By Asoka Bandarage
WASHINGTON DC, Mar 27 2025 – Following independence from Britain, both India and Sri Lanka emerged as leaders of the Non-Aligned Movement, which sought to advance developing nations’ interests during the Cold War. Indeed, the term “non-alignment” was itself coined by Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru during his 1954 speech in Colombo.

The five principles of the Non-Aligned Movement are: “mutual respect for each other’s territorial integrity and sovereignty; mutual non-aggression; mutual non-interference in domestic affairs; equality and mutual benefit; and peaceful co-existence.”

Later, Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi played a key role in supporting Sri Lankan Prime Minister Sirimavo Bandaranaike’s 1971 proposal to declare the Indian Ocean a Zone of Peace at the United Nations.

Such progressive ideals are in stark contrast to the current neocolonial negotiations between the two countries.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s forthcoming visit to Sri Lanka on April 4, 2025, is presented as representing a mutually beneficial partnership that will bring economic development to debt-burdened Sri Lanka. However, the details of the strategic agreements to be signed during Modi’s visit remain undisclosed to the public. This opacity cannot be a good sign and should not be accepted uncritically by the media or the people of either nation.

The Indo-Lanka Agreement of July 29, 1987, was also crafted without consultation with the Sri Lankan people or its parliament. It was signed during a 48-hour curfew when former Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi arrived in Sri Lanka. This agreement led to the imposition of the 13th Amendment to the Sri Lankan Constitution and established the Provincial Council system.

The political framework it created continues to challenge Sri Lanka’s territorial integrity and sovereignty. Rather than bringing peace, India’s 1987 intervention resulted in one of the most violent and chaotic periods in the island’s recent history.

Will these agreements being finalized with Prime Minister Modi also lead to a period of pillage and plunder of the island’s resources and worsening conditions for its people, rather than delivering the promised economic benefits?

It is crucial that any bilateral agreements include enforceable measures to stop Indian bottom trawlers from illegally fishing in Sri Lankan territorial waters. This decades-long practice has caused severe damage to Sri Lanka’s marine resources and inflicted significant economic losses on its fishing communities.

Facing an increasing Chinese presence in Sri Lanka and the Indian Ocean, India has sought to strengthen its political, economic, strategic and cultural influence over Sri Lanka through various overt and covert means. During Sri Lanka’s 2022 economic crisis, for example, India provided $4 billion in financial assistance through currency swaps, credit lines, and loan deferrals that enabled Sri Lanka to import essential goods from India.

While this aid has helped Sri Lanka, it has also served India’s interests by countering China’s influence and protecting Indian business in Sri Lanka.

Prime Minister Modi’s upcoming visit represents the culmination of years of Indian initiatives in Sri Lanka spanning maritime security, aviation, energy, power generation, trade, finance, and cultural exchanges. For example, India’s Unified Payment Interface (UPI) for digital payments was introduced in Sri Lanka in February 2024, and in October 2023 India provided funds to develop a digital national identity card for Sri Lanka raising concerns about India’s access to Sri Lanka’s national biometric identification data.

Indian investors have been given preferential access in the privatization of Sri Lanka’s state-owned enterprises (SOEs) in key sectors like telecommunications, financial services, and energy. The Adani Group’s West Terminal project in Colombo Port is explicitly designed to counter China’s control over Sri Lanka’s port infrastructure, including the Colombo International Container Terminal, Hambantota Port, and Port City Colombo.

India and Sri Lanka have recently agreed to resume negotiations on the Economic and Technology Cooperation Agreement (ECTA), which focuses primarily on the service sector and aims to create a unified labor market.

However, Sri Lankan professional associations have raised concerns that ECTA could give unemployed and lower-paid Indian workers a competitive advantage over their Sri Lankan counterparts. These concerns must be properly addressed before any agreement is finalized.

On December 16, 2024, India and Sri Lanka signed several Memoranda of Understanding (MOUs) in New Delhi to enhance cooperation in defense, energy, and infrastructure development. These include plans for electricity grid interconnection and a multi-product petroleum pipeline between the two countries. Building on these agreements, construction of the Sampur power plant in Trincomalee is expected to begin during Prime Minister Modi’s April visit.

The Sampur power plant project, combined with India’s takeover of the Trincomalee Oil Tank Farm, represents a significant step toward integrating Sri Lanka into India’s national energy grid. This development effectively brings Trincomalee’s strategic natural harbor – often called the “crown jewel” of Sri Lanka’s assets – under Indian control, transforming it into a regional energy hub. In 1987, during India’s military intervention in Sri Lanka, New Delhi pressured Colombo into signing a secret agreement stipulating that the British-era Trincomalee oil tank farm would be jointly developed with India and could not be used by any other country.

While India promotes its energy interconnection projects as enhancing regional energy security, recent experiences in Nepal demonstrate how electricity grid integration with India has made Nepal dependent on and subordinate to India for its basic energy needs. Similarly, Bangladesh’s electricity agreement with the Adani Group has created an imbalanced situation favoring Adani over Bangladeshi power consumers. What collective actions could Sri Lanka and other small nations take to avoid such unequal “energy colonialism” and protect their national security and sovereignty?

India’s emergence as a superpower and its expansionist policies are gradually transforming neighboring South Asian and Indian Ocean states into economically and politically subordinate entities. Both Sri Lanka and the Maldives have adopted “India First” foreign policies in recent years, with the Maldives abandoning its “India Out” campaign in October 2024 in exchange for Indian economic assistance.

India’s “Neighborhood First Policy” has led to deep involvement in the internal affairs of neighboring countries including Sri Lanka. This involvement often takes the form of manipulating political parties, exploiting ethnic and religious divisions, and engineering political instability and regime changes – tactics reminiscent of colonial practices. It is well documented that India provided training to the LTTE and other terrorist groups opposing the Sri Lankan government during the civil war.

Many in Sri Lanka also suspect, though without conclusive evidence, that India’s Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) was involved in both the 2019 Easter Sunday bombings and the 2022 Aragalaya protest movement during Sri Lanka’s economic crisis.

Contemporary Indian expansionism must be viewed within the broader context of the New Cold War and intensifying geopolitical competition between the United States and China. Given its strategic location along the vital east-west shipping routes in the Indian Ocean, Sri Lanka has become a pawn in this great power rivalry.

In addition to granting China extensive control over key infrastructure, Sri Lanka has signed the Acquisition and Cross-Servicing Agreement (ACSA) and Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) with the United States, effectively allowing the use of Sri Lanka as a U.S. military logistics hub.

It was reported that during a visit to Sri Lanka in February 2023, Victoria Nuland, former Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs of the United States strongly suggested the establishment of a joint US-Indian military base in Trincomalee to counter Chinese activities in the region.

As a member of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (QUAD) – a strategic alliance against Chinese expansion that includes the United States, Australia and Japan – India participates in extensive QUAD military exercises like the Malabar exercises in the Indian Ocean.

However, India’s role in QUAD appears inconsistent with its position as a founding member of BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa), which was established to promote the interests of emerging economies and a multipolar world order.

Unfortunately, BRICS appears to be replicating the same patterns of domination and subordination in its relations with smaller nations like Sri Lanka that characterize traditional imperial powers.

India presents itself as the guardian of Buddhism, particularly in its relations with Sri Lanka, to foster a sense of shared cultural heritage. However, it was Sri Lanka – not India – that preserved the Buddha’s teachings as they declined and eventually disappeared from India. Sri Lanka maintained the Buddhist tradition despite seventeen major invasions from India aimed at destroying the island’s Buddhist civilization.

Even today, despite its extensive influence, India has not taken meaningful steps to protect Buddhist temples and archaeological sites in Sri Lanka’s north and east from attacks by Tamil separatist groups. Instead, India appears focused on advancing the concept of Akhand Bharat (Undivided India) and Hindu Rashtra (Hindu Nation), which seeks to incorporate neighboring countries like Sri Lanka into a “Greater India.” The promotion of the bogus Ramayana Trail in Sri Lanka and the accompanying Hinduization pose a serious threat to preserving Sri Lanka’s distinct Buddhist identity and heritage.

Indian neocolonialism in Sri Lanka reflects a global phenomenon where powerful nations and their local collaborators – including political, economic, academic, media and NGO elites – prioritize short-term profits and self-interest over national and collective welfare, leading to environmental destruction and cultural erosion. Breaking free from this exploitative world order requires fundamentally reimagining global economic and social systems to uphold harmony and equality.

In this global transformation, India has a significant role to play. As a nation that endured centuries of Western imperial domination, India’s historical mission should be to continue to lead the struggle for decolonization and non-alignment, rather than serving as a junior partner in superpower rivalries. Under Mahatma Gandhi’s leadership, India championed the worldwide movement for decolonization and independence in the modern era.

Upholding the principles of the Non-Aligned Movement could forge a partnership benefiting both nations while preserving Sri Lanka’s independence and Buddhist identity. Otherwise, the New Cold War will continue to trample local sovereignty, where foreign powers vie to exploit the island’s resources, subjugate local communities and accelerate environmental and cultural destruction.

Dr Asoka Bandarage has served on the faculties of Brandeis, Georgetown and Mount Holyoke and is the author of several books, including Colonialism in Sri Lanka.; The Separatist Conflict in Sri Lanka and Crisis in Sri Lanka and the World and numerous other publications on global political economy and related subjects.

IPS UN Bureau

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By Isaiah Esipisu
KERICHO, Kenya, Mar 27 2025 – On the outskirts of Kericho town within Kenya’s Rift Valley region, Kaptepeswet tea farm, an organic tea estate sprawling on a 50-acre piece of land, is a testament that organic fertilizers can be used on mature tea bushes and still produce the desired quantity and quality of premium leaves.

“We have always used the NPK fertilizers on our tea estate, but for the past three years, we have started trials with organic fertilizers and soil conditioners deliberately to convert our tea into an organic product to serve the constantly growing global demand for organic tea,” said Gilbert Korir, the farm Manager at the Kaptepeswet Farm.

According to the Data Bridge Market Research, the global organic tea market size was valued at USD 1.70 billion in 2023 and is projected to reach USD 2.83 billion by 2031, with a Compound Annual Growth Rate of 6.60 percent during the forecast period of 2024 to 2031. This exponential growth is driven by increasing consumer awareness of health and environmental issues related to organic farming.

The NPK is an important synthetic fertilizer that contains nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium, largely used in Kenya on different crops, including tea estates, to replenish nutrients lost through harvesting and sometimes leaching.

However, different studies have shown that the process of manufacturing such synthetic fertilizers emits so much greenhouse gases, and that excessive or long-term use of the same can significantly raise soil acidity levels, create macronutrient saturation, or change it to the point where the soil loses sensitivity and absorbency to various nutrients.

According to Korir, the shift to organic farm inputs is also in line with the global shift towards environmentally safe and economically viable alternatives for good production.

“The only setback is that unlike synthetic fertilizers, which deliver high yields promptly, organic inputs take a longer time for the crop to respond, and the beauty is that they keep the soil nourished for a longer period,” he said.

Dr. George Oduor, a Kenya-based soil health scientist, explains that fertilizers derived from organic sources stimulate important soil microorganisms to provide nutrients for the crop and also improve the structure of the soil.

On the contrary, synthetic fertilizers are water-soluble, and they avail nutrients directly to the plants without necessarily replenishing the soil; hence, the farmer must reapply the fertilizers regularly to keep the crops healthy.

“It may take a longer period to see the results of organic fertilizers, but once the nutrients are available, it will take a longer time in the soil, and the plants will continue benefiting from season to season,” said Oduor.

Moses Oburu, the General Manager at Vermipro Limited, a Uganda-based organic fertilizer-producing company, says that organic fertilizers used on a large scale are made through a process known as vermicomposting, where organic materials from plants, animal manure, and food waste are fed to earthworms, which in turn excrete nutrient-rich castings, which are the main raw material for making different liquid fertilizers and soil conditioners.

The vermi liquid is then cultured in order to isolate particular microbes (bacteria) that are needed for a particular purpose; thereafter, it is taken to the concentration stage where the selected microbes are grown through medium and non-chlorinated water before they are stabilized using non-sulfur molasses to give it a longer shelf life.

Studies have shown that such fertilizers aid in the fixation of soil nutrients such as nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium. “In many cases, most of these nutrients are always in the soil, but in forms that cannot make them available for the plant,” said Oburu. “So our final products help regenerate such nutrients and make them available to the plant,” he said.

Besides, there are other non-liquid organic fertilizers that can be used on large-scale farming, including ‘bokashi,’ which is made through fermentation of organic matter, and ‘biochar,’ which is a nutrient-rich soil amendment that improves soil fertility and crop yields. Others include compost manure, farmyard manure, and green manure, among many others.

Oburu says that the demand for organic farm inputs has been on the rise, particularly in Kenya and Uganda. “Last year, we had orders from about 15,000 farmers from Uganda, and we also have several orders from Kenya by farmers who also use the inputs on horticultural crops, legumes, rice, maize, and even Napier grass,” said Oburu.

So far, the Kenya Agriculture and Livestock Organisation (KALRO), in collaboration with Ernestea Limited (a private tea processing company in Kericho), are contacting an experiment on the Kaptepeswet farm to assess the impact of organic fertilisers on tea estates through a study titled ‘Evaluation of bio-fertiliser products for optimising productivity of mature tea in Kenya.’

Kenya is rated as the third biggest tea producer in the world, delivering over 430,000 tons of tea leaves to the local and international market.

IPS UN Bureau Report

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