A crisis is an opportunity – this is perhaps the oldest and wisest axiom of leadership. A couple of decades ago, China’s axis with India’s staunch regional ally, Sri Lanka, sowed the seeds of a potential crisis. China was a prickly, powerful adversary up north. Sri Lanka was a perilously close southern neighbour that could sway the strategic equilibrium in the Indian Ocean. As we will understand later, India failed to scoop an opportunity out of this looming crisis.
But today, the tide has turned. China is staring at an economic crisis long brewing in its womb, ie, its deadly debt-fuelled expansion, made worse by a strangely panicky response to COVID-19 outbreaks with complete shutdowns and disruptions. Simultaneously, tiny Sri Lanka is collapsing, bereft of foreign exchange, fuel, food, and medicines, felled by a virus that killed tourism and a Rajapaksa clan that proved incredibly greedy and foolish.