Not entirely a picture of health

Narendra Modi must be feeling pleased with himself. In addition to being the Prime Minister of the country, he has now become the lead yoga practitioner of the nation. There is something corny about having the PM lead a mass exercise event, but Modi is not your average politician. Behind the move, no doubt, is some thought and calculation.

 

India is making no bones about taking ownership of the yoga brand. There is nothing wrong with that. If the French can doggedly insist that they “own” champagne, we can certainly do that for this ancient form of meditation and exercise. The Modi government is seeking to kill two birds with one stone on this. First, to use yoga as a vehicle for India’s soft power in the world, and second as a mobilisational platform within the country around an issue which seeks to transcend barriers of caste and creed. This is something that Modi has been doing as a politician, witness his call for Swachh Bharat or for building toilets across the country.

In all this, traditionalists may complain that yoga is losing its essence, since its meditative aspects are very personal and do not quite easily lend themselves to “soviet” kind of drills that we witnessed on the Rajpath on Sunday. But then, in the years that India did not claim any kind of ownership, yoga has already developed various strains building from the traditional ones like hatha yoga, ashtanga yoga, kundalini yoga and so on and leading to modern teachers like Iyengar, Bikram or Bharat yoga.

Modi’s move to take international ownership of yoga has been carefully thought through. It was articulated in his first speech to the UN General Assembly as Prime Minister in September 2014, calling for the UN to adopt an international yoga day. As part of this, India’s permanent representative at the UN introduced a draft resolution at the UN General Assembly in December. The draft was supported by 177 Member states, and 175 of them co-sponsored the resolution which was adopted and the UN declared June 21, the summer solstice, as the International Yoga Day.

So, not surprisingly, there were reports of yoga day observance from around the world. Millions of people participated, from places as diverse as the iconic Times Square in New York to Angkor Wat in Cambodia and the Eiffel Tower in France. There were observances in Kazakhstan, China, South Korea, Kuala Lumpur, Manila, to name but a few of the cities. Yoga could well emerge as the focal point of an Indian effort to promote its culture through government-sponsored institutes much in the way the French, Americans or the Chinese seek to do so around the world.

All this said, there is also need for a reality check back home. Promoting yoga cannot be a substitute for action on the ground on issues that affect the health of the people. This is a country with many people who have really serious health issues and who are wracked by malnutrition. Yoga cannot help, and there is need for caution against inflated claims that it can cure this disease or that ailment.

A perspective on the real health challenges in the country is provided by the India Country Report on Millenium Development Goals brought out by the government of India. Its own assessment is that the country’s target in halving the proportion of people who suffer from hunger and in improving maternal health is in the “slow or off-track” category.

An uncomfortably high some 20 per cent of our billion plus population - come within the official count of poverty. The proportion of underweight children remains around 33 per cent and India has failed to meet the goal of reducing the proportion from 52 per cent to 25 percent between 1990 and 2015. Likewise infant mortality remains at a high figure of 39 deaths per 1000 live births, missing the 2015 target of 27. Associated with this is the maternal mortality ratio which should be 109 deaths per 100,000 live births in 2015, but it is actually 140. Whether it is malaria or tuberculosis or other diseases, India’s figures continue to be uncomfortably high.

For good health, there is also need to look at some other issues as well. First, is the provision of safe drinking water. While the government claims that 87.88 per cent of households had access to “improved source” drinking water, this does not quite mean that this water is either safe or potable. There is, of course, another area and this has been a focus of Prime Minister Modi’s attention access to latrine facilities. Even today nearly half the households in the country do not have proper sanitation facilities.

So, it is important to look at Prime Minister Modi’s yoga initiative in the perspective of the massive challenge of eliminating hunger and poor health that afflicts large numbers of our citizens. Before we can have the luxury of taking the high road to good physical and mental health with yoga practice, we need to gird ourselves towards some basic issues that relate to good health. At the same time, of course, we should not decry efforts, such as the one that took place on Sunday to promote sound health practices and at the same time make Indians proud of their cultural heritage.

Mid Day June 23, 2015

India's lack of respect for liberty could pave the way to another Emergency

Allusions are not new in politics.In 1975 - the year of our own Emergency - Chairman Mao’s views of the Water Margin, a Song dynasty (960-1279 AD) novel, were used to corner Zhou Enlai and Deng Xiaoping. 

Compared to that, L.K. Advani’s interview criticising the Emergency - his lament that “forces that can crush democracy are stronger” today, and that he is not confident that it could not happen again - are more banal, if not obvious.

 

Not different 

The India of today is not the India of 1975. But in some important ways, it is not all that different either. There are important gains, in that our polity has become more inclusive and representative. 

Institutions like the Election Commission have become stronger, as, to an extent, has the higher judiciary. The media is totally transformed, but, only the brave will say that it has become the bedrock of our democracy. 

Fewer still will argue that our political culture is more ethical and mature. 

Neither will anyone stand up for our bureaucracy and say that it has become more upright and competent. 

Significant civil society institutions have emerged, but they are dangerously dependent on foreign funding. 

Can the Emergency recur again? 

The matrix of the elements outlined above could possibly provide an answer. Take the media first. Advani’s most memorable quote: “You were asked only to bend, but you crawled” holds good today, as much as it did in 1975. Through the UPA regime, it was manifested in the absence of criticism of Sonia Gandhi, and now it is in the free ride that Narendra Modi gets. 

You are free to kick a Manmohan Singh or a Sushma Swaraj, but woe betide you should you take on the supremo - and the media knows this well. 

There is nothing in the media today to suggest that it has the depth or the resilience to face up to an authoritarian challenge.

Old IPC 

Governments continue to use the legal system to muzzle the media. 

The 155-year old Indian Penal Code is a convenient handle to ban books or get them pulped, as happened to Wendy Doniger’s The Hindus.

TV channels get taken off the air for allegedly screening obscene material or politically incorrect maps; a documentary on rape is prevented from airing on the bizzare grounds that it will promote violence against women. 

None of this has been done through judicial due process, but through the decisions of bureaucrats and ministers. 

The end of the Emergency only came because of then-Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s 'blunder' in calling for an election in January 1977. Here she is pictured with son Rajiv (left)

Modern laws can be, if anything, more draconian. 

Fortunately, this year the Supreme Court has struck down the obnoxious Section 66 A of the IT Act which sought jail terms of up to three years for posts and messages that were “grossly offensive or menacing” or causing “annoyance or inconvenience”. 

India regularly tops the list of countries that request the removal of allegedly contentious material in sites like Facebook.

Another aspect of this is the attack on NGOs and their foreign funding. 

Instead of prosecuting outfits that are breaking the law, the government is taking recourse to executive decisions to throttle these institutions which have played a significant role in evolving the Indian civil society.

The real danger to democracy in India comes from the fact that its ruling elite - especially its politicians and bureaucrats - lack any passion for civil rights and liberties. 

Indeed, their mind works in the opposite direction, seeking at all times to control and manipulate.

This is a result of the stunted intellectual culture of the country which has prevented India from achieving its true potential. 

Despite 68 years of freedom, our political parties and bureaucrats have not developed any special commitment to a governance regime that gives salience to the civil rights and liberties of the people. 

Arbitrary rule, injustice, torture and deprivation remains the lot of the majority of the country. 

No hesitation 

Were there to be circumstances in which a regime felt that it was under siege, it may not hesitate in taking to the authoritarian path because it will find a compliant bureaucracy and police force to assist it. 

This time around, the process could well be incremental, in the manner of Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Turkey.

The Emergency of 1975 does not give us any cheer here. 

There was little or no fight against the Emergency. Most leaders, with microscopic exceptions, went tamely to jail and stayed there.By 1976, opposition had been virtually reduced to zero. 

With the political Opposition in jail, the media, judiciary and bureaucracy fell in line. It was only the hubris of Sanjay Gandhi and his forced sterilisation campaign that allowed some opposition to the Emergency to coalesce. 

But its end came because of Mrs Gandhi’s “blunder” in calling for an election in January 1977. 

Love thy neighbour

There is something unique about Prime Minister Modi’s Bangladesh visit. Of all of India’s South Asian neighbours, Bangladesh is one which is almost completely “India-locked.” Of its 4,413-km land boundary, just 271 km is with Myanmar, the remaining 4,142 with India.  

Of course, Bangladesh was part of India till its partition in 1947 and the cultural connections between Bengalis on both sides of the border run deep, considering that they share the same language and celebrate the same literature. This was also the nation that India midwifed in 1971.

 Actually India and Bangladesh are locked into each other and this awareness is what is driving the positive trend in our ties today. The relations have had its ups and downs. Bangladesh, itself has had its ups and downs. Yet in 2015, we have a different country from the one that was once described as a “basket case”. In many social indicators today, Bangladesh is ahead of India and given its geographical location, it holds the key to the development of all of eastern India.

The immediate objective of Prime Minister Modi’s visit to Dhaka is to overcome legacy issues that still bedevil our relations as well as to lay the foundations for an era of closer economic integration between Bangladesh and India. First among these is the boundary agreement through which the two countries will iron out the minor enclaves that both sides hold across the border and which are a major source of problems between them. The second is to overcome the problems that have prevented a water sharing pact on the Teesta river. In 2011, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee torpedoed the Manmohan Singh government’s effort to strike a deal on the issue. This time she coincided her visit to Dhaka with Prime Minister Modi’s and was received as a VIP.

There was no outcome on Teesta, but the discussions and atmospherics will go a long way in getting a balanced settlement. By getting Mamata Banerjee to participate in the discussions, Modi has set an important and far reaching precedent to involve the states of the Union on foreign policy matters that have a direct connect with them. India is a huge and varied country, but our constitution ignores the importance of Indian states in foreign affairs. Thus Mizoram, Nagaland and Manipur have little say in foreign affairs issues that affect them. While states like Tamil Nadu use domestic politics to skew Indian foreign policies.

Bangladesh, a country of 166 million people is hugely important to India. If India surrounds Bangladesh, the latter effectively splits eastern India and separates the north-east from the rest of the country. The Siliguri corridor, anywhere between 14-33 km at its narrower parts, that links West Bengal to Assam, is perhaps the strategically most important geographical vulnerability of India, since its northern part also contains the Chumbi Valley, which is a part of China. Given the nature of the India-Bangladesh border, it can never be completely sealed and hence the goodwill and cooperation of the Bangladesh government is vital in matters relating to India’s security. We know the value of this cooperation in the tenure of Sheikh Hasina as the Prime Minister, precisely because we also know how India was negatively affected in the tenures of Khaleda Zia between 1991-1996 and 2001-2006.

The advantages for India are many. As of now, north-eastern states have to go around the Siliguri corridor to reach the sea port of Kolkata. The distance between Agartala and Kolkata is over 1,600 km, whereas it is just 100 km from Chittagong in Bangladesh. Not only would Bangladesh gain from the better utilisation of its ports and transport facilities, but it could gain over $1 billion in transit fees were it to encourage the movement of goods on its riverine and rail networks to India, Nepal and Bhutan. Linking up to Chinese networks in Tibet, or through the proposed Bangladesh-China-India-Myanmar (BCIM) corridor could give an even greater fillip to the region.

But all this requires careful diplomacy to deal with disputes such as the ones between India and Bangladesh, or India and China, or Bangladesh and Myanmar. It also requires an awareness among the states that they need to be sensitive to the security concerns of other states. Ignoring this usually leads to a blowback, as has happened in Pakistan, and to an extent in Bangladesh, where Islamists have been strengthened by Khaleda Zia’s tactic of using them to needle India.

Beyond resolving outstanding problems, Modi’s visit has led to the setting up of agreements, MoUs and protocols which will transform our relations in the future. The key issues here are connectivity and economic partnership. Bangladesh has held out against providing effective transit rights to India, but now many in the country realise that Bangladesh needs India as much as the latter needs the former. Hence the slew of MoUs to promote economic ties, transit and coastal trade, as well as bus services that will begin negating the malign consequences of partition.

Prime Minister Modi has once again returned a virtuoso performance, emphasizing the importance of Bangladesh to India, as well as emphasizing the win-win outcomes that are possible in the future.

Besides the economic and practical, he also made some important cultural gestures such as the visit to the Dhakeshwari temple and to the Ramkrishna Mission which underscored India’s concern over a problem that is largely ignored by Indians themselves and the world community the steady decline of the country’s Hindu population in the face of violence and persecution. These issues cannot and should not be ignored if we are to construct ties that are durable and mutually beneficial.

Mid Day June 9, 2015

There is something unique about Prime Minister Modi’s Bangladesh visit. Of all of India’s South Asian neighbours, Bangladesh is one which is almost completely “India-locked.” Of its 4,413-km land boundary, just 271 km is with Myanmar, the remaining 4,142 with India. Of course, Bangladesh was part of India till its partition in 1947 and the cultural connections between Bengalis on both sides of the border run deep, considering that they share the same language and celebrate the same literature. This was also the nation that India midwifed in 1971. - See more at: http://www.mid-day.com/articles/love-thy-neighbour/16275191#sthash.xJT4vAqD.dpuf

Why China is desperate to make friends with the world

There is one aspect of contemporary Chinese policy in the South China Sea that India has known well for some time. This is the process of creating new facts on the ground to assert a boundary claim.

This is what happened, most notably, in the Aksai Chin area where there lines have shifted steadily. Initially, China, with the goal of building its strategic highway linking Xinjiang with Tibet, fobbed off all Indian queries about the border. They broadly claimed the McCartney-McDonald Line of 1899 which ran along the Karakoram watershed, but which was still within the Indian claim. When questioned on this, they said that these were old maps.

Subsequently, they occupied the Lingzi-Tang Plains to the west of this line. But till 1960, they left the Chip Chap and Galwan River Valley to India. Thereafter they began to press westward. In September 1962, before the war, the LAC ran from Karakoram Pass, skirted Chip Chap and Galwan valleys, thence to Kongka La, Damba Guru and Khurnak Fort.

Chinese occupancy

However, after the war, the Chinese occupied the two valleys, and pushed westward beyond Samzungling and Khurnak Fort by anywhere between ten-100kms. Even now, as the Depsang Plains incident of 2013 revealed, the Chinese are maintaining a westward pressure on the LAC with India.

As for the Eastern sector, after indicating in 1960-80, that they were willing to trade it for an Indian acceptance of their western claims, the Chinese now say that this is actually "southern Tibet", and that the dispute in relations lies there.

Something similar is now happening in the South China Sea where the Chinese have insisted that the Nine Dash line, of completely spurious provenance, is their maritime boundary. Given the pushback from the states of the region - Vietnam, Philippines, Malaysia, the Chinese have resorted to a new tactic of building islands on what were submerged reefs and rocks.

Through the process, they claim territorial waters 12 nautical miles around these newly created artificial outcrops, and an exclusive economic zone of 200 nautical miles. A Chinese admiral pointed out in the recent Shangrila Dialogue in Singapore, that the Chinese position was both "legitimate and reasonable", it was not restricting freedom of navigation and that China wanted to use these new islands for public service and was actually building lighthouses to aid navigation.

The US has strongly rejected the process of reclamation, and as it alleges, emplacement of military equipment on the islands. US secretary of defence called on China to halt the reclamation in his remarks at the Shangrila Dialogue, but there was no response. Even direct questions on the issue were evaded by the Chinese leader of the delegation, Admiral Sun Jianguo.

No answers

But discerning observers are pointing out that the US has no real answers on ways of dealing with this Chinese salami tactic. In his response to a direct question on the issue, all Carter could say was that China would pay a price for alienating its neighbours, but did not give any hint of a US plan to deal with the issue. "One of the consequences of that," he noted, "will be the continued coalescing of concerned nations around the world," presumably of the affected nations with the US.

There is an irony here. Even as China appears to look at the issue in the South China Sea as a zero-sum game, one which it must win, with a view of shoring up its defensive perimeter, in the oceans beyond, it is seeking to collaborate with other countries to expand its influence.

Global power

Beijing knows that it cannot become a global power without friends. As the US has known, there is a limit to what you can do alone. The US with its network of friends, allies and partners is a case in point. The new China military strategy document makes no bones about China's desire to play a more proactive role in international security affairs. The document therefore outlines China's search for enhanced security partnerships, an expanded role in peacekeeping operations, alongside the creation of new power projection capabilities.

The problem for China is that it has relentlessly put national interest ahead of everything that the sum total of its foreign "friends" is two - Pakistan and North Korea. Countries like Russia and Iran that are coming close to Beijing, are doing so because of their antipathy to the US.

The military strategy document is a categorical assertion of China's coming out as a world power and its interests in virtually every corner of the world. What it is doing here is also what it has being doing on its borders - creating facts on the ground - and getting the world to adjust to them.

Mail Today June 8, 2015

Why India Insists on Keeping Gilgit Baltistan Firmly in the Kashmir Equation

New Delhi’s move to  raise objections to Pakistan’s plan of holding an election in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir’s Gilgit-Baltistan region may appear to be an afterthought, but it is, in fact, the belated assertion of a simple principle: In a dispute, express your maximal position, rather than the one you will compromise on.
For long years, indeed, beginning in 1947 itself, India had tended to play down, if not ignore, its own legal claim over what Pakistan used to term as the Northern Areas and now calls Gilgit Baltistan. As a result, the world assumed the ‘Kashmir problem’ only pertained to the Kashmir Valley which was in India’s possession. Thus, when it came to compromises, it put the onus on New Delhi.
It is this principle that informs Beijing’s tough stand on the Sino-Indian border. In 1960 and 1980 they were agreeable to swapping claims and broached the idea with New Delhi. However, India rejected the proposal, and since it was holding on to Arunachal Pradesh, the area it claimed in the east, it hoped that it could persuade China to part with some 3000 or so sq kms in the Aksai Chin area. However, beginning 1985, China turned tables on the stunned Indian negotiators by insisting that the bigger dispute lay in the east and has since been demanding concessions from India in that sector. It has said it is willing to concede India’s claim to most of Arunachal if India is willing to part with the Tawang tract.
When it comes to Pakistan and PoK, India has clearly taken a page from the Chinese playbook.
In 2009 and 2010, India responded sharply to reports of the presence of Chinese soldiers and workers in the region.“India believes that Pakistan has been in illegal occupation of parts of the Indian State of Jammu and Kashmir since 1947. The Chinese side is fully aware of India’s position and our concerns about Chinese activities in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir”, the MEA said in 2009. In 2010 similar concerns were raised.
Last month, National Security Adviser Ajit Doval raised eyebrows when he reminded an audience of BSF officers that “we also have a 106-km-long non-contiguous border with Afghanistan that we need to factor in,” a clear reference to Gilgit Baltistan’s Afghan frontier. Now, in similar vein, Vikas Swarup, the spokesman for the external affairs ministry, said on Tuesday: “India’s position is well known. The entire state of Jammu and Kashmir, which includes the regions of Gilgit and Baltistan, is an integral part of India.”
The election, which is scheduled for June 8, is as an attempt by Islamabad “to camouflage its forcible and illegal occupation of the regions” and to deny its people their political rights; it is being held under a belated effort by Islamabad to give the region a figment of self-rule, the MEA said in a strong statement on Tuesday.
The Gilgit Baltistan area of Jammu and Kashmir occupied by Pakistan covers 85,793 sq km. It was further divided in 1970 into two separate administrative divisions: Mirpur-Muzaffarabad (which Pakistan calls Azad Jammu and Kashmir, or AJK) and the Federally Administered Gilgit-Baltistan.
Gilgit-Baltistan was earlier referred to as the “Northern Areas” in Pakistan. Pakistan illegally ceded the Shaksgam Valley, around 5,180 sq km, to China in a 1963 border agreement.
Swarup said the proposed election in Gilgit and Baltistan under the so-called ‘Gilgit Baltistan Empowerment and Self Government Order’ of 2009 is an attempt by Pakistan to absorb these territories.
“We are concerned at the continued efforts by Pakistan to deny the people of the region their political rights, and the efforts being made to absorb these territories. The fact that a federal minister of Pakistan is also the ‘Governor of Gilgit Baltistan’ speaks for itself,” he added.
Battle for Gilgit
The Gilgit agency was leased by the British from the Maharaja of Kashmir because of its stratgegic location south of Afghanistan and China. It was administered by a British officer and policed by the Gilgit Scouts which were, too, officered by the British. In July 1947, the British decided to terminate the lease and return it to the Maharaja who took over the control of the region as of August 1, 1947, and appointed  Brigadier Ghansar Singh as governor. But two officers of the Gilgit Scouts, Major W A Brown and Captain A S Mathieson, along with Subedar Major Babar Khan, a relative of the Mir of Hunza conspired to overthrow the government.

Brigadier Ghansar Singh

On October 31, 1947, after the Pakistan-backed raiders had entered Kashmir, the three conspirators tried to capture the government along with a company of Gilgit Scouts. But the Brigadier got up and engaged the rebels and in the morning Brown asked the governor to surrender, threatening a massacre of non-Muslims in Gilgit. Brigadier Singh surrendered  and set up a provisional government under Major Brown and a number of Poonchi Muslims who had killed their Sikh colleagues in the 6 Jammu & Kashmir Light Infantry located at Bunji, 50 kms away. The Pakistan flag was hoisted and from here, Pakistani regulars and irregulars launched attacks on the other towns and cities of the region like Skardu, Dras, Kargil and Leh.
No fiction of Azadi
Pakistan did not bother with any fiction of “Azad” Gilgit-Baltistan, nor did it claim that the government represented the will of the people. Two weeks after Brown’s coup, a nominee of the Pakistan government, Sardar Mohammed Alam, was appointed Political Agent and took possession of the territory.
From the outset, India was less than categorical about its desire to resume control of the Gilgit-Baltistan area, though Nehru did insist that as part of the UN resolution requiring the removal of Pakistani forces from J&K, the Pakistani regulars and irregulars ought to be removed from Gilgit-Baltistan as well.
However, when the Dixon proposals came up in 1950, which sought to partition the state, India went along with the proposal for allotment to Pakistan of those areas where there was no apparent doubt about the wishes of the people wanting to go the Pakistan, and Gilgit-Baltistan was one of these areas, along with areas of Jammu west of the ceasefire line. Jammu, Ladakh, and Kargil would go to India and the plebiscite would be held in the Valley and parts of Muzaffarabad. However, this proposal came to nought because Pakistan wanted a plebiscite over the whole state.
Shias targeted
In 1970, Pakistan changed the name of the region to “Northern Areas”, but kept it detached from Azad Kashmir. But while AJK was given a semblance of constitutional government right from the outset, Gilgit Baltistan was in a constitutional limbo, or simply a colony of Pakistan.  In 2009, Pakistan finally sought to give some legal cover to this relationship by passing a Gilgit-Baltistan Empowerment and Self-Governance Order in the Cabinet and getting presidential assent for it. The order allegedly granted self-rule to the people by creating a legislative assembly and a council, yet did not provide for any constitutional means of linking it to Pakistan. Islamabad believes that this way it is able to maintain its somewhat convoluted stand on Jammu & Kashmir.
Pakistan’s role in the region has not been particularly responsible. According to estimates, some 70 per cent of the population are Shias of various denominations and only 30 per cent or so are Sunnis. However, since the Zia-ul-Haq era, an effort has been made to alter the sectarian balance in the region. In 1988, a huge Lashkar of Sunni extremists was sent in to chastise the Shia population, triggering sectarian strife which has now recurred regularly over the years. And in recent times, the general climate of violence against Shias in Pakistan has taken a toll in the Gilgit-Baltistan region as well.  Tuesday’s MEA statement makes a reference to these issues too, for added measure: “Unfortunately in recent times the people of the region have also become victims of sectarian conflict, terrorism and extreme economic hardship due to Pakistan’s occupationary policies.”
China corridor
Since the Pakistan-China agreement in 1963 which saw the transfer of the Shaksgam Valley to China, Beijing has been an important player in  the region. Beginning in the mid-1960s, China constructed the Karakoram Highway linking Kashghar in Xinjiang with Gilgit and Abbottabad through the Khunjerab Pass. Though prone to landslides, efforts are on to upgrade this highway and make it an axis of China’s Silk Road Initiative which will link Xinjiang to Gwadar port in Balochistan through the highway, a possible railroad and oil and gas pipeline. China has invested in a number of projects in the Gilgit-Baltistan region and the Chinese connection is an important element of the region’s economy. During his recent visit, President Xi Jinping committed some $46 billion to projects in Pakistan.
China says that it is seeking to stabilise the region as Pakistan melts down and is ensuring that there is no blowback into its vulnerable province of Xinjiang. However, India cannot take that at face value, since the legal title of the region through which the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor will run through vests with India. This is the reason the Indian side has  protested Chinese activity in PoK in the past and again recently. However, this is only a subtext of the larger Indian complaint about the Sino-Pak nexus.

thewire.in June 2, 2015