India for ‘constructive’ Rohingya policy:

India for ‘constructive’ Rohingya policy:

Context:

• India on Thursday said that displaced members of the Rohingya community will have to return to their place of origin in the Rakhine province of Myanmar.

Introduction:

• Speaking on the prospects of India-Japan cooperation in the Bay of Bengal and Asia-Pacific regions, Foreign Secretary S. Jaishankar highlighted India’s regional humanitarian responsibilities and growing convergence with Tokyo.
•   He also highlighted the need for “a sober, sensitive and locally sensitive approach” in dealing with the humanitarian emergency that the exodus had become.

Regional cooperation:

•     Mr.Jaishankar also brought up the ties between connectivity, regional cooperation and humanitarian response to evolving crisis.
•  “One of the areas we want to see in the agenda of BIMSTEC is collaboration on the HADR— that, we would like these member countries to cooperate on humanitarian assistance to disaster situation. In the last three years, Nepal earthquake relief, (India’s response to) Yemen civil war, Maldives water crisis, and even Operation Insaniyat for the Rohingyas are part of cooperation.” Mr Jaishankar highlighted.
• Nepal earthquake relief, India’s response to Yemen civil war, Maldivian water crisis, and Operation Insaniyat for the Rohingyas are part of cooperation.

Who are the Rohingyas?

• The Rohingya are an ethnic Muslim minority group living primarily in Myanmar’s western Rakhine state.
• They practice a Sufi-inflected variation of Sunni Islam.
• The estimated one million Rohingya in Myanmar account for nearly a third of Rakhine’s population.
• The Rohingya differ from Myanmar’s dominant Buddhist groups ethnically, linguistically, and religiously

What is the crisis?

• The Rohingya crisis is a human rights crisis with serious humanitarian consequences.
• Large number of Muslim Rohingya have fled Myanmar, many crossing by land into Bangladesh, while others take to the sea to reach Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand.
• The unfair policies of the Myanmar government in Rakhine state have resulted hundreds of thousands of Rohingya to flee since the late 1970s.

Why the issue of ethnicity for Rohingya?

• The Rohingya trace their origins in the region to the fifteenth century when thousands of Muslims came to the former Arakan Kingdom.
• Many others arrived during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries when Bengal and the Rakhine territory were governed by colonial rule as part of British India.
• Since independence in 1948, successive governments in Burma, renamed Myanmar in 1989, have refuted the Rohingya’s historical claims and denied the group recognition as one of the country’s 135 ethnic groups.
• Both the Myanmar government and the Rakhine state’s dominant ethnic Buddhist group, known as the Rakhine, reject the use of the label “Rohingya.

Why are Rohingya fleeing Myanmar?

• Government policies, including restrictions on marriage, family planning, employment, education, religious choice, and freedom of movement have institutionalized systemic discrimination against the ethnic group.
• Rakhine state is also Myanmar’s least developed state, with more than 78 percent of households living below the poverty threshold, according to World Bank estimates.
• Widespread poverty, weak infrastructure, and a lack of employment opportunities exacerbate the cleavage between Buddhists and Muslim Rohingya.

Rohingyas in India

• There are an estimated 36,000 Rohingya Muslims in India today, concentrated in the seven states of Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, Andhra Pradesh, Kerala, Assam, Jammu and Kashmir and Delhi.
• Delhi stance on the Rohingyas is firm; they are welcome as long as the Rohingyas obtain a valid visa and have a refugee card.
• Without a refugee card, the Rohingyas can’t claim land, health benefits or education for their kids.
• According to a Reuters report, only 9000 of the 36,000 Rohingyas who live in India are registered.

Why such distant stand by India?

• Rohingya crisis is irreconcilable and unresolvable. All that can be done is try to mitigate it.
• With India having no solution or expertise to offer, it is a good reason to stay away.
• India has real security interests which depend on the goodwill of the Myanmar regime.
• In 2015, for instance, following an attack by Naga rebels on a security convoy in Manipur, Indian forces carried out a covert raid across the border – with the quiet nod from Yangon. Delhi does not want that trust to be eroded.
• A new Muslim militant minority across India’s eastern border poses a severe security threat to the stability in Bangladesh and, in turn, across Assam and northeast India.
• Several thousands of Rohingya refugees already reside in India and with support from activists they could disrupt Delhi’s relations with Myanmar.

Impact on India

• When peace returns to Myanmar, India can ask the latter to rehabilitate the Rohingyas.
• A stable and democratic Myanmar will naturally gravitate towards New Delhi.
• The Rohingya crisis, if it remains unsettled, can become a path toward radicalization and pose a greater security threat for India.
• There are reports of increasing radicalization among sections of the Rohingya community.
• A December 2016 report by the International Crisis Group spoke precisely about this challenge and highlighted how rights violations can lead to radicalization.

About BIMSTEC:

1. The Bay of Bengal initiative for Multi-sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC) is an international organization involving a group of countries in South Asia and South East Asia.
2. These countries includes: Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Bhutan and Nepal.
3. The BIMSTEC states are among the countries dependent on the Bay of Bengal.
4. BIMSTEC  is home to around 1.5 billion people, constituting around 22% of global population with a combined GDP of $2.7 trillion economy.
5.  Majority of the BIMSTEC countries are situated in South Asian Region (SAR) prone to natural disasters such as floods, cyclones, earthquakes, avalanche.
6. The seven-country forum aims to achieve its own free trade area by 2017.

Objective of BIMSTEC:

Technological and economic co-operation among south Asian and South East Asian countries along the coast of the bay of Bengal .

• Commerce, investment, technology, tourism, human resource development, agriculture, fisheries, transport and communication, textiles, leather etc. have been included in it .

Operation Insaaniyat :

• India has decided to provide humanitarian assistance to Rohingya community though

Operation Insaaniyat:

Key features of Operation Insaaniyat:

• Indian government has decided to assist Bangladesh in this crisis by sending relief material.
• The Defence ministry assured the relief material will be delivered in multiple consignments. Items include rice, pulses, sugar, salt, cooking oil, tea, ready to eat noodles, biscuits, mosquito nets etc.
•  The Indian Air Force was tasked to airlift the relief material from India to Bangladesh.
•   One C-17 Globemaster strategic heavy lift cargo aircraft was positioned at short notice at Delhi on 13 Sep 17 to airlift 55 Tons of relief material to Chittagong, Bangladesh.
•       One more C-17 is scheduled to airlift additional relief material to Bangladesh.
•  The Indian Air Force rose to the challenge and played a pivotal role to further strengthen the close ties of friendship between India and Bangladesh.