India and the World: Foreign Policy in the Age of Modi

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s foreign policy has been characterised by great energy, a desire to break the mold of the past and a penchant for risk-taking. Given the vigour he has imparted,  foreign relations should have yielded more significant results. They haven’t. This is not only the fault of poor conception and implementation of some initiatives, but to the fact that in foreign policy there are external variables outside your control.

Even before the Modi government assumed office in May of 2014, certain trends in foreign policy had hardened.  1) The Special Representative process of resolving India’s border issue with China had reached a dead-end. 2) The same had happened with the composite dialogue with Pakistan. Actually, minus a Pakistani effort to punish the perpetrators of the  2008 Mumbai terror strike of November 2008, the very basis of a bilateral dialogue to resolve issues had been undermined.

What has Modi sought in his  foreign policy ?

The Modi government has, through its publicised Raisina Dialogues, put forward themes it wishes to pursue in its foreign policy. In its first iteration in 2016, “Connectivity” was the overarching meme, associated with its desire to push neighbourhood ties. In January 2017, the dialogue was under the rubric of “Multipolarity and Multilateralism,” signaling a larger vision of India as a regional power.

These do not, however, tell the whole story. India can have only one major goal in its grand strategy –to promote economic growth and secure its periphery. In this, integrating the South Asian economy through enhanced connectivity is logical, though pursued fitfully, primarily because of India’s poor ties with Pakistan.

To secure its periphery, New Delhi must deal with its biggest foreign policy challenge—moderating, if not breaking, the China-Pakistan alliance. Short of this, it remains limited to managing its relationships with the two in a sub-optimal manner.  As of today, however, the Modi government appears to be faltering even in this task.

Early momentum

Modi came in with a terrific drive. In just the seven months that he was in office in 2014, he had made nine foreign visits. In his two-and-a-half years, he has visited 36 countries, a handful  of them twice, and the United States four times.  A remarkable aspect of his visits was that, in many instances, he was the first PM to visit a country, even key neighbours, in years—the first in 17 to Nepal, 28 to Sri Lanka,  34 to UAE,  and the first ever to Mongolia.

Modi came to power with a “neighbourhood first” agenda. He signaled his commitment by inviting all the leaders of SAARC nations for his inauguration as Prime Minister. His very first bilateral visit in June 2014 was to India’s “best friend” Bhutan and the second in August was to Nepal.  He returned to Kathmandu in November to attend the 18th SAARC summit, where he conducted  an important outreach to Pakistan’s Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif.

The neighbourhood pattern was repeated in 2015, but this time focusing on the Indian Ocean when there were visits to Seychelles, Mauritius and Sri Lanka as well as to Bangladesh and Afghanistan. A second important cluster was all the five Central Asian “stans” in July 2015.

A third set of priorities became visible through Modi’s 2016 visits to Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Qatar. He had already visited the UAE in  August 2016, and the Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed al Nahyan became the chief guest at the Republic Day parade in 2017.

Underlying all these were visits to Japan and various European countries with a view to enticing investors and aid. The visits to the US were a special category, aimed at shoring up ties with the only country that could help India offset Chinese power, and whose friendship opened the doors to many other countries and institutions.

The best laid plans…

Somehow things have not worked out as well in the neighbourhood as they could have – and we aren’t even speaking about Pakistan. It was evident in the 18th SAARC summit in Kathmandu that Islamabad was not willing to go along with the connectivity projects being mooted, and Sharif had been domestically hobbled by the Army. By 2016, the India-Pakistan situation had reached a point where a New Delhi-led boycott led to the collapse of the 19th SAARC summit to be held in Islamabad.

Ties with Nepal nose-dived in 2015 following the promulgation of a new constitution that militated against the interests of the Madhesi or plains people. New Delhi woke up at the last minute and sent Foreign Secretary Jaishankar to retrieve the situation, but it was too late. Eventually a road  blockade softened the Nepalese, and thereafter a New Delhi-backed constitutional coup led to a break in the CPN(UML)- CPN (Maoist) alliance in Nepal, and the replacement of K P Sharma Oli by Pushpa Kamal Dahal (Prachanda) as Prime Minister. But the damage has been deep, and Oli is now fanning the flames of Nepali nationalism with some Chinese encouragement.

The new Indian assertiveness was also visible in Sri Lanka where New Delhi helped cobble an alliance that saw the defeat of Mahinda Rajpakse in the presidential elections. The man who defeated the LTTE became anathema to New Delhi because of the burgeoning links between Sri Lanka and China. More than this, though, New Delhi was alarmed by the docking of Chinese submarines in Colombo harbour in 2014 and 2015.

There has been no visit to Maldives because New Delhi’s relations with Male remain deadlocked following the  removal of Mohammed Nasheed as President, and the steady consolidation of control by President Abdulla Yameen.

But the visits to the island republics of Mauritius and Seychelles have been useful in developing India’s maritime domain awareness scheme, as well as its naval posture in the Indian Ocean.

The elephants in the room

The big failures in India’s ties relate to Pakistan and China. After a thaw of sorts in 2014, India-Pakistan ties never really got off the ground. There were incidents on the Line of Control, and the new government sought to clearly signal its tough intent by conducting an unprecedented counter-bombardment on the LoC.

But New Delhi did not give up on Islamabad. Following the Ufa meeting between Sharif and Modi, their NSAs met in Bangkok in early December 2015. Later on Christmas Day, which happened to be Nawaz Sharif’s birthday, Modi made a surprise descent on Lahore to personally wish him.

However, the attack, a week later on January 1, 2016, on the Indian airbase at Pathankot has changed the Indian narrative on Pakistan. Prime Minister Modi has since then, repeatedly called on Pakistan to be sanctioned as a state sponsor of terrorism, and to be isolated by the international community. The Uri attack of September 18, 2016 and the Indian response through the so-called surgical strikes ten days later on September 28/29 are an indication that India and Pakistan are back to the future. Modi’s obsession with “terrorism” from Pakistan is puzzling considering that since 2011 we have not suffered a mass civilian casualty attack. It appears to be designed to appeal to the domestic electorate.

With China, nothing so dramatic is happening. Indeed, to go just by one metric, Chinese “transgressions” on the Line of Actual Control have actually decreased. The peculiar drama that played out in Chumur sector during the state visit of Xi Jinping in September 2014 was the last such major event. But the border talks are stalled and there has been no significant political or economic outcome from either the Xi visit of 2014 or Modi’s return visit in 2015.

But a CBM regime ensures that its disputed border does not trigger conflict, while India participates in Beijing-led initiatives like the Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), and BRICS, and goes through the motions of cooperation.

Our natural ally

The one area where India has had unalloyed success is in its relations with the United States. This is not because we have an identity of interests, but a congruence of needs that the other can fulfill. India needs the world’s foremost military power to maintain a balance against China, while the US needs India because it is the only credible partner it has in building a coalition in East Asia to confront China. These ties were not a Modi initiative, but arose during the presidency of George W Bush. In fact, it can be argued that the given the momentum, the outcome has been sub-par.

Relations with Japan are a subset of ties with the US, and again, serve mutual needs—India wants Japanese investment and technology, while Tokyo seeks India’s participation in the East Asian coalition.

What about the main agenda: seeking an economic transformation of India? According to the government, Modi’s foreign visits have resulted in a sharp rise of FDI into India. In 2015, for example, India attracted $ 44 billion a 29 per cent jump over the figure for the previous year. The figure could be higher for 2016, but it needs to be recalled that the 2012 figure was $46.55 billion, and so to attribute the growth to Modi’s foreign policy alone would be an error.

As part of this, Modi has also been active in multilateral forums like BRICS, East Asia Summit,  and the G-20.  However, the political part of the agenda often became more important than the economic. Thus, the  Ufa  BRICS summit became more important for the Modi-Sharif meeting than the substantive agenda. The BRICS summit in Goa in October 2026, became an occasion to corner Pakistan on account of its support of terrorism.

Looking ahead

Despite the self-inflicted wound of demonetisation, India’s economy will remain a growth magnet and attract foreign investment. But the India story may be affected by questions about the competence of its government and its whimsical ways. More importantly, there are concerns over its failure to deliver much-needed domestic reforms to ease the rules of doing business in India. Modi seems to be on a permanent election campaign, unable to take the tough decisions needed for the next wave of reforms.

Our worries are undiminished.  Pakistan, far from being isolated for its support to terrorism, it is getting enhanced attention because of the compulsion of the great powers like the US, Russia and China to obtain peace in Afghanistan. Indeed, the Russia-Pakistan entente and the Russia-China relationship pose troubling questions for New Delhi.

China continues to swarm over us in South Asia. The latest sign of this has been the $24 billion aid, loans and investment commitments made by Xi Jinping during his visit to Bangladesh in 2016. As it is, all three of the wings of the Bangladesh military are equipped with Chinese equipment. Indian aid to Nepal has dipped, while China has now pipped India as the top aid donor. More worrisome are the internal trends suggesting growing Chinese influence in the country.

The new Srisena government had promised to review many of the allegedly pro-Chinese actions,  but as time goes by it is apparent that there has been no real change. Chinese influence is now a growing reality that India must take into account in Sri Lanka.

In the mid 1990s, India thought of itself as a player in Central Asia, but today, the Chinese have swamped everyone, including the US and Russia. Chinese bilateral trade with the region is in excess of $ 50 billion, compared to India’s roughly $ 1.3 billion. Chinese banks hold a significant portion of the government debt of several of the “stans”. And  Chinese pipelines and railroads are turning away the region from their historic ties to Russia.

A major problem in India’s foreign policy is its illusion that it is somehow competing with China. We are certainly a budding rival of China, the only one with sufficient physical size and population to offset its power. But we are a long way from actualising the potential. In the meantime, we urgently need a strategy to do so. Because of the enormous difference in economic and military power between India and China, what we need are asymmetrical means of dealing with Beijing. We have substantial soft-power assets, but those can only be effective together with the real currency of hard power— cash and exportable military goods.

The broad thrust of India’s foreign policy remains is legitimate and worthwhile. But what is needed is retrenchment and focus. We cannot take on China across-the-board. Our South Asian neighbourhood is a priority, and Modi’s outreach to the Persian Gulf has great value because that is the most important external region for India. It is where it gets most of its oil and where it has 7 million citizens who send back substantial remittances.  Saudi Arabia, UAE and Qatar have huge sovereign wealth funds which are always looking for good investment destinations. India needs to not only access these funds, but build security linkages to secure its oil and its nationals there.

The Chah Bahar project offers us a relatively inexpensive riposte to the One Belt One Road strategy by enabling a multi-modal link to Europe through Iran, the Caucasus and Russia. If we can provide sub-continental and Indian Ocean linkages, we, too, can be in the connectivity business.

Though the first indications are that there could be opportunities in the Trump era, there is need for caution since there are too many imponderables at play at this juncture. But real success for Modi’s foreign policy will necessitate an effective domestic policy focusing primarily on investment and economic growth. This  requires not just vision—which Modi has in surfeit—but competence and execution, which seem to be in short supply.

Pragati March 4, 2017

Chakravyuh we made: India needs a more realistic assessment of its Pakistan and China options

The country’s foreign and security policy has plunged into a Chakravyuh of its own making. Its major manifestation is the dead end that we have reached in our relations with China and Pakistan, our two principal neighbours, who are simultaneously our principal adversaries and each other’s best friends.
The biggest foreign and security policy challenge that we confront is the deepening China-Pakistan relationship. These are countries we have warred and skirmished with, and on their account we have to spend a fortune on our security apparatus.
Faced with this challenge, one would imagine that the principal aim of our government would be to seek to break this nexus, which has been around since the 1960s, by fair means or foul. Instead, however, we have been witnessing a strengthening of that alliance, especially in the last two years. As for the government, it is in a world of its own where it already believes that it is a major world power that can bring its adversaries to heel through a policy of unrelenting toughness.
In the real world, the choices for India are fairly clear – manage ties with the countries in question or engineer change in them. Changing China or Pakistan is too big a task for India to attempt alone. Even the mighty US has tried and failed. Hoping for change to come is a non-option, what is needed is a policy to manage the bilateral problems through dialogue and negotiation in the short term and effecting change with the help of other likeminded countries in the longer. In essence this is what India’s policy has been till recently. And it has achieved a great deal by avoiding a major war with either country, despite our very serious issues with them.
India rightly believes that the forces against change in Pakistan are powerful and insidious, but it is still worth pursuing the path of dialogue and friendship. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s approach towards Pakistan, at least to the point, a little over a year ago, when he descended on Lahore to wish Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif “Happy Birthday”, was in line with this.
It’s not clear what happened thereafter and the same Modi has since spoken of the need to sanction and isolate Islamabad in virtually every international forum that he addressed. It cannot simply be the cross-border attacks which are fairly minor and had been going on since, at least, 2012. We can only assume that Modi’s desire to make peace with Pakistan has been overtaken by his need to win the UP election and thereafter the general election; in both cases, bashing Pakistan and, by inference, Islamism, plays well with his electorate, as against the risk of endangering his political capital through instances such as the Pathankot and Uri attacks.
New Delhi has displayed the same zig-zag pattern with China. In his visit to Beijing in 2015, Modi made an impassioned plea to his counterparts to resolve the border issue. But since then, New Delhi has adopted a strident and sometimes belligerent attitude towards Beijing on issues that can, at best, be considered trivial – India’s membership to the NSG and placing Masood Azhar in the UN’s 1267 list. The former appears to be born out of a sense of entitlement, rather than a real need. As for the latter, counterterrorism is better off focussing on eliminating the terrorist, not putting him on some list. Hafiz Saeed has been on that list since 2008 and it has hardly made any difference to him or the Lashkar-e-Taiba.
A third issue relates to CPEC which India says it will not condone because it passes through Gilgit-Baltistan. On the face of it, it looks reasonable, but in essence it means that New Delhi is offering Beijing a Hobson’s choice – either accept India’s claim on J&K or abandon Pakistan. And it is not about to do either, at least not without good cause.
Defeating the Chakravyuh is not easy, false choices and illusions block the way, and the belief that only unrelenting toughness will work with Islamabad and Beijing. Getting out requires a more realistic assessment of India’s options and a willingness to accept the international norm that in bilateral ties, you are expected to give something in exchange for something you want. There are incentives New Delhi could offer – contracts for Chinese companies, a face-saving role for Pakistan in Kashmir and so on. At present all that is on display are disincentives for them. As of now, it would seem that New Delhi is riding on the hubristic belief that friendship with Washington is its key out of the maze. But in the US of today nothing will come for free.
Times of India March 4, 2017

Is it mere wishful thinking – or time to say Khuda Hafiz to Hafiz Saeed?

A number of Indian news sites carried a Press Trust of India report on February 21 stating that Pakistan had cancelled the licences of 44 weapons issued to the co-founder of Lashkar-e-Taiba and the chief of Jama’at-ud-Da’wah Hafiz Muhammad Saeed and other members of his organisations.

The PTI report cited a Punjab (Pakistan) home department notification as having cancelled the licenses for security reasons and mentioned action being taken against two of Saeed’s organisations, the Jamaat-ud-Dawa and the Falah-e-Insaniat Foundation.
The strange thing was that none of the major Pakistani papers like the Dawn or the Express Tribune have reported the licence ban, neither can it be found on the Pakistan Punjab government website.
So the news can either be taken with a pinch of salt, or, it could be assumed that the Pakistani authorities have indeed acted as the PTI report indicates, but are being discreet about the decision which, if true, would have shaken Saeed.
The Lashkar-e-Taiba founder has long believed in ensuring his own security. But if the guns have been taken away, he must be feeling quite vulnerable, unless the authorities have stepped in with their own security which they would, in any case, have to provide, if indeed it is true that he is under house arrest.
The cancellation of licences report comes on the heels of the Pakistan Punjab government’s decision to put Saeed and four of his colleagues under house arrest in Lahore for a period of 90 days on January 30. In addition, the jihadi leader and many of his associates belonging to the Jamaat-ud-Dawa and the Falah-e-Insaniat Foundation have been put on the Exit Control List barring them from leaving Pakistan.
There had been a bit of a stir when Pakistan’s defence minister Khwaja Asif declared at the Munich Security Conference earlier this week that “Saeed could pose a serious threat to the society” and had hence been placed under house arrest in the country’s “larger interest”.
Saeed’s arrest provoked the predictable uproar from the Difa-e-Pakistan Council, a grouping of religious extremists of which he is a vice president. But the action under the fourth schedule of the country’s Anti Terrorist act very clearly signaled an acknowledgement of his being linked to terrorism in some way.

Beyond tokenism?

There has been a great deal of speculation as to the Pakistani action. Some say that it is token action to assuage the Pakistani public opinion which has been shaken by a spate of eight terror attacks this month killing more than 100 people. The latest attack on one of the leading Sufi shrines at Sehwan has shaken the entire country.
Others speculate that anticipating a tough United States administration under new President Donald Trump, Pakistan is trimming its sails in advance. Asif, in his Munich speech, claimed that Pakistan was in the frontline of countries fighting terrorism and even criticised the West for its alleged isolationist policies.
The statement by Pakistan Army Spokesman Major General Asif Ghafoor that the decision was taken in “national interest” indicates that the government’s goals are quite narrow. There is speculation that the Pakistan Army, which has a new chief, is concerned about the spread of Jama’at-ud-Da’wah activities to other countries. Perhaps equally important is the growing influence of the outfit in Pakistan itself. The Jama’at-ud-Da’wah and the Falah-e-Insaniat Foundation run efficient social service networks, and Saeed has been trying to stoke Punjabi nationalism to expand his political footprint.
There is even a strand of opinion suggesting that the Chinese may be tiring of the opprobrium they have to face in supporting Pakistan’s favourite terrorists. However, the Chinese have more fish to fry in the region than pressure Pakistan on Saeed. Apart from the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, they have to worry about stabilising northern Pakistan, which includes a portion of Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, to prevent the jihadi virus escaping north to Xinjiang. Second, they have an interest in stabilising Afghanistan to part their larger central Asian policy and insulate Xinjiang from the jihadi virus, in particular the Islamic State, given that scores of Uighyur fighters are believed to be fighting alongside the IS in Syria and Iraq.
As far as India is considered, it is watching on with bemused interest. It, of course, has great interest in what Saeed does and what happens to him. Unfortunately, it has been unable to actually lay his hands on him and try him for the murder of 166 persons in Mumbai on November 26, 2008 and other acts of the Lashkar-e-Taiba. So it is dependent on Pakistani actions. And those actions have not been particularly heartening.

Farcical arrests

Saeed has been detained before. He was arrested in December 2001, following the uproar over the attack on the Indian Parliament House, but he was released in March 2002 when the Indian military pressure abated. He was arrested again in May and released in October, and then placed under house arrest for a short while. Again, after the Mumbai train blasts, he was arrested in August 2006 but released in October.
Saeed’s defence was that while Lashkar-e-Taiba was designated as a Foreign Terrorist Organisation in December 2001 by the United States and banned in Pakistan on January 12, 2002, there was no such ban on the JuD, which was formed after the ban on the Lashkar.
In December 2008, Saeed was again placed under house arrest after the United Nations put the Jama’at-ud-Da’wah in what is called its 1267 list – declaring it a terrorist organisation. The United States had also earlier designated it as a Foreign Terrorist Organisation in April 2008. This time he got his release through a Lahore High Court order deeming his detention unconstitutional in June 2009. Because of Indian pressure he was again detained in September, but the following month, the Lahore High Court quashed all cases against him and declared that the JuD was not a banned organisation in Pakistan and he could work freely in the country.
With this history, it is easy not to be sceptical. India has also seen how the parallel process of trying four top Lashkar-e-Taiba leaders including its operations chief, Zaki ur Rehman Lakhvi, is going nowhere.
Yet, if the cancellation of the arms licences report is indeed true, there does appear to be a new development. Because the one thing that Hafiz Saeed will worry about will be the possibility of getting picked up by Indian or American intelligence agencies and having to face the music for his malign past.
Scroll.in February 23, 2017

The Army Chief Would Do Well to Weigh His Words More Carefully

General Bipin Rawat may be right to warn those who try to obstruct anti-militancy operations, but labelling separatism and militancy with terrorism is not the solution.

Army chief General Bipin Rawat. Credit: PTI

The new army chief, General Bipin Rawat, must be learning just how important it is to weigh one’s words when in the hot seat. His remarks, made no doubt in anger, that the army would treat all those in Kashmir who do not support army operations or obstruct them during encounters “as overground workers of terrorists,” are clearly over the top and probably do not meet the legal standard – especially his belief that displaying ISIS and Pakistani flags is tantamount to terrorism.
His threat of “tough action” against protestors raises more questions than it answers. Because in army parlance, tough action could imply a shoot-to-kill policy. No self-respecting army can turn its guns on unarmed protestors, even if they are throwing stones; their job is to take on armed militants and leave civilian protestors to the police.
Minister of state for home Kiren Rijiju’s defence of Rawat – that action could be taken against anyone who “works against national interest as national interest is supreme” – is simply fatuous. No ‘national interest’ can justify gunning down unarmed protestors. Besides being characterised as a war crime, such action would actually be anti-national.
The chief is clearly frustrated at the high casualties the army is suffering in the Valley in recent times. However, there are two specific reasons for this. First, in winter months, the security forces usually launch an across-the-board offensive in the Valley to catch militants who are compelled by the weather to abandon their forest retreats. Second, the government and the security forces have boxed themselves into a situation where counter-insurgency has been stripped of its crucial “hearts and minds” element and the only instrument being used to resolve the Kashmir issue is the proverbial ‘danda‘, or stick.
First and foremost, it is important for everyone to have their definitions right. Stone pelting is violence, but it is not the same thing as armed militancy. The latter can only be fought with the gun, while the former must be tackled in a different manner, most certainly not by shooting pelters. Second, all anti-government militants in Kashmir are not terrorists. Only those who deliberately target civilians can be put in that category.
Looking back at events in Kashmir since last July, the security forces cannot be blamed for going after Burhan Wani since he was a self-professed militant and lived by the code of kill or be killed. At the same time, it is wrong to dub him a “terrorist”. To the best of our knowledge, Wani and his fellow militants have not deliberately targeted non-combatants. Seeking to undermine Kashmiri separatism by describing it as “terrorist” is not likely to work, and it is also not accurate, and will only result in faulty responses.
By deliberately creating obfuscation on this issue, the government is making things difficult for itself. No self-respecting government – not this one or any other – can negotiate with terrorists. But such governments can and do negotiate with militants. The Doval negotiations with the NSCN(I-M) is a recent example. During the first NDA government led by Atal Bihari Vajpayee, the government sent the Union home secretary to meet with masked militants in Srinagar.

Public attitude a cause for concern
The crossover of violent civil protest into violent armed militancy is not a good sign. General Rawat is right to warn those who try to obstruct anti-militancy operations. This is sometimes done in a very risky fashion where crowds gather and launch protests near an ongoing shoot out. The protestors at the site of an ongoing anti-militancy operations are deliberately seeking to obstruct a military operation through an act of brinkmanship which could go horribly wrong if a grenade or AK-47 burst goes the wrong way in the tense environment.
Perhaps the army and the civil authorities need to work on new strategies of dealing with such situations. But the problem is that at present, many of the militants being killed are Kashmiris and their relatives and friends live nearby and are agitated when they get killed.
On the other hand, the Modi government’s style raises a few questions. It has adopted a uni-dimensional policy of hitting hard at the militancy, without seeking any political means to undermine the support the militants’ cause has generated. Many so-called counter-insurgency experts in India look admiringly at Israeli methods, but the Indian and Israeli situations are as different as chalk and cheese.
For one, the Israelis are dealing with a conquered population and that, too, not too well, considering their retreat from Gaza. The repeated cycles of Israeli military operations have degenerated into an armed stand-off with no resolution in sight since Tel Aviv refuses to conduct any political negotiations.
The other method of dealing with an insurgency is the Sri Lankan approach – using a scorched earth policy resulting in a horrific toll of non-combatants and tens of thousands of displaced persons. The Pakistanis also hew close to this style, though they first ensured that all civilians had left the areas which they subsequently attacked with gunships and artillery.
Militancy in the Valley has never been anywhere as bad as things have been in Waziristan or in Sri Lanka. Today, the militants are few in number, and they are armed with AK-47s and grenades. To use Israeli or Sri Lankan means would be to use the proverbial hammer to kill a fly, with horrific consequences.
The real challenge is to maintain pressure on the militants, even while undermining their cause through political means. This requires sophistication and patience. Sadly, there is little of that in display in the Modi government’s approach. The result is that the clock is steadily being turned back to the 1997-2004 period when security forces routinely lost hundreds of personnel every year, peaking in 2000 when 638 died. In contrast, from 2007 onwards, the numbers fell below 100, dipping to just 17 in 2012.
The authorities need to ask themselves why the civilian support to militancy in Kashmir has risen in the past two years and why the people there risk crowding encounter sites even while the shooting is going on. Government ministers have said Pakistan is paying people to pelt stones, but it is unlikely that you could pay an unarmed crowd to push against the army where bullets are flying. The government needs to reflect on this situation, and also worry about the possibility of an incident in which a large number of unarmed protestors get shot – something that hasn’t happened since the Bijbehara incident of 1993 and which would be a blot on India’s reputation.
The Wire February 17, 2017

Book Review: Dragon on our Doorstep

Dragon on Our Doorstep: Managing China Through Military Power is a vast book covering virtually every aspect of India’s defence policy, from 1947 to the present. It examines issues as diverse as China’s grand strategy, the demolition of Babri Masjid, to building military power and the succession of the Dalai Lama. But its focus is quite clear, managing India’s real security problem – the rise of China.
Given the enormous asymmetry that has already developed in the comprehensive national power of China and India, there is no resolution that is possible, the issue can only be managed and the authors suggest that to even begin that process, India must set its defence system right. This is not, as its name may imply, a hawkish call to arms, but a sober analysis which argues that military power is an important part of the mix of any country’s geopolitical perspective. But India has diluted this ingredient, has suffered the consequences and will continue to do so till it changes its approach. So, it is critical of those who speak blithely of a two-front war with China and Pakistan, arguing that even a one-front war was not an option. What it advocates is an effective military capacity as a precondition of building durable peace with Pakistan and China.

Pravin Sawhney and Ghazala Wahab,
Dragon on Our Doorstep: Managing China Through Military Power
Aleph, 2017

This is a provocative book and deliberately so, aimed at shaking Indian complacency. As the editors of Force magazine, the authors have traveled across the country, visited numerous facilities and units, and spoken and interacted with a large number of military officers in key positions. A great deal of this is evident in the material that has been marshalled in the book, as well as in the assertions that they make in the book. You may or may not agree with all of them, but they definitely provoke thought.
Over the years, political leaders, bureaucrats and even military leaders have begun to work with the assumption that no external force can dare to attack India, not just because we have nuclear weapons now, but that we are so big and populous that it would be a foolhardy enterprise.
They may not have understood the character of defeat. More often than not, it is a state of mind – within two weeks of the German offensive in 1940,  with Paris and most of France still to be conquered, the French  government threw in the towel and accepted defeat. This  was not very different from  November 1962, when a broken Pandit Nehru wrote off Assam and appealed to the US for military assistance, or the slow defeat of the US in Vietnam between 1968 and 1975.
At the root of India’s problems, the authors write, is the erroneous belief that a large and well equipped military alone can win wars. Given the fact that wars are an  extension of politics, the one thing that India has not been able to get is its politicians to understand this. Not only do politicians tend to shun things military, but they also systematically exclude the military from higher defence management.
Carl von Clausewitz is well known for his observation that, “war is nothing by the continuation of policy with other means” – in other words, without political ends, war is  meaningless. And repeatedly, as the authors show in India’s case, those political ends have not been  clear – the most recent being the 2002 Operation Parakaram. If fighting must have a political purpose, surely it behoves those who are involved to closely integrate the political and military  means. It is not just a question of political ends, but the necessity of the political leader to control every aspect of war – its intensity, its direction and length etc.

Ghazala Wahab. Credit: Twitter

Given this, it is vital for the politicians to have a grasp of military affairs, or, at least, clearly understand what the military is all about. Of course, it goes without saying that military leaders, too, need to understand national policy. So while the politics must always be in command, the military must be in a position to influence the leader. But the leader and his political ilk must make it a point to understand why their country is spending a vast fortune in buying guns, tanks, maintaining millions of men in arms. They cannot depute this function to the civilian bureaucracy as they have done till now, to the detriment of the security of the nation. Only the political leader can take decisions that may simultaneously span diplomacy, trade, military operations and politics.
In some ways, for example, the success of the Allies in World War Two arose from the ability of an arch imperialist (Winston Churchill), a half democrat (Franklin D. Roosevelt) and a dictator (Stalin) to work together towards a common goal. They coordinated their diplomatic strategy, military offensives, military assistance while their adversaries were an axis only in name, with little coordination and diplomacy.
India’s official defence budget is now over Rs 3,59,000 crore, including pensions. If you add the nuclear and space activities it is even greater. It is vastly more than what we spend for health, social welfare and infrastructure.
Surely, this would mean that the politicians in-charge would take the task of purposefully spending this money, managing the men and ensuring that the country gets the best bang for the buck. But, as we know, this is far from the case. Indeed, the country’s defence system is seriously dysfunctional, making it unfit for a major war as became evident when the challenge came – following the terrorist attack on parliament in 2001 and the Mumbai attack of 2008. By their own reckoning, the modernisation of the three wings of the armed forces is delayed by at least a decade. There is no point trying to blame a single minister or government – the problems are systemic. Efforts have been made by expert committees and even the standing committee on defence in the parliament to recommend change, but the government has been firmly proof against any advice.

Pravin Sawhney. Credit: Twitter

Things have not changed much with the Narendra Modi government. The authors note that the ambitious ‘Act East Think West’ slogan raised by the government has no place for military power in its planning. In their view, “thinking strategically and developing an appreciation of military power are two major shortcomings of India’s foreign policy.”
This foreign policy weakness is compounded by the fact that India does not have a defence policy either. For the past decade a small group of strategic specialists have been trying to push the government to adopt a strategic defence review, duly approved by the cabinet committee on security, to outline India’s priorities in the area of defence and provide  a coherent narrative as to how it plans to cope with the challenges. The main aim of this is to ensure that the entire governmental system is on the same page when it comes to the vital area of defence. Though documents have been drafted by the National Security Advisory Board, the governments of the day have not seen it fit to study, let alone accept or reject them.
This is an impressive piece of work and beyond the actual recommendations, there is a wealth of information that an interested reader can gather about the way India’s defence system works (or doesn’t).
The Wire February 13, 2017

Hammer Of Authority:The Indian military is its own police and judge. That’s the problem.

One  way to understand our current military justice system is to read the sections in the Army Act of 1950 dealing with “offences in relation to the enemy and punishable with death” relating to warlike situations. Samples: “shamefully” abandoning a garrison or a defence position, casting away arms, cowardice, assisting the enemy, putting up the white flag of surrender, spreading rumours that may create alarm, a sentry who “sleeps upon his post or is intoxicated” in times of war.
Independent India has got no soldier execu­ted; that does not mean we have not had cowardice or desertion in times of war, or sentries who fell asleep. All it does is to tell us how antiquated the law is. The colonial ring of its language, and some provisions, date many of its provisions to the 1911 Indian Army Act.

There is something inherently authoritarian about the military justice system because the military is a kind of dictatorship functioning within a democracy. Given the requirements of military discipline and the preservation of good order, the system has felt a need to create an authoritarian regime where authority flows from the top to the bottom. Also, questioning an order, or not following the draconian rules, can lead to punishment that would be considered severe by the regular laws of the country.
Good order and discipline are not just about war time, but relate to the daily life of an army man requ­ired to keep the military’s fighting edge keen at all times. For this, there are summary procedures for commanding officers of units to punish jawans up to the rank of a hawaldar. Death sentence may not visit you if you desert, mutiny, steal, strike or threaten superiors in peace time, but you can still get 14 years RI and be cashiered, which means no retirement benefits.
There are other problematic provisions, such as “unbecoming” or “disgraceful conduct” of officers and junior commissioned officers, not too clearly defined, but venture into areas that go against the moral ethos of the armed forces and their sense of honour. Actually, unlike the police or other state instruments, army personnel can be punished for cruelty to civilians, defiling religious places and even infidelity.
 The aim of the system is to provide a quick, but fair procedure. Safeguards are built in, but the very nature of the system raises questions. The military courts, or the courts martial, comprise benches of five or three officers with no legal training—even the prosecutor and defence councils are line officers. General courts martial usually have a judge advocate who is supposed to advise the court on the finer points of the law.
 In essence, the military is its own police, forensic dep­artment, judge and jury, and this is the biggest weakness of the system. While the summary court-martial is a useful means of maintaining good order, when it comes to more serious crimes, collecting evidence, its presentation and consideration by a non-specialist group can be problematic. The idea that peers are the best judges goes back to the European notion of a jury trial. In India, the system was abolished after a jury acquitted a naval commander of a 1959 murder of a businessman. The Bombay High Court overturned the verdict and tried and convicted him through a bench.

Over time, the infirmities of the system have been app­arent, especially since it has no built-in right to appeal and, given its draconian nature, bears instances of its misuse. To deal with this, the government established the Armed Forces Tribunals (AFTs) in 2007. The members here are mixed—senior retired judges and senior retired military officers.
The big problem, however, is that the AFTs come under the ministry of defence, instead of the law ministry. So the appeals system is run by the very outfit against whom the appeals are usually entered. The key powers to have their judgements and orders impl­emented have been withheld from the Tribunals, and their rulings are simply ignored, if found inconvenient.
Separating the military from society has often been seen as a means of enhancing the military effectiveness of the forces. The Army Act was a manifestation of this. But times have changed, and so have the very nature of warfare and the context of the old rules. Getting soldiers to follow orders must be accompanied by a culture where not only illegal orders are challenged, but instead draconian discipline to get them to follow orders, the officers depend on their self-esteem as professionals and their sense of being part of a team.
 There are reports saying the government intends to provide the legal teeth to the tribunals. The MoD and the three services are not very happy about this, but the time has come to bring the military justice system in line with the mores of contemporary society.
Outlook February 17, 2017