(This is my first piece after the general election results. Readers of this blog know that I am a strong supporter of the Congress for systemic reasons. I believe that a strong, centrist and secular party is the best option for a country that is so diverse in terms of ethnicities and religions.)
The world changed while we were in election mode. Change is, of course, constant. But there are periods in time — during war or some disaster — that it gets accelerated. That is what seems to have happened as a result of the global economic meltdown in the last eight months. Besides that great catastrophe, we have also had tumultuous events in our neighbourhood.
Sri Lanka stepped up its war against the LTTE, the post-civil war peace process in Nepal collapsed, the barbarians arrived at the gates of Islamabad, the US’ and western financial system imploded, and China suddenly became that much more important on the world stage.
But New Delhi was distracted. There was some half-hearted diplomatic action. The stimulus packages were there, but the overwhelming focus of the government was on the issue of elections. So satraps like Reserve Bank governor D.V. Subba Rao sat on the file and refused to take key decisions that would have accelerated recovery.
Almost everyone recognises that we are living in an era of great flux. Many of the countries affected are not conscious of the shift, others are, but are unable to alter the course of events. Some are trying to ensure that they are able to retain control after the buffeting, others have gone down. In the Indian case, we have been a largely direction-less ship as we went through the needlessly lengthy exercise of choosing a new government.
But the elections and their outcome have provided a great payoff for the six months of drift. Instead of a weak government, brutalised by dealing with the Left and having to rely on the somewhat sleazy Samajwadi Party, we have a government which is stronger than we have had in a while.
Since this government was re-elected with a vastly greater majority it can treat the verdict as a mandate of sorts for its policies. Principal among these is its strategy of close ties with the United States and the west, of flexible containment of Pakistan and competitive engagement with China.
But even as the government savours its mandate and tries to comprehend its meaning it will find that the world it was dealing with in October 2008 has changed. In America, an election brought into place a government that has self-consciously set its policies in contradistinction to those of its predecessor. At the same time, the US virtually lost an arm and a leg. Its vaunted financial services sector collapsed and even today, as the new administration picks up the pieces, it is not clear what is going to take its place. A big hole has been blown on to America’s side and the world’s sole superpower has come down a couple of notches on the global totem pole.
China
On the other hand, in China, acting with a sense of urgency and efficiency that characterises the Communist “democratic centralist” system of governance during a crisis, the leadership has contained its worst elements that have seen a dramatic decline of Chinese exports and huge unemployment in its manufacturing sector. With a stimulus package that rivaled that of the US’ in size, the Chinese have begun the process of restructuring their economy, seeking out opportunities for mergers and acquisition abroad, and planning for a world in which they have suddenly climbed a couple of notches up that totem pole.
The rise of China is the single greatest challenge for India, but I am not clear whether it is seen in this way by most of our political class. As you can see, in the recent elections, we had Mr Mulayam Singh put forward the view that all that mattered to him was the dismissal of Ms Mayawati’s government. Not to be outdone, Ms Jayalalithaa wanted the Indian armed forces to invade Sri Lanka.
In the recent months, China has acted with great perspicacity to establish itself as a leading economic power which is willing to enter into a relationship of partnership with the United States. This was the subtext of Chinese Premier Wen Jia Bao’s remark in mid-March, that he was “worried” about the safety of China’s $1 trillion investment in US government treasury bonds. He called on the US to “maintain its good credit, to honour its promise and to guarantee the safety of China’s assets.” One significant consequence of the crisis is that the Chinese have made it clear that they are interested in a gradual transition to some other regime, perhaps one in which special drawing rights can play the role of the international currency.
The 60th anniversary of the People’s Liberation Army Navy happened to take place last month. It was a good occasion to see how much China had changed from the time when it followed Deng Xiaoping’s 24-character injunction to “Observe calmly; secure our position; cope with affairs calmly; hide our capabilities and bide our time; be good at maintaining a low profile; and never claim leadership.”
America
The parade of naval vessels, including the spanking new Chinese nuclear propelled submarines was as impressive as the news that China had begun work on its first aircraft carrier, based on the hulk of the erstwhile Varyag which it has bought from Russia.
What happened with the United States is very different. India was lucky in the UPA’s first term to have had a president who was ideologically against the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty and the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and had a great fascination for India. The result was that these two seemingly insurmountable obstacles were simply brushed aside when the US agreed to enter into a civil nuclear cooperation agreement with India. As a result of this, the Nuclear Suppliers Group has opened the doors of all member countries for trade with India. Now that so many doors are open, it does not really matter if the US wishes to close its door. The nuclear pill that was stuck in the Indo-US face for an entire generation has been washed down and digested.
Terrorism
There is every indication that the new Obama administration and New Delhi may find themselves on opposite sides of the fence when it comes to his disarmament and climate change plans. Mr Obama is likely to be pre-occupied with PakAf through his entire term and New Delhi is likely to play only a peripheral role in American calculations. This is likely to involve the maintenance of peace on the India-Pakistan border, for which New Delhi needs no prompting, because the boot on this issue is really in the Pakistani foot. In addition, the US would want India to maintain its aid and reconstruction programme in Afghanistan, again something for which New Delhi needs little prompting, since it is fully in our national interest.
But the crises in the neighbourhood brooks no delay. New Delhi must immediately get involved in the rehabilitation and relief of the beleaguered Tamil community in Sri Lanka. It must build on the Maoist decision to persist with the political track to repair the situation in Kathmandu. Then, there is need to respond to Pakistan’s predicament, without necessarily pandering to Islamabad’s usual neuroses relating to Kashmir or alleged Indian activities in Afghanistan.
Above all New Delhi must not forget that the possibility of another Mumbai-type terrorist attack remains its first short-term national security priority. Another attack would stain the new government’s reputation, regardless of the mandate. Some hurried measures were taken last year in the wake of 26/11. The new government must move vigorously in the domestic and international arena to counter the terrorist threat.
This appeared in Mail Today May 18, 2009
Wednesday, May 20, 2009
Thursday, May 14, 2009
A good night-watchman can also help win a match
( Some one has termed Dr Manmohan Singh as a night-watchman, a low order batsman who is sent higher up in the order to keep the play going till the next day, even if he is one, he is serving a useful function)
There is something in democratic politics that makes governments run out of breath in about year four of their term. An election not only provides correctives to the political process, it also gives the politicians renewed stamina to run the next course of four or five years. On May 16, the proverbial slate would have been wiped clean. Old alliances would have been dismantled and newer ones put on the drawing board, past slights will have to be forgiven, or put away in a safe place at the back of the mind.
The Congress has repeatedly emphasised that they will continue with Dr Manmohan Singh. The BJP had, earlier, categorically declared L.K. Advani as its prime ministerial candidate. Even so there was the brief wobbly moment when the politics of succession of the octogenarian leader was played out, even before he had become prime minister. Whether Narendra Modi’s name came forward as the move of a pawn or a king is unclear, but the last word has yet to be said about this.
Referendum
By May 16, old issues, too, would have receded, to be replaced by new ones. One of these is the Indo-US nuclear deal. Though it was not an issue in the elections it has left a residue of bitterness in the CPI(M)- Congress ties. The BJP has made vague noises about renegotiating the deal if it comes to power. However, we are not sure what specific clauses they wish to renegotiate. Nor do they seem to be aware that Mr Obama is pushing the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and the Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty. Any reopening of the 2008 agreement could end up with the US imposing more conditions, rather than offering any new concessions.
As is its nature, the election result will be as much a referendum on the government of Dr Manmohan Singh as an election of the regime that will rule us for the next five years. A positive outcome could well see Singh back in the saddle because the Congress party has declared that he remains their prime ministerial candidate. Should the numbers not favour the party, Dr Singh could recuse himself so that the party can put forward another
candidate.
The Manmohan Singh government came to power through what was seen as the shock outcome of the 2004 general elections. There were a number of issues — the Sino-Indian border negotiations, the India-Pakistan peace process and the Indo-US nuclear dialogue — that were premised on the near-certain return of the NDA. In that sense, the path of the country’s foreign and security policy was clearly laid out, and by and large, the UPA played to the script.
But the UPA also came to power with the belief that it needed to buttress Indian secularism, battered by the years of BJP rule, as well as to provide a corrective to the economic policy of the NDA that had, in their view, focused on “Shining India” and ignored the aam admi. In many ways the UPA has succeeded in achieving these objectives.
The period 2004-2009 has been singularly free of large-scale Hindu-Muslim communal riots that have disfigured the Indian polity. Indeed, communal violence has scarred almost every government going back to Indira Gandhi — Nellie massacre of 1983, the Sikh pogrom of 1984, Bhagalpur killings of 1989, 1992-93 riots in Ahmedabad, Surat, Mumbai, Kanpur and Malegaon riots of 2001and the 2002 pogrom in Gujarat.
The UPA has also managed to take the first tentative steps towards creating a social safety net. The National Rural Employment Guarantee Act has offered the promise of some kind of a job for the poorest of the poor, for at least some part of the year. The extension of the OBC quota to higher education has inadvertently led to a vast expansion of the higher education infrastructure in the country. The Right to Information Act is a pioneering piece of legislation to provide transparency — where none existed — in the government’s work.
The 2004-2009 period has seen the highest rate of economic growth the country has ever seen since its independence, though the global trends have now slowed it down. But a more important consequence of growth has been the increase in the revenue receipts of the government which went up from Rs 230,834 crores in 2002-03 to Rs 486,422 in 2007-2008. The average annual growth of revenue receipts of the Central Government was of the order of 16.2 per cent.
Strength
This has enabled the government to undertake vast expenditures related to the NREGA, the loan waiver of Rs 70,000 crore for farmers in 2008-2009, and fund ambitious schemes for eradicating illiteracy, the mid-day meal scheme, the schemes for enhancing rural and urban infrastructure and, in recent months, the various stimulus packages. Those who sneer at economic growth as a means of poverty alleviation would be hard put to explain where they could have come up with those sums in the absence of a flourishing economy.
The UPA government’s report card must be seen from the perspective of its political circumstance. It did not have a majority in Parliament and it spent its last year quarreling with its Left ally. Then, unlike the past, the Prime Minister was not the leader of the party. In that sense he operated with reduced authority. Yet, as the record shows, it is unfair to call Dr Manmohan Singh a “one issue” prime minister, or for that matter, a weak leader.
The Left learnt, to its cost, the stubbornness with which the PM pushed a policy he believed in — the Indo-US nuclear deal. Prakash Karat’s recent revelation confirms this. According to Mr Karat, the PM single-handedly faced down his own council of ministers and party and refused to sanction the dismissal of Mulayam Singh Yadav’s government in UP in 2006 because he felt that the move was politically wrong.
Those in government can recall several such instances that bring out the exceptional qualities that Dr Singh brought to the PM’s office, qualities that are not easy to come by even in a billion strong country.
Alliance
Later this month, the country may end up with the old prime minister, but the issues he confronts will be new. These are the ones that have emerged in the six month hiatus that the country was compelled to take because of the elections and the ones that have emerged through the process of elections. Domestically, the need to shore up growth in the face of the global melt-down is an obvious challenge. Globally, we have witnessed a distinct upward movement in the world order by China, and the proportional slide back of the US. This has implications for India.
It also could have important political consequences. The Left's major critique of Singh was that American imperialism had gained ascendancy in New Delhi. The last six months have seen an America deeply wounded by the collapse of its financial system and a new president who has shown no special inclination towards New Delhi.
In such circumstances, the Left must decide whether they want to continue pursuing the American chimera, or back the Congress once again to take on the most important domestic political challenge — the shift of the leadership of the BJP towards Narendra Modi.
The Congress has made it clear that it would want Manmohan Singh to serve as Prime Minister for some more time, if it can form the government. Rahul Gandhi’s emergence as a full-fledged leader is an indicator that the new order is already here.
There is nothing pejorative in terming Manmohan Singh as a “night watchman”— the batsman of a lower order who is sent up to guard the wicket till the play resumes the next day. He has already played his heroic innings, though you can be sure he can still wield a useful bat.
Appeared first in Mail Today May 9, 2009
There is something in democratic politics that makes governments run out of breath in about year four of their term. An election not only provides correctives to the political process, it also gives the politicians renewed stamina to run the next course of four or five years. On May 16, the proverbial slate would have been wiped clean. Old alliances would have been dismantled and newer ones put on the drawing board, past slights will have to be forgiven, or put away in a safe place at the back of the mind.
The Congress has repeatedly emphasised that they will continue with Dr Manmohan Singh. The BJP had, earlier, categorically declared L.K. Advani as its prime ministerial candidate. Even so there was the brief wobbly moment when the politics of succession of the octogenarian leader was played out, even before he had become prime minister. Whether Narendra Modi’s name came forward as the move of a pawn or a king is unclear, but the last word has yet to be said about this.
Referendum
By May 16, old issues, too, would have receded, to be replaced by new ones. One of these is the Indo-US nuclear deal. Though it was not an issue in the elections it has left a residue of bitterness in the CPI(M)- Congress ties. The BJP has made vague noises about renegotiating the deal if it comes to power. However, we are not sure what specific clauses they wish to renegotiate. Nor do they seem to be aware that Mr Obama is pushing the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and the Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty. Any reopening of the 2008 agreement could end up with the US imposing more conditions, rather than offering any new concessions.
As is its nature, the election result will be as much a referendum on the government of Dr Manmohan Singh as an election of the regime that will rule us for the next five years. A positive outcome could well see Singh back in the saddle because the Congress party has declared that he remains their prime ministerial candidate. Should the numbers not favour the party, Dr Singh could recuse himself so that the party can put forward another
candidate.
The Manmohan Singh government came to power through what was seen as the shock outcome of the 2004 general elections. There were a number of issues — the Sino-Indian border negotiations, the India-Pakistan peace process and the Indo-US nuclear dialogue — that were premised on the near-certain return of the NDA. In that sense, the path of the country’s foreign and security policy was clearly laid out, and by and large, the UPA played to the script.
But the UPA also came to power with the belief that it needed to buttress Indian secularism, battered by the years of BJP rule, as well as to provide a corrective to the economic policy of the NDA that had, in their view, focused on “Shining India” and ignored the aam admi. In many ways the UPA has succeeded in achieving these objectives.
The period 2004-2009 has been singularly free of large-scale Hindu-Muslim communal riots that have disfigured the Indian polity. Indeed, communal violence has scarred almost every government going back to Indira Gandhi — Nellie massacre of 1983, the Sikh pogrom of 1984, Bhagalpur killings of 1989, 1992-93 riots in Ahmedabad, Surat, Mumbai, Kanpur and Malegaon riots of 2001and the 2002 pogrom in Gujarat.
The UPA has also managed to take the first tentative steps towards creating a social safety net. The National Rural Employment Guarantee Act has offered the promise of some kind of a job for the poorest of the poor, for at least some part of the year. The extension of the OBC quota to higher education has inadvertently led to a vast expansion of the higher education infrastructure in the country. The Right to Information Act is a pioneering piece of legislation to provide transparency — where none existed — in the government’s work.
The 2004-2009 period has seen the highest rate of economic growth the country has ever seen since its independence, though the global trends have now slowed it down. But a more important consequence of growth has been the increase in the revenue receipts of the government which went up from Rs 230,834 crores in 2002-03 to Rs 486,422 in 2007-2008. The average annual growth of revenue receipts of the Central Government was of the order of 16.2 per cent.
Strength
This has enabled the government to undertake vast expenditures related to the NREGA, the loan waiver of Rs 70,000 crore for farmers in 2008-2009, and fund ambitious schemes for eradicating illiteracy, the mid-day meal scheme, the schemes for enhancing rural and urban infrastructure and, in recent months, the various stimulus packages. Those who sneer at economic growth as a means of poverty alleviation would be hard put to explain where they could have come up with those sums in the absence of a flourishing economy.
The UPA government’s report card must be seen from the perspective of its political circumstance. It did not have a majority in Parliament and it spent its last year quarreling with its Left ally. Then, unlike the past, the Prime Minister was not the leader of the party. In that sense he operated with reduced authority. Yet, as the record shows, it is unfair to call Dr Manmohan Singh a “one issue” prime minister, or for that matter, a weak leader.
The Left learnt, to its cost, the stubbornness with which the PM pushed a policy he believed in — the Indo-US nuclear deal. Prakash Karat’s recent revelation confirms this. According to Mr Karat, the PM single-handedly faced down his own council of ministers and party and refused to sanction the dismissal of Mulayam Singh Yadav’s government in UP in 2006 because he felt that the move was politically wrong.
Those in government can recall several such instances that bring out the exceptional qualities that Dr Singh brought to the PM’s office, qualities that are not easy to come by even in a billion strong country.
Alliance
Later this month, the country may end up with the old prime minister, but the issues he confronts will be new. These are the ones that have emerged in the six month hiatus that the country was compelled to take because of the elections and the ones that have emerged through the process of elections. Domestically, the need to shore up growth in the face of the global melt-down is an obvious challenge. Globally, we have witnessed a distinct upward movement in the world order by China, and the proportional slide back of the US. This has implications for India.
It also could have important political consequences. The Left's major critique of Singh was that American imperialism had gained ascendancy in New Delhi. The last six months have seen an America deeply wounded by the collapse of its financial system and a new president who has shown no special inclination towards New Delhi.
In such circumstances, the Left must decide whether they want to continue pursuing the American chimera, or back the Congress once again to take on the most important domestic political challenge — the shift of the leadership of the BJP towards Narendra Modi.
The Congress has made it clear that it would want Manmohan Singh to serve as Prime Minister for some more time, if it can form the government. Rahul Gandhi’s emergence as a full-fledged leader is an indicator that the new order is already here.
There is nothing pejorative in terming Manmohan Singh as a “night watchman”— the batsman of a lower order who is sent up to guard the wicket till the play resumes the next day. He has already played his heroic innings, though you can be sure he can still wield a useful bat.
Appeared first in Mail Today May 9, 2009
Saturday, May 02, 2009
There can be no closure for murder
People have been saying that Election 2009 is devoid of issues. That is not really true. There is no strong central theme such as the need for a stable government or tougher measures against terrorism. But there are powerful undercurrents — national parties versus the regional and caste formations, criminalisation of politics, issues like Pakistan and Sri Lanka and so on. In the past week, another important issue has come up which, because of the pusillanimity of the Congress party, has remained sub-surface as it were.
The Supreme Court which had set up a Special Investigation Team to look into the nine most heinous post-Godhra cases, has now ordered it to probe the role of Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi, his cabinet colleagues and senior police and administration officials in the 2002 Muslim pogrom in the state.
Complicity
Only last week a chorus of voices from the second-rung of the Bharatiya Janata Party leadership articulated what had, till now, been spoken of in whispers — that Narendra Modi would succeed L.K. Advani as the party’s prime ministerial candidate in the next election. This was as much a verdict on the octogenarian Advani’s ability to reach the highest office in the land in this election, as it was an exercise to cut Rajnath Singh to size.
There have been inquiries on the killings in Godhra and its aftermath, but they have either been by a commission appointed by Modi himself, or through NGOs. That commission, headed by Justice H T Nanavati, has said that it could not find any lapse on the part of the Gujarat government in the riots.
The Supreme Court’s SIT will be able to access records of the police and the government itself and probably give us a better understanding of what happened during those horrific days. Did Modi lose control, or was he cynically manipulating things?
A case could be made that Modi, who took office in October 2001, was not really in full control of the levers of governance when the Godhra massacre of Hindu pilgrims took place in February 2002 and so he was not able to effectively check the violence that led to the massacre of Muslims in several parts of the state.
Whatever may have been the situation then, Modi has since left no one in any doubt about his attitude towards the pogrom. He has refused to acknowledge any guilt and, worse, his government has used every tactic in the book to prevent the prosecution of those guilty of the killings. Take the Best Bakery case. On March 1, 2002 the Best Bakery was attacked and burnt down by a mob. Fourteen people of whom 12 were Muslims died.
According to human rights activists, the police deliberately weakened the case by failing to collect witness statements and other evidence. The key witness, Zaheera Sheikh was subsequently suborned and all 21 accused in the case were acquitted in July 2003 by a fast-track court. When it became clear that the Supreme Court could intervene, the Gujarat government admitted that there had been lapses in the case and sought to file an appeal.
The case was retried outside Gujarat on Supreme Court’s orders, in Mumbai. Zaheera was sentenced to one year’s imprisonment by the court for perjury and in February 2006, nine out of the 21 people were convicted of murder and given life sentences.
More germane, perhaps, is the case of Maya Kodnani, a gynaecologist and Sangh Parivar activist whose name came up as one of the accused in the Naroda Patiya and Naroda Gam massacres. The Gujarat police did question her, but said there was no evidence against her. By this time, she had become a minister in Narendra Modi’s cabinet. But once the SIT began looking at those two cases, it became clear that she was likely to face charges. Fearing arrest, she went underground on February 2, but later at the end of March, she resigned from the Cabinet and surrendered. Till this point she had Modi’s full support.
Clearly, Modi is either guilty of the charges against him and would therefore go out of his way to protect the other guilty persons. Or, he has decided that he gets greater dividends by polarising the electorate.
Politics
This latter tactic is a cynical game practised by many politicians. But we are talking of Modi, the potential prime minister. While other Prime Ministerial hopefuls have also been accused of crimes, such as L.K. Advani for the Babri Masjid demolition, or Mayawati and Mulayam Singh Yadav for corruption, none has been accused of being complicit in mass murder or of shielding those involved in that act. In this sense he is different. In the last six years, Modi has vehemently refused to acknowledge any guilt for the shameful killings that took place in Gujarat during his watch. At the same time, as if in expiation, he has gone out of his way to avoid any communal discourse and has promoted the development of Gujarat as his defining policy. He has recently appointed a Muslim as the Director-General of the state police. And there was an almost Orwellian touch to Modi’s visit to the Muslim areas of Godhra on the eve of Republic Day where he was welcomed and feted.
No doubt as someone looking at his own future prospects, Modi the politician realises that he cannot appear as a Muslim-baiter before a nation-wide electorate. But Modi, the politician, has to overcome Modi, the supreme egoist, who cannot admit that he can do any wrong. To compound this, is his macho self-image which he promotes by making all those tough statements about hanging this or that person, or justifying illegal killings by police officials.
During the Gujarat Assembly elections he justified the killing of Soharbuddin Sheikh because he dealt with illegal arms and ammunition, but Modi did not care to mention that Sheikh’s wife Kausarbi, too, was killed for no fault other than that she was the wife of an allegedly “bad” man.
Violence
Modi’s biggest mistake could be to misread the mood of the Indian electorate. While they will certainly be impressed by his developmental record in the state, they are becoming increasingly leery of people who are linked to violence. This is evident from the fate of Jagdish Tytler and Sajjan Kumar. Modi’s tough guy image may work in Gujarat’s specific ambience, but it is doubtful whether it would be acceptable in other parts of the country. By and large people tend to be in the mid-stream politically, unless the polity itself is out of kilter, as in the case of Israel. Modi’s polarising ways may not even find full acceptance within his own party.
Modi has predictably dismissed the Supreme Court directive as a conspiracy against him. Like other politicians in similar circumstances, he is seeking to make the election outcome a referendum on his fitness for high office.
But it is not so simple. Modi was, after all, the Chief Minister of the state when there was a complete collapse of governance in which the mass murders took place. In that sense it is a big question-mark on his competence and self-proclaimed ability to create a safe and secure environment in the country.
This article appeared in Mail Today May 1, 2009
The Supreme Court which had set up a Special Investigation Team to look into the nine most heinous post-Godhra cases, has now ordered it to probe the role of Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi, his cabinet colleagues and senior police and administration officials in the 2002 Muslim pogrom in the state.
Complicity
Only last week a chorus of voices from the second-rung of the Bharatiya Janata Party leadership articulated what had, till now, been spoken of in whispers — that Narendra Modi would succeed L.K. Advani as the party’s prime ministerial candidate in the next election. This was as much a verdict on the octogenarian Advani’s ability to reach the highest office in the land in this election, as it was an exercise to cut Rajnath Singh to size.
There have been inquiries on the killings in Godhra and its aftermath, but they have either been by a commission appointed by Modi himself, or through NGOs. That commission, headed by Justice H T Nanavati, has said that it could not find any lapse on the part of the Gujarat government in the riots.
The Supreme Court’s SIT will be able to access records of the police and the government itself and probably give us a better understanding of what happened during those horrific days. Did Modi lose control, or was he cynically manipulating things?
A case could be made that Modi, who took office in October 2001, was not really in full control of the levers of governance when the Godhra massacre of Hindu pilgrims took place in February 2002 and so he was not able to effectively check the violence that led to the massacre of Muslims in several parts of the state.
Whatever may have been the situation then, Modi has since left no one in any doubt about his attitude towards the pogrom. He has refused to acknowledge any guilt and, worse, his government has used every tactic in the book to prevent the prosecution of those guilty of the killings. Take the Best Bakery case. On March 1, 2002 the Best Bakery was attacked and burnt down by a mob. Fourteen people of whom 12 were Muslims died.
According to human rights activists, the police deliberately weakened the case by failing to collect witness statements and other evidence. The key witness, Zaheera Sheikh was subsequently suborned and all 21 accused in the case were acquitted in July 2003 by a fast-track court. When it became clear that the Supreme Court could intervene, the Gujarat government admitted that there had been lapses in the case and sought to file an appeal.
The case was retried outside Gujarat on Supreme Court’s orders, in Mumbai. Zaheera was sentenced to one year’s imprisonment by the court for perjury and in February 2006, nine out of the 21 people were convicted of murder and given life sentences.
More germane, perhaps, is the case of Maya Kodnani, a gynaecologist and Sangh Parivar activist whose name came up as one of the accused in the Naroda Patiya and Naroda Gam massacres. The Gujarat police did question her, but said there was no evidence against her. By this time, she had become a minister in Narendra Modi’s cabinet. But once the SIT began looking at those two cases, it became clear that she was likely to face charges. Fearing arrest, she went underground on February 2, but later at the end of March, she resigned from the Cabinet and surrendered. Till this point she had Modi’s full support.
Clearly, Modi is either guilty of the charges against him and would therefore go out of his way to protect the other guilty persons. Or, he has decided that he gets greater dividends by polarising the electorate.
Politics
This latter tactic is a cynical game practised by many politicians. But we are talking of Modi, the potential prime minister. While other Prime Ministerial hopefuls have also been accused of crimes, such as L.K. Advani for the Babri Masjid demolition, or Mayawati and Mulayam Singh Yadav for corruption, none has been accused of being complicit in mass murder or of shielding those involved in that act. In this sense he is different. In the last six years, Modi has vehemently refused to acknowledge any guilt for the shameful killings that took place in Gujarat during his watch. At the same time, as if in expiation, he has gone out of his way to avoid any communal discourse and has promoted the development of Gujarat as his defining policy. He has recently appointed a Muslim as the Director-General of the state police. And there was an almost Orwellian touch to Modi’s visit to the Muslim areas of Godhra on the eve of Republic Day where he was welcomed and feted.
No doubt as someone looking at his own future prospects, Modi the politician realises that he cannot appear as a Muslim-baiter before a nation-wide electorate. But Modi, the politician, has to overcome Modi, the supreme egoist, who cannot admit that he can do any wrong. To compound this, is his macho self-image which he promotes by making all those tough statements about hanging this or that person, or justifying illegal killings by police officials.
During the Gujarat Assembly elections he justified the killing of Soharbuddin Sheikh because he dealt with illegal arms and ammunition, but Modi did not care to mention that Sheikh’s wife Kausarbi, too, was killed for no fault other than that she was the wife of an allegedly “bad” man.
Violence
Modi’s biggest mistake could be to misread the mood of the Indian electorate. While they will certainly be impressed by his developmental record in the state, they are becoming increasingly leery of people who are linked to violence. This is evident from the fate of Jagdish Tytler and Sajjan Kumar. Modi’s tough guy image may work in Gujarat’s specific ambience, but it is doubtful whether it would be acceptable in other parts of the country. By and large people tend to be in the mid-stream politically, unless the polity itself is out of kilter, as in the case of Israel. Modi’s polarising ways may not even find full acceptance within his own party.
Modi has predictably dismissed the Supreme Court directive as a conspiracy against him. Like other politicians in similar circumstances, he is seeking to make the election outcome a referendum on his fitness for high office.
But it is not so simple. Modi was, after all, the Chief Minister of the state when there was a complete collapse of governance in which the mass murders took place. In that sense it is a big question-mark on his competence and self-proclaimed ability to create a safe and secure environment in the country.
This article appeared in Mail Today May 1, 2009
Monday, April 27, 2009
In Sri Lanka, we paid the price, we better heed the lessons
The current events in Sri Lanka mark the end of a sorry chapter of a story that began, for India, in 1983 when we decided to use the militants as an instrumentality to intervene in the Sri Lankan civil conflict. We lost 1200 soldiers in the process. For the Sri Lankans, both Sinhala and Tamil the saga has been sorrier. They have lost thousands killed and missing, the whole texture of their society has coarsened. The isle of Serendip has been washed in blood and tears several times over. And there is every indication that the tear-shedding will not end with the destruction of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam.
In the quarter century since, India has grown from adolescence to maturity as a regional power. We began our intervention as friends of the Tamils who had been progressively marginalised by rampant Sinhala nationalism. We have ended it as the firmest supporters of the Sri Lankan government. In between has been a long journey that led us to a partial confrontation with the United States, a failed attempt to emerge as an honest broker between the Sinhalas and Tamils, and a tough jungle war with the LTTE.
Arrogance
When we naively set out to intervene in Sri Lankan affairs we were in a sense trying to insulate Tamil Nadu from the separatist virus. Despite the best efforts, at various times, of Vaiko, S. Ramadoss and other Tamil fire-eaters, Tamil Nadu did not get infected by the Eelam bug. We were also acting on the belief that the US was interested in leasing Trincomalee as a base. That was the time we believed in autarky for both our economic and foreign policy.
In 1984, the parameters of the Indian intervention began to change. This was because Indira Gandhi, with her history of bad blood with the US, was no more. Her son and successor as Prime Minister, Rajiv Gandhi, did not carry any ideological baggage. He was wooed by Washington which began to encourage India to play a larger regional role. Time magazine even carried a cover story on the rise of India as a superpower.
New Delhi was flattered and along with a shift in Indo-US relations, came a changed Sri Lankan policy. Prompted by Washington, India now became an honest broker between Colombo and Jaffna, where the LTTE was now established.
When the Sri Lankans demurred, and launched what appeared to be a successful military offensive in 1987, New Delhi showed the mailed fist by sending transport aircraft to drop relief supplies in Jaffna peninsula, escorted by Mirage 2000 fighters. The Sri Lankans, with nothing more than Siai Marchetti piston-engined trainers, threw in the towel. The result was the India- Sri Lanka Accord (ISLA) of 1987 through which Colombo agreed to end its military offensive,order its troops back to their barracks, devolve power to a merged Northern and Eastern Province. In return India would oversee the disarming of the LTTE through a division-strong Indian Peace Keeping Force.
Hubris
India was riding high at this point. But the Bofors scandal had just broken when when the IPKF mandate was transformed into a peace-enforcement mission. The Indians were not prepared, but their generals felt they could make short work of the scrawny guerrillas who wore lungis and chappals.
It soon became apparent in the first week of October 1987 that India had a fight in its hands. Far from folding up, the LTTE skillfully contested every inch of the ground in Jaffna. Finally when they were cleared from the peninsula, they took to the Wanni jungles. But not only did they hold their own against the mighty Indian army, that became a four division force by 1988, but managed to best Indian diplomacy thereafter.
Rajiv Gandhi lost the 1989 elections even as the LTTE forged an unlikely alliance with its bitterest foe— the Sri Lankan government—now headed by Ranasinghe Premdasa. Binding them was a visceral hatred for India. Premdasa demanded the withdrawal of the IPKF, the new government of V.P. Singh tamely complied. Prabhakaran slipped out of the IPKF noose in Wanni and the whole structure of a Tamil-majority north-eastern state that India had constructed came apart. Premdasa, Defence Minister Ranjan Wijeratne and National Security Minister Lalith Athulathmudali, who had double-crossed India, were separately murdered on Prabhakaran’s orders.
This was one of the shoddiest episodes in Indian history. When the IPKF returned, the Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu, the same M. Karunanidhi refused to participate in the ceremony to welcome them back. Instead, the state became a logistical and operational base for the LTTE. This was used effectively to carry out the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi in May 1991.
India turned its back on Sri Lanka. As the LTTE and the Sri Lankan government went through successive phases of negotiation and war, India stayed away. It did so even when both parties begged India at various times to broker the peace process. And we have stayed away even as the Sri Lankan army, equipped with Chinese, Pakistani and Israeli weapons have finally crushed the LTTE.
Limits
With the defeat of the LTTE, India should take up where it left of in 1991. Not in the form of a military intervention but a return to an active political posture. Sinhala chauvinists have been enormously strengthened by the defeat of the LTTE-led Tamil separatist movement. But military defeat of the Tamil separatists does not mean that the basic issue of the discrimination of the Tamil minority in Sri Lanka, that gave rise to the LTTE, has gone away.
War inevitably rips the social fabric of the society where it takes place. The Tamil-majority areas have been ravaged by the war, but the Sinhala dominated areas have also been affected, but in a different way. A subtle and deadly wave of repression has been unleashed against all forces of moderation and reconciliation. The first target has been the media which has seen several editors, reporters and correspondents assassinated by hit-squads linked to the government. The defeat of the LTTE could be used by Sinhala chauvinists to consolidate their hold.
Sri Lanka cannot, and should not, be allowed to treat its Tamils as second class citizens. Having stood by as the LTTE was being defeated, we should now remind Colombo that the ISLA remains in force and needs to be implemented. The Sri Lankans must begin the process of political conciliation of its Tamil minority.
The Sri Lanka affair has many lessons for India. Many, especially the need for integrated policy making and effective intelligence coordination are yet to be learnt. But more importantly, New Delhi needs to overcome the trauma that the intervention brought to policy-making.
Though we went there on Sri Lanka’s invitation, and left when they asked us to go, the episode persuaded some of our politicians that military intervention itself is bad. But no power can afford to limit itself that way, and neither should India.
This appeared first in Mail Today April 24, 2009
In the quarter century since, India has grown from adolescence to maturity as a regional power. We began our intervention as friends of the Tamils who had been progressively marginalised by rampant Sinhala nationalism. We have ended it as the firmest supporters of the Sri Lankan government. In between has been a long journey that led us to a partial confrontation with the United States, a failed attempt to emerge as an honest broker between the Sinhalas and Tamils, and a tough jungle war with the LTTE.
Arrogance
When we naively set out to intervene in Sri Lankan affairs we were in a sense trying to insulate Tamil Nadu from the separatist virus. Despite the best efforts, at various times, of Vaiko, S. Ramadoss and other Tamil fire-eaters, Tamil Nadu did not get infected by the Eelam bug. We were also acting on the belief that the US was interested in leasing Trincomalee as a base. That was the time we believed in autarky for both our economic and foreign policy.
In 1984, the parameters of the Indian intervention began to change. This was because Indira Gandhi, with her history of bad blood with the US, was no more. Her son and successor as Prime Minister, Rajiv Gandhi, did not carry any ideological baggage. He was wooed by Washington which began to encourage India to play a larger regional role. Time magazine even carried a cover story on the rise of India as a superpower.
New Delhi was flattered and along with a shift in Indo-US relations, came a changed Sri Lankan policy. Prompted by Washington, India now became an honest broker between Colombo and Jaffna, where the LTTE was now established.
When the Sri Lankans demurred, and launched what appeared to be a successful military offensive in 1987, New Delhi showed the mailed fist by sending transport aircraft to drop relief supplies in Jaffna peninsula, escorted by Mirage 2000 fighters. The Sri Lankans, with nothing more than Siai Marchetti piston-engined trainers, threw in the towel. The result was the India- Sri Lanka Accord (ISLA) of 1987 through which Colombo agreed to end its military offensive,order its troops back to their barracks, devolve power to a merged Northern and Eastern Province. In return India would oversee the disarming of the LTTE through a division-strong Indian Peace Keeping Force.
Hubris
India was riding high at this point. But the Bofors scandal had just broken when when the IPKF mandate was transformed into a peace-enforcement mission. The Indians were not prepared, but their generals felt they could make short work of the scrawny guerrillas who wore lungis and chappals.
It soon became apparent in the first week of October 1987 that India had a fight in its hands. Far from folding up, the LTTE skillfully contested every inch of the ground in Jaffna. Finally when they were cleared from the peninsula, they took to the Wanni jungles. But not only did they hold their own against the mighty Indian army, that became a four division force by 1988, but managed to best Indian diplomacy thereafter.
Rajiv Gandhi lost the 1989 elections even as the LTTE forged an unlikely alliance with its bitterest foe— the Sri Lankan government—now headed by Ranasinghe Premdasa. Binding them was a visceral hatred for India. Premdasa demanded the withdrawal of the IPKF, the new government of V.P. Singh tamely complied. Prabhakaran slipped out of the IPKF noose in Wanni and the whole structure of a Tamil-majority north-eastern state that India had constructed came apart. Premdasa, Defence Minister Ranjan Wijeratne and National Security Minister Lalith Athulathmudali, who had double-crossed India, were separately murdered on Prabhakaran’s orders.
This was one of the shoddiest episodes in Indian history. When the IPKF returned, the Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu, the same M. Karunanidhi refused to participate in the ceremony to welcome them back. Instead, the state became a logistical and operational base for the LTTE. This was used effectively to carry out the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi in May 1991.
India turned its back on Sri Lanka. As the LTTE and the Sri Lankan government went through successive phases of negotiation and war, India stayed away. It did so even when both parties begged India at various times to broker the peace process. And we have stayed away even as the Sri Lankan army, equipped with Chinese, Pakistani and Israeli weapons have finally crushed the LTTE.
Limits
With the defeat of the LTTE, India should take up where it left of in 1991. Not in the form of a military intervention but a return to an active political posture. Sinhala chauvinists have been enormously strengthened by the defeat of the LTTE-led Tamil separatist movement. But military defeat of the Tamil separatists does not mean that the basic issue of the discrimination of the Tamil minority in Sri Lanka, that gave rise to the LTTE, has gone away.
War inevitably rips the social fabric of the society where it takes place. The Tamil-majority areas have been ravaged by the war, but the Sinhala dominated areas have also been affected, but in a different way. A subtle and deadly wave of repression has been unleashed against all forces of moderation and reconciliation. The first target has been the media which has seen several editors, reporters and correspondents assassinated by hit-squads linked to the government. The defeat of the LTTE could be used by Sinhala chauvinists to consolidate their hold.
Sri Lanka cannot, and should not, be allowed to treat its Tamils as second class citizens. Having stood by as the LTTE was being defeated, we should now remind Colombo that the ISLA remains in force and needs to be implemented. The Sri Lankans must begin the process of political conciliation of its Tamil minority.
The Sri Lanka affair has many lessons for India. Many, especially the need for integrated policy making and effective intelligence coordination are yet to be learnt. But more importantly, New Delhi needs to overcome the trauma that the intervention brought to policy-making.
Though we went there on Sri Lanka’s invitation, and left when they asked us to go, the episode persuaded some of our politicians that military intervention itself is bad. But no power can afford to limit itself that way, and neither should India.
This appeared first in Mail Today April 24, 2009
Saturday, April 18, 2009
Election 2009 show signs of an emerging pattern
The whole is more than a sum of the parts. The problem of applying that adage to Election 2009, a day before the first phase of the poll gets under way on Thursday, is that it is difficult enough to differentiate the parts, but to understand the whole is uncommonly difficult.
With no uniform national swing one way or the other, we are left to trying to jury-rig an understanding by aggregating state-wide swings and trying to fit them into a single national pattern. Not surprisingly, the fit does not appear convincing and as a result we have several narratives of what may happen on May 16 when the votes are tallied.
Yet like all national elections in the recent past, Election 2009 will also mark a point of departure for our polity. It is difficult to predict just where the change will occur — in the attitude to coalitions and regional political formations, economic or foreign policy, or even age — but there will be a marked transformation. In that sense, contrary to received wisdom, there are issues in this election, many of them. And it is more than likely that there will be responses to some of them.
Bipolarity
Among the more important will be the issue of national parties versus those based on regional or caste identities. Despite the clamour of such actors, who always make great copy for newspapers and television, the trend is towards national parties and against sectional actors. As it is, the contest is looking more of a joust between two principals — the Gandhi family versus L.K. Advani. The Third and Fourth Fronts play a supporting role since they are coalitions of equals and no leader is projected as the number one.
It is only the BJP and the Congress that matter across the length and breadth of India. The other parties have local concerns and their larger policies relating to the economy and foreign and security issues are not to be seen at all, or are visible through strictly regional filters, as is the case, say, with the Dravida Munnetra Kazgham.
The Tytler episode brought out another factor in the polity — a determination to cleanse it. Preventing Tytler and Sajjan Kumar is an expression of a desire among the people that criminalisation of politics has gone far enough and that politicians cannot be allowed to get away with murder, and most certainly not mass murder. Coming as it does as the Supreme Court grapples with Gujarat’s reluctance to prosecute those guilty of the 2002 massacres, it is an important development in the life of the nation. There have been horrific communal riots in the past as well: Bhiwandi, Jalgaon, Maliana, Bhagalpur.
But the Sikh massacre in Delhi and the Gujarat pogrom of 2002 were horrific because of the complicity of the governments of the day. For this reason, Narendra Modi, who is complicit in at least not actively pursuing the perpetrators of the mass-killing, is scrambling to “appease” the minorities by appointing a Muslim Director-General of Police.
Technology is playing the role of catalyst for many of the issues at play. It has enhanced the self-awareness of the people of the country. Formally a large percentage of the Indian population is illiterate and prone to being persuaded on issues by emotion and rumour. But technologies such as that of mobile phones which reach 250 million Indians — largely urban, but also sub-urban — and the TV, ensure that people may be illiterate, but they are not ignorant.
Related to this is the issue of age. Technology is one thing that the younger generation understands better. It is best brought out by the Samajwadi Party’s anti-computer, anti-English stand. The manifesto had been made by the old-men of the party and is an expression of a yearning for the “simple” politics of the past where an anti-English agitation could mobilise forces across the state, as happened when they began their careers as politicians.
As for the election itself, its most interesting aspect, aside from the regional colour, is the Congress gamble. By seemingly deliberately refusing an alliance in Uttar Pradesh and breaking one in Bihar, the party has gambled on the future. This did not happen inadvertently, but was a deliberate choice of the leadership that had broadcast its intentions of rejecting national level alliances in January. If the two leading parties both get less than what they got the last time, we would probably have an unstable situation that could lead to another election two years from now, and yet another one soon after. If the Congress persists on its current path, there is a good chance that it could re-establish its organisation in both these crucial states.
Advantage
Political judgments must always be relativistic. So we will say that the Congress has provided a more secular government, finer economic management, bigger pro-poverty programmes and a better foreign policy. No doubt, if you remember that the best is the enemy of the good, they could have done better in all these areas, but it is unlikely that the Bharatiya Janata Party or the Left-dominated Third Front could have bested them.
High economic growth and good monsoons have helped put a little more money into the pockets of rural India where sixty per cent of our work-force resides. The relative sense of well-being is bound to benefit the Congress party, except in some states like Madhya Pradesh where the Congress leadership has not been able to make much of a dent in Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan’s popularity.
The party thus goes into the election with an upper hand. Economic growth has meant that there was money for the loan waiver, the enhanced expenditure on unemployment schemes, better allocations for the construction of rural and urban infrastructure. In fact the system has reached a point where money is not what is scarce, but delivery of government services.
Weakness
The one area in which the Congress government singularly failed has been in the lack of administrative reform. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh made this an important part of his platform in 2004. It was believed that he, who had served for decades within government, was the best placed to undertake this. But the only achievement was to provide the bureaucracy higher salaries and perks, with nothing achieved by way of getting them to become better at their jobs. As a result we are saddled with a cynical and circumspect bureaucracy whose main aim is to avoid getting their hands dirty in the real work of running this country. All their creative endeavours are directed towards creating a self-perpetuating machine that will provide jobs for themselves till the end of time.
Failure here comes up directly against the expectations of the populace. Self awareness has brought on a surge of higher expectations. So the voters do not expect just to satisfy their identity-related aspirations, but want concrete benefits, here and now. Political parties are scrambling to meet them through innovative schemes — 35 kg of rice at rock-bottom rates, free TVs, and even straight-forward cash doles. But such schemes appeal only to the desperately poor.
The 250-odd million who possess mobile phones are dreaming of their own house, good education for their children and better prospects for themselves. They want an infrastructure of better roads and drinking water, secure homes and markets, a justice system that is fair and swift. These are the parts that will give us an election outcome in May.
This appeared first in Mail Today April 15, 2009
With no uniform national swing one way or the other, we are left to trying to jury-rig an understanding by aggregating state-wide swings and trying to fit them into a single national pattern. Not surprisingly, the fit does not appear convincing and as a result we have several narratives of what may happen on May 16 when the votes are tallied.
Yet like all national elections in the recent past, Election 2009 will also mark a point of departure for our polity. It is difficult to predict just where the change will occur — in the attitude to coalitions and regional political formations, economic or foreign policy, or even age — but there will be a marked transformation. In that sense, contrary to received wisdom, there are issues in this election, many of them. And it is more than likely that there will be responses to some of them.
Bipolarity
Among the more important will be the issue of national parties versus those based on regional or caste identities. Despite the clamour of such actors, who always make great copy for newspapers and television, the trend is towards national parties and against sectional actors. As it is, the contest is looking more of a joust between two principals — the Gandhi family versus L.K. Advani. The Third and Fourth Fronts play a supporting role since they are coalitions of equals and no leader is projected as the number one.
It is only the BJP and the Congress that matter across the length and breadth of India. The other parties have local concerns and their larger policies relating to the economy and foreign and security issues are not to be seen at all, or are visible through strictly regional filters, as is the case, say, with the Dravida Munnetra Kazgham.
The Tytler episode brought out another factor in the polity — a determination to cleanse it. Preventing Tytler and Sajjan Kumar is an expression of a desire among the people that criminalisation of politics has gone far enough and that politicians cannot be allowed to get away with murder, and most certainly not mass murder. Coming as it does as the Supreme Court grapples with Gujarat’s reluctance to prosecute those guilty of the 2002 massacres, it is an important development in the life of the nation. There have been horrific communal riots in the past as well: Bhiwandi, Jalgaon, Maliana, Bhagalpur.
But the Sikh massacre in Delhi and the Gujarat pogrom of 2002 were horrific because of the complicity of the governments of the day. For this reason, Narendra Modi, who is complicit in at least not actively pursuing the perpetrators of the mass-killing, is scrambling to “appease” the minorities by appointing a Muslim Director-General of Police.
Technology is playing the role of catalyst for many of the issues at play. It has enhanced the self-awareness of the people of the country. Formally a large percentage of the Indian population is illiterate and prone to being persuaded on issues by emotion and rumour. But technologies such as that of mobile phones which reach 250 million Indians — largely urban, but also sub-urban — and the TV, ensure that people may be illiterate, but they are not ignorant.
Related to this is the issue of age. Technology is one thing that the younger generation understands better. It is best brought out by the Samajwadi Party’s anti-computer, anti-English stand. The manifesto had been made by the old-men of the party and is an expression of a yearning for the “simple” politics of the past where an anti-English agitation could mobilise forces across the state, as happened when they began their careers as politicians.
As for the election itself, its most interesting aspect, aside from the regional colour, is the Congress gamble. By seemingly deliberately refusing an alliance in Uttar Pradesh and breaking one in Bihar, the party has gambled on the future. This did not happen inadvertently, but was a deliberate choice of the leadership that had broadcast its intentions of rejecting national level alliances in January. If the two leading parties both get less than what they got the last time, we would probably have an unstable situation that could lead to another election two years from now, and yet another one soon after. If the Congress persists on its current path, there is a good chance that it could re-establish its organisation in both these crucial states.
Advantage
Political judgments must always be relativistic. So we will say that the Congress has provided a more secular government, finer economic management, bigger pro-poverty programmes and a better foreign policy. No doubt, if you remember that the best is the enemy of the good, they could have done better in all these areas, but it is unlikely that the Bharatiya Janata Party or the Left-dominated Third Front could have bested them.
High economic growth and good monsoons have helped put a little more money into the pockets of rural India where sixty per cent of our work-force resides. The relative sense of well-being is bound to benefit the Congress party, except in some states like Madhya Pradesh where the Congress leadership has not been able to make much of a dent in Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan’s popularity.
The party thus goes into the election with an upper hand. Economic growth has meant that there was money for the loan waiver, the enhanced expenditure on unemployment schemes, better allocations for the construction of rural and urban infrastructure. In fact the system has reached a point where money is not what is scarce, but delivery of government services.
Weakness
The one area in which the Congress government singularly failed has been in the lack of administrative reform. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh made this an important part of his platform in 2004. It was believed that he, who had served for decades within government, was the best placed to undertake this. But the only achievement was to provide the bureaucracy higher salaries and perks, with nothing achieved by way of getting them to become better at their jobs. As a result we are saddled with a cynical and circumspect bureaucracy whose main aim is to avoid getting their hands dirty in the real work of running this country. All their creative endeavours are directed towards creating a self-perpetuating machine that will provide jobs for themselves till the end of time.
Failure here comes up directly against the expectations of the populace. Self awareness has brought on a surge of higher expectations. So the voters do not expect just to satisfy their identity-related aspirations, but want concrete benefits, here and now. Political parties are scrambling to meet them through innovative schemes — 35 kg of rice at rock-bottom rates, free TVs, and even straight-forward cash doles. But such schemes appeal only to the desperately poor.
The 250-odd million who possess mobile phones are dreaming of their own house, good education for their children and better prospects for themselves. They want an infrastructure of better roads and drinking water, secure homes and markets, a justice system that is fair and swift. These are the parts that will give us an election outcome in May.
This appeared first in Mail Today April 15, 2009
Saturday, April 11, 2009
India must focus on its own long-term strategy for AfPak
This is a continuation of my previous article on the developing scene in the region. Here I argue that the situation could be worse than we think.
The South Asian region appears to be at a transformational moment. Not because of the elections in India, but of developments taking place in Pakistan and Afghanistan, which could spill over into India, especially Jammu & Kashmir. Admiral Mike Mullen has put it aptly. The US was not winning the war in Afghanistan. Therefore, it was losing it. Defeat in Afghanistan almost certainly means disaster in Pakistan. That is why even if this week’s report on the arrival of the Taliban in J&K is a false alarm, it is an ominous portent for the future.
This is reflected obliquely in the remarkably accommodative US attitude towards India in relation to Pakistan. Richard Holbrooke, the US special envoy for Afghanistan has an explanation, “ For the first time since partition India, Pakistan and the United States face a common threat and a common challenge and we have a common task," that demands that the three countries work together.
But there is another take to this. For most of the past 60 years the US policy was based on seeing Pakistan as the pivot of its South Asian policy. So, all policy was hyphenated—Indo-Pak. With Pakistan melting down, the hyphen itself is fading. The Taliban has already gained ascendancy in Pakistan’s tribal areas. 17 out of 30 administrative divisions of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas and the North-West Frontier Province are under Taliban control, in six control is contested, and in five there is Taliban influence. Only two—Haripur and Abbotabad, directly north of Islamabad— are controlled by the government.
India
The Pakistani establishment in Islamabad seems determined to dig its heels into the ground. By all accounts the Holbrooke-Mullen visit to Islamabad early this week was a failure. Leaks in the Pakistan media suggest that the its Army is smarting under the mounting pressure from the US for the ISI to snap ties with the Taliban and other militant groups. As the US realises, this is the irreducible minimum needed from the Pakistan Army because the ties themselves suggest that Pakistan views the Taliban as a potential ally, whereas for the US they are the adversary. There can be no joint battle unless these ties are snapped. So far nothing, not even the killing of police personnel in the Pakistani heartland seem to make any difference to Islamabad’s ambiguous attitude towards the religious extremists.
So, the US cannot avoid thinking of the worst case scenario where an Islamic Emirate of Afpak emerges despite its best efforts. The only option then would be to contain this entity and the containment would require the cooperation of Iran, Russia, and India—the coalition that helped the US defeat the Taliban in the first place in 2001. So we are separately also witnessing the changes taking place in US policy in relation to Iran, Russia and China as well. Both Russia and Iran, have reasons to fear a resurgent
Taliban, and both can play an important role in ensuring their defeat by providing the logistics for anti-Taliban forces, be they the US and NATO, or the Northern Alliance. India is an important bastion. It is deeply committed in Afghanistan’s development efforts and is in the geopolitical sense a frontline state against Islamist radicalism in the region.
The situation in Pakistan has a direct relationship to what is happening in J&K. Ever since the India-Pakistan agreement of 2004, the level of violence in the state had declined steadily. Even the Lashkar-e-Tayyeba which has cadres stationed in the forested mountains of north Kashmir and the Pir Panjal, chose to avoid combat. They would surface only infrequently, mainly to mark their presence through some fedayeen attack. But the infiltration pattern this year has changed. Larger groups are challenging the three-tier Indian cordon on the Line of Control. Perhaps these groups are there to disrupt the Lok Sabha elections, or their presence reflects a change in the attitude of the Pakistan army towards the Kashmir issue.
This disquieting development could have an even more serious follow-on if the current march of the Taliban remains uninterrupted. It will reach the borders of J&K within this year itself. Two decades of Islamism and several years of Lashkar-e-Tayyeba propaganda have made the Azad Kashmir region prone to religious extremism any way. The arrival of the Taliban there could have a game changing affect in the battle in the Indian parts of the state.
Tribesmen from the FATA and NWFP triggered the first India-Pakistan war when they invaded J&K in 1947. Pakhtun tribesmen began participating in the current Kashmir war in 1992, after the pro-Soviet government of Najibullah fell in Kabul. The first cadres belonged to the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen and of the Hizbe-Islami of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. But the Afghans found the conditions in J&K different. They had no access to stand-off weapons, the Kashmiris were not reliable, the Indian forces were far too numerous and effective and both groups were wiped out by 1993.
Talibanisation
A Taliban presence in Azad Kashmir, across the Line of Control could change things. The last ten years, the war has been fought by professionals—the LeT—which is detatched from the population. Though Wahabists, the LeT did not go out of their way to interfere with Kashmiri traditions. The Taliban usually arrive along with their social and religious practices which transform by force the society they begin functioning in. We have to worry not just about the Taliban, but Talibanisation. It would be easy to suggest that the alien Taliban will hold little attraction for the Kashmiris on this side of the LoC who are, after all, well educated and economically better off than the tribesmen of Pakistan’s badlands. But, as Pakistan’s example suggests this may not be enough to persuade them to stand up to the Taliban. A deep and insidious Islamisation, as well as suspicion of New Delhi, could paralyse their response. They may prefer to cut their nose to spite the Indian face.
Exit
The United States offers, at best, a limited bulwark against these trends. Obama’s Afpak policy could be another name for a US exit strategy from the region. This will see them intensify the fight against Al Qaeda in the short run and hope that they can kill their nemesis Osama bin Laden and hand over the war against the Taliban to the new Afghan army and police by 2011. Purely in politico-military terms it is good that that the Americans have an exit strategy.
It is quite another thing that wars, more than anything else, seldom work along a time-table. Mr Obama comes up for re-election in 2012, so perhaps he has to work to schedule. In that event, countries like India must do their own long-range planning that takes into account the Pakistan meltdown and a possible expansion of the Taliban into our very borders. The US will no doubt do something about the Pakistani nuclear weapons. But after that we may be left to our own devices.
This may sound overly pessimistic, but it is better to be safe than sorry. India does not have the luxury of an exit strategy. We must think through our own plans to deal with Pakistan and Afghanistan in the event of a US retreat from the region. This policy-within-a-policy needs closer coordination with Iran and Russia. In the meantime, however, we should go along with the US effort to intensify the anti-Taliban war and contribute what we can, keeping in mind our longer-range national interest requirements in the region.
This article appeared in Mail Today April 10, 2009
The South Asian region appears to be at a transformational moment. Not because of the elections in India, but of developments taking place in Pakistan and Afghanistan, which could spill over into India, especially Jammu & Kashmir. Admiral Mike Mullen has put it aptly. The US was not winning the war in Afghanistan. Therefore, it was losing it. Defeat in Afghanistan almost certainly means disaster in Pakistan. That is why even if this week’s report on the arrival of the Taliban in J&K is a false alarm, it is an ominous portent for the future.
This is reflected obliquely in the remarkably accommodative US attitude towards India in relation to Pakistan. Richard Holbrooke, the US special envoy for Afghanistan has an explanation, “ For the first time since partition India, Pakistan and the United States face a common threat and a common challenge and we have a common task," that demands that the three countries work together.
But there is another take to this. For most of the past 60 years the US policy was based on seeing Pakistan as the pivot of its South Asian policy. So, all policy was hyphenated—Indo-Pak. With Pakistan melting down, the hyphen itself is fading. The Taliban has already gained ascendancy in Pakistan’s tribal areas. 17 out of 30 administrative divisions of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas and the North-West Frontier Province are under Taliban control, in six control is contested, and in five there is Taliban influence. Only two—Haripur and Abbotabad, directly north of Islamabad— are controlled by the government.
A map showing the situation in NWFP and FATA. Click here for the original in Bill Roggio's blog
India
The Pakistani establishment in Islamabad seems determined to dig its heels into the ground. By all accounts the Holbrooke-Mullen visit to Islamabad early this week was a failure. Leaks in the Pakistan media suggest that the its Army is smarting under the mounting pressure from the US for the ISI to snap ties with the Taliban and other militant groups. As the US realises, this is the irreducible minimum needed from the Pakistan Army because the ties themselves suggest that Pakistan views the Taliban as a potential ally, whereas for the US they are the adversary. There can be no joint battle unless these ties are snapped. So far nothing, not even the killing of police personnel in the Pakistani heartland seem to make any difference to Islamabad’s ambiguous attitude towards the religious extremists.
So, the US cannot avoid thinking of the worst case scenario where an Islamic Emirate of Afpak emerges despite its best efforts. The only option then would be to contain this entity and the containment would require the cooperation of Iran, Russia, and India—the coalition that helped the US defeat the Taliban in the first place in 2001. So we are separately also witnessing the changes taking place in US policy in relation to Iran, Russia and China as well. Both Russia and Iran, have reasons to fear a resurgent
Taliban, and both can play an important role in ensuring their defeat by providing the logistics for anti-Taliban forces, be they the US and NATO, or the Northern Alliance. India is an important bastion. It is deeply committed in Afghanistan’s development efforts and is in the geopolitical sense a frontline state against Islamist radicalism in the region.
The situation in Pakistan has a direct relationship to what is happening in J&K. Ever since the India-Pakistan agreement of 2004, the level of violence in the state had declined steadily. Even the Lashkar-e-Tayyeba which has cadres stationed in the forested mountains of north Kashmir and the Pir Panjal, chose to avoid combat. They would surface only infrequently, mainly to mark their presence through some fedayeen attack. But the infiltration pattern this year has changed. Larger groups are challenging the three-tier Indian cordon on the Line of Control. Perhaps these groups are there to disrupt the Lok Sabha elections, or their presence reflects a change in the attitude of the Pakistan army towards the Kashmir issue.
This disquieting development could have an even more serious follow-on if the current march of the Taliban remains uninterrupted. It will reach the borders of J&K within this year itself. Two decades of Islamism and several years of Lashkar-e-Tayyeba propaganda have made the Azad Kashmir region prone to religious extremism any way. The arrival of the Taliban there could have a game changing affect in the battle in the Indian parts of the state.
Tribesmen from the FATA and NWFP triggered the first India-Pakistan war when they invaded J&K in 1947. Pakhtun tribesmen began participating in the current Kashmir war in 1992, after the pro-Soviet government of Najibullah fell in Kabul. The first cadres belonged to the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen and of the Hizbe-Islami of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. But the Afghans found the conditions in J&K different. They had no access to stand-off weapons, the Kashmiris were not reliable, the Indian forces were far too numerous and effective and both groups were wiped out by 1993.
Talibanisation
A Taliban presence in Azad Kashmir, across the Line of Control could change things. The last ten years, the war has been fought by professionals—the LeT—which is detatched from the population. Though Wahabists, the LeT did not go out of their way to interfere with Kashmiri traditions. The Taliban usually arrive along with their social and religious practices which transform by force the society they begin functioning in. We have to worry not just about the Taliban, but Talibanisation. It would be easy to suggest that the alien Taliban will hold little attraction for the Kashmiris on this side of the LoC who are, after all, well educated and economically better off than the tribesmen of Pakistan’s badlands. But, as Pakistan’s example suggests this may not be enough to persuade them to stand up to the Taliban. A deep and insidious Islamisation, as well as suspicion of New Delhi, could paralyse their response. They may prefer to cut their nose to spite the Indian face.
Exit
The United States offers, at best, a limited bulwark against these trends. Obama’s Afpak policy could be another name for a US exit strategy from the region. This will see them intensify the fight against Al Qaeda in the short run and hope that they can kill their nemesis Osama bin Laden and hand over the war against the Taliban to the new Afghan army and police by 2011. Purely in politico-military terms it is good that that the Americans have an exit strategy.
It is quite another thing that wars, more than anything else, seldom work along a time-table. Mr Obama comes up for re-election in 2012, so perhaps he has to work to schedule. In that event, countries like India must do their own long-range planning that takes into account the Pakistan meltdown and a possible expansion of the Taliban into our very borders. The US will no doubt do something about the Pakistani nuclear weapons. But after that we may be left to our own devices.
This may sound overly pessimistic, but it is better to be safe than sorry. India does not have the luxury of an exit strategy. We must think through our own plans to deal with Pakistan and Afghanistan in the event of a US retreat from the region. This policy-within-a-policy needs closer coordination with Iran and Russia. In the meantime, however, we should go along with the US effort to intensify the anti-Taliban war and contribute what we can, keeping in mind our longer-range national interest requirements in the region.
This article appeared in Mail Today April 10, 2009
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
