US-China rivalry presages new world order

There is an element of lazy thinking when people describe the situation between the US and China as a new Cold War, thus connecting it with the binary competition between the erstwhile Soviet Union and the United States in the 1950s-1980s.

The US-China relations have been rocky since 2018 when the two sides began a tariff war and the US began to restrict the export of semiconductors to China. And then came Covid-19 and as the situation in the US deteriorated, the level of rhetoric against China began to rise. It has been primarily opportunistic, driven by the hope that attacking China could perhaps make the US electorate overlook the shoddy handling of the pandemic by the Trump administration. After all, consider that at the beginning of this year, the US and China had agreed to a Phase I trade deal which would have made them even bigger trade partners than they are.

But now, as the election approaches, it has become wholly political with a group of anti-China hawks led by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo launching a scorched earth policy that will ensure that a Biden presidency is not easily able to alter its trajectory.

This is a moment of great opportunity and risk for India. One of the important features of the current situation is a desire of the US to break some key technology links with China. Steps have already been taken in this direction and we can anticipate some more in the coming months.

Corporations and businesses are scrambling to anticipate the situation and are looking for alternatives. By virtue of its size and political orientation, India fits the bill. Political proximity to the United States is a plus. But the task of creating the physical and human infrastructure to receive this bounty is entirely ours and there are no signs that we understand this.

But there is risk as well. China is a powerful neighbour, belligerent of late, with whom we share a vast land border. In addition, China’s economic and growing maritime power makes it a player in our own South Asian and Indian Ocean region backyard. In that sense, in this ‘new’ Cold War, India is a frontline state and all the dangers that come with that status.

We need to carefully understand what this could entail. For example, while the US will encourage India to play a more active role in the South Africa-Indian Ocean Rim (SA-IOR) region, as well as in the western Pacific, it may not want to get involved in India’s Himalayan quarrels. Through an October 27, 1962 statement, the US recognised the McMahon Line as the international border, but it still views Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh as disputed areas. Whether the US would want to get militarily involved in any Ladakh situation is a moot issue.

Historical analogies are a useful device to understand a situation, but they are not exact. So, while the ‘new Cold War’ is a useful device to understand the situation, we also need to be clear in our own minds that it’s not quite a repeat of that past.

For one, it is not an ideological contest. We have capitalist America taking on a form of state capitalism in China. Neither is there military alliances arrayed against each other on a global scale. China hosts a great number of American industries, it owns a substantial portion of its debt, and in turn, the US hosts hundreds of thousands of Chinese students.

In terms of military power, the US is way ahead of China which does not have the kind of alliance system the US has. China does have substantial military capability, one which is growing, but it is essentially one that has application on its borders only. So yes, militarily, we need to be careful of China’s teeth along the Himalayan frontier and western Pacific, but that’s about it. And let’s be clear about one thing, communist or capitalist, authoritarian or democratic, China would behave in the same way. Like any power, it would be driven by its perception of national interests, not ideology. Pompeo’s claim that the struggle is between the free world and ‘new tyranny’ can hardly resonate in places like Brazil and India where the notion of liberties is increasingly narrowing.

We are actually in an entirely new era, where the old rules and blocs that governed the world order have gone. They were already coming apart before Covid, the process has now accelerated.

For the sake of peace and stability, which everyone needs, we need to reconstitute it. Whether it is arms control, confidence building measures (CBMs), security treaties, trading regimes, they have all frayed. Also, the country that played an out-sized role in creating and sustaining them has signalled that it is no longer interested in assuming the burden of hegemony.

The challenge is, therefore, to come up with a successor world order with new rules of the game. Experience tells us that they will not be simply multilateral regimes, there is room now for plurilateral alliances aimed at providing both security and economic benefits. And yes, Covid has taught us that we need to build in redundancy into the system so that it doesn't come apart the way it nearly did in February this year.

n this process, one set of problems and solutions may require one kind of a coalition, another set an entirely different one. Pompeo’s Manichaean struggle has no place in a world that needs more, rather than less, cooperation and collaboration. This was, if you recall, the very first lesson of the old Cold War.

Tribune August 5, 2020

https://www.tribuneindia.com/news/comment/us-china-rivalry-presages-new-world-order-122259

One Year On, Modi's Kashmir 'Master Stroke' Has Proven to Be a Massive Flop

On August 5, 2019, the Narendra Modi government revoked Jammu and Kashmir’s special status and statehood, dividing it into two union territories. In this series – ‘One Year in a Disappeared State’ – The Wire will look at what the last year has meant and what the region looks like now. 

It’s been a year now that the Bharatiya Janata Party government delivered its Kashmir “master stroke”. Just like the other “greatest hits” – demonetisation, Goods and Services Tax, the Christmas Day descent on Lahore, the 9 pm-9 minute lighting plan to destroy COVID-19 – the Kashmir one has also been a flop, if not disaster.

Yes, militant leaders have been eliminated and public protest and stone-throwing prevented. Figures show that the level of violence has not really come down. Data collected by the South Asia Terrorism Portal reveals that the levels of violence were coming down at the beginning of this decade, with the lowest point reached in 2012 when 19 civilians, 18 security personnel and 84 terrorists/extremists killed. But in just eight months of 2020, 17 civilians, 34 security personnel and 154 terrorists/extremists have been killed.

It is convenient to blame Pakistan for the continuance of violence in the state, but the reality is that the August 5 decision has only increased the recruitment of locals into the separatist militancy. Pakistan, if anything, is playing a waiting game.

It is difficult to describe what happened in Jammu and Kashmir as anything else but political vandalism. A state which was part of the Union under very difficult and dangerous circumstances, was demoted and ripped apart through questionable legal means.

The highest court of the land has yet to hear the urgent issue of the constitutionality of the J&K Reorganisation Act, as well as a slew of petitions relating to the detentions of various leaders, the withdrawal of 4G services and the misuse of draconian preventive detention legislation.

Even today, we have no answer as to why this happened, other than the fact that the BJP’s founding ideology says that Article 370 needs to be removed. But the demotion of a state to Union territory status? Was this not something purely punitive? Manifested by the detention of mainstream Kashmiri leaders ranging from the pro-BJP Sajjad Lone, to the former political ally of the BJP Mehbooba Mufti and the Abdullahs – politicians who have upheld the Indian flag in the state under extremely trying circumstances. In one fell stroke, the entire spectrum of Kashmiri political opinion was declared hostile.

All this happened without any form of consultation with the people of the state, either directly through a referendum or through its elected representatives in the state legislative assembly. The notion that the Delhi-appointed governor somehow represented the 7.5 million people of the state is laughable.

Rajasthan is the latest example of how the combination of the executive and judiciary are working to deprive the people of the country of their democratic rights and processes. On one hand you have the governor preventing the elected state assembly from convening, and on the other you have the judiciary blocking moves to implement the anti-defection law.

And just why did Modi decide on this master stroke? The only answer is narrow political gain. It had nothing to do with terrorism, since all the indicators show that militancy and terrorism had been declining in the state since the mid 2000s. It had nothing to do with Pakistan, whose influence in the affairs of the state, too, had been declining.

But at what cost? The whole state has been imprisoned for the past year, deprived of political rights, modern means of communications, the internet. The reality is that protest has been contained simply because the state has become a large jail. Locking everyone up can be a strategy to fight crime, but with everyone in, on whose behalf are you fighting crime, anyway? Alarmingly, what is happening in Kashmir does have unpleasant echoes of China’s Xinjiang policy.

The army and the paramilitary forces remain a major presence, with their numbers boosted since last August. The media functions under a censorship regime, more draconian than the one that operated in the dark days of the insurgency in the early 1990s. The economy of the state is, of course, devastated. And what can one say about the judicial system when just last week, the J&K administration extended the detention of People’s Democratic Party leader and former chief minister Mehbooba Mufti by another three months – she has been held since August 5 last year – even as her petition challenging the detention has been pending with the Supreme Court since February this year?

Since the mid-1950s, the reality has been that Article 370 was something of a bogeyman. It had been systematically hollowed out by various presidential orders over the years. In the process, J&K became more closely integrated to the country. The process was long drawn out, as it should have been, given the background of the state’s accession to the Union. But the BJP saw the need to remove the article as an exercise in political showmanship aimed at signalling their animus against Muslims in the country. Now, a fraudulent delimitation of exercise is planned to gerrymander the state’s constituencies so that the salience of the Valley, which is Muslim-majority, is reduced, if not eliminated.

The whole notion that the demotion of the state was aimed at promoting economic growth is looking like a cruel joke. But it will be easy to blame COVID-19 for it. All the talk about companies fighting with each other to invest in the Valley is a chimera. In the present situation, Kashmir is simply not a place anyone would want to invest in, with or without the coronovirus.

Also read: A Year Without High-Speed Internet Has Been a Nightmare for J&K’s Entrepreneurs

Having put the entire Kashmiri political class on the other side of the pale, the government is now left with no alternative but to carry on with its repressive policies. An effort to create a new level of political discourse through panchayats has been a failure. The reality is that we have an angry and sullen population in the Valley.

Notwithstanding its hollowing out, the Kashmiris were content with the fig-leaf of “specialness” that Article 370 provided. Wanting to feel special is not something unusual in India. Several states in the north-east get special treatment under Article 371.

Actually, the issue is about the idea of India. It is one thing to celebrate the diversity of the country and encourage the self-esteem of the people by celebrating their uniqueness, and quite another to iron out all the differences into one uniform Hindi-speaking Hindutva nation with one history, one culture and one leader that the BJP seems to be wanting to do.

The Wire August 4, 2020

https://thewire.in/politics/narendra-modi-kashmir-master-stroke

Japan-S Korea rift worsens

Is the US-Japan Free and Open Indo-Pacific (FOIP) strategy coming apart from the very top? Unnoticed in India, and not commented on by our Foreign Ministry officials, is the serious crisis that has erupted between South Korea and Japan that is escalating by the day.

Both countries are important friends of India and have a major economic presence in the country in a range of areas relating to technology. They are also key military allies of the US and as such part of its ‘security network’ aimed at containing China.

It began with the Japanese imposing restrictions on three key products and has now escalated to both countries declaring that they will impose a wider set of restrictions on technology exports to the other.

At the root of the problem lies the old issue of forced labour and sexual slavery during Japan’s colonial rule of the Korean peninsula between 1910 and 1945. South Korean Supreme Court rulings in 2018 reopened what Tokyo thought was a closed issue after the agreement of 1965 through which South Korea had been given $500 million in financial aid.

In early July, Japan said it would restrict the exports of three critical materials needed in the manufacture of semiconductors and display panels for smartphones and TVs. Japan said this was aimed at preventing their illegal diversion to North Korea, but this was clearly aimed at the court decisions relating to forced labour.

Instead of using his electoral victory in the Upper House elections in July to get over the quarrel, Abe doubled down on the confrontation and has now revoked South Korea’s preferential status as a trusted trade partner. In early August, Abe’s Cabinet passed an order excluding South Korea from a ‘white list’ of 27 countries that are able to buy Japanese products that could be diverted for military use. Both these measures would have a severe effect on South Korea’s world-class technology industry. Semiconductors made in South Korea are used in Chinese and Japanese branded smartphones and displays are used by iPhones and TV sets of various brands.

In turn, Seoul removed Japan from its own list of preferential trade partners relating to strategic materials management which comprise of Japan and 28 other countries.

An anti-Japanese movement has emerged in South Korea where consumers have organised a boycott of Japanese products and services. Its leaders have been invoking nationalistic rhetoric to declare that they would not allow Japan to defeat the country again.

Even while the two squabbled, Russian and Chinese jets carried out their first joint patrol in the airspace near an island that is contested between South Korea and Japan. That same week, North Korea conducted a test of short-range missiles as a warning to the South, accusing it of acquiring new weapons like the F-35 fighter and planning military exercises.  

And what of the US? Washington is the security provider to its military allies Japan and South Korea and ought to be the go-to country to resolve issues between them. But Washington seems to be strangely disinterested. Trump says he would act if both asked him to do so, and Secretary of State Pompeo made a perfunctory effort at mediation at an ASEAN meeting last week.  

In all this mess, the US is creating its own complications and seems to be more focused and getting Tokyo and Seoul to shell out more money to pay for the non-personnel costs of stationing American forces in their country.

According to a report, the US has sought a five-fold increase in Tokyo’s contribution,  a figure that could actually exceed the cost of stationing the forces in the first place. The US is also putting the squeeze on the Koreans. It wants South Korea to provide $5 billion for stationing American troops in the country, a steep hike of over $4 billion from the $920 million that the Koreans currently pay.

In recent weeks, the bemused South Koreans and Japanese have been confronted with a situation where a US President not just condones a set of missile tests conducted by North Korea in violation of UN sanctions, but says everything is going fine in his dealings with Kim Jong-un.

The US is worried now that the two may cancel an intelligence-sharing agreement they reached in 2016. The General Security of Military Information Agreement (GSOMIA) aids three-way intelligence sharing and is important for the US and its security posture in the region.  

Just by the way, the US has also opened up another front with the South Koreans and the Japanese in the Persian Gulf. After ratcheting up tensions with Iran, it has been pushing them to join the naval coalition to safeguard their oil supplies.

The bigger question perhaps is whether Trump himself has bought into the FOIP. By his words and deeds it would seem that he is not particularly interested in fulfilling the traditional American role of a global leader, leave alone a security provider. Sure American officials like Mike Pompeo periodically tour Asia and speak about the importance of the Indo-Pacific strategy. But their boss is following his own drum and they are doing little when one of its principal architects, Shinzo Abe has adopted a course that will undermine it.

Both countries are important partners of India. Japan is our principal source of official development assistance and the technology firms of both countries are important for our consumers, as well as any putative ‘Make in India’ strategy.

The Tribune August 6, 2019

For China, Pullback Is ‘Done’. Will India Raise Diplomatic Costs?

The remarks by China’s ambassador to India, Sun Weidong, in New Delhi on Thursday, 30 July, and those of the official spokesman of the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Wang Wenbin, in Beijing on Tuesday, suggest that in China’s view, the ball is firmly now in the Indian court.

Speaking at a webinar organised by the Institute of Chinese Studies on Thursday, Ambassador Sun declared that China’s troops were on its side – ‘traditional customary boundary line’ – on the north bank of the Pangong Tso. Ergo, he seemed to imply, where was the question of ‘disengagement’?

Also Read

What’s The Broader Import Of The Chinese Statements?

On Tuesday in Beijing, the foreign ministry spokesman had said that its troops had “disengaged in most localities” and were preparing for the fifth round of the Corps Commander-level meeting “to resolve outstanding issues on the ground.”

Responding almost immediately to the Ambassador’s remarks, the Indian official spokesman, Anurag Srivastava, said that while there had been some progress, “the disengagement process has as yet not been completed.”

The broader import of the Chinese statements are difficult to miss.

From their point of view, disengagement is an almost done thing, and if New Delhi thinks otherwise, the onus is on it to do what it can.

(Photo: Google Earth / modified by Manoj Joshi)

Sun’s description of the background of the Galwan Valley clash can only heighten concerns in India, that Beijing is seeking to alter the LAC, no matter what it formally says. Following the meeting of the Corps Commanders on 6 June, the Chinese ambassador said, “the Indian side committed that they will not go… across the water mouth of Galwan Valley to patrol…”

He said on 15 June, that the Indian troops ‘disregarded’ the 6 June ‘consensus’, and “went across the LAC again”.

This is then another example of an expanded Chinese claim, considering that the LAC is a good 6-7 km from the mouth of the Galwan or the Galwan estuary, as the Chinese have been putting it.

Clearly, The Chinese Are In No Mood To Go Back

By China’s own 1960 description, its ‘traditional and customary’ boundary should pass through Finger 5. Chinese officials said that their boundary crosses the northern shore of Pangong at 78° 49’E, 33° 44’N, and the southern shore at 78° 43’E, 33° 40’N.

Instead, it is staking a claim till Finger 2, which is a good 15 km from the present claimed LAC, and another 5 km or so from where their original claim ran.

Traditionally, though maps like Google Earth show both the Chinese and Indian versions of the LAC, the fact is that till now, both have patrolled to their extent of the LAC. Now, the Chinese have created blockades at Finger 4, preventing the Indian troops from patrolling up to their claim line.

The same is true of another area which somehow evaded discussion at the webinar – Depsang. Here, a Chinese blockade at bottle-neck or Y point has prevented Indian troops from patrolling tens of kilometers of territory that India claims in a very sensitive area.

(Photo Credit: The Quint)

Clearly, the Chinese are in no mood to go back. What they want, as they once did earlier in 1960, is to insist on status quo, studiously avoiding any move towards status quo ante.

• 
  
• From the Chinese point of view, disengagement is an almost done thing, and if New Delhi thinks otherwise, the onus is on it to do what it can.
• What the Chinese want, as they once did earlier in 1960, is to insist on status quo, studiously avoiding any move towards status quo ante.
• The choices before India are obvious.
• We can persist with diplomacy, and by raising the diplomatic costs to China, persuade Beijing that a return to the positions of April 2020 is in its interests as well.

The Choices Before India Are Obvious. What Are They?

Just to make sure that we have actually had the door being slammed shut, Ambassador Sun also rejected the notion of clarifying just where the LAC runs. This, he said, somewhat disingenuously, could “create new disputes”.

He seems to have completely forgotten that China committed itself to clarifying the LAC through no less than three solemn agreements — the Border Peace and Tranquility Agreement of 1993, the 1996 agreement on CBMs in the Military Field, and the 2005 Agreement on the Political Parameters and Guiding Principles for settling the boundary issue.

The choices before India are obvious.

We can persist with diplomacy, and by raising the diplomatic costs to China, persuade Beijing that a return to the positions of April 2020 is in its interests as well. 

After all, it did take several years before we could get China to vacate Sumdorong Chu.

The other and somewhat uncertain option is to use force. The problem before India is that none of the areas affected are so important that it can contemplate war for them easily. At the same time, it is confronted with the classic dilemma of an adversary using salami tactics, where each cut seems minor, but at the end of the day you end up losing something significant.

The Quint July 31, 2020   https://www.thequint.com/voices/opinion/india-china-disengagement-process-galwan-clash-line-of-actual-control-indian-diplomacy-options?#read-more

China’s hierarchy of nations

The talks on restoring status quo ante in eastern Ladakh have yet to yield significant results. There has reportedly been disengagement in the Galwan area, but the more serious Pangong Tso and Depsang incursions have yet to be terminated.

Meanwhile, India must grapple with the consequences of the collapse of the regime that largely maintained peace and tranquility along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) and possibly its larger relationship with its huge northern neighbour, China.

Given the asymmetry of the terrain and logistics, we need to ensure that there are no repetitions of the Chinese moves that have taken place in the recent months. Stopping them from intruding into Indian territory is infinitely more preferable, and doable, than trying to uproot them from the positions they have occupied. This has been the long lesson the country has learnt since 1951. Meanwhile, the bigger challenge is to figure out the new trajectory of our relations with China.

First, we should try to figure out why the Chinese have done what they did. It could simply be a bit of Covid-19 opportunism — after all, China, the first country to be infected, has also successfully pulled out of it and has got its economy going again. As in the case of the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) of 2008, its power relative to that of the others could grow in the coming period.

It could also be a consequence of the astounding abandonment of global leadership by the US generally, and more specifically during the Covid crisis. The chaos and confusion in the US is a perfect opportunity to be exploited. More so because the country is up for elections this year and the incumbent President is hitting out blindly as he senses he may lose to his Democratic challenger.

This could explain their simultaneous moves across their periphery — in the South China Sea, with Japan in the East Sea, raising the eastern Bhutan claim, the crackdown in Hong Kong and the actions in eastern Ladakh. This is a perfect moment for staking out their primacy in Asia. Kurt Campbell and Mira Rapp-Hooper argue that the foreign policy of restraint introduced by Deng Xiaoping is at an end. ‘China is done biding its time’ is the suggestive title to their recent article in Foreign Affairs.

The Chinese are driven by a sense of history, and they see their dominance as the natural order of things. Their view of the world is that harmony is a consequence of every country accepting its place in a system, which is hierarchical. This was perhaps best put in their White Paper on Asia Pacific Security Cooperation in 2017, which observed that ‘Major countries should treat the strategic intentions of others in an objective and rational manner… (while) small and medium-sized countries need not, and should not, take sides among big countries.’ In the document, China listed four ‘major’ countries in a hierarchical manner — the US, Russia, India and Japan. Indonesia, Vietnam, Pakistan, or Australia did not figure on the list.

The first thing that Xi Jinping did when he came to power was to talk of a ‘New Model of Great Power Relations’, a kind of code to get the US to accept a sort of a condominium or a ‘group of two’ (G2) arrangement. This proposal began to do the rounds in the US following the GFC, with people like Zbigniew Brzezinski and C Fred Bergsten advocating it.

But the Chinese misread the American mood and Obama was cold to the proposal when Xi brought it up at the Sunnylands summit in 2013. The New Model was all about getting the US to accept China as an equal which, in turn, would signal an acceptance of Chinese dominance in the western Pacific. Instead the US began to talk about the ‘pivot’, which later became the Indo-Pacific policy.

Though it spoke of a new model of major power relations, the Chinese were only thinking of the US, and most certainly not India. As a large and populous country, we are a bit of a conundrum for China. Where could we figure in the hierarchy? Besides, we have the economic and military potential to match up to, or even beat China.

So, Chinese policy has been concentrated on containing India’s rise however it can. Formally, Beijing professes friendship and cooperation with India, but in practical terms, all it has needed is a Pakistan to keep us off balance. Our own policy of relentless hostility towards Islamabad, of course, aids this mission. And our incompetence with neighbours like Nepal and Sri Lanka compounds our problem.

As of now, we are only a potential equal. China’s economy is nearly five times the size of India’s, and its military much more powerful. They could yet overreach and crash, but let’s not depend on that and work at some self-help.

The challenge for Indian policy is to be able to reduce these asymmetries. This is not something a friendly Uncle will help us do — we need to relentlessly grow our economy, enhance our diplomatic performance and be far more focused. This cannot happen overnight, or even in one prime ministerial term. It requires systematic short to medium-term planning and effort, beginning now. As our trendlines start arching upwards, we will get the payoffs in the form of better Chinese behaviour on our borders.

The Tribune July 21, 2020 

https://www.tribuneindia.com/news/comment/chinas-hierarchy-of-nations-115813

D-10: Sense of Déjà vu: Before India joins other democracies, whither democracy in India?

The UK has rejected Huawei as a 5G partner, and says that it is now forging an alliance of ten democracies (D-10)  to create alternative suppliers for 5G and other technologies from China.   And, surprise, surprise, a major role is being envisaged for New Delhi in this venture. There’s nothing like a bit of anti-Communism to get the blood rush of the UK-US alliance  going, and so since the old G-7 has refused to take life, a D-10 has been trotted out, with opposition to Huawei’s 5G acting as the cement. As the global hegemon, the US doesn’t want any other country, especially, a non-Western one, to lead in a foundational technology like 5G.  As for the UK, till as recently as January, its intelligence agencies were certifying that the risks of dealing with Huawei were manageable. So what’s going on here?

Covid has, of course, addled things, but the UK also wants to leverage a leadership role for Brexited Britain. Countries fixated on “grand strategies”, like the US and Australia, want to use the denial of India’s huge market to strangle the rise of Chinese technology.  There should be a sense of deja vu here. In the 1950s and 1960s the UK and US saw us as an answer to Communist China’s growth model.  India never did live up to its role and set off on its own course, throwing off the Anglo-American embrace.

“Democracy” in India doesn’t quite mean the same thing it does in London or Washington. It remains a long work in progress. Whether it’s in governance institutions, caste or communal equations or  police and legal institutions, large areas of iniquity and inequity remain. Our variant is  an electoral democracy which  holds periodic elections and gives us successive governments which haven’t quite yielded economic and social justice, leave alone decent governance. Democracy is working well elsewhere, but our place in the D-10 is really honorary,  occasioned by the geopolitical needs of the UK, US and other countries.

Democracy with Indian characteristics comes with a dash of authoritarianism. It’s about politically motivated IT raids on the Opposition in Karnataka and Rajasthan, or the fine of Rs 84 crore  on PTI, India’s largest news agency, on  account of its interview of the Chinese ambassador. Or the numerous people incarcerated on political grounds across the country and charged under the colonial statute of sedition. The biggest  blot on the Indian “democratic” system is its police. The Delhi Police’s shoddy handling of the violence against Muslims in the wake of the CAA protests in January shows that the institution had learnt nothing and forgotten nothing from its cringe-worthy handling of the 1984 Sikh massacres. Instead of insisting  on, and advancing, the rule of law, political leaders in the country have given the police a free rein to conduct extra-judicial killings.

Now even electoral democracy is eroding. Nothing could be more emblematic than Ashok Lavasa’s decision to become one of the vice-presidents of the ADB, forgoing the option of becoming the Chief Election Commissioner of India next  year. Like Lavasa, others have  thrown in the towel too – sections of the media, parts of the judiciary and  bureaucracy.

BJP alone is not responsible for this situation. Political corruption, extra-judicial killings, tax harassment, have  been around for a long time. But under the current government the situation seems to be in free fall. There appears to be little concern, even at the highest echelons, at the propriety of defectors becoming ministers,  encounter killings, incarceration without trial, or the undermining of the media. Upholding political morality and respecting due process are part of the immune system that protects the body politic of a democracy. Wantonly weakening it is to invite disease and destruction.

As for our geopolitical concert of democracies, given India’s Covid-19 situation and alarming economic situation, there are issues that New Delhi ought to focus on other than external ventures.  The crisis we face is not going away, notwithstanding the concerted spin. Along with our economy, our democracy is going under. We’re not even flailing our hands to stay afloat.

Times of India, July 18, 2020

https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/blogs/toi-edit-page/d-10-sense-of-deja-vu-before-india-joins-other-democracies-whither-democracy-in-india/