The ongoing Corona Virus Pandemic has infected 24 million+ people all across the world and victimized more than 820 thousand people so far and these numbers will surely get even more ugly, unfortunately, in coming months as the advent of vaccine in 2020’s court doesn’t seem very certain.
Storms come and go, generally big trees get extirpated but the small grass survives. But COVID-19 Pandemic is a kind of storm which left almost no tree and no grass rooted, from 21 Trillion dollar fat US Economy to a small land-locked country, our adjacent Bhutan, with around 770 thousand population and around 8 billion, yeah just 8 billion dollar economy.
Asia’s one of the happiest country Bhutan, sandwiched between China and India, one world leader in Corona Virus tally in the first quarter and the other is in forth quarter, surprisingly have just 155 confirmed Corona Virus cases. For a country with 770K population, 201 cases per million population isn’t a big number. This side might seem very smooth and beautiful but the other side of moon is full of craters, an around 6-month long international travel ban all around the globe is no less that a nightmare for Bhutan’s Tourism Based Economy where around 7% of the total population is either hoteliers or travel agents or travel guides. This was not all as the only trade route having responsibility of 90% of Indo-Bhutan trade was jammed due to the nationwide lockdown in India, the Bhutanese Exports came at its level worst, moreover the imports of some of the most essential commodities were also got temporarily ceased and once there was a time when Bhutan had commodities stock sufficient for just 12 days, and perhaps the situation would have been disastrous yet if they did not get external help.
“Hard times always reveal true friends”
When Bhutan was amongst a flock of problems, India, one of the most important country which Bhutan has diplomatic relations with, came forward for help of its in trouble bordering country. This was not very surprising by the way because Bhutan is a very important for our foreign policy and is a major strategic partner of ours in the region, let me tell you Bhutan was the only country in South Asia, other than India obviously, which skipped China’s ambitious Belt and Road Initiative. As a result Bhutan had to face continuous bullying by China multiple times, even during this China Born Pandemic, and this happened most recently when the ‘land hungry dragon’ claimed Bhutan’s there called Yeti Territory in which Sakteng Wildlife Sanctuary also comes, calling it a “disputed” territory in the meeting of Global Environment Facility (GEF) Council, later the same was criticised by India and various other countries’ delegates on the same forum. In response to this baseless claim, India also announced to build a road, emerging from Assam and till the Tawang region of Arunachal Pradesh and will pass through some region of Bhutan too. This road is critical for Bhutan not just by Development perspective but also because this is going to pass through the so called disputed Yeti Territory, and will be symbolic statement to the ‘Expansionist’ China that Sakteng Wildlife Sanctuary and Yeti belongs to Bhutan. The work on this project will start after final approvals from the concerned ministry.
“Love thy neighbor as yourself“
In Bhutan’s era of probs, India proved again that it is a chum of them. To get Bhutan out from their supplies crisis and freezed trade issue, India opened the traditional trade route under Jaigaon Land Customs Station (LCS) plus opened a new one too connecting Jaigaon to Ahllay in Bhutan, which will significantly raise Bhutanese exports not just to India, but also to various other neigboring countries like Nepal, Bangladesh and Myanmar which will be a huge boost for their major manufacturing hub Pasakha Industrial Estate, India also ensured that Bhutanese Businesses will not suffer much during ongoing pandemic. India is working out to unbolt more trade routes in near future which will strengthen our trade ties even more and will give a much needed thrust to Bhutanese Economy. Recently India’s Railway Minister, Piyush Goyal, in his speech in India-Bhutan Start-up Summit, gave a proposal of connecting both the countries by a railroad which will establish a direct link between Mujnai in West Bengal to Bhutan’s Nyoenpaling, surprisingly enough this will be the first Indo-Bhutan rail line project after Independence.
‘India-Bhutan fight Corona’
India is backing Bhutan not just in getting proper supplies, bringing trade and exports on track and defending their territorial integrity against China but India also gave its contribution in Bhutan’s fight against ‘Made In China’ Corona Virus. Recently India sent PPE Kits, RT-PCR Test Kits and various drugs including Paracetamol and Hydroxychloroquine to Bhutan and also promised that Indian support will go on to Bhutan during and even after this pandemic.
“Make mistakes, learn from them”
India’s cordial actions in Bhutan will definitely help in bringing our bilateral relations on new heights and will definitely help in making a goodwill in Bhutanese public and their leadership too for India. This all also shows that India have learnt a very important and must lesson from the diplomatic blunder with Nepal, a country with which we have very close trade, military, historical, religious and cultural ties. Chinese influence have been so much ascendant there that Nepali government started seeming nothing more than Chinese puppet. This was also a consequence of our negligence, reluctance, diplomatic slips and China’s debt trap strategy that made Nepal went so much in Chinese side. Hopefully India will take this as a ‘wake up’ call and will bring some serious changes and necessary transformations in our till date submissive and full of insouciances foreign policy especially when it comes to dealing with our neigbouring counties. India have to go aggressive, raise the Uighur Muslim’s issue at UN, support Taiwan, which is backing India already in ongoing Indo-China Standoff, strengthen countries bullied by China in South China sea like Vietnam and Phillipenes and at any cost have to contain the ‘Domino Effect’ of our adjacents falling ‘like nine pins’ into Chinese Debt trap, coming in Dragon’s Influence, being ‘Anti-India’ and are being compelled and obliged to serve Chinese geopolitical interests in the region. Otherwise we will be a ‘New Israel’ surrounded nothing but many hostile implacable enemies.
Being Mayank 