Go slow on the Kabul Express

The Great Game appears to have taken a couple of somersaults in Afghanistan. The announcement of Mullah Omar’s death, apparently two years ago in April 2013, is a pointer towards this. 

The most obvious consequence of this will be the weakening of the Taliban. Omar was no ordinary leader. He was the Amir-ul-Momineen, or the commander of the faithful, and accepted as such by the various factions of the Taliban camp, the Haqqani network and al Qaeda. 

 

His successor Mullah Akhtar Mansoor is being opposed by powerful Taliban dissidents, and even if accepted, will simply be the leader of the Taliban, not the near-mythical Amir-ul-Momineen. 

The Nato war against the Taliban has removed a number of older field commanders from the scene and seen the rise of younger, more radicalised fighters who are outside Islamabad’s control. 

Almost simultaneously, there has been an announcement that the legendary Jalaluddin Haqqani, too, has passed away. He was the key ISI-backed player in Afghanistan responsible for many of the terrorist strikes, including the attacks on the Indian Embassy and other India-related facilities, that took place in that country. 

Omar's death 

The news of Mullah Omar’s death was communicated by Pakistan to Afghanistan’s President Ashraf Ghani, indicating that Islamabad no longer felt the necessity of having Omar being seen as a unifying factor of the Taliban. 

Minus the Amir-ul-Momineen, the ISI will find it easier to handle the factious Taliban. At some point or the other, Omar would have to be produced to bless the peace agreement. Revealing his death now, Pakistan has, on one hand, weakened the Taliban, and, on the other, bought brownie points with the United States and China. 

Clearly, Islamabad has retrenched its aims in Afghanistan, instead of seeking to replace the Kabul government with the Taliban, who have always been more than a handful, it is now seeking to work with Ghani - who is following a policy of working closely with the Pakistan government and who has gone out of his way to signal that Kabul will accommodate Islamabad’s concerns. 

Recall that in May, the spy agencies of the two countries signed an MoU to share information and boost anti-terror cooperation. The peace process which is being ‘facilitated’ by Pakistan involves China, the US, Afghanistan and the Taliban and is called the 2+2+1 talks. 

On July 7, the first round of talks between the Afghan government and the Taliban officials took place in Murree, in the presence of the authorised representatives of the Chinese and the US governments. 

On Eid, in mid-July, a written message, purportedly from Mullah Omar declared that there was nothing wrong in talking with adversaries and had welcomed “political endeavours and peaceful pathways”. 

Further, he rejected the claim that the Taliban were Pakistan’s agents. 

In response, Ghani had expressed his gratitude to the Amir-ul-Momineen and declared that negotiations with the Taliban were the only way to end the bloodshed and bring peace to Afghanistan. You can be sure, in hindsight, that the message was crafted by the ISI. 

Now, with things moving its way, Pakistan now appears to be distancing itself from the Taliban. This is essential for getting the support of the US and China in the venture which will give it what it most desires - an Afghanistan fitting into its sphere of influence. 

Talks postponed 

Omar’s death has led to the postponement of the second round of talks that were scheduled to take place in Murree on Friday. 

A dissident group of Taliban leaders has emerged to challenge the ‘election’ of Mansoor as the successor to Omar. It has constituted its own shura, or council, and is threatening to elect its own leader. 

Omar’s family, too, has declined to back Mansoor and have called for a consensual election based on consultation among the ulema, the Taliban, and elders. This is simply not going to happen. 

India out on a limb 

Where does all this leave India? Between a rock and a hard place. New Delhi cannot avoid one essential truth - that its substantial commitments to the civilian reconstruction of Afghanistan have been based on the security cover provided by the US/Nato forces. 

With the US deciding to go along with the Pakistan- China option, India is out on a limb. True, we have friends in Afghanistan - the supporters of former President Hamid Karzai, the left-inclined intellectuals, parts of the Northern Alliance who fought the Taliban and Pakistan. 

But as of now, with Islamabad having been placed in the driver’s seat by the US and China, they are marginalised. 

It is time for New Delhi to roll with the punches and bide its time. India lacks resources and direct access to Afghanistan, but it can derive some comfort from the fact that, if the past is any guide, you can always trust Islamabad to give us the opening through its propensity to overreach. 

Mail Today August 3, 2015

Why Yakub Memon should not be hanged

Don’t get me wrong on this, I support the death penalty – for rapist-murderers, child killers, terrorists and even acid-throwers. But I go with our Supreme Court’s caveat, that it should be reserved for the “rarest of rare” cases. Yakub Memon, who could be executed on July 30^th for his role in the Bombay blasts of 1993 does not fit that criterion.
Punishment in a civilised democracy must  balance between retribution on behalf of the victim and the possibility of the rehabilitation of the criminal. And, of course, it must meet the requirement of proportionality, in other words, the punishment must fit the crime.
In my view, Yakub Memon was a second-level  actor in the conspiracy and not deserving of what is called the “supreme” punishment. The main conspirators are Dawood Ibrahim, his brother Anees, Yakub’s elder brother Mushtaq “Tiger” Memon and the unknown ISI officers who helped them to stage the horrific Bombay blasts of 1993 that took the lives of 257 people. All of them are hiding in Pakistan. There were also others, such as the ten small-time hoods who actually planted the bombs, others who were involved in landing the RDX explosives and storing them at various locations in Mumbai.
Yakub is not innocent. He was aware of the conspiracy and even aided it, but he was not the main player. More important was his behaviour subsequent to his escape from India and his role in exposing the Pakistani hand in the blasts.

Yakub’s return
Just before the blasts on March 12, 1993, the Memon family slipped out of Mumbai on a flight to Dubai via Karachi. During the Karachi stopover, they slipped out and entered Pakistan without any immigration formalities. As the heat built up, they were whisked away to Bangkok and brought back to Pakistan after a few days, traveling on Pakistani passports with new identities.  Nearly 17 months after they fled, in  August 1994, Yakub was dramatically arrested in New Delhi along with six members of his family, which included three women. However, Tiger and another brother, Ayub, remained in Pakistan.
The government hailed it as a big catch. Before the magistrate who remanded him, Yakub said that he had returned of his own volition to surrender before the Indian authorities. The police, however, showed him as being arrested at New Delhi railway station and the media was told that he had been sent on a clandestine mission to trigger blasts on Independence Day. Privately, police sources acknowledged that Yakub had been “arrested” in Kathmandu. In reality, he and his family were pushed across the border on July 28 and interrogated by the Intelligence Bureau. Thereafter on August 5 he was taken to New Delhi railway station and formally arrested.

Helping nail Pakistani role
The value of Yakub in proving Pakistan’s complicity in the Bombay blasts was invaluable. Subsequently, Yakub persuaded six other members of his family to return and face the law – his brothers Essa and Suleiman and his wife Rubina, his own wife Raheen and his mother Hanifa  and father Abdul Razzak.
Between March 12, 1993, and Yakub’s return, Pakistan played a cat and mouse game with India, first denying the presence of the Memons in Karachi, then acknowledging it when evidence was provided. But they claimed that the Memons, who had no visas for Pakistan, had left for places unknown.
Yakub provided the Indian authorities with knowledge of the Pakistani officials who assisted the family in Dubai and Karachi, as well as details about the Pakistani passports and other identity documents issued to them by the Pakistanis, thus nailing Islamabad’s lies. He also had a few micro-cassettes of conversations of Tiger and his associates that he had taped surreptitiously in Dubai and a few other items of proof.
The information he provided played an important role in the trial of the accused but instead of being treated as an approver of sorts, he became a fall guy. Since the authorities did not have Tiger in their hands, they wanted another Memon to hang.
There has been a pattern in India in relation to the death penalty. Sometimes,  really nasty criminals get amnestied, either by the Supreme Court or the President. In March, President Mukherjee commuted the death sentence of Man Bahadur Dewan who was sentenced to death for killing his wife Gauri and two minor sons, Rajib and Kajib, in September 2002. The President did  so at the recommendation of the Home Ministry which sought leniency because of Dewan’s poverty-ridden background.  His predecessor, Pratibha Patil commuted 30 death sentences, including seven to murderers who had also raped their victims, several of whom were children. The Home Ministry recommendations that must have led to this Presidential action would probably make nauseating reading.

Politics in command
However, in cases of terrorism, courts and officials usually respond to the blood lust of society. People accused of terrorism, even those peripheral to the crime, are sentenced to death and  hanged. In this category comes Afzal Guru, who, as the evidence clearly showed, was a side-show in the Parliament House attack case. Yet, somebody needed to hang since the actual perpetrators had been shot dead and the main conspirators were out of our reach in Pakistan.
In the Rajiv Gandhi case, too, Indian investigators only managed to lay their hands on some Indian Tamil dupes of the main conspirators. The chief villains – Prabhakaran and his intelligence chief, Pottu Aman – were in Sri Lanka, the main culprit dead while her support team led by ‘one-eye Jack’ Sivarasan and his team committed  suicide when they were surrounded by the police.
So Nalini, Murugan, G. Perarivalan and Chinna Shanthan were sentenced to death. Nalini’s sentence was commuted to life imprisonment in 2000, and earlier this year, the sentences of the other three were also commuted by the Supreme Court. The commutation had more to do with the political pressure brought by various political players in Tamil Nadu, rather than some change of heart of the system.
Politics is playing a role in the death sentence awarded to Balwant Singh Rajaona, convicted for the assassination of Punjab Chief Minister Beant Singh. His execution was scheduled for March 2012, but has been stayed by the Home Ministry following appeals by the SGPC and various Sikh notables of Punjab.
To reiterate, Yakub is not innocent, but neither does he deserve the death sentence,  given the background cited above. The charges against him are not of participating in the military training that was given to several of the conspirators by the Pakistanis, or of landing the RDX and placing the explosives. He was charged with financing the blasts, though his co-accused Mulchand Shah got just five years for the same charge. Indeed, his co-accused in the three charges he faced have all got lesser sentences for the same offence. Don’t forget, of course, that the conviction took place under TADA, a law which has since been discredited and repealed.
In Yakub’s case, the balance has shifted too much towards retribution and is disproportionate to his crimes.
It is for the Indian judicial system to reflect on whether the death sentence has become a whimsical lottery, tilted a bit against the Muslim community. Heinous criminals get away with barbaric crimes, terrorists who are politically convenient are given the benefit of doubt, but to make up for it, peripheral players in Islamist terrorist conspiracies feel the full might of the law.
The Wire July 17, 2015

Modi's foreign policy style is continuity, not change

Continuity, rather than change, is the true hallmark of Narendra Modi’s foreign policy. True, he has been far more vigorous and muscular than his predecessor Manmohan Singh, but the difference is in tone and emphases, rather than substance. 

Nothing brings this out better than the recent developments with Pakistan. After a year of mixed signalling, the two countries have finally settled on the mode of dialogue through which they will seek to resolve all their outstanding issues - which, for those who are tone deaf - also includes Kashmir. 

 

 

Terror agenda 

Dealing with terrorism has a salience in the new India-Pakistan encounter. That is because in the last year, Pakistan has finally made up its mind and decided to fight terrorism, rather than to maintain a deliberate ambiguity because of its need to back groups that target India. 

However, its record remains messy because of its past and one of those issues - the Mumbai attack of 2008 - continues to roil the India-Pakistan efforts towards a détente. 

A second problem for Pakistan is to decide what it wants to do in Kashmir. In the 2004-2008 period, it slowly wound down its commitments there and explored ways of arriving at a modus vivendi with India. Subsequently, it sought to raise the heat again by infiltrating militants into the Valley. But it has realised that there is not much appetite for an armed militancy left in there. 

The recent incidents of firing, almost all of which are certainly linked to infiltrating militants across the LoC, indicate that it is continuing its policy of maintaining a low level of violence in the Valley. But this is a dead end and Islamabad knows it, and that is where the India-Pakistan dialogue between the National Security Advisers comes in. 

By selecting AK Doval to be the point man for his Pakistan policy, Prime Minister Modi has placed a heavy burden on his NSA who is known to be a hawk on issues relating to Pakistan. 

Essentially, Modi is telling Doval that he is depending on his, Doval’s, expertise in resolving things with Pakistan. Whether the NSA chooses a policy which turns up the heat on Pakistan, or whether he chooses other options, at the end of the day, he must hold the can. 

Continuity, with a changed emphasis, also marks India’s US policy. The tenth anniversary of the Indo-US nuclear deal is a good occasion to reflect on what it has achieved and what it hasn’t and the direction to which our relations are headed. 

For India, the deal has been hugely beneficial since it has led to the removal of a raft of technology restrictions. The US has also made it clear during President Obama’s visit in January that it is committed to removing the other restrictions that come through the Missile Technology Control Regime, the Nuclear Suppliers Group and the Wassenaar Arrangement. 

As for the disappointing reactor sales, that is something the US can live with. Most people simply don’t realise that commerce has never really been a factor in America’s foreign policy initiatives. 

All this have been on track since Manmohan Singh’s time. The US knows very well that the former Prime Minister was deeply committed to closer ties with the US. Initially it had apprehensions about the ties with Modi because of the past visa issue, but they were pleasantly surprised when Modi took a pragmatic tack and pursued strong relations with the US. 

Their best manifestation of this has been the Joint Strategic Vision on the Indian Ocean and Asia Pacific that was agreed to in the Obama visit. 

Curious case of China

In the case of China, the continuity manifested is of a different nature, in large measure because of the sheer dynamism of China’s advance in the regions proximate to India. India has sought to meet this with a policy of engagement, along with moves to right the Asian power balance. 

So India is an enthusiastic member of the Chinese-sponsored Asian infrastructure bank, the BRICS bank and, more recently, the SCO. At the same time India has visibly strengthened its ties with the US, Japan and Vietnam. 

Border issue

In trying to deal with the Sino-Indian border, too, little has changed in the parallel process where India is working to develop its border infrastructure to meet a more assertive China even as it works to settle the border dispute through the Special Representative’s dialogue. 

However, if there is one factor that will change the sense of continuity, and what analysts say is a reactive world of Indian foreign policy, it is the Chinese surge in the Indian Ocean and Central Asia, along with a spill-over affect in our neighbourhood of Pakistan, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Nepal and Sri Lanka. 

To cope with this, New Delhi will have to improve its game by several notches. Prime Minister Modi has brought uncommon energy and focus into the play, but India lacks resources and, more important, the institutional structures and personnel who can flesh out a framework of response and the subsequent policy to deal with the situation. 

Mail Today July 19, 2015

Why it's time for India to invest in Iran

Almost everyone is agreed that the recent Iran-US nuclear deal has opened up a raft of opportunities for India — economic and geopolitical — as well as other countries. But major obstacles still remain, primarily the political divisions in the United States.

At the textbook level, the US Senate has to approve international treaties by a two-thirds majority vote. But as per current practice, the deal is deemed as an "agreement" and not "treaty" and hence Congress can be ignored. But in a democracy things don't quite go by the textbook. As things stand, Obama and the Congress have agreed to have the latter the right to vote to void the deal. But the President will veto such a vote, and its mainly Republican opponents will not be able to get a significant number of Democrats to overcome the veto. Lifting Iran sanctions will also be a problem, though the President has the right to suspend Congress-approved sanctions for two years before requiring its approval to lift them.

The US opponents must mull the consequences of blocking the deal at this stage. Till now the P-5+1 group of big powers has presented a united front and forced Iran to come to the table. But should the US renege, Russia and China, who have not been particularly happy about the Iran sanctions, will pull out, as will countries like India and Japan, which have borne the adverse consequences of the embargo.

New Delhi followed the US' lead in squeezing its oil trade with Iran. Prior to the sanctions, in 2011, Iran was India's second largest supplier of crude oil after Saudi Arabia. Currently it is seventh. Though India was one of six nations allowed to purchase a limited quantity of crude under the sanctions regime.

Indian companies like Essar, Tata and oil and gas majors have been mooting investments in Iran since the early-2000s, but they have not put down any serious investments in the country because of the sanctions which actually began in the mid-2000s. As a result, in April this year, the frustrated Iranians withdrew an offer to Indian firms to develop the Farzad B Gas field.

Over the past five years, New Delhi developed a variety of tactics to deal with the Iranian situation. Besides getting exemptions from oil trade sanctions, India also managed to work out a Rupee-Rial arrangement to maintain their trade relations. Indian companies were advised to work through Turkish, Chinese and Russian entities, or set up corporations without vulnerable US assets.

India has made it clear from the outset that it is against Iran getting nuclear weapons. This may sound strange coming from New Delhi, but unlike India, Iran signed the NPT and has given a solemn commitment that it will not make nuclear weapons. In 2005, as part of the western drive against Teheran's dubious actions on the nuclear front, India voted twice in the IAEA to censure Iran. But, most people acknowledged that New Delhi had little choice, considering that it was at a critical phase in its own nuclear deal with Washington.

First, and most importantly, what binds India and Iran are geopolitical interests. We have been together since 1990 in helping Afghan parties to fight the Taliban. In the 2000s in Afghanistan, India built a highway from Zaranj, which is close to the Iran border, to Delaram, to facilitate the linkage of the country from the non-Pakistani territory in the west. Both of us also have a somewhat jaundiced view of Pakistan who we border, albeit for different reasons.

Now Iran has also emerged as an important ally in fighting the Islamic State. While India may not be immediately threatened by the Daesh, it cannot be complacent. However, it can be sure that the Iranians who are the targets of Sunni fanatics will be on the same side as us.

Second, Iran offers a vast market for Indian products. In the last few years, India has been exporting rice and sugar to Iran against Rupees accumulated in Indian banks due to the US sanctions. But as trade normalises, India has opportunities to develop a market for automobile parts, pharmaceuticals and IT products, provided we understand that now we will be facing competition from a variety of sources.

Third, Iran's vast oil and gas resources, which are proximate to India, are vital for our energy security. So far we have dithered on gas projects, as well as in developing the Chah Bahar port. But of late, things have been moving. During his meeting with Prime Minister Modi at the sidelines of the Ufa summit, days before the final agreement between Iran and the P5+1 powers was announced, President Hassan Rouhani of Iran called on India to invest in infrastructure projects worth $8 billion.

Fourth, Iran offers us wider geopolitical opportunities by developing multi-modal routes to Central Asia and Russia. The elements of two parallel North-South Corridors — one going north from Bandar Abbas to the Caspian, and thence to Russia and Europe, and the second going from Chah Bahar to Afghanistan and Central Asia are all there. What is needed is to complete several critical rail and road links that Rouhani is inviting us to build. This would be a worthy riposte to the Chinese Belt Road Initiative.

The opening of Iran will alter the geopolitics of south-western Asia. Even so, India needs to tread with care. There are other factors we need to take into account — our ties with Israel and key partners like Saudi Arabia and the UAE, and, for that matter, the United States. But this should not in any way constrain our initiatives with Iran. We need to move beyond the phase of dithering that has characterised our ties with Tehran for the last decade.

Mid Day July 21, 2015

Learning from a bloody past

In all the breast beating about the Kandahar hijacking raised by former R&AW chief AS Dulat’s book on Kashmir, people are forgetful of an important point: The terrible events of September 11, 2001 have forever ensured that there is only one way to deal with a hijack free the hostages through negotiations or commando action, or shoot it out of the sky. There is no middle ground left.

This said, we can look at that event with some hindsight. It is clear now, as it was then, that the handling of the event was a blunder, not a simple “goof up” as Dulat suggests. In keeping with the Indian tradition of no one being held accountable for anything, no heads rolled and no one was punished for that event. People blamed the Crisis Management Committee headed by Cabinet Secretary Prabhat Kumar, they in turn blamed the all-powerful Brajesh Mishra, the National Security Adviser, who in turn said that the NSG and Punjab Police personnel failed to do the needful. Incidentally, Prime Minister Vajpayee learnt of the hijacking 100 minutes after it occurred because he was not informed by the Indian Air Force pilots on his Boeing 737 since he was on an internal flight.

And, as usual no lessons were learnt. When terrorists struck in Mumbai on November 26, 2008, there was a repeat performance. The state’s Crisis Management Group headed by its Chief Secretary was a non-starter, the police chief barricaded himself near the Trident hotel instead of being in the control room, and the National Security Guards took their time arriving, ensuring that an event that could have been terminated within hours was allowed to play out for 60 hours. One of the major flaws in the idea of Crisis Management Groups at the time, was the belief that crises can be managed by committees, that too of babus who are better trained to avoid decisions.

Fortunately, a new hijack doctrine laid out by the United Progressive Alliance government in 2005, left out the Crisis Management Committee. The new policy framework was approved by the Cabinet Committee on Security which said that a commercial jet could be shot down if there were fears that it would be used as a missile by hijackers. Further, it ruled out negotiations on the demands of the hijackers. Negotiations, involving trained negotiators would take place only to seek the termination of the event and seek the safe release of the passengers. In addition, the government declared that it would seek the death penalty against anyone seeking to hijack an aircraft.

While the decision to shoot down an aircraft would rest with the CCS or, the PM, defence minister and the home minister, a provision was made for a quick decision by a senior Air Force officer in the event of an aircraft going rogue during landing or take off giving little time for the normal chain of command to be accessed. A hijacked aircraft would be accompanied by IAF fighters in Indian airspace and specific orders given to ensure that no hijacked aircraft which landed in an Indian airfield could take off again. Such aircraft would be liable to be stormed by the NSG, were there to be a situation that threatened the lives of the passengers.

Despite all this, it is not clear whether we would be able to handle the next event efficaciously. The only way such situations can be handled is by clear-cut doctrines, chains of command and repeated practice. It is true that no one event is like another. Yet, if the doctrine is well articulated and understood, the chain of command clear and uncomplicated, and those charged with dealing with the incidents put through regular exercises, there is no reason why they cannot handle any version of the challenge.

But that is where the rub lies. Most people have forgotten that we actually have an anti-hijack doctrine. They cannot be blamed because this is something that the government needs to educate the public on and this can be done through periodic exercises. This holds good not just for hijack threats, but terrorist actions as well. We may have overcome the challenges of Sikh and Islamist terrorism that afflicted us in the 1990s and mid-2000s, but only the foolhardy will say that the era of terrorism is over. It is not, and we must put all the lessons

Mid Day July 7, 2015

How we can save the nation's farmers

India got a reality check on Saturday when newspapers splashed the shocking conclusions of the first Socio-Economic and Caste Census (SECC) since 1934, which revealed the extent of rural deprivation. 

Its primary finding was that rural households make up nearly three quarters of the country’s population, some 884 million people, and that an overwhelming 74 per cent of them survive on a monthly income of Rs 5,000 for their highest earner. 

The message from these staggering numbers is obvious: India has to resolve some very basic issues within before it can aspire to be any kind of power, regional or global. 

With agriculture contributing just 13.7 per cent to the Indian Gross Domestic Product, it is clear that the rural situation is a millstone around the country’s neck, rather than being an asset in the transformation of our economy. 

But this millstone happens to comprise of people - hundreds and millions of men, women and children who are illiterate, poor and hungry. 

Rural Assets

More than half of these households do not own any land, the primary rural asset. And neither are they able to create other assets because they lack education. Thirty-six per cent of them are illiterate and the rest of those considered literate barely qualify since they have not even completed high school. 

In practical terms a vast number of households have to struggle hard to get food, potable water, have no power or toilets. The consequences of this are illiteracy, malnutrition, and vulnerability to disease.

As another report being suppressed by the government and revealed by The Economist notes, fully 30 per cent of the country's children suffer from malnutrition and its terrible consequences of “stunting” and “wasting” - being abnormally short or underweight. You can be sure most of these folk are from the rural areas too.

Over the years, a large number of people have worked their way out of poverty, gained literacy, acquired the trappings of middle class living like refrigerators, washing machines, and a two or four-wheeled vehicle. But the SECC has just opened our eyes to the sheer scale of poverty that continues to blight our land. 

Because this deprivation is rural, many of those who make policy, read newspapers, and shape the discourse of the country through the TV, never really get to grasp what it means. 

Hidden away in the backwaters of Bihar, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh or Orissa, even the minor illness of an earning member of the household can mean slow starvation and death. 

Sadly, richer states are not too different - 47.6 per cent of rural Rajasthan remains illiterate and the much-touted Gujarat’s child malnutrition rates of 33.3 per cent are higher than the national average. 

At a macro level it is obvious that the country needs a manufacturing revolution, as Prime Minister Modi says, to shift these millions into productive occupations. But the issue is not simply one of investments, ease of doing business, FDI and the other buzzwords you hear, but of a process that would first eliminate hunger and disease and provide education to the rural masses. 

The figures say, for example, that only 5.4 per cent of the people in rural India have completed high school, and only 3.4 per cent have graduated from college.

Red Herrings 

With these numbers, who or what will populate your factories? “Make in India” or MNREGA are red herrings. What the country needs to urgently work on is an sweeping agrarian revolution. 

For too long policy - essentially subsidising fertiliser and providing unsustainable support prices - has drifted. In the meantime, the size of holdings has declined, even as the number of persons dependent on those holdings has increased. The water table has dropped precipitously.  

Biggest Problem 

But the biggest problem has been the fractured Indian agricultural market, dominated as it is by Agriculture Produce Marketing Committees. The result is that there are situations where brinjal is selling for Rs 300 a quintal in Punjab and Rs 3,000 a quintal in Gujarat at the same time. 

Middle-men distort the prices and availability of commodities. India does not have the option of forcing the process, as was done in the Soviet Union and China, and as the experience of countries like the US and Japan shows, it is not easy to reform the agricultural sector in democratic countries as well because of its political clout. 

But for India there is, perhaps, little choice. Politicians have been kicking the can down the road for the past decades. Now, they have accumulated to form the millstone that will block the progress of the country. 

Bold steps are needed to create a new agricultural paradigm, or else the country is condemned to walk on the development treadmill forever. 

Mail Today July 6, 2015