Disappearance of Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 exposes limits of technology?

The mere possibility of someone actually pulling off such an audacious attack on India should be reason enough for alarm bells to ring in the Indian security establishment. “What if,” is a question that cannot and must not be rejected out of hand.

The tragedy that struck the Malaysian Airlines aircraft MH370 with 239 passengers and crew on board it on 8 March 2014 has been worse compounded by the fact that there is still no certainty as to what caused the aircraft to simply disappear or where the plane’s wreckage probably is. With every passing day, the families of the passengers on-board the ill-fated flight have to battle the pain and trauma of not getting closure even as, at last count, 26 countries had pooled their resources to search for the remains of the aircraft.

This one incident alone has brought home the limits of what technology can do to make aviation industry safer or resolve the unanswered questions that continue to bedevil investigators in Malaysia and beyond. Is it even possible in the 21st century that technology is failing us in locating the wreckage of the aircraft or in piecing together the circumstances leading up to and after its disappearance? Several conspiracy theories have been doing the rounds, almost on a daily basis: Could it be a terrorist act, sabotage, hijack or a technical glitch? There are no immediate answers to these puzzling questions. For his part, Prime Minister Najib Razak of Malaysia has said that the aircraft’s main communications and transponder had been deliberately shut off. “… these movements are consistent with deliberate action by someone on the plane,” Mr Najib said.

On the face of it, the Indian government has treated the incident as another airline crash, although five Indian nationals were aboard that MH370 flight. What is disconcerting is not the manner in which the Indian government has chosen to respond to the tragedy but the apparent, cavalier, handling of the incident which could have ended in an even worse tragedy if, as a former United States diplomat Strobe Talbott has argued, the plane could have been hijacked for a 9/11-type attack on an Indian city. Talbott said on his Twitter account: “Malaysian plane mystery: Direction, fuel load & range now lead some to suspect hijackers planned a 9/11-type attack on an Indian city.” He then tweeted a second theory to say that the hijackers were headed towards India but crashed just like the third plane involved in the 11 September 2001 attacks in the US. “Malaysian#370 as hijack: 1 of many theories. Speculation: hijackers headed toward India but crashed like UA#93 on 9/11,” Talbott tweeted.

The mere possibility of someone actually pulling off such an audacious attack on India should be reason enough for alarm bells to ring in the Indian security establishment. “What if,” is a question that cannot and must not be rejected out of hand. There is also the larger issue about how little aviation authorities worldwide have learnt from the 2001 attacks in the US. In a chapter on aviation security written for the book “How did this happen?” published by the Washington-based think tank Council on Foreign Relations a few months after the 2001 attacks in the US, American writer Gregg Easterbrook highlighted the vulnerabilities in the way aircraft transponders operate. “If the transponders had not gone silent on 9/11, air traffic controllers would have quickly realised that two jetliners en route to Los Angeles had made dramatic course changes and were bound straight for Manhattan. Instead, controllers lost precious time trying to figure out where the aircraft were. At the time, I would have bet my life’s savings that the transponder, which broadcasts an aircraft’s location and identity, would be re-engineered to prevent hijackers from turning such units off. But nothing was done. Almost 13 years later, Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 sparked a lengthy worldwide search when, it appears, another transponder was turned off. The issue today is exactly as it was on 9/11,” Easterbrook wrote in a recent article.

At the time of writing, the international team hunting for the aircraft in the southern Indian Ocean has not recovered anything.

Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen has spoken. Is India listening?

  

Amartya Sen

The public discourse in some parts of India today has tended to centre around the politics of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), the apparent failure of the ruling Congress-led UPA to revive the economy and the likely consequences or implications of Narendra Modi as Prime Minister, not necessarily in that order. Add to it the talk of a third, fourth or a federal front, and you have a veritable cornucopia of political expression. Lost somewhere in all of this was a “wish” made by a gentleman who answers to the name of Amartya Sen. The 80-year-old Nobel Laureate, who admittedly has no love lost for the Modi brand of politics, said in his keynote address at the Jaipur Literature Festival last month that he would like to see a secular right-wing party emerge in the country. To quote a media report, he said: “My big political wish is to have a strong and flourishing right-wing party that is secular and not communal.” Another media report quoted him extensively, in which he seeks to explain himself by saying: “There is an important role for a clear-headed, pro-market, pro-business party that does not depend on religious politics, and does not prioritise one religious community over all others...the Swatantra Party for example...but the party died. I wish it would be revived.” Sen wished for more: For instance, he said that he would like the “Left parties to be stronger, but also more clear-minded and much more concentrated on removing severe deprivations of the really poor and downtrodden people and not obsessed with American imperialism”; and “the media to be more responsive to the needs of the poorest people, and less single-minded in their coverage of the world of glitzy entertainment and shining business opportunities. They are right to grumble about the way subsidies waste economic resources, but largely fail to denounce subsidies for the better off, in the way subsidies for the unemployed and the hungry are savaged in the press.”

Now, one may or may not agree with Sen’s political views; one may quarrel with his choice of words and their implication; one may even question their own convictions; but it would not be prudent to reject his remarks out of hand. At the very least they merit a careful consideration. Here’s why:

* To begin with, it is not enough for the AAP to claim that it is neither Left nor Right or that it is not anti-enterprise. For a political party that claims to offer an alternative to the centre-left Congress-led UPA and the centre-right BJP-led coalition, the AAP hopes to be all things to all people all the time. Sample the following statements attributed to AAP’s ideologue Yogendra Yadav, which were published in various publications:

“Unlike traditional political parties, we are not based on the idea of one ideology, we are here to solve problems.”

“[Our] political programme is evolving, that programme refuses to typecast itself into standard ‘Left’ or ‘Right’.”

“Our Constitution talks of socialist principles.”

The AAP remains hydra-headed and ambivalent on certain issues, in spite of its leaders’ recent attempts to clarify their political- and economic vision. “We are not against capitalism, we’re against crony capitalism... It’s a wrong perception that AAP is against business. Of course we need businesses,” AAP chief Arvind Kejriwal said while addressing corporate leaders at a Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) meeting in Delhi. Yet, during his 49-day stint as Chief Minister of Delhi, Mr Kejriwal not only rejected FDI in retail but also increased the subsidies on electricity and water.

* The right-wing politics espoused by the BJP; its ideological mentor, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS); and its affiliates such as the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) and the Bajrang Dal has its own limitations. The lines between what is communal and what is secular may get blurred due to political realignments in the run-up to, or after, an election but the greatness of Indian democracy lies in its ability to moderate or temper any major deviations from the idea of India or its identity as a multi-cultural, multi-ethnic and multi-religious society. Yet every now and then certain fringe elements do manage to raise their ugly head but only so much before they are overcome. It owes much to the fact that the nature of the Indian democracy is such that it militates against such extremist and fissiparous tendencies. The BJP’s Hindutva brand of politics particularly challenges the sense and sensibilities of some sections of the society, who then make common cause with the likes of, say, Mulayam Singh Yadav’s Samajwadi Party.

C Rajagopalachari

Between, say, a Modi and a Mulayam, there is enough space for a secular centre-right political party to grow and flourish – a party that can harness India’s demographic dividend; give voice to the youths, students and young professionals alike; encourage and promote enterprise; create jobs, wealth and value; and bring out the entrepreneurial spirit in them. If one were to take Sen’s remarks at face value, the India of today could do with a new political entity that reflects the hopes and aspirations of the young people. One need only look at the latest data from the Election Commission in which an estimated 1.79 lakh new young voters would exercise their franchise on an average in each parliamentary constituency. The Swatantra Party founded by C Rajagopalachari gave us a glimpse of how a party that encourages enterprise and liberalism can offer a political alternative. Perhaps it is time for a similar initiative?

India’s first social media election

If Barack Obama was described by a section of the US media as the first social media president, whoever wins the 2014 general elections in India could well earn the moniker of being the first social media prime minister this country has seen. It would be no exaggeration to say that the 2014 elections are well and truly India’s first big social media election, inspired in no small way by the manner in which Obama successfully tapping into the power of social networks to win the 2008 US presidential election. An indication of the influence social media wields can be had from the fact that for the first time in India, the Election Commission will monitor social media spends of the candidates. One possible reason for the exponential rise in the use of social media is that an estimated 1.79 lakh new young voters would exercise their franchise on an average in each parliamentary constituency, as per the latest Election Commission data. (However, it needs to be pointed out here that internet penetration is not uniform throughout the country; therefore, social media would have an influence only in certain pockets.)

I recall reading a New York Times article that published the following quote explaining the phenomenon: “Thomas Jefferson used newspapers to win the presidency, F.D.R. [Franklin D Roosevelt] used radio to change the way he governed, J.F.K. [John F Kennedy] was the first president to understand television, and Howard Dean saw the value of the web for raising money[.] But Senator Barack Obama understood that you could use the web to lower the cost of building a political brand, create a sense of connection and engagement, and dispense with the command and control method of governing to allow people to self-organise to do the work.” That was in 2008. Today, social media has become ubiquitous in India and around the world. So much so that according to a studycarried out by Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) and IRISKnowledge Foundation, social media such as Facebook and Twitter are likely to influence at least 160 Lok Sabha constituencies out of 543 during the next general elections. According to some estimates, the number of social media users in India can be expected to rise exponentially by the middle of this year to several tens of million; it may not be much in absolute terms but when seen in the context of the reach of social media and its power of exponential influence it could make all the difference between winning and losing.

Sample the following statistics:

·      The internet population in India is among the largest in the world;

·      In India 30 new internet users are added every minute and a new Facebook user every second; and

·      Nearly half of all internet users in India use social media to keep themselves abreast of political developments.

These statistics only go to prove that there is a paradigm shift unfolding in the way elections are fought and political parties engage voters. Already we are seeing candidates and political parties alike experimenting with Google Hangouts, live broadcasts, audio-visual presentations on YouTube and online debates, besides making use of Facebook and Twitter. (The advent of social media in Indian election campaigns is not the only innovation going around. This election has also seen the entry of American-style “primaries” and “town hall” meetings to select candidates and engage with voters, respectively.)

India - Sri Lanka: Expanding on the Shades of Grey

Here's the link to the text of my article that was published by www.ipcs.org on 4 April 2014:

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INDIA - ARTICLES Print Bookmark Email Subscribe #4369, 4 April 2014   India-Sri Lanka: Expanding on the Shades of Grey Ramesh RamachandranJournalist, New Delhi   On March 27, India, departing from its usual voting pattern on UNHRC resolutions critical of Sri Lanka, abstained from casting its vote on the resolution that approved an independent international investigation into certain alleged war crimes and human rights violations committed by the Sri Lankan government during the 2009 civil war against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). The “explanation of vote” by India’s permanent representative to the UN offices in Geneva among other things, stated that “In asking the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) to investigate, assess and monitor the human rights situation in Sri Lanka, the resolution ignores the progress already made by the country in this field and places in jeopardy the cooperation currently taking place between the Government of Sri Lanka and the OHCHR and the Council’s Special Procedures. Besides, the resolution is inconsistent and impractical in asking both the Government of Sri Lanka and the OHCHR to simultaneously conduct investigations.” “…adopting an intrusive approach that undermines national sovereignty and institutions is counterproductive,” he added. Evidently, India's abstention was dictated as much by necessity and self-preservation as by a desire to place bilateralism at the front and centre of New Delhi’s ties with Colombo. After having voted for the UNHRC resolutions on Sri Lanka in 2012 and 2013, India’s abstention this year was indicative of a course correction in India’s engagement with Sri Lanka that was aimed at retrieving the ground lost in the intervening years, burnishing India’s credentials as a relevant player in the island nation’s affairs and signalling a return to bilateralism as the centrepiece of New Delhi – Colombo ties. If India’s support for the resolutions in the preceding years exposed an utter bankruptcy of ideas on engaging Sri Lanka (thereby implicitly admitting to a failure on the part of New Delhi to either influence the course of events or bring about the desired change in Colombo’s disposition), its abstention should be seen as a belated attempt to pull the relationship back from the brink. Indeed the muted reactions from the regional political parties provided New Delhi with room to manoeuvre, and in the process, enabled it to reclaim its voice vis-à-vis the Tamil Nadu state government and other regional political parties on foreign policy issues. Particularly worrying for the Indian Ministry of External Affairs is the phenomenon of erosion of New Delhi’s position in what it calls its sphere of influence. The debate over ways India should have voted at the last three UNHRC resolutions on Sri Lanka is instructive to the extent that it illustrates how far India has come from being an influential actor in its neighbourhood to being a marginal or fringe player. Some key questions were: Was it advisable for New Delhi to vote for the resolutions and risk losing whatever goodwill and leverage it might have had with Colombo? Shouldn’t all other options have been exhausted before India threw in the towel and threw in its lot with the West? India’s abstention this year has partially answered that question. At present, India cannot claim to adhere to a consistent policy towards Sri Lanka. First it nurtured the LTTE and burnt its fingers in the process. It then extended tacit support to Colombo – before, during and after the end of the Sri Lankan civil war in May 2009 – only to subsequently support the UNHRC resolution piloted by the US. The 2013 Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting summit in Sri Lanka was as much in the news for the renewed focus on Colombo’s human rights record as for the Indian prime minister’s decision to refrain from attending it, and instead, leave it to the Indian External Affairs Minister to lead New Delhi’s delegation. In a letter of regret hand-delivered to Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa, Singh informed Rajapaksa of his inability to attend personally but without providing reasons. Suffice to say that a careful reading of the history of India-Sri Lanka relations would make it evident that New Delhi’s policy towards Colombo can be described as consistently inconsistent, characterised by myopia and self-inflicted crises. It is time to reshape India’s neighbourhood policy in a manner that reflects the broadest possible national consensus on the way forward in our relations with Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Nepal, Bangladesh, Maldives, Bhutan and Sri Lanka. Irrespective of which coalition forms the next government in New Delhi, a reset is necessary. India can ill-afford a Pavlovian foreign policy, and/or framing India’s foreign policy options as a binary choice. There is need for greater appreciation of several shades of grey.

India - Sri Lanka: Time for reshaping New Delhi's neighbourhood policy

This article was published by www.rediff.com on 28 March 2014 under the headline "Time for reshaping India's neighbourhood policy" and by www.atimes.com on 31 March 2014 under the headline "UN vote shows strains in Delhi's diplomacy":

President Mahinda Rajapaksa of Sri Lanka and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh of India

Abstaining from voting on a UNHRC resolution on Sri Lanka was dictated as much by necessity and self-preservation as by a desire to place bilateralism at the front and centre of New Delhi’s ties with Colombo, says Ramesh Ramachandran.

In a departure from its hitherto familiar voting pattern on United Nations Human Rights Council resolutions critical of Sri Lanka, India on Thursday abstained from casting its vote on the resolution that approved an independent international investigation into certain alleged war crimes and gross human rights violations committed by the government of Sri Lanka during the 2009 civil war against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam.

The customary ‘explanation of vote’ by the permanent representative of India to the UN offices in Geneva said, among other things, that: 

* “In asking the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights to investigate, assess and monitor the human rights situation in Sri Lanka, the resolution ignores the progress already made by the country in this field and places in jeopardy the cooperation currently taking place between the government of Sri Lanka and the OHCHR and the council’s special procedures. Besides, the resolution is inconsistent and impractical in asking both the government of Sri Lanka and the OHCHR to simultaneously conduct investigations”;

* “India believes that it is imperative for every country to have the means of addressing human rights violations through robust national mechanisms. The council’s efforts should therefore be in a direction to enable Sri Lanka to investigate all allegations of human rights violations through comprehensive, independent and credible national investigative mechanisms and bring to justice those found guilty. Sri Lanka should be provided all assistance it desires in a cooperative and collaborative manner”; and

* “It has been India’s firm belief that adopting an intrusive approach that undermines national sovereignty and institutions is counterproductive.”

After having voted for the UNHRC resolutions on Sri Lanka in 2012 and 2013, India’s abstention this year is indicative of a course correction in New Delhi’s engagement with Colombo that is aimed at retrieving the ground lost in the intervening years, burnishing India’s credentials as a relevant player in the island nation’s affairs and signalling a return to bilateralism as the centrepiece of India-Sri Lanka ties (not necessarily in that order).

If India’s support for the resolutions in the previous years exposed an utter bankruptcy of ideas on how to engage with Sri Lanka (thereby implicitly admitting to a failure on the part of New Delhi to either influence the course of events or bring about the desired change in Colombo’s disposition), the abstention should be seen as a belated attempt to pull the relationship back from the brink.

Of course, it helped that the reaction from the regional parties was muted this year and that gave New Delhi extra room for manoeuvre, enabling it in the process to regain its voice vis-a-vis the states on foreign policy matters.

It needs to be said here that India cannot claim to adhere to a consistent policy towards Sri Lanka. First it nurtured the LTTE and burnt its fingers in the process. Then it extended a tacit support to Colombo -- before, during and after the end of the Sri Lankan civil war in May 2009 -- only to later, in its wisdom, support the UNHRC resolution piloted by the United States. The 2013 Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting summit in Sri Lanka was as much in the news for the renewed focus on the human rights record of the host nation as for the decision by the prime minister of India not to take part in it. In his stead it was left to External Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid to lead the Indian delegation for the biennial event of the 53-nation Commonwealth.

In a letter of regret that was hand-delivered to President Mahinda Rajapaksa, Singh informed Rajapaksa of his inability to attend personally but he did not assign any reasons for it. Suffice it to say that a careful reading of the history of India-Sri Lanka relations would make it evident to just about anyone that India’s policy towards this island-nation in the Indian Ocean can be described as consistently inconsistent, characterised by myopia and self-inflicted crises.

For the ministry of external affairs, what should be particularly worrying is the erosion in India’s standing, in what it calls, its sphere of influence. The recent debate over which way India should vote on a UNHRC resolution on Sri Lanka is instructive to the extent that it illustrated how far India has come from being an influential actor in its neighbourhood to being a marginal or fringe player.

Put simply (not simplistically), some of the key questions were: Is it advisable for New Delhi to vote for the resolutions and risk losing whatever goodwill and leverage it might have had with Colombo? Should not all other options have been exhausted before India (figuratively) threw in the towel and (literally) threw in its lot with the West? Thursday’s abstention has partially answered that question. However, there remains another worry:

The protestations from Tamil Nadu chief minister J Jayalalithaa and her rival and DMK patriarch M Karunanidhi over India’s vote on Sri Lanka in 2012, coming as they did a few months after West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee ‘vetoed’ an agreement on the sharing of the Teesta river waters with Bangladesh, injected a certain degree of dissonance in the conduct of foreign policy. What fuelled the diplomats’ anxiety was the precedent that would be set if the Centre caved in or succumbed to the states on matters that fell in the Union Government’s realm. Already, India’s engagement of Pakistan on one hand and China and Burma on the other are determined to an extent by the domestic conditions prevalent in Jammu and Kashmir and the north-eastern states, respectively. 

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh betrayed his frustration when he said in the Lok Sabha that difficult decisions were getting more difficult because of coalition compulsions. He called for bipartisanship in the interest of the country. At the same time, what cannot be denied is that there exists a view among a section of serving and former practitioners of diplomacy that devolution of foreign policy to more stakeholders than what is currently assumed should not be entirely unwelcome.

As a former foreign secretary told this writer, “Foreign policy today is made not only in New Delhi but elsewhere, too. There are multiple stakeholders and one can’t deny states a say in foreign policy if it relates to them.” In other words, it is argued that if the states assert their rights and/or seek more consultations, then the Centre must respect those sentiments.

Having said that, an impression seems to be gaining ground, erroneously at that, that foreign policy is the worst sufferer of this nouveau phenomenon of the states having their say in matters pertaining to foreign policy. A cursory look at recent years would show that the states have consistently been vocal on a host of other issues, too. The recent examples of certain states or regional parties opposing the policy of raising the cap on FDI (foreign direct investment) in single-brand retail is a case in point. As is the opposition to the Centre’s proposal for setting up a National Counter Terrorism Centre.

In some of these cases New Delhi chose to yield, albeit temporarily, but in some others it had its way. Therefore, it would not be accurate to suggest that regional influences are wielding a ‘veto’ over New Delhi. Also, it would not be fair to either paint the states as villains of the piece or to apportion all the blame for the Centre’s foreign policy woes to regional parties that are, or could be, aligned against it in the political arena.

For instance, the Centre accuses the West Bengal government headed by the Trinamool Congress party of scuttling a river waters sharing agreement with Bangladesh. However, the Congress, which heads the ruling coalition at the Centre and also in Kerala, is guilty of playing to narrow political sentiments, too, as was evidenced by the state government’s and the party’s stand on the two Italian marines who are facing murder charges for the deaths of two Indian fishermen off the Kerala coast.

On balance, it is time for reshaping India’s neighbourhood policy in a manner that it reflects the broadest possible national consensus on the way forward in reshaping ties with countries such as Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Nepal, Bangladesh, Maldives, Bhutan and Sri Lanka. A reset is imperative, irrespective of which coalition forms the next government in New Delhi. India can ill-afford a Pavlovian foreign policy.

Equally, framing India’s foreign policy options as a binary choice can be self-defeating. There needs to be a dispassionate debate and a greater appreciation of various shades of grey (pun unintended.)

CONSULT, NOT CONFRONT

President Mahinda Rajapaksa of Sri Lanka and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh of India

Re-posting my November 2013 piece on the CHOGM Summit and India - Sri Lanka relations (You may want to read it together with my March 2012 piece, headlined "Mamata, Karunanidhi effect: MEA sees red as states veto foreign policy"):

The recently concluded Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) summit in Sri Lanka was as much in the news for the renewed focus on the human rights record of the host nation as for the decision by the Prime Minister of India not to take part in it. In his stead it was left to External Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid to lead the Indian delegation to Colombo for the biennial event of the 53-nation Commonwealth. In a letter of regret that was hand-delivered to President Mahinda Rajapaksa of Sri Lanka, Mr Singh informed Mr Rajapaksa of his inability to attend personally but he did not assign any reasons for it. It was the second consecutive CHOGM summit the Indian Prime Minister has skipped but not many in his own party, the Indian National Congress, or its allies are complaining. The Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK), which was at the front and centre of a campaign in Tamil Nadu to dissuade the Prime Minister from travelling to Colombo, welcomed the move, describing it as “some consolation” to it. Some of the Prime Minister’s own colleagues in the Council of Ministers who hail from Tamil Nadu were relieved, too, after the PM acceded to the decision of the Congress core group, headed by party president Sonia Gandhi, that he must excuse himself from the summit. For its part, the Congress party was guided by the belief that while the DMK had withdrawn support to the government and pulled out from the ruling alliance in March this year, it remains a potential ally as the 2014 parliamentary elections draw near. Besides, Sri Lanka is an emotive issue that resonates with a large cross-section of the electorate in the state. As Mr Khurshid himself pointed out, the Prime Minister’s decision to skip CHOGM had been taken after factoring in a lot of issues. “The Prime Minister has taken a considerate call; he factored in a lot of issues, including the importance of his presence in the country at this time. We are after all facing five elections,” he said, before going on to concede that “there was also a very strong sentiment expressed by our colleagues in Parliament from Tamil Nadu.”

The Indian Prime Minister was not alone in giving the summit a miss. The prime ministers of Canada and Mauritius boycotted it, too. However, unlike the Canadian premier who warned of the boycott at the last CHOGM summit held in Australia in 2011, India cannot claim to adhere to a consistent policy towards Sri Lanka. First it nurtured the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and burnt its fingers in the process. Then it extended a tacit support to Colombo – before, during and after the end of the Sri Lankan civil war in May 2009 – only to later, in its wisdom, support a 2011 United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) resolution piloted by the United States and vote, in turn, against Sri Lanka. It voted against Sri Lanka a second time in the UNHRC in March this year. There can be compelling arguments for and against whether India should have supported such a resolution but it cannot be denied that those acts exposed the limits of India’s influence among its neighbours. Suffice it to say that a careful reading of the history of India-Sri Lanka relations would make it evident to just about anyone that India’s policy towards this island-nation in the Indian Ocean can be described as consistently inconsistent, characterised by myopia and self-inflicted crises.

In a federal structure such as India’s, foreign policy cannot be practised in a vacuum or in isolation or without consultations with all stakeholders concerned, including, but not limited to, the states, particularly those that share contiguous borders with neighbouring countries and/or share ethnic, linguistic, cultural or geographical affinities with them. A foreign policy drawn up in the corridors of the South Block in New Delhi may have served India well in all these decades but contemporary realities dictate that in a federal set-up and in an era of coalition governments the views of the states are factored in at the time of formulation of a foreign policy. Having said that, an impression seems to be gaining ground, erroneously at that, that foreign policy is the worst sufferer of this nouveau phenomenon of the states having their say in matters pertaining to foreign policy. A cursory look at recent years would show that the states have consistently been vocal on a host of other issues, too. The recent examples of certain states or regional parties opposing the policy of raising the cap on FDI (foreign direct investment) in single-brand retail to 100 per cent is a case in point. As is the opposition to the Centre’s proposal for setting up a National Counter Terrorism Centre (NCTC) or the protests against building nuclear power plants at Jaitapur in Maharashtra and Kudankulam in Tamil Nadu. In some of these cases New Delhi chose to yield, albeit temporarily, but in some others it had its way. Therefore, it would not be accurate to suggest that regional influences are wielding a veto over New Delhi. Also, it would not be fair to either paint the states as villains of the piece or to apportion all the blame for the Centre’s foreign policy woes to regional parties that are or could be aligned against it in the political arena. For instance, the Centre accuses the West Bengal government headed by the All India Trinamool Congress party of scuttling a river waters sharing agreement with Bangladesh. However, the Congress, which heads the ruling coalition at the Centre and also in Kerala, is guilty of playing to narrow political sentiments, too, as was evidenced by the state government’s and the party’s stand on the two Italian marines who are facing murder charges for the deaths of two Indian fishermen off the Kerala coast. That the ensuing protests and the government’s response to them were provoked in part by the fact that a crucial by-election was to take place in the state, was not lost on anyone.

What cannot be overstated is that devolution of foreign policy to more stakeholders than what is currently assumed should not be entirely unwelcome. I would go as far as to say that the democratisation of foreign policy and the salience of the states in shaping it cannot be continued to be treated as an exception; and the sooner New Delhi gets used to executing its foreign and domestic policies in a coalition with sometimes competing political interests, the better it will be for all the stakeholders concerned. The irony is unmistakable: If Colombo reasons that Sri Lanka is too small a geographical entity to be governed from the provinces or for more powers to be delegated to them, New Delhi is increasingly finding that administering foreign policy in the extant federal polity which it so recommends for Sri Lanka, coupled with the influence wielded by regional political parties or groups in a country of India’s size and history, is not easy. As recent developments indicate, policy-making cannot remain the exclusive preserve of New Delhi and it behoves of the Centre to encourage various stakeholders to air their views and to enable them to give expression to their concerns. Also, it is time for reshaping India’s neighbourhood policy in a manner that it reflects the broadest possible national consensus.

The Indian Spring: Lessons for the world

This piece was first published by www.rediff.com on 30 December 2013 under the headline The Indian Spring: Lessons For The World


n The Indian Spring represented by Anna Hazare's anti-corruption campaign, which has culminated in the Aam Aadmi Party's impressive electoral debut, began around the same time as the Arab Spring in 2011 but they led to different outcomes. A comparison:

A scene from an anti-corruption protest in India

A photograph from the Arab Spring

New Delhi
28 December 2013 

O

n 17 December 2013, as Tunisians observed the third anniversary of the self-immolation of a 26-year-old street vendor Mohd Bouazizi in Sidi Bouzid that sparked protests in their country and triggered a wave of similar uprisings across North Africa and West Asia, people of Delhi broke out into celebrations for the second time in less than 10 days. A rank outsider, 45-year-old Arvind Kejriwal had just announced a referendum of sorts to ascertain the people’s wishes on whether his Aam Aadmi (common man) Party should take the lead for forming a government or not, after the fledgling party made a historic debut in the recently concluded provincial elections winning 28 seats in the 70-member Assembly and coming second behind BJP and its allies (32) but far ahead of the Congress’s tally of eight seats. Less than a week later, Kejriwal had staked claim to form the government, bringing to a successful culmination an unprecedented experiment in Indian democracy and bringing cheer to ordinary citizens who had had enough of the corruption and inflation that had peaked of late.

The contrast between Sidi Bouzid, a town 260 kilometres southwest of capital Tunis, and a Delhi located 6,000-odd km away, could not have been starker. Three years after the first stirrings of the Arab Spring, Tunisia – much like the rest of the Arab world – is still coming to terms with the contagion that was unleashed on an unsuspecting society and government alike. But the Indian version of the Arab Spring that began with a septuagenarian anti-corruption crusader Anna Hazare’s fast at Jantar Mantar in Delhi on 5 April 2011 can draw satisfaction from the many successes it has notched up on the way. There is a sense of accomplishment in the air. The spontaneous public movement that captured the imagination of men and women, young and old, in cities and towns across much of India has finally paid dividends. Not only does India today have a new Lokpal Bill that provides for a nationwide anti-corruption ombudsman, Hazare’s one-time protégé Kejriwal has turned a people’s movement for good governance, transparency and accountability into a political party with a remarkable felicity of democratic expression. That this was achieved without any blood-letting is a tribute to the virtues of democracy in general and the sagacity and maturity of the Indian voter in particular. Compare this with the less than two lakh people killed in the Arab Spring, including, but not limited to, 300 in Tunisia, 1,700 in Egypt, 2,000 in Yemen, 25,000 in Libya, 1.2 lakh in Syria and over 100 in Bahrain, all of which are yet nowhere close to overcoming the challenges such as corruption, unemployment, inflation and inequality that bedevils Sidi Bouzid as much as it does Chandni Chowk. The events that unfolded in those countries brought home the tragic consequences of choosing the bullet over the ballot.

The phenomenon sweeping across much of the Arab world did not leave democratic societies such as the United States, where the Occupy Wall Street movement gained traction, or India, untouched. No country was immune from its reach. Social media ensured that the word spread farther and anger travelled faster. It sprouted wherever it found a ground made fertile by misgovernance. It spared neither the dictator nor the democrat. Five governments were overthrown, including two in Egypt, just as the ruling Congress party was ousted from power in the province of Delhi but, unlike India and the US, the levels of disenchantment continue to remain high in the democracy-deficit countries in North Africa and West Asia. The prevailing sentiment in Tunisia, which has seen changes wrought by the Arab Spring, is that people’s lives and their economic situation has improved only marginally but it is not likely to improve any further in the immediate future. Tunisia is likely to witness the approval of a new constitution and the holding of parliamentary elections in 2014. In a recent study conducted by researchers from the University of Michigan Institute for Social Research and the University of Maryland in the United States, more than 60 per cent of the 3,000 Tunisian adults surveyed said that they are not happy with the current political leadership and 86 per cent said that corruption is common. The situation is worse in Egypt, which increasingly resembles a police state, or, Libya, where militias run amok, throwing the country into further instability. In Yemen, attempts are still being made for a national dialogue and reconciliation involving multiple stakeholders. “It is clear that the process of Arab transformation will need decades to mature and that its success is by no means guaranteed,” says Marwan Muasher, vice president for studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, the oldest international affairs think tank in the United States. Muasher’s prognosis for some of the countries affected by the Arab Spring is not encouraging. According to him, Egypt, which can be expected to hold a referendum on a new constitution in addition to presidential and parliamentary elections in 2014, “is not out of the woods yet.” He sounds a warning for the Arab monarchies who have not succeeded in tackling the underlying political, economic, and social challenges their nations face. “Jordan will continue to feel that it has successfully ridden the wave of Arab transitions without seriously addressing some of the key economic and political challenges facing the country. And it will probably get away with it, at least for now,” notes Muasher, who served as Jordan’s deputy prime minister from 2004 to 2005 and foreign minister from 2002 to 2004.

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t the same time, the Aam Aadmi Party’s ascension to the front and centre of the political landscape and discourse is instructive for a proud democracy such as India. We are seeing Kejriwal’s fourth avatar, this time as a politician, after the engineer-turned-bureaucrat quit government service to launch a non-government organisation (NGO.) He was in every sense of the word an antithesis to the reticent and self-effacing Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who for many had come to symbolise some if not everything that was wrong with the government and governance. By any reckoning, the recently concluded elections in Delhi that catapulted the Aam Aadmi Party to centrestage had to be among the most secular electoral contests in recent memory because it was fought on the twin issues of corruption and good governance, and these are as secular an issue as secular gets. The usual considerations of caste, sect or religion were trumped by the near universal outrage against corruption. Contrast this with many of the countries affected by the Arab Spring which descended into sectarianism, majoritarianism or plain terrorism; where people still yearn for the rule of law and many of the personal freedoms and human rights that many around the world take for granted. The Indian Spring also took under its wing issues other than corruption, such as crimes against women. The common man was once again at the forefront of the apolitical, secular protests following the 16 December 2012 gang rape of a young woman in Delhi. The Indian Street, similar to the Arab Street, had well and truly begun to take spape. The unprecedented outrage forced Parliament to pass the Criminal Law (Amendment) Bill to tighten the legal framework against rape. Women have found the voice to assert themselves like never before. It has led to the arrest of a magazine editor on charges of rape and a retired Supreme Court judge finds himself at the centre of a row over the alleged sexual harassment of a law intern. Having said that, if the groundswell of opinion in favour of the Aam Aadmi Party in Delhi extends to even some of the other states of Indian Union and/or the mandate decisively shifts away from the two blocs led by the Congress and the BJP to regional parties, then the 2014 parliamentary elections could throw up a more representative government bringing in its wake certain implications for the economic and foreign policies of India. Be it 51 per cent foreign direct investment (FDI) in multi-brand retail; policies vis-à-vis Pakistan, Bangladesh or Sri Lanka; National Counter Terrorism Centre (NCTC); or setting up of new nuclear power plants, what cannot be overstated is that devolution of economic or foreign policies to more stakeholders than what is currently assumed should not be entirely unwelcome. In a federal structure such as India’s, foreign policy in particular cannot be practised in a vacuum or in isolation or without consultations with all stakeholders concerned, including, but not limited to, the states, particularly those that share contiguous borders with neighbouring countries and/or share ethnic, linguistic, cultural or geographical affinities with them. A foreign policy drawn up in the corridors of the South Block in New Delhi may have served India well in all these decades but contemporary realities dictate that in a federal set-up and in an era of coalition governments the views of the states are factored in at the time of formulation of a foreign policy. The democratisation of policy-making and the salience of the states in shaping it cannot be continued to be treated as an exception; and the sooner New Delhi gets used to executing its foreign and domestic policies in a coalition with sometimes competing political interests, the better it will be for all the stakeholders concerned.

At the time of writing, protests reminiscent of the Arab Spring are happening in Thailand, where at least five have died so far, and Ukraine. The international community could draw the right lessons from the Indian Spring, which spawned the rise of the Aam Aadmi Party. It has stirred even a 128-year-old party such as the Congress from its complacency and put others on notice. The three-time chief minister of Delhi, who had derisively asked “Who is Arvind Kejriwal? What is [Aam Aadmi Party]?” on election day, got her answer four days later when the votes were counted and how: Her party had been trounced and she herself had lost the election from her constituency. All of which can only mean one thing for political parties and governments everywhere: Thou shalt not mistreat the common man.

Remove the Blinkers: Manmohan Singh takes a lonely road on Pakistan

This article was published by Asia Times Online (www.atimes.com) on 17 October 2013 under the headline: "Singh takes a lonely road on Pakistan". Here is the link to it.


Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in a bilateral meeting with the Prime Minister of Pakistan Nawaz Sharif in
New York on 29 September 2013 (Pictures and video courtesy: www.pmindia.nic.in)

New Delhi
16 October 2013

The Prime Minister of India met with his Pakistan counterpart on the margins of the 68th session of the United Nations General Assembly in New York on 29 September 2013, defying public sentiment and in spite of an overwhelming body of evidence of Pakistan’s complicity in allowing its territory to be used for mounting terrorist attacks against India and Indian interests, at home and abroad alike. The discourse leading up to the meeting was dominated by whether the talks should at all be held in the immediate backdrop of the 26 September 2013 twin terror attacks in the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir in which Indian soldiers, police personnel and civilians were killed. It was not an isolated incident: In January this year an Indian soldier was beheaded at the Line of Control (LoC) with Pakistan; in August five more Indian soldiers were killed; and, in between, several more such killings and infiltrations were reported. As it became known later, the Indian Army was engaged in an operation to repulse an attempt from the Pakistan Occupied Kashmir (PoK) to push a tranche of infiltrators across the Line of Control even as the two premiers shook hands and posed for the cameras. It took the army a fortnight to successfully conclude the anti-infiltration operation. If the government dithered on calling Pakistan’s bluff, the army chief made it eminently clear to anyone who would care to listen that it is impossible for terrorists to carry out any activity along the LoC without the knowledge of the Pakistani Army.

By the Indian government’s own admission, the expectations from the New York talks had to be toned down given the terror arm which is still active in the Indian subcontinent. And as it predictably turned out, there was not much to show by way of outcomes except for the two sides deciding to task their respective Directors-General of Military Operations (DGMOs) to meet for suggesting effective means to restore the ceasefire. Even that looks remote now. The two DGMOs last met in 1999 although they speak fairly regularly. The New York meeting could at best be described as a photo-op. If anything, it once again reaffirmed Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s, and by extension his government’s, adamantly consistent but questionable position on talks with Pakistan. After the 26 November 2008 Mumbai attacks, too, he had similarly disregarded public opinion to first meet with the then President of Pakistan at Yekaterinburg in Russia on the margins of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit, and later with the then Prime Minister of Pakistan at the Red Sea resort of Sharm-el-Sheikh in Egypt on the sidelines of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) summit. It was at Sharm-el-Sheikh that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and his team agreed to a joint statement with Pakistan that said: “Action on terrorism should not be linked to the Composite Dialogue Process and these should not be bracketed”. Also, in another first, Balochistan was allowed to creep into the text of an India - Pakistan joint statement. Pakistan has since conveniently used the bogey of Indian involvement in stirring up trouble in Balochistan as a stock response to India’s assertions of a Pakistani hand in fomenting unrest in the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir.

All of which begs the question: Talks to what end, and at what cost? Is the life of an Indian – be it a soldier or a civilian — so cheap that talks with Pakistan should continue at any cost and in spite of a spate of terrorist attacks, as evidenced most recently in the twin terror attacks in the Samba and Kathua sectors of Jammu and Kashmir? How many more brave Indian soldiers should be killed in cowardly terrorist attacks before the decision-making apparatuses of the government proactively seek out the military’s views? How many more families should lose their loved ones at the hands of the terrorists and their masters outside our borders before the government of the day begins to pay heed to the sentiments of the common man whom it claims to represent? Why are no visible attempts being made to restore the delicate civil-military balance and to uphold the dignity and morale of the soldier? Instead, what we are witnessing today is a government that is playing with fire and it needs to stop now. External Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid has since clarified that while the two Prime Ministers met in New York the stage has not been reached where the two sides have indicated any dates, timeline or perspective on resuming the dialogue. And with a post-2014 Afghanistan looming large on the horizon it is anyone’s guess as to how much time and effort Pakistan, given its proclivities, will be willing to spare and/or invest in preserving the incremental peace dividends and insulating the bilateral relationship from external influences.




Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in a bilateral meeting with the Prime Minister of
Pakistan Nawaz Sharif in New York on 29 September 2013. Also seen in the picture
(on the right) are External Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid, National Security
Adviser Shivshankar Menon and Foreign Secretary Sujatha Singh

What the discerning stakeholders in India today need be understand is that this government’s blind faith in dialogue with Pakistan has not disproved those who have little or no faith in talks under the present circumstances. The history of India – Pakistan bilateral engagement over the past decade and more is replete with an unending series of terrorist attacks interspersed with peace talks, an overwhelming majority of which were held in third countries on the margins of multilateral summits. The New York meeting is but one in a long list of bilateral engagements starting with the 2006 NAM summit at Havana in Cuba, the 2008 Asia –Europe Meeting (ASEM) at Beijing in China, the 2008 United Nations General Assembly session in New York, the 2009 SCO summit at Yekaterinburg in Russia, the 2009 NAM summit at Sharm-el-Sheikh and the 2010 SAARC (South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation) summit at Thimphu in Bhutan. Add to it former Pakistan President Gen Pervez Musharraf’s visit to New Delhi in 2005 and former Pakistan Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani’s visit to Mohali in 2011 for watching cricket or the private visits by Pakistani heads of state/government to Ajmer and you have a veritably uninterrupted dialogue that can be traced further back to Lahore, 1999; Agra, 2001; and Islamabad, 2004. Importantly, these bilateral engagements have survived multiple terrorist attacks and conflicts dating back to Kargil and Kandahar in 1999, Parliament in 2001, Mumbai train bombings of 2006 and the 26/11 terrorist attacks again in Mumbai, in 2008. But what has come of the talks so far? Are we any closer to a breakthrough than we were before? Have terrorist attacks diminished appreciably? Unfortunately, after every terrorist attack the government of the day mouths platitudes and employs boilerplate language such as ‘It cannot be business as usual’ or ‘Patience is not inexhaustible’ only to go back on them at the first available opportunity! This government has tied itself in knots over its Pakistan policy but it has only itself to blame for it. Its inability to think out of the box has exposed its bankruptcy of ideas on how to deal with an increasingly intransigent neighbour. And Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s personal quest for a lasting legacy insofar as Pakistan is concerned has only further compounded an already intractable conundrum.

The government needs to remove its blinkers and begin to appreciate that terrorism and talks cannot go hand in hand. It is imperative that the government shows zero tolerance to terrorism, takes strong steps to prevent terror attacks and imposes costs on the perpetrators of terrorism. Most importantly, the government must heed public opinion. The time has come for the government to start calling Pakistan’s bluff, to act firmly and decisively and if that involves putting a moratorium on future talks with Pakistan at the highest level, “so be it.” Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has used this specific language before, albeit to a domestic audience in the run up to the India – United States nuclear cooperation agreement in his first term in office when the Left parties parted ways with the UPA; there is no reason why in the instant context Pakistan cannot be told “So be it”; that India will be free to pursue its course of action if Pakistan does not intend to reciprocate peace overtures; and that consequences will follow if it does not give satisfaction to India on what India considers to be its core interests. Saying no to talks now is not the same as saying no to talks ever and it certainly need not necessarily mean or come to represent an escalation of tensions. A range of other equally effective options is available to the government of the day to execute its Pakistan policy and these must be explored. Above all, the government must forge the broadest possible national consensus on the way forward for a détente with Pakistan.

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* Patience needed for Sharif's India goals, published by www.atimes.com on 17 May 2013