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Thursday, April 09, 2020

Terror, Kashmir & Trade: Deconstructing Modi-Xi’s Chennai Summit

Expectations were not too high from the Chennai summit between Chinese Premier Xi Jinping and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, that concluded on Saturday, 12 October. The fact that in terms of words and gestures, at least, it appears to have gone swimmingly well, is a tribute to the fine art of diplomacy.
The reality is that both sides will continue to do what they do and have done, and not quite live up to the spirit of the fine words uttered at the summit.

Meaning of Terrorism Differs for India & China

Take the issue of terrorism which came up on the first day itself. According to briefings, the two sides shared the view that they would work together to ensure that “radicalisation and terrorism” do not affect the fabric of “multicultural, multiethnic and multi-religious societies” of their countries.
However, the meaning of “terrorism” differs for both sides.
For Beijing, what the Uighur separatists do is terrorism. While India believes that China’s “all weather friend”, Pakistan, is the fountainhead of terrorism. Both will, therefore, use their national means to deal with the issue rather than depend on each other.

Kashmir Issue Swept Under the Carpet

Take Kashmir. Foreign Secretary Gokhale said on Friday that there had been no discussion on Kashmir.
This is interesting because tensions relating to China’s position in Kashmir are one of the major issues of contention between the two sides. And they have largely arisen between the Wuhan and the Chennai summits.
Essentially, then, what the two sides have done is to sweep the inconvenient issue under the carpet. And will continue to work along the lines they have always worked – India doing what it must and China what it can.

Platitudes on Border Dispute

Or the border. According to the MEA, the Special Representatives will continue to make efforts to arrive at a mutually agreed framework on issues including boundary question for a “fair, reasonable and mutually acceptable settlement.”
This is a routine statement and in no way addresses the potential of the border dispute to derail the ties between the two countries, just as the issue of Doklam had done in 2017.
It is not clear whether NSA Ajit Doval had a formal SR meeting with his counterpart Wang Yi in Chennai.
There were reports earlier that such a meet could take place and that there could be some movement on the issue of upgrading the Confidence Building Measures which have held the peace along the LAC for the past 40 years.

China to Take Steps to Reduce Trade Deficit

If there is an issue where we have seen some concrete movement, it is in that of trade. India’s $ 57 billion trade deficit is the country’s single biggest one with any country. Chinese investment in India is still modest, around $ 8 billion.
The Chinese side is aware of Indian feelings on this issue and the need to provide some corrective.
President Xi told the Indian side that China is ready to take concrete measures to reduce the trade deficit. Besides, Xi assured India that China will discuss India’s concerns over the RCEP.
But this is easier said than done given the economic and trade profile of the two countries.
But the two sides have agreed to set up a new mechanism for matters relating to trade investment and services. The Chinese have nominated Vice Premier Hu Chunhua to deal with the new mechanism and the Indian side has proposed Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman.
Hu is an important figure in China, a Politburo member, who was once spoken as a potential successor to Xi.
According to Foreign Secretary Vijay Gokhale’s briefing, President Xi also raised the issue of engaging more on the defence and security side. Both sides reviewed that ongoing programmes and Xi called for stepping up engagement.
According to Gokhale, there was some discussion on international and regional issues and both sides stressed the importance of countries having independent and autonomous foreign policies.
Xi cannot be unaware of Washington’s pull on New Delhi and therefore, he emphasised the need for more intense discussions to promote a common Sino-Indian perspective on some of these issues.

Informal Summits Important for Both Sides

Informal summits have developed their own logic and vocabulary now. These are going to be a feature of the Sino-Indian relationship in the coming years.
They are an important means of the two countries to overcome the difficult issues in their relationship – the disputed border, the Sino-Pakistan relationship and the pull of the US-China dissonance.
In that sense Modi was right when he said there was considerable value in ensuring such “strategic communication” saying that that the Wuhan summit of 2018 had seen “increased stability and fresh momentum” in the relations between the two countries.
“We had decided we would prudently manage our differences and not let them become disputes, be sensitive to each other’s concerns and be a reason for peace and stability in the world.”
The Quint October 13, 2019
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In combat roles: The need for women’s fairer participation in the military, as in the workforce

The Montane Spine Race, coursing 268 miles along the central hilly spine of England tests not just physical fitness, but mental toughness as well. The 126 participants in 2019 were both men and women and the winner of the winter race, Jasmin Paris, beat her male competitor by a full 15 hours, and the course record by 12 hours. Shelli Gordon, the second female, was 17th. Last year, Carol Morgan came 8th, and the year before that she clocked 6th.
In the Moab 240, another well-known endurance event, last year the top woman was 9th and there were 4 women in the top 20 in a field of 111 finishers, mostly males. The year before, in 2017, the winner was a woman, Courtney Dauwalter. Recall, till 1972 women were not even allowed to officially compete in the Boston Marathon.
Science does not yet have clear answers, but there does seem to be something about the inherent ability of women to resist fatigue. Endurance events require both mental fortitude and physical fitness and women have been making a surprise showing in races and distance swimming activity.
You do not have to look at exotic sports to understand the basic point about the inherent toughness of women. Look at any nearby worksite and you will see female workers doing exactly the same work as the males – using the spade and shovel, hoisting bricks and so on. Sometimes they are nursing a child. When you are indigent you tend to worry less about gender roles and more about where your next meal comes from.
In the farm or the factory, women often do the same jobs as men, but without being given either credit, or the salary for it, even as they shoulder the “double burden” of being the caregiver of their family.
Women make up 48% of the Indian population, but only 65% of them are literate as compared to 82% men. Female labour force participation in India is not only among the lowest in the world, at around 27%, but has actually declined in the last two decades even as the country registered impressive economic growth.
Remarkably, some the biggest resistance to female participation in the work force comes in better educated families. A 2018 Icrier study by Surbhi Ghai says that at the bottom of this conundrum is “patriarchy” – a collection of attitudes which insist that women’s roles are secondary to those of men – which the study quantified in an index.
Women, in turn, are battering against those attitudes, sometimes frontally, such as when they insist on not only joining the military, but insisting that they should serve in the combat arms. Participation in such arms is a new metric of the status of women in a society. Across the world, the barriers have fallen and in most developed countries, their role has become crucial to the combat capabilities of their forces.
The status of women in the Indian military is spotty. IAF has begun inducting them as fighter pilots, but the navy does not allow them seagoing roles. As for the army, they are permitted in non-combat arms only. Last year army chief Bipin Rawat made all the classically patriarchal arguments to argue that women cannot be given combat roles, the most obvious and facetious ones being that they would find it difficult to exercise authority over soldiers with a rural background and may claim maternal leave.
Women’s participation in the military, as in the workforce, is not a vanity project to display your progressive credentials. At its heart lies the need for their training and skills, and numbers, in one case to maintain a combat capability and in the other to lubricate a growing economy. It most certainly requires a sharp understanding of what patriarchy is all about and the ways in which society can, and should, remove the social and cultural disabilities that have hobbled women through the ages.
Times of India October 12, 2019
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Modi & Xi At Mamallapuram: How India Can Increase Diplomatic Clout

Beijing’s decision to drop references to the role of the United Nations in resolving the Kashmir dispute may have saved the upcoming Mamallapuram informal summit between Prime Minister Modi and President Xi Jinping. This is, perhaps, the best indicator of just how fragile the reset — promised by the first informal summit that was held in Wuhan in April 2018 — has been.
On Tuesday, when observers were getting alarmed over the lack of a formal announcement on the dates of the Mamallapuram summit, which was supposed to be held that very week, the Chinese side probably did the needful, when its spokesperson reverted to China’s position, that Kashmir was an issue best resolved through dialogue between the two sides.
Clearly, a year down the line, the lustre of the Wuhan process  seems to have faded, even before it set in.

Has the ‘Lustre’ of Wuhan Faded?

Following Wuhan, the Indian press release had mooted it as a “positive factor for stability amidst current global uncertainties”. It was driven by the need to promote “strategic communications”— high-level interactions with the view of removing mistrust, and reduce the danger of miscalculation in the wake of the Doklam incident. Before the meeting and after it, we saw a surge in the frequency of high-level ministerial and official visits between India and China, and meetings between ministers and leaders of the two countries.
Among the important achievements was the strategic guidance to the two forces to maintain peace and tranquility on the border. This has broadly ensured peace on the LAC and also given a fillip to military exchanges between the two sides. Though India and China were not able to do a joint project in Afghanistan, they did manage a joint training programme for Afghan diplomats. And in May, China did come forward to lift its hold on the designation of Masood Azhar as a terrorist under the UN’s 1267 Committee.
In the past year, the two sides have held their 6th Strategic Economic Dialogue and the 9th Finance Dialogue, and they have continued to cooperate in multilateral mechanisms like the Russia-India-China trilateral, BRICS, SCO and the G20.
Yet, the climate of relations in which the Mamallapuram meeting takes place, is more complex and difficult than at the time of Wuhan.

New Delhi Will Deal With China By Displaying Resilience

Prime Minister Modi goes into the meeting with an even larger mandate than in 2014. The Indian economy may have weakened, but the global climate against China has turned far more adverse than it was in April 2018.
New Delhi seems to have decided that the best way to deal with China is by displaying its resilience.
Just how this will play out remains to be seen. The first move here was the action in Jammu & Kashmir which China objected to, and took the initiative to organise a UN Security Council meet on the issue, the first since 1971.  Subsequently, in its joint statement following his visit to Islamabad and in his UNGA speech, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi kept up the criticism, and referred to the need to take into account the UN position on the issue.
The result was the cancellation  of Wang Yi’s visit to New Delhi on 9-10 September for another round of Special Representatives talks with his Indian counterpart, NSA Ajit Doval — allegedly because of “scheduling issues” from the Indian side. The Wang-Doval meeting had also been aimed at laying the grounds for the Mamallapuram meet.
Two Indian military exercises, one held on September 17 in eastern Ladakh on the border with China and another which began on October 3 to test mobilization and assault tactics in Arunachal Pradesh were the unmistakable signal of India’s decision to signal its tough posture.

What India & China Are Likely to Focus On At Mamallapuram

Finally, at the sidelines of the UNGA in New York, foreign ministers of India, Australia, US and Japan met under the Qualdrilateral Dialogue framework. This upgradation of the Quad, which formerly consisted of officials at the level of Joint Secretary could be consequential. Three of the four members of the Quad are military allies of the United States, and the grouping is seen as a means to work out a military containment of China.
Whether or not Modi and Xi can reverse this slide is something that will be keenly watched.
Both countries are likely to focus on trade and economic issues in Mamallapuram, but the overhang of the growing political dissonance in their relationship cannot and should not be discounted.
Both are likely to arrive at the meeting with a wish list, with issues big and small to discuss. As in Wuhan, some of the fairly trivial ones relating to trade barriers can be dealt with. There is a lot of pressure on India to go ahead with the RCEP, while New Delhi is seeking to redress the issue of the USD 60 billion trade deficit in China’s favour.

Cooperation with China Will Enhance India’s Diplomatic Clout in Washington

However, the political issues are more tricky. What we may see is an effort to push the issue of joint projects in third-world countries in a bigger way. In the past year, China and Japan agreed to cooperate in 50 infrastructure projects, without their coming under the rubric of the Belt and Road Initiative. A similar formulation could be used for cooperation between India and China in Afghanistan, Myanmar, Nepal and even Sri Lanka.
Notwithstanding the run-up to the summit, both India and China still have a lot to gain and a much more to lose in allowing their relations to deteriorate. 
Cooperation with China, whether at the BRICS or SCO level, enhances India’s diplomatic clout in Washington DC. Likewise, bonhomie between the US and India ensures that Beijing behaves well. But if you push either envelope too far, you run the risk of the other partner feeling that it’s simply not worth the effort — and letting go. In that case, India is the loser. In many ways, both need each other and stand to gain a great deal through cooperation.
The Quint October 10, 2019
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Indian Defence Industry Founder Krishna Menon’s Flawed Brilliance

Not many people passing by the side of the Sena Bhavan in New Delhi pay attention to the brooding statue just off the road of V K Krishna Menon, freedom fighter, diplomat and defence minister of the country between 1957-1962.
The location is, perhaps, symbolic. His stewardship of the Ministry ended in a flaming crash of the disaster of the 1962 Sino-Indian war. But the issues that emerged at the time, have not quite gone away.
Menon’s attitude was, in some ways, a natural outcome of his years in the UK where he got his higher education
History never gets stale because contemporary concerns light up newer areas of the past and what look like known facts, reveal facets that were earlier unseen. So it is not surprising that a look back at Krishna Menon on his 45th death anniversary gives us new perspectives on our contemporary dilemmas.

Krishna Menon’s Flawed Brilliance

Menon’s imprint in the immediate post-independence history of India is unforgettable. As an Indian freedom fighter living in the UK, who became the top-most diplomat to the country that had ruled India,  as India’s representative to the United Nations, and eventually as Defence Minister, Menon was a brilliant and flawed personality whose list of enemies and critics read off from Dwight D Eisenhower, President of the United States.
Under him, the India League became a formidable lobby on behalf of the independence movement.
Menon’s attitude was, in some ways, a natural outcome of his years in the UK where he got his higher education and––among his other accomplishments––helped establish the highly popular Pelican imprint of Penguin Books.
Given his education, the times and the circumstances, it was not surprising that he came under the influence of the left-wing intellectuals and politicians. Combined with the fact that he was a passionate advocate of India’s freedom, he came under the scrutiny of the British intelligence who monitored him closely.
Under him, the India League became a formidable lobby on behalf of the independence movement and Menon emerged as the foremost spokesperson of the movement in UK.
His life there added a touch of bitterness against imperialism and the West, something that became manifest when he shaped Indian foreign policy as India’s representative to the UN. In this position he was involved in issues relating to peace making in Korea, the fighting in Indo-China, disarmament and decolonization. From 1949 onwards, the world had split into two camps—the American and the Soviet.

Menon’s Criticism of the Global West

The fact that democratic India with its western educated elite chose not to automatically side with the US rankled in the West. India paid for it when the UK skewed the Kashmir issue in the UN against India. Western resentment against India made it appear as though Nehru had virtually taken India into the Soviet camp. But this was not true.
Dwight D Eisenhower, 34th President of the United States.
Dwight D Eisenhower, 34th President of the United States.
Photo Courtesy: Wikimedia Commons
Menon’s acerbic criticism of the US got under the skin of its leaders, who were simply not used to the idea that the poor Third World could have independent positions of their own. Some of this came from India’s stand in the Korean war, the Suez Crisis and the Soviet invasion of Hungary.
Mind you, all this was at a time when the United States had taken Pakistan into the fold of its military alliance system and began a process that completely altered India’s strategic paradigm. Where Pakistan, much smaller than India, would have adopted a cooperative policy, it began to take a belligerent stance, encouraged by the fact that equipment assistance from the US had given its military an edge against India.

Menon, the Founder of India’s Defence Industry

In his book “The Guilty Men of 1962” the former editor of Indian Express D R Mankekar, entitled the Chapter on Menon as “A Dynamic Minister.” He describes how Menon’s entry into the ministry was like a breath of fresh air “that blew away the cobwebs and layers of dust accumulated on the portfolio over the years.”
It was Menon who laid the foundations of a modern Indian defence industry.
While Menon’s leadership of the ministry was to end in disaster, it was not foreordained that it would be so. Under him, the Ministry which had all been sidelined in the heady post-Independence decade, came to life again with a Minister who had clout with the Prime Minister. As Mankekar put it, he enhanced the pensions of the personnel, restored their ration allowance, revised the salary scales upward, and took up issues related to housing and welfare.
It was Menon who laid the foundations of a modern Indian defence industry. He did not let an alleged jeep scandal distract him from giving the Army better wheels. In 1959, the Vehicle Factory Jabalpur started manufacturing the Shaktiman truck, built under a license from Germany. They served as the Army’s basic truck till 1996.
He initiated the plan to re-equip the Army with a basic semi-automatic rifle, the 7.62 SLR, which India simply copied from a Belgian gun. The SLR is still in service in India.
Likewise, there were several projects such as that of the Jonga jeep, Nissan light truck, and 120mm Brandt mortars that fructified in the mid 1960s. It was under Menon that the MOD obtained a license to manufacture the Alouette helicopter in India beginning 1962. As the Chetak, it has provided yeoman service to all three wings of the armed forces since.
Fly past of Chetak Helicopters at the passing out parade of 82nd Helicopter pilot conversion course held at INS Rajali, Naval Air Station Arakkonam near Chennai on June 5, 2014. 
Fly past of Chetak Helicopters at the passing out parade of 82nd Helicopter pilot conversion course held at INS Rajali, Naval Air Station Arakkonam near Chennai on June 5, 2014. 
(Photo: IANS)
Perhaps the most consequential deal in his period was that for the supply and manufacture of the MiG21 for the Indian Air Force. When western countries balked in providing India with a supersonic interceptor, in 1961, Menon negotiated with the Soviet Union and got an agreement not only for acquiring the aircraft, but a full technology transfer to manufacture it in India. Variants of this aircraft still fly with the IAF.

The Many Weaknesses of Krishna Menon

Curiously enough, Menon failed in an area where he should have known better—international politics. He simply did not give credence to the threat posed by the Chinese. This is something for which, of course, his boss and mentor Jawaharlal Nehru was primarily responsible.
First Prime Minister of India Jawaharlal Nehru inaugurates the Asian Games in 1951. 
First Prime Minister of India Jawaharlal Nehru inaugurates the Asian Games in 1951. 
(Photo courtesy: Pinterest)
The other problem was his arrogance and inability to get along with the Army brass for which we must blame his circumstances. He was a freedom fighter who had lived and worked in the UK while the Army brass––having served the British––affected British upper-class mannerisms. A less arrogant person may have done things differently. But, Menon was Menon. However, it would be fair to say that the 1962 failure was as much that of the military leadership as the civilian.
Today, 45 years after his death, the ghost of Menon has not quite been exorcised from the Indian defence system. The foundations of the Indian defence industry he had laid have yet to be built upon. For one reason or the other, India remains dependent on imported equipment.
A second issue is the relationship between the military and the civilians. After Menon’s tenure, governments have run the MOD through civilian bureaucrats and not involved themselves in providing the armed forces strategic guidance. This has led to a civil-military dissonance which makes India’s defence system sub-optimal. Today, more so than ever before, war is total––involving the land, sea, air, under-sea, space, and the electromagnetic spectrum. This requires a united and sophisticated leadership which can cope with the hybrid nature of modern warfare. We did not have that leadership in 1962, we don’t have it today.
The Quint October 5, 2019
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