Budget has to deliver on reforms

After an astonishing and uninterrupted run, the Bharatiya Janata Party has begun to feel the heat. The Delhi election has, for the first time in the past eight months, put pressure on the party leadership. Equally, the Government is getting a measure of just how humongous a task they face as they begin to craft what needs to be the defining Union Budget of their tenure. 

If the BJP stumbles in either endeavour, it could mark the beginning of “normal” politics in the country and, perhaps, another period of political wrangling which will prevent the Government from undertaking the deep restructuring and reform of the Governmental system, ranging from modifying labour laws, improving education, easing rules of doing business, transforming the Ministry of Defence, reforming the tax administration of the country and so on. 

The BJP Government headed by Narendra Modi is not weak, but it has a certain fragility based on the fact that power and responsibility rest on the shoulders of one man. So far that man has shown himself to be a superman of sorts, gaining the first ever majority for the party in the Lok Sabha in 30 years, capturing the state assemblies in Congress strongholds of Maharashtra and Haryana, and setting a scorching pace in the country’s foreign relations with major powers like the United States and China. 

Ordinances 

But, what the people want of him, and indeed expect, is an economic revolution that will change their lives and those of their children. 

To this end, Modi’s actions, so far, add up to several IOUs, and a number of promises in the form of temporary measures pushed through in the form of ordinances. 

There are, in addition, a number of administrative steps, the so-called low hanging fruit which have been plucked. 

Barracked by the Opposition in the Upper House, the Modi Government has brought in some nine ordinances already. 

These are related to the land acquisition bill, the coal mines bill to enable e-auctions, the insurance bill to increase the cap in the insurance sector to 49 per cent, the quicker arbitration bill to make it mandatory for judges dealing with commercial cases to settle the cases in nine months, the e-rickshaw ordinance to allow e-carts and e-rickshaws to ply on Delhi’s roads, the mines and minerals development regulation to do away with mining leases and increase the lease period from 30 years to 50 years, to merge schemes for PIOs and OCIs and provide lifetime visas for them and finally an ordinance to increase FDI to 100 per cent in pharma and medical equipment sector. 

Many of these are indicative of the direction the Government has set. But, as President Pranab Mukherjee noted in a speech last month, ordinances are not the way to get to the destination. 

There are other areas which are very important, but equally problematic for the new Government such as the Goods & Services Tax (GST) and the labour reforms bill. 

Some BJP states oppose the former or want in a shape which will make it virtually meaningless. 

On the other hand, powerful Sangh Parivar entities, which include the country’s largest trade union, the Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh oppose any efforts to reform the labour laws which have become an albatross around the country’s neck. 

Signals 

Delhi may not be a full fledged state, but its election holds considerable significance. The city is, after all, the national capital. 

It is also the home of a significant proportion of well-off people and elites who shape national opinion and policy in a range of issues. 

The BJP’s primary opponent in the election Arvind Kejriwal of Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) has sharply posed the issues and has made it clear that a Government headed by his party would oppose multi-brand FDI in retail, labour reforms and the land acquisition steps outlined by the BJP. 

Were he to win, he could cause considerable dissonance with the Union Government, as well as send the wrong kind of signals to potential investors in the country. 

BJP president Amit Shah (left) has upended the BJP's organisation and brought in a maverick former police officer, Kiran Bedi (right), to counter the appeal of the AAP's Arvind Kejriwal

Of course, victory—or defeat—in the elections will have an intrinsic significance for the BJP as well. 

It has put in an enormous effort to win the poll. It has upended its party organisation and brought in a maverick former police officer, Kiran Bedi, to counter the appeal of Kejriwal. 

The Prime Minister’s principal lieutenant has headed the campaign committee which has seen bigwigs like Arun Jaitley lead the charge, with help from Modi himself.

Corruption 

The Modi Government’s dynamism centred around his ambitious plans to trigger the much-needed manufacturing revolution in India, has led to the temporary eclipse of several important issues that were bothering the country in the past few years. 

Primary among these is that of corruption. In Modi’s scheme of things the issue does not have the kind of salience it gained in the 2010-2014 period. 

But the BJP should not forget that it played a major role in undermining the credibility of the United Progressive Alliance Government. 

Modi believes that his centralised governance and his pre-eminence in the Government makes it immune to charges of corruption. 

As he famously declared “Na khaoonga, na khaaney doonga” (I will neither be corrupt, not permit anyone else to be so). But people in the country are far from being rid of the huge amount of corruption they face in their daily lives. 

The Lokpal envisaged by Kejriwal and Anna Hazare was, of course, over the top and not a viable solution. But people, especially the poor, do want the Government to rid them of the petty and debilitating corruption they face from Government officials at all levels in their everyday lives. 

And no matter what Modi says, that aspect of corruption has not even been dented or seriously challenged by his Government. 

Mail Today February 5, 2015

The Congress is a threat to Rahul and Sonia Gandhi, not the BJP

There was a time, not so long ago, when people spoke of the "Lotus" wilting. Today the focus is on the shrivelling of the "Hand". The run up to the 2014 general election and its shock outcome showed up the spreading rot, even though it was clear that it had set in from the time Prime Minister Manmohan Singh gave the Congress a victory in the 2009 general elections, and the Gandhis decided that he needed to be marginalised.

However, the effort to check Singh, combined with the eruption of a number of scandals, beginning with those associated with the 2010 Commonwealth Games, and the 2G allocation, eventually paralysed decision-making in the party.

High Command

The pattern of the disease was that it began with the periphery - Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra and so on - and moved towards the centre. Now it has hit home at the high command, through the revelation of a letter written last November by former loyalist and Union Minister for environment and forests, Jayanthi Natarajan to Sonia Gandhi, complaining about the way she was made to take decisions by Sonia and Rahul, in the period when she was the minister between July 2011 to December 2013.

During the 2014 general elections, Narendra Modi had charged that a "Jayanthi tax" (presumably bribes) had been levied on companies to obtain environmental clearances. With the new government in place, there was talk of CBI looking into some of the cases. In her letter to Sonia, she said that she had been given "specific input" on certain projects by Sonia and Rahul or by their aides. For the first time, a specific allegation is being made against Rahul and therefore has implications for the future of the party. If what she eventually decided fell within rules, it will be fine, but if not, it would open up Natarajan, as well as Sonia and Rahul to legal action. If there is actual proof that Rahul was party to a strategy of "shaking down" corporates, using the device of environmental clearances, he could get entangled in a Chakravyuh, much like his father was in the case of Bofors.

That the party has been going downhill for a while has not been a secret. There is little point repeating the handling of the post-Rajasekhara Reddy Andhra Pradesh and the Telangana issue, or that of dealing with another Congress strong-hold Maharashtra. The consequence of this was apparent in the disastrous showing of the Congress party in both the two states.

Resignations

Last year as the elections approached, the pace intensified. In March 2014 in Rajasthan, Bhanwar Lal Sharma, a six-term MLA from Sardarshahar, resigned from the party. Sharma attacked Rahul Gandhi as a leader who has been forced on the party. Equally damaging was the defection of Colonel Sonaram Chaudhry, a long-term MLA and MP who quit the party and was fielded from his home constituency and won from Barmer on a BJP ticket. The process intensified across the country where long-serving Congressmen abandoned the party and sought tickets with the BJP which welcomed most with open arms. The result was that the party crashed to its lowest ever showing. Following the defeat, process became more acute.

TH Mustafa, a senior Congress leader belonging to the party's Kerala unit, attacked Rahul Gandhi as a "joker" and said that the party should know that "being a prime minister is not child's play." He wanted Priyanka to become the party leader instead. However, Mustafa was merely suspended and returned to the party later. In July 2014 it was the turn of former MP and Sanjay Gandhi loyalist, Gufran Azam to criticise Rahul, accusing him of destroying both the Youth Congress and the party. "We are tired of hearing people addressing the Congress vice president as 'Pappu' and 'Munna' and feel ashamed," he added. Azam was expelled from the party in October 2014. Then it was the turn of GK Vasan, son of late GK Moopanaar, who split away from the party in November 2014, in a repeat of 1996 when the latter had formed the Tamil Manila Congress. Several senior leaders, some of them former legislators joined him in a new version of the TMC.

Political Failure

All this suggests that the party is in a free-fall. We could see more top-level leaders making the calculation about their own political future and taking a decision to cut their losses. For example, how long will someone like Jyotiraditya Scindia and Sachin Pilot hang on? They, especially the former, could easily float a regional formation and retain influence in his strongholds of Gwalior and Guna. As for the BJP, it does not now face much of a threat from the Congress party. So, it will decide when and how to press the button. Of course, it is clear that former ministers are vulnerable, if there are indications that they took illegal decisions because of pressure from the Gandhis, as are the latter themselves.

Mail Today February 1, 2015

Unsettling game of border settlement

Even before the hype over US President Barack Obama’s visit has died down, the Modi government is on the move to enhance its ties with China. External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj’s ongoing visit is an important part of this effort, especially as she is accompanied by the new Foreign Secretary S Jaishankar, who had done a full three-year term as ambassador to China till 2013.

 

Sushma Swaraj, in a first for an Indian leader, explicitly declared that ‘my government is committed to exploring an early settlement’. Pic/PTI

Ms Swaraj was in China to work out the preliminaries of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s May 2015 visit, which is expected to even the keel of the Sino-Indian relations that have been tilted by US President Obama’s recent visit to India. In her remarks in Beijing, the EAM, for the first time for an Indian leader, explicitly declared that “my government is committed to exploring an early settlement”. She buttressed this with the remark that her government, “had the political will to think out of the box” on this issue. As part of this effort, the National Security Adviser Ajit Doval, who is also India’s Special Representative (SR) and pointsman for Sino-Indian border negotiations, would visit China between now and the PM’s planned visit for the 18th round of talks with his Chinese counterpart, State Councillor Yang Jichei.

The Chinese have been signalling that they want an early settlement ever since Xi Jinping said in a statement in March 2013 in Durban that “China and India should improve and make good use of the mechanism of Special Representatives to strive for a fair, rational solution framework acceptable to both sides as soon as possible.”

Subsequently, Chinese leaders Li Keqiang in May 2013 in New Delhi and Foreign Minister Wang Yi, who was in New Delhi in June 2014 have also emphasised the point that the Chinese are ready for a border settlement.

No one in the Indian side has made any public comment on the nature of the settlement, but the Chinese have not been so shy. In May 2013, in an oped in The Hindu, former Chinese ambassador Wei Wei noted that the two sides had arrived at an 18-point consensus document on the border settlement through the dialogue between their SRs who had been appointed in 2003. Wang Yi was more direct when he said during his June 2014 visit that “Through years of negotiation, we have come to an agreement on the basics of a boundary agreement, and we are prepared to reach a final settlement.”

Prime Minister Modi had initially held back in appointing his new NSA as the Special Representative for the border talks. This post had been held concurrently by previous NSAs beginning with the first, Brajesh Mishra. However, on November 26, Modi did nominate Doval, thus setting the stage for a resumed dialogue, which could yield results quickly, provided we can cut through the fog of changing Chinese positions.

At the time of Doval’s appointment, the Chinese official spokeswoman Hua Chunying had repeated the formulation that the Chinese were keen “to push forward the settlement of the problem based on the principles and consensus reached by both sides in previous talks.” However, she also referred to the border as being 2,000-km long, as the Chinese officials have been doing since 2010 when they started calling Arunachal Pradesh as “Southern Tibet”.

Given that the Indian border with China can be divided into roughly four segments 1700 km in the West, 640 km in the Central sector and 1,100 km in the east, and the 225-km border in Sikkim which has been settled, it is not clear where the 2,000-km figure comes from. It can either exclude the McMahon Line or the Sino-Indian border in J&K. Whatever be the case, the 2,000-km figure touted by the Chinese seriously undermines their claims of wanting to negotiate seriously.

In recent years, the Chinese have been making an emphatic demand for the Tawang area of Arunachal Pradesh during the SR talks. However, the Indian representatives have made it clear that this is simply not on the table and that they were willing to arrive at a fair and reasonable settlement within the bounds of the 2005 agreement on the Political Parameters and Guiding Principles of a Border Settlement, which more or less hinted that the two sides would swap their claims.

Besides the border, the two sides are eager to set the terms for enhancing their economic engagement. During Xi’s visit, the Chinese offered $20 billion worth of investment and expressed a desire to finance and participate in a high-speed rail project in India. They also said they wanted to be part of the smart cities initiative of the PM. In addition, they have sought to rope India into their Silk Route-related One-Belt One-Road initiative. However, while India is game for the Bangladesh-China-India-Myanmar (BICM) corridor, it is a bit cautious about the One-Belt One-Road initiative, especially its maritime component, which has seen Chinese military forays into the Indian Ocean. During the last round of the SR talks, the Chinese had proposed a maritime dialogue. India would like to get a better understanding of the Maritime Silk Road plan before committing itself to it.

What the Modi government is signalling to the Chinese is that it does not view its relations with regard to the US and China as a zero-sum game. By raising the qualitative threshold of India’s relations with these and other powers, he is seeking to maximise India’s gains. Whether he can indeed do so depends vitally on his ability to get the Indian economy on a fast-growth track.

Mid Day February 3, 2015

Ms Swaraj was in China to work out the preliminaries of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s May 2015 visit, which is expected to even the keel of the Sino-Indian relations that have been tilted by US President Obama’s recent visit to India. In her remarks in Beijing, the EAM, for the first time for an Indian leader, explicitly declared that “my government is committed to exploring an early settlement”. She buttressed this with the remark that her government, “had the political will to think out of the box” on this issue. As part of this effort, the National Security Adviser Ajit Doval, who is also India’s Special Representative (SR) and pointsman for Sino-Indian border negotiations, would visit China between now and the PM’s planned visit for the 18th round of talks with his Chinese counterpart, State Councillor Yang Jichei. - See more at: http://www.mid-day.com/articles/unsettling-game-of-border-settlement/15960168#sthash.zNpeyHPB.dpuf

Ms Swaraj was in China to work out the preliminaries of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s May 2015 visit, which is expected to even the keel of the Sino-Indian relations that have been tilted by US President Obama’s recent visit to India. In her remarks in Beijing, the EAM, for the first time for an Indian leader, explicitly declared that “my government is committed to exploring an early settlement”. She buttressed this with the remark that her government, “had the political will to think out of the box” on this issue. As part of this effort, the National Security Adviser Ajit Doval, who is also India’s Special Representative (SR) and pointsman for Sino-Indian border negotiations, would visit China between now and the PM’s planned visit for the 18th round of talks with his Chinese counterpart, State Councillor Yang Jichei.
The Chinese have been signalling that they want an early settlement ever since Xi Jinping said in a statement in March 2013 in Durban that “China and India should improve and make good use of the mechanism of Special Representatives to strive for a fair, rational solution framework acceptable to both sides as soon as possible.”
Subsequently, Chinese leaders Li Keqiang in May 2013 in New Delhi and Foreign Minister Wang Yi, who was in New Delhi in June 2014 have also emphasised the point that the Chinese are ready for a border settlement.
No one in the Indian side has made any public comment on the nature of the settlement, but the Chinese have not been so shy. In May 2013, in an oped in The Hindu, former Chinese ambassador Wei Wei noted that the two sides had arrived at an 18-point consensus document on the border settlement through the dialogue between their SRs who had been appointed in 2003. Wang Yi was more direct when he said during his June 2014 visit that “Through years of negotiation, we have come to an agreement on the basics of a boundary agreement, and we are prepared to reach a final settlement.”
Prime Minister Modi had initially held back in appointing his new NSA as the Special Representative for the border talks. This post had been held concurrently by previous NSAs beginning with the first, Brajesh Mishra. However, on November 26, Modi did nominate Doval, thus setting the stage for a resumed dialogue, which could yield results quickly, provided we can cut through the fog of changing Chinese positions.
At the time of Doval’s appointment, the Chinese official spokeswoman Hua Chunying had repeated the formulation that the Chinese were keen “to push forward the settlement of the problem based on the principles and consensus reached by both sides in previous talks.” However, she also referred to the border as being 2,000-km long, as the Chinese officials have been doing since 2010 when they started calling Arunachal Pradesh as “Southern Tibet”.
Given that the Indian border with China can be divided into roughly four segments 1700 km in the West, 640 km in the Central sector and 1,100 km in the east, and the 225-km border in Sikkim which has been settled, it is not clear where the 2,000-km figure comes from. It can either exclude the McMahon Line or the Sino-Indian border in J&K. Whatever be the case, the 2,000-km figure touted by the Chinese seriously undermines their claims of wanting to negotiate seriously.
In recent years, the Chinese have been making an emphatic demand for the Tawang area of Arunachal Pradesh during the SR talks. However, the Indian representatives have made it clear that this is simply not on the table and that they were willing to arrive at a fair and reasonable settlement within the bounds of the 2005 agreement on the Political Parameters and Guiding Principles of a Border Settlement, which more or less hinted that the two sides would swap their claims.
Besides the border, the two sides are eager to set the terms for enhancing their economic engagement. During Xi’s visit, the Chinese offered $20 billion worth of investment and expressed a desire to finance and participate in a high-speed rail project in India. They also said they wanted to be part of the smart cities initiative of the PM. In addition, they have sought to rope India into their Silk Route-related One-Belt One-Road initiative. However, while India is game for the Bangladesh-China-India-Myanmar (BICM) corridor, it is a bit cautious about the One-Belt One-Road initiative, especially its maritime component, which has seen Chinese military forays into the Indian Ocean. During the last round of the SR talks, the Chinese had proposed a maritime dialogue. India would like to get a better understanding of the Maritime Silk Road plan before committing itself to it.
What the Modi government is signalling to the Chinese is that it does not view its relations with regard to the US and China as a zero-sum game. By raising the qualitative threshold of India’s relations with these and other powers, he is seeking to maximise India’s gains. Whether he can indeed do so depends vitally on his ability to get the Indian economy on a fast-growth track.
- See more at: http://www.mid-day.com/articles/unsettling-game-of-border-settlement/15960168#sthash.zNpeyHPB.dpuf

Decoding what U.S. wants from India

U.S. President Barack Obama will be the first American to be a chief guest at the Republic Day parade.He will also be the first U.S. President to have visited India twice in his presidency. There was a time when American presidential visits to India were few and far between. 

 

But since Bill Clinton came to India in 1999, signaling a grand reconciliation after harshly punishing India for the May 1998 nuclear tests, American presidential visits have been regular. 

In just seven months, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has met Obama three times — in the U.S. during the former’s official visit in September, at the East Asia Summit in Nay Pyi Taw and then later at the G-20 summit in Brisbane. 

Despite interaction in a range of areas, and providing crucial assistance to India in its times of troubles, no American leader was ever invited as the chief guest at the Republic Day parade; a Chinese marshal and even two Pakistani leaders have figured in the guest list. 

The Modi strategy is visible in the pattern of his foreign visits which has seen him develop strong ties with Japan and Australia, two key U.S. allies in East Asia. 

The Japan visit, the first outside the subcontinent after he became PM, was notable for the display of the good chemistry between Modi and his Japanese counterpart Shinzu Abe, besides being successful in attracting Japanese investment and laying out the basis for a strategic partnership. 

The Australian visit, too, clearly signalled a stepping up of the engagement between New Delhi and Canberra, an important U.S. military ally. 

Reading between the lines of officials’ statements and those of itinerant think tankers, it is clear what the U.S. wants of India.

First, they seek a clear articulation of how Modi views the place of the United States in his scheme of things. 

The Americans, for their part, have not hesitated to indicate that they are for an alliance with India. 

Short of this, and perhaps more realistically, they want the closest possible partnership. 

To this end, they say that they want to assist India to emerge as a major global power, a view first articulated by the Bush Administration in 2005. 

It does not take a genius to understand why the U.S. wants this — India is the only country of its size which has the potential to offset the enormous geopolitical pull of a rising China. 

And India is also a country with which the U.S. has no real conflict of interest, at least for the foreseeable future. 

U.S. President Barack Obama and his wife Michelle during a three-day visit to India in 2010

Previous Indian leaders like Manmohan Singh have waxed eloquent on the need for close Indo-U.S. ties, but they never quite spelt out their longer-term vision beyond the diplomatic niceties. 

Of course, India wants technology, investment, people-to-people ties and so on. 

But how does it see its relationship with the U.S. in strategic terms? 

After all, it is not just the U.S. which wants to offset the Chinese pull, India, too faces the Chinese heat, even in its own South Asian region. 

Second, the U.S. is looking for a sound economic partnership with India. 

In today’s gloomy economic scenario, the only large economies that are managing to hold their head above water seem to be those of India, China and the U.S. 

But for the full potential of the India-U.S. relationship to be exploited, there is need for some homework. 

India needs to ease the terms of doing business in the country. 

Modi and Arun Jaitley have repeatedly emphasised their intention of doing the needful, but for the moment, the investors are waiting and watching. 

As it is, the Americans remain unhappy with issues relating to the nuclear liability act and intellectual property rights in India. 

Third, the U.S. wants to step up its defence partnership with India. 

During this visit, the two sides are likely to sign up for another 10 years on their framework agreement for the U.S.-India Defence relationship. 

The crown jewel of this has been the Defence Trade and Technology and Initiative through which the two sides are trying to identify high-tech items for co-development and co-production. 

Fourth, the Americans want India to come on board their push for a climate change treaty when the Climate Change Conference is held in Paris later this year.

After striking a deal with China, the Americans hope to pin down India in a bilateral deal. Obama is hoping to make this treaty the capstone of his administration. 

To this end, the U.S. will offer India agreements in clean energy technology, as well as hold out the promise of making India eligible for U.S. oil and natural gas exports.

This is just a quick sketch of what is, of course, a much more complex and layered relationship. 

Back in the year 2000, the then Prime Minister termed India and the U.S. as “natural allies”. 

This formulation was reiterated by Modi in an interview during the campaign for the general elections and subsequently, as PM, he restated it in an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal where he called the U.S. “our natural global partner”. 

Through the Obama invitation, Modi has sent an important signal about the place of the U.S. in his scheme of things. 

Obama is now virtually a lame-duck President of a country whose Parliament is controlled by the Opposition. 

So Modi is viewing the visit on a longer perspective where he seeks to leverage the U.S. connection to attract technology and investment from the western world, as well as build ties to balance China. 

Divided over Pak

Pakistan remains the one issue which divides U.S. and India. 

The American pullout from Afghanistan compounds the problem because of Indian fears that Pakistan could once again assume a dominant position in that country. 

But while Obama seems determined to pull out American forces from there, the U.S. is exerting a great deal of diplomatic pressure to get Pakistan committed to a smooth transition in Afghanistan. 

They do not want a chaotic Afghanistan to once again host terror groups like the al-Qaeda which target the U.S. 

The carefully floated reports that Islamabad planned to ban the Haqqani network and Jamaat-ud-Dawa followed the recent visit of U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry to Pakistan.

This came in the aftermath of the horrific Peshawar massacre. 

Mail Today January 18, 2015

Sri Lanka is the key to India's interests

India's relief, if not joy, over the outcome of the Sri Lankan elections that saw the exit of Mahinda Rajpakse is barely concealed. In recent years, there was a sense in New Delhi that Sri Lanka was slipping out of Indian hands. But before the celebrations get too rowdy, we should be aware that the foreign policy of a mature democracy like Sri Lanka is not made by individuals, but is based on interests. 

 We should make no assumptions about the manner in which the incoming Maithripala Sirisena government will deal with areas of our concerns - the treatment of the Tamil minority and the growing Chinese influence in the island. 

Sri Lanka’s President Maithripala Sirisena will improve ties with India

Emergence 

India’s refusal to intervene in the civil war which pitted the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) versus the Sri Lankan Army, more or less decided the issue in favour of the latter. 

Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination and the loss of over 1,000 Indian Army personnel in the 1987-1990 period ensured that India would remain out of the Sri Lankan equations till the LTTE was obliterated. 

The Sri Lankan victory over the Tigers in May 2009 had many consequences, none of them good for India. The land was devastated and the Sri Lankan Tamils, India’s “natural allies” left leaderless and disempowered. 

Second, the Rajpakse family consolidated itself politically in the island and a year later, in 2010, Mahinda won his second term as president. 

Third, China emerged as Sri Lanka’s “all time friend” by providing not just military aid to Colombo in its hour of need, but also help in deflecting global pressure on its leadership for accounting of the human rights violations that took place towards the end of the war with the LTTE. 

According to UN estimates as many as 40,000 civilians may have died in the final months of the civil war. 

Since the end of the civil war, Sri Lanka has received some $4 billion worth of loans and smaller amounts in grants and aid from China. In terms of aid and grants, Japan still remains the biggest donor to Sri Lanka and in terms of grants India is number one, having given an estimated $350 million in the last three years in terms of grants, but the Chinese connection is especially useful since it comes without strings. 

Chinese trade with Sri Lanka has grown sharply in recent years, doubling between 2008 and 2012 from $1.5 billion to $2.7 billion and is now second only to India, despite the fact that China and Sri Lanka do not yet have a FTA. China has emerged as a major investor in Sri Lanka, with some 70 per cent of Sri Lanka’s infrastructure projects being funded by Chinese banks. 

Infrastructure 

Their most famous is the Hambantota deep sea port, the new international airport in Mattala, and a cricket stadium being built in Rajpakse’s constituency. 

In Colombo, too, the Chinese are in a joint venture to expand the port. The government may also be considering a project for a Chinese company to establish an aircraft maintenance centre at Trincomalee.

The Chinese probably see Sri Lanka as an important port of call for its Maritime Silk Route idea of creating ports, highways and railroads to ferry trade from China to the far parts of the world. There is a historical resonance here in that Sri Lanka was an important port of call for the 15th century Chinese Admiral Zheng He, who visited it several times in his voyages between 1405-33 and is also reputed to have defeated and captured a Sri Lankan king. 

Sri Lanka is a sovereign country, and it must do what it views as best for its national interests. Promoting trade and receiving investment and aid from various countries, be they China, India, Japan or others, is unexceptional. Colombo is aware of the value of getting a powerful player like Beijing to offset the gravitational pull of New Delhi in the South Asian region. 

Given Sri Lanka’s proximity to us, we cannot help but worry about things that could have implications for our interests. Foremost among these are maritime interests, particularly sea lanes leading out of our east and west coasts, as it is Colombo, which is the largest transhipment port for Indian container cargos.

Facilities 

There is no indication, as of now, that China intends to establish military facilities in Sri Lanka. These will not threaten India, because they are easily vulnerable to Indian interdiction, but they will certainly be an irritant. 

Communal peace in the island is no less important an element for us, seeing how we got sucked into the civil war in the mid-1980s. Events in Sri Lanka have an important resonance in Tamil Nadu, something which no government in New Delhi can ignore. 

Given India’s position in the Indian Ocean vis-à-vis China, the challenge is not military. For the foreseeable future, the Indian Navy will be more powerful than its Chinese counterpart, at least in the Indian Ocean. The challenge is economic. As the Chinese economy grows, so do its commercial interests in the Indian Ocean. 

But if India wants to be seen as a power in its region, it needs to sharply step up its game as a manufacturing and trading nation. In an article in July 2014, Sri Lankan scholar Saman Kelagama pointed out that India’s trade with its South Asian neighbours was $ 17 billion, while China’s amounted to $ 25 billion. Geography does favour us in our relations with out South Asian neighbours, but we need to sharply up the economic content we put in. 

The election of a new government in Colombo provides New Delhi a great opportunity to reset its relations with Sri Lanka. Both countries need to set aside the contentious past and see how they can construct a 21st century relationship based not only on economic ties and the awareness of the need to understand each other’s security concerns, but also of the fact that both countries are vibrant democracies where the people have the last word. 

Mail Today January 14, 2015

Identifying the REAL enemy: The problem is not Islam, but a civil war within the faith that has become a battle for the religion's very soul

In the past few days, terrorists have killed 17 people in Paris and 2,000 in Nigeria, while more than 30 have died in bomb blasts in Yemen and seven in Rawalpindi. In terms of geography, the incidents were as widely distributed across the globe, as they were in the ethnicity of the victims. But there is one thing in common in all the acts of violence—they were done in the name of Islam. 

A lazy person’s analysis would argue that there is something inherent in the faith that persuades its adherents to such acts of violence. But a closer analysis would suggest that this is no clash of civilisations pitting Islam against the rest, but a civil war within Islam, a battle for its soul. 

Most of the victims in the incidents cited above were probably Muslim, but obviously there was something different in the way they professed their faith that persuaded their more radical co-religionists to murder them. 

This is the story of the Islamic State militants of Iraq and Syria, whose major thrust is the ruthless and, indeed, mindless killing of other Muslims. 

In these circumstances, the worst option for us would be to vilify Islam, the faith, instead of trying to understand why a violent minority has managed to get so much traction across the Islamic world. 

The Islamists have successfully intimidated a large number of writers, artists, journalists, film-makers, many of whom live in exile. 

Within the borders of Muslim countries, they have used blasphemy laws to coerce

The terrorists may be an extreme minority, but they have successfully coerced the majority—or, to be more accurate, enthralled them—into sympathy for them. 

The battle is not something that began after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, or even 9/11. It has been going on since the beginning of the industrial revolution, which transformed the global power balance away from the great Muslim empires led by the Ottomans and the Mughals, in favour of the Christian west. 

But where Christianity itself evolved and modernised, within the citadel of Islam emerged a powerful school led by Muhammad Abdl ibn al-Wahhab, born in 1703, who wanted to return Islam to its original “pure” form, and for whom ‘bidaa’ or religious innovation was as big an enemy as shirk or polytheism. 

Modern Islamism and the direct challenge to western modernism has come from Egypt and the writings of Hassan al Banna and Sayyid Qutub. 

Their progeny exist in the subcontinent as the Jamaat-e-Islami. While the Indian one is quiescent, the Pakistani and Bangladeshi Jamaat are active in politics and attract followers who are educated and deeply committed to the project of spreading Islam across the world. 

They believe that modernisation, as understood by the West, is bankrupt and morally degraded. On the other hand, Islam offers a universal option, free from man-made laws and divisions of race, language and colour. 

In their view, what is needed was a world order whose guiding philosophy is based on Islam. The Jamaat and Brotherhood type Islamists accept that the fight can be peaceful and gradual, but many militant offshoots—the al- Qaeda, the Jamaat-ud Dawa, the Taliban, Hamas, the Boko Haram, the Islamic State or its rival, the Jabhat al Nusrah, and others—feel there is no other way but one of violence.

minorities and make any rational discussion of religion impossible. 

Many of us, schooled in the ways of the globalised world, often think that the doctrines of an al Banna or Qutb are crackpot doctrines and need not to be taken too seriously. 

However, they are what provide the jehadists and radicals their raison de etre, and whether we like it or not, they spring from Islam, at least the interpretation of Islam that these radicals adhere to. 

Many of these ideas and movements have taken shape in countries which were ruled by prowestern regimes, whose repression bred alienation. Many felt the brunt of Cold War politics, especially, the twists and turns of American policy. 

Even today, the US links with Saudi Arabia underwrite the shenanigans of a family that claims to be the guardian of Islam. 

Another set of victims were from the colonial empires of the Europeans. This is where the difference between other places where large numbers of Muslims live—India, Indonesia, or Malaysia—is so striking and, indeed, proof that the problem is not so much with Islam, but with an assertive and violent minority which has left its silent majority bewildered. 

Even as the world must together fight the Islamic radicals, whether in the realm of ideas or in the battlefield, it is also clear Muslims alone can break the thralldom of anti-modernity and violence that is espoused in the name of their faith.

A word of caution

On New Year’s Day, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al Sisi made a powerful counter-attack on Islamist radicalism. 

Speaking to the ulema and religious scholars at Cairo’s world famous theological centre, the Al Azhar University, al Sisi said that he was mortified by the fact that “what we hold most sacred should cause the entire umma to be a source of anxiety, danger, killing and destruction for the rest of the world.”

He bluntly spoke of the theological issue of bidaa when he noted that the “corpus of texts and ideas that we have sacralised over the years, to the point that departing from them has become almost impossible, is antagonising the entire world.” 

Pointing to the mindless violence of Islamists, he sarcastically noted that it was not possible that “1.6 billion [Muslim] people should want to kill the rest of the world’s inhabitants— that is 7 billion—so that they themselves may live.” 

He went on to tell his audience that there was need to get out of the old mindset and reflect on it from a more “enlightened perspective”. 

“We are in need of a religious revolution,” he added, “and the entire world is waiting for your [the ulema’s] next move” because the Muslim world was otherwise destroying itself.

The role of racism  

The Islamist challenge to Europe, especially countries like the UK, France and Netherlands, comes from the consequences of its colonial past. 

But economic needs and policies led to the rise of Muslim populations in Sweden, Norway, Switzerland and Germany as well.

These migrants have come as workers and, in many instances, have been stratified as a less privileged and less educated underclass. 

The fault for this lies as much with them as their host countries, whose people tend to be insular and arrogant towards recent migrants. 

Layered upon alienation and deprivation are religious beliefs relayed by mullahs distrusting modernity and rejecting concepts of gender equality. 

This class has been enormously attracted by the doctrines of jehad and anti-westernism. While the distance from the Afghan conflict prevented many from going there, the European jihadists have travelled to Syria via Turkey and Jordan in significant numbers. 

It is estimated that there are some 250 fighters each from Australia and Belgium, 700 from France, 400 from the UK, 270 from Germany and so on.

The results are for all to see 

Just around the time of Egypt’s Muhammad Abdl ibn al-Wahhab, Indian theologian Shah Waliullah was laying the foundations of a religious revival movement in Delhi. 

He believed that the Muslim downfall in India had come because they had strayed from the “pure faith”.

Subsequently, his ideas led to the growth of the seminary in Deoband. However, unlike the Wahhabists, the Deobandis operated in an environment where Muslims were a minority and where the dominant power were the Christian British. 

So, their emphasis was more on personal change, rather than one enforced by society. However, their world view was conservative and has been a factor for their backwardness. 

On the other hand, it was this conservatism that led the Deobandis to oppose Partition. It was the modernisers who called for Pakistan, and thereafter cynically used the religion to maintain their rule in the country. 

Unlike the Muslim experience in Pakistan where the state meddled with religious ideas, or Europe, where Muslims are often alienated migrants, in India, the government took the road of letting Muslims undertake change at their own pace and within the ambit of their own religion and traditions. The results are for all to see. 

In Pakistan, the gates of radicalism are wide open and there are few signs yet that the society will be able to prevent the further growth of radicalism.

Mail Today January 11, 2015