01:37struck a pragmatic tone despite the early tensions by saying during a news conference that India is
01:46the Maldives nearest neighbor and a close friend. That he said was part of New Delhi's
01:51neighborhood first policy. Moizoo has openly sought closer relations with China but now that
02:00the island's economy is in great distress, India has become a more practical choice for him. The
02:08two leaders virtually inaugurated a new runway at the Honey Madhu International Airport in the
02:14Maldives with the Indian Prime Minister saying that New Delhi was ready to help the island nation
02:21develop its infrastructure. In the aftermath of the Maldivian election which Moizoo won by defeating
02:30his India friendly predecessor Ibrahim Mohammed Saleh, there were undisguised tension with many
02:37Maldivians asking Indian tourists to leave despite the fact that they brought a great deal of economic
02:43gains. Although Modi never said so explicitly, he very publicly promoted India's Lakshadweep of the
02:51southern coast of the Indian mainland as a replacement for the Maldives. That move rattled
02:59the island nation. Moizoo even chose to visit China before coming to India in January in a
03:05cavalier display of disregard for New Delhi. However, six months later, relations seemed to
03:12be on the mend when Modi was re-elected in June this year for a third term and invited Moizoo as
03:19one of the guests at his swearing-in. Moizoo's current Friday visit is clearly aimed at luring
03:26India back along with its celebrated tourists from the Mumbai film world whose social media
03:32posts from various Maldivian atolls helped the island considerably. For a while, boycotting
03:39the Maldives in response to Moizoo's anti-India stance became intertwined with India's national
03:45politics. In some sense, the Modi government is also conscious that they need to refurbish their
03:52image with the South Asian region. To that extent, the Moizoo visit has come in handy, especially at
04:00a time when Sri Lanka, the country's much bigger southern neighbor, has witnessed the rise of an
04:05independent-minded and somewhat Marxist leader in Anuradha Senaike as its president. Bangladesh
04:13too has been in ferment after the ouster of the avowedly India and Modi-friendly Sheikh
04:19Hasina as Prime Minister who had had to flee to India in August.