China seeks rekindling of Indian ties

Despite its economic problems, or perhaps, because of them, India is in a geopolitical sweet spot these days. Countries like Japan, China, the US and the European Union look at India and see a country which is on the threshold of something big economically.

Inevitably, given New Delhi's inclination, this will translate into greater political and diplomatic heft within the South Asian region and beyond.

An element at play here is that India has a new government, one that wants to make a break with the pas sive restraint of the UPA years.

Underscoring this is the fact that it has a leader who is billed as a strong and decisive figure. 

China's Foreign Minister Wang Yi's visit to Delhi shows how keen the Chinese are to do business with Modi

Just what is not clear as yet is the direction that India will take. The initial moves of the Modi government have given some indicators, such as that it will anchor its foreign policy on strong regional moorings. But there is, as yet, nothing beyond that.

Autonomous

The Union budget presented by Finance Minister Arun Jaitley has not provided any substantial hint as to whether the government intends to provide the overhaul that the system needs, or will be content to just tinker with it till it establishes itself within the country by consolidating itself politically in key states where it made a breakthrough in the Lok Sabha elections – Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh.

Meanwhile New Delhi has not lacked for suitors. We have had the Chinese, the Americans and the Europeans calling. The initial contacts are by way of feeling out the lay of the land.

For many of his foreign interlocutors, Modi is an unknown quantity, as are his colleagues in the Union Cabinet. He has promised change, and displayed the ability to deliver it as the Chief Minister of Gujarat.

Still, the chief ministership, albeit of an important state, cannot quite reveal the flavour of the man who is now the prime minister of India.

For the present, Chinese president Xi Jinping will have the advantage over other leaders. Having sent his foreign minister Wang Yi to New Delhi within weeks of the new government taking over, he will meet Modi on the sidelines of the BRICS summit and later, this year, he will visit New Delhi.

After brooding over the Indo-US nuclear deal, the Chinese seem to have veered around to the view that India has an autonomous foreign policy and it has no inclination of becoming part of a US-led containment of China.

Last week in China, this writer had the opportunity to meet a cross-section of policy-makers, think tank-wallahs and officials. The uniform impression was that Beijing senses an opportunity with Modi, in that he does not have the "historical baggage" of either the Congress or the BJP establishment.

However, the invitation to Lobsang Sangay, the head of Tibetan government-in-exile for his swearing in has definitely jarred. Characteristically, officials steered cleared of this issue, but some think tank scholars did raise it.

 Opportunity

Just as no US-led balance of power system to check China will work minus India, likewise no Chinese effort to keep the US at an arms length in Asia will work minus India's cooperation.

But the one problem that the Chinese have is the unsettled border between China and India which limits the relationship that can be forged. No matter how many agreements and codes of conduct are worked out, an undemarcated border provides for multiple points of friction.

The repeated emphasis of many Chinese officials was on the need to strengthen "strategic communications" between the two countries and to reduce the "misperceptions and mistrust".

But the Chinese know well that it is not the mistrust that matters, but the political will and ability on both sides to push the relations in a desired direction.

After all in the 1970s there was no lack of mistrust between the US and China, but what they did have was the political will to push on with the rapprochement because of a perceived common threat from the Soviet Union.

So, the question is: What can drive the Sino-Indian entente? Economic growth? A desire to rework the global order?

As it is, there is a lot to keep them apart. The disputed border is an obvious problem area, but so are Beijing's activities in our South Asian neighbourhood.

Speculation

China has its own goals in South Asia which go beyond ties with New Delhi. It is part of its vision of an America-mukt Asia where by virtue of its economic and military might, it will be number one.

China would be happy to provide investments in India and tap into the huge Indian market, but it is unlikely to cede the South Asian strategic space because that is part of its building blocks that link with Central Asia, Persian Gulf region and South-east Asia, and eventually to primacy in Asia.

There is a lot of sloganeering about how there is enough room in the world to accommodate a rising China and India.

But a realistic perspective of international relations would reveal that eventually it is about being number one.

Currently, China is seeking to displace the US in the regions adjacent to itself. Look at a map, and you will see that India, too, must figure in that strategy. The big question that everyone is pondering about is: What does India want?

As of now, as we noted, that is not clear. So far New Delhi's strategy of passive restraint matched its poor economic performance. But if its economy begins to take off and it is able to overhaul its dysfunctional military system, it can emerge as a formidable second pole of the Asia-Pacific region, maybe just a shade inferior to China.

But for the present all this is speculation, India refuses to reveal its hand, and thereby the sweet spot. 
Mail Today July 15, 2014

Strong ties with Uncle Sam in India's interest

Ever since he became prime minister, there has been speculation about the relationship between Narendra Modi's government and the US. Modi's personal relationship with the US has not been happy. In 2005, not only was he denied a diplomatic visa to the US, but the normal B1/B2 visa issued to him earlier was also withdrawn under a 1998 US law which bars entry to foreigners who have committed "particularly severe violations of religious freedom". This was done at the behest of a number of US Congress members and NGOs who campaigned against him because of the issues arising from the massacre of Muslims in Gujarat following the Godhra killings.

But in the months leading up to his historic sweep of the Lok Sabha, Modi made several statements indicating that he would put national interest ahead of any supposed personal pique in relation to the US. In one interview he termed India and the US "natural allies", in a formulation that had been first made during the prime ministership of Atal Bihari Vajpayee. Modi also noted that it was Vajpayee who laid the foundation for a new era of partnership with the US, so "we will build upon that and take it forward".
Given his personality, no matter what he says, Modi is not likely to forget the slight of the US visa denial easily. But, no matter what he may feel or believe, it would be difficult for Modi to ignore the US. As of now, it remains the world's most formidable military and economic power - one that can harm us, if it chooses, but also help us, if it wants to.
Actually, Modi's personal issue is just one aspect of the poor relations between India and the US in the past couple of years. A lot of work needs to be done in Washington and New Delhi to undo the era of bad feelings.
The process seems to have begun in right earnest in a succession of American visits, beginning with that of influential Senator John McCain, followed by that of Deputy Secretary of State William Burns. There have been a number of other visits by lower-level delegations from the departments of defence and commerce, as well as a slew of think tanks. Now, Modi has accepted an invitation by US President Barack Obama for an official visit to Washington in September. Officials are emphasising that this is a special event and not a byproduct of his visit to New York to attend the UN General Assembly.
Like China did in the early 1980s, India needs to exploit the opportunity of good relations with the US to become a stronger economic and military power. Indeed, as a decisive leader, Modi could well transform the relationship with the US and enable it to reach its full potential. The Chinese are also aware of this and are wooing New Delhi frantically. But as long as the border dispute between the two countries remains unresolved, there is a limit to which Sino-Indian relations can grow.
Mail Today July 15, 2014

Read more at: http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/narendra-modi-barack-obama-william-burns-us-india-ties-modi-visa-row-washington-new-delhi-ties/1/370933.html

How central planning has groomed China

Traveling to China is always a somewhat depressing experience for an Indian of my generation. That is because till my middle-age, both were what was unfashionably called underdeveloped countries and today it would seem that China is another planet.

In 1990, China’s GDP was roughly the same as India’s and parts of its infrastructure, such as its railway system, were considered inferior. Today, China’s GDP is around $9 trillion and India’s is $2 trillion.

Last week when I rode the high speed train travelling at 300 kph from Shanghai to Beijing, the extent to which China had pulled away from India hit home again.

While China is evolving with central planning, the Modi govt is planning to do away with the Planning Commission. Pic/PTI

The railway station was little different from the Shanghai Hongqiao International Airport terminal next door. The train was, of course anything beyond what you get in India. On the 1,500 km track from Shanghai to Beijing there were no signs of the distressing poverty an urban squalor you see in India.

This brings me to the main subject of this column which is the talk about how the new Modi government is planning to do away with the Planning Commission. The body is viewed as being archaic talking shop used to park loyalists.

But just what sophisticated central planning can do is visible in China. Despite talk of increasing marketisation of the Chinese economy, there should be no doubt that the Chinese miracle is a product of careful and sophisticated central planning.

The Shanghai-Beijing train or the modern terminal are not a stand-along prestigious project, but part of a system that covers or will cover most of China. Indeed, the ambitious Chinese want to build high-speed trains around the world.

Planning is afoot for trains connecting China with Europe via Central Asia, Iran, Turkey and Bulgaria and to Singapore via Laos, Thailand and Malaysia. A proposal to fund a line in India was turned down by the Planning Commission last year because it would not be economical. Already there is regular freight train service between China and Europe.

The railway technology was acquired in the 1980s and early 1990s from France, Japan and Germany and “indigenised”. Being relatively unsophisticated, the Chinese quickly mastered it and are now major players in the high-speed train markets, displacing those very countries that initially supplied it technology.

But it is not just by the metrics of railway construction that China is defined. With just 2/3 the arable land as compared to India, China is by far the larger agricultural output. China was not an exporter of fruit in 1990, whereas today, it is the largest producer and exporter of apples.

Indeed, the Chinese variety of the Fuji apple is the super-star of Indian markets, outpricing the products coming from the US or New Zealand and our own Himachal and Kashmir. China may not be an innovator in the scale of the US, Germany or Japan, but it is getting there.

In the area of IT, China has produced companies like Alibaba and its rival Tencent which are world class. Alibaba is bigger than Amazon as an online retailer. Indeed, in Internet, the Chinese have created their own universe and are now blocking western companies like Google.

As a result I could neither access Gmail, nor use the search engine in my week in China. Reports are that the next target is Microsoft. Chinese products like instant messaging app WeChat have now gained popularity abroad.

All this has come through central planning, not of the stodgy Soviet/Indian style, but a sophisticated and agile one that China has pioneered. A lot of this has its origins in a plan drawn up based on a letter received by the Chinese supremo, Deng Xiaoping on March 3, 1986. This plan, called 863 Program (in the Chinese style, 86 is for the year and 3 for the date).

The gist of the letter from top nuclear weapons and missile scientists was that China risked being left behind if it allowed its science and technology to be overly focused on military issues. What it needed was a broad thrust across several key science and technology fields.

As a result of this, big money, in terms of billons of dollars was pumped into laboratories, universities and research institutes in fields ranging from biotechnology, information and communications technology, to deep sea research, lasers and robotics. In 2001, clean energy was added to the list.

The programme, reviewed periodically not only by Chinese, but also foreign experts, has provided China with its space capsule Shenzhou, the deep submersible Jiaolong, Longson processor and thousands of patents. In addition to this, there have been important spinoffs for the military like the hyper technology vehicle.

Of course, these efforts have been supplemented by cyber-theft and espionage on a grand scale, but that should not diminish the effort and investment that has gone in projects that aim to make China a high-tech power.

In this period, India also sought to do what China did. In the Rajiv Gandhi government (1984-1989), mission areas were selected and fields like supercomputers and telecom were targeted through agencies like CDAC and C-DOT, and mission areas identified for oilseeds, water, immunisation, literacy and so on. But these programmes imploded with the Rajiv government.

An important difference has been the political stability and continuity provided by the authoritarian Chinese system, and the lack of focus of the Indian one. The difference is actually less with regard to the system, but more the leadership that was provided, both at the political, as well as the mission level.

Most of India’s S&T bureaucrats have proved to be as shoddy as the politicians who led us. I need not take names, some are still around.

There were important exceptions like Verghese Kurian, who enabled India to become a “milk” power. But in most other areas we have lost our way because of the inability of the political system to provide the right kind of leadership to the country.

Mid Day July 8, 2014

Gandhis cannot stabilise the Congress

In the UK, from where we inherited our Westminster parliamentary system, a party chief who leads his or her party to defeat in a general election, routinely resigns from its leadership thereafter.

In the US, a defeated candidate can, very, very rarely, claw his way back to the top, as Richard Nixon famously did in 1968, after having lost to John Kennedy in 1960.

There is no such alternative before the Grand Old Party, the Indian National Congress in India, because the leaders of the party – Sonia and Rahul Gandhi – own it, lock, stock and barrel.

So, a Manmohan Singh must fade away and a P V Narasimha Rao be forgotten. But the Gandhis cannot go away.

As proprietors, the family feel that they have no alternative but to retain control and ride out the current setback. 

Denial

But things are no longer what they were in 2004, for three reasons.

One, Ms Sonia Gandhi is not in the best of health.Two, the failure of UPA II has proved that the surrogate model of leadership does not work. And three, the promise that Rahul, the heir, exuded at that time has proved to be an illusion.

We now know that Mr Gandhi is not only a commitment-phobe, but also not particularly good at leading a political party and garnering votes.

Despite some early promise, Rahul Gandhi has proved poor at garnering actual votes

But this is not what Sonia and Rahul believe. Like the Bourbons of old, they have learnt nothing and forgotten nothing. And probably for the same reasons – they live in a gilded cage dependent for their information of the external world on courtiers who pass off as advisers and party colleagues.

If there were any reasons to think otherwise, they have been put to rest by two post-electoral decisions taken by the high command viz Sonia and Rahul Gandhi.

First, to appoint Mallikarjun Kharge as the leader of the Congress party in the Lok Sabha, and second, to make A K Antony, now reviled as the worst defence minister the country has had, as the head of a two-man committee to review the outcome of the general elections.

Ironically, according to one media report, Rahul Gandhi had based his 2014 election strategy on a report written by the same A K Antony in 1999.

Given his track record, you can be certain that the last people that Antony will find culpable for the 2014 election debacle will be the Gandhis – mère et fils.

Actually, the party's head-in-the-sand attitude became clear the moment it appointed Kharge as the leader of the much-depleted party in the Lok Sabha. He may be a well-known leader and a Dalit, but is he prime minister material? 

Ineptitude

After all, the traditional role of a leader of Opposition is to be the prime minister-in-waiting. David Cameron, for example, was elected leader of the Conservative Party in December 2005, and simultaneously took over as the Leader of the Opposition in the British Parliament.

So when the party formed a coalition government in 2010, after winning the majority of the seats in a hung parliament, it was natural that he became prime minister.

It was clear from the statements and comments surrounding the decision, that Kharge had been appointed because Rahul Gandhi was reluctant to assume the leadership of the party.

If there was one clear lesson for the party in the outcome of the general election, it was that the surrogate leader model does not work.

And now once again we have surrogates – Antony for the review, and Kharge for the Lok Sabha.

Given the scale of the disaster which has befallen the GOP, surely the proprietors – the Gandhis – had the duty to tell their stake-holders what went wrong themselves and provide the leadership needed to set things right.

In the last couple of years, the political ineptitude of the party is becoming more and more apparent. One manifestation of this is the attempt to square the circle – make a family proprietorship look like a modern meritocratic corporation.

Rahul Gandhi's half-baked attempts to democratise the party have run up against the reality of the feudal nature of the party. His primary-based selection of candidates flopped because the conditions in which this can happen are simply not available in India.

As for the elections, the failure to stitch up effective alliances with smaller parties like the Apna Dal in UP or the LJP in Bihar have cost the Congress party dearly. 

Contrast

Advisers like Ahmed Patel, Ghulam Nabi Azad, Digvijaya Singh and Madhusudan Mistry still have the ears of the Gandhis, while current plans seem to suggest that the satraps – Tarun Gogoi in Assam, Prithviraj Chavan in Maharashtra, and Bhupinder Singh Hooda in Haryana – will pay the price.

This is exactly the kind of management style that crates a problem, since it does not allow for the emergence of a credible leadership in the states, and minus this, the Congress can't get regional vote-catchers.

Since their central vote-catchers – Sonia and Rahul – have also proved to be flops, the party faces oblivion.

The incompetence with which the party is being run is in sharp contrast to the Modi machine.

Prior to Modi's ascendancy, both the Congress and the BJP vied with each other on the score of a dysfunctional leadership. But in the past year we have been given a lesson on what a well-oiled and led political machine can achieve.

The Modi victory was not just the victory of the BJP, but a paradigm shift in the manner in which politics are to be conducted in the country.

The Congress party needs to sharply step its game up. But it is showing no signs of doing that.

Mail Today June 24, 2014

Modi shouldn't do away with EGOMs

Last month, in a bid to break with past practice, the new Narendra Modi government abolished all the Group of Ministers (GoM) and Empowered Group of Ministers (EGoM) because it said there was need “for greater accountability and empowerment” for the government as such.

The reason, probably, was that the previous UPA government had run riot with the GoM and EGoM concept and, what was once seen as a tool for quick decision-making, became, instead, a means of slowing it down, if not choking it up completely.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi feels that he does not need the GoM and EGoM format because he does not head a coalition government. Pic/PTI

During the UPA-I and II, there had been scores of GoMs and EGoMs, most of them headed by Pranab Mukherjee, A K Antony, P Chidambaram and Sharad Pawar. The EGoMs, in particular, were given with the authority to take decisions, making subsequent discussion and approval by any cabinet committee, presided over by the prime minister, a mere formality.

They were a useful device and helped decide many contentious issues, including the plan for restructuring Air India, the amendments to strengthen India’s anti-rape laws following the Delhi gang rape in 2012, the allocation and pricing of natural gas, and so on. However, towards the end of the UPA tenure, they became a means of postponing decisions.

Ironically, the GoM innovation was pioneered by the NDA-I government of Atal Bihari Vajpayee. Among the more successful uses of the format was the report on “Reforming the National Security System” released in May 2001 by a GoM headed by L K Advani, and comprising External Affairs Minister Jaswant Singh, Defence Minister George Fernandes and Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha.

This led to the first comprehensive bid to reform the national security system since the 1960s. Its recommendations were based on the work of four Task Forces, on Intelligence, Internal Security, Border Management and Defence.

The great advantage of the process was that the report passed swiftly through the Cabinet Committee on Security, since it was drafted by three of its four members, the fourth being Prime Minister Vajpayee. In contrast, a report by a specialist Task Force headed by Naresh Chandra in 2012 has gotten lost into the miasma that was the UPA-II government.

Prime Minister Modi should, perhaps, ignore the UPA experience and draw a lesson from the experience of the country whose decision-making prowess he so admires. Recently, for the first time, the Chinese media revealed that there were at least 18 “leading small groups” in their system, which are the equivalent of our EGoMs, and party boss and President Xi Jinping heads four of them.

China watchers have pointed out that this concept of “leading small groups” have been a feature of the Communist Party’s governance of China. Such groups have existed since the mid-1950s, and are featured in the work of the party, the government and the military.

There were some surprises when it was revealed Xi presided over the Leading Small Group for Financial and Economic Affairs and Premier Li Keqiang was the deputy leader, and that the group which also had Vice Premiers Zhang Gaoli (also a Politburo member), Liu Yandong, Wang Yang and Ma Kai; the director of the Central Policy Research Center, Wang Huning; the director of the party’s General Office, Li Zhanshu; central bank governor Zhou Xiaochuan; the ministers of water, housing, land resources, and industry and information technology; and representatives from foreign affairs and the military. Till now, many believed that dealing with the economy was the primary responsibility of the prime minister.

The Third Plenum held last year led to the creation of three more leading small groups which are headed by Xi — one on Internet network security and information technology, the Central Military Commission’s leading group for deepening reform on national defence and army leadership, and the leading group for comprehensively deepening reform. Of course, Xi is also the head of the National Security Commission which was set up earlier this year.

An example of how this works is evidenced by the fact that the key foreign policy player in China is not the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, but the Foreign Affairs Leading Small Group (FALSG), which is chaired by Xi and comprises people like State Councillor Yang Jiechi, who is the special representative for talks on the border issue with India. Wang Yi, the foreign minister, is not a member of this group, whose composition is secret, but it almost certainly includes senior PLA generals and security officials.

All this tells us a great deal about how China is governed and the unprecedented consolidation of authority in the hands of Xi Jinping. Prime Minister Narendra Modi obviously feels that he does not need the GoM and EGoM format because he does not head a coalition government. Unstated is the reality that Modi is clearly the numero uno in the government, and that his word will prevail without much difficulty in the various Cabinet Committees.

But, the Chinese experience points to the usefulness of institutionalised coordination groups within government systems to cut through bureaucratic red-tape that inevitably accumulates in systems of countries as big and complex and China and India.

Mid-Day June 24, 2014

Modi's defence forays

Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visits out of New Delhi last week have emphasised the new government's understanding of India's Grand Strategy. In some ways, it marks a continuity with the policy of past governments, but in important ways it presages a departure.

The visits – to commission the INS Vikramaditya in Karwar and to the kingdom of Bhutan – are connected through an understanding of that strategy.

It has three elements: the need for India to live in conditions of peace and stability in which economic growth can take place and make the life of every Indian better; the importance of establishing India's primacy in its own neighbourhood before making extra-regional commitments; and third, and most important in the current context of flux in the world order – anchoring India's foreign policy in a strong national security posture.

Indigenisation

In his remarks at the function, Modi not only called on the Navy to fulfil its traditional role in keeping sea lanes open to commerce, but also promote self-reliance and indigenisation in the defence manufacturing sector.

 

It may be recalled that as Chief Minister of Gujarat Modi has long supported indigenisation and has even offered Gujarat as a platform for defence R&D and manufacturing.

Significantly, Modi added that Indian-made arms and equipment "should also serve as protectors for small nations across the world."

In other words, India must emerge as a net security provider in its immediate region.

As a former Chief Minister of Gujarat, Modi is also familiar with other things maritime and has self-consciously promoted manufacturing based on SEZ's close to ports.

Gujarat's coastline of 1600kms is the longest among Indian states. It also hosts ports, such as Kandla, Mundra, Dahej, as well as smaller ones like Pipavav, Jakhau, Porbander and so on.

Gujarat has also been a pioneer in encouraging industry based on proximity to sea lanes of communications, such as the Jamnagar oil refinery.

If the visit to Bhutan seemed a puzzle, take out a map of India and see it again. Bhutan lies adjacent to two of the most sensitive parts of the country - the Siliguri corridor and the Chumbi Valley.

The former is the narrow neck of Indian territory that lies between Nepal and Bangladesh, with Bhutan on its northwest. It is just about 35kms wide at its narrowest point.

The Chumbi Valley is that part of Tibet that lies between Sikkim and Bhutan and is proximate to the Siliguri Corridor.

China has claims with Bhutan on its eastern, central and western flanks and the two countries have undertaken over 20 rounds of talks to resolve their differences. 

Strategy

In terms of bare bones, the Navy's 2009 maritime doctrine describes as areas of "primary interest" the immediate waters around India, the littoral reaches of the Arabian Sea and Bay of Bengal, the straits leading into the Indian Ocean and the sea lanes that criss-cross it.

From the purely military point of view, a maritime strategy involves four elements – sea control, power projection ashore, presence and strategic deterrence.

As long as I have spoken to Indian Navy leaders, I have heard the word "balanced Navy" for their vision what the Navy should be all about. Which means a Navy which can exercise sea control through fleets built around aircraft carriers.

Power projection involves the ability to use the sea to make strikes on targets of coastal or land-locked straits as well as in physically taking control of choke points.

The emphasis is on building all four elements of maritime strategy. As the record will show, with mixed results.

India's inefficient public-sector navy yards are unable to keep up to the required pace of construction – the time they take to build a warship is sometimes three or four times longer than those of comparable yards abroad.

For example, most modern Shivalik class, which were contracted to be built within 60 months, took 112 months to be built.

The Scorpene submarine which was to be delivered in 2012 will start arriving in 2016. In the meantime, two of ten Kilo-class submarines we had acquired from Russia are out of commission.

A project to acquire a new class of 75I submarines has been hanging fire for the past decade. The first Indian designed aircraft carrier – the new Vikrant – has been delayed till 2018.

Ironically, India has a number of private sector yards dying to get into business – Pipavav Defence Systems, L&T, ABG shipyards and so on – but they are given the crumbs of the table of naval construction because of an indifferent attitude of an alliance of bureaucrats and public sector unions.

Reassertion

As for presence, India is reasonably well off in the Indian Ocean. It has helped countries like Mauritius, Seychelles and Mozambique in maintaining security. It has a strategic presence in Maldives and Madagascar and ties with almost all the littoral countries.

Presence is important in maritime strategy. But to consolidate yourself, you need something more – a flourishing economy, maritime assets like ports and merchant ships, an open trading system and secure sea lanes.

China is using economic, military and diplomatic tools to gain influence over coastal states and small islands in the Indian Ocean and is using its investments and aid to consolidate its strategic positions and secure the approaches to these positions.

In his initial visits and statements, Modi's footing has been quite sure and firm. The Indian Ocean is as important as the subcontinental land mass for India's security and well being. To secure both, the government has an agenda of reform and restructuring that are needed to enable India to emerge as a security provider for its smaller neighbours. 

Mail Today June 17, 2014