Pragmatic India junks past rhetoric for Xi-Modi summit

Given their relationship, as Asia’s two rising powers who share a disputed border and a relationship that has long been troubled, there are multiple reasons India and China are reaching out to each other, and the leaders of the two countries, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Xi Jinping, will hold an unprecedented informal summit this week in Wuhan, in central China’s Hubei province.

Given the recent sequence of events, which famously included New Delhi throwing the Dalai Lama under the bus and assuring Beijing that it will not intervene in Maldives, it would appear that the outreach has been initiated by India and reciprocated by China.

Given the many-layered relationship between the two countries, India’s reasons are also manifold. But at this juncture, it would appear that Modi is reaching out to China to remove possible risks to his re-election campaign next year. His advisers believe that a confrontation with China in the border region always has the chance of going against India. Such a development would have grave political consequences for a leader who has thrived on the image of being a tough guy.

The Doklam issue has led to the People’s Liberation Army building up its forces along the entire Line of Actual Control (LAC) that marks the Sino-Indian border. New Delhi is aware that the outcome to the Doklam standoff being favorable to India last year was in great measure because of the overwhelming military advantage its forces had over the Chinese in the locality of Doka La Pass. But such a situation may not obtain elsewhere along the 4,000-kilometer LAC. As it is, there is some unease that the Doklam crisis has shaken the elite circles in Bhutan and if Thimphu throws in the towel, India doesn’t have a legal leg to stand on.

Modi now agrees with some of his senior advisers that India was wrong to handle China the way it did through 2016 by publicly hectoring it over the Nuclear Supplier Group and Masood Azhar issues. So there is an effort now to put diplomacy in command when dealing with them,  rather than using them to score propaganda points.

Likewise, Modi and his team believe that they may have erred in going out of their way to use the so-called Tibet card. This has only served to get China’s back up and in realistic terms, there is little to be gained by encouraging the Tibetans in exile in India, since China has firm control of Tibet. The Dalai Lama has been ready to make a deal with them, but it’s only the Chinese hard line that prevents such a development.

Before he came to power, Modi was a known admirer of the Chinese economic miracle, and his visit to China in 2011 was described as “historic” by his supporters. As candidate, though, he attacked the incumbent United Progressive Alliance government for having failed to secure India’s borders with China and Pakistan.

Today, as the Indian economy continues to be troubled by niggling issues such as a declining investment rate in recent years, China looks like a good prospect for an economic partnership that could see investment in infrastructure, improving manufacturing capability and skill development. Indeed, despite the two countries’ political difficulties, Sino-Indian trade is booming, as is Chinese investment in India.

Though India has joined the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, or Quad, and has emerged as a major element in the US Indo-Pacific strategy, the government does not see any immediate payoffs from this. Modi is also worried about the risks of tying India’s policies to the erratic administration of US President Donald Trump. On the other hand, along with China, it could be targeted by the US on trade and currency issues. Reaching out to China helps moderate some of these risks.

The Modi team realizes that as of now India cannot compete with China in Southeast Asia  and must focus its attention in the Indian Ocean region and work out ways to ensure that the two largest Asian countries are not played off against each other by the smaller nations of South Asia and the Indian Ocean Region (SA-IOR).

What are China’s aims in reciprocating India’s moves towards détente?

The very obvious one is that it is seeking to shore up its flanks to protect itself against a political and commercial attack from the United States. India may not be a significant economic player, but it is an important political actor and its neutrality in the event of any US-China clash would be useful.

As China’s economy slows down and India’s picks up pace, Beijing may have realized that it is at that cusp of history where its bargaining power with India is at its maximum and as the decades unfold, India’s comprehensive national power will grow and the Chinese advantage will become progressively less. This is therefore a good time to alter the trajectory of its relationship with India, which has so far been dominated by their conflicts arising out of their border issue and China’s use of Pakistan as a foil against India.

So these questions beg another one: What can India offer China and what can the latter offer India? At a broad level we know that China has its core interests – the primacy of the Communist Party, and the recognition that Taiwan, Tibet and Xinjiang as inalienable parts of China, now along with the Diayou/Senkaku islands, and the South China Sea.

As for India, it has never quite spelled out its core interests like the Chinese, but certainly national sovereignty and territorial integrity are central. This, of course, includes Jammu and Kashmir and Arunachal Pradesh, which brings it into collision with China and Pakistan.

Naturally, neither side is expected to offer up its core interests in any bilateral bargain. But better strategic communication can lead, first, to a modus vivendi on potential areas of concern, such as expanding China’s forays into South Asia and the Indian Ocean Region, or India’s interest in joining the US, Australia and Japan in the Quadrilateral grouping.

Second, better political understanding can unlock the economic complementarities of their huge economies. India is looking to prop up its declining rate of investment and build its infrastructure, and China is in a position to provide both; indeed, Chinese companies are very eager to do business in India. The Chinese are not unaware of their enormous export dependence on the US.

Third, it could open up a more sustainable path toward cooperation if China and India could settle their border dispute. The 20 rounds of border talks between the two Special Representatives have more or less completed the technical aspects of a border settlement. What remains is the political push, which can only be given by Modi and Xi. Are they up to it?

In 2014, there were expectations that there could be swift movement in this area given that both were strong leaders, capable of pushing a compromise in their respective domestic constituencies. Now that does not appear any longer to be the case.

Usually in such summits, detailing these issues and working out solutions and options are done well in advance. So have the two sides worked out a deal in advance, or are they truly going into an informal and unstructured summit? If the latter is the case, there could be hazards for India, considering the existing asymmetry of economic and military power between the two countries.

Asia Times April 25, 2018

When Modi meets China’s Xi in Wuhan, India starts from a position of weakness

So, India threw the Dalai Lama under the bus. Not my words, but those of a retired senior government official with years of experience of India’s China policy. He was commenting on a news report that appeared this week, which said that just before the Centre sent out a note to all government officials in February asking them not to participate in events commemorating the Tibetan spiritual leader’s 60 years of exile, India had already informed Beijing of its intended move.

Now we know why that happened. Prime Minister Narendra Modi wants to talk peace with Beijing. Why? The answer is obvious. In the run-up to general elections in 2019, the only thing that seems to matter to him is to make sure there are no unpleasant shocks for his government.

Among external actors, the one country that can spring an unpleasant surprise on India is China. After the Indians tom-tommed their great victory in Doklam – where Indian and Chinese troops faced off for around 70 days last year – the Chinese have been seething. And they have 4,056 km of the disputed Sino-Indian border across which they could spring that surprise.

So, Foreign Secretary Vijay Gokhale was sent to Beijing on February 23 to inform the Chinese that a) India would abjure from using the Tibet card as it had been doing for the past four years, and b) that it had no intention of intervening militarily in the Maldives, where China has interests.

Wuhan meeting

The reward, as it were, is the Wuhan summit between Modi and China’s President Xi Jinping that is to take place on April 27-April 28. We can only speculate about its outcome, but we do know that it is India that is going into it from a position of weakness. Hopefully, the two sides have already negotiated an outcome, because a truly unstructured event could blow up in our face.

There is a facile comparison being made that the Modi-Xi summit in Wuhan would be a repeat of the Rajiv Gandhi-Deng Xiaoping meeting of December 1988. Actually, the time that has passed since has ensured that it cannot be similar.

Both events came in the wake of face-offs that went well for India. In 1986-’87, under Operation Falcon, the Indian Army for the first time looked at the People’s Liberation Army eye-to-eye and forced it to recognise the fact that the balance of power on the border was no longer the one that had prevailed in the 1960s.

In 2017, the Indian Army intervened in Doklam to block a Chinese road-building project in territory claimed by both China and Bhutan. In the end, given their adverse position, the Chinese backed off.

The result of Rajiv Gandhi’s China visit in 1988 was that India agreed to set aside its demand that China settle the border dispute before there could be normalisation of ties. Talks took place that resulted in two far-reaching agreements in 1993 and 1996, which created an elaborate structure of confidence-building that has ensured that, despite occasional face-offs, the two sides have managed to maintain peace and tranquility along the border.

Since then, of course, relations between India and China have developed much greater complexity if only because they have developed much larger economies and corresponding interests in their respective regions. Indeed, the big problem is that their interests are now rubbing against each other in the South Asia-Indian Ocean region.

What can the 2018 visit yield ?

The Wuhan summit, although billed as informal, is a carefully prepared event. The story began in Xiamen, where Xi and Modi met on the sidelines of the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) summit in September. It was at this summit that China signaled that it was not entirely deaf to India’s concerns about terrorism emanating from Pakistan.

It was also at this summit that the two leaders, aware of the dangerous confrontation in Doklam, gave their officials instructions to enhance “strategic communications” between the two sides – essentially, to step up high-level communications to resolve problems before they turned into confrontations.

The first step in this direction was the decision to hold the 20th round of talks between the special representatives in Delhi after a gap of 20 months. At this meeting in December, India’s National Security Adviser Ajit Doval met his counterpart, State Councillor and Politburo member Yang Jichei.

As usual, little was revealed about the content of the meeting, but the Indian press release did note that the two officials spoke of the need to emphasise their convergences and to find “mutually acceptable resolutions of their differences with due respect to each other’s sensitivities, concerns and aspirations”.

Subsequently, Gokhale – who was the Indian ambassador to China till October – made an official visit to Beijing on February 23. It was on the eve of this visit that he sent a letter to his colleague, the cabinet secretary, asking him to advise leaders and government functionaries to stay away from events marking 60 years of the Dalai Lama’s arrival in India.

On March 20, Modi spoke directly with Xi to congratulate him on his re-election as president and it was during this conversation that the Wuhan visit was finalised. Since then, we have seen Doval visit China, where he once again met Yang Jichei – now secretary of the Central Foreign Affairs Commission, the body that determines Chinese foreign policy – and the new Chinese special representative Wang Yi. Then earlier this week, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj and Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman visited Beijing. These visits were in the context of the summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation in Qingdao in June. But you can be sure the high-level discussions took into account the shifting Indian position on China.

Odds are against India

At first glance, the deck is stacked against India. It is the one that has publicly drawn back on Tibet and Maldives, moves that have not been reciprocated by China in any way. In that sense, they reflect the deeply asymmetrical nature of the Sino-Indian situation. China is also a far bigger economic and military power than India.

But at this juncture, Beijing also needs to secure itself from a putative American assault. Even though many see the trade war between the two countries as shadow-boxing, China knows it is in President Donald Trump’s crosshairs and is seeking to ensure that countries like India remain neutral.

Also, China is looking at India through a long-term perspective, in which it sees the Indian economy growing at a faster pace than its own in the coming decades. This huge economy can provide opportunities for investment and markets for Chinese products in an era where Beijing’s over-dependence on the United States is becoming manifest.

New Delhi’s handling of Beijing has been somewhat immature in the last four years. Instead of give-and-take diplomacy, it has hectored China, demanding that it support its membership to the Nuclear Suppliers Group and its efforts to get Jaish-e-Mohammed chief Masood Azhar declared a United Nations-designated terrorist. It has sought to take a position in the western Pacific, to counter China’s forays in the Indian Ocean. Its attempts to match up to Beijing reached ridiculous heights when it created a Forum for India-Pacific Islands Cooperation, even though it has no discernible interests in the South Pacific.

But there also seems to be a realisation in New Delhi that the sum total of these positions, which emphasise confrontation, are unsustainable. What worries Modi now is that Beijing could lower the boom in an election year, with all its unpredictable consequences.

Scroll April 25, 2018

On reforms in China

While the 19th Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC)  that was held last October and the annual National People’s Congress  held last month garnered a great deal of international attention, little attention is being paid to the sweeping government restructuring going on in China.

Under this plan the CPC has enhanced its authority across the board, even while the government has been dramatically restructured. The end result is that  President Xi now has  more direct control over the levers of money and power and will push ahead with a series of reforms which will, first and foremost, moderate the risk that the  unreformed Chinese economy confronts, and then, if things work according to plan, take China to new heights of achievement. 

Actually in some areas China is mainly playing catch up, creating  new ministries and governing institutions to address the unmet needs of its huge economy. Many areas of regulation have been found wanting, people have taken advantage of regulatory loopholes and corruption has been rampant in many areas. Uncoordinated governance has also resulted in huge waste, while ineffectively supervised state owned companies piled on debt.

On March 21, the CPC released the Plan to Deepen Reform of Party and State Institutions. This forms the basis of the most drastic restructuring of the government and some Party organization in decades. The idea was to improve the control of the CPC, enhance, policy coordination, governance and efficiency. China has a parallel system where the Communist Party has its institutions which dominate those of the country, viz the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Famously, for example, the Chinese military is the armed wing of the CPC and not the PRC.

Earlier China worked on the assumption that over time, the Party will recede into the background and strong State institutions will be the norm just as they are in the rest of the developed world. But Xi clearly believes that this has encouraged unprecedented corruption and inefficiency and threatened the dominance of the CPC. So he has sought to clean up the CPC and make it central to the Chinese system again.

The thrust of the reorganization is two-fold. First, it seeks to moderate the risk the Chinese economy is facing because of its massive debt and deficits. And second, it seeks to equip China with instruments and institution s to manage its continuing rise.

As part of this, the new reforms Central Banking will become more central. The People’s Bank of China (PBOC ), their equivalent of our RBI,  now has gotten powers to write rules for much of the financial sector and its powers will pivot on the new Central Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission.

Another key area that the new reforms will look at is that of the environment. The environment ministry is being  expanded, creating a new ministry of ecology and environment. By now it should be clear that the Chinese are serious about cleaning up their environment and this is evident from the huge  strides they have taken in Beijing.

The expansion of Chinese economic power globally will now be aided by a new foreign aid agency, the State International Development and Cooperation Agency (SIDCA), like the USAID or the Japanese JICA,  which will essentially formulate and execute China’s global outreach, including the Belt and Road Initiative. It will be headed byWang Xiaotao

 A new State Market Regulatory Administration  will be a powerful new regulator for companies operating in China. It will take over the work of the State Administration for Industry and Commerce, the China Food and Drug Administration and the General Administration of Quality Supervision. This is the first agency which will focus on anti-monopoly issues and also oversee the new State Intellectual Property Office. The SIPO will strengthen the creation, protection and application of IPR and give a push to Xi’s policy of promoting an innovation-based economy, and also provide a response to critics who charge China with large-scale Intellectual property theft.

As far as the Party is concerned, the reform has targeted Central Leading Groups which are high-powered groups of ministers, officials and Party members and who are the real decision-makers in China. Under the new plan, the CPC  abolished several Central Leading Groups and created new ones and promoted several from leading groups to central or commissions.

The central leading groups for deepening overall reform, cyberspace affairs, financial and economic affairs and foreign affairs are being given the rank of central commissions. It is no surprise since  Xi Jinping himself chairs these Central Leading Groups.

Among the new commissions coming up, the most significant is the National Supervisory Commission which will look into discipline and corruption cases. Unlike the Central Commission on Discipline and Inspection (CCDI) whose work is confined to the Party, the NSC will function at every level and in every part of life in China—universities, multi-national companies, banks, and so on.

One of the big losers is the National Development and Reforms Commission (NDRC) the Chinese equivalent of our Planning Commission.  It was known as the “little Cabinet” and wielded power in a range of areas from high-speed rail projects to electricity rates. It will remain as one of the 26 bodies of the State Council as the PRC government is known, but it will shed many of its functions to other agencies.

This could trigger a dramatic shift in the Chinese economy towards allowing the market play a decisive role in allocating resources, something that the Party wants, but which has been blocked by various vested interests. However, at the end of the day, the real proof of the pudding will be in its eating.

Greater Kashmir April 23, 2018

How Xi Jinping is playing the 'Trump' card in China

Whether US President Donald Trump is winning or North Korea's Supreme Leader, Kim Jong-un, is a matter of debate because the final deal has yet to be clinched. But one thing is sure, Donald’s way of doing things has got him much more of a payoff than his predecessors have managed.

So, the obvious follow-up question is: Are the Trump tactics working successfully on China as well? Has his strategy of hitting China with a massive dose of tariffs succeeded in bringing Beijing to heel?

Beijing now faces tariffs on $150 billion worth of products, though it has announced counter-duties, there are limits to what it can do for the simple reason that it imports far less from the US than it exports. US exports to China are just $130 billion while the US imports $506 billion worth of goods.

China needs US?

The answer there is more complicated. Many wonder whether China is playing the Americans, as it has done for the past four decades. But there are compelling reasons for China to meet the American demands of opening up its economy and these are actually overwhelmingly domestic.

China’s financial sector is in a bad shape. Earlier this year in January, the head of the China Banking Regulatory Commission Guo Shuqing pointed out that banking assets comprised 80 per cent of China’s total financial assets and so there was need to lower their risk.

In the past year, the regulators had focused on interbank business, wealth management products and off-balance sheet activity. To stave off the risks, the government has been taking stringent measures to regulate banking, securities and insurance industries, levying heavy fines on those charged with wrong-doing.

Guo, who is now the head of a combined Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission, as well as the Secretary of the Communist Party within the People’s Bank of China, warned of the dangers, both obvious and hidden, in the coming period.

One of the big priorities of President Xi Jinping's government is the need to clean up the financial sector and ensure that it will not implode, taking the Chinese economy along with it.

But financial risks are just one aspect of the situation, China’s economy is also slowing down over the years, resulting in rising fiscal deficits and lower employment in the manufacturing industries. In 2017, China’s fiscal deficit — the difference between government revenue and expenditure — reached some $478 billion.

Jobs on a decline

Further, there has been a withdrawal of foreign investments, fed up with the manner in which the playing field is tilted against them in the country. Employment has been generally declining in the manufacturing sector, but the decline has been most marked in foreign investment industries.

In the recent period, China’s exports have been declining and it is actually becoming more dependent on exporting to the US. The bulk of its foreign trade surplus comes from the US and in the past decade, the US accounted for over 50 per cent of its exports.

Xi promised action

So, speaking at the Boao Forum earlier this month, Xi declared that China will not only ensure that its door will not close “but will only open wider.” He has promised action this year itself to open the financial sector, something that was hinted at last October around the time of Trump’s visit to China.

He has promised reform in the automotive sector which is the cause of considerable heartburn among foreign auto-makers. China will also boost its imports all around this year itself.

Following the Boao Forum, China announced that the entire island of Hainan, roughly the size of Kerala, would become a free trade zone and welcomed foreign multinationals to establish their regional and global headquarters there.

Aware of that some of these economic challenges could emerge as dangerous risks, Xi has been pushing for economic reforms. In 2013, the 3rd Plenum of the Communist Party had called for markets playing the decisive role in the country’s economy. Plans were made to set up free trade zones and provide greater market access to trade partners.

However, Xi faced headwinds that prevented the reforms from being followed through, corrupt officials and vested interests blocked change.

This was a major reason that he pushed through measures that provided him the option of having a third term as the president of the country last year. Four years down the line, it's clear now that Xi has consolidated his authority and China is now set to move on his reform agenda.

Ironically, in this, the American pressure actually comes to his aid as he can now rally the country to take measures to deal with the so-called American threats.

Mail Today April 23, 2018

Higher Defence Management with 'Indian Characteristics'

Are we now in the process of establishing a higher defence management system with ‘Indian characteristics’? This could well fit the description of the new Defence Planning Committee (DPC) headed by national security adviser Ajit Doval that was created recently.

According to reports, Doval’s new committee comprises the army, navy and air force chiefs, and the defence, expenditure and foreign secretaries. The chief of the Integrated Defence Staff would be its member secretary and the outfit its secretariat.

The DPC will author the country’s national security strategy, plans for building a defence manufacturing system and boosting defence exports, and prioritise capability development plans. These will be submitted to the defence minister who will presumably seek the approval of the Cabinet Committee on Security to authorise action on them.

The committee will have four sub-committees to look at four key areas – policy and strategy, plans and capability development, defence diplomacy and the defence manufacturing system.

The reports say that the committee will also prepare military doctrines and, in line with this, establish the strategic objectives of Indian military power. Future operational directives of the defence minister will emerge from the doctrine and strategy worked out by the committee.

Some have seen this as a revived version of the 1977 Committee on Defence Planning, but its roots lie in the Strategic Policy Group set up under the National Security Council in 1998. Formed to promote inter-ministerial coordination, the group comprised of the cabinet secretary, the three service chiefs, the key secretaries dealing with foreign, finance, defence and home affairs, as well as the heads of the intelligence services. For some reason, this body never really functioned effectively.

By creating a group with the NSA at its head, and a weak defence minister to take care of the legal issues relating to the cabinet, we have an institution that will not only  promote defence procurement, industry and exports, but provide higher strategic direction to the country. Its composition makes eminent sense since it is compact and national strategy requires effective use of all the instruments of national power. But it does beg a number of other questions.

Is it being seen as a substitute for the long-standing requirement for a chief of defence staff for the three services and the need for closer integration between civilians and uniformed personnel in the Ministry of Defence? The fact that the IDS headquarter is the anchor of the DPC would suggest that, indeed, that is what the government is thinking.

If  the DPC is just a band-aid to avoid deep restructuring and reform needed by the military system in the country, it could lead to trouble. Not in the least because of the fact that while they may hone the best national security strategy document, the military instrument they need to execute it may not function in the most optimal manner because it is in dire need of top-down reform.

For nearly 20 years, the system has been kicking two cans down the road. The first is called the “chief of defence staff” and the other “civil-military integration”. Two committees – the Group of Ministers in 2001 and the Naresh Chandra Committee in 2012 – felt that a CDS-like institution was vital to ensure the integrated functioning of the three armed forces. Further, they felt that for a more professional defining of the country’s security challenges and more effective ways of dealing with them, there was need for closer integration between the uniformed personnel and the civilians who ran the Ministry of Defence.

But the proposal has been resisted both by politicians and civilians in the government, primarily IAS bureaucrats. Their opposition has been subtle, since it is not based on any reasoned argument, but the belief that a CDS could diminish their power and pelf.

In his outstanding study on the Indian military and the state, Steven I. Wilkinson has shown that beginning with the 1950s, higher defence management in the country was deliberately structured “to minimise the risk of military intervention in politics”. Disappointingly, even by 2015 when his study was published, there had been no major change, even though such strategies were seen “as an increasing drag on the country’s military efficiency and antiterrorist strategies”. So India’s national security decision-making processes remain archaic, as indeed does its military organisation.

Could Doval’s new committee, then, be a creative answer to the gridlock that has prevented real reform in India’s higher defence management system? For the present we must keep an open mind – if only because there is no other alternative. The politicians and babus will never allow the CDS to come up, so, in lieu of it, we may as well as have Doval as the “CDS with Indian characteristics”, one who will not spook the system the way a military person seems to be able to do. But the proof of the pudding will be in its eating: The NSA will have to show that he can crack heads to push through needed changes in the system.

The country has lived with a higher defence management system with Indian characteristics for a while. Shaped by the experiences of the 1960s, this gave us a system where the military is kept out of the civilian decision-making system, while politicians steer clear of interfering in what are classed as purely operational or tactical affairs. Going by the experience of other countries, this is not the best way to manage the country’s higher defence management. Each country must follow its own path, provided it is able to achieve the ends it seeks.

Just what this “Indian” system is can be seen by the way we handle our nuclear deterrent. In contrast to other nuclear weapons states, India’s nuclear weapons are in the custody of civilians – the Department of Atomic Energy and the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO). It is only when it comes to delivery that the armed forces are involved through the Strategic Forces Command which are embedded within the military, but under the effective command of the NSA.

As Clausewitz put it, war is nothing but the continuation of politics with other means. The importance of close political supervision, if not leadership, in military affairs has always been important and has become even more salient in the contemporary era. Prime Minister Narendra Modi probably sees it instinctively, as evidenced by his use of the “surgical strikes” to corner Islamabad.

So if Modi wants to run the show through his NSA, it could actually have a positive outcome in certain areas by taming parochial interests in our governmental system. But they should not be under the illusion that the creation of the DPC will be a solution to all the ills that afflict our defence system. Reforming and restructuring our antiquated military and its command system is a problem in itself that would require several years, if not a decade, of work to overcome.

Then, having a national security strategy that is approved at the highest level would be a boon because it will get the whole system on to the same page in dealing with issues, but prioritising the challenges and, more importantly, reshaping the means with which to deal with them, require hard work and concentrated attention in the coming years.

Doval’s is an agile mind who has thought a great deal about some of the issues his new responsibilities will bring, especially defence research and industrial reform. But he is an extremely busy man. As of now, the NSA is not only the principal security adviser to the prime minister, but the effective supervisor of all three intelligence services. He has heavy foreign policy responsibilities, primarily those relating to Pakistan and China. He is also the head of the executive council of the National Nuclear Command Authority and in that sense, the custodian of the country’s nuclear deterrent.

So, the bottom line is: Will he be able to provide effective leadership for this new body, or only token authority ?

The Wire April 20, 2018

Bangladesh polls pose a challenge to regional stability

Elections are expected in Bangladesh soon, as by law they must take place between October 31 and December 31 this year. This is not an easy prospect either for Bangladesh or for its principal neighbor, India.

The previous general election in 2014 was marred by violence and was boycotted by the Bangladesh National Party (BNP). It saw a turnout of just 22%. The international community is hoping that the elections this time around are more credible and help stabilize the polity of this volatile country, which is witnessing the growth of Islamist radicalism.

This month, Indian National Security Adviser Ajit Doval traveled to Dhaka to attend the meeting of NSAs of the BIMSTEC (Bay of Bengal Initiative for Biodiversity and Economic Cooperation) countries. His visit was followed by that of Foreign Secretary Vijay Gokhale aimed at shoring up bilateral relations. India has old ties with the Awami League going back to the time the country fought its liberation war in 1971.

India suspicious of BNP

India’s perspectives on Bangladesh have been shaped by the experience of the governance of the BNP in the 1991-96 and 2001-06 periods, when Islamist militancy took root in the country and separatists and terrorists in India received covert Pakistani support as the Bangladesh authorities looked the other way.

Bangladesh is important for India for political, national-security and religious reasons considering that it borders no fewer than five Indian states. But it is no less important for the larger region and the world, given its large Muslim population that is being subjected to creeping radicalization.

Islamist groups such as Jamaat-e-Islami, Harkat-ul-Jihad al-Islami Bangladesh and Jamiat-ul-Mujahideen have been around for a while, and now Islamic State (ISIS) and al-Qaeda also claim a presence on its soil. And recent years have also seen suicide attacks.

For that reason, the prospect of any government other than one run by the Awami League and current Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina is viewed with some dismay by India. For the record, though, India insists it is neutral with regard to the two parties, and during her visit to the country last October, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj also met with BNP chief Begun Khaleda Zia and held talks with party officials.

Some Indian officials say that their experience of working with the Awami League government on issues relating to terrorism, radicalization and curbing the activities of third-country intelligence services has been positive. They say that Sheikh Hasina has been proactive in curbing Islamist extremism in her country, while claiming that the BNP has tolerated, if not encouraged, some Islamist elements.

Credibility at stake

Clearly, any fresh elections will have to meet the challenge of credibility. As of now the BNP has said it is willing to contest the next election, but preferably with a non-partisan election commission that would take charge of the government during the elections period. In fact, in recent months it has stepped up its campaign demanding that a caretaker government conduct the polls.

The BNP is banking on the anti-incumbency factor. By itself, it is not in particularly good shape to fight elections. Begum Khaleda Zia is embroiled in some 37 different cases relating to corruption and abuse of power relating to her two terms as prime minister, and the party is being led indirectly from London by her son Tarique Rahman.

In February, Begum Khaleda and her son were convicted in a corruption case involving embezzlement from a trust. Khaleda was sentenced to five years in jail. Though her party claims that the charges were a political vendetta, endemic corruption has been a factor in the poor performance of Bangladesh’s governments.

Her principal ally of the past, Jamaat-e-Islami, has been decimated by trials relating to its role in the Bangladesh war of independence in 1971. In any case, as of 2013, the Jamaat has been deregistered and cannot contest elections, though it still retains considerable street power through its youth wing, the Bangladesh Islami Chhatra Shibir.

Sheikh Hasina’s problems are, of course, the problems of incumbency, but also that her erstwhile ally, the Jatiya Party of former dictator Hussain Muhammad Ershad, has said it will seek to contest the election on its own. The Bangladeshi economy has done well under her watch, averaging 6.7% annual growth in the last four years and growing even faster than India in 2017. Yet there are persistent weaknesses in the government system that cannot be easily overcome.

In the current situation, the Bangladesh Army has so far remained non- political, but it did step in in 2006 to prop up a caretaker government for a period of two years before elections were held bringing Sheikh Hasina to power. The corruption charges against Begum Khaleda were actually filed by the caretaker government.

If there are serious questions about the fairness of the elections under the auspices of an Awami League government, there are chances that the Bangladesh Army will once again be brought in to provide the process credibility. But Sheikh Hasina has kept the army close to herself, doubling its size and providing a generous budget with which to equip itself and build new bases.

Geopolitical hot spot

The one-sided 2014 election, which some Western countries frowned on, provided Beijing with an opportunity to reach out to Dhaka. China has a growing interest in Bangladesh both as a means of containing India and for its strategic location at the head of the Bay of Bengal, proximate to Rakhine state in Myanmar, where it has significant investment and from where it has an important pipeline that avoids the Malacca Strait and transports oil directly to its landlocked Yunnan province.

While India has been Bangladesh’s longtime trade and aid partner, China has emerged as a serious rival. China, which has invested US$3 billion in the country since 2007, has been involved in building bridges, roads and power plants in the country. It is also Dhaka’s biggest supplier of military hardware.

In his October 2016 visit, Chinese President Xi Jinping promised $20 billion worth of investments in infrastructure. One analysis says that this could rise to $31 billion and that if the commitments are actually implemented, China could emerge as the largest investor by far in Bangladesh. India cannot match China, but it has upped its credit line to $4.5 billion, the highest it has offered anywhere.

The Rohingya issue has the potential to poison both Indian and Chinese relations with Bangladesh. On one hand, China has not permitted any condemnation for the Myanmar government’s role in triggering the exodus of Rohingya Muslims, and on the other, some in India remain concerned that the Rohingya will infiltrate into India in larger numbers and pose a threat.

The question for the rest of the world and, more important, neighbor India, is what does the future look like in Bangladesh?

The worst-case scenario is that the weakening of the parliamentary parties and the growing power of such groups as Hefazat Islam (Defenders of Islam), a network of madrassa leaders who oppose the establishment of a secular polity and want sharia rule in the country. As it is, Islamist ideologues have already succeeded in shifting the national narrative by rewriting textbooks to exclude non-Muslim writers and ideas.

In 2015-16, there were attacks on bloggers, academics and Hindus by Islamists. The Awami League government only began to crack down after the massacre in the Holey Artisan Bakery in July 2016. The other alternative is a military government, which the country has experienced several times in the past.

Bangladesh is in a relatively sweet spot, but with a big “if.” It has had an old history of Islamist radicalism, but the newer and more virulent forms of Islamism could tear the country apart.

Asia Times April 17, 2018