Recently, on Jan 4th, Prime Minister Narendra Modi post on social media about India’ island beach in Lakshadweep. The controversy began when three deputy ministers in the Ministry of Youth Affairs from Maldives engaged in negative comments about India’ and Prime Minister recent visit to Lakshadweep.
With the recent derogatory comments arise the criticism in India within Indian celebrities encouraging towards domestic tourism rather than travelling to the Maldives. With the recent controversy the Indian government has reduced it’s overall allocation by 22% for the 2024-25 financial year, as per the interim budget released by government.
Also, the Indians travelling to the Maldives dropped the share by 11.18% in 2023 while it constitutes 14.41% in 2022.
India has provided 52 crore for the development of India Gandhi Memorial Hospital to state-of-art cancer facility that will connect over 150 health-centres on various islands. During the Covid-19 pandemic, India provided rapid assistance to the Maldives.
India emerged as Maldives’s 2nd largest trade partner in 2022. Indian imports from the maldives comprise scrap metals while Indian exports to maldives include a variety of products like drugs, pharmaceutical, cement and agriculture.
In education, India helped set up an institute of technical education in 1996. India has also started a programme to provide training to Maldivian teachers and youth and for vocational training in a USD 5.3 million project. India provides the largest number of training opportunities for the Maldivian National defence force (MNDF) meeting around 70% of their defence training requirements.
The recently elected Maldivian government opposes the administration ‘india first policy’s to the extent that withdrawal of Indian troops was included in muizzu’s election. The Indian-Maldives relationship suffered a set back when Maldives entered into a Free-trade Agreement (FTA) with China in 2017.