When India, in May last year, became the only major absentee at Chinese President Xi Jinping's inaugural Belt and Road Forum in Beijingheld to champion his pet mega infrastructure projectNew Delhi was widely warned of its impending isolation.

When we came out with our concerns last year, recalls former envoy to China Ashok Kantha, the feeling in some quarters, including people in India, was we are getting isolated and run the risk of being an outlier in this global project backed by 60 countries.

A year since the Beijing forum, India's stand on Chinas Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) appears increasingly vindicated, and the concerns articulated in New Delhi's statement last May on the lack of transparency and financial sustainability in the mega project are, as Kantha notes, being reflected in so many other quarters now.

Sri Lanka, one of the early backers of the BRI, now owes China more than $8 billion. Unable to repay Chinese loanssome of which the previous government agreed to at a 6.4 per cent interest rateColombo has transferred control of its Hambantota port to a Chinese company on a 99-year lease. In Myanmar, the government has said it would review the terms of Chinese projects, while in Malaysia, Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad has expressed concerns on repaying Chinese loans and suspended a $20 billion high speed rail project.

Even in all-weather ally Pakistan, criticism over the terms of the China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) has grown louder. During the poll campaign, Imran Khan of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf criticised the outgoing government over the lack of transparency in many CPEC projects and alleged corruption. A Wall Street Journal report on July 22 revealed that Chinese power companies had been given a guarantee of 34 per cent annual return on their investments from CPEC projects, to be paid by the Pakistan government in dollars. This, even as Pakistan's finances have teetered on the brink of a crisis, with suggestions that the new government will be forced to seek an IMF bailout (which could bring a stop to new CPEC projects).

These developments have reinforced India's initial scepticism towards the BRI. Kantha, who was the envoy in China until January 2016 (Beijing first approached India to formally join the BRI in 2015), said India's main concern then was a lack of clarity. It was clear to us that it was a Chinese initiative not a multilateral one and we were not given an in-depth briefing on it for quite some time. External affairs minister Sushma Swaraj in 2015 conveyed to her counterpart Wang Yi that India had serious reservations on the plan, but would be willing to work with China if it saw interests converging. This was why India didn't hesitate to join the China-backed Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank the following year. While Beijing first pitched it as a BRI-linked project, India made clear to bank president Jin Liqun that it would only join if it was a truly multilateral project. Beijing went out of its way to address the concerns of India and other countries and ensure a structure where Beijing doesn't have a veto despite being the biggest shareholder. India ended up as the second-biggest shareholder.

This multilateral approach hasn't been seen in the BRI. At the same time, China has appeared to reluctantly accept India's stand, and said after the Wuhan summit it was open to working with Delhi on China-India-Plus One multilateral projects. As India's concerns remain on the strategic ambitions that underpin BRI, officials say it will proceed carefully, even as it watches Chinas flagship project run into choppy waters around its neighbourhood.