In calling for “dialogue”, “national reconciliation” and “more inclusive and broad-based” political reforms, India is largely following China’s lead, which wants “stability” and “reconciliation” in Burma in the wake of the current repression of the monks’ uprising. China pursues its Burma policies with a certain confidence and surefootedness that India lacks, although Beijing too realises there are limits to its leverage with the ruthless and xenophobic Burmese military junta.

Dr Tint Swe, a National League for Democracy (NLD) MP who lives in the country, says India is “helpless” on Burma. He calls for a new Indian thinking and approach, but policy-makers visualise only a multi-lateral solution involving China, the United States, Japan and ASEAN.

India did a u-turn on Burma in the early nineties from its 1988 policy of supporting the pro-democracy movement and later opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi because of compelling national and energy security factors.

One, China became a key ally of the isolated Burmese military leadership especially after 1988, aiding Beijing’s policy of “encircling” India with naval bases and listening stations in the Bay of Bengal.

Two, the Burmese regime was neither inclined nor capable to roll up expanding North East insurgent camps mainly in Burma’s Sagaing division. Insurgency and drug smuggling fed off one another, leaving the North East awash with addicts and AIDS. India had to incentivise the regime against the rebels with friendly ties and arms exports.

Three, India’s Look East Policy, aimed at linkages with ASEAN and, more ambitiously, East Asian economies, could only succeed through friendship with Burma, its first ASEAN neighbour. The development of India’s North East also crucially rests on this policy.

Finally, energy hungry India needs Burmese resources, especially oil and gas, although China has gained the upper hand. In March, gas from two offshore blocks committed to India were sold to PetroChina after China and Russia blocked a UN Security Council resolution in January to end repression in Burma and release political prisoners.

Ten years ago, ASEAN admitted Burma in the hope to democratise it. Failing, it lashed out at the regime, without much impact. India, on the other hand, has pursued what some analysts call “neo-realism” in Burma, concerned at China’s “relative gains” vis-à-vis its own “absolute gains”. The result has been some tactical successes, but failure on the account of engendering visionary policy, with no levers for the future.

First, while India has got no Burmese gas for its troubles, the junta’s military operations have contained most North East rebels except the ULFA, which recently blew up a gas pipeline in Assam. Indian weapons’ exports facilitate such operations, but also broadly arm the regime against its own people. Anti-rebel operations are conditioned on relations with India. The Indian government believes the junta exhibited a delayed anger when the former awarded the Jawaharlal Nehru Award to Suu Kyi, by allowing surrounded rebels to escape in a 1995 operation. The rebels may be back in Sagaing if relations sour.

Second, despite assurances, the junta has permitted Chinese projects in oil/ gas exploration, pipelines and ports near India’s land or maritime borders in the Bay of Bengal, the sensitive Rakhine province, and west of the Irrawaddy.

Third, doubts persist about Chinese maritime intelligence gathering on Indian missile activities in the Bay of Bengal, although media sources report that the Burmese permitted an Indian aerial surveillance of the Coco Islands, one of the suspected Chinese listening stations. About the Chinese building radar, refit and refuel facilities in such Burmese naval bases as Hainggyi, the Coco Islands, Akyab, Za Det Kyi, Mergui and Khaukphyu for potential use of the PLA-Navy in its Indian Ocean plans or area denial operations against the Indian Navy, there is no similar negative assurance.

Finally, apprehensive of Burma as India’s gateway to ASEAN and East Asia, China is encouraging the country’s eastward linkage to its own Yunnan province through oil-gas pipelines/ road to Kunming, while simultaneously pursuing encroachment in Kachin and Shan States. “China is…playing the hearts-and-minds cards by making it easy for Kachin leaders to travel to Yunnan province,” writes the former Indian foreign office official, Rajiv Sikri.

Zhao Gancheng of the Shanghai Institute of International Affairs repeatedly alleges India’s “competition” with China in ASEAN and East Asia via Burma “…The Look East policy aims at a more crucial role India wants to play in the Asia-Pacific, where China’s position is increasingly important,” he says. “…India’s policy…will impact on China’s role.” The point is not that Burma resists India’s ASEAN or East Asia ambitions, but that China is able to overturn Burmese policies to limit New Delhi's options.

In sum, little as India’s tactical gains are following China’s lead on Burma, it loses on vision. And while Beijing is bringing flexibility into its diplomacy to cater for even a shock collapse of the Burmese regime, India has no plan B.

The Chinese ambassador received the UN special envoy, Ibrahim Gambari, when he arrived in Burma this week; China facilitated the first and possibly the second Gambari-Suu Kyi meetings; and certainly Chinese pressure impelled the junta leader, Senior General Than Shwe, to grant an audience to Gambari.

The less publicised meeting in June between three Burmese ministers and a US state department official took place in Beijing. Dr Tint Swe, the NLD MP, says that the Chinese ambassador to Burma was among the first to arrive to offers his congratulations on his party’s victory. “The Chinese are clever,” he says. On the other hand, India sees nothing beyond the Burmese military junta. It does not even play on the junta’s fears of over-dependence on the Chinese, or Chinese settlements and encroachments in the border states. India hopes it will be called to play no role in Burma’s painful – and bloody transformation – to democracy.

At this rate, it won’t be.