Despite turbulent ties with Maldives, India recently extended budgetary support of nearly US$ 50 million
Within days after his return from New Delhi after the 9 May meeting with Indian counterpart Dr S Jaishankar, Maldivian Foreign Minister Moosa Zameer posted his thanks for India’s ‘true gesture of goodwill’ on his request for a debt rollover. The Indian Foreign Office had obviously fast-tracked the process as US$ 50 million of the debt owed to State Bank of India (SBI) on a past agreement between the two governments was due for repayment on 15 May, and another US$ 50 million in September.
Weeks earlier, New Delhi had increased the export quotas of essential commodities, including rice, wheat flour, sugar, potatoes and eggs, and also construction materials like river sand and stone aggregates required in Maldives’ mainstay construction industry. Already, New Delhi had played along without inhibitions or protest, when President Muizzu followed up on his poll-time demand for India to withdraw military personnel operating and maintaining the three aerial platforms gifted to Maldives for medical evacuation and aerial surveillance of the nation’s EEZ. The day Zameer left New Delhi, on 10 May, the last of the three batches of Indian military personnel, totalling 76 men, returned home, to be replaced by civilian pilots and technicians from public sector HAL.
New Delhi had increased the export quotas of essential commodities, including rice, wheat flour, sugar, potatoes and eggs, and also construction materials like river sand and stone aggregates required in Maldives’ mainstay construction industry.
Without reference to the change of elected government in Maldives, New Delhi has been continuing with the multiple infrastructure projects, including the prestigious Thilamalé sea-bridge, and any number of high-impact development schemes in very many islands in the country. To his credit, on assuming office, Muizzu continued with India’s infra investments without break or without linking to his demand for the withdrawal of military personnel. He also visited the sea-bridge work site in the early days of his presidency to inspect the progress of the work, and called for fast-tracking the works that were delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Yet, questions remain, particularly regarding the Indian concerns, which are limited mostly to defence and security matters, especially centred on an adversarial Chinese presence in the region. An intervening irritant in the matter flowed from permission for Chinese research/spy vessel ‘Xiang Yang Hong 03’, to berth in a Maldivian port twice in as many months and reports of the ship hovering around the Maldivian EEZ for three. That the Chinese vessel’s visit came after Muizzu’s meeting with President Xi Jinping in Beijing, and also his decision not to renew the joint oceanographic survey with India beyond the existing June deadline raised eyebrows in Indian circles.
Then there is the question of the ‘Boycott Maldives’ social media calls that were made after three Maldivian deputy ministers had posted derogatory remarks against India and Prime Minister Narendra Modi. It happened after Modi visited Lakshadweep and promoted the island-group as a tourist destination. In an interview with the Indian news agency ANI in New Delhi, Minister Zameer ‘apologised’ for the past, pointed to the immediate suspension of the three ministers, and reiterated that their views were personal and was not the stand of the government.
Incidentally, Muizzu’s 14 January news conference will be remembered for things that no head of state, including China’s Xi Jinping, had said. Mouthing the lines of Chinese academics in uniform through the past decade but without naming India, he said that Maldives was ‘nobody’s backyard’ and ‘nobody has the licence to bully us’. He also spoke about his official visit to Türkiye earlier, from where he said Maldives was procuring drones to ensure ‘self-reliance’ in aerial surveillance—and the first two of them arrived less than two months later. Likewise, the President also declared his decision to import all essentials like rice, flour and sugar on an annual basis, to end ‘over-dependence on a single source’.
Mouthing the lines of Chinese academics in uniform through the past decade but without naming India, he said that Maldives was ‘nobody’s backyard’ and ‘nobody has the licence to bully us’.
Muizzu did not have to name India, but successive developments showed how in the following months India cleared higher import-quotas of these staples and more, after high-cost procurements from Türkiye were hampered by the Houthis’ attacks on merchant vessels on the Red Sea. Today, when the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund have revived their two-year-old assessment of an imminent debt trap beginning the end of last year, Maldives can do with all the fiscal and economic assistance it can get from India, in particular as ‘more Chinese loans loom’ as a consequence of the agreements signed during Muizzu’s January visit. It was not known if Muizzu spoke about debt-restructuring with Xi in Beijing, but Chinese envoy Wang Lixin has now said that they were talking about ‘debt-restructuring’, which however could hinder further credit facility.
Muizzu’s presidential poll victory last year was unique for any democracy. He was possibly the only candidate to have entered the fray at the last-minute, hijacking the substantial constituency of his one-time political mentor and jailed predecessor, Abdulla Yameen—which was/is conservative but not radicalised—and won a two-phase election against the incumbent. New Delhi seemed to have understood that the withdrawal of Indian military personnel was an inherited/hijacked ‘legacy issue’ for Muizzu even though the election was otherwise fought and won only on domestic politics and personalities.
The same applied to Muizzu’s PNC-PPM coalition acquiring a ‘super-majority’ in last month’s parliamentary polls after the President appealed mainly for a cooperative/collaborative Parliament. It was after the Opposition Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP) of predecessor Ibrahim Solih, with its higher numbers in the outgoing Parliament, began threatening Muizzu with imminent impeachment, even before the new President and his team had settled down until the Maldivian Supreme Court quashed their amended procedure.
With a super-majority in Parliament, trouble for Muizzu, if any, may now have to come from within, as happened to predecessor Solih.
The continued division of votes between the MDP and breakaway Democrats also helped, and so did the failure of Yameen’s new party, the People’s National Front (PNF), though without a common symbol for parliamentary elections. With a super-majority in Parliament, trouble for Muizzu, if any, may now have to come from within, as happened to predecessor Solih. Yet, after the sweeping parliamentary poll victory, which is his own, he should be able to predict, hence handle, any revival of Yameen’s failed and forgotten ‘India Out’ campaign in the months and years to come.
At 45, Muizzu is a new-generation political leader, cut off from the prevailing democracy-centric electoral rivals who date it all back to the birth of the multi-party Constitution in 2008. So are the new generation of aspiration-tinged voters who are even more cut off from the past. For this reason, Muizzu is also a non-quantifiable, in his handling of domestic politics, governance, and foreign and security policies.
From an Indian perspective, it remains to be seen how the Muizzu dispensation moves from here on bilateral issues, particularly in matters of security cooperation. This has to be read in the context of Maldives and China deciding to ‘elevate strategic cooperation’ during Muizzu’s January visit, and also signing into China’s ‘Global Security Initiative’ (GSI) along with ‘Global Civilisation Initiative’ (GCI).
From an Indian perspective, it remains to be seen how the Muizzu dispensation moves from here on bilateral issues, particularly in matters of security cooperation.
Even while seeking the time-bound withdrawal of Indian military personnel, the Maldivian government hosted the Dosti-16 Coast Guard exercises, where Indian soldiers were present along with counterparts from common neighbour Sri Lanka. In May 2024, the nation hosted American soldiers in the ‘Black Marlin’ joint exercises. A visiting British minister also held security-related talks while on a visit to Malé, recently. As if to expand economic out-reach, the Maldivian minister concerned has since held talks in London to deepen trade and investments ties with the United Kingdom (UK).
All these have raised questions about the Muizzu administration’s approach to bilateral defence and security cooperation with the Indian neighbour. Addressing a joint news conference with Foreign Minister Zameer on his return from India, Defence Minister Ghassan Maumoon, acknowledged that all Indian soldiers had returned and there were also no Indian military personnel on the Uthuru Thila-Falhu (UTF) Island, where work on an India-funded Coast Guard jetty was on.
Minister Ghassan, son of former President Maumoon Abdul Gayoom, also clarified that the Maldivian military personnel were not capable of flying the three aerial platforms gifted by India. This may imply that the government may deploy Indian civilian pilots and technicians like their military counterparts earlier. While arguments remain about how the Indian Dornier ‘out-performed’ the Turkish drones, EAM Jaishankar at a Delhi conclave offered to ‘train Maldivian pilots’, if urged.
The Indian High Commission, promptly denied the claim in a statement, and said that the emergency landing ‘owing to unforeseen exigencies’ was undertaken to ensure the safety of men and machines, but with ground approvals.
Yet, an irritant was introduced at the joint news conference, when a Maldivian allegation involving Indian Navy personnel making an unauthorised landing in Thimarafushi Island in Thaa Atoll, way back in 2019 was raised. The Indian High Commission, promptly denied the claim in a statement, and said that the emergency landing ‘owing to unforeseen exigencies’ was undertaken to ensure the safety of men and machines, but with ground approvals.
The incident clearly shows that well-wishers of bilateral ties, especially in Maldives, should be concerned about those who want to dig into the past where the Muizzu leadership was not involved and come up with half-truths that could throw a spanner in the collective works.
N Sathiya Moorthy is a Chennai-based Policy Analyst & Political Commentator
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N. Sathiya Moorthy is a policy analyst and commentator based in Chennai.
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