Tag Archives | India

Diplomacy, politics, power and norms in the neighbourhood

By on 12th March 2013 in Foreign Affairs

Can New Delhi shape and use a normative consensus?

In today’s Indian Express, Pratap Bhanu Mehta carries forward the debate on neighbourhood policy that I attempted to initiate last week through the columns of Business Standard.

In short, I had argued that New Delhi finds itself in reacting to events around the subcontinent in an ad hoc manner because it has not yet thought out a policy framework on how to deal with the region. I recommended a new neighbourhood doctrine:

First, India must continue to generate high rates of economic growth so as to remain the economic engine of the subcontinent.

Second, India must unabashedly back pro-India political parties in neighbouring countries and make it more expensive for anti-India parties to hold their positions. [Business Standard]

Mr Mehta qualifies both these arguments. The influence of economic growth is gated by the fact that “region is still populated with leaders and political forces that will cut off their own nose to spite their face; and investments in enmity override the well-being of populations.” As for backing pro-India parties, he contends that, a short-sighted partisanship will not work, and “in the long term, these forces can only be those that have the potential to build a new normative consensus” in the subcontinent.

These are well-considered qualifications. It is easier to respond to the proposition that economic growth alone is unlikely to persuade political parties that would rather keep their populations poor than abandon their anti-India politics. This is rational from their perspective because they see it as politically advantageous. For precisely this reason, New Delhi must back pro-India parties and chip away at the perceived political advantage of being anti-India.

The issue of building a normative consensus is harder to crack. It is a challenge at the best of times to balance respect for sovereignty and a particular domestic political order at the same time. It is easier if the attempt to balance these is discarded: ASEAN, for instance, solved this dilemma by placing sovereignty over democracy (or authoritarianism) by enshrining the principle of non-interference in domestic affairs. India cannot take this escape route: a large democracy constitutionally and popularly committed to human rights and pluralism cannot be completely oblivious to the state of its neighbourhood. This is so even when New Delhi might prefer dealing with assorted despots and authoritarians. There has always been a strong constituency in parts of Indian society that stands up for democracy and human rights in neighbouring countries. (Admittedly, this constituency has been inconspicuous recent months.This is very likely due to the unusually high level of preoccupation with India’s domestic politics and economy.)

Even if New Delhi somehow manages to walk the tightrope, its ability to enshrine and enforce norms is an altogether different matter. K Subrahmanyam expounds realism when he notes that “norms can have power despite being marked by organised hypocrisy”. That said, states usually use the language of values on three occasions: when they are too weak to employ power; when they want to mask the employment of power; and when they are too strong and would rather not use power.

So a weak, newly-independent India championed liberal internationalism; during the Cold War, the United States cloaked its use of power by invoking the language of freedom and in the proximate post-Cold War era, the West hopes that enshrining norms will reduce the need for it to take the expensive route of employing hard power.

Where does India stand today in the context of its subcontinental neighbourhood? It is certainly not so weak that it has to rely on moral platitudes alone. On the other extreme, at current levels of national income and given the increasing openness of the region to external powers, it cannot be said that India can enshrine and enforce norms relatively easily.

At the risk of leaving idealists and other well-meaning people aghast, this leaves New Delhi with the middle option: use norms to cloak the use of power, participate and even lead the organised hypocrisy.

Therefore, I agree with Mr Mehta that India must build a new normative consensus as part of its neighbourhood policy doctrine—although I suspect it is for different reasons.

Related Posts: The paradox of proximity — my paper on why neighbourhood policy is difficult and a short, quirky look at the power-principle matrix.

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Leave it at the tactical

By on 15th January 2013 in Foreign Affairs, Security

Media-fuelled public outrage must not determine New Delhi’s strategy on the tensions along the Line of Control

Success or failure in a contest between two states is not measured by merely by the relative numbers of soldiers killed or bits of territory gained or lost. It is measured by the relative well-being of the people in the states concerned. What is the national interest if not “the well-being, prosperity and happiness of the nation”? The Arthashastra puts this in pithy terms: “The possession of power and happiness in a greater degree makes a king superior to another; in a less degree, inferior”.

Since the nuclear tests of 1998 and the Pakistan’s invasion of Kargil, leading to a brief border war in 1999, there has been a fairly commonplace lament in the popular discourse that India is unable to “do anything” to respond to Pakistani provocations. Let there be no doubt—Pakistani provocations have been many, they have been systematic and they have caused the nation physical, social and psychological harm. Let there be no doubt that India’s responses have been more restrained than they need to be—not least to a predilection among India’s prime ministers to see the need for “a peace process with Pakistan”. Let there also be no doubt: a flawed logic—the presumption that the Pakistan they do the peace process with is the Pakistan that attacks us—informs this policy.

Even so, by most measures, Indians in 2013 are better off than their Pakistani counterparts (see this Gapminder chart). This is despite the UPA squandering a good part of a benign decade and bringing the economy on the verge of a fiscal crisis. This is despite the neglect of governance reforms and bringing the polity into a wrenching political churn. Pakistan, for all its provocations and too-clever-by-half exploitation of its ‘geopolitical positions’ is back into the international doghouse it was in. It is being devoured by its own domestic monsters, without the need for any help from India.

So folks, we are winning this one.

Back in 2003, in a conversation with Sameer Wagle, a friend and intellectual sparring partner, this blogger had argued that the solution to our problems from Pakistan is economic reform. In fact, as argued in this Pragati cover story, Reforms 2.0 is our China policy, our America policy, our Europe policy and every-other-country policy. From this perspective, the UPA government’s abandonment of the reform agenda is its biggest foreign policy failure.

The purpose of national defence is to ensure that India’s growth and development can take place undisturbed. Defence policy is not an end in itself (a point that Pakistan has missed).

The recent escalation of tactical conflict between India and Pakistan at the Line of Control comes at a time when India is in the grip of a grand moral panic and political flux. The media and public discourse tends to rapidly end up in outrage and anger. For this reason, it is all the more important to be more careful and dispassionate and not precipitate actions that might end up being self-defeating.

First, it is important that the Indian side does not give Pakistan an opening to end the ceasefire along the Line of Control. For if the ceasefire goes, the Pakistani military-jihadi complex will rub its hands in glee and attempt its strategy of the 1990s—essentially infiltrate men and war material into Indian territory under the cover of armed conflict. The broader situation is a lot like the 1990s, as ranks of the jihadi alumni from Afghanistan begin to swell in 2014, and though the Indian armed forces are better prepared than two decades ago, who needs the resumption of a proxy war?

Second, it makes sense not to disturb the adversary when he is making a mistake. Pakistan is in deep turmoil. A number of internecine rivalries are tearing the country apart. It will get worse in 2014 when international troops leave neighbouring Afghanistan and the militants no longer have a foreign enemy to fight. It is hard to predict which way Pakistan might go, but it is smart not to give the warring factions a reason to join forces and focus on a common enemy in the shape of us.

Third, let the armed forces sort out the tactical game along the Line of Control away from the media glare. The Indian Army has been engaged in this conflict for decades and is well-aware, well-trained and well-equipped to handle the matters. General Bikram Singh’s statements make this amply clear. The army “reserves the right to retaliate at a time and place of its choosing”. This is as it should be. It is imprudent, risky and counter-productive for media-fuelled public outrage to force the army’s professional assessment.

None of this is an argument for the manufactured and contrived ‘peace process’ activities. Rather, that New Delhi must use the detente to its strategic advantage. What the public debate ought to be about is not how New Delhi plans to react to a tactical attack but to chart out how it will exploit the detente to strengthen India’s strategic advantage.

Finally, one of India’s strategic projects has to be the systematic containment and eventual dismantling of the Pakistani military-jihadi complex. So much of New Delhi’s policy is short-term, the here and the now. Worse, India’s public discourse is even shorter—momentary surges of awareness and emotion on one issue that quickly lapse and move on to the next one. All the more important then, for thinking Indians, to never forget that the military-jihadi complex must be destroyed.

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In defence of lobbying

By on 13th December 2012 in Public Policy

The lobbying industry must be allowed to function transparently within the ambit of the law.

This is an unedited draft of today’s column in Business Standard.

A famous Indian politician was searching for an issue that could energise his party cadre and move the masses. An group of businessmen produced a report on “making India self-contained in her supply” of a particular commodity. It had arguments on the rationale on consumption of the commodity, why it was necessary and why the poor needed it more than the rich. One of the politician’s close associates forwarded the report to the party leadership across the country while his personal secretary echoed the report’s arguments in an op-ed article the subsequent week.

The politician embraced the cause and triggered off a historic agitation, the basis of which, partly at least, was the output of corporate lobbying. The politician was Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, the industry group was FICCI and the commodity common salt. The historic event in question, of course, is the Salt Satyagraha (see this post for details). It would be hazardous to suggest that a FICCI monograph singularly triggered off Gandhi’s famous march to Dandi. It would, however, be equally hazardous to discount the importance of lobbying on national politics then, as indeed in contemporary times.

The current debate over corporate lobbying conflates two separate issues: one, the legitimate persuasion of politicians on the merits of a certain policy measures and two, the illegal activity of bribing them in pursuit of this goal. The latter is wrong. The former is necessary. We might be in the throes of moral panic, but we should not mix up the two.

Lobbying is inevitable in a modern representative democracy: the more rules you make, the more complex the economy, the more the need for ‘specialists’ to intermediate between citizen, corporation and the state. That’s why we have lawyers, who help individuals and firms navigate the legal system. That’s why we have chartered accountants, who interpret the arcana of tax laws. These intermediaries play an important economic role by specialising in such matters and saving you and I the trouble of mastering law and the tax code when all we want is to go about our business.

Lobbying serves a similar function. It is far more efficient for businesses to hire public affairs specialists and lobbyists rather than involve the management in the byzantine world of Indian politics. If we consider lawyers and chartered accountants as legitimate professionals, why not lobbyists?

One argument against mainstreaming lobbying is that lobbyists risk making democracy a plaything of the rich. Those with deeper pockets will get to unduly influence government policies. This is reasonable in and of itself. However, isn’t it true that richer people can afford better lawyers and bend justice in their favour? Isn’t it true that richer people have smarter accountants who can find ingenious ways to pay less tax? More importantly, isn’t it the case that richer people already influence government policies, but in opaque, shady, dubious or wholly illegal ways? Those who doubt this can contact Mr Kejriwal for details.

Hey wait! What about the Niira Radia controversy? Doesn’t that connect shady corporate lobbying to high corruption? Yes, it does. However, that controversy arose in a country where lobbying is not only unregulated by perceived by many as a dubious activity. Had lobbying been a recognised as a legitimate profession, bound by its own norms and governed by a set of rules—like law and accountancy—we might have been spared some of the scandal.

This is, in fact, a good time to have a public debate over lobbying. Before 1991, most corporates would line up outside government offices as supplicants pleading for licenses, quotas and permits. After 1991 and until the exposure of big corruption scandals of 2010, canny businessmen sought to create legislative loopholes that would allow them to squeeze through, but keep their competitors out. This approach is becoming untenable.

Economic growth, globalisation, the Right to Information (RTI), urbanisation and the penetration of social media have changed the nature of how India’s corporations and governments engage each other. Businesses that try to create and exploit loopholes have a greater chance of being exposed, with the attendant loss to reputation and valuation. Like their counterparts in mature democracies, Indian businesses will have to engage in public affairs in cleaner, more professional, and transparent ways.

This can only happen if we allow the lobbying industry to function within the law. It is far better to regulate it rather than drive it underground. Indian democracy will be better served by placing the lobbying industry in a regulatory environment that requires companies to declare their lobbying activities and expenses, lobbying firms to disclose their activities and lobbyists to adhere to professional codes of practice. This is what the United States does. It’s not a silver bullet, but certainly an improvement over hypocritically persisting with a sanctimonious moral blindfold and pretending to be surprised that odious things happen in our country.

Copyright © 2012. Business Standard. All rights reserved.

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The Waheed regime’s games

By on 4th December 2012 in Foreign Affairs

New Delhi must punish Maldives’ Waheed regime, but without playing into its hands

Mohammed Waheed Hassan’s regime seized power through dubious means. It now seeks to acquire domestic popularity and external support by reneging on an airport operations contract with India’s GMR group. Contrary to its claims, the matter is not merely an issue of the business case turning out to be different than what was previously assumed. If that were so, it would not declared that it is expelling GMR and would select a different airport operator. Renegotiating with an existing vendor is less expensive, less difficult and more reasonable course of action if the intentions were purely commercial. [This ANI report has more details about the project]

The high-level politics of this is clear. The Waheed regime seeks to bolster its ‘nationalist’ credentials by showing it can take on the big, domineering neighbour. It seeks to acquire external support by playing on the India-China contest in the Indo-Pacific. If New Delhi can be provoked to react punitively, the Waheed regime gets the space to court Chinese or other foreign companies. That it was emboldened to attempt such a move is an indicator of New Delhi’s failure of neighbourhood policy.

What should New Delhi do now? First, it should not provide the Waheed regime the excuse it seeks. Diplomatic relations, economic ties, tourism and aid must not be suspended. Second, India should bolster the democratic opposition to the Waheed regime—including Mohamed Nasheed, who happens to be the legitimately elected president—and turn the heat on its illegitimate hold on power. Third, New Delhi must encourage GMR and Axis Bank to use the Singapore courts—the jurisdiction chosen by the contracting parties—to the fullest extent.

The arbitration verdict might well have gone in favour of the Waheed regime, but the Singapore court has stayed the eviction of GMR. If the Waheed regime refused to comply with the court’s orders—as it has declared it will—GMR can seek legal recourse. Similarly Axis Bank might have a case against the Maldives government if the latter has a sovereign guarantee obligation and does not discharge it. The Maldives government has financial and fixed assets in Singapore, which can be targeted by GMR & Axis Bank’s lawyers.

New Delhi has risks to its reputation at stake. If governments of the region come to expect that expropriating Indian companies will be inexpensive and will not have bad consequences, there is a greater chance that they will engage in such behaviour. The Waheed regime must be made to incur the costs of its politics. Not bluntly, though.

The issue will take on an entirely different dimension should the Waheed regime use force against Indian nationals, or engineer or condone violence against them. In such circumstances, it is proper to keep all options on the table.

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A new system is not the answer

By on 29th October 2012 in Public Policy

The best way to transform India is by making the system work as it should

In a post on his very active Facebook page, Ashwin Mahesh—public policy activist, scientist and politician, all rolled into one—briefly minutes the key theme at workshops he attended in New Delhi: “The basic premise before us now is that the ‘whole system is broken’, so we can’t just offer different solutions that we would like to implement within the existing system. Instead, we need to come up with a new system itself, and that’s where the real hope for the country lies.”

Such sentiments have never been uncommon in India, and certainly not over the last two years, when the confluence of a bad governance, policy paralysis, economic mismanagement and flagrant corruption pushed the middle class out from apathy to outrage. As serious observers have noticed—see, for instance, Anil Padmanabhan’s Mint column today—this churning is due to a gap in what India is and what its crop of politicians think it is. While it is unclear at this time what the churning will lead to, how India’s elite and its middle class act now will determine whether or not the inevitable change will be for the better or for worse.

The quest for ‘a new system’, however, ignores the Indian reality. If it gains traction, it risks plunging us into an even more illiberal system.

Why so? First, contrary to the middle class narrative, Indian democracy is actually working for those who participate in it. Those who find the system “broken” are usually those who are excluded from it, or those who have chosen to exclude themselves from it. Those who are satisfied with the current system are unlikely to be enthusiastic supporters of upheaval. How do we know there are these satisfied people? Because we don’t have blood on the streets despite the immense diversity, social inequality and income disparity. No matter what India Against Corruption and the urban middle classes might say, corruption is not an issue that’ll move the masses into supporting an overhaul. What outrages the middle class, what the middle class says it is outraged by is just one of the many factors in the voter’s mind.

Second, if there has to be a “new system”, then very long established interest groups—with more crowd-pulling power than Arvind Kejriwal—have their own ideas what it should look like. Some of them—like the Naxalites—have guns and do not hesitate to use violence to push their own case. Delegitimising the existing system will create openings for various groups wishing to overthrow the Indian state. The ultimate arbiter in a contest between them will be force.

Third, studying the Constitution and the debates that led to its creation leads one to the conclusion that the founding fathers were far more visionary, liberal and broad-minded than the current lot. Any election for a constituent assembly is going to throw up people who won’t be dissimilar in disposition than the current members of parliament and legislative assemblies. Looking at the way successive generations of MPs have distorted the letter & spirit of the constitution, it is reasonable to assume that the product of their deliberations will be a grotesque assault on liberties. (No, the good people who lead apolitical movements do not have any legitimacy to create a new constitution for an already-functioning democratic republic).

Finally, there’s no guarantee that the new system will work any better than the current one if our attitudes do not change. Our attitudes are the reason why we have bad governance, and not vice versa. If this causal direction is right, even if we acquire a ‘new system’, we’re back to square one. Actually, accounting for the above, perhaps to square minus-ten.

The Constitution and the Indian Republic are India’s best hope. Strengthening the Republic by getting better people into parliament, into government and at all levels of government is the right way. The talent, passion and energy of middle India, its intellectuals and its leaders ought to be directed towards this end.

http://twitter.com/acorn/status/262020843138347009

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Cyber security to Cyber strategy

By on 17th October 2012 in Foreign Affairs, Public Policy, Security

Plans and implementation

India’s National Security Council Secretariat (NSCS) has announced a roadmap of action on the cyber security front, involving partnership with the private sector. (See the recommendations of the joint working group and related media reports)

In an op-ed in Indian Express I make two sets of arguments. The first set points out that the government has realised that it needs expertise from outside its cloisters to address contemporary policy challenges and must reform itself in order to be able to use it.

The second set distinguishes three aspects of information policy in the geo-strategic and national security context: cyber security, addressing physical threats that emerge from cyber space and finally cyber-strategy. Much of the emphasis in the government’s plan is on the first of the three. It ought to place adequate emphasis on the other two. Without debating and evolving a new balance on the bounds of government in cyberspace, it will be difficult to manage the threats that emerge from it. Without investing in intellectual inquiry into the fundamentals of cyber conflicts, it will be difficult to shape a cyber strategy that protects and promotes India’s national interests in the international arena. Also, India ought to be wary of both premature and delayed militarisation of cyber strategy. You can read the whole essay here.

Subimal Bhattacharjee’s op-ed in Mint presents another perspective. Mr Bhattacharjee argues that while institutionalising cyber security management in a joint working group under the NSCS is a good thing “the key point is the cohesive functioning of the permanent JWG and the implementation of these recommendations.”

Related Link: My Takshashila colleagues, Srijith Nair & Rohan Joshi responded to the draft national cyber security policy in May 2011.

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On the government’s decision to block some social media content

By on 23rd August 2012 in Public Policy, Security

On free speech and extraordinary circumstances

Here’s a segment from yesterday’s NDTV’s Nine ‘o Clock News

You can catch the entire programme here. For more details and an analysis of the blocked sites, see Pranesh Prakash’s post at CIS.

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The migration problem unpacked

By on 27th July 2012 in Foreign Affairs, Public Policy, Security

Without a pragmatic approach to migration, instability will only increase.

The surge in communal clashes in parts of Assam—between Bodos and Muslim migrants—earlier this month was serious enough to require the army to be called out to subdue the violence. Such violence is a clear indicator of failure of governance at various levels. Good intelligence, sensitive local governance and astute political tactics should have kicked in long before violence escalated to riot levels. This didn’t happen. It is important to ask why it didn’t happen and hold the state government to account.

That shouldn’t blind us to the big underlying problem—an inability to evolve a workable policy towards migrations into India’s north-eastern region from the regions around it. This problem is more than a century old. The British couldn’t deal with it satisfactorily and ended up sowing the seeds of discord that exist to this day. The Indian republic’s record is no better. As Sanjoy Hazarika points out in his Strangers of the Mist (or Sudeep Chakravarti in a recent Mint article), while the issue of migration (of which illegal immigration from Bangladesh is an important subset) has been exploited politically, there has been no serious attempt to evolve a national policy response.

Yes, it requires a national policy response, for two reasons. First, while border fencing and patrolling can work to some extent, migration can be managed by reducing people’s incentive to migrate. People move in search of greener pastures. Second, the heart of the problem is not the flow of migrants, but their concentration in some areas. 10,000 Bengali-speaking Muslim people from Bangladesh arriving in India is not as much a problem as the same people settling in one village in Assam. [See this editorial in the Assam Sentinel]

Therefore it’s important for Bangladeshi economy to grow at a rate that will reduce incentives for Bangladeshis to want to migrate to India. It is in India’s interests to ease demographic pressure by supporting Bangladesh’s development. Proximity geopolitics is not easy. One of two mainstream Bangladeshi political parties is plainly hostile towards India. Even so, it is meaningless to think India can address the problems of illegal immigration if Bangladesh fails to keep pace with India’s own development.

More importantly, as this blogger has argued elsewhere, the focus of India’s national approach to migration must be to manage the flows in a manner that does not undermine the already weak social capital across the country, and especially in ‘remote’ regions. A work permit system that allows Bangladeshis and others to legally work in India and travel back to their homeland is necessary. This might not be a popular idea—but it is a better alternative to both pretending that there are no illegal immigrants and to hyperventilating that there are too many of them. Issuing work permits and allowing state and local governments to assign limits on the number of work permit holders in their communities will be an improvement on the status quo.

What about the politics, you ask? There is something in the idea for either side of the political spectrum. The Congress party’s fortunes in Assam will brighten once the illegal migration issue is settled. It can claim to have protected the rights of Bengali-speaking Indian Muslims who no longer face the risk of harassment. The BJP, for its part, can credibly call for the repatriation of all illegal immigrants.

Work permits for Bangladeshis offers absolute gains for most political parties. Their own calculations, however, are on the basis of relative gains — “does it benefit our party more than the other party.” Both great leaders and good politicians would smell a political opportunity here. We do have some of the latter.[How to fix illegal Bangladeshi immigration]

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Should Pakistani TV channels be allowed in India?

By on 17th July 2012 in Foreign Affairs, Public Policy

A debate on NDTV

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Return and reforms

By on 4th July 2012 in Economy, Public Policy

Will Manmohan Singh’s return to the finance ministry result in some reforms?

Pranab Mukherjee, an over-rated, over-respected and over-portfolioed cabinet minister presided over the finance ministry at a time when the results of UPA government’s gross mismanagement of the Indian economy began to show. His remedies worsened the malaise—not only has the economy slowed down, domestic and foreign investors have been given reason to believe that India’s economic managers are not only unserious, but also nearly banana. Retrospective taxation—Mr Mukherjee’s gift to economic policymaking—is an abomination and exemplifies how awfully perverted the UPA government’s thinking has been.

So, with Mr Mukherjee out of the cabinet (and undeservingly heading for Rashtrapati Bhavan) and Manmohan Singh taking over the finance portfolio, what are the prospects for reforms? None at all, argues the astute Swaminathan Anklesaria-Aiyar. Quite a lot, contends Sanjaya Baru. The truth may be in the middle, but despite Mr Baru’s valiant cheerleading, the odds are stacked up in favour of Mr Aiyar’s prognosis.

Samanth Subramanian sought my views for his report in The National. Here is my full response to his questions:

Q. Do you think the PM has the political capital he needs to make bold changes? Do you think, for that matter, that the government will risk making possibly unpopulist changes with the elections less than two years away?

Whether or not there will be any reforms depends on how much Manmohan Singh is willing to face down the Congress party establishment in order to secure his own place in history. It’s not so much about political capital but as he said in his 1991 speech “Sarfaroshi ki tamanna ab hamare dil mein hai/Dekhna hai zor kitna baazu-e-qatil mein hai.” Does he have Sarfaroshi ki tamanna?

Q. How much can any possible economic reforms redeem Manmohan Singh’s otherwise awful leadership of this UPA government?

What Manmohan Singh can do at this stage is revive the narrative of reforms, by setting out a long-term road map and by implementing the ones he can. The signal this will send will help set the economy back on track and hopefully redeem his own record.

Q. If you had to make a short, three-item wish list of reforms you hope he could enact, what would that list be?

Liberalise education, liberalise labour laws and start fixing land acquisition. Toying with fuel subsidies, reversing GAAR etc is mere signaling…the fundamental strengths of the economy can be reinforced only by liberalising education, labour and land acquisition. Playing around with financial markets and FIIs is mere tinkering. He must do what is necessary to revive direct investment, both domestic and foreign.

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