Appearing from Islamabad, Karachi, Lahore, Peshawar, Muzaffarabad & Quetta

Sunday, March 21, 2010, Rabi ul Thani 4, 1431

Holbrooke provides comic relief to Subcontinent

FM Qureshi seen as Army favourite

Subdued reaction to India-Pakistan talks

19-02-2010

M D Nalapat

Besides the current Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh, India has had three PMs who were very much in favour of reaching out to Pakistan. The first was Morarji Desai, the austere Gandhian from Gujarat who became the first non-Congress PM of India in 1977. Morarji began the day drinking a cup of his own urine (and, perhaps for unrelated reasons, remained spry and fit throughout his 99 years). He was a pacifist who, as Finance Minister under Jawaharlal Nehru, reduced budgets for India’s military during 1959-62, a factor which experts believe helped cause the defeat of the Indian army at the hands of the Chinese. As Prime Minister, he refused to intervene in the matter of the imprisonment and subsequent execution of Z A Bhutto by General Zia, publicly saying that this was an internal matter of Pakistan’s. He refused Israel permission to use Indian facilities for a pre-emptive strike on Pakistani nuclear installations, and withdrew all Indian intelligence networks from Pakistan, a factor that probably contributed to his getting the Nishaan-i-Pakistan. Indeed, during his brief period in office, the Indian external intelligence agency Research & Analysis Wing (R&AW) was sharply reduced in size and scope.

The next PM who was very friendly to Pakistan was I K Gujral, the pipe-smoking Jhelum-born Punjabi intellectual who took over in 1997. He enunciated the Gujral Doctrine, which held that as South Asia’s largest country, India should make the most sacrifices for peace. As PM, Gujral ordered a halt to all offensive covert activities in Pakistan, a decision that even today impacts India’s capabilities in its western neighbour. It was during his time that visa procedures for citizens of Pakistan were first relaxed, and some people-to-people interaction took place after fifty years of freeze. After him, the BJP’s A B Vajpayee belied the rhetoric of his party by becoming very friendly to Pakistan, especially to Mian Nawaz Sharif, for whom he had a strong bond of affection. Vajpayee saw Sharif as a man of peace, and came to Lahore in a bus in 1999,creating the hope that peace was at hand. However, the absence of the then Army Chief Pervez Musharraf from the Vajpayee-Sharif Lahore Summit was an ominous sign, that was followed by the Kargil operation and the coup against Sharif. After Kargil, Vajpayee no longer felt confident enough to continue with the peace process, although he did go ahead with two unilateral cease-fires in Kashmir, that were used by the Jehadis to consolidate their position.

Even Vajpayee’s successor as PM, Manmohan Singh,seems to have made peace with Pakistan the main objective of his term in office. It was expected that the economist would focus on the economy, but Singh has largely left such matters to his Cabinet colleagues Pranab Mukherjee and P Chidambaram, concentrating instead on foreign affairs, especially peace with Pakistan. He has even gone so far as to support measures such as an open border between the two parts of Kashmir, a concept that is totally opposed by the security agencies in India. He is understood to be backing Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah’s proposal that Kashmiri youth who went to the Pakistan side for training in weapons be allowed to return back. Others warn that such a move could ensure the easy return to India of hundreds of youths with a burning hatred of India. The recent bomb blast at Pune, which was carried out by Indian citizens from Kashmir, has strengthened the hand of those who regard the Abdullah-Singh idea (of a return of Jehadis) as impractical. However, not least because US Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is anxious to please the Pakistan military, the Obama administration has been putting a lot of pressure on Manmohan Singh to agree to several concessions on Kashmir that are opposed by the security agencies. Just as Kargil killed off the desire of the Indian public for accommodation with Pakistan, the Pune blast has made it politically very hazardous for Manmohan Singh to persist with his efforts at placating the Pakistan military with concessions on Kashmir.

However, there is very little public opposition to the idea of talks with Pakistan. The people of India are aware of the importance of contact as a means of clearing away misunderstandings, and back talks. However, they expect that these will be used by the Indian side (led by the attractive, tough Foreign Secretary, Nirupama Rao) to place firmly and frankly India’s concerns that Pakistan territory has become the staging area for Jehadi operations against India. However, the Indian side knows that Asif Ali Zardari and Yousuf Raza Gilani have no control over the Pakistan army, so there is no expectation that the talks will lead to any breakthrough in relations. Those in the know say that they are taking place because Manmohan Singh favours talks.

Of course, the Obama administration has for eight months been pressing India to resume a formal dialogue with Pakistan.The Foreign Minister of Pakistan, S M Qureshi, is not correct when he claims that India has been forced to have talks with Pakistan, for the reason that Delhi has shown ( for example, at Copenhagen and recently when the US seed company Monsanto was refused permission to produce genetically modified brinjal, despite pressure from the Obama team) that it can resist US pressure. The talks are taking place because of the decision of PM Manmohan Singh to ignore advice to the contrary and go ahead. However, it is unlikely that Singh will get any public support for unorthodox ideas such as open borders or allowing Jehadis to return to India. Such actions would become unpopular the instant there are fresh terror attacks, as seem likely. Since the Gujarat riots in 2002, Indian Muslims in locations other than Kashmir have been willing to take up arms against the state, so that now there are several terror modules operating across the country that are manned by Indian citizens. Several of them have received training by elements in other countries. For years, the Manmohan Singh government was in denial about this domestic component of the terror machine, refusing permission to the security agencies to enter into selected zones to question suspects. Only after the horrific Mumbai massacre of 2007 (when a flat-footed government became an international laughing stock by being held at bay by a handful of youngsters, were some of these self-imposed restraints removed. The Pune blast has led to a fresh reconsideration of the guidelines for operations, and it is expected that several dozen arrests will be made, not only to crack the Pune case, but to prevent fresh terror attacks.

Manmohan Singh, despite his conciliatory nature, seems to be awakening to the realisation that the objective of those involved in terror plots against India is not simply Kashmir but the reversal of India’s growth story. They seek to make India unsafe for investments, by scaring away even international sports teams, they way they have succeeded in Pakistan. They have been funding agitations against industrial and other projects, so that vast regions of the country remain backward. Thus far, the Manmohan Singh government has adopted an ostrich policy towards this growing threat, hoping that it will disappear. Instead, it is becoming worse. India has always seen a cycle of inaction that creates a crisis, which is then met with overwhelming resources and - where needed - force. The Pune blast has been a wake-up call for Manmohan Singh. Unless he takes much more active steps to stop terror networks in India from killing innocents, he risks seeing the end of the Indian economic miracle. Much more is at stake for India than relations with Pakistan.

Why colonial law for “free” citizens?

12-02-2010

M D Nalapat

Until General Zia-ul-Haq sought to align Pakistan culturally with Saudi Arabia in the 1970s by changing the laws of the land in a way that became closer to that country, Pakistan too had the same system of British colonial law as India. In the satisfaction at the “European” standard of such laws, what is forgotten is that the laws passed by the British in their Indian colony were not the same as those that were enacted for citizens of the UK. Instead the laws passed in India were designed for colonial subjects, and hence gave disproportionate power to the state authorities and very little rights to the citizen. Because of the potential for generating bribes and patronage that such British-era laws bring, political leaders in India have thus far refused to liberalise the laws in a manner that ensures that citizens of India cannot get persecuted by the state,the way they were under the British Raj.

In India, an Income-tax officer has the power to take away property and even liberty on the basis of a subjective decision, as was the case when the British were masters of the subcontinent. Several of the actions of the Income-tax department have been kept outside the purview of the court system, so that the citizen needs to appeal only to other officials to get redress. Thanks to such vast powers, it is easy for the government of the day to intimidate people, especially those with High Net Worth. Of course,even relatively poor and honest taxpayers can get harassed by the Income-tax department, especially if the order to do so has come - orally of course - from powerful politicians and the officials who toady to them. In India, there are many former Chief Ministers (of Indian states) who are in politics. Almost all of them have become super-rich, but only those who fall foul of the present governmnent have been subjected to searches and seizure of wealth. The others remain protected by their connections. Recently,there were raids on the residence of the former Chief Minister of Jharkhand state,Madhu Koda, an individual who has no contacts with India’s influential media fraternity. According to the authorities,about $1 billion was recovered, in the form of foreign bank accounts. While the figure may look large,the reality is that Madhu Koda is a poor man when compared to the immense wealth acquired by some other former Chief Ministers,several of whom are in office under the very dispensation that arrested Koda (because he was a political inconvenience to the government). Had every former Chief Minister been raided and investigated, it would have been a matter for congratulation. However, what the nation saw was a few being punished, while the many escaped.

The colonial laws still in force mean that the political leaders who took over from the British retain the vast powers that the aliens had. The Indian Police Act,for example,dates from 1863, and gives total control to the executive over the police. As a result,there are frequent transfers of police persons, a District Superintendent of Police serving an average of about six months before being shifted, usually because he or she annoyed a local politician. Because of excessive political control over the police force, efficiency suffers.It is a tribute to the resilience of the people of the Indian subcontinent that despite such drawbacks, most policepersons in India cheerfully work long hours, and with dedication. In most parts of the country, law and order is reasonably satisfactory, in large part because of the hard work put in by the police, whose personnel often work for

12-hour days with only a brief 20-minute break in between. If India is doing well despite its corrupt politicians the reason is the hundreds of millions of decent people in the country. Efforts have been made in the past to reform the legal system,so that it ceases to have the odour of colonialism. During 1998, a top lawyewr,Ram Jethmalani,was made Law Minister of India by Prime Minister A B Vajpayee. He quickly got to work fashioning changes in the legal case that would majke justice in India a paradise for the citizen rather than (as at present) for the lawyer. However, Jethmalani’s ewfforts at reforming the legal system led to his ouster from the Union Cabinet. There were too many powerful people who wanted the present legal system - with its delays and its multiple procedures - to continue. Today also,India has an efficient Law Minister, the writer and thinker M Veerappa Moily, but his efforts at reform too are meeting strong resistance from vested interests.

Unfortunately, rather than get simplified, laws in India are getting more complex and more restrictive. The Congress-led government that took office in 2004 and was surprisingly re-elected in 2009 has gone back to the period of the Nehru family rule, when there was a host of laws that controlled almost every aspect of a citizen’s life. Nehru regarded Indians as children needing firm parental control and he and his daughter Indira Gandhi presided happily over the colonial system of laws that places discretion in the hands of the state rather than the people. When the soft-spoken Narasimha Rao became Prime Minister in 1992,he tried to liberalism the system and take away powers from officials and politicians. Such efforts led to anger against him by the privileged with the result that - alone among Indian Prime Ministers - Rao was hounded when out of office and almost sent to jail on the basis of frivolous charges. Today, the Nehru era is back in fashion and since 2004,there has been a ceaseless expansion of the powers of the government.

Since 2004,the Income-tax department has been given back the draconian powers that it lost in the intervening 15 years. Other agencies of government have been strengthened. Efforts are obn to tighten state control of the internet, following the example of China. Movies and books are getting banned, or are prevented from completion, an example being a film that shows the romance between Edwina Mountbatten and Jawaharelal Nehru. The power of the state is reaching levels not seen since the 1970s,so it is small wonder that almost the entire media are singing hosannas to the present government. However, there has been a silent transformation of India. The new generation is aware of the rights of citizens in a democracy and is making its voice heard. Every available forum is being used to question the rulers as to their inefficiency in crucial issues such as a check on inflation. The Indian Middle Class has crossed 300 million and will soon reach 500 million. At that stage, colonial law will have to give way to democratic law, seven decades after India became a free country.

The people of the subcontinent are wise. They need not the dead hand of repression but the cool breeze of understanding. They need freedom in their lives and in their pursuits. Only then will Indians and Pakistanis be at home the super-productive people they are in countries such as the US.

Defence Minister Antony shows who’s boss

29-01-2010

M D Nalapat

The 1950s and the 1960s were a period when the US and its European allies backed the takeover of governments in Asia by the military. One after the other, pro-US generals staged coups that toppled elected governments, to applause from North America and Europe. The West saw no contradiction between their frequent exclamations of support for democracy and their connivance in putting into power the uniformed services. After all, to Dean Acheson, John Foster Dulles or Duncan Sandys — as to Winston Churchill earlier — democracy was a gift meant to be enjoyed only by those of European ethnicity. The rest of the globe, in their view, was not fit enough for such a privilege. In a period when countries in their midst were staging military coups almost on a yearly basis, it is to the credit of the generals in India that they rejected hints from abroad that they take over power from the civilian leadership. Those in the know say that the only period when a few senior officers in the military actually considered a coup was in 1959, when then Defence Minister V K Krishna Menon behaved in an insulting way to senior officers of the armed forces, whose protest to Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru fell on deaf years. Menon was, after all, a favourite of Nehru.

At that time, the Chief of Army Staff was General Kodendera Thimayya, a superb tactician responsible for forcing open the Zoji La pass in Kashmir in 1948, by the use of tanks. The Sandhurst-trained “Timmy” was beloved by the troops, but excited the attention of the paranoidal B N Mullick, Director of the Intelligence Bureau, who suspected him of planning a military coup.In fact, there was nothing more to the rumour of a coup than some loud talk in army messes by a few senior officers who ought to have known better, and who were angered by the public rebuke given to General Thimmayya by Jawaharlal Nehru in Parliament. An angry and ungracious PM administered the tongue-lashing after having got the COAS to withdraw his preferred resignation. Thimmayya, his spirit broken, finally retired in 1961 and died soon afterwards. The next year, a once-proud army weakened by political interference and crippled by severe budget cuts went to defeat at the hands of the Peoples Liberation Army. It was only after that shock that Nehru realized the need for a strong army, especially since his warm welcome of the Dalai Lama in 1959 had angered China and made that country’s leaders suspicious of Indian designs. From the time that the Dalai Lama took up residence in India, relations between Beijing and Delhi have never been warm, despite the need for both to work together.

That even a competent, popular COAS such as Thimmayya could be treated so cavalierly indicated the reality of civilian control over the Indian military even in the 1960s. However, in India, this has been carried too far, with the military getting excluded from decision-making at the higher levels. Till today, unlike in countries such as Japan, serving officers of the military have zero presence in the Ministry of Defence, which is filled only with civilian officers. A Defence Secretary (the bureaucratic head of the ministry) may have been Secretary of Sports just before he took charge of the administrative oversight machinery of the armed forces, and may never have seen a tank or a gun in his life. Yet he would now be taking decisions that directly impact India’s readiness to face threats.

None of his bureaucratic colleagues would have any expertise in Defence, unlike in the case of the External Affairs and Finance Ministries, where there is greater specialisation. Worse, as yet, there is no Combined Headquarters for the three Services, which continue to operate as separate fiefs. Such a lack of coordination, while operationally unwise, suits the interests of politicians and bureaucrats eager to be in the driver’s seat on military affairs. The result has been that decisions on equipment and career progression have been taken by civilians with little understanding of military requirements. Despite such setbacks, the military in India has cheerfully soldiered on, aware that democracy is not a perfect system, but that it is preferable to the alternative of military government.

After the Thimmayya episode, another major blow to the prestige of the armed forces took place on December 30,1998, when Defence Minister George Fernandes dismissed the Chief of the Naval Staff, Admiral Vishnu Bhagwat, for insubordination. Admiral Bhagwat had publicly declined to accept the Defence Ministry’s appointment of Vice-Admiral Harinder Singh as Deputy CNS. While such a stand was untenable in the context of civilian control over the military in India, the numerous punitive steps against the fallen Admiral - including efforts to strip him of his rank and retirement benefits - created much heartburn within the uniformed services. However, as in the past, they accepted the barbs without public demur, and after a while, some justice was done to Admiral Bhagwat, who is one of the finest strategic minds in the country, and a strong votary of Sea Power, by withdrawing some of the punitive measures against him

This week, the mild-mannered Minister of Defence, Arecaparambil Kurian Antony, once again showed the Services as to just who is the boss. The present Army Chief, General Deepak Kapoor, a tough and no-nonsense general, seemed to be going soft on his Military Secretary, Lt-Gen Avadesh Prasad, who has been accused of favouring a businessman in what has been termed the Sukhna Land Scam. Lt-Gen Prasad allegedly influenced his colleague, Lt-Gen P K Rath, as well as Lt-Gen Ramesh Halgalli, to ensure that the businessman was given prime land, ostensibly to set up a college, but in fact, to build houses on.

The Defence Ministry has already cancelled the appointment of Lt-Gen Rath as Deputy COAS, while a court-martial of him and Lt-Gen Halgalli seems imminent. The COAS had sought to delink the top man involved in the transaction, Lt-Gen Avadesh Prasad, from a court-martial, merely slapping him on the wrist by “administrative action”.

In other words, Lt-Gen Prasad would have escaped scot-free in two days, when he retires from service by January 31. Had the Inquiry Officer (Lt-Gen P K Singh, the incoming COAS) been of the same view as his boss General Kapoor, Lt-Gen Prasad may have escaped. However, Lt-Gen Singh recommended a court-martial for Lt-Gen Prasad. When Defence Minister Antony was told of this divergence of view between the two top officers of the Indian Army, he examined the records and ordered a court-martial, overruling General Kapoor.

Antony is one of the very few top politicians in India who are financially honest (another being - it must be admitted – Prime Minister Manmohan Singh), whose wife and children still use public transport, and whose sole wealth is a tiny house in Trivandrum, the capital of his home state of Kerala. He is aware that scandals involving procurement have cast a cloud over the Ministry of Defence, and may be hoping by this public move to retrieve some of his department’s lost reputation. Certainly the fact that the upright incoming COAS, Lt-Gen Singh, was of the view that severe steps needed to be taken against Lt-Gen Prasad would have been decisive in making the normally non-confrontational Defence Minister deliver the coup degrace to his army chief, who seems to have very little leeway left but to resign, in view of his advice not being taken. General Kapoor is known for his soldierly qualities, but friends have reportedly told him that he should not create a controversy by quitting, but accept the orders of the Defence Minister. The good thing is that the entire episode has been played out in public.

In both India and Pakistan, the media - especially the visual media have emerged as public watchdogs, challenging the writs of the powerful. With all its defects, Indian democracy has shown the resilience needed to ensure that it does not get smothered by military coups, and these days, in Pakistan as well, the media are playing an important role in preventing a repeat of the past, when elected governments were replaced. In the case of India, perhaps the pendulum needs to swing slightly in the other direction. The men and women in uniform need to be directly associated with decision-making in the Ministry of Defence, and reforms such as a Combined HQ for all three Services need to be introduced. Of course, none of this should take away the reality of civilian control over the military, a reality that has been emphasized to General Kapoor by Defence Minister Antony just two days ago.

The failure of Barack Obama

22-01-2010

M D Nalapat

This columnist was an early (February 08) supporter of Barack Hussein Obama, and still considers the current US President as a potential Abraham Lincoln. He has both the mind as well as the charisma to lead his nation from a confrontational to a cooperative relationship with other major powers. Unlike George W Bush and Dick Cheney, who seemed to be uninterested in any US citizen worth less than a billion dollars cash, both Obama as well as Vice-President Joe Biden have a value system that prizes good above greed. Indeed, Biden has for decades lived a life that in its simplicity is far removed from the grandeur of a US Senator’s existence,even taking the train each week to be back with his family in Delaware.The most precious treasure for any individual is the earning of the genuine love of those close to him or her,and by this measure,both Biden and Obama are wealthy indeed.They each have close families that are obviously at ease with one another.

Neither leader has allowed the passion of prejudice to colour his view about the rest of the world. President Obama,indeed,has made it clear that he acknowledges that the Muslim Ummah is as enlightened and moderate as their sisters and brothers who are Hindu,Jewish,Christian or Buddhist. This public stance despite efforts by traducers to highlight the fact that his father was a Muslim,and that therefore the President’s middle name is Hussein

However,despite his personal gifts and political successes of 2008, a few days ago the voters of Massachusetts elected an Obama-baiter to take the place of the revered Edward Kennedy.In part,this may have been out of pique that they were no longer a “celebrity” constituency. It may - on hindsight - have been better to have persuaded John F Kennedy’s daughter Caroline or another of the prolific and talented Kennedy clan to stand,rather than a nonentity who has been defeated by another nonentity,now become a celebrity. Indeed,the distancing from the candidature of Caroline Kennedy for the New York Senate seat vacated by Hillary Clinton and the fact that neither her name – nor that of any of her family members - was ever considered to fill a Kennedy family borough indicates the weakeness of Barack Obama : his reluctance to stand up to for his friends and supporters,and his embrace of those who are his enemies. In this quality,Obama reminds one of Prithvirak Chauhan,the Hindu king who defeated Mahmud Ghori in the first Battle of Tarain in 1191 and sent him back with gifts and honour to his kingdom.Ghori soon made common cause with Hindu kings opposed to Prithviraj,and defeated him in 1192. However,unlike the Rajpur prince, the Afghan beheaded Prithviraj and annexed his kingdom,beginning the Mughal conquest of India. Prithviraj’s mistake in allowing Mahmud Ghori to escape after defeat changed the history of the subcontinent

After his own victory in the 2008 Presidential elections, Barack Obama reached out to the candidate he had comprehensively defeated in the primaries,Hillary Rodham Clinton,and handed over the US State Department to her care.He also populated the “Obama” administration with multitudes of Clinton loyalists, even while ignoring the well-merited claims of his own longtime backers for responsibility.Even the architect of the Obama victory,David Axelrod, has only an inconspicous job in the Obama administration, weighted as it is with friends and followers of Hillary and Bill Clinton. Only a handful of backers got prize posts,such as Janet Napolitano,who is now Homeland Security Secretary,although she would have been an excellent Secretary of State.The others who for years worked tirelessly for his success have been cast to the wolves by President Obama.The Democratic Party base had chosen Obama over Clinton.The US electorate had chosen Obama. Yet what they have now got is Clinton Lite. If there is any Obama in the Obama Administration, that quality is in hiding. Had Bill Clinton been a great President,this would not have been as much of a problem as it is now.But the reality is that it was during the amoral period in office of Bill Clinton that - for example – Wall Street was given full freedom to indulge itself in a frenzy of speculative greed.It was no accident that the last order passed by President Clinton in his final six minutes of office was a pardon to Marc Rich,the financier who since then has been ensconced in Switzerland. George W Bush only continued the speculator-friendly policies of Bill Clinton, to a degree that these criminal elements caused the 2008 collapse of the global economy. It was expected of Barack Obama that he would ensure that accountability was fixed and punishment meted out for the excesses of the past two decades. However, he appointed as Treasury Secretary a man – Timothy Geithner - who is himself part of the problem,because of his close personal links to Wall Street.Having given the fox the responsibility for looking after the chickens,is it any wonder that speculators are back at work,sending commodity prices skywards once again?

Although Bill Clinton professed to be a post-racial President,in fact the Clinton adminustration followed the Dean Acheson - Foster Dulles model of seeing only Europe as a serious partner for the US. Bill Clinton was condescending towards the rest of the world,including India and Africa.The only exception was China,a country much courted by the financial and business titans that Clinton relied on for donations. Today,that same Europe-oriented policy is getting followed by Barack Obama, thanks to the fact that he has outsourced foreign policy to the Clintons. In any crucial negotiation, such as over Iran,only European countries are included in the negotiating team, not even India and China. Indeed, the Clintons still believe that they can command India to do the US bidding, in the hectoring way that was attempted over first Kashmir and then the nuclear issue during the 1990s. It is no accident that the new Clinton Lite US Administration has rehabilitated Robin Raphel,who as Assistant Secretary of State during the 1990s did so much to help bring the Taliban to power (although these days,the entire blame for that has been laid at the door of Islamabad). For Raphel treats those countries that do not have

European-ethnicity majorities as places that need to do as they are told,a trait that led to several unpleasant exchanges between her and Indian polocymakers in the 1990s Small wonder that US Defense Secretary Robert Gates has returned empty-handed from his visit to Delhi. He had wanted the Manmohan Singh government to sign on to two long-pending agreements, the Communications Inter-Operatability and Security Memorandum of Understanding (CISMOA) and the End-User Verification Agreement. These were on the cusp of getting signed last year,after the Bush administration accepted that Indian objections to some of the clauses in them were valid,such as that US teams would have unfettered and unannounced access to any piece of US equipment (even a screwdriver) at all times, or that India would need to give full information to the US while getting back only a partial feed. Within months of the Obama administation taking office last year, these restrictive conditions once again began to be re-emphasized.

Once again,the attitude of US negotiators became a “Take it or leave it” stand.Defense Minister A K Antony of India decided to leave it,unless a pact that reflected both the mutuality of interests as well as equality of status got formulated. Had there been an “Obama Approach” to the problem, rather than the clumsily payternalistic Clinton approach, Defense Secretary Gates would have left for home with both agreements signed. The Barack Obama administration has once again slowed to a crawl US collaboration in hi-tech and space with India. Once again, Indian scientists are being denied visas to enter the US.Once more, several Indian companies are being threatened with sanctions,just because they seek Europe-level standards of production and output mix. If friends in Pakistan believe that there are tensions between their country and the US,they can be assured that there are equal tensions between India and the US, relations between which seem to have returned to the frost of the Clinton years.

It all goes to prove that while Prithviraj Chauhan may have been a nice man,his leniency towards his foes was a disaster. Barack Obama, faced with the loss of his veto-proof Senate majority,is learning the hard way that firmness pays, as does loyalty to those who reflect your views, rather than pandering to those who sought and who seek to undermine you.

It is a reflection of the Obama Presidency that Hillary Clinton (who serially abused him) rides high while Caroline Kennedy (who did so much for him) has been cast aside.
 

Minister Tharoor pays for his candour

15-01-2010

M D Nalapat

Independent India’s first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, so admired the British that he was insistent that the last Viceroy of British India - Lord Louis Mountbatten — should also be the first Governor-General of Free India. It was Lord Mountbatten who advised Nehru to declare a cease-fire in Kashmir in 1948,when only two-thirds of the territory had come under Indian control, and to refer the issue to the United Nations, instead of settling it unilaterally by continuing the war, as Home Minister Vallabbhai Patel wanted. Only in India do some in authority try and keep it secret that Nehru had more than a soft corner for the wilful spouse of Lord Mountbatten, Edwina, a romantic relationship that continued throughout their lives.

The British had a paternalistic view of India, judging the sub-continent’s inhabitants to be incapable of handling their own affairs, and so did their successors, who have retained the Imperial Civil Service, British colonial law and a structure of regulations that has taken discretion away from the population into the hands of the administration. Because more governmental powers mean higher bribes, those in office have been reluctant to shed the vast powers that they have over the lives of ordinary citizens.

Since Manmohan Singh got appointed by Congress President (or “CP”, as she is referred to within her party) Sonia Gandhi to be Prime Minister in 2004, there has been a steady rollback of the liberalisation introduced by the present PM’s previous boss, Narasimha Rao. Several departments of government have been given increased powers, with the inevitable result that it is not efficiency that is rising, but corruption. Recently, a former chief minister of the small but mineral-rich state of Jharkhand, Madhu Koda, annoyed the Congress Party and as a result, found himself accused of enriching himself by $800 million. Koda is not the only former chief minister of an Indian state in politics, nor is he the richest. There are many others whose wealth is several times more than his relatively paltry accumulations, but as these others are close to those now in power (indeed, several are themselves in power), they have been left free to enjoy their newfound riches Despite the talent and industry of the Indian people - who have shown their mettle worldwide by establishing prospering communities throughout the world - the country has the largest number of destitutes in the world,300 million.

In most Indian cities, pathetic and often limbless individuals beg for a few coins, even as the windows of the BMWs and the Volvos remain shut in their faces. Despite socialism being explicitly enshrined in the Indian constitution, the poor get short shrift in India. An example is the highway system, where pavements for pedestrian use are either absent or inadequate. A highway close to the residence of this columnist in the National Capital Region (NCR) has no pedestrian crossings, so that every few weeks, he sees ambulances take away those who were killed while attempting to cross the road. Human life is cheap in our subcontinent. Given the many deficiencies and malpractices present in India, it would have been helpful if those in power encouraged transparency and candour. Instead,they seek to ensure that the facts never come to light, by punishing those who speak out. A prominent victim of such an authoritarian attitude is the former Under-Secretary at the United Nations and present Minister of State for External Affairs, Shashi Tharoor, who has gotten into trouble for his candid observations on the situation in the country. And even for humour. Tharoor was ticked off for referring to those leaders who travel Economy Class for show as “Sacred Cows”. The fact is that when Sonia Gandhi, for instance, travels by air, those in government say that a separate aircraft ferries two bullet-proof cars to her destination, together with a huge complement of security and other staff. Had she and her immediate entourage travelled in the same aircraft, the country would have been spared the extra expense of the tickets of herself and her substantial immediate retinue, yet some flights of hers in Economy Class were hailed as evidence of being in sync with the values of Mahatma Gandhi rather than an exercise in public relations Mahatma Gandhi always travelled by Third Class, and lived in huts wearing a loincloth. When he died, all that he left behind for his family was a pair of spectacles, some old clothes and a pair of sandals. His lifestyle and that of those claiming to follow his example is as different as a Rolls Royce is from a bicycle. Tharoor was right in subtly and sophisticatedly pointing to such hypocrisy, and deserved thanks rather than the censure he got. Recently, when he pointed out that some aspects of Nehruvian policy created misperceptions in the broader international community, there was again an uproar, even though he was correct. Sadly for him, Nehru is indeed sacred in the Congress Party, and has been raised to the level of a

divine force that cannot be questioned the way Thoroor sought to do. This columnist has never been reticent in pointing out mistakes made by Tharoor, including when he launched an ill-advised move to become UN Secretary-General, forgetting that such a post ought to remain with citizens of small countries rather than a global power such as India. However, in the controversy over his recent remarks, there is no doubt that Tharoor is the victim of his party’s refusal to allow itself to indulge in self-criticism Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is into his second and last term. At one time, the soft-spoken economist sparked admiration for his integrity and his democratic instincts. It is this early promise of change that has so embittered several admirers and converted them into critics. Hopefully, Manmohan Singh will ensure that self-criticism is not seen as a crime, so that errors can be pointed out and rectified. Should Rahul Gandhi - who has become the most influential force within the Congress Party today - help the PM in such an effort, they will jointly be able to take India forward on the Second Wave of Reform, one that ensures that the colonial legacy of Power to the Powerful gets replaced with Power to the People. It is a reality that Sonia Gandhi has been unable or unwilling to change the system of controls and patronage that enriches the influential few while it impoverishes the multitudes. Today, India has a population of at least 400 million who are young and educated, and who deserve better governance. In 2009,these voters chose Rahul and his Congress Party over the BJP, but unless he delivers on the promise, the next time around, there could be electoral disaster.

Although touted as a future superpower, the reality is that India is still a work in progress. The administration is more a hindrance than a help to development, while corruption and incompetence are pervasive. These days, although the established print media has remained stale and non-topical, some television channels have stepped into the vacuum by highlighting cases of incompetence and corruption. For example, over the past decade, a section of retailers has fleeced the Indian consumer by rathcheting up the prices of essential items to absurd levels.

The Manmohan Singh government ignored this, until television channels began to focus on the fact that - for example - the retail price of onions is six times higher than the wholesale price. Some of the younger news anchors on television have become ombudspersons for the public, voicing their grievances in the way that Minister Shashi Tharoor tried to do, before he was taught the lesson that the price of power is all too often the surrender of honesty.

Bringing Islamic Banking to India

08-01-2010

M D Nalapat

There are more Muslims in India than there are in Pakistan, which is why it is surprising that successive governments have so far done nothing to bring Islamic banking into India. The consequence of such neglect is that millions of observant Muslims are forced to park their savings in dubious entities,because they have been deprived of financial institutions in India that are Sharia-compliant and avoid the payment of interest,because of its ban in the Quran (3:130).

Indeed, the Quran sets forth some very healthy financial principles,such as the avoiding of the giving of finance to unsavoury businesses (5:2), and the showing of compassion to the financially disadvantaged (2;280). As has been pointed out by several scholars,the prohibition of interest is not unique to Islam,but is also found in Judaism and Christianity ( Psalms 15:5, Nehemiah 5:7). However,throughout the world,the giving and taking of interest has become widespread Financial experts estimate that more than $50 billion of funds from the Gulf can flow to India,should Islamic banking institutions be set up in the country. This will generate 2.7 million jobs in the country,both directly and indirectly. At present,almost all the surplus cash of the Gulf countries is parked in London (which, ironically, is the world’s top “Islamic Banking” centre), New York,Zurich and Frankfurt. Naturally,the financial instititions headquartered in these locations would not like to see India emerge as a competitor in the parking of funds from the Gulf.

They are aware of the strong historical and civilisational ties between India and the Arab world,and are nervous that this may result in funds moving away from them. Indeed,many Arabs are justifiably upset that they have suffered a collective loss of $1.3 trillion because of the numerous malpractices of financial institutions in the US and the EU,and would prefer to place their money in India. However,thus far,because of the immense influence that financial entities in the US and the EU have over the Reserve Bank of India and the Ministry of Finance,thus far, the policy changes needed to attract such funds have not come about So pervasive is the influence of US and EU funds over India’s financial policymakers that the Reserve Bank of India significantly slowed down economic expansion in India during 2007-2008 by raising interest rates to levels not seen in more than a decade.

Although the RBI justified this as an anti-inflation measure,they themselves know that such painful steps have no impact on price rise,caused as this is by speculation and by policies that favour the middleman over the producer and the consumer. All that the policy of high interest rates has done was to make several segments in Indian industry less competitive than they were when interest rates were low. The policies followed by the monetary authorities in India have forced several corporates to borrow money from London and other centres in the developed world,at a profit for these centres of 3%.

Small wonder that there is so much pressure on India to prevent the authorities from taking steps that could attract funds from the Gulf. Had the authorities in India encouraged their domestic companies the way policymakers in the US and the EU unfailingly do,India would not have been in today’s situation,when even tiny Taiwan exports double the volume India does Recently,the government of Kerala,a state that has ties with the Gulf that go back for 1600 years,sought to set up an Islamic Banking division in one of their financial institutions. However, a politician having close links with a section of the Hindu religious leadership has got the Kerala High Court to stay the operationalisation of this move.

India’s courts are famously liberal when it comes to granting stays,with some even lasting for decades.In countries such as the US or the UK, stays are granted only after the court is convinced that there exists a strong prima facie case in favour of the individual making the request. In the case of India, stays by a court are granted far more liberally.The Kerala High Court order means that the attempt by the state’s Communist rulers to set up an Islamic banking system in a state where 20% of the population are Muslims may be indefinitely delayed.Bankers in Europe and in the US can rest easy, knowing that it may be a long time before the estimated $1.16 trillion dollars parked in so-called “Islamic Banking” institutions in these locations faces competition from India

Although it is true that several policymakers allow themselves to be unduly infuenced by interested parties operating overseas,the fact remains that overall,India’s policymakers are a patriotic group. Indeed, with all their faults,India’s administrators have done a commendable job in ensuring a modicum of stability in the face of frequent political upheavals.Hence,this columnist is optimistic that it will not be long before India copies the Malaysian model,and brings Islamic banking into the country. Closer economic interaction between India and the Gulf is in the interests of both sides. The GCC countries and India are complementary in their skills and congruent in their interests. The setting up of Islamic banking divisions within the existing banking network in India would ensure a substantial flow of investible funds into the country.

Of course,none of this money would get diverted to industries such as gambling and alchohol, that are barred in Islam. A beginning has been made by the Jamaat-i-Islami Hind,which has set up a committee on Islamic banking under a noted scholar,Mr Abdur Raqeeb. Some influential policymakers within the Congress Party are also active in seeking to overcome the block to Islamic banking that has been artificially created by international interests keen to ensure that India does not take money away from them India is a secular country,and therefore Islamic banking needs to be seen not as a “Muslim” issue,but as one that involves the welfare of each citizen,whether Muslim,Christian, Hindu, Jain, Sikh or Buddhist. After all, the huge volume of remittances from Indians working in the Gulf benefits the entire country and not simply those belonging to a particular religion. Islamic banking therefore needs to be viewed less as a religious right than as a secular advantage. Allowing India’s observant Muslims to gain access to domestic funds that are Sharia-compliant would ensure that they avoid getting duped by unregulated and often dubious entities that seek to profit from their faith. The Islamic world is India’s natural partner,and one way of strengthening such linkages would be through the introduction of Islamic banking in India Indeed,it can be argued that the healthy financial principles mentioned in the Quran were the earliest enunciation of the “mutual fund” concept. Unless mutual gain comes from mutual effort, and unless moral principles are given primacy in decision-making,the wotkd will witness further man-made catastrophes such as the 2008 financial crash.

This was caused entirely by the greed of some 380 individuals, who were the prime movers in the relentless speculation that artificially drove up the prices of commodities such as foodgrains,copper,steel and oil. Sadly, apart from a handful,not one of the 380 have suffered any legal consequence of their devastating economic attack on humanity.Indeed,the Obama administration seems as deferential to them as was George W Bush.Small wonder that speculation in commodities is once again rearing its poisonous head,making the price of oil and other essentials rise despite the weakened state of the international economy. Judging by the way in whuch Barack Obama,Gordon Brown,Angela Merkel and others are obedient to their whims, it looks as though those guilty of causing the distress of hundreds of millions in their insatiable greed for money will once again plunge the world into chaos,and soon.

In such a context,the need to create financial systems grounded on moral values becomes clear.Should Islamic baning entities finally get sanctioned in India,and should they function in the way that is intended,then not only Muslims but Hindus and others will start putting their savings in them. As the sages say, we need to look for good everywhere, so as to reach it everywhere.

More laws not the answer in India

01-01-2010

M D Nalapat

This past week, attendance at cinema houses has suffered because of two stories that have repeatedly been shown on television. The star of the first is the 86-year old Congress Party politician,Narain Dutt Tiwari, who has been Chief Minister of two states,a Union Cabinet Minister,and till a few days ago,the Governor of Andhra Pradesh. According to the channels, a charming lady from his home state of Uttaranchal used to arrange for other - and much younger - women from the same location to visit the Governor in his official residence.

Although protocol demands that each appointment be cleared by the Intelligence Bureau, this was not done.Instead,the lovely young ladies were escorted by an Officer On Special Duty ( very special duty,indeed) past the security checkpoints at the Raj Bhavan to the waiting arms of His Excellency. No entry was made in the visitor logs,and the Chief of Security was informed that the ladies in question were all “close relatives” of the Governor. Of course, the “close relatives” usually looked very different from each other,thus raising questions as to the gene pool they belonged to being 86, Tiwari did not follow the example of some other Governors, who met their “relatives” in 5-star hotels rather than in their official residences. Indeed,in Delhi, at least two 5-star hotels are known for the multitude of charming “relatives” that come for short periods - sometimes at night but usually in the afternoons) to meet “Uncleji” for what must surely be chats about the weather. Others rely on close friends to provide the venues needed for such refreshing encounters, meetings that do so much to preserve family values and the spirit of togetherness. Sadly for Tiwari, his contact got annoyed because a promised coal mine allocation did not materialise. She promptly got one of the “neices” to film Uncleji as he gave learned discourses in the bedroom to her and to two other “neices”, discourses where the practical mingled happily with the theoretical.

Some would say that an 86-year old who educated three “neices” at a time should be given a Sports Award. However, India’s straitlaced Prime Minister, Dr Manmohan Singh, took a somewhat negative view of the Andhra Pradesh Governor’s visible (on television) love for his extended family,and forced poor Narain Dutt Uncle (or Grandpa,more appropriately) to resign. Several other residents of Raj Bhavans across the country who have similar proclivities must be thanking their lucky stars that in their case,they kept their word about such trifles as coal licences,and hence have yet to become television stars.

The other story that has been making waves in India is more tragic than the loss of office. Ruchika Girhotra was a 16-year old tennis prodigy when she was summoned into the presence of the President of the Haryana Lawn Tennis Association,Inspector-General of Police Rathore,and allegedly groped. She resisted,and was plucky enough to give a written compaint against the top cop. After that,she was forced to leave school on a trumped-up charge,while her brother Ashu was repeatedly arrested by the police on false charges. The harassment grew so severe that Ruchika killed herself in 1980. A couple of weeks ago,after 19 years,a court finally sentenced Rathore to a term of six months for his responsibility in the tragedy. The mild sentence finally woke up the media,which led a campaign that seems set to ensure that Rathore (who was promoted to Director-General of Police,possibly for his groping skills) may spend the next few years of his life in prison. There are far too many instances of high officials exploiting their power to humiliate and assualt women,and the Rathore example may serve as a warning to such individuals.

However, after having slept for 19 years,the Government of India has woken up after the media furore to put in place yet more rules and legislation,on top of the draconian laws that already exist in India. The new laws would make arrest mandatory in every case where a woman complains of harassment, with no right to anticipatory bail. Last year,a young friend of this columnist was harassed for months by his wife (who left him after a love affair), because she filed a case of dowry harassment against him. Under the law in India,such a complaint means that the entire close family of the spouse can be arrested.

My friend’s 79-year old mother had a criminal case filed against her,as happened to his sister and her husband. It took a while before the falsity of the charges could be established, a period when the family lived in dread of being taken away to jail. The point is that laws are only as good as the people who enforce them,and in India the enforcement machinery is usually very corrupt.Hence the proposed new laws that will follow the Ruchika case will not end such harassment,as much as it will increase the ability of the corrupt to blackmail and intimidate,so as to get bigger bribes. After more than a decade of liberalisation, India seems to be returning to the Nehru era of tough laws indifferently or crookedly applied.

For the politicians,the passing of tough laws is an easy way out of the public displeasure created by reports such as the Ruchika Girhotra suicide. However,such laws are useless in the absence of a clean,transparent and effective administrative structure. What is needed is milder laws but better compliance.And this can happen only when the public become more alert and more demanding of better standards.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is a reformer,but some others in his Cabinet are not,and they have been forcing through rule after rule,law after law,since they came to office six years ago. Such administrative methods have resulted in a shrinking of the space for the public,which is once more at the mercy of the officials,the way they were during the time the Nehru family were in charge. Of course, even today the family is in charge,as Prime Minister Singh has to report to Congress President Sonia Gandhi,the current head of the Nehru clan.

Is there hope? There may be,and from the Nehru family itself. Rahul Gandhi,the 39-year old son of Rajiv and Sonia Gandhi,is showing genuine reformist instincts. He was born into a new India,and has grown up in a more self-confident country. His associates know first-hand the dangers of choking the system through draconian laws,that may some day get applied against them. Rather than join the herd in pushing through new legislation and new rules that can only increase the flow of bribes, Rahul needs to nudge his party’s government into undertaking the systemic reforms that alone can prevent the abuse of power that took the life of 16-year old Ruchika Girhotra two decades ago. He needs to encourage civil society in India. As in Pakistan,an alert and informed citizenry is a much better defense against tyranny and misfeasance than a plethora of indifferently implemented laws.

Needed: Education reform in India

25-12-2009

M D Nalapat

When India finally became free of foreign rule in 1947,more than 80% of the population was illiterate.The need was for numbers. To train hundreds of thousands of engineers,doctors and other specialists so as to meet the needs of the population. Hundreds of new universities were set up, and by the end of the 1990s, India was turning out more than two million technically qualified people each year,higher than any other country,including China. Even by the 1970s, doctors and engineers from India had spread across the world, earning respect for the Indian passport that predated the boost in image caused by the tech boom of the 1990s. There was no doubt that overall,the quality of professional education in India was good.The doctors and engineers trained within India could hold their own with those who studied in the US or the EU.

However,there was a problem. Although the average level of skills was high,there were almost no “peaks”. Although one-sixth of the world’s population was from India,yet the country’s contribution to significant discoveries was almost nil.There were hardly any Nobel Prizes,the few getting them studying and working in laboratories abroad,such as this year’s V Ramakrishnan in Chemistry. The Indian education system promoted quality at the expense of excellence. Students who were brilliant and creative found that they were being stifled by a rule-bound system that discouraged innovation. Once a student entered into a “stream” ( technical,medical or the humanities) in high school, he or she was stuck in that till the doctorate level. Unlike in the US,where there exists flexibility in courses,and where an outstanding student gets special attention,in India,such a student often gets regarded as a disruptive influence,and is sought to be brought down to the level of the rest of the class. Hence the reason

Why India still depends on foreign countries for so much of its R & D,and why indigenisation has failed so spectacularly Of course,this does not worry many policymakers. Minister of State for External Affairs Sashi Tharoor,for instance,calls those seeking to make India self-reliant as “nationalists” who hold India back from the inevitable globalisation. Tharoor himself has spent most of his life abroad, and hence has escaped the effect that education in India has on initiative and in the willingness to experiment with new ideas.

His impatience with local conditions is therefore understandable, and is shared by the new Education Minister,Kapil Sibal, a successful lawyer who has been seeking the past year to reform the Indian education system. However,he is facing resistance from the many whose careers and whose fortunes would be affected by change. Today, the immense regulatory framework of Indian education has spawned corruption and sloth. Academic freedom is non-existent,and attempts at excellence and innovation are slapped down. Many within the regulatory agencies have enriched themselves, giving sanction to undeserving institutions on payment of bribes. It is such people who are resisting Kapil Sibal as he seeks change.

In India, as in Pakistan, selection to key committees depends on personal friendships rather than on professional expertise. The National Security Advisory Board is an example. The NSAB was set up to provide advice on security issues,and meets each month (if not more often).The members get to stay in 5-star hotels and travel Business Class on aircraft,and each meeting costs the Indian taxpayer millions of rupees. However, very little enlightenment comes out of such deliberations,for the reason that almost all the members have been chosen because of their personal connections. Each National Security Advisor fills the NSAB with friends and admirers, thus repaying old favours and generating new ones. Those who are honest in their criticisms, or are not favourites at the darbars of the powerful,get ignored. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has followed precedent in ensuring that several of his old friends have gotten accomodated in key committees An example is the Education Committee set up under the chairmanship of a close friend of the Prime Minister, Dr Yash Pal. Although Manmohan Singh is regarded as a friend of the private sector,the same cannot be said of the venerable Dr Yash Pal,who has spent his life in government service and clearly has a distaste for anything private.

He has therefore severely downlayed the extent to which the private sector can be an instrument of educational reform. The Education Committee Chairman dislikes the private sector, and it is therefore no accident that the past months have seen multiple attacks on the autonomy and rights of private education providers in India, both in school as well as in the college sector. Such “sarkari” types forget that the government-run institutions are themselves cesspools of corruption,and that there are several cases when well-functioning private institutions have been proceeded against,because they refused to bribe those in charge of the education sector.

By giving the responsibility for framing a higher education policy to an individual who is obsessed with governmental solutions, Prime Minister Singh has answered the question of why there has been no progress in the education sector, during his six years and counting as Prime Minister of India. Unless he breaks out of the sociology that confines itself only to friends and admirers,and looks for talent from elsewhere than within such ranks, Manmohan Singh will not succeed in creating the “education revolution” favoured by Kapil Sibal Sibal is trying to see that the all-powerful (and in many cases corrupt) regulatory bodies that control accreditation to medical and technical education in India are either removed or have their powers diluted.This stand has put him at odds with several politicians and officials,who are each making millions of rupees each year because of the vast powers the regulatory bodies have. However, unless he succeeds, Indian higher education will continue to be bereft of excellence,except in a few pockets such as the Indian Institutes of Technology. Another necessary step is to create a framework for foreign universities to come to India.At present,nearly 300,000 students go from India to other countries to study each year,at a cost of $12 billion. They seek the flexibility and excellence of institutions in the US,the EU abnd elsewhere. Should Kapil Sibal succeed in convincing the Prime Minister to back him in his efforts at getting foreign universities to set up campuses in India, then India could become a major international education provider,earning rather than losing billions of dollars each year. Standards in many parts of India are far better than in countries such as Australia (where racial attacks on Indian students has multiplied), but the complex web of controls that is shackling Indian education needs to be lifted. Education Minister Sibal is seeking just that,and hopefully he will succeed

Although as yet there have not been any “Big Bang” reforms,yet in some fields,there has been progress.An example is the 2002 policy of introducing free internet capability in religious schools. Such facilities give the students access to information beyond that purveyed by their teachers. That year,the government also went ahead with providing religious schools with teachers in English and other subjects, so that graduates of such institutions would acquire the skills needed to compete in the job market.A purely religious education results in a very limited access to the job market in India,and consequent frustration. Every student in India needs to have an education that is modern and which gives her or him skills that are useful in a modern economy. T

his includes familiarity with computers and the internet. Hopefully, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh will look beyond the narrow circle of his friends and admirers to identify those who can suggest education reforms. Hoopefully, he will ensure that his government puts in place such reforms. For that is the only ,way to generate more Indian Nobel Prizes, more cutting-edge R&D in India, so that the country develops an education sector as modern as its Information Technology industry.

China & India team up at Copenhagen

18-12-2009

M D Nalapat

Strategic analysts in India not committed to an “Always Obey the West” policy have long pointed to the advantages of joint action between India and China. This is why Delhi has tried since 1981 to establish cooperative relations with Beijing, the Foreign Service pioneer in this being the soft-spoken, thoughtful K R Narayanan, who was one of India’s senior diplomats and a former envoy to China.

The life story of Narayanan is fascinating. Born into a “Dalit” family (or, in other words, from a community that had been downtrodden for millennia), by his brilliance he got scholarships to study in India and abroad, and was appointed to the Indian Foreign Service by Jawaharlal Nehru, ending his career as India’s first (and thus far, only) Dalit President. Then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi encouraged Narayanan to explore the possibility of a thaw between China and India, so as to rescue relations from the Deep Freeze into which they had been consigned since the intensification of suspicions because of Nehru’s 1959 decision to give a privileged VVIP asylum in India to the Dalai Lama, followed by China’s launch of a brief but conclusive war against India in 1962. However, the response from China was cool, although Paramount Leader Den Xiaoping and Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi put in place a few Confidence Building Measures in 1988.

The next Prime Minister to make good relations with China a priority was P V Narasimha Rao,who engineered the economic reforms of 1992-94. To an extent,he succeeded: when the 1998 nuclear tests took place,the Chinese response was at first muted,even while that of the US was harsh,and that of its allies Australia and Canada was abusive. Observers in India saw shades of racism in the threats flung at India by Bill Clinton and his friends that reminded them of ancient India, when the young low-caste boy Ekalavya learnt archery by observing the way the way the great teacher Drona taught archery to Prince Arjuna. The low-caste boy became so good that he challenged Arjuna to a competition,which the prince lost. Horrified at a low-caste learning skills that should,according to custom, be the monopoly of the upper castes,Drona forced Ekalavya to cut off his right thumb,thus destroying hios skill in archery for good.In 1995, Narasimha Rao abandoned a planner nuclear test by India,after his economic advisors warned him that the resulting sanctions may have a catastrophic effect on the accelerating economy. That time,this columnist compared the Clinton-led effort to de-nuclearize India as a modern version of the high-caste Drona seeking the thumb of the low-caste Ekalavya.

At that time,China had distanced itself from US moves to cap and roll back India’s nuclear capacity,with its then envoy to India even defending India’s right to test.It was only after Prime Minister Vajpayee explicitly invoked the “China Threat” in a letter to US President Bill Clinton got leaked (by the Clinton team) that Beijing turned sharply negative,and resisted India’s de facto accession to the nuclear club till the final two hours of the IAEA and NSG votes that put in place an India-specific agreement in 2008, an agreement that was owed to the desire of President George W Bush to make India a strategic partner of the US. In contrast to Bush,whose close family includes several not of European ethnicity, the Clintons have always been Europeanist,seeing the rest of the world as different. Hence,they have always applied different standards to countries in Asia than what they use for Europe,and this was evident in the Clinton reaction to the 1998 nuclear tests by the world’s fastest-growing democracy,India.The reaction of Canada and Australia was even more rabid at the time.

Although the deliberate leak of the Vajpayee letter by the Clinton team caused Beijing to go sour on the Indian tests (thus serving the purpose of Bill Clinton,which was to get China to join in a US-led coalition that would seek to cap and roll back the Indian nuclear deterrent), the unintended benefit was the immediate adoption of India as the favourite of the anti-PRC group in the US,a lot of whom were from the Republican Party. It was the desire to use India as a counterweight to China that propelled forward the process that culminated in the 2008 nuclear deal between India and the US. After this got operationalised,it became clear to the moderates in Beijing that India could not be kept indefinitely in a “South Asia” box. Since then,they have been seeking to free policy towards India from the hawkish (and negative) grip of the military. Any country where the military decides the policy towards India is unlikely to understand and leverage the immense economic and other benefits of friendly relations with the world’s largest democracy. It is a welcome sign that the Chinese military’s hold on India policy is weakening,and that pragmatists seem slowly to be taking a more decisive role under President Hu Jintao.

Thus far,the “India hawks” in China have prevented the moderates in Beijing from working out a border settlement in India that is based on the Zhou Enlai formula of 1961. Tensions remained high because of the frequent border incidents.Such hawks did not realize that the main beneficiary of hostile relations between China and India is the large (and growing) international anti-PRC coalition,that seeks to place India firmly within their own camp.Their negativism on India is in fact helping this anti-PRC lobby to ensure that Delhi and Beijing remain far apart. However, the Climate Summit has given a chance for those who seek a Sino-Indian alliance to try and get control of the direction of policy. It has been India’s Envirnonment Minister Jairam Ramesh ( an admirer of Rahul Gandhi,the telegenic,articulate son of Rajiv Gandhi) who has been the architect of the China-India Copenhagen Coalition,that may herald a breakthrough in relations between Beijing and Delhi. Unlike his equally articulate and brilliant ministerial colleague, Sashi Tharoor, who favours a policy of going along with the West, the Nehruvian Environment Minister Ramesh is the author of “Chindia”,a book that highlights the synergy between China and India. He is the individual most responsible for the fact that China,India,Brazil and South Africa have united at Copenhagen to face down attempts by rich countries to make the poor continue to pay for the pollution caused by the wealthy.

Like his predecessor A B Vajpayee, India’s current Prime Minister Manmohan Singh prefers an alliance between the US and India to the more Nehruvian vision of Ramesh. However,Singh has been hobbled by the absence of substantive concessions by Obama, who seems to have returned to the Bill Clinton policy of seeing India as the “child of a lesser god” than favourites in Europe,and hence undeserving of such “high caste” attiributes as nuclear and missile capabilities.Singh has therefore allowed Ramesh to take centre-stage at Copenhagen, where the close advisor to Rahul Gandhi has immediately linked up with his Chinese counterpart.

Unless Prime Minister Manmohan Singh follows the advice of Barack Obama at Copenhagen and asks Ramesh to agree to concessions that would - once again - make the poor countries pay for the lifestyles of the richer economies, or unless PRC Prime Minister Wen Jiabao bends to pressure from the richer countries and moves away from the G-77 position into the waiting arms of Denmark, Copenhagen may see the dawn of an emerging India-China alliance,not just on climate but on other issues as well.

US pushes India closer to Russia & China

11-12-2009

M D Nalapat

The Chinese are meticulous about referencing. This became clear during a visit to Beijing several yeards ago,when this columnist was reminded of an article he had written in the early 1980s, about a possible alliance of India,China and Russia. Subsequently, the prestigious Beijing Review spoke of him as being the first to put forward such a concept, more than fifteen years before the then Prime Minister of Russia,Yevgeny Primakov, spoke of an alliance between Asia’s three largest countries. Since then, geopolitical currents moved on. Boris Yeltsin was dismissive of India, and the once-strong bonds between Delhi and Moscow weakened. Yeltsin took his country into the Western sphere of influence, but because of the fact that he allowed the mafia to seize control of much of Russia’s wealth, his people suffered. Geopolitically,Boris Yeltsin converted Russia into as much of an international joke as the often drunk,shambling leader himself was.

Poverty spread,suicides rose,and the country despaired, till Vladimir Putin emerged from the shadows a decade ago For more than four years,Putin continued the Yeltsin legacy of relying on the West, only to be disappointed at the meagre returns he got from such loyalty. Indeed, the Bill Clinton years ( 1992-2001) were lost ones for the US. In his greed to secure maximal concessions from Moscow as well as destroy the country as an independent source of strategic technology, Clinton convinced many Russian patriots that they had been wrong to trust that the West (led by the US) would ever accord Moscow an honoured place at the international table. They understood that both France and Germany would work in concert to block Russia’s entry into Europe, as such an entry would severely dilute the importance of the Franco-German alliance within Europe. By 2005, Putin began moving away from the West-centred policy of his predeccesor, getting closer to the West’s geopolitical rival,the Peoples Republic of China. Between 2005 and 2007, technological and military cooperation between Russia and China increased significantly. However, Putin had still not placed India on his radar That changed in 2007,when Vladimir Putin masterminded a policy of renewed strategic engagement with India. However,this time around, it was the Indians who were uncooperative. Entranced as they were by the EU and the US, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and his political boss Sonia Gandhi were cool to Russia’s overtures.Indeed, gestures such as the searching of the diplomatic baggage of the Russian ambassador took. place, while only low-level officials met with visiting Russian delegations,in contrast to the top officials who always seemed to have time for delegations from the West.

It took the coming to office of Barack Obama this year to jolt Delhi out of its complacent assumption that India would be at the core of US interests. Early on, President Obama made it clear that he followed Bill Clinton in considering India as just the biggest South Asian state,and not the Asian powerhouse it was or the emerging global powerhouse that George W Bush saw it as. Behind the scenes, efforts were launched by the non-proliferationists in the Obama administration to cap India’s store of fissile material,and to arrange for inspections of India’s strategic program by the back door. A month ago,President Obama stunned New Delhi by asking President Hu Jintao of China to join hands with him in jointly managing tensions in South Asia. Sadly for Obama, India is too big to be managed,even by its own leaders. If Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton sought a partnership with China, India would beat them to it.Once the Obama statement in Beijing became public, quiet steps got initiated to ensure that China join hands with India’s allies Brazil and South Africa in the Copenhagen Climate Summit. After all, as China’s neighbour, India has a lot to offer to China, as does China to India. It makes sense for the two to cooperate,especially when Washington has once again downgraded India into a sub-regional power in its diplomatic calculations. Although the Indian Foreign Service has only around 600 officers within its ranks,yet it has evolved into an effective and far-thinking service, able and willing to leverage India’s strengths in the world. The sudden warming-up of relations between India and China has dismayed those who were counting on continuing to take advantage of the frictions between the two giants of Asia.

The cooperation at Copenhagen may get repeated in the WTO talks,and later perhaps at the UN, where till now China has been lukewarm to the possibility of India joining the UN Security Council as a permament member Last week, in another major shock to the “Take India for granted” brigade, President Dimitry Medvedev (despite his pronounced Europeanist leanings) and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh signed a nuclear deal that would ensure supplies of Russian equipment and feedstock even in the event of a nuclear test by India. Clearly,this agreement was the brainchild of Vladimir Putin,who seems to have taken up on the idea of an India-China-Russia alliance that would emerge as an alternative geopolitical pole to the US-EU bloc,a bloc that seems to believe that a “fair bargain” in which it gets 90% of what it seeks, while the other side is expected to be content with 10% of what they seek. A stable deal needs at least a 60:40 sharing of the spoils and the sacrifice,not the 90:10 model favoured by the West Copenhagen is the latest cockpit for such western overreach.

The Climate Conference is being held in one of the most expensive cities in the world, so that those from the poorer countries will find it hard to get there.Indeed,many that can afford to will find themselves excluded,because of the difficulty of getting an EU visa. For the poorer delegations, it would be financially devastating to stay two weeks in Copenhagen,where even low-quality hotel rooms (at least by Asian standards) cost $600. Small wonder that 80% of the 36,000 delegates and 90,000 hangers-on attending the conference are from the richer countries. The deliberate selection of a high-cost,visa-denied city to hold the so-called “global” summit was a transparent way of preventing the participation of the poor and the needy.Copenhagen is a rich man’s club,that sheds crocodile tears for those it has excluded.

The international oil companies (and the speculators who are close to the major shareholders) have done much damage to the world economy by artificially keeping the price of oil high.Even now,oil is nearly double what should be its market value,because of speculation and deliberate cutbacks in production. Were the Copenhagen Conference to come up with a scheme of utilising the methane hydrates in the Arctic or Siberian permafrost, thus preventing them from escaping and endangering the environment, it would be an immense benefit. However, the oil lobby is blocking such a move, driving the debate towards the red herring of biofuels,several of which take as much fossil fuel to grow as they repalce at the pump. Another by-product of biofuels is deforestation,in a context where afforestation is vital to reduce the harmful impact of carbon emissions. Led by host country Denmark,the richer nations are seeking to put in place tariff barriers to products from the poorer countries,using the excuse of carbon emissions.They are also seeking to sell expensive “green” technologies to the poorer countries,even though in several instances,local technology is much better suited to the protection of the cocerned region India’s teaming up with China at Copenhagen and the signing of the nuclear pact with Russia are indications that President Obama’s policy of downgrading India to the level of a South Asian power is pushing Delhi closer towards Moscow and Beijing. If such an axis takes place, the “credit” will go to the Obama administration. India sees itself as an Asian power with a global focus.Those unwilling to accept this cannot be defined as friends.

The lessons from Dubai

04-12-2009

M D Nalapat

Arab lands have one of the most glittering histories on the planet. Most importantly, it is from these oases and deserts that Prophet Mohammad (SAW) emerged, to reveal the wisdom of the Word of God. Since that blessed time, Arab countries became the source for much of the learning and innovation in the world, a time in which they borrowed freely from afar,but always ensured that the final touches were given at home.In other words,all knowledge was adapted to local conditions before being acted upon at home. The Arab peoples regarded their own wisdom as being the bedrock of their knowledge. As a consequence,the influence of the Arab world spread to Europe,Africa and to other parts of Asia.

What is the picture today? Any visitor to the Arab world can see the extent to which local inhabitants have allowed decision-making in their countries to be outsourced to foreign countries.In the case of the Arab world,these are Europe and the US. Almost every major enterprise has a European or a North American at the top,while throughout the senior management system, people from these lands dominate. Even relatively small decisions get taken by them,with the Arabs acting as mere bystanders. Indeed,there has been a near-total outsourcing of high-level decision making to selected individuals from Europe and the US. Of course,a similar situation prevails in some other countries, including India.An example is the consortium that built the new Bangalore International Airport. The Indian owners have so little confidence in their own people that they have filled even security slots with people from abroad, a situation that is the same – although to a smaller degree - in Mumbai. Officials from Europe are not like those from India,Pakistan or the Arab world,who place the interests of their own people last. In Bangalore airport for example, even the toilet fixtures are made in Germany, as are so many other items,including buses. This in a country with excellent local brands in these two segments. There is no doubt that European brands are,many of them,very good.ut they are also hugely expensive, and in the case of Bangalore,the purchase of such expensive fittings and equipment has resulted in an airport that is already too small for traffic,less than 36 months after commissioning An example of an Indian company that seems to have relied on outside advice for investment decisions is the Tata Group. Chairperson Ratan Tata may even select some executive from outside India to head the Indian group, even though its profits are from Indian operations, while many of Tata’s recent overseas aquisitions have been disasters. For example,there have been huge losses at both Corus Steels as well as Jaguar-Land Rover, which have had the effect of lowering the value of Tata shares to the tens of millions of shareholders in India. There has been a relentless flow of funds from India to the UK, so that once again, money from this poverty-stricken country is flowing outwards to sustain higher employment in the UK. Ratan Tata is a visionary who is a legend in India for his honesty and vision.Hopefully,he will reconsider the group’s present policy of treating the upliftment of the poor in India as a lesser priority than maintaining jobs in foreign countries at the expense of the Indian shareholder. Especially when Europe has become fiercely protectionist, blocking even items such as low-cost pharmaceuticals from India in order to protect the profits of its own companies Even in the case of the Tata Nano (a revolutionary vehicle that costs only US$ 2500 each for the four passenger version), the Tatas have decided to concentrate only on the Indian market (where roads are already over-congested) rather than attractive foreign markets that can generate foreign exchange earnings and have roads that can better bear the huge increase in numbers caused by the Nano.

It is not only Tatas.There is a mad rush in many local companies for foreign executives and expensive foreign takeovers in India, which seems to be the expression of a major inferiority complex rather than be based on business logic Official India is even worse in its “Craze for Foreign” than Corporate India. During the past six years of the Manmohan Singh government, commitments of nearly $20 billion have ben made for foreign equipment that could very easily have been made in India. Sadly,because of the lure of money that can get parked in Swiss bank accounts, many officials in India reject Indian manufactures (and in the case of the lucrative Defense sector,actually ban Indian companies from participation) in favour of highly expensive foreign items. Official India still treats Indian companies in as stepmotherly a way as Corporate India treats its Indian shareholders when it racks up huge losses in its overseas branches,the way the Tata Group has.

However,the extent of foreign penetration in decision-making in India is nowhere near as high as it is in so many of the Arab countries,an example being Dubai,where almost all the actual decision-making has been done on the basis of advice given by expatriates from the US and Europe.

Now that the advice of these birds of passage have been found to be ruinous,it is the people of Dubai or Abu Dhabi that are being asked to pay the tab Rather than local institutions, it is those banks that lent money and earned huge profits for years from Dubai that should bear the burden of wrong decisions. It is against the laws of economics that profit flows to such entities,but that they seek to get insulated from losses. It would be better for Dubai World to go into receivership rather than bleed Abu Dhabi of funds that would immediately get transferred to foreign banks. The collapse of this company ought to act as a wake-up call for all decision-makers in Asia,whether in India, Pakistan,the Arab world or in East Asia. The policy of outsourcing decision-making to nationals of faraway countries must stop,and those who are local should be told to look at matters from the perspective of their own national needs,rather than follow paths that benefit outside countries at the expense of one’s own.

Europe has set a good example to Asia in the way it has Europeanized all its institutions,and in the manner by which it seeks to ensure that the maximum benefit go to itself rather than to outside countries. Asia needs to learn from Europe and look within itself for meeting its needs. If the Arab world has to recapture its past glory, what is needed is to adopt a policy of ensuring that the higher levels of decision-making remain in Arab hands,and that those from Asia be given the first priority in case outsiders are needed. The success of the European Union has given the world a brilliant model of development,one that Asia should emulate.The lesson from Dubai is that it is dangerous to leave your future in the hands of others. And that the bill for mistakes should be paid by those actualy responsible,rather than by those innocent of liability.

Manmohan Singh goes to Washington

27-11-2009

M D Nalapat

During the years of the Cold War, Richard Nixon crafted an alliance between his country and the Peoples Republic of China, a feat for which Henry Kissinger got the credit. Nixon understood that a link with China would strengthen the US immensely in its major battle,that against the Soviet Union. He ensured a steady and increasing flow of US intelligence and technology to Beijing, a diet that ensured the steady increase in China’s capabilities. If today the PRC is becoming the other superpower in the globe,the credit must go to the US,which gave that ancient country the brainpower and moneypower needed to launch such a rise. Of course,by the 1990s, the economic policies fashioned by Deng Xiaoping ensured that China became almost as important to the US economy as the asian country itself was to America. Cheap consumer goods ensured a lower rate of inflation in the US, and the decline in manufacturing costs caused by outsourcing production across the Pacific Ocean gave the US a competitive edge in several markets over its EU trade rivals.

Today,China is miles ahead of India in the economic sphere,where fifty years ago the country was way behind. Several Indian policymakers look wistfully at the progress China has made,and seek to replicate it in their own country, by linking India to the US the way the Chinese leadership aligned their country with Washington earlier. The driving force behind such a “China Stategy” is the Deputy Chairperson of the Planning Commission,Montek Singh Ahluwalia,who is the person closest to the economist in Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.Indeed,during the 1990s, it was the concept note on economic liberalisation prepared by Montek that formed the basis for the subsequent liberalisation of the Indian economy. Since then,he has worked hard to harness the synergy involved in closer ties with the US, and his Prime Minister’s state visit to Washington must be a source of satisfaction at a strategy smoothly implemented: to make India the new China. A partnership that would give benefits to both sides.

The differences between such an Indo-US alliance and that crafted in the 1970s between the US and China are substantial. Most importantly,analysts say that the India-US relationship is not directed against any country,the way the China alliance was directed against Moscow. The US and China need each other to thrive economically,and the bonds between them are too many to be cut off. There is no question of quarantining China the way the USSR was blocked from access to markets and technology. The second difference is the fact that both the US and India share a similar history of British rule, which made the two the biggest English-speaking countries in the world, both of whom are democracies. Of course, as was the case with China,there is a large Indian diaspora in the US that has worked hard to strengthen ties between the country of their citizenship and the country of their ethnicity. Also, there is already substantial technological linkage between the US and India,especially in the computer software field.

It was therefore not accidental that the first state visit of the Obama adminstration was for the Indian PM. Till this visit, the arrival of an Indian contingent in Washington was largely ignored by the local media, unlike the attention given to visitors from Pakistan and China. During the 1980s, both Rajiv Gandhi as well as Deng Xiaoping visited the US, but while the Chinese leader received huge media coverage,the Gandhi visit was almost ignored. This time, ther is substantial - and unusually favourable - media attention being given to the Manmohan Singh visit,with television channels and newspapers devoting large volumes of space even to a discussion about the menu and the guest list.Unfortunately,it would seem that some members of the Republican Party declined the invitation to attend the dinner given on November 25. This despite the fact that it was under George W Bush that India-US ties bloomed. Clearly, domestic politics has once again taken precedence to the needs of international diplomacy,although it must be said that overall,Republican lawmakers are even more friendly to India than Democrats,many of whom see the Asian power through Europeanist lenses. In such a view,the only natural allies of the US are countries that are either European or have majority populations that are of European extraction. Vice-President Joe Biden belongs in this camp, as does former Vice-President Al Gore. Indeed,if one goes to universities in the US,it will be impossible not to be struck by the focus on Europe. Apart from China (which is too big to be ignored) ,most students want to take their summer breaks in Europe.Few are adventurous enough to come to India,even though the English language is much more spoken in Delhi than in Beijing.Indeed,in India,even in small towns and big villages,many boards are in English, including road signs. Although Asia has overtaken Europe in commercial importance to America, as yet most US campuses have yet to accept such a change. This is partly the reason why the study of India is so rare in the US,as compared to experts on China.Of course,this is changing,as a new generation of scholars takes over from old “South Asia” experts who saw everything in terms of tensions between India and Pakistan.

Such academics failed to research in other areas,perhaps because even today,it is easiest to get funding for “conflict resolution” projects rather than those that deal with issues such as education and housing. The wide publicity given to the Manmohan Singh visit by the US media may see a change in such neglect of India. While the prime mover in the US-China relationship was geopolitics,the harnessing of Beijing in moves against the Soviet Union, the focus with India is economic. Closer ties would increase the rate of growth of India’s economy and enable the country to develop its technologies. Indeed, such technological collaborations was very much on the minds of the Indian administration, although this far the Obama administration has remained wedded to the Clinton polocy of preferring China to India as a technology partner.Indeed,during his visit to Beijing,President Obama explicitly mentioned space cooperation,a field in which his officials have been dragging their feet so far as India is concerned.The Obama team is also much less willing to acknowledge India as a nuclear power than was the Bush administration. An agreement on nuclear energy could not be signed,because Washington sought to include conditions that were far more stringent than that already agreed to by George W Bush. Those who head the nuclear disarmanent slots in the Obama team have spent decades trying to prevent Indian access to nuclear technology and material,and find it hard to adjust to an era where it is accepted that the world’s biggest democracy has at least the same rights as France and the UK. Another speed bump in the relationship is the approach of the Obama team towards Indian involvement in Afghanistan, a factor that General Stanley McChrsystal regards as negative. He would like to see India wind down its missions in Afghanistan, something that Delhi will not do,as it regards Afghanistan as an ally. It was only during the period when the Taliban were in power in Kabul that Afghanistan became hostile to India.Before that,and subsequently, links have been cordial.Indeed,both Hamid Karzai as well as Abdullah Abdullah have first-hand experience of India, and both leaders are popular in Delhi.

Unlike some other countries, which seem to change its allies every few years,India remains loyal to its friends. Just before the Singh visit, South Block made it a point to welcome Iran’s Foreign Minister to Delhi,where several agreements were arrived at. Iran has been a good friend of India for years, a friendship derived from the respect that the people of the country have for Persian cuiture.Indeed,much of the cuisine of North India is of Iranian origin,as are many other cultural attributes,including dress. Interestingly,Iraq too has been a longtime friend,and the view of many scholars is that both Iraq and Iran are likely to become close allies in the future.Should this happen,India would of course be very happy. Another big prize would be Pakistan. For years,it has been the dream of Indian leaders such as Rajiv Gandhi, I K Gujral,A B Vajpayee and now Manmohan Singh to establish friendly relations between Delhi and Islamabad. As yet,this has been elusive,mainly because each country blames the other for terrorist attacks.

Although he has not succeeded thus far with Pakistan, Manmohan Singh can return from his US trip happy that he has firmly placed India on a radar of the American public as a friendly country and possible future ally.He spoke with confidence about the economic future of the US,and about ties with India. Definitely, India has finally reached the big league in its relations with the US,although many differences exist between both sides. As indeed they did with China in the 1970s,when warming ties with the US did not prevent Beijing from continuing its help to the North Vietnamese to defeat US troops. In contrast,India has generally avoided doing anything that harms US security,a factor behind the warm welcome given to Prime Minister Singh in Washington this week.
 

China & US will manage SA: Obama

20-11-2009

M D Nalapat

In a world that loathes him, former US President George W Bush has millions of admirers in India, a country that was placed at the core of US interests and strategy by his administration. Although 9/11 diluted the operational significance of such a geopolitical vision, in that it forced Washington back towards the traditional policy of relying on Pakistan, this did not prevent Bush from ensuring the breakout of India from the web of restrictions that had been placed on the country since its 1974 nuclear test. Despite opposition from China, New Zealand and several European countries that sought till the final hours of the vote to block the deal, the IAEA approved an India-specific safeguards agreement on August 1,2008 that allowed each of its member-states to trade with India in nuclear technology and materials. Soon afterwards,on September 6,the 45-member Nuclear Suppliers Group removed restrictions on trade with India,even though the country was not a signatory to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. This was possible only because of US pressure,which forced countries such as Austria (which implicitly believe that only countries in Europe or with European-origin ethnic majorities should be given the right to develop potentially deadly technologies) and Switzerland to withdraw their veto. Incidentally,Germany played a very helpful role in getting India the exemption,as did France and the UK. Apart from the Europeanist powers,the country most dismayed by the India-US nuclear agreement was China. The reason is clear.The only other country in Asia with the population and potential to pose a challenge to its primacy in the continent is India,and hence it is in Beijing’s interest to prevent Delhi from accessing technology that can boost both its industries as well as its defense capability. The potential for the rise of India to cast a shadow over the rise of China was the unstated reason behind the Bush administration’s warmth towards the world’s most populous democracy. Unless an economic or a regime collapse occurs,China is on track to overtake the US in Purchasing Power Parity terms within the next 15 years,and to move rapidly ahead thereafter. Such a growth would pull in countries such as South Korea and Japan into a Sinic alliance with the PRC at the core that could challenge Western primacy across the globe. In such a scenario, it is essential for Western countries led by the US to forge an alliance with India,a country that has western-style institutions, more than two hundred million people who speak the English language and a civilisation that is related to the European. By the more than two million Indian-Americans, per capita the most affluent ethnic group in the US. By the hundreds of thousands of technology linkages, many in the software and service sectors. Now that the Obama administration is on track to ensure universal health care for all citizens,despite opposition from powerful insurance and medical lobbies, it will become inevitable for a lot of medical processes to get outsourced,mainly to India. The reason for this is the country’s growing pool of medical professionals and technicians,who are making up for the miserable infrastructure and limits on connectivity caused by an incompetent and corrupt governmental system.

Nearly 300,000 students leave India each year for education abroad,at a cost of an estimated $17 billion. Setting up international campuses in India would reduce such an outgo of foreign exchange,besides force Indian universities to improve. Sadly,Barack Obama seems to be following in the footfalls of Colin Powell,who in his writings seemed to forget that India existed. Since he took the oath of office this year, there has been silent but insistent pressure on India to sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and the Fissile Materials Cutoff Treaty,even though some Indian scientists led by K Santhanam argue that further tests are needed for India to improve its trigger mechanisms and the intensity of its nuclear payload. They - and many others - also say that the country’s stock of fissile material is nowhere near the volume needed to produce the three hundred nuclear weapons that India needs as a credible minimum deterrent against any comer armed with similar weapons. Some officials in the Obama administration are also - wisely,in private - making an argument that never fails to annoy Indian interlocuters,which is that Indian adherence to restrictive treaties “ is necessary to make Pakistan do the same”. Delhi has long been allergic to any linkage with Pakistan,seeing itself as linked instead to China,and such arguments remind many in India of Bill Clinton and his obessesion with de-nuclearizing India. Of course,when even a small country with a tiny economy such as North Korea can defy the US, the ability to pressure India is low, even though the Manmohan Singh government is the most deferential to US concerns of any that has held office since 1947.

It is not only in the nuclear (and missile) field that the new US administration is treating India as though it were in a much lower class than China, but on climate change. Although per capita emissions in India are nearly twenty times lower than those for the world’s biggest per capita polluter,Australia, the Obama administration is informally nudging India towards caps on emissions that would - according to Chamber of Commerce sources - raise business costs by 8%.Abd this in the absence of any commitment from the US to lower its total pollution as well as its very high per capita emissions. On issues relating to the WTO as well,the Obama administration is seeking concessions from India that it is not demanding of itself or its rich partners in Europe. The difference between India and the rich countries is the difference between a man who takes a 1200-calorie meal of six “rotis” and “dal” being told to limit himself to just four “rotis”,while those who consume a 5000-calorie nine-course meal agree to limit themselves to “just” 4500 calories. There is a huge difference between taking away 300 calories from a man taking in only 1200 calories and taking away 500 calories from a 5000-calorie diet, but this is being ignored by the Obama administration. Fortunately for relations between the US and India,this is no longer dependent on governments on both sides, but on people-to-people and business links,that are multiplying daily. For President Obama has on November 17 deeply annoyed the Indian establishment by asking President Hu Jintao in Beijing to join him in managing “all of South Asia”, shorthand for India.This immediately after he asked the PRC President for help in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Although Prime Minister Manmohan Singh instructed his officials not to react strongly to this public announcement, so as to avoid a controversy just before his state visit to the US on November 24 (the first by any world leader since Obama was sworn in), he too must be seething at such an attempt to involve China directly in crucial matters relating to India.

Interestingly, a similar offer was made by President William J Clinton in 2008,when he asked then PRC President Jiang Zemin to join him in “managing South Asia”. Although the Obama administration seems clueless about the chemistry in South Asia,the Chinese side is much more alive to the dangers involved in accepting such an offer,one made without any consultation with India (and presumably Pakistan and Afghanistan as well). President Hu and other Chinese leaders have wisely ignored this suggestion by Obama, although they would of course welcome intelligence information on India.Perhaps President Obama will give them information on India,the way President Nixon gave Premier Zhou substantial data on the then USSR. After all, if China is to jointly manage South Asia together with the US,it follows that Beijing should be given access to the same information available to Washington,a situation unlikely to be welcomed by Delhi.

Like Pakistanis,Indians are prone to flattery,and the ecstasy of being the first Head of Government to be given the privilege of a state visit by the Obama administration may ensure that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh walks an extra ten miles to accomodate the US on Climate Change,the WTO and nuclear issues. However, he is unlikely to surrender even an inch to President Obama’s decision to involve China in the “management” of South Asia. Before Obama messes up governmental relations with India even more than he has already done, hopefully, US diplomats will google on their computers and thereby understand that neither India nor Pakistan nor Afghanistan will allow themselves to be dicatated to by a foreign power,or even by a pair of superpowers. As a senior official told this columnist,”It would seem that to Barack Obama,India is just a bigger version of Iraq.Well,we will show him the difference”. As will Pakistan and Afghanistan.

India’s Naxalites: Wages of feudalism

M D Nalapat
 

13-11-2009

In 1966, on hearing of a peasant rebellion that had erupted in Naxalbari, a small hamlet in West Bengal in India, Chairman Mao Zedong of China said that “a single spark can light a prairie fire”. He likened the forays of the small group of Maoists as sparks that would ignite agrarian unrest in India to a level unbearable for the government. In a year’s time, West Bengal saw the formation of a government led by the the Communist Party of India -Marxist (CPM), but those who began the “Naxalite” movement saw this party as dominated by the “oppressor classes” and had formed their own “Communist Party of India Marxist-Leninist (CPI-ML), that rejected the peaceful path of elections in favour of armed struggle. Its leader,the frail but charismatic Charu Mazumdar, was soon captured by the security forces,and died in custody. His followers took to the jungles but soon fizzled out.

Why? The reason was that the Indian peasantry - especially the landless - were too scared of the big landowners to risk their lives in armed assaults. A few “class enemies” were killed,and some of them publicly beheaded, but such sights failed to ignite rebellion in the broad masses,who stayed quiet. Most had an option to armed struggle and used it: elections. In the 1967 elections the once all-powerful Congress Party was reduced to a minority in several states, including in Uttar Pradesh and Tamil Nadu. Or perhaps it was not the din of democracy that blocked the spark from settling the prairie aflame but the bitter memory of the Communist agitation of the 1950s in Telengana ,which too had been suppressed viciously . Hundreds of revolutionaries had been killed,and the trauma was great enough to convince the Communist Party of India that elections rather than armed struggle was the way of the future, a course rejected by its “Maoist” cousin. By 1973, the Maoist “Naxalite” movement had been brutally stamped out, although several of the cadres of the CPI(ML) escaped death and imprisonment. Indeed, many went: aboveground” and took to conventional careers. It was only during the last years of the 1980s that the movement revived again, regaining its 1960s strength by the end of the 1990s. The reason was the income inequality created by economic reform. While the new policies had made about a quarter (and thereafter a third) of the Indian population prosperous, the gap between them and those at the bottom of the ladder increased enormously. Cable television,which spread from the 1980s, opened the eyes of the rural poor to the lifestyles of the rich,and although incomes grew,wants increased by much more. In several parts of the country,those at the lower ends of the social ladder began moving up,helped by a policy of providing low-cost education.In the South, because unlike in the north of the country, the Muslim elite had not migrated to Pakistan, the Muslim community began to prosper,matching the rest of the population in education and income. Land reform began to get implemented across the country in the 1970s,following Indira Gandhi’s spectacular 1972 victory on the slogan of “Garibi Hatao” ( “Abolish Poverty”). In Kerala,each landless labourer was given a tenth of an acre of land on his landlord’s farm,thus making eviction impossible. As a result of this new-found security, agitations for higher farm wages multiplied,and Kerala farm wage rates went up by several times.In Karnataka too, a vigorous labd reform was implemented that took land away from landlords and gave it to tenants who till then did not own the land they tilled. Wherever such reforms were successful, the local economy flourished. However,in some parts of the country,diehard feudal interests prevented land reforms from getting implemented. They ignored the many laws passed in favour of the landless and the small peasant,and continued to have despotic control over the many who worked on their fields. Even today,a third of the country still retains vestiges of feudalism.This includes parts of the states of Maharashtra,Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh,Orissa, Jharkhand and Chattisgarh. Not surprisingly, it is in such places that Naxalism has reared its violent head. Because the landlords control the voting booths, and have the local administrative machinery in their pockets,the very poor find that democracy does not deliver for them. So they get attracted to the simple message of the Naxalites: join us,and we will together vanquish your oppressors. Since the 1990s, a tenth of India’s 600-plus districts have come under the control of the Naxalites (or Maoists,as they are also called), at least during the nights,when police dare not venture out from their stations.

The only panacea for this situation is inclusive development, that ensures a reasonable distribution of income to the underprivileged.The problem facing authorities in India is that the Maoists seem totally opposed to any form of development. They block the building of factories,and sometimes even roads. Interestingly,in India,they have been in the forefront of moves to ensure that the country’s uranium reserves remain unmined. In each location where uranium gets mined,Maoists protest. As a result,India’s nuclear reactors were starved of fuel,until the 2008 nuclear agreement signed with the IAEA ensured a steady supply. Maoist activities have held back development, so that some claim that they wish to ensure that poverty continues,till such time as they themselves will come to power.

In the meantime, areas where the insurgents are strong suffer.An example is Nandigram in West Bengal,where a giant factory was to be set up by the Tata Group to produce the world’s cheapest car,the Nano ( at a price of Rupees One Lakh each). Political rivals of the ruling CPM party joined hands with Maoists to ensure that the factory was not built, despite the fact that more than 70,000 jobs would have been created locally by the factory. In all regions controlled by them,the Maoists are against big projects,fearful thatthe spread of prosperity will affect their popularity, and bring in outsiders who are less amenable to their control than the poor (largely tribal) population that forms the bedrock of CPI(ML) support.

In Nepal, Indian government agencies stood aside as the Maoists took control of the state. Only when they began to reveal their bias towards China (and their hatred of India) did the Government of India realise that it had been nurturing a Frankenstein. Till last year,Nepalese Maoists were given sanctuary in India, especially in West Bengal. They were assisted in numerous ways by officials in Delhi against the Monarchy in Nepal, an institution that has always had a tense relationship with Delhi,which has always favoured the democratic parties rather than the Palace. In the 1980s, Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi blockaded Nepal in order to force the King to abdicate his powers in favour of elected representatives. The last King of Nepal,Gyanendra, has seldom hidden his distrust of Delhi, a sentiment that was reciprocated. However, once the Maoists came to power,they showed their true colours. These days,there are reports that the Maoists (Naxalites) in India are getting help from across the border in Nepal.If so,this would be a worrisome development.

In India,the policy has always been to ignore a problem until it gets too painful to remain unaddressed. Today,the Naxalite movement has become - in Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s words - the Number One security problem in the country.The newly-appointed Home Minister, Palaniappan Chidambaram, has vowed to tear up the roots of this violent insurgency,and is creating special units for the purpose.Defense Minister A K Antony has said that if needed,the armed forces will go into operation against the Maoists. However, such police action should be accompanied by anti-feudal measures as well as by an acceleration of development projects. Economic growth fused to social justice is the best defense against the Maoist insurgency that is growing in India.
 

Will Indians & Pakistanis lose their culture?

M D Nalapat

6-11-2009

It used to be said that Indians were different, and that — unlike in the Gulf countries or in East Asia - most middle and even upper class Indians stayed aloof from the craze for premium European brands. Whatever their income level, Bollywood was preferred to Hollywood, tandoori chicken to the European continent’s baked variety. In motorcars, the music heard was seldom that of Michael Jackson, the preference being for Indian singers,including the greats of times past,Lata Mangeshkar and Mohammad Rafi. And of course,Pierce Bosnan or Madonna would have very little danger of getting mobbed in a shopping mall,unlike the wildly popular Shahrukh Khan or the earthy Tabu (Tabassum).

While it is true that there are far more people in the Arabian Gulf countries or in China who buy up Gucci handbags or Cartier watches,or feel deprived without a Bentley or a BMW, yet the number of those with what Vidia Naipaul described as the Indian “craze for foreign” seems on the rise. This columnist (who is vegetarian) loves his “dal-chawal” and his “alu subzi and roti”. He would walk several miles to tuck into a pile of succulent “idlies” (the rice cakes popular in the south of India) mixed with chutney. Which is why he dreads dinner invitations from his fancy friends these days.For,instead of the usual fare,what gets placed on his plate is a succession of indigestible French dishes,or - horror of horrors - pasty made gooey with some sauce “imported specially from Milano”.Unless he feigns delight,the hostess and the host will consider him an ignorant country bumpkin (which,born as he was in a village,he is). Steadily, tastes and attitudes in India are losing their moorings and floating towards the fate of being cultural clones of natives of France or Italy. Many of those with the money take time off to spend “heritage time” in various scenic locations in Europe, practising their foreign accents or tasting wines and cheeses. This always creates a (hidden) laugh in uncultured minds like that of your columnist, for the reason that most of those from our part of the world who pretend to be more French than those born in Nancy or Rouen are in their hearts yearning to return to “masala chaat”. The foundation for national resilience is culture. While this can adopt other strands - and indeed should - yet such adaptation ought not to be so significant as to affect the basic qualities of a civilisation. Let us take the case of India,Pakistan and Bangla Desh,where the basic culture of the people is to be warm and hospitable. To be polite and respectful. However, in each of the three countries more and more people are adopting a culture of hatred and intolerance that is completely at variance with their own. They are adopting the same attuitude of intolerance and hatred towards those who reject their views as the multiple nationalities in Europe did against each other in the first half of the previous century.

It is in the context of growing fanaticism that the difference between those who absorb the good elements in other cultures and integrate them in their own and those who uncritically attempt to copycat foreign ways becomes important. For,fanatics can be fought only by those with an inborn confidence in their own culture (albeit woven out of multiple strands) rather than by those who feel like aliens in their own country. Sadly,our schools teach us to be contemptous of our own traditions and history,and regard as central the events that took place within countries that once ruled over us. Even today,more attention is paid to the history of Europe than to the history of Asia. The past is still taught the way it was a century ago, when what was local was derided and only that which came from afar was judged to be worthy of attention. Unless such outdated curricula get replaced by others that mix traditional values with modern knowledge, the fanatics will continue to spread. One of the problems being faced within the region is the fact that too many young people are made to study in exclusively religious schools. The teaching of Religion is like a spoonful of sugar that needs to be put into a glass of “water” ( in other words,conventional education), so as to make the “water” sweet. It should not be seen as a substitute for conventional scholing,the way it is in so many parts of South Asia. Schools that teach the young the expertise needed for a productive life in a modern economy need to be emphasized,as also the teaching of an international language suich as Eglish.In this connection,the experience of India is instructive. In South India, the teaching of English was encouraged,except in the Communist-ruled state of Kerala.

In contrast,northern states such as Uttar Pradesh and Bihar restricted the teaching of English to very few,with the result that today,it is majorly the people of the South that are grabbing most of the best jobs in the Knowledge Industry. Incidentally,the only southern state lagging behind the rest in thois field is Kerala,which for ideological reasons downplayed the teaching of English in past decades. Learning English is not the same thing as slavishly following an alien culture,for language is less a medium of culture than it is an instrument for self-advancement. A person speaking Chinese or Russian cannot be said to be adopting the culture of China or Russia,but those who deny the poor the right to learn English say that knowledge of the international link language “dilutes culture”. In fact,they are behaving the way upper castes behaved in ancient India,when they denied education to the lower castes,thus seeking to keep them in permament servitude. To deny access to modern schooling and knowledge of English to the poor is to perpetuate the ancient Indian caste system, no matter if this take place in Pakistan, India or Bangla Desh. The modern casteists of Pakistan ensure by their neglect of conventional education that this gets denied to the poor,while their Indian counterparts shut the door on the teaching of English in the name of “preserving local culture”.

In fact,what such disastrous policies are encouraging is the spread of fanaticism, the common enemy of all the countries of South Asia. What needs to be done is to avoid being a clone of Europeans, clutching premium bags, wearing super-expensive branded shoes, clothes and watches and refusing to stir out without “Made in Europe” all over them.All that such a profusion of premium brands reveals is their deep sense of inferiority and their contempt towards their own cultural and natural genes,a state of being that makes them unable to mount a serious challenge to the fanatics. Next,to oppose those who have revived (only this time in Asia) the visceral hatreds of the Europe of the 1930s.The people of that continent paid a heavy price in blood for their intolerance of each other.This sad history must not get repeated in Asia,esecially in our region. India and Pakistan need once again to be proud of who they are,what they represent, so that the people of the region can unitedly beat back the waves of hatred generated by a few. Indeed,such a process seems to be taking place in Pakistan,where the population is seeing the effects of the actions of un-Islamic militias such as the Taliban. Were FATA and the Swat valley well-endowed with modern schools, it would not have been possible for the Taliban to gain in support in these regions. The culture of India and Pakistan is both moderate and modern. Both need to be encouraged,so that the two countries will continue to be showcases of a vibrant cultural tradition.

Tibet’s shadow over India, China, Russia meet

M D Nalapat

30-10-2009

This week,the foreign ministers of India,China and Russia met for two days of discussions in Bangalore. The location was selected by External Affairs Minister S M Krishna,who had previously been the Chief Minister of Karnataka,the state of which Bangalore is the capital. Most politicians in India have deep roots in their states,even if they have spent most of their official life in the national capital. Ministers make it a point to visit their states on weekends, accepting even minor invitations such as the opening of a photo studio to justify the travel cost of themselves and their entourage.

By holding the India-China-Russia trilateral in Bangalore, the soft-spoken and always courteous Krishna was gently conveying to the people of the state his newfound importance as the public face of India’s foreign policy. In contrast to most of India, foreign policy matters a great deal to Bangaloreans,because so much of the prosperity of the city is tied up to outsourcing. While the meeting generated the usual “Feel Good” photographs, there was no breakthrough in relations, no solution found to the thorny issues that especially bedevil links between India and China. And this is no surprise. For on November 8, the Dalai Lama of Tibet will pay a two week visit to Arunachal Pradesh,the location of Tawang,the Buddhist pilgrimage site that he entered when crossing over from Tibet in 1959. The PRC has thus far refused to acknowledge the state as a part of India,considering it Chinese territory. As for the Dalai Lama, Beijing considers him to be a “splittist”,whose intention is to delink Tibet from the PRC,and hence is wary of the undoubted expansion in the influence of the Dalai Lama within a state it claims as its own. The visit is expected to make a significant section of the population of the state loyal to the Dalai Lama,the way much of the 120,000-strong Tibetan community in exile already is. Since 1959, when Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru hugged the Dalai Lama and gave him and his supporters a home in India, the Tibetan “Government-in-exile” headquartered in Dharamshala ( relatively close to the border with Tibet) has functioned as an agency autonomous of the Government of India, with even its vehicles having license plates separate from that of others. During his nearly two decades in office,both foreign as well as economic policy in India was monopolised by Jawaharlal Nehru. After his welcome to the Dalai Lama, relations cooled with China, although Prime Minister Zhou Enlai twice came to Delhi to seek to persuade Nehru to agree to a settlement of the boundary dispute on the basis of the status quo. This was rejected by Nehru,who ordered Indian troops to adopt a “forward policy” of advancing beyond current pickets, a course of action that led to the 1962 war and the Indian army’s comprehensive defeat. After that,it was Nehru’s grandson Rajiv Gandhi who as Prime Minister offered the hand of friendship to Beijing,and indicated that the Zhou Enlai formula was now acceptable. This was reiterated by Prime Minister P V Narasimha Rao in 1995 in Beijing, but thus far,has not been accepted by the Chinese side. The reason is probably that they would like the settlement of the border issue to be part of a comprehensive Sino-Indian settlement,one that will include the status of the Tibetan community in India.

Since 1959, the Dalai Lama has been treated with the protocol given to a Cabinet Minister,being provided security at all times and using the VVIP track at airports on arrival and departure. Tibetans coming into India are speedily given the requisite papers,and are free to travel to any part of the globe (except of course that they avoid China,where they would most probably come to the attention of the Public Security Bureau). Although the US,Canada,Australia and the EU make much of their “moral support” for the Dalai Lama,the fact is that India – a country that shares a long border with China and has a huge security stake in better relations with the Communist giant - has done a hundred times more for the Dalai Lama and his followers than the rest of the world combined.The cost of this has been immense,in the form of objective manifestations of PRC displeasure,including the close strategic relationship between China and Pakistan. In line with Nehruvian foreign policy, nobody within the policy establishment in India computes the cost of such hospitality. Ensuring asylum to the Dalai Lama is regarded by policymakers as a spiritual plus that will ensure good karma for those responsible.

Although the then envoy of India to China, K M Panikkar,had warned Nehru in 1948 that an independent Tibet was in India’s best interests,rather than that the territory falling into Beijing’s control,Nehru took the advice of friends in London and - in the interests of good relations with China - sacrificed all of India’s historical rights in Tibet,including access to the pilgrimage centers of Kailash Mansarovar,the location that many Indians believe to be the home of Lord Shiva. However, the welcome given to the Dalai Lama nullified the effects of this policy of accomodating China, and relations between the two giants of Asia have never been warm subsequently. With the 2008 unrest in Tibet, and the emergence within India of a growing number of young Tibetans impatient with the non-violent policy of the Dalai Lama, the stage may be set for fresh confrontations between China and India,with Tibet as the core.Hopefully,these will all be verbal and not military. Both India as well as China have too much to lose from a second border war, the only such conflict in the four millenia of contact between the two nations.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is a man of peace,whose preference has always been to look for an amicable resolution of disputes,including with China and Pakistan. However, in deference to the tenets of Nehruvian foreign policy (which regards the Tibetan issue as “religious and spiritual” rather than political), Singh has been very firm on the issue of the Dalai Lama,sanctioning his visit to Arunachal Pradesh despite being aware that it would enrage Beijing. The fact is that the Dalai Lama has immense moral support in the US and the EU.

Although neither place will ever place at risk their financial ties. with China by providing a home for a “Government-in-Exile” and 120,000 Tibetans the way India has done,yet they are very pleased that Singh is “standing up to the Chinese”. Something US President Barack Obama ( not to mention Gordon Brown,Angela Merkel and Nicholas Sarkozy) have consistently failed to do.Indeed,Obama refused to meet the Dalai Lama during the Buddhist monk’s most recent visit to Washington, for fear of offending the Chinese.And with good reason,as over two trillion dollars of US money assets are in PRC hands Many,especially in the US and the EU,praise the leaders of India for standing by moral and spiritual principles,even though at huge cost to the country’s vital interests? After all, Beijing is in firm control of Tibet,a situation that is unlikely to change.And Tibet is the source of much of the river water of North india,Pakistan and Bangladesh. An Indus Waters-style treaty is vital between the lower riparian states of India,Pakistan and Bangla esh and the upper riparian state of China,but this is unlikely so long as India continues its moral and spiritual support to the Dalai Lama and his followers. Given that India is a land where the spiritual gets prized above the material,what seems likely is that the Dalai Lama will continue to enjoy a warm welcome within the country, even if the price for this is frosty relations with China.

Hence,India will be alone in South Asia in putting the interests of the Tibetan community in exile above the necessity of better relations with China.It is only in India that Tibetans in exile are warmly welcomed,and given an honoured status such that they enjoy nowhere else.Certainly,much good karma must be flowing from this situation into several spiritual accounts, a flow that hopefully will compensate for the earthly costs of Sino-Indian tension, not only to India and China,but to Asia as a whole.

Use education to fight terror

M D Nalapat

23-10-2009

Although much of the human resources and physical infrastructure of Germany and Japan were destroyed in the 1939-45 world war, within a decade both countries had bounced back to economic health. While Germany became — and remains — the economic powerhouse of Europe, in the 1960s Japan as an important manufacturing platform, exporting a variety of products to markets across the world. The main reason for this recovery was education: the high standards of school and university teaching in both countries. In each country where a modern education system exists, prosperity follows.

Despite such a reality, it is a matter for shame that South Asia neglects education in contrast to SE and East Asia. One facet of this is the allergy that many politicians in the region have for the English language. In India, those who downgrade the importance of English as an instrument of social and economic change include the Communist Party (Marxist), the Samajwadi Party of Uttar Pradesh, the BJP in the states that it rules , the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam in Tamil Nadu and even the Congress Party in some states. The result is that in India,the poor ( who are forced to send their children to government schools) get denied the many chances for advancement ( within the Knowledge Industry,for instance) that come only with a knowledge of English, while the middle class sends its children to private schools,almost all of whom use English as the medium of

Instruction. Language is merely an instrument, and not an attribute of culture. This columnist has met with several Indian Americans in the US,whose daughters know classical dance and music, and whose families preserve the traditions of their country. Reality must be faced,and this is that because of the ravages of colonialism, no language in South Asia can provide the key to knowledge that English can. Hence it is important that efforts be made to teach it to as many children as possible, even while ensuring the development of local languages,and the improvement of education in them. The choice of language that a parent wants for the child should be left to him or her,and not be forced on both by the absence of alternative education outlets.

Religion is an important component of human existence,and religious schools have their place. However, they cannot replace conventional education. Students should attend religious schools (or religion classes in conventional schools) only to the extent that they do not thereby get denied an all-round education. For only such learning can equip them to succeed in the job market. Sadly,in many parts of Pakistan,India and Bangla Desh,the absence of conventional schools is forcing parents to give an exclusively religious education to their children. Because such individuals are frequently unable to compete with others more comprehensively taught,they often become prey to teachers who seek to subvert the love for peace,the mercy,the compassion,that is at the core of the Islamic faith with a mix of hatreds and resentments.

Although Hinduism is at the core moderate, an anti-modernisation wave has resulted in a steady growth of fringe elements that are following in the Taliban’s path. Take as an example the Sri Ram Sene (Sri Ram Army) in Karnataka, headed by Pramod Mutalik. This individual’s view of society is identical to that of Mullah Omar. Both want women to be cloaked from head to toe and not get access to modern education.Both regard facets of a tolerant lifestyle such as alchohol and dancing tobe crimes that need to be severely curbed. Both have a hatred for the “Other”.In the case of Mullah Omar,for those not Wahabbi. In the case of Mutalik,for those not Hindu. By actions such as destroying small churches, dragging girls in jeans by their hair from restaurants and spewing hatred against all, units such as the Sri Ram Sene have badly damaged the image of India as a tolerant country, the way a handful of fanatics have damaged the good name of Pakistan. The only way to reverse the growth of what was termed by me in 2001 as the “mental infrastructure of Terror” is to ensure access to modern education - and the English language to whoever wants to study it – to the poor. And India,Pakistan and Bangla Desh are not alone in this danger,that millions of youth will turn to extremism because of lack of access to modern education. Central Asia is another such danger zone The collapse of the Soviet Union in the 1990s led to the crumbling of the Russified educational infrastructure of many of the countries of Central Asia. Because rich countries such as the US and its NATO partners are clueless about the chemistry of the societies they work with (although expert in such mechanical details as local languages), they have not paid the needed attention to the vacuum in the school education system in Central Asia that has been caused by the atrophy of the Russified model. This vacuum is getting filled with religious schools, exactly the way the lack of conventional schools in Pakistan during the Zia-ul-Haq years led to a mushrooming of religious schools. And because successive governments have been as neglectful of the need for the poor to get access to modern education, today several million youths in Pakistan are unable to compete in the modern economy,and therefore flirt with extremism. A similar situation may develop in Central Asia,unless there is a rapid expansion in conventional school facilities. Should the US and other NATO countries shift a bit of their money from more guns and aircraft to school buildings, Indian and Pakistani teachers can be sent to Central Asia to teach English-language education to the young.

The young are a “tabula rasa”, a blank slate that soon gets filled. If governments in the region do not ensure the spread of modern education,these minds will get filled with alternative systems that handicap an individual from competing in the job market. Pakistan is paying a heavy price for its neglect of modern education, as is - to a smaller extent — India. Should Central Asia go their way,the spread of the Taliban from Afghanistan to the noorth may get facilitated. The way to win against the terrorists is to properly educate the young.

India, China, Pak: The three donkeys

M D Nalapat

16-10-2009

After nearly five centuries of dominance over the rest of the globe, Europe began to fallback during the first half of the 20th century, because of the two World Wars. The devastation of 1914-19 gave heart and power to national liberation movements across Asia,while the weaknesses within their countries caused by the bloodshed and economic cost of 1939-45 enabled Egypt, India-Pakistan,Indonesia and other countries to become independent brief years after the end of that conflict. By the 1960s, most of Africa was free, with even South Africa following in the 1980s. Today,apart from specks on the map such as Diego Garcia (forcibly taken away from Mauritius), almost all of Asia is ( legally,at least) independent, with the exception of Iraq and Afghanistan,where foreign countries guide much of state policy,and where foreign troops are based in large numbers.

After reviewing the effects of the carnage,European statespersons resolved to prevent war by making borders irrelevant. Today, most of Europe has fused into a single visa-free zone, and people from different locations freely visit and work wherever they wish to. As a consequence,the psychological differences between the different countries in Europe are beginning to narrow, thus making war between them improbable. These days, even the French have infused themselves with an overlay of culture and attitudes from neighbours,including from Britain and Italy. In 1985,when this columnist and his wife went on a honeymoon visit to Paris, the natives refused to speak in English, until we retorted back in our own language,Malayalam. On being bombarded with what they thought was gobbledygook, the reluctant French finally began to reply back in the international link language. These days,however, it is almost a mark of distinction in France to be able to speak English well,especially with a Texan twang!

If France and Britain could become allies in the 20th century despite the many wars that they fought with each other, if even Germany and France could become friends as early as the 1960s, surely the countries of Asia can replicate such a situation. After all,whether in India or in China or in Pakistan ( the three big countries that are being discussed now), there are millions who ape the hairstyles and fashions of Europe. These belong to the elite, the very group that has refused to imitate one of the most positive parts of Europe, that continent’s newfound amity. Just as took place in Europe,in Asia too borders need to be made irrelevant, so that war gets taken off the table. By fighting each other,by obstructing each other,all that India,Pakistan and China are “achieving” is to ensure that outsiders continue to have the upper hand in all three. Either we become friends of each other,or we each remain the substantive servant of other powers.

Sadly,in none of the three has such wisdom dawned.Instead, all three continue their rhetoric against each other, oblivious to the long-term harm this does to each. India,China and Pakistan are in a class by themselves, with no paralell in modern Europe, not even that long-sparring pair,Greece and Turkey,who have after all never actually gone to war with each other. If India,China and Pakistan take out their calculators and compute the costs and benefits of each war that they have fought with each other,they will see that the cost has been borne by them while the benefit has flowed to outside powers. Had India and Pakistan become military allies,for example, the two together could have helped ensure security for their friends in the Middle East, thus permitting local governments to dispense with the troop presence from North America, Australia and Europe. A presence that by its huge logistical cost,its unbrarable level of civilian casualties and its cultural differences has created a distance within the Arab world between ruled and rulers who permit such an occupation of their terrritory to take place.This is the case even in Kuwait, a country that still has grateful memories of the US troops that liberated them in 1990.

Contingents from India and Pakistan could train local citizens in military and counter-terror tactics, without creating a cultural divide.After all,Arabs were welcome visitors on the shores of “Al-Hind” for a millenium. Today,millions from both countries live and work in the Middle East. As for security of sea lanes,this too could be assured by both powers,who have the logistical capability to ensure that these be kept open for commerce, another essentiality for the Middle East. Were China too to join the two subcontinental giants in a trilateral alliance,the reach of such a troika would stretch across the whole of Asia. Once the three come together,other powers are sure to join in,such as Russia, a fact that would make the grouping even stronger.

Small wonder that some countries would like to see perpetual war between India and Pakistan and perpetual tension between China and India. Unfortunately,the statespersons in the three countries have thus far not emulated the wisdom of their counterparts in Europe,by working out a matrix of conciliation and cooperation rather than incessant confrontation. Friends in Pakistan will say that settlement of Kashmir is a pre-condition for “establishing trust between India and Pakistan”. The view of this columnist is that the dispute will never get settled unless there is trust between the two countries. Once this gets established - through a vigorous partnership in multiple fields - a practicable solution to the dispute can be found with despatch. The lack of progress over sixty years is because the “cart” of a solution has been put before the “horse” of trust.

The same dynamic operates between China and India. Both sides need to talk frankly about their apprehensions, rather than avoid discussing them. Once India and Pakistan become friends and hopefully allies,India’s primary grouse with China, which is that country’s nuclear and missile assistance to Pakistan,will get eliminated. The root of China’s mistrust of India to be the Tibetan Government-in-exile at Dharamshala,in North India, an entity which has a Prime Minister and Ministers, none of whom accepts that China has a role in Tibet. The “Government of Free Tibet” wants the authorities in Beijing to amalgamate vast territories in Qinghai and Gansu provinces into a Tibet that would be free of Han settlers and be ruled by its own Kashag or Council. Short of a 1930’s -style collapse of the PRC,such an objective seems unachievable. Once China and India get closer, suspicion that Delhi is seeking the separation of Tibet from China will lessen and hopefully disappear, for such is emphatically not the case.

India,Pakistan and China are the big losers of the present uneasy dynamic between the three (excluding the close China-Pakistan partnership). Some other powers are the gainers,exactly as in the case with the Tibetans,where the geopolitical costs of hosting the Tibetan exile community are being borne by India,while the benefit flows to other countries (who are delighted to watch India and China snarl at each other,the way they are doing these days) The danger in the current situation is that it is not in equilibrium. Fresh terror attacks in India,even if not the responsibility of the Pakistan military, can create a dynamic that leads to incidents that can expand in scope .A similar situation exists on the Sino-Indian border,where a single hotheaded response can remove hopes of a Sino-Indian partnership for a generation. Once again,there is need tro bring out the slide rules and the abacus, to accept that the costs of tension between India,Pakistan and China can be massive,while the gains from such a state of affairs accrues to outside powers. Conversely,the gains to India,Pakistan and China of cooperation can be immense. Statespersons in each of the three countries should stop being donkeys led by outsiders,and instead work to forge the 21st Century India-Pakistan-China alliance that Asia needs for its stability and salience.

Conciliation, not conflict: King Abdullah’s vision

M D Nalapat

09-10-2009

Although demonized by many who are unaware of its tenets,the reality is that Islam lives up to its name by being indeed the Religion of Peace. The proof of this can be found in the Middle East,where in every country,people of different faiths work together. Had the overwhelmingly Muslim population in that region been exclusivist and against those of other faiths,they would have barred those of other faiths from participating in the wealth that has been bestowed on them by the Almighty. In both India and Pakistan, numerous families depend on incomes earned in the Gulf, as do their finance ministries. Within the Middle east - and indeed the wider Muslim world – the position of Saudi Arabia is unique,because of the country being the location where the faith was revealed nearly fifteen centuries ago, and where Mecca and Medina are situated.

The position taken by the Saudis - and in particular by the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques - is critical in moulding attitudes within the 1.5 billion adherents of the faith. Since the previous century,there has been a (completely erroneous) perception that Islam enjoined believers to constantly battle the rest of society,even in ways that were violent. Several so-called religious teachers emerged,each with his own interpretation, the combined effect of whom was to mislead many into joining groups that indulged in acts of violence,often on a significant scale,the apogee of which was reached on September 11,2001 in New York and Washington.The Allah Almighty is described by the Holy Qur’an, as being “Beneficient and Merciful”. These two words,which were revealed to the Holy Prophet (PBUH), need to be noted, for it is these two virtues,together with the associated blessing of Compassion,that characterize the core of the Muslim faith ,and which should therefore be operationalised by each believer . Unless she or he has internalized these heavenly qualities and uses them in relations with the world, she or he cannot be said to have understood Islam, a word that itself means “Peace”. As the poetess Kamala Suraiyya from India pointed out, “ Allah Almighty embodies Beneficience and Mercy, not vindictiveness and rage. The faith is described by the single word. Peace, not by the alternative word conflict”. How different the vision of the poetess about true Islam is from that of those who join groups that bomb and maim,kill and kidnap,all in the name of a faith that is the opposite of their dark vision.

Less than a hundred and fifty years after the Koran was revealed, the Golden Age of Islam began,and lasted for more than five centuries. During this time,the “weapons” used to spread the faith were not the implements of coercion but science,culture and literature. Those of other faiths were treated with respect, with the Jewish people,for example,being safe in the Muslim world in a way that they were not in places that were Christian. To return to the views of Kamala Suraiyya, who declared her faith after seeing a light in the dark pre-dawn more than a decade back, “ Islam will indeed be the Religion of the Future, but this will happen not by violence but by the success (of Muslims) in gifting the world treasures of art and culture,science and technology. By Muslims setting an example for humanity of tolerance,beneficience and compassion.”

It was to reset the Muslims on the true path,the way that led to the Golden Age,and away from the road that led to the present-day suffering and mistrust,that King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia convened a council of the wise at Mecca last year. This select group of 500 Islamic scholars decided to hold an Inter-Religious Dialogue in mid-2008 at Madrid in Spain,a country with enormous historical resonance for its past as one of the jewels of the Caliphate and thereafter,as the cockpit of the Crusades. Religious leaders and experts from faiths as diverse as Jainism,Sikhism,Hinduism and Buddhism were invited along with representatives of the three Semetic faiths ( Islam,Judaism and Christianity). The Madrid Declaration embodied the collective wisdom of this high-powered group,and presented a clear and concise road map for harmony between different faiths. A subsequent such dialogue was held in New York, followed by the third at Geneva on September 30-October 1, to which this columnist had the honour to be among the 127 invited by the Muslim World League (set up under the direction and patronage of King Abdullah).

The Geneva Conference,held in the Intercontinental Hotel, stressed the commonality of human values between those of different faiths,and sought to reduce if not eliminate the roots of misunderstanding between them. This columnist pointed out the fallacy in characterizing the Hindu faith ( commonly known as Sanatan Dharma) as the philosophical opposite of the Monotheistic faiths, when in fact the core mantra of the religion,the Gayatri Maha Mantra, was clear that there was a single Supreme Being to whom the universe owed its existence.Because of the immense,the indescribable,complexity of the Supreme Being, followers of sanatan Dharma resorted to the expedient of separating facets of the One Divine Force and giving each a separate name, such as Kali for victory in battle, Saraswati for learning and Lakshmi for Wealth. Although the ancient texts speak of the trinity of the Creator (Brahma),the Destroyer (Shiva) and the Preserver (Vishnu),the reality is that the qualities of all three merge into the Supreme Being described in the Gayatri Mantra. Unfortunately,many Hindus are unaware of the principle of “Advaita” (Non-dualism) expounded by Sankara three millenia ago,which which describes the Supreme Lord (“Ishvara”) as “all-perfect, omnsicent, ruler of the world, creator and destroyer, eternal and unchangeable”. A reasonable description of the Almighty. Of course,the description of the Supreme. Being in Sanatan Dharma differs in several respects from the Koranic revelations. The Advaita philosophy also nullifies the concept of irredeemable sin, while Heaven gets replaced by Salvation,which is merger into the Divine. Also, there is much greater flexibility of ritual as well as conceptualisation of the Divine in Hinduism than is the case in Islam, but the fact remains that Sanatan Dharma too accepts a single Supreme Being,the way other major faiths do.There are far greater commonalities between faiths than differences,as indeed is implicit in the huge number of prophets who came before Prophet Mohammad (PBUH).

What links those of different faiths together is faith in the Almighty, and even those who do not believe in the Divine nevertheless fall within its ambit and its powers. Once those of different faiths see the enormous commonality in their core beliefs, much of the tension between them can be expected to end.This lowering of discord was,indeed, the intention of King Abdullah in holding these meetings,which are designed to formulate a common ground for dialogue between faiths.A harmony of civilisations rather than a clash.Indeed,these days, with a world that modern communication has shrunk, there are so many cultural strands in each modern human being that harmony already exists within each individual.For example, the people of India each have within their cultural DNA three strands: the Vedic,the Mughal and the Western.All three fuse to form the composite tradition that is the strength of India.

The largely Saudi members of the Muslim World league,ably led by Secretary-General Turki, were true to Arab tradition of being excellent hosts. Although from different faiths,the MWL made each invitee feel at home. There was even vegetarian food for Hindus,Jains and Buddhists,as well as a kosher section for Observant Jews. Although some cynics claim that this move on the part of the Custodian of the two holy Mosques is a “Public Relations Exercise”, the fact is that by getting together Christian,Hindu,Buddhist and Jewish religious leaders with Muslim clerics, King Abdullah demonstrated his commitment to a world where believers will live peacebly alongside each other,whatever be the manner in which they show their reverence for the Divine Sadly,the European media paid very little attention to the Conference.

Had there been some discord,or some expressions of hatred, certainly several front pages would have carried the news of that. There seems to be an unconscious effort to feed into stereotypes of intolerance and hatred of the Muslim world,by playing up the few who are that way and ignoring the many who are the exact opposite. Hopefully, King Abdullah’s international initiative will soon grow into a wave too strong to be ignored.Should he succeed in this mission,the world may see a Second Golden Age of Islam, when Muslims will once again enrich the world by cultural treasures and scientific discoveries.

Will Obama break India-US alliance?

M D Nalapat

01-10-2009

The way to hell,they say,is paved with good intentions. US President Barack Obama wants to ensure that nuclear weapons as well as the missile and other platforms that launch them once again become the monopoly of the US,the EU and (by sufferance) China. Years ago,Bill Clinton had the same view,and tried hard to persuade India that nuclear weapons were not needed for security,and that indeed they subtracted from security. Clinton failed to explain why,if nuclear weapons were so useless,the US had so many of them,and was in the process of developing more. Implicitly for Clinton, India did not count as part of the “civilised” world,and hence could not be trusted with weapons that can,if used against them,devastate any group of countries

Because of the post-1974 effort to destroy India’s technological capability, a raft of sanctions was imposed on India,which however failed to check the country’s progress towards both nuclear weapons as well as missiles. It was George W Bush who realized that a continuation of the sanctions regime was unlikely to succeed in the future where it had failed in the past, and dry up India’s capability. He therefore forced through an exemption for India within the Nuclear Suppliers Group that gave the NSG members the right to trade with India. Almost immediately thereafter,Delhi entered into fuel and nuclear agreements with Russia,Kazakhstan and other nations.Those countries that back the Clinton (and now Obama) line that India is not “civilised” comntinue to deny uranium to the world’s largest democracy. Australia is an example. Canberra was vituperative against India when the 1998 tests took place,the offensive language used by its diplomats verging on the racist in their presumptions, with Ottawa going much the same way then

Looking back at history,it was Canada,South Africa and Australia that backed Winston Churchill in his refusal to grant India freedom. They endorsed the UK’s rejection of moves to include India in the UN Security Council as a permanent members,despite its size. Had Franklin Roosevelt been alive,India may have got into the list, for he favoured independence for India as early as 1940, but his successor Harry Truman could not look beyond Europe and its people to see “humanity”. It was Truman who turned down Ho Chi Minh’s request for cooperation and instead backed the French colonial army in Viet

Nam,an army that was defeated at Dien Bien Phu by the Viet Minh in 1954.

For Truman,India was just an incomprehensible mass of people,a view shared by Dwight Eisenhower and his all-powerful Secretary of State, J F Dulles. It was only during the Kennedy years that the US returned - ever so slightly - to a “Rooseveltian” view of India, an approach not followed by any of his successors, except George W Bush. Today,Barack Obama seems to be going back to the real Truman Doctrine in Asia,which is that those of an ethnicity other than European cannot be trusted the way the French or the British can Is this the view of the real Barack Obama,or just one more compromise of his with the views of the Europeanist Clintonites,who are determined to continue their hero’s efforts to de-nuclearize India? Few know,and they will probably not talk. However,the reality is that the Obama administration’s shrill emphasis on “universal” non-proliferation (where the US,France,the UK,Russia and China are exempt from the rules) indicates a possible collision with India,where even Manmohan Singh (whose pacifist instincts are no secret) has had to rebuff him. Obama has taken away much of the nuclear concessions of what Bush had offered India, only to discover that this has in practice meant that Russian and other companies would gain from India’s nuclear purchases while US companies lose. His team therefore wants every country to go back to the situation that prevailed before the 1998 NSG India Waiver,and refuse trade with India until Delhi signs the NPT,the Fissile Materials Cutoff Treaty and the Test Ban treaty, and is so lobbying in private Every action has an equal and opposite reaction.The US pressurized Switzerland into giving up its cherished banking secrecy, because of illegalities allegedly being committed by US citizens making bank deposits there. The Swiss have hit back by arresting Roman Polanski for a crime committed 30 years ago,and which the US (as indeed,the then 13-year old who was the victim of Polanski’s lust) has completely foirgiven him for.

The arrest of the celebrated film director will send shivers down the spine of other US citizens entering Switzerland, especially if they have some long-forgotten case tucked away somewhere. Should Obama succumb to Clinton and go back on the Bush commitments, Manmohan Singh is likely to get discredited. It needs to be mentioned that the PM bounced back in popularity only when the nuclear deal was approved in the NSG. A reversal now will impact him badly,and may lead to a more assertive replacement,especially if the BJP bounces back in state elections this month. The Congress Party cannot then afford to look weak.Indeed,Manmohan Singh’s own tough talk about the Pakistan response to 26/11 came after his party’s reverses in several by-polls While fresh nuclear testing is unlikely, pressure by the US to de-nuclearize is likely to be met by an intensification of the program. In the process,weapons will get made that are of yields lower than those posible with testing,but still light enough to get mounted on missiles.

However,the nascent military alliance between the US and India is unlikely to survive the effective scrapping of the nuclear deal by the powerful non-proliferation lobby that dominates policy on the subject in the new US administration. Michael Krepon, Robert Einhorn and Rose Gottemoeller were once active in the Clinton efforts to “persuade” India to give up its deterrent. Those who refused to heed such advice found their careers interrupted.For example,then Prime Minister Deve Gowda refused to sign the CTBT in 1997,and was quickly faced with a withdrawal of support by Congress President Sitaram Kesri,whose closest advisor on the matter was Ajit Jogi,whose proximity to a particular embassy in Delhi is no secret Whether Obama can get the US Congress itself to agree to the CTBT (Test Ban treaty) is open to doubt. Several high-yield weapons need testing to be perfected,and it may become inevitable for the US to do so. Some Senators may demand that India sign on before the US does,perhaps in pre-arrangement with the non-proliferation lobby.

In the case of India,it was because Bush realised that further tests could sharply increase the destructive power of India’s weapons that he offered Delhi the choice of nuclear cooperation so long as India did not test. Because of this limitation,the country’s arsenal is effectively at the 65-kiloton stage,although 200 kilotons is possible,but would be too cumbersome to load on most delivery vehicles.Only data from fresh tests can lead to a miniaturization of the bomb and an increase in its yield to the megaton range. At present,India’s “megaton” weapons are untested and therefore not entirely reliable,unlike the low-yield bombs,that have been configured even for short-range missiles India’s traditional caste system makes it almost impossible that the country would accept an alliance with the US except on the “highest-caste” terms.

In other words,India should - in effect – have the same privileges as the “high-caste” UK and France, be accepted as a nuclear weapons state and be given a seat in the UN Security Council. An India-US alliance would change the security architecture of Asia the way the coming together of the US and Russia did in 1941 did in Europe.The question is: will Obama go back to Clinton or Truman, or accept the India-inclusive approach of Franklin Roosevelt and John Kennedy? On his answer will depend progress in the emerging US-India military alliance

Economic revolution needs SA peace

M D Nalapat

18-09-2009

According to estimates made by high officials in the region, the Gulf countries themselves have lost well over a trillion dollars because of the collapse of financial standards in most EU and US financial institutions. Although accurate records do not exist for them, experts in Moscow estimate the loss to Russian citizens at over $400 billion, while in the case of China, that figure may be even higher.

Clearly, investors - both state and private — within the Gulf, Russia and China have lost heavily by trusting investment bankers in the developed world. Surprisingly, despite the loss of close to $6 trillion as a consequence of greed-actuated misfeasance, almost no banker has been prosecuted for the scam. Indeed, many are once again active in speculation, seeking to drive up prices of oil and other commodities to levels that would smother a recovery. They have also been awarding themselves huge bonuses and salaries, despite the fact that the solvency of their institutions is largely based on taxpayers in the US and the EU.

The question is: will such behaviour finally dissolve the blind faith that people in the Gulf, Russia and (to a lesser extent) China have in such advisors? Since the 1970s, London, New York and Frankfurt have prospered because of the belief that ethical standards have been enforced. This view has been shown to be false, especially in the period in the 1980s since Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher freed businesspersons in the US and the UK from any fear of legal retributive consequences for behaviour actuated solely by greed. This lost confidence in the current financial capitals of the world presents an opportunity for other locations to emerge. South Asia is a prime competitor, especially if the SAARC countries work closely with each other, rather than fall victim to the “divide and rule” policy that has kept them squabbling for so long. An example where future growth can be immense is Islamic Banking.

The steady development of religious sentiment in the Gulf has not been matched by a like increase in instruments and institutions that have embedded within them the codes of Islamic Banking, with its disavowal of interest. Indeed, even today, more than 87% of the surplus money in the Gulf countries gets placed in institutions that charge - and give - interest. Should India and Pakistan, in particular, come together in the form of partnerships between banks in both countries, the combination of skills this confluence would represent would be sufficient to attract a significant volume of funds.

In 1983,this columnist spoke of an India-China-Russia alliance, a fact that was pointed out to him in Beijing in 2001, in the course of an interview for Beijing Review. Should Russia, India and China team up, they can produce aircraft to rival the best currently on offer. They would emerge as a manufacturing and services powerhouse. However, as yet the manufacturing linkages between these three giants of the Asian landmass are insufficient, given the potential. Coming back to Islamic Banking, this is only one of the many ways in which a partnership between entities in India and Pakistan can create a sum much larger than the individual total of each. A case of four plus four becoming forty-four and not simply eight. For decades, investment into South Asia has got reduced because of the perception of tensions and the risk of war. During 2002,for instance, waves of hysteria were generated that a nuclear conflict was inevitable.

Such a doomsday forecast has as its basis an extremely derogatory view of Indian and Pakistani policymakers, who are judged to be self-destructive and irrational. Of course, several research grants were sanctioned to “South Asia” scholars in the US and the EU to “determine ways of preventing a nuclear holocaust. Many were the conferences held, and the papers presented, on this imaginary catastrophe. The fact is that Indian and Pakistani policymakers are at least as rational as their counterparts in Moscow and Washington, who ensured a nuclear peace despite building up immense stockpiles. It is wrong to assume that only those of a particular geographic region contain within them a monopoly of wisdom.

Interestingly, at a time when both India and China are enjoying the highest growth rates for major economies in the world and — especially China — seems on track to pose a serious challenge to the primacy of the economies of the presently developed world, a raft of reports have appeared in media outlets both domestic and foreign that the two countries are close to a shooting war. The reality is that the Sino-Indian border has been quiet since 1962, barring random incidents caused by Beijing’s inability to align its maps of the Line of Actual Control with India’s. As a consequence, every few weeks a patrol strays into territory in the control of India, thus sparking hysteria in some circles. Only a No War Pact between India and China can end the speculation of another border conflict, speculation that is having a damaging effect on both countries. Over the past year, in both the Chinese as well as the Indian media, reports have proliferated about “warlike” activities and tensions. Thus far, the public in both countries likes the other, keeping in mind the more than two millennia of contact between them. However, should media reports of imminent conflict continue to proliferate, this could change.

The growth of the Services sector needs a stable environment, and this means a Zone of Peace. If the EU has made rapid strides these past decades, a primary reason is the absence of conflict since 1945 in what till then was a blood-soaked continent. Unfortunately, although the Asian countries have the potential for recapturing their primacy, yet this is getting stunted by the perception of instability and tensions in theatres such as China-Taiwan-North Korea, Iran-GCC and India-Pakistan. Statespersons in all these countries need to shake off such perceptions by constructive diplomacy and by ensuring that a threat to the security of any country in Asia is seen as a threat to the security of each country in the continent. Both India and Pakistan have young and fast-growing populations.

To find jobs for the hundreds of millions within this segment, what is needed is for the leaders of both countries to accept that “if India and Pakistan do not hang together, they will assuredly hang separately”. Sadly, thus far, the experience of the past decades gives little hope that wisdom will dawn on a political class that seems obsessed with power and money to the exclusion of the long-term interests of their peoples. Should the young in India and Pakistan find that their avenues for advancement have been restricted by wrong policies and old feuds, the promise of the region would evaporate into chaos. China, India, Pakistan and Russia need to follow the example of the EU and create a Zone of Peace across their territories.

Democracy, “family style”

M D Nalapat

11 September 2009

On September 3, a helicopter carrying YSR Reddy, the Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh State, crashed in bad weather, killing him and four others. Almost from the hour that the helicopter was located early on September 4, a chorus welled up within the Congress Party in the state to persuade Congress All-India President Sonia Gandhi to anoint his son Jaganmohan Reddy as the new chief minister. Young Jagan, who is a Congress Member of Parliament, has no administrative experience, and his primary qualification is his genetic code. However, in the “Family Style” politics of India, his parentage was enough for the majority of the state’s Congress legislators to press for his selection to the top job in the State.

Although Sonia Gandhi frowned on such a display of loyalty to a politician other than from her own family, the event underscores a critical weakness in Indian democracy, which is the way individual families control the country’s “democratic” political parties. The Nehru family, now led by the Italian-born Sonia, can be said to own the Congress Party. Decades ago, in the 1930s,patriarch Motilal Nehru persuaded M K Gandhi to appoint the farmer’s son Jawaharlal as Congress President, something that M K Gandhi (who loved the dashing young politician with his English manners and mannerisms) eagerly agreed to. Once the Mahatma himself passed away, it was not long before the Congress Party came fully into the grip of Nehru, who promptly appointed his only child Indira Gandhi as Party President in 1959, and subsequently made it clear that he would like “Indu” to succeed him. Although it was L B Shastri who took office as PM after Nehru’s death in 1964, his death the next year opened the way for Indira Gandhi. In 1969, the non-family leaders of the Congress Party sought to hobble Indira Gandhi by getting appointed one of their own, N S Reddy, as President of India. Once the Congress Party officially nominated Reddy as its candidate, (Congress) PM Indira Gandhi began to work against him, finally getting him defeated by her handpicked follower, V V Giri.

From then onwards, there has never been a serious challenge to the total control of the Nehru family over the Congress Party. Indira Gandhi was succeeded in 1984 by son Rajiv, and after his death, his widow selected the ageing, ailing South Indian politician PVR Rao to be the PM. Rao clung on for five years despite Sonia Gandhi wanting to replace him, but after the defeat of the Congress Party in the 1996 polls, sank into oblivion, humiliated even after his death in 1994. Even his body was refused entry into the Congress Headquarters at 24 Akbar Road in Delhi, having to wait outside on the pavement before finally being carted to his home state, rather than given the national burial his status as a former PM entitled him to since 2004, although Manmohan Singh is the Prime Minister of India, actual power is wielded by Sonia Gandhi, the owner of the Congress Party. She runs the party the same way as other “owners” do.

For example, the Samajwadi Party in Uttar Pradesh is completely under the control of M S Yadav and his son Akhilesh, just as the Shiv Sena in Mumbai is run by Bal Thackeray and his son Uddhav, or the DMK in Tamil Nadu is by M Karunanidhi and his family. Indeed, while Karunanidhi is chief minister of Tamil Nadu, his son Stalin is Deputy Chief Minister, son Azhagiri and nephew Dayanidhi are ministers in the Union Cabinet, while daughter Kannimozhi is an MP. A similar situation prevails in almost all the political parties in the country, barring the Communist parties. In the case of the BJP, the Vajpayee-Advani duo have held charge since its inception, and are - because of age - in the process of handing over charge to handpicked nominees.

The absence of inner-party democracy is a serious blot on India’s record as a democracy. The Indian voter is, in effect, given the choice of voting for the servant of Sonia Gandhi or any of the other owners and controllers of India’s political parties. A situation such as in the US, where Bill Clinton emerged in the 1990s and Barack Obama took the party away from the Clintons in 2008 would be unthinkable, as would a situation such as in the UK, where Tony Blair was forced by pressure from within the party to make way for Gordon Brown.

Indeed, Blair resigned despite having steered the party to victory. In India, the owners and controllers remain in power, regardless of the electoral verdict. For example, despite two successive losses in the 2004 and 2009 national elections, the Vajpayee-Advani duo have continued to run the BJP. In India, only divine providence changes a party’s leadership. Such a “Leader for Life” status takes away the incentive for improving one’s record. It facilitates a “durbari” culture where only those who flatter the mighty and who spend endless hours hovering around them get noticed and rewarded. Sincere party workers who toil in the grassroots get ignored, while the (usually affluent) hangers-on of the powerful become MPs and ministers. Unless one has demonstrated unconditional, permanent loyalty to the party “owner”, there is little chance of political advancement. Only when there is democratic accountability within political parties will it be possible to call India a healthy democracy.

What the YSR Reddy case illustrates is the way regional leaders appointed by the central leadership themselves seek to perpetuate family rule. In both Congress as well as in other parties, there are numerous examples of regional leaders grooming their children to take over from them. Why? The obvious answer is money. Politics has become the most lucrative career in India, and is even recession-proof. Almost all those prominent in national as well as in regional politics are multi-millionaires, several far wealthier than even that. Obviously, Papa or Mamma would like to keep such fountains of wealth within the family, the more so as influence is usually proportionate to cash. Politics has become such a high-cost career that it usually takes more than a million US dollars to fight a parliamentary election, and at least half of that to fight a state election.

Only those with the money and manpower backing provided by established parties can contest, the rest having to remain by the wayside, despite their quality should young Jaganmohan Reddy seek to challenge the Nehru family by not cooperating with their choice of chief minister, he is unlikely to succeed. The grip of the Nehru family - headed by Sonia - over the Congress Party is total. Should it be clear that Sonia Gandhi looks with disfavour on the late chief minister’s son, support is likely to fall dramatically. Indeed, several politicians in Andhra Pradesh backed the son only because they thought he inherited his father’s close ties with the Nehrus. Once they see that this is not the case, they will peel away, as good opportunists.

And what of Congress Supremo Sonia Gandhi? There is talk in Delhi’s power circles that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh may politely be asked to step down after serving three years of his five year term, getting replaced by Rahul Gandhi, the son of Sonia Gandhi. Although “Family Style Democracy” is not ideal, it must be admitted that Rahul has thus far acquitted himself well. His interventions in Parliament have been well thought out, and his choice of colleagues far better than the political hacks favoured by his mother. Interestingly, should Rahul come as Prime Minister (the way his father did in 1984), the BJP is likely to witness the rise of another Nehru as the counterfoil.

This is Varun Gandhi, now Member of Parliament, the only child of Sanjay Gandhi, the younger son of Indira Gandhi, who died in a airplane crash in 1980. Interestingly, while Rahul is very similar in temperament to his father Rajiv, who was soft-spoken, cousin Varun takes after the far more mercurial and ruthless Sanjay. It looks like the Nehru family will continue to ensure exciting times for watchers of India’s family-style politics!

Why India has not Balkanised?

M D Nalapat

04 September 2009

During the 1960s, it was not only the writer Vidia Naipaul who considered India to be an “area of darkness”. Several scholars made a living out of forecasting the imminent disintegration of a country that had an immense multiplicity of cultures, faiths and ethnicities. However, India survived as a united nation, and once economic reform got introduced in 1992, began slowly to thrive. This despite being ruled by a political class that saw personal enrichment as the only objective worth expending effort on, and a bureaucracy both corrupt and incompetent. Why did this miracle take place? Interestingly, it was because of decisions that were forced upon a reluctant executive.

The first such decision was to succumb to the pressure of linguistic lobbies and break up Indian states into smaller entities. Prime Minister Nehru was reluctant for years to accept the logic of linguistic states, hoping that different groups could function harmoniously in one big state. Thus, for years he ignored demands from the Telugu-speaking population of the state for a separate entity. Finally, the riots that broke out after the death by fasting of the Telugu leader Potti Sriramulu forced his hand, and Andhra Pradesh (a majority Telugu-speaking area) was carved out of Madras, which later got renamed as Tamil Nadu (Home of the Tamils). Soon afterwards in 1960, the Gujarati-speaking parts of Bombay State separated from the Marathi-majority region, and became Gujarat State. The Marathi speakers renamed their new state “Maharashtra” Afterwards, even states with a common language got divided, mainly because of administrative convenience. Thus, Chhatisgarh got separated from Madhya Pradesh, as did Uttarakhand from Uttar Pradesh and Jharkhand from Bihar, even though all six were Hindi-speaking. This division dampened linguistic resentments, and helped to contain such tensions to levels not harmful to the unity of India. Had Nehru been resolute in his opposition to linguistic states, tensions would have continued to fester, and thereby grow Apart from linguistic states, another factor that helped retain unity was the English language. Because this is a foreign language, no group felt disadvantaged at its continuance. Today, across India, a middle class has arisen that almost entirely is comfortable in the use of English. A Bengali professional can shift to Gujarat or Tamil Nadu and immediately find people who also speak English, who read the same (admittedly of spotty quality) magazines and watch the same movies. The leavening of “middle class culture” over the other identities of the country has helped to create a unity that was earlier absent in a country with a multiplicity of identities. Had Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri gone ahead with his move to banish English from India in 1964, the resultant tensions would have proved dangerous. But because the single state of Tamil Nadu resisted the abolition of English, the Government of India shelved the proposal to replace that language with Hindi. Today, it is because of their proficiency in English that so many millions of Indians are benefiting from the boom in computer software.

Sadly, several politicians oppose English. Examples are Laloo Yadav of Bihar and Mulayam Singh Yadav of Uttar Pradesh, both of whom have educated their own children in the English language while seeking to deny knowledge of that language to pupils in government schools. Another anti-English state was Communist-controlled Bengal. However, public demand for educating young children in English - or at least ensuring that they know the language - has forced these leaders to dilute their opposition to English. At current trends, more than 500 million Indians will speak some variant of that language within the next fifteen years, thus getting enabled to participate in a globalised world. It is mainly in places where the international link language is not taught that local economies are still at subsistence level Apart from the English language, another factor that favours Indian unity is commerce. The need to access a larger market and enjoy a wider variation in the production base ensures that unitary tendencies are favoured by the business class, a group that is substantial in both numbers as well as influence. Most companies are based all over the country, and indeed, mamy are now setting up branches abroad. Even when a company is controlled by a family, the professionals working in it are almost always from different states, and these days, from different countries.

This is not to say that there are no longer any challenges to Indian unity. There are, and Kashmir is an example. Jawaharlal Nehru was an admirer of the Soviet model, and he adopted that model in Kashmir. This is separate development. The Kashmiri has since 1952 been segregated from the rest of the country, and given special laws and privileges, that all contribute to a feeling of alienation from the rest of India. Only the withdrawal of US activism over Kashmir following 9/11 and the change in attitude towards armed struggle after that event have taken the international pressure off India, while internally, the spreading of economic opportunity within the community has diluted much of the zeal for separation. Today, many Kashmiris want a separate state, but few are any longer willing to fight for it. Indeed, many more are ready to take advantage of the educational and business opportunities throughout India, and link with the rest of the country rather than seek to break away. However, decades of Kashmir-specific social and other policies have taken their toll, and there is no doubt that even today, several Kashmiris resent being part of India, a lot of them on grounds of religion rather than because of any other factor. For Indian policymakers, the “Muslims are a separate nation” argument was concluded with the formation of Pakistan on August 14,1947,and they are reluctant to once again divide on the basis of faith, fearing the impact of this in the hundreds of thousands of locations in the rest of India where Muslims and Hindus live and work together. Millions died during Partition, a tragedy that they are keen to avoid happening again. Interestingly, China too is following Kashmir’s “separate development” model in Xinjiang, where the Uygur are given educational and other opportunities different from those made available to the Han. Of course, unlike Kashmir, where other Indians are forbidden to relocate to, in Xinjiang, any Han can freely relocate. However, a bifurcation in policy based on ethnicity has meant that the PRC is beginning to face in Xinjiang the same problems that India has been contending with in Kashmir for decades. In the latter case, however, the economic rise of India has seen a migration of Kashmiris to different parts of the country, where several have set down roots, so that they have begun to have a vested interest in a united India. In Xinjiang too, individual prosperity has ensured that many Uygur become loyal to the PRC rather than to a separate State, as demanded by Rebiya Kadeer.

The north-east is another region where there is some alienation from the rest of India.Again,state policy is to blame. Nehru accepted the view of his friend Verrier Elwin that the people of the north-east “should be kept in their pristine state”. Thus, he banned large-scale development in the area, even of such basic facilities as roads. Even today, the north-east is one of the most neglected parts of the country, although from here too, people have migrated to other parts of the country once the economy began to modernize. For example, in Gurgaon near Delhi, several computer software professionals are from the northeast, where the popularity of English has spurred familiarity with Information Technology.

Will a wave of Balkanisation hit India, and the country separate into a Bengali, a Tamil and other parts? So long as the economy is humming along at a speed that gives jobs to millions each year, and so long as a single linguistic or religious group does not impose its dominance over the rest, this is unlikely to happen. China is not the only big country in Asia where stability depends on continued economic progress.
 

Jinnah and Jaswant

M D Nalapat

28 August 2009

Sixty-two years have gone by since the British divided India and left, yet the ghost of Mohammad Ali Jinnah continues to haunt India. This columnist believes Partition to have been caused by the Gandhi-Nehru policy of “neutrality” between the Axis and the Allies during World War II. Indeed,the Mahatma had a unique solution for the British people. It was to “give up their resistance,their weapons”,and meet the Germans with “soul force”. According to Gandhi,this powerful “inner energy” would so melt the hearts of the Nazis that they would vacate their conquests and live happily ever after with the British.

Gandhi had a similar solution for the Jewish people, during the time when they were being persecuted and later exterminated by the Germans under Adolf Hitler.This was to cease all resistance to the Nazis and rely on the goodness of heart of the SS and other death squads to ensure a happy outcome. Fortunately for the Mahatma, India was ruled by the British and not by the Germans. Had it been the latter,he would swiftly have become another statistic,the way more than five million Jews were during 1939-45.

The Mahatma was a remarkable human being, sleeping between two nude girls in order to “test” his “commitment to virtue”, which - whether because of age or inclination - fortunately remained intact,except for a single occasion,which was duly recorded in the pages of his magazine,”Harijan”. Small wonder that he caused havoc within the anti-colonial movement in India,and confusion way past his time. It was Gandhi who propped up Jawaharlal Nehru, piggybacking the youthful, attractive Kashmiri over the heads of individuals more capable, such as Vallabhai Patel or Subhas Bose.Or, indeed Mohammad Ali Jinnah. It was Nehru’s dislike of the Quaid-e-Azam that drove the latter from the Congress,and into the arms of a British Raj grateful for support against a quixotic Congress.

The true father of Partition is less Jinnah (or Nehru and Gandhi) than it is Winston Churchill,who regarded Hindus as “beastly” and Indians as little better than baboons. Unlike Gandhi and Nehru,who failed to understand the consequences of their flirtation with the Axis at a time of war, Jinnah was steadfast in backing the Allies,who rewarded him by 1942 with a status equal to that given to the Congress leaders,and by 1946 with a plan to divide India so that the “Muslim” part would continue to remain an ally of the Crown, even as the “Hindu” part went its own way. Had the Congress Party backed the Allies during World War II the way Gandhi did during World War I, there would not have been the division of India that was witnessed in 1947. Several commentators in Pakistan point to the “lower” status of Muslims in India.They are wrong. Whatever the country’s other faults,India has always remained a secular state, except for spasms of communalism such as in Delhi in 1984 (when Sikhs were butchered after Indira Gandhi was killed by one) or Gujarat in 2002 (when Muslims were killed “in revenge” for the torching by fanatics of a train compartment in Godhra).

The Pakistani commentators see the superior status of Muslims in Pakistan as the norm, rather than accept the secular standard of equality of religions. For them, the “natural and acceptable” course would be to ensure that Islam be given the pride of place that the faith has in Pakistan,or in India during the Mughal period. In any part of the country,the 157 million Muslims who are citizens of India practice their faith, indeed with certain rights (such as the legal right to four wives) that they are not given in several Muslim-majority countries.

It is this fair treatment that has prevented Muslims in India (outside Kashmir) from adopting violent methods to deal with their problems Interestingly, it is in parts of India ravaged by Partition (and which saw the flight of the educated to Pakistan during 1947-49) that the condition of Muslims is still as bad as that for other sections that are relatively disadvantaged.In this columnist’s home state of Kerala,Muslims are among the most advanced in society, as indeed they are in most other parts of the South.Indeed,the world’s richest Muslim businessperson,Azim Hisham Premji, is headquartered in Bangalore. The silver lining is that these days,even in backward states such as Uttar Pradesh and Bihar (from where the bulk of Pakistan’s Mohajirs comes from), education has become a priority,including for women,thus leading to hope that the Muslims there will become as advanced as their counterparts in the south.

The Partition of India is a fact of history. Hopefully,the years ahead will see a common market and perhaps visa-free travel and residence within South Asia (India, Pakistan, Myanmar, Afghanistan, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Bangla Desh), as there is within the European Union.This columnist favours such an outcome,rather than the present hostility,which benefits only a few outside powers,and enables them to dominate the subcontinent.

Jaswant Singh was External Affairs Minister and then Finance Minister during the six years (1998-2004) when A B Vajpayee was Prime Minister. He has written a scholarly book,that places much of the blame for Partition on Gandhi and Nehru, less on Jinnah. Surprisingly, the BJP leadership under L K Advani has sprung to the defense of the Congress leaders by not only banning the book in Gujarat but summarily expelling Singh from the BJP. More than anything else,this shows that the Vajpayee group has been reduced to zero within the BJP, now that the party has come into the hands of L K Advani (whose views on Jinnah are, interestingly, identical to those of Jaswant Singh). It was perhaps to signal the end of the Vajpayee era that Singh was given marching orders. In the process,the BJP has shown itself to be a party intolerant of dissent,and out of sync with the hundreds of millions of middle class that were once irs political base.

During the 2009 elections,all that the BJP had to showcase to match the undoubted charisma of the youthful pair of Rahul Gandhi and his sister Priyanka was an ageing Advani and the same jaded faces that were rejected in the 2004 elections. It would appear that,on the lines of a US Supreme Court Justice or the leader of North Korea, L K Advani considers himself Leader for Life of the BJP. Because Jaswant Singh ( given his loyalty to Vajpayee,who was always vary of Advani) opposed the total grip of Advani over the BJP,the book on Jinnah was used as an excuse to remove him without even the issuance of a show-cause notice.

However, given their lack of rapport with either the BJP base or voters in India, it is doubtful that the Advani Group will for much longer control the BJP the way Sonia Gandhi and her children control the Congress Party. If the leaders of India were such paragons of perfection (the way “sarkari” historians depict them),then why is India in such a mess? Why is there no power or water,why are the roads so bad and the administration so corrupt? Jaswant Singh has only done what others have gingerly begun,which is to do away with the subcontinental culture of creating icons out of (very fallible) leaders. Unless the designs of the British Raj are studied, the people of the subcontinent will not understand how much they are losing from enmity,and how much they can gain from friendship. Sadly,”democratic” India has leaders as intolerant of criticism as the worst dictators in history.What happened to Jaswant Singh is a travesty of democracy,and indicative of the moral rot at the core of the BJP.

Killers more effective than Al-Qaeda

M D Nalapat

21, August 2009

A handful of people - about 150 in all - have been responsible for several times more deaths than terrorists acting in the name of Al-Qaeda. These are the speculators who drove up prices of petroleum, food stocks and commodities such as steel and copper manifold since the occupation of Iraq in 2003. Because of these price increases, hundreds of thousands were forced into starvation, and several died as a consequence. The living standards of hundreds of millions across the world got reduced, while the collapse of consumer demand caused by super high prices led to economic depression and large-scale unemployment.

Never before in history have so many been made to suffer so much as a consequence of the actions of so few. Amazingly, while Al-Qaeda terrorists are - justly - hunted and their money seized, this group of speculators is still given privileged entry into the homes and offices of the political leaders of the US and the EU, not to mention the Third World When the price of petroleum feedstock was rising from US$ 23 a barrel to more than US$ 150 a barrel after Iraq was occupied by the US and the UK, this columnist was among the few who pointed to speculators as the cause of the increase, rather than accept the explanation peddled by apologists of the speculators, that “market conditions” were responsible for the rise in prices. The publicity organs of the financial entities responsible for sending prices sky-high were diligent in ensuring a steady diet of “crisis” stories about the crude oil market. A raid by a few armed thugs on a petrol bunk in Nigeria became reason enough to talk of a “crisis in production” in that state, while an alarm was sounded for three years about an “imminent” attack on Iran by the US and Israel, something that could reasonably be expected to constrict crude oil supplies for years. Indeed, since George W Bush took over as President of the United States in 2001, the policy of the world’s biggest economy was fashioned in a way that sent the price of crude oil rocketing upwards. First came the tacit backing for the lockdown of the oil I came the industry in Venezuela in 2002,and the attempted ouster of President Hugo Chavez. Next came the 2003 invasion of Iraq, and the (inexplicable) fall in that country’s crude oil production from its already low levels. Then, in 2004,came tensions over Iran, followed in 2006 by the ratcheting up of tensions with Russia, another major oil producer, all in the backdrop of alarmist reports about raids in Nigeria and storms in the US gulf.

There are those who claim that North Korea has escaped harsh US action because it has a nuclear device. Another reason may be that such sanctions would not reduce the quantity of oil in world markets, as that country has very little oil besides that used to pomade Kim Jong-II’s hair. During seven of the eight years of the Bush II administration, several actions taken by the US had the effect of helping those who were speculating on crude oil. Indeed, these worthies should install a platinum statue of George W Bush in Houston, so greatly has he added to their fortunes.

It was hoped that Barack Obama - most of whose campaign was funded by small donations - would reverse the policy of helping speculators to impoverish the world,but the choice of Timothy Geithner as Treasury Secretary indicated that Obama too was unwilling to check such depredators. Geithner has a record of being close to speculators,and in office, has ensured not only that there has been zero punishment for those responsible for the 2008 collapse, but that they have been rewarded by handouts from US taxpayers. Small wonder that after a brief lull caused by the 2008 crash, speculators are back manipulating markets,sending the price of oil,foodgrains and other essential commodities sky-high once again,thus leading to loss of lives from starvation for the thousabds,and loss of livelihood for millions. As during 2001-2008,the prices of commodities has been multiplied by speculation,and the danger is that the loss of consumer demand that this will cause may lead to an ecomnomic depression by 2010,rather than the hoped-for recovery. Unless President Obama wakes up from his moral slumber and takes action against those rigging the market,the omens are bleak for the world

Thousands of innocents have died because of the starvation caused by high food prices. Many more have died because they were unable to afford treatment for illnesses that could be cured only by expensive drugs manufactured by a few companies. In India, Chairman Hamid of CIPLA fought for years before he was able to ensure the production of reasonably-priced drugs for AIDS. Today he and other low-cost manufacturers in India are being persecuted by lawsuits filed by drug predators eager to maximise personal profit at the expense of human misery. Sadly,the “idealistic” Obama administration has been complicit with the pharmaceutical interests maintaining a high-cost regime, seizing as many as 16 drug shipments from India during the previous months. And despite their loud talk about “helping the poor”,the EU governments too take the side of drug predators rather than companies that seek to make essential medicines affordable. Several Indian pharmaceutical companies have had their drugs illegally seized at European ports,despite the fact that they were in transit and not meant for European markets. Unfortunately, so frightened is the Manmohan Singh- Sonia Gandhi government of annoying the Europeans that the government has refrained from a media blitz explaining to European consumers how their governments are forcing them to pay higher prices for their drugs,either directly or through taxation.

US and European price gougers in the pharmaceutical industry have long held a monopoly in the supply of drugs to poorer markets such as those in Africa and Asia, and are reluctant to see Indian manufacturers take away their skyhigh profits by selling lower-cost alternatives. Hence the frequent harassment of Indian pharma companies by European and US manufacturers,acting through courts that are usually complicit in the milking of the hapless consumer. As has been pointed out by many,although drug manufacturers point to the “costs of research” as the reason for high prices,the reality is that almost all such research gets done by government or university laboratories,with very little being done by the companies themselves.Indeed,a much greater expense is usually the legal expenses involved in litigation designed to keep lower-cost producers out of lucrative markets.Sadly.rather than side with the poor and with consumers generally,the WHO has become a propaganda machine for the pharma predators,protecting their monopoly

An example is the H1N1 virus,that causes “Swine Flu”. This columnist believes that the internationally-orchestrated panic over Swine Flu is unjustified,except as a source of revenue to a few drugs manufacturers. The scare has come as a bonanza for the few companies that produce the drug used to treat H1N1 cases. These entities have even managed to influence the WHO into accepting their policy of preventing any other producer from manufacturing lower-cost alternatives that would be as efficacious. Sadly, most of the leaders of poor countries lean forwards,backwards and sideways to please entities in the developed countries, rather than take up cudgels on behalf of their people. It is because of such cowardice that as yet there is no low cost treatment for Swine Flu, nor a reasonably priced testing kit. In india,each positive test costs US$ 200,an impossible sum in the event of an epidemic. In the case of AIDS, after many years and millions of deaths, the huge pharma giants that were holding a monopoly over treatment relented in allowing a few Third World producers of excellence to manufacture retrovirals. How many millions will need to die of Swine Flu before a similar “magnanimity” gets shown by the hardhearted few who are today smiling at the profits the misery of people is generating for them?

India, Pakistan,Brazil and other countries need to work together to ensure that the price gouging of a few drug companies gets ended,and medicine becomes accesible to the many,especially the poor. Unless this be done, those who are killing - by their greed - many more people than terrorists ever did will continue laughing all the way to the bank,as they pass the corpses of those felled by their monopoly.

India & Russia: Can past warmth return?

M D Nalapat

14 August 2009

Along with diehard members of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), policymakers in India mourned the 1992 demise of the USSR. Moscow had been an ally of Delhi since the early 1960s, ensuring through its veto that the US, the UK and China could not use the UN Security Council to embarrass India on Kashmir. The Indian military was heavily reliant on Soviet supplies, especially for the air force, while steel plants,machine tool works and numerous other projects came up in India because of technical and financial help from the Soviet Union. In 1971,when US President Richard Nixon (an India-hater with India-baiter Henry Kissinger by his elbow) sent the nuclear-equipped Seventh Fleet to the Bay of Bengal in an attempt to scare India away from ensuring success to the Mukti Bahini in what is now Bangla Desh, Premier Alexei Kosygin ordered the Soviet Sixth Fleet into the same waters,in the process turning into jelly Nixon’s resolve to protect the unity of Pakistan,the country that was the facilitator in Washington’s opening to China

India’s Soviet tilt was the responsibility less of itself than of the Western powers. The US relied on the UK to decipher India, and London was still in the Churchillian afterglow of backing the “courageous Moslems” against the “shifty Hindoos”. It was no secret that the UK wanted Pakistan as a counterweight to an “unreliable” India, and as a bridge to the immense Muslim-majority lands to Pakistan’s west. Hence,beginning in the 1950s, the UK (and its faithful follower the US) applied incessant pressure on India to surrender the Muslim-majority state of Kashmir to Pakistan. In 1962,after the debacle caused by the Chinese advance into India’s north-east, Delhi was willing to become an ally of the US, at a time when ties with Moscow were still tentative. The initiative was killed by the crude badgering of the UK’s Duncan Sandys and his American emulators . “Give up Kashmir or else” was the message from Sandys,who -poor man - had clearly not been told that India had become an independent country in 1947. India chose the “Or else”. Again,with the collapse of the USSR, Delhi looked towards Washington to replace Moscow as an ally. The Clinton White House acted the way Sandys had three decades earlier,by demanding concessions on Kashmir that would in effect have extinguished Indian control over the state. Not surprisingly,the pressure was rebuffed. It took a decade more,and a new US President (George W Bush) before the US finally woke up to India’s potential and dealt with it as the ally of choice in the region

And what of the former ally,Moscow? As usual,the establishment in Delhi was taken unawares by events. Indeed,India was the only country in the world to officially welcome the 1991 coup against Mikhail Gorbachev, an action that did not endear Delhi to either Gorbachev or his successor Boris Yeltsin. As a consequence of India’s stubbornly pro-CPSU line, relations between itself and Russia under Boris Yeltsin were cool. Moscow was charmed by the West,and disillusionment had not yet set in. Hence, military supplies became expensive and irregular, and joint projects fell to near-zero levels.This despite India being the only country in the world that committed to repaying Moscow in old roubles,rather than the worthless currency the once-respected medium of exchange had become. The cost to an impoverished India of this generous gesture (masterminded by no less a personage than Manmohan Singh,then Union Finance Minister) was in excess of US$ 12 billion,but it was judged worthwhile in order to keep the relationship strong.and ensure steady supplies of military equipment, propositions that subsequently turned out to be inaccurate. Under Yeltsin, ties soured,even while the Clinton White House ignored the prospect of India as an ally. Indeed,those days,the US State and Commerce Departments used to warn businesspersons against investing in India,which - they claimed - was “one of the most dangerous places on earth”

It was only after the former KGB took control of Russia in 1999 from the numerous mafias backed by Yeltsin that relations with India began to warm up. Vladimir Putin,the new boss, was,unlike his predecessor, no admirer of the West. He saw his objective as being the re-emergence of Russia as a superpower, balancing the West rather than serving as an auxiliary to it. Looking at the map of Asia,Putin accepted the view of his former KGB colleagues that it would be in Moscow’s interest to renew the now lapsed alliance with India. Once again,from around 2003, military supplies began to flow into India on huge transport aircraft,and the quality of the equipment supplied rose considerably (along with the price tag). However, the desperate need of Russia for cash has meant that a substantial amount of price gouging has taken place,especially with the “Gorshkov”. This 31-year old aircraft carrier was given “ for free” by Russia to India in 2004. Since then, Moscow has added nearly US$ 3 billion to the price tag,thus draining the Indian Navy of the funds needed for several other fleet expansion plans. Even should the ship (now renamed “Vikramaditya”) ever get inducted into the Indian naval fleet,the costs of operation and maintenance would be huge. Of course,a few individuals would have got immense personal benefit from the deal,which is presumably the reason why the Defense Ministry is so eager for the deal to be clinched,even on the extortionate terms asked for by the Russians The high price of Russian hardware is the reason why India is now turning to the US as an alternative supplier. Once the relationship between India and the US develops, several naval vessels now in the service of the US Navy can be handed over to India, where they can be re-equipped and sent on missions such as anti-piracy patrols. Given the problems that have afflicted the Russia-India military supply relationship since 1992, it is reasonable to forecast that the coming few years will see the US supplanting Russia as India’s biggest defense supplier. Of course,Moscow will still be assured of huge profits from India,for items such as nuclear reactors. Also,Russia has an even richer customer than India, and this is China. Even as India and the US are moving closer, so are China and Russia.Today,several laboratories in Russia survive because of Chinese support, and especially since Hu Jintao took over in 2002 as General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) from the West-leaning Jiang Zemin, the strategic relationship between China and Russia has become much stronger than the old relationship between India and the USSR. Very clearly, a bipolar world order is emerging, with the US and China as the two poles.

Although it claims to be be non-aligned,the reality is that India is Washington’s to lose. Unless the Clinton cohort in the Obama administration once again scares away Delhi by harping on matters such as signing on to the NPT or making concessions in Kashmir, the coming years will witness the steady expansion of ties between the world’s most powerful country and the world’s most populous democracy

Que sera sera. Although India and Russia are once again good friends, they are unlikely to be allies once more, given the close ties of the former with the US. Of course,if the US makes a series of mistakes that have the effect of driving India away from its embrace ( not a bad result,in the eyes of many), then there is the prospect of another alliance taking shape: India,China and Russia.In today’s world,where money talks, the rapid growth of India will,it is hoped,assure Delhi the place at the top table that it has been denied for so long.In a caste-oriented society such as India, this counts.

India-Iran ties still in shadow

M D Nalapat

7 August 2009

Persian culture is everywhere in India, whether it be in the - some would say exaggerated - etiquette of Lucknow in the north or the Nawabi localities of Hyderabad in the south. It is there in the gentility of the Urdu language , which matches the charm of Sanskrit in its politesse,and in the food and even the dress eaten and worn throughout the subcontinent. Rumi and Ferdousi are almost as well known in many parts of India as they are in Iran, so it is small wonder that modern Iran enjoys a popularity among the people of India that is less the result of current reality in that country than it is the result of its romantic past. Unfortunately, this goodwill within the Indian public has not been matched by similar cordiality in official ties. Although there can exist substantial synergy between India and Iran, since the 1950s,such potential has largely gonre untapped

Had Mohammad Mossadeq been allowed by MI6 and the CIA to continue in office, New Delhi may have had a smoother ride in Tehran,given its own anti-colonialist chemistry. Unfortunately,the Shah of Iran was helped to topple the nationalist prime minister in 1953. Thus,the Pahlavis once again got the better of the Qajars. Because India was on the “wrong side” of the John Foster Dulles classification of US friends and foes,the Shah followed Washington in giving a cool reception to numerous overtures from the Indian side. It was only after 1973, when he engineered a huge increase in the price of crude oil (and won the enmity of influential groups in the US,who “repaid” him by standing aside while the mobs toppled his government a few years later), that the Shah began looking to India as a possible friend. After the “Peaceful Nuclear Explosion” at Pokhran in 1974,his interest rose, together with international orders for Indian manufactures,which rose by more than 30% less than a year after the blast, the logic being that if a country could set off a nuclear explosion, there must be adequate value in its products. While the “cost” of going nuclear is endlessly repeated by US non-proliferation groups (which instinctively do not trust those outside European ethnicity with nuclear technology), what is left unsaid is the business benefit of the demonstration effect of the mastering of such technology on the image of a country. If Pakistan is treated with a lot more respect and attention today,as is North Korea,the reason lies in nuclear capability

Although 1975-78 saw a substantial improvement in India-Iran ties,with trade rising and even talks beginning on possible military links,these were choked off soon afterwards. While Ayatollah Khomeini was friendly to India (indeed,he was called the “Man from Hind” by some), this soured after the Iran-Iraq conflict began in 1980. Saddam Hussein was a close friend of India,and had been so for decades.He was a dictator,true,but a secular one who did not tolerate the religious zealots then being assisted by the CIA. Several times,when India ran short of crude oil,he would divert Iraqi supplies at “friendship prices”. Even in 1993, afte he had been humiliated by the US in the Kuwait war, it was only Saddam Hussein who responded to the Indian SOS for intelligence on the groups that facilitated the serial bomb blasts at Mumbai that year. The US and the UK provided “intelligence” that was not fit even for a wastepaper basket,so committed were they to the “fight against terrorism”. Other countries were similarly reticent.It was only Saddam Hussein who opened the files of his secret service to India.

Later, in 2003,when he was once again engaged in (this time mortal) combat with the US, the Indian parliament,alone in the world,passed a unanimous resolution condemning the invasion of a sovereign country.The resolution was passed by a voice vote with no dissenters,on the day US troops entered Baghdad just three weeks after the attack began on March 20. Earlier,despite intense prodding by the US and several European countries,New Delhi refused to extradite Iraqi diplomats working in that city,and individually assured each of the diplomats whose extradition was being demanded that they were welcome to remain in India for as long as they liked.A few are still in Delhi,welcome guests of a nation grateful for the friendship offered by Saddam Hussein to India Once the war with Iran began,India pulled out its military trainers from Iraq.This did little to cool the anger of the clerics in Tehran,who were insistent that India should behave not in a neutral manner,but “stand with the victim against the aggressor”.

Given the culture of procrastination, that saw Delhi hesitant even to condemn the 1956 Soviet invasion of Hungary,the 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia or even the brutal 1979 occupation of Afghanistan, this would have been a tall order even without the many friendly links between the Saddam Hussein regime and India. The consequence of such neutrality was that it was only after Mohammad Khatami took over as President of Iran in 1997 that relations between India and Iran thawed. Oncve again,as in the late 1970s, Iranian students began to flock to Indian universities. New Delhi assisted Tehran in building a road and rail link from Bandar Abbas to the northern border that ensured land access for India to Central Asia and its emnvirons,an important benefit in the face of Pakistan’s longstanding refusal to permit such access through its territory. However, the increasing warmth between India and the US led the Manmohan Singh government to vote against Iran at the IAEA meeting in 2005,even though major developing countries such as Brazil,South Africa and even Mexico abstained.

Eager to clinch the nuclear deal with the US, Manmohan Singh thereby became responsible for a fresh freeze in India-Iran ties,a situation that continues to the present Looked at geopolitically and not sentimentally,there is logic in Manmohan Singh’s decision to place a higher value on US than on Iranian goodwill.Given the tense relationship that exists between the Khameini-Ahmedinejad regime and the US, plus the importance to the Indian economy of closer ties with the US, it would be folly to annoy Washington by agreeing to Tehran’s wish that - for example - India undertake maintenance of Iranian defense equipment.Any such linkage would create a frost in the rapidly-developing ties between the US and Indian militaries.Indeed,the best case for India would be the victory of reformists over religious conservatives in Iran, given the warmth that existed during the period in office of Khatami. The pragmatic Hashemi Rafsanjani is also close to India,but became so only during the past decade,and not while he was in office as President of Iran (1989-97). India and the US,as also India and the EU,are moving closer to each other,and only an Iran that is friendly to both the US and the EU will be able to gain the immense synergy that can exist between Delhi and Tehran. Till then,engagement will be what it is now, sporadic and unsubstantial,unable to unlock the benefits that a closer relationship would bring. Of course,no matter the state of US-Iran ties,India would still need to ensure that its lines of communication with Iran remain unclogged. The reasons are clear.Iran is a major source ogf hydrocarbon to the Indiab economy,and if relations between India and Pakistan improve to a point where a pipeline to dia that traverses Pakistan become viable,then its importance as a supplier would grow. Second,in the absence of a rapprochement between Delhi and Islamabad,Iran provides the only land access that Indian manufactures have to the important markets of Central Asia and its environs.

Next is the Shia factor,an important consideration. Within India’s 157-million Muslim community, almost all the acts of violence have been by the small Wahabbi component of the population. Shias have thus far not joined in acts of violence,even though they account for more than the Wahabbis. Given the intense activity of the Wahabbi groups across India,it would be foolhardy on the part of the Indian state to provoke the world’s leading Shia power into activity that resembles that of some extreme Wahabbi groups. India is not at all eager to repeat the mistake made by Israel in Lebanon in 1982, when that country took the side of the Maronite Christians against the Shia,provoking an anger that has led to a deadly assymetrical war between armed groups of Shia and Israel.Indeed, unlike in the case of the extremist Wahabbis,who target numerous countries,thus far the only foreign country targetted by armed Shia is Israel. In sum, Iran is too major a factor to be ignored by India,although at present,in present conditions too hot to handle with the closeness that the basic congruence between the two two countries makes desirable!

India to China: “Treat us as equals”

M D Nalapat
31st July 2009

Unlike in the US, where experts have a decisive say in the formulation of foreign policy, in India the political establishment is reluctant to cede space to experts while determining policy towards other countries. Since the time of Jawaharlal Nehru (1947-64), successive Prime Ministers have fashioned policy less on the basis of ground reality than on their own predelictions and political needs. The result has been policies that often act only as short-term palliatives, without resolving core issues. And because the power of the elected Prime Minister is constrained only by his council of ministers and Parliament, policies get implemented that usually have little support among the people or even the bulk of the cadre of the ruling party or parties

An example is “non-alignment”, which resulted in India failing in the 1960s to reap the dividend (of becoming a source for equipment and other procurement) that the Asian tiger economies of South Korea and Singapore got because of the huge expenses incurred in the region by the US. Interestingly, when the PRC was formed in 1949 and for more than a decade thereafter, China had a per capita income half that of India. Today, the situation is reversed. And while countries such as South Korea had a standard of living close to what was then the case in India just forty years ago, today that country is an advanced economy, while India has 300 million desperately poor people. Yes, for the 300 million “middle class” in India, the country is beginning to shine. But for the rest, life is still extremely dismal

It was the Congress Party’s first prime minister outside the Nehru family to complete a full term (of 5 years), Pamulaparthy Venkata Narasimha Rao (PVN Rao), who in 1992 began to unshackle both the economy and foreign policy from the Colonial-Cold War past. Rao recognized Israel, and began the “Look East” policy that reversed two decades of Delhi’s neglect towards the present ASEAN group. He made several efforts to coax the US to enter into the same kind of alliance with India that Delhi had enjoyed with Moscow for four decades, but met indifference from a Clinton administration that focussed only on two touchy areas, nuclear capability and Kashmir. Bill Clinton was blind to the multiple links that were developing between his country and India during his eight years in office (1993-2001), links that comprised hundreds of thousands of Indian students and migrants heading towards the US, as well as numerous business and other partnerships. Finally, the volume of such US-India interaction became too much for Clinton to continue to ignore, and he visited India during his final months in office, charming hearts liberally.

Although the Clintons are seen in Delhi as friends of China rather than India, the expectation is that policy towards the democracy that is expanding faster than any other (save China) will remain in the control of President Obama, who has apparently escaped the effort of the Clinton team to get him to concentrate on the Clintonites favourite subcontinental subjects, nuclear capability and Kashmir. Instead, he instructed Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to in the past week pursue a broad agenda, one that reflects the diversity of the Indian economy and society’s engagement with the US. In particular, it is expected that Delhi will soon be placing defense orders with the US for about $10 billion, including aircraft and other systems. Because “the business of the US is business”, the ringing of cash registers since the end of the 1990s is expected to ensure an upward trajectory for India-US ties

However, relations with China remain problematic, although outwardly cordial. While the US is the “emergent” superpower, China is the “emerging” superpower. And although even ties with Pakistan seem to be getting warmer, especially between the civilian government headed by President Asif Ali Zardari and the Manmohan Singh team, relations with China still suffer from a himalayan chill, despite numerous public statements to the contrary. Both countries exchange barbs regularly over what India claims is “massive dumping” by Chinese manufacturers in the huge Indian market (it may be mentioned that India enjoys a substantial trade surplus with China despite this). Forward progress on border talks has been - in effect - zero. Indeed, incursions by the PLA into territory held by India has been on the rise, including stray incidents of helicopters coming into airspace controlled by India. This is happening in both the western as well as the eastern boundaries with China. Those in Delhi who see the “Pakistan Hand” in everything say that it is to please Islamabad that Beijing continues to dally over a border settlement, although few who know the pragmatic Chinese Communist Party will accept such a view. In sum, although much is made (by both sides) of the “strategic partnership” between the two giants of Asia, the fact that since 1949, neither the Chinese Trade Minister nor the Commerce Minister has visited India tells its own tale. As for the Defense Minister, the only time the PRC sent this dignitary was a decade back. Contrast this to the vigorous engagement between Islamabad and Beijing

The dismal record is despite intense Indian efforts since 1986 for an accommodation with China, efforts fuelled by the realisation that a comprehensive settlement with China would enable India to concentrate on other problems. Each Indian initiative has met with resistance from Beijing. An example is the effort of then Union Petroleum Minister Mani Shankar Aiyar (a brilliant former diplomat with several friends in Pakistan) six years ago to craft an India-PRC “Oil Alliance”. This move came to naught, and the two countries continue to compete furiously for oil in Russia, Africa and elsewhere, thus pushing up prices. The view in Delhi is that the PRC “has not reconciled to the fact that India is rising, and needs to be treated as an equal”. Indeed, recently, in the Asian Development Bank, China sought to block a loan to India, stepping back only under US pressure. Its backing for India’s entry into the UN Security Council has been tepid and studded with preconditions, while thus far, while Beijing seeks entry into SAARC, it has blocked India from full membership of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation and from attending East Asia summits. Delhi sees itself as at the least a continental power, with interests across Asia. Indeed, East Asia is even more important to India for purposes of trade than even North America, if volume is taken as the index. Which side is to blame for the longstanding impasse in Sino-Indian relations? Each side has a narrative that places 95% of the blame on the other. The truth is that during the period 1957-62, the actions that caused negativity in the relationship were mostly done by India, such as welcoming in 1959 not only the Dalai Lama but any Tibetan who sought to leave Tibet, or Nehru’s preemptory rejection of Zhou Enlai’s offer that the status quo be converted as the official border. Having sent back Premier Zhou from Delhi twice with a rejection, Nehru compounded Chinese anger by sending poorly-equipped troops to man pocket pickets in the PRC-controlled zone. However, in the 1970s, masterminded by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi working through a quiet but effective diplomat, Kocheril Raman Narayanan (who subsequently became President of India), Delhi sought to de-freeze its ties with Beijing. Only in 1986, with the surprising rapport between then PM Rajiv Ratna Birjees Gandhi and Paramount Leader Deng Xiaoping did some rays of sunlight finally penetrate through the gloomy fog of what has been for more than a half-century a tense relationship. But since Jiang Zemin came to full power in the 1990s, India seems to have become a lower priority for the Chinese leadership. Indians think in terms of “yugas” that last several million years each. Hence there is no hurry in Delhi to come to a settlement, a trait exasperating to those with a somewhat less cosmic view of time. As China keeps rejecting Delhi’s offer of a border settlement based on the Zhou formula, ties between India and the US are developing even faster than the economy (now growing at 6.9% despite the international recession). Within a decade, the gap between India and China is expected to narrow to a point where - it is hoped - Beijing will finally accept the status quo on the border and accept the growing geopolitical reach of India, thus conceding the core demand: treat us as equals, for example by supporting and not blocking India in the UN Security Council and the Nuclear Suppliers Group. Hopefully, some time in the not too distant future, Pakistan, India and China will form an arc of friendship rather than a zone of tension.

Will Manmohan win his Pak gamble?

M D Nalapat
24 July 2009

There are two members of the Manmohan Singh Cabinet of whom it can with certainty be said that neither has made money while in politics. One is the Prime Minister himself, the other being Defense Minister A K Antony,whose wife and children still use public buses for transport. Dr Singh was brought into the Government of India as Economic Advisor in 1991,by then Commerce Minister, Subramanian Swamy. Subsequently,a year later,incoming prime minister Narasimha Rao promoted him as Finance Minister, a post in which (helped by his closest confidante,Montek Singh Ahluwalia, Manmohan Singh shepherded the economy through its major economic reforms since 1947.

In the light of such a record, it was expected that in 2004,when he took over as Prime Minister in 2004, he would focus on economic issues. But the decades spent in economics seems to have dulled the allure of the subject for Dr Singh,who during the past five years has concentrated much more on foreign and security policy than on economics. In the view of several members of Delhi’s security and foreign policy establishment, this has been akin to an Olympian hockey player suddenly switching to Test cricket. Not surprisingly,they give him low marks for his efforts,especially at forging better ties with Pakistan, a policy held hostage to any mass terror attack in India

An example of his alleged clumsiness in diplomacy was the unusually curt behaviour of Dr Singh to Pakistan President Asif Zardari on the sidelines of the mid-June G-8 meeting at Yekaterinburg,Russia. Just how the indian Prime Minister was - in his version of the event - oblivious of the presence of the huge contingent of international media that were clicking and shouting away can perhaps be explained by a hidden propensity on Dr Singh’s part to transcendental meditation. Whatever, his hectoring of President Zardari about Pakistan being the venue for the planning of terror attacks on India went down as badly with the professionals as it delighted a arge constituency of Pakistan-sceptics in India. Was the G8 drama simply the politician in Dr Singh taking charge, so as to score populist points at home? Or was it his indignation at the November 2008 Mumbai massacre boiling over when he met President Zardari after a gap of nine months ? Whatever,as the testy lecture would have further damaged President Zardari’s standing at home, it was regarded as unwise by an establishment that sees the Pakistan President as the only member of the highest echelons of government not committed to what is seen in Delhi as the Pakistan military’s “untreatable” hatred for India. Zardari’s statements on terrorism and on the need for India and Pakistan to work together have created a constituency for him within the policy establishment,that sees him as a check on the “adventurism” of the military. Unlike Prime Minister Gilani,who is regarded as being in thrall to the line espoused by the military

Thus, the policy establishment in Delhi raised a collective eyebrow at Prime Minister Singh’s effusive conduct during the meeting with Pakistan Prime Minister Yusuf Gilani at Sharm-el-Sheikh a month after the Zardari “gaffe”. Dr Singh further horrified this group by allowing a reference to Balochistan in the Joint statement. The security and foreign policy establishment in India believes that Islamabad is raising the “bogey of Balochistan” in order to use the allegations as a lever to get Delhi to scale back its growing diplomatic presence in Southern Afghanistan,and believe that Dr Singh “fell into the trap” by agreeing to a Joint Statement that included this subject. While his advisors were reportedly against such a reference,Manmohan Singh took a personal decision to allow it to be inserted,thus putting in play this presumed “lever against India” that can get discussed at summits between the two countries

In India, those in positions of responsibility usually draw a clear line between the civilian and the military establishments in Pakistan,seeing in the former a possible ally against the relentless “anti-India” attitude of the military. Here,President Zardari is seen as being much more liberal than Prime Minister Gilani,who is regarded as being a close personal friend of COAS Ashfaq Kayani. While a few unkind commentators have pointed to the common Punjabi link between Singh and Gilani to explain the unusual warmth shown by the Indian Prime Minister to his Pakistani counterpart,this would be unfair to Dr Singh,who is more at home in New York or London than he is in Chandigarh or Ludhiana. Clearly,Manmohan Singh saw the damage his G8 grandstanding had caused to his reputation as an exemplar of courtesy and grace,and sought to make amends,but this time with the wrong person. All in all, there has been an eloquent silence in Delhi about Dr Singh’s performance at Sharm-el-Sheikh and the Joint Statement, with only the Prime Minister’s Office busily seeking to undo the damage by organising television sound bytes from Dr Singh that are far more hardline than the Joint Statement,and explain it in a manner that is plainly inconsistent with the released text

By organizing such a flipflop,the Prime Minister’s handlers have done Dr Singh a disservice. He is gambling that even the Pakistan military - faced with the threat from the Taliban - will sheath its sword against India, and hopefully agree to a policy of engagement and even an eventual alliance with India. The economist Dr Singh knows that such a warmth in relations would do wonders for the economies of both India and Pakistan, and he seems to be willing to “go the extra mile” to ensure that his gamble succeed. And in the process,proves wrong those in Delhi (and they are many) who believe that the Pakistan military will never accept a policy of peace with India Behind that affable exterior, his friends know that there is a ruthless determination in Dr Singh’s character that makes him pursue objectives through numerous obstacles.An example is the India-US nuclear deal,that almost caused the fall of the government a year ago. Despite volleys of criticism, Dr Singh held on to the deal,and was finally rewarded with its approval by the IAEA and the Nuclear Suppliers Group,overcoming strong ( but hidden) opposition from global powers such as China. It helped that for commercial reasons,both France and Russia have been enthusiastic backers of the deal,and both have been rewarded with contracts for nuclear reactors of about $10 billion each over the life of the agreements being worked out with India. Not that the US is far behind. Washington is hoping to net its own $10 billion,by selling the Indian Air Force 126 front-line fighter aircraft within the year.This would give the US the chance to displace Russia from its longstanding position as the largest supplier of defense equipment to India.There was a time when India and the US were on opposite sides during the decades of the Cold War. Today,the two countries are trotting towards an alliance,establishing multiple links almost every week

Manmohan Singh is right,when he argues that the priority has to be economic growth. He believes that this needs an interface of peace with India’s nuclear neighbours China and Pakistan,and has been looking for ways of improving ties with both. The Pakistan army’s vigorous offensive against the Taliban in the Swat valley gives rise to the chance that the military too will join with Zardari and other civilan leaders in Pakistan who accept that peace with India is needed for the swifter development of both countries. Perhaps Manmohan Singh will be rewarded with success on India-Pakistan, confounding the critics, just as he has been on the nuclear deal.Certainly the Pakistan army’s vigorous drive against the Taliban has made many Pakistan-sceptics in India wonder whether they need to rethink their conviction,that the men in khakhi will never allow peace between India and Pakistan.

—The writer is a Vice-Chair, Manipal Advanced Research Group, UNESCO Peace Chair & Professor of Geopolitics Manipal University.