<![CDATA[What's China got to do with elections in India's southernmost town?]>
India's mammoth elections reached the country's southernmost parliamentary constituency on Thursday, where an unlikely factor could prove decisive " the country's battle with China for maritime trade supremacy.
Kanyakumari in Tamil Nadu state is the proposed site of a new US$4.8 billion international container transshipment port being promised by the area's current elected representative Pon Radhakrishnan, the outgoing junior minister of shipping who is seeking re-election under the banner of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
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Analysts see the planned port as one of several attempts by India to take trade away from Sri Lanka's Port of Colombo " the busiest in South Asia.
Yet the neighbouring nation to the southeast already has additional capacity in the form of Hambantota port " a project financed under Beijing's "Belt and Road Initiative" that was handed over to a Chinese company on a 99-year lease after Sri Lanka was unable to service the debts it incurred during construction.
When combined with a new container terminal in the Port of Colombo that was part-financed by the same Chinese company that now runs Hambantota, China has a regional foothold that will be difficult for India to dislodge, according to S N Srikant, founder of maritime consultancy Hauer Associates.
"Building a mega port or a transshipment port in India would hardly suffice to push back against Chinese attempts to dominate the Indian Ocean," he said.
"Even if you manage to wean vessels away from Colombo, it does not mean that the Chinese will vacate the terminal they have invested in."
Chinese dredgers at work off the coast of Colombo in 2018. Photo: Xinhua
Concerns have also been voiced about the possibility of China exploiting such facilities for militaristic purposes, he said.
"India fears that these commercial investments might be used as naval bases in the future," said Srikant.
"The fact that two Chinese submarines docked at the Chinese-run terminal at Colombo's South Harbour [in 2014] fuelled these fears. Protocol wise they should have docked at the government-operated terminal."
Abhijit Singh, who heads the Maritime Policy Initiative at the Observer Research Foundation think tank, said China's presence in Sri Lanka "does arouse suspicion in Indian minds".
"With the vast majority of regional trade transshipped through Colombo, Chinese planners are likely to have anticipated Hambantota's limited utility as a trading hub. Feasibility studies would have indicated as much," he said.
"The fact that China still went ahead and made massive investments in developing infrastructure at the port, leads many in New Delhi to wonder if Beijing has a strategic plan for Hambantota. From an Indian point of view, it seems plausible the port could at a future date be used to position Chinese naval assets, even if Sri Lankan leaders vehemently deny that would ever be permitted."
Geopolitical power struggles aside, the proposed port at Kanyakumari " which is known as both Colachel International Seaport and Enayam port " has also faced strong opposition from the area's 300,000-strong fishing community.
Pon Radhakrishnan, the BJP's candidate for Kanyakumari. Photo: Facebook
M G Devasahayam, a retired civil servant, has been at the forefront of agitation against the port through his Rebuild Kanyakumari movement.
"The minister says it is a great development for the 1.8 million people of the district and that only 300,000 fisherpeople are opposing it. This is polarisation: he knows he will not win the votes of fisherpeople anyway," he said, pointing to the fact that Radhakrishnan is a Hindu nationalist and the area's fishing communities are predominantly Catholic.
The Congress party candidate for the constituency, as the BJP's main rival, has also been convinced that the port is a bad idea, according to Devasahayam.
"He used to support the project .... On the first day here, he was told that he will not get votes if he does not follow our agenda. So he has immediately taken it up and is opposing the project," he said.
As well as local opposition, there is also the question of economic viability " just 80km north of the planned port, another new seaport is under construction at Vizhinjam in Kerala state, and about 250km further up the west coast is the eight-year-old international container transshipment terminal at Vallarpadam. There are also three ports already operating on Tamil Nadu's east coast.
But Singh, of the Observer Research Foundation, said he was confident that the planned new ports "could recapture Indian domestic cargo " the vast majority of which is transshipped presently via Colombo".
An aerial view of the Port of Colombo. Photo: Reuters
"New Delhi is hopeful that the port projects ... [being] close to the main east-west international shipping routes and with deepwater depths to accommodate the latest generation of mega-ships, will act as a booster for trade, and cut Indian shipping costs," he said.
"This would also integrate Indian ports into global production networks, providing a viable alternative to Colombo in South Asia."
Devasahayam, the activist, disagrees. He maintains that the proposed port is financially unviable and will drag down Kanyakumari, which has the highest human development index among Tamil Nadu's districts. "We don't need jobs here. We don't need this nonsense of a port," he said.
This article originally appeared on the South China Morning Post (SCMP).
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