Tweet-for-Tat Diplomacy:   How an egocentric former general set back the PM's India-Pakistan initiative

Prime Minister Narendra Modi is unlikely to be amused at the spectacle his minister of state for external affairs, General V K Singh, has made of himself this week. In a surprise move of the kind that has characterised his foreign policy , Modi ordered the ex-Indian Army chief to attend the Pakistan Day reception on Monday , March 23. His plan was to signal both toughness and accommodation towards Islamabad by having the general represent India at the national day reception. Unfortunately , the headstrong minister torpedoed the plan by tweeting his “disgust“ at having had to attend. Through another tweet, he indicated that he had done so out of a sense of “duty“.
Part of a Jigsaw
Attendance at such events is voluntary for most invitees, but it is customary for countries who maintain diplomatic relations to send representatives, their levels being based on reciprocity . In sending Singh, the PM wanted to signal his desire to enhance the India-Pakistan relationship.
No doubt, he wished to pick up the threads of the relationship that were disrupted after New Delhi's cancellation of the foreign secretary-level talks in August 2014, which followed the meeting between Pakistan High Commissioner Abdul Basit and representatives of the Hurriyat. Subsequent to this, the situation on the India-Pakistan border in Jammu deteri orated sharply , with border forces on both sides aiming mortars and machine guns at each other.
After the situation cooled down, Modi signalled a shift by sending his new foreign secretary , S Jaishankar, to Islamabad as part of a tour of Saarc countries. This was the outcome of the important one-on-one talks he had with his Pakistani counterpart Nawaz Sharif at the retreat during the Kathmandu Saarc summit.
Singh's duty , then, was to further the prime minister's aims, not to undermine them as he did. It would be surprising if Modi is not hopping mad at the downright stupid display of ego by a junior minister. If Singh has actually done what he has done as “duty“, he has egregiously insulted Islamabad -by first accepting an invitation to attend a national day function and then announcing to the world that he was “disgusted“ at having done so.
Modi's Pakistan policy is not a stand-alone affair. It is part of a wider policy that involves the maintenance and furtherance of peace in Jammu & Kashmir, as well as coordinating a complex policy with the US of promoting peace and stability in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
It is no secret that the BJP-PDP government in Srinagar has been crafted by the PM himself. Left to itself, the BJP would not have touched the PDP with a barge pole. But Modi realised that the only way the electoral verdict could be respected and peace be maintained was for a shotgun wedding with the `soft-separatist' PDP .
Likewise, Modi knows that there is really no long-term solution other than to maintain the policy of flexible containment -or engagement -with Pakistan that has been in place ever since Kashmir exploded in 1990.As part of this policy , different Indian governments have absorbed everything that Pakistan has thrown at it. And even then, New Delhi sought to engage its neighbour in a bid to find that elusive middle ground.
No matter what the hawks say , Ind ia can neither isolate Islamabad nor make war on it. Indeed, Pakistan's shifted stance on Afghanistan has been welcomed by Washington and Beijing. It would be New Delhi that would be alone if it sought to pursue of policy of relentless hostility.

The Great Wall of Pakistan
The government is also aware that the old policy of engaging Islamabad in a composite dialogue has reached a dead-end. That was premised on the belief that if the countries could settle smaller issues such as Siach en, Sir Creek and water resources, they could develop confidence in res olving the bigger ones like Kashmir. However, Pakistani actions have torpedoed it. First, the Kargil adven ture made it difficult for India to set tle on Siachen. By Pakistan claiming that the Line of Control was fuzzy in Kargil -when, in fact, it wasn't -it made it difficult for New Delhi to take Islamabad's word that its forces would withdraw from the area adja cent to Siachen, were Indian forces to demilitarise the glacier without a formal demarcation of their respec tive positions.
The second were the terrorist stri kes on India through a variety of non state actors. The 2008 Mumbai attack was a watershed that hardened Indi an positions on Pakistan because there is evidence of involvement of some Pakistani state actors in the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) plan.
So, any new round of talks would have to be on an entirely new basis. It would have to be not just commitme nts, but also actions on the part of Pa kistan on the issue of terrorism. Th ere are signs that Islamabad may be willing to play ball, at least in a limit ed fashion, because of the terrorist onslaught that it is being forced to confront itself.
This is what Modi is hoping to build on. And this is what has recei ved a needless setback by the gener al's silly actions.
Economic Times March 28, 2015

Modi's faultless footing in foreign policy

Whatever you may say about the slow pace of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s promises on the economic front, his stepping in the area of foreign policy has been faultless. The recent tour to the Indian Ocean region is a case in point.

He was the first PM to visit Seychelles in 33 years, the first to go to Sri Lanka in 28 years, and the first to Mauritius in a decade. Modi believes that India’s foreign policy must pivot on strong ties with its neighbours on the land or across the seas. But it is also a response to the strong surge of Chinese interest, which has manifested itself in substantial infrastructure investment, high-level visits and naval movement in the Indian Ocean Region (IOR).

Prime Minister Modi with former cricketer Arjuna Ranatunga. Events and actions of countries in the IOR littoral have security implications for India. Pic/PTI

It is not just that 90 per cent of our overseas trade passes through the IOR, that makes it important for us. Events and actions of countries in the IOR littoral have security implications for India. In addition, we have an interest in the welfare of significant chunks of the Indian diaspora who are scattered across the region from South Africa to Oman.

There was a time when naïve India sought to keep out foreign navies from the Indian Ocean. But today it realises that in a globalised world, others too have important reasons to be in the IOR, even the Chinese. Yet, we have a paramount responsibility to keep peace and promote stability in the region because of our location. The Chinese or the Americans can, if compelled, do without the IOR; we don’t have that option. Developments in the ocean and its littoral have a direct impact on our security and well being.

An important building block of our efforts are plans to establish coastal surveillance radars in a number of island states-8 in Mauritius, 8 in Seychelles, 6 in Sri Lanka, 10 in Maldives. These will be linked to the 50-odd sites on the Indian coast and, in turn, linked to the Gurgaon based Integrated Management Analysis Centre and be part of the Navy’s Maritime Domain Awareness project.

India’s security ties with Mauritius gathered steam following the 1981 attempted coup in Seychelles by South African mercenaries, which nearly led to the hijack of an Air India aircraft at the Seychelles airport. To prevent such an action in Mauritius, India helped it create a Rapid Mobile Force, as well as strengthen its police force and coast guard.

India is now seeking to consolidate its relations with Mauritius, a key gateway for foreign investment in India. This involves plugging the loopholes in the Double Tax Avoidance Agreement and the deferment of the anti-avoidance tax rules till 2017, besides providing an additional $ 0.5 billion line of credit for infrastructure development in the island.

On the security front, the Indian built CGS Barracuda, launched by Prime Minister Modi, was only the latest manifestation of the long-standing security ties between the two countries going back to the mid-1970s when India gifted the INS Amar to the Mauritian Coast Guard. It is significant that during the Modi visit, the two sides signed an MOU to develop the aviation and port infrastructure of the strategic Agalega island.

In the case of the Seychelles, India has been involved in a security partnership since 2003, when the two sides agreed to have the Indian Navy patrol its territorial waters. In 2003, the Indian Navy presented the Seychelles coast guard the INS Tarmugli to do the job itself and also gifted some helicopters and Dornier surveillance aircraft to the island nation.

Modi announced the gift of another Dornier aircraft this time. The two countries also signed an agreement for a hydrographic survey of the islands, as well as one for developing the air and sea infrastructure on Assumption Islands. There was no offer of a Line of Credit, since an earlier one of $ 75 million remains to be fully utilised.

The most complex visit was to Sri Lanka because of its importance to India’s economic and security interests. Here, the effort was two-fold. First, to reinvigorate ties that had stalled during the presidency of Mahinda Rajpakse and, the second, to reconnect with the Tamil minority of the island, which has an important emotional connect with India. A $318 million Line of Credit will be used to modernise the Sri Lankan railway system and India has committed to develop the port of Trincomalee as a petroleum hub. In the early 1980s, the Sri Lankans baited India by offering the old petroleum tank farm there to a US company. Modi’s visit to Jaffna, the first by an Indian PM was an important signal that India would stand up for the rights of the Tamil minority which has been battered by the brutal civil war.

The IOR tour was not just about declarations and MOUs, proof of this is that New Delhi has put down money through Lines of Credit for infrastructure development in various island states. The challenge now is to ensure that it is effectively utilised. This is one area of weakness on our part which must be remedied by creating appropriate project management vehicles. 2014 marked just the beginning of Chinese naval forays into the Indian Ocean. In the coming years we can see a marked increase as its $40 billion Maritime Silk Route initiative gets underway. Countries of the IOR will not hesitate to play off New Delhi against Beijing, we would be naïve to think they won’t. They will seek to advance their national interests, just as we must serve our own.

Mid Day March 17, 2015

Whatever you may say about the slow pace of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s promises on the economic front, his stepping in the area of foreign policy has been faultless. The recent tour to the Indian Ocean region is a case in point. - See more at: http://www.mid-day.com/articles/modis-faultless-foreign-policy/16067197#sthash.ojp8wi44.dpuf

Why the PDP was right to release Alam

This country is a nuclear weapons state, with a huge standing army. 

Terrorism is in remission, and the country most responsible for it is itself mired in violence. 

Yet, the sense of insecurity rides high in India. Indeed, there seems to be a touch of hysteria in the public discourse. 

Its more malign manifestation has been the mob lynchings that have taken place in two disparate parts of the country – Nagaland and Uttar Pradesh. But equally it was visible in the over-the-top response to the release of Masarat Alam, a separatist leader in Jammu and Kashmir. 

Grounds 

When Alam was released on March 7, the new Chief Minister Mufti Mohammed Sayeed was attacked for ordering his release as part of his alleged separatist agenda. The word “traitor” resounded in some TV debates. 

As the issue rocked Parliament, few bothered to note that his release was based on a letter from the state’s Home Secretary Suresh Kumar to the Jammu District Magistrate on February 4, before Mufti took over as the CM, saying the September 2014 detention order against Alam under the state’s draconian Public Safety Act (PSA), had become void. 

His release was ordered when the district magistrate determined that there were no fresh grounds to keep him in jail. 

 

The guidelines of the Supreme Court prohibit the detention of any person for the same offence more than once. Alam had to be released as no charge under the state’s Public Safety Act could be reframed against him, and there was a limit to detain someone under the Act. 

Alam has spent nearly 15 years in jail without any criminal charge ever since his detention under PSA for the first time in 1990. To keep him in jail, successive state governments slapped PSA on him from time to time. Since 2008, the PSA had been slapped on him more than 13 times. 

This is clearly against both the letter and spirit of the laws, and the Constitution. 

There is no doubt that the stone-pelting incidents that rocked Kashmir in 2010 were a serious challenge to the authorities, as was Alam’s alleged role in encouraging them. But stone pelting is not the same as firing guns and setting off explosives. It had several causes, not in the least the lack of adequate training and equipment of the local police to deal with street protest. 

In any case, 2015 was not 2011. The purpose of Alam’s detention had been served once the uprising wound down by 2012. 

Punishment 

Another political prisoner, dedicated to a movement that wants to overthrow the state, Kobad Gandhy, has been in jail for five years without being convicted of any crime. He belongs to a banned organisation, but nothing in our law says that you can incarcerate any person indefinitely without trial. 

In any case, he has already served the maximum punishment of 2 years imprisonment prescribed in the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act for being a member of a banned organisation. 

There is another category of people jailed for long periods before being imprisoned of any crime. These are under-rials who do not have the means of posting their bail. 

In yet another category comes the likes of Sahara chief Subrata Roy, who is presumably in jail on grounds of contempt of court. But the proceedings appear more a means of extracting Rs 10,000 crore from him, whereas the proper course would have been to try him for fraud, convict him and attach his assets. 

Repeated judgements of the Indian courts have made it clear that detention without trial goes against the law of the land, which has been shaped by the long stretches of imprisonment that our freedom fighters had to endure at the hands of the British. Bail is viewed as the right of a person. 

Terrorism 

Dealing with terrorism, or armed insurgencies such as those of the Maoists, does represent a challenge for a democratic polity. This is best evidenced by the dilemma of the US which has used a foreign territory – Guantanamo Bay in Cuba – to indefinitely incarcerate those it says were involved in terrorist acts. 

However, it is well known that the only crime of a lot of the detainees was to have been at the wrong place at the wrong time. 

That Guantanamo is a blot on America’s claim to be a country that lives under the rule of law is recognised by many Americans, including President Obama, but he finds it difficult to do anything about it. 

India has tried to grapple with the issue by passing tough legislation like TADA and POTA to deal with the threat. However, in both instances, the Ministry of Home Affairs came up with legislation which was so draconian and open to misuse, that it came apart under its own weight. 

In dealing with separatism, social protest and public anger, what the state requires is a subtle, rather than a heavy hand. 

In the era of instant communication and smart phones, the need for a refined strategy is even greater. Whether it is Kashmir or the Maoist heartland of Chattisgarh, using a sledgehammer to stifle protest is a bad idea. 

What is needed is a policy that combines elements of toughness, with strategies that promote trust and reconciliation. 

India faces no existential threat from either the separatists in the Valley, or the Maoists in Dantewada, so why the hysteria? By defining the discourse as between “nationalists” versus “traitors” and “terrorists”, a divide is created which cannot be bridged. After all, how can you reconcile such categories? 

Sadly, the TRP-driven media is oblivious to this. On one hand it enhances the paranoia and insecurity of Indians, and on the other it seems determined to tip the frazzled patient over the edge. 

Mail Today March 16, 2015

Restructure and reform the armed forces before buying hardware

The 2015-2016 budget shows a provision of Rs 310,079 crore for the defence services. If this looks different from what you read in the papers, it is because it contains a sum of Rs 54,500 crore which is paid out by way of pensions for the defence services, and Rs 8,852 crore which are listed for the MoD secretariat.

By a sleight of hand, these are excluded from defence expenditure - but that does not mean they don’t come out of the central exchequer.

Buying defence equipment without a plan, won't help our armed forces

Of this, just Rs 94,588 crore is for capital acquisitions or new equipment for the services. 

Therein lies the dilemma: Too much is being spent on pay, allowances, and maintenance of existing forces, and not enough is left over for the ever-increasing costs of modernisation. 

And this will increase as the Indian Army expands by another 90,000 personnel in the coming five years, and the Navy and Air Force grow. 

With the Services demanding top-of-the-line equipment, the question is: Can the economy can safely absorb the burden of defence expenditure? 

Manpower 

In 1978, China’s leader, Deng Xiaoping proposed “Four Modernisations” – in agriculture, industry, defence and science and technology – aimed at making China a great power by the early 21st century. 

We now know that they have succeeded spectacularly. What we may not be aware of is that defence was assigned the lowest priority. 

The Chinese made sure they became an economic power before undertaking military modernisation which has gotten underway in the last decade. 

India’s challenge is somewhat similar. Should it commit valuable resources to modernise its armed forces first, or should it get on the path of sustained high economic growth before doing so? 

India’s predicaments are somewhat different. We need manpower intensive forces to police our borders with China and Pakistan, we also need modern forces to deter a rising China whose nexus with Pakistan is only intensifying. 

How do we factor all this towards a defence policy that is successful and sustainable? Ideally, the Government’s national security goals should lead to a formulation of defence objectives which then yield a policy which is implemented. 

The first challenge is to have a national security doctrine prepared through interaction between the PMO, Ministry of Defence, Home, External Affairs and Finance. 

This would yield a strategy paper which prioritise our responses, identify the military capabilities required, as well pinpoint the industrial, scientific, technological and fiscal capacities required to meet the challenges. 

The problem is that if you ask five Indians what their national security strategies are, you will get five answers. 

What we need, instead, is an authoritative, official, assessment around which we can make our plans and policies. 

Take, for example, external threats. The one area which gets little attention is the Persian Gulf area from which we get 65 per cent of our oil and where 7 million Indians work and send back some $40billion worth of remittances. 

Yet, for the security of sea lanes from the Gulf and its littoral, we simply depend on Uncle Sam. 

Security 

The second is to integrate defence planning with national plans – in other words, get the military and civilian Make in India programmes to synergise each other. 

Associated with this is the need to link plans with budgets. The way things happen right now are illustrated by the Government authorisation for the Mountain Strike Corps last year. 

The Corps were not in the Long Term Integrated Perspective Plan (LTIPP) 2012-2017 and hence not budgeted for. 

The result is the Corps are up, by drawing personnel from existing Army units, and raiding the war wastage reserves for their equipment. 

The third big issue is the need for restructuring the apex level management of the armed forces by a) appointing a Chief of Defence Staff and b) creating an expert civilian bureaucracy for managing the MOD. 

Only then will we get realistic defence plans with proper inter-service prioritisation and which can be synchronised with the defence needs of the country, as well as its resources. 

Minus this, we get landed in situations where each Service pushes its maximal demand simultaneously, and not having an expert civilian bureaucracy to adjudicate them, these either block each other, or force the Government to take ad hoc decisions. 

The fourth challenge is to restructure our armed forces by integrating their functioning. There is no logic in having the eastern command of the IAF in Shillong, that of the Army in Kolkata and the Navy in Vizag. 

Acquisition 

The Lanzhou Military Region commander, one of seven commands in China, faces five Indian commands—the Northern, Western and Central Commands of the Army in addition to two Indian Air Force Commands. 

The Services also need to look into their own structures and forces and cut unnecessary manpower and organisations which may have served a function in the past, but are no longer needed. 

The Services need to look into their own structures and forces and cut unnecessary manpower and organisations which may have served a function in the past, but are no longer needed

The phased reduction of the Rashtriya Rifles is one case in point. The fifth is to leave behind the colonial heritage of our defence R&D and industry and progressively corporatize privatise ordnance factories and field workshops. 

They were needed in 19th and 20th century India but are not required now. In the coming years, budgets and acquisitions should be viewed in the perspective of longer term aims, rather than through bogeys of short-term demands. 

Indeed, the Government should hold off making big acquisitions till it can sort out some of the more basic issues. 

India is a nuclear weapons power and we do not face an existential threat from any state large or small, or for that matter from any non-state actor. 

Before the Government plunges into the physical modernisation of the armed forces, it needs to put in place the much needed modernisation of the way we think about, plan and manage our national security system. 

Buying or making shiny new hardware for the sake of looking modern neither enhances our security, nor helps our economy. 

Mail Today March 2, 2015

Mooring in foreign shores

In the second week of this month, Prime Minister Narendra Modi plans to visit Sri Lanka, Maldives, Mauritius and Seychelles. This is another version of his South Asian neighbourhood diplomacy, only the neighbours here are long neglected oceanic ones. Modi will be the first Indian PM to visit Sri Lanka in 28 years, and first to visit Seychelles since Indira Gandhi, the last prime ministerial visit to Mauritius was in 2005 and to Maldives in 2011.

Concern mounted in India in 2007 when Chinese President Hu Jintao rounded off his eight-nation trip to Africa with a stop at Seychelles. Last year, they reached a crescendo with the berthing of Chinese submarines in Colombo, and the visits of President Xi Jinping to Sri Lanka and Maldives, as part of his South Asian tour that brought him to India.

China is using economic, military and diplomatic tools to gain influence over coastal states and small islands in the IOR and is using its investments and aid to consolidate its strategic positions. In addition, there is the reality of China’s steadily growing influence in the littoral through military and economic ties with our immediate neighbours, Myanmar, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Pakistan.

Just how intense the competition is, became evident last month when Male’s main water desalination plant collapsed. Just a day after India sent five aircraft and two ships on an emergency mission to aid Maldives to overcome its water crisis, China pointedly sent a military vessel carrying 960 ton of fresh water and donated $500,000 for the repairs of the plant. Maldives is a particular area of concern to India since it was the object of back to back visits by Chinese President Xi Jinping in September and Defence Minister Chang Wanquan in November 2014. There have been persistent reports about China’s desire to construct a naval facility in the archipelago.

Chinese trade in the IOR has steadily grown in recent years. Beijing has important ties with resource-rich nations of East Africa and the Persian Gulf. It has a major role in the Gwadar port in Pakistan, at the mouth of the strategic Persian Gulf. Last November, China gave a call for the creation of a maritime silk route to enhance connectivity and trade among the Asian nations, and it has now operationalised a $40 billion fund to assist in the building of port and infrastructure in relation to it.

India can hardly object to the growth of Chinese trade and commerce in the IOR and its efforts to enhance connectivity. Indeed, it is not difficult to see why regional countries welcome Chinese interest and investment. But this has been accompanied by a significant stepping up of military activity as well. Last year, the PLA Navy carried out a special exercise on breaching the Lombok Strait that leads into the IOR from the Java Sea. It also sent a nuclear propelled submarine on a patrol across the Indian Ocean, ostensibly on an anti-piracy mission. Indeed, China’s robust participation in the anti-piracy task force off Somalia have given it a great opportunity to maintain a presence in IOR and familiarise itself with the region. But what has gotten New Delhi’s goat were the visits made by two Chinese conventional submarines to Colombo harbour. One of them, was clearly timed to coincide with the visit on September 7, 2014, of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, an important Indian ally, to Sri Lanka.

Geography and culture favour India in the IOR. The Indian peninsula juts out into the ocean and gives us unparalleled location astride important sea lanes. The Indian diaspora is scattered across the region from South Africa to Myanmar and the Persian Gulf. The Andaman & Nicobar Islands sit at the head of the Malacca Straits through which 30 per cent of the world trade passes which includes 50 per cent of oil being shipped. For this reason, China has been exploring the alternate routes via Lombok and Sunda Straits, as well as developing over-land pipelines to connect via Kyaukphyu (Sittwe) in Myanmar and Gwadar in Pakistan. There is an even grandiose talk of cutting a canal across the Isthmus of Kra.

The Indian Navy’s Maritime Doctrine describes its “primary areas of interest” to include our territorial waters and the exclusive economic zone out to 200 nautical miles, the Arabian Sea, Bay of Bengal and their “littoral reaches”, the choke points at Malacca, Sunda, Lombok, Hormuz, Bab el Mandeb, and the Cape of Good Hope. The southern IOR, Red Sea and its littoral, South China Sea and the West Pacific are areas of secondary interest.

The long-term goal of the IN is to exercise sea control and have the ability of power projects ashore in its region of primary interest. But India’s present challenge is to step up its game to maintain its presence in the region in the face of stiff Chinese competition. It has developed relations through naval diplomacy, which includes the transfer of patrol craft and reconnaissance aircraft and helicopters. Now it needs to consolidate these through enhanced trade and investment aimed at integrating the region into India's economic sphere.

New Delhi cannot match Beijing in terms of resources, but what it does have is location, a great deal of goodwill and also friendly allies, especially the IOR’s hegemon-the US. Even so, India needs to up the ante by finding money to put into strategic investments and projects across the IOR-whether it is Myanmar, Iran, Sri Lanka or Mauritius. The way to do it is not governmental schemes which are all running late, but to draw strength from India’s entrepreneurial class and the private sector.

Mid Day March 3, 2015