Modi needs to partner Advani

The tea leaves in the BJP cup are swirling far too fast to enable a tasseographer to read them. On one hand we are witnessing a ground swell of support for Narendra Modi across the party. On the other, we have key party allies like Nitish Kumar of the JD(U) making it clear that they could not accept the BJP's hriday samrat (emperor of hearts) as a future prime minister.
Even more striking is the fact that senior BJP leaders, too, are telegraphing contrary signals. On Monday, former Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha was explicit: If L K Advani was available to lead the party, the debate on the prime ministerial candidate of the party would be over. He was followed by Madhya Pradesh chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan, who declared that L K Advani was the party's "tallest leader".
It doesn't take a genius to figure out what he really meant. In that light, Delhi party chief Vijay Goel's "slip of the tongue" that the next government would be led by Advani "and nobody else" wasn't that much of a slip. There are a number of other leaders who have not yet spoken, but you can be sure that their silence speaks louder than their words.

The contenders: While some in the BJP say Narendra Modi (right)'s rise is irresistible, others believe veteran L.K. Advani remains the party's 'tallest leader'

Race

Given the circumstances, it would be redundant to ask whether Barkis is willing. There is nothing in Advani's statements and demeanour to suggest that he is not. And why not? He actually is the party's tallest leader, who has been at its forefront for decades and provided greater service to it than any other leader, including, arguably, Atal Bihari Vajpayee. Yes, at 85 he is old, and at an age where every year matters. But he is famously sprightly. And at a certain point in life, it is the genes that become the autopilot and so far they seem to be flying fit.
Modi's predicament should not surprise. He has two powerful things going for him: he is seen by the cadre as an exemplar of Hindutva politics, and second, he has a successful record as the chief minister of Gujarat. Maybe there has been some hype about his resume, but few can doubt that he has the leadership traits which appear to be deficient in the UPA - decisiveness and ambition.

 

Uncompromising: Critics like to paint Modi as an authoritarian figure

Not surprisingly for such men, he also has his faults. The very ego which drives him also appears to cloud his vision and makes him uncompromising and authoritarian. It also makes him a tad too forgiving of his supporters. Only that can explain his insistence on getting on board someone like Amit Shah, who is tainted by some very serious charges.
He may be innocent till proved guilty, but in politics, the usual practice is to assume guilt by association. At the end of the day, politics is the art of the possible. At this juncture it is a moot point as to whether Modi understands that. By demonising pragmatism and mocking at the formula politics of the day, he comes across as a radical who is basing his politics in the expectation that the Indian electorate is at the stage where it is ready to accept drastic remedies to its predicament.
However, that is not a given. We know that the people (read the middle classes) are fed up of the corruption, poor governance and incompetence that they confront in their everyday lives. But whether this class wants deep-seated changes is quite another thing.
Speaking of change, it is not at all clear whether the rural areas are in a mood for radical things. So an election outcome could well give the Congress a drastic haircut, without necessarily giving the BJP a hair implant.

Elections

We could see people turning away from expectations from the Union government and turning to their respective state governments for a resolution of their problems. This is where the likes of Nitish Kumar, Jayalalithaa, Mulayam Singh, Mayawati, Shivraj Singh Chouhan and Naveen Patnaik come in.
Having covered several general elections, this writer can testify to the fact that the contemporary observers almost always get it wrong. Perhaps it is because we are too immersed in the events to make an accurate judgment. Or, it could be that the electorate simply refuses to reveal its hand. The prospect of Narendra Modi as a prime ministerial candidate has definitely excited the party faithful, but it seems to have clearly divided its leadership.
Rajnath Singh can either enforce a purge and line the party behind Modi, or he can paper over the cracks and take a divided party into the elections. Either course could have deleterious effects on the BJP's prospects.

 

Compromise

There is another way out. Modi can team up with Advani. Even the supreme egoist that he is, Modi recognises that Advani stands much taller than him in the party. If there is one person he could work under in a putative BJP government, it would be Advani. He can play the quintessential party man and emerge as an acknowledged heir presumptive, much in the way Advani became one to Vajpayee.
Advani is 85, next year he will be 86, nothing can stop that. He could, given his present form, be prime minister for a decent interval of a year or two and then hand over the baton to a chosen successor. That way, the BJP could put up a united party to confront the UPA.
The alternate could well be an election in which the BJP campaign gets bogged down with backstabbing and sabotage.
Mail Today April 18, 2013

The record of our arms industry remains one of failure and disappointment

The report that Rajiv Gandhi was involved in promoting a Swedish fighter during the Emergency (1975-1977) should not surprise.
Thirty five years down the line it helps us locate the beginnings of the dysfunctionality of the country's military industrial complex which depends 70 per cent or more on imported products and components.
In themselves, the Wikileaks documents do not prove much, but they are the smoking gun that point to the manner in which decisions have since been taken despite spending hundreds of thousands of crores in trying to create a military industrial complex that services our huge requirements. 

The story line is not familiar to many. 

But by the time she declared Emergency, Indira Gandhi realised that she had carried the Left maneuver too far.
Indeed, she was convinced that the Nav Nirman agitations of 1974-5 were the handiwork of the Americans.
A course correction was needed, and one of its elements was to signal her intent by beginning to purchase defence equipment from the West.
This was the era of Sanjay Gandhi where deals and dealmaking was the norm - for projects, real estate development, you name it.
It is not surprising that the prospect of purchases from the West also attracted entrepreneurs, and who better than the elder son of the prime minister.
The Soviet equipment that India was getting was at throwaway "friendship" prices, so there was nothing to be skimmed off there, but five or six per cent from a western deal was eminently doable.
This was the template that was used, with the bulk of the money going not to the "agent" who represented the company, but to the political leader who had the power to ensure that a deal could, or could not, go through. 

The Wikileaks report suggests former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, who was in office from 1984 until he was killed in 1989, was involved in promoting a Swedish fighter during the Emergency in the mid-1970s 

The more recent AgustaWestland helicopter deal has suggested that money may have been made for every single import deal, barring the US FMS category.

All efforts to utilise deals to create a defence industrial base have failed on account of that reality.
They have done so not because Indians are bad managers and bad at learning technology, but because there have been powerful parties at work to ensure that we continue to import, so that they can get their cuts.
At first sight this would seem to be far too sinister an explanation for the phenomenon.
There is some truth in that.
It is not as though some politicians have sat together and conspired to sabotage indigenisation.
But the net effect of their policies have been that.
The demand for cash that all political parties have to contest elections has been the fountainhead that has created a bureaucratic, military and defence decision-making structure which ensures that we keep running at the same place when it comes to creating a vibrant military industry complex in the country.
While other sectors of the manufacturing industry, notably automobiles, have become world class, the record of our arms industry remains one of failure and disappointment.
Today we have 9 defence public sector units and 41 ordnance factories as well as the laboratories of the DRDO, all of which are reported to employ nearly 1.5 million workers, including 30,000 DRDO employees, of which 7,000 are scientists.
The Arun Singh Committee on Defence Expenditure was the first to point out the obsolescence of the Ordnance Factories and recommended the shutting down of five and letting the private sector handle items like clothing. To this we could now add trucks.
The premier Ordnance Factory, the Vehicle Factory Jabalpur is today merely assembling Ashok Leyland Stallion and Tata LPTA 713 trucks.
According to a report of the Boston Consulting Group, the annual output per employee in the Ordnance Factories and DPSUs is of the order of Rs 15.4 lakh against an average of Rs 30.4 lakh across the manufacturing sector.
Yet, in 2012-13 as much as Rs 556 crore had been allotted for overtime in the Ordnance Factories' budget. Take the case of the Tatra truck.

A CBI probe has revealed that Bharat Earth Movers Ltd (BEML) had in 1986 entered into an agreement with Tatra of the erstwhile Czechoslovakia for supply of Tatra T815 trucks.
Simultaneously, under the agreement, documents on technological know-how for manufacture of the trucks were also bought for Rs. 3 crore.
It was agreed that BEML would progressively indigenise the trucks and the target was fixed at 85 per cent indigenisation by 1991.
We know that none of these targets were attained and that in 2003, BEML actually surrendered the rights to make the axle; even today the level of indigenisation is of the order of less than 50 per cent.
More distressing, however, is the evidence which seems to suggest that the PSU managers were actually going out of the way to serve the interests of the foreign company, rather than the company they headed. Insiders will tell you that this is not as uncommon a phenomenon in our DPSUs and ordnance factories as it may seem.
The effort being made to thwart indigenous development is most obvious when it comes to shipbuilding.
India now has several private shipyards which can build world class ships and subs, but they have been assiduously kept out of naval projects.
And where permitted, they have been given marginal work.
And what is the result?
Indian warships are being built way over cost and time estimates.
The Godavari class took 72 months to be built and the Delhi class 114.
In US and Japan the norm is around 30 months.
Delhi may have been the first in its class, but sadly, the follow on Mysore and Mumbai also took 117 and 106 months respectively.

The Shivalik class which were contracted for 60 months, took 112 months.
Yet, all this has not moved the Cabinet Committee on Security, the Defence Minister or the babus of the defence ministry a whit.
No amount of reform or tinkering can fix this, only a paradigm change which must be led by the very people who have created the present paradigm - the political class.
India is expected to spend as much as $200 billion over the next 15 years in purchasing armaments.
There is little in the present experience which tells us that things will change in India.
Indeed, we could find that our next cycle of modernisation which will begin sometime in the mid 2020s, is once again based on imported products.

Mail Today April 10, 2013

India needs a federal foreign policy

The competitive populism in Tamil Nadu over the situation of Tamils in Sri Lanka has generated a great deal of alarm in New Delhi over the manner in which political issues relating to a State have begun impinging on India’s foreign and security policies. Though somewhat over the top, the Dravidian parties have a point, but a general one rather than the specific case they are advocating.

The general point is that in any country, the people have a right to advocate and push for a particular foreign and security policy. Given our linguistic, ethnic, religious and ideological divisions, these views often come across as those belonging to this or that section. That, too, is legitimate. But at the end of the day, this diverse country must have a single policy and its execution must be the responsibility of its federal government. 

Sectional interests

The government structure as such does not cater to these sectional interests; in other words, there are no constitutional or institutional mechanisms to relay those interests. So, with Union governments taking the form of coalitions, they have become vulnerable to party or sectional pressure which often takes the form of pure blackmail.

The withdrawal of the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam from the United Progressive Alliance government could be seen as being part of the rough and tumble of coalition politics. Actually, it is more likely that the party has used the Sri Lankan crisis to push for a separation from the UPA, because it is politically expedient for it to do so. After all, what is happening in 2013 — or even what happened in 2012 — is not the worst that has befallen the Tamils of Sri Lanka.

But with general elections looming, competitive populism seems to be ruling the roost. The DMK wanted the UPA government to pilot a resolution in the United Nations demanding an international probe into alleged war crimes tantamount to “genocide” in Sri Lanka. Then with Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J. Jayalalithaa joining the fray, the demands escalated — a boycott of the Commonwealth Heads of Government summit to be held later this year in Colombo, a ban on Sri Lankan players in the Indian Premier League matches in Tamil Nadu and an Assembly resolution asking the Union government to get the U.N. to create a separate Eelam in Sri Lanka.

The DMK and the All-India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam are only a more extreme manifestation of a trend we have been witnessing recently in India where coalition constituents and States are bringing foreign and security issues to the bargaining table. Actually, the leader of this pack has been the Indian Left for which the United States is a permanent anathema. This is what led to the crisis in UPA-I in 2008 when the Left pulled out of the coalition because it opposed the India-U.S. civil nuclear deal. This move of the Left was also pitched as much on its belief that nothing good could come out of an agreement with “imperialist” America, as its attempt to cloak the decision in the garb of attacking America for its anti-Muslim policies.

The next instance of this “State-first” approach occurred when West Bengal Chief Minister and then UPA coalition partner, Mamata Banerjee, opposed the river waters agreement with Bangladesh. In September 2011, on the eve of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s visit to Dhaka, the Union government was forced to call off the signing of a pact that would have ratified a formula for sharing the waters of the Teesta with Bangladesh.

The surprise entrant into this club was Narendra Modi who suddenly jumped into the Sir Creek issue on the eve of the Gujarat elections. In a letter to the Prime Minister, Mr. Modi said that not only should India not hand over the Creek to Pakistan, it should stop any dialogue with Islamabad on the issue. Any concession by New Delhi would affect Gujarat negatively.

In all four instances, it is possible to argue for a “Union of India” stand rather than that of the State or party in question. In Sri Lanka, the Government of India has had to balance its policies to ensure that Colombo does not drift towards Beijing and Islamabad. There also is the question of pushing resolutions on the territorial issues of other countries, having burnt our hands on the Kashmir issue once. Equally, resolutions on human rights in international bodies are a double-edged sword, especially given our own shoddy record in dealing with internal insurgency.

As for the Teesta issue, there were expectations that in exchange for the river waters treaty, Bangladesh would sign an agreement giving India transit rights to its land-locked north-east. Clearly, while West Bengal may have notionally given up something, there was the advantage of the greater good that would accrue, not only for the north-eastern states but West Bengal as well, through the increased commerce that would have resulted from a transit agreement.

In the case of the nuclear deal, too, the net gainer was India. It was the U.S. which had to abandon its sanctions regime against us and agree to allow civil nuclear commerce to resume with India. Given the balance of power in the international system, it was a deal only the U.S. could pilot — not France, China or Russia — though all of them had to finally put their stamp on it through the Nuclear Suppliers Group.

In Gujarat, the boundary between India and Pakistan on Sir Creek remains disputed and, as a result, the maritime boundary between the two countries has yet to be finalised. In this sense, India and Pakistan are both losers, not only because no one will invest in exploiting the natural resources from a disputed area, but also because they will lose out on the extended exclusive economic zone they can get under the U.N. convention on the laws of the seas.

Intersection of issues

Yet, there is a case for institutionalising the process of consultation and involvement of States which are affected by a particular foreign or security policy measure. Barring Haryana, Madhya Pradesh, Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh, all Indian States share borders with other countries, or with the international waters of the sea. In that sense, they have interests or issues that may intersect with the foreign and security policies of the country.

In recent times, we have seen how the politics of Kerala has impinged on a foreign affairs issue relating to two Italian marines. There is Jammu and Kashmir which still complains about the short shrift it got on the matter of river waters when the Union government signed the Indus Waters treaty with Pakistan. As for waters, the Chief Ministers of Bihar and Assam too have important issues which impinge on our relations with Nepal and China.

Among the various governmental systems, the U.S. is one in which the interests of its federal constituents are taken into account in the formulation and exercise of foreign and security policies. This was part of the large and small States compromise that resulted in its constitution. This enables its upper chamber, the Senate, to be the lead house on foreign policy issues — ratifying international agreements, approving appointments of envoys and so on. The Senate, as is well known, has a membership which is not based on population — each State, large and small, populous and otherwise, has the same number of Senators.

It would be difficult to graft something like the U.S. system on to the Indian system. Yet, clearly the time has come when Mizoram and Nagaland also have a say in India’s Myanmar policy, instead of merely having to bear its consequences.

(The Hindu, April 8, 2013)

China pivots to Russia

The new Chinese President Xi Jinping has wasted little time in conducting his own pivot - to Russia - in response to the much heralded American turn towards Asia. Geopolitically, the new Chinese-Russian entente harkens to the World Island of Sir Halford McKinder, which would dominate the world because of its location and command of the world's resources.
And which would more than offset the power of the outer or "insular" crescent stretching from Japan to the United States. Both geography and politics have dictated Xi's visit to Moscow, among the many agreements signed are those relating to China accessing the huge energy resources of Russia as well as those linked to arms transfers.
The politics, too, are quite easy to discern. China has deep economic linkages with the United States. But it also perceives itself to be a political rival of the Americans. 



As for Russia, under Vladimir Putin it has become more nationalistic and assertive abroad. It has clashed with the US on the issue of Georgia, on American ballistic missile defence systems in Europe, and on Syria and Iran.
Expectations of a "reset" in the presidency of Vladimir Medvedev have been belied, and his successor Putin harbours a deep suspicion of the US.
Last week, at the onset of Xi's visit to Moscow, ITAR-Tass news agency quoted Putin as saying that the relations between the two countries were helping to "shape a new, more just world order" and that Russia and China had shown a "balanced and pragmatic approach" to international crises, presumably in their opposition to the positions of the US and the west on Syria and Iran.
Xi, in turn, responded that he expected Russia to "strengthen coordination and interaction in tackling international and regional issues to ensure our common strategic security." 


 

Xi also underscored these remarks in a major speech at the Moscow Institute for International Relations, where he spelt out the current Chinese world view: "It will be impossible for any single country or country bloc to dominate international affairs".
In practical terms, China has worked out a series of energy agreements, which involve the doubling of oil supplies and the construction of a natural gas pipeline from Russia.
Additionally, there were agreements on developing Russian coal resources for the benefit of the Chinese.
These supplies will not only boost China's economy, but also its energy security, since the supply chains will avoid the maritime choke-points dominated by the United States and its allies.
Equally significant have been the two important arms sales agreements between the two countries - the first to purchase 24 Su-35 fighters and the second for 4 Lada class submarines - the first significant deals in a decade.
These deals have been in the making for the past six months and were signed on the eve of Xi's visit. But their announcement since then signifies a new turn in their arms transfer relationship.
In the 1950s, the Soviet Union supplied China the bulk of its military technology, but this ceased in the 1960s, and the Chinese subsequently reverse engineered many Soviet designs.
In the 1990s, following the collapse of the Soviet Union, a broke Russian arms industry offered China its cutting edge systems. 

Till 2001, 90 per cent of Chinese arms imports came from Russia. These included Tor M1 mobile air defence missiles, Mi-17 helicopters, Su-27 fighters, Sovremenny destroyers, S-300 SAMs, Kilo class submarines and so on.
In many instances, the Russians also transferred the technology of manufacture to the Chinese, who also acquired ex-Soviet systems from ex-Soviet countries like Ukraine.
Then there was a ten year hiatus in which the Russians stopped selling cutting edge systems to the Chinese because they were angered by the Chinese cloning their systems, as well as the fear that the Chinese could pose a military threat to a weakened Russia.
Moscow now seems to have calculated that China does not pose an immediate threat, that it seems to be focused on the East and South China sea for the near future.
Chinese money will help keep the Russian military industrial complex going, and Russia derives additional leverage with the West by opening up to the Chinese.
The new Chinese-Russian entente should certainly set alarm bells ringing in New Delhi. As a news report by SPS Pannu in Mail Today earlier this week pointed out, India is the loser in the growing China-Russia energy ties. New Delhi could also lose out in the emerging Russian-Chinese arms transfer relationship.
So far, India has held the technological edge in terms of the quality of its fighter aircraft. The SU-35 will begin to tilt the balance against us, unless we pay for the expensive upgrade of the SU-30MKI or begin receiving the Russian fifth generation fighters in significant numbers.
The Chinese-Russian entente could also mean that there could be an agreement for the supply of Russian engines for Chinese-designed and built fighters which would make them much more capable than they are at present.
The Indian subcontinent would seem to be an outlier when it comes to the geopolitics of Eurasia.
Even so, New Delhi needs to get its act together in formulating and executing its foreign and security policies for what is clearly a period of great change.
First and foremost, we need to shore up our relations with out neighbours where Beijing seems to be able to operate with great ease.
Then, we need to fix the new problem of our diverse states noisily undermining New Delhi's policies.
Both the United States and Japan offer India strategic openings to offset China's power in conjunction with a host of South-east Asian countries, who are wary of China's assertiveness.
Given their past relations the longevity of the Sino-Russian entente, too, is moot. Clearly, India is not entirely without options in this geopolitical competition, the only problem is to get New Delhi to play the game.
Mail Today April 1, 2013

'Chinese dream' will haunt the new world

On Saturday, China completed the process of its once in- a-decade leadership transition. It has been one of the smoothest transitions of leadership in recent decades.
Xi Jinping, who was elected General Secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) and Chairman of its Central Military Commission in November, has taken over as the President of the country, along with a new prime minister Li Keqiang and a council of ministers.
In taking over the three offices in such quick time, he has emerged as the most powerful Communist party boss since Deng Xiaoping. 


He has wasted little time in consolidating his authority. No doubt circumstances, notably the Bo Xilai affair and other corruption scandals have aided the process.
Though his first tour to the southern, economically vibrant zones, including Shenzhen was aimed at signaling his commitment to economic growth and reform, his most significant actions so far seem to have been in stamping his authority over the crucial pillar of the CPC - the People's Liberation Army (PLA) and the country's national security policy.
It was in this tour that he delivered a speech to senior PLA brass and party officials, where he stressed the need for "absolute loyalty" of the PLA to the CPC. Many western analysts have been pointing to the signs of the growing importance of the PLA and the role that it has played in the factional politics of the Chinese leadership.
In the four months that Xi has been in power, he has undertaken a largescale reshuffle of the top leaders of the PLA general staff departments, as well as the seven military regions.
Last month, the military authorities issued "Ten Regulations on improving the Work Style of the Army", aimed at checking corruption and high living among the mid and senior level officers.
Among its more draconian prescriptions is the banning of liquor from public functions. Senior officers have been asked not to talk out of turn, and get clearance from the Central Military Commission General Office before commenting on sensitive issues to the media.

 

Of greater significance, perhaps, was Xi's January visit to the Guangzhou Military Region - the one that fronts the South China Sea. According to observers, it was significant that the Chinese media described it as the Guangzhou "war theatre" rather than the "military region" that it is.
It was during this visit that the new General Secretary emphasised his requirements of the PLA, "We must ensure that our troops are ready when called upon, that they are fully capable of fighting, and that they must win every war".
This has rung alarm bells across the region because it breaks away from the anodyne statements that leaders make about the need for "readiness" in the armed forces, or their duty to "defend national interests."
All this has generated unease and indeed fear, among China's neighbours, particularly Japan. In recent months, China has stepped up pressure on the Senkaku islands, which it claims.
There has been an increase in Chinese air and sea activity in the seas around the islands, which are currently under Japanese control. Japan is a useful target for Chinese nationalism.
Given the history of the Japanese military invasions and atrocities, it is fodder to the ultranationalist forces in China.
Indeed, it was in the 1894-95 invasion of the country that Japan is alleged to haveto the post of the head of the CPC, Xi was given charge of the top interagency group, which had been oversee China's maritime disputes. So it is not without significance that it is since Xi took charge that the Chinese have been active in the Senkaku area.
But Japan is not the only target. In November 2012, China issued new regulations, effective January 1, which would allow the police of the Hainan prefecture to board and search ships, which in the Chinese views, were trespassing in their waters in the South China Sea.
This is bringing China's other neighbours in the region into a zone of tension. But the country most affected could be the Philippines.
But, both Japan and the Philippines could well be proxy targets because they are tied with the United States through Mutual Defence treaties.
The Chinese are playing this carefully. In December, they took their claims to the continental shelf of the east China sea (which affects the Senkaku islands) to the United Nations.
But it is the Philippines that is proposing arbitration on the South China sea. Whatever be the case, the bottom line here is that China has a new and vigorous leader who has made it clear that he is determined to outdo his predecessors and fulfill the "Chinese dream".
What kind of a world view constitutes that dream is not yet clear. But it has important consequences for peace, tranquility and prosperity of the world.
By ratcheting up tension, they are also causing alarm in other countries that use the busy South China Sea as the shortest and most convenient link between the Pacific and Indian Oceans.
The Chinese could well end up the losers as the countries affected could band together to offset Chinese aggressiveness.
Worse, it could well trigger off Japanese nationalism and rearmament. In great measure, this depends on whether the hard edge in Xi's positions are postures linked to a domestic debate within the party and the PLA, or they are what they say they are: an announcement that the world better get used to Chinese power.

Mail Today  March 17, 2013

India the soft state

(I had written this is January, but forgot to post it)


When  Swedish economist Gunnar Myrdal coined the phrase "soft state" in the early 1960s, he did have countries such as India in mind.
What he was speaking of was states that had low expectations from its citizens.
Today, the phrase is used to refer to countries like India in a different way - as states which, despite their size and power, are unable to exercise the influence that should by right be theirs.

India is larger than all the other South Asian nations combined, but despite its size and economy, it looks like a pitiable giant in the neighbourhood.
Whether it is Bangladesh, Sri Lanka or Nepal - leave alone Pakistan - cocking a snook at India is par for the course. 

 

India is larger than all the other South Asian countries combined

 
Take Sri Lanka, a country for whose security more than 1,000 soldiers and officers of the Indian Peacekeeping Forces (IPKF) laid down their lives.
Yet, today, Colombo keeps New Delhi at an arm's length and ignores the politically sensitive Indian concern over the rehabilitation of its Tamil minority.
This is despite a highly favourable free trade agreement that has increased commerce between the two countries manifold and promoted Indian investment in the island.

As for Nepal, not even the US and Canada have the kind of open border that India has with its northern neighbour, one that is of enormous benefit to the Nepalese.
Yet, every government that takes office in Nepal thinks nothing of playing the Chinese card against India.
With the Maoists having become an important force in the country, China's influence is likely to grow, though India has been diplomatically quite effective in checking this trend as of now.
India is not a small country - on a European map it would stretch from Minsk to Madrid. It has the world's largest standing army, and one of the larger air forces and navies.
Its economy is already eight times as large that of the next biggest country, Pakistan, and slated to get even bigger in the coming decade.
India's advantages are accentuated by geography and culture.
The former makes India the natural centre of the subcontinent - Bangladesh is virtually "India locked" as is Nepal because of the high Himalayas, and Pakistan is cut off from West Asia by turbulent Afghanistan and the deserts of Balochistan.
One important reason for India's inability to exercise its clout is that the smaller countries have, at various times, brought in effective "offshore balancers" to counter India.
The US played this role for a considerable period of time and this position now has been taken up by China.
With its export prowess, full coffers and a burgeoning arms industry, Beijing has the combination of "hard power" assets that effectively, and often, stymie India.

India, the quintessential soft state, is also a great soft power. With its movies, dress styles, cuisine, popular and high culture, free India is the cultural centre for a vast region extending from Jakarta to Cairo.
But translating soft power into purposeful policy is never easy. The bottom line for India is its inability to compete with China's hard power.
Its soft power advantages count for nought when Beijing has the ability to mount massive economic aid programmes, investments in infrastructure, and supply armaments without any concern for human rights and other such niceties.
This is what Beijing uses in the region. It has sharply stepped up its aid to Sri Lanka, investing heavily in building its infrastructure, as well as its armed forces.
Located where it is on the Indian Ocean, China clearly views Sri Lanka as an important component of its Indian Ocean strategy.
Economic ties between Bangladesh and China are substantive. But even more impressive are the military ties.
The Bangladesh Army is equipped with Chinese tanks, its Navy has Chinese missile boats and frigates, and its air force flies Chinese fighters.
But perhaps of greater significance is the fact that India's lumbering government is unable to provide the kind of inter-departmental coordination and sense of purpose that would result in effective policy abroad.
Its foreign service is pitifully small and there is a constant battle between the IAS-dominated Commerce Ministry and the Ministry of External Affairs.
As for arms exports, they are a non-starter, for the dysfunctional Indian defence industry can't even provide for our own armed forces.
The sad fact is that we have a governance system which finds it hard to exercise power within India, so where is the question of applying it abroad?

Mail Today January 13, 2013