A new blueprint for China (Gateway House)

BY M.D. Nalapat 

DIRECTOR, DEPARTMENT OF GEOPOLITICS, MANIPAL UNIVERSITY

The serial failure by two Democratic presidents of the U.S. – Bill Clinton and Barack Obama – to forge an alliance with India that is acceptable to both sides has given an opening for an India-China partnership that would include Russia, thereby bringing into being the long-talked about India-China-Russia triangle, an alliance which would be at least as powerful as NATO. What is also needed is to work out ways in which India, ASEAN and China can join hands to get control of resources across the world.

However, this would entail Chinese President Xi Jinping going beyond the border-centric, military-focussed view of Sino-Indian relations that has characterised Chinese policy towards India since the fadeout of Deng Xiaoping, a leader who had the vision to appreciate the importance to Beijing of close ties with Delhi.

But Indian foreign policy too has been a saga of missed opportunities such as the turning down of the suggestion that Delhi join with Singapore, Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur, Jakarta and Manila in forming ASEAN, which grouping was later expanded to include Vietnam, Cambodia, Myanmar, Laos and Brunei.

When ASEAN was formed in 1967, India was informally approached by the prime mover behind the alliance, Singapore, to join. At that time, the economy of India was much bigger than that of the ASEAN countries, and nearly twice that of China. Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was informally advised by Moscow that the new pact was an “anti-communist” alliance and she should keep her country out of it, which she did.

Only in 1992, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, did policy planners in India acknowledge that a new world had dawned with the fall of the Berlin Wall. They began the ‘Look East’ policy; in reality, this was an offshoot of the ‘Look West’ policy of the (1992-96) Narasimha Rao government, which sought to replace Moscow with Washington as the strategic partner of India. It was thought that closer ties with the pro-U.S. ASEAN would help persuade Washington to accept Delhi as an ally. The effort failed because Bill Clinton insisted on impossible preconditions, such as a solution to Kashmir on Pakistan’s terms and the rollback of the Indian nuclear programme.

Apart from India, Clinton was also responsible for the loss of the opportunity to get Russia as a strategic partner, because of the scorched earth policy vis-a-vis the Russian economy and science that he sought to get followed through his friends in Moscow and St Petersburg, and the eastward expansion of a NATO that pointedly excluded Moscow.

Although there was a brief flurry of acceptance of India as a strategic partner on the same level as France and the UK during the second term of George W Bush, with the nuclear deal being the centrepiece of the new engagement, under President Barack Obama, the U.S. has returned to the Europeanist policy of seeing India as deserving of a lesser status as a prospective ally than key EU states.

The consequence has been a continuing – albeit largely backstage – effort by Obama to take off from where Clinton left off, to get Delhi to make concessions on Kashmir and the nuclear issue. Hopefully, a future government will reveal the secret diplomacy between India and the U.S., so that the public may be enabled to judge just how far both Vajpayee and Manmohan Singh went in seeking Washington’s goodwill.

Just as Clinton missed the opportunity of cementing a full-scope partnership with India when a U.S.-friendly prime minister (Rao) was in charge and the Soviet Union had collapsed, so Barack Obama has (so far) failed to utilise the positive momentum generated by the U.S.-friendly duo of Sonia Gandhi and Manmohan Singh, who have been in office in India for nine years, but face elections early next year.

Economics is at the heart of policy in Asia, or ought to be. India, like China, needs huge quantities of natural resources for economic expansion on a level that can do away with widespread poverty. Unfortunately, till now India and China have been competitive rather than collaborative in securing natural resources. Chinese and Indian companies routinely bid against each other in oilfields and other resource pools across the world. This causes prices to rise for both, whereas if they had a mutual understanding, they could jointly force down prices while getting enough resources for both economies.

Indeed, when this columnist proposed in 2005 an ‘India -Taiwan Oil Alliance’ leveraging the diplomatic strengths of India with the financial power of Taiwan in order to jointly secure petro-product resources, then Petroleum Minister Mani Shankar Aiyar countered with the suggestion of an India-China Oil Alliance, which would combine the strengths of both countries to gain access to oil resources. Nothing came of the minister’s suggestion, which was ignored by both Beijing as well as New Delhi, and vested interests – presumably linked  to NATO-bloc oil companies – made sure that Aiyar was removed from the Petroleum portfolio by 2006. Although much has been made of India teaming up with Vietnam in the South China Sea, or forging closer links with ASEAN, the reason is not to “contain” China but to generate traction for higher growth. If India, ASEAN and China join hands to control resources, there is enough for all these countries. The prices will be less if there is an understanding between the two giants of Asia rather than rivalry in bidding.

The ‘Winner Takes All’ strategy being followed by Beijing in the China Seas indicates that too many of that country’s policy elite have cut their intellectual teeth in western institutions and consequently have begun to adopt the traditional Zero Sum approach of the West rather than replace such a construct with the Win-Win approach publicly favoured by China’s leaders. The challenge before the new leadership headed by CCP General Secretary Xi Jinping is to work out a matrix that will ensure fast growth in India as well as ASEAN. Such an acceleration of growth would immensely benefit China as well.

But its actions and words in the China Seas indicates that Beijing is copying the NATO playbook rather than adopting a strategy more in tune with its culture and its overall national interest. Such a policy would welcome a partnership between ASEAN, India and China in the China Seas and elsewhere, damping down tensions and promoting growth. Should Japanese, Vietnamese, Indian or Chinese blood get spilled in any of these misadventures, the setback to the unity and progress of Asia would be grave.

M. D. Nalapat is vice-chair of Manipal Advanced Research Group and UNESCO peace chair, and professor of geopolitics at Manipal University, India.

For interview requests with the author, or for permission to republish, please contact Gautam Kagalwala at kagalwala.gautam@gatewayhouse.in or 022 22023371

http://www.gatewayhouse.in/a-new-blueprint-for-china/

There is no Nehru in Vladimir Putin (Sunday Guardian)

ROOTS OF POWER MADHAV NALAPAT www.sunday-guardian.com/profile/madhav-nalapat

US President Barack Obama meets Russian President Vladimir Putin in Northern Ireland on 17 June 2013. PTI/AP dward Snowden may be expert in the arcana of electronic interception, but his knowledge of geopolitics seems a bit spotty. Else, he would not have chosen a time just after the California meeting of Presidents Obama and Xi to land in Hong Kong, a city that reverted to China 15 years ago. Both China and the United States are joined at the hip economically, and it was obvious that Beijing would not wish to provoke a tit-for-tat with Washington about harbouring a citizen of the US who has just uncovered some of the most secret of communications and methods of the country that thrives by practising the opposite of what it preaches (for others). While US spooks would certainly be working hard on getting as much information from China, such efforts would get significantly enhanced should Snowden have been given asylum in Hong Kong. Unlike those who have run India for seven decades, the Chinese Communist Party core is never far away from calculations of cost and benefit, with the result that impulsive decisions such as Nehru's 1948 referral of the Kashmir situation to the UN, or Indira Gandhi's 1972 surrender to the wiles of Zulfie Bhutto at Shimla, or Vajpayee giving up the last shreds of Indian leverage on the Tibet issue three decades later, would not happen. In China's ruling circles, ratiocination gets carried out by the brain and not the glands, which helps to explain why a country that was only half the size of India in economic terms in 1950 and only equal in size three decades later has become nearly five times bigger by 2013. While China and the US have become expert at throwing verbal darts at each other, both have been careful to avoid turbulence in the economic relationship. Hence, there was a near-zero chance that Snowden would have been given a sanctuary in Hong Kong, no matter how attractive that city's nightlife and expat population looked to him. His choice of Moscow as the default option was not an illogical step. President Vladimir Putin had for years given ample evidence of his independence from the dictates of the US. While in Libya, a Dmitry Medvedev Kremlin did surrender to NATO the way it earlier had in the matter of Kosovo, when the time came for NATO to push the case of its proxies in Syria, Vladimir Putin held firm, insisting on Bashar Assad being a part of any conversation about the future of that tortured country. In conferences across the globe, Putin took positions significantly at odds with the line favoured by Washington, which is presumably why Edward Snowden clearly believed that he would get a much warmer welcome in Moscow than he enjoyed in Hong Kong. As it turned out, he was mistaken. In Moscow airport, as in similar locations across the world, there are crevices inhabited by the security services that are invisible to the uninitiated. It is presumably in one of these that Edward Snowden has spent the whole of a month hiding not only from his own government but from the media. Vladimir Putin made it clear that the price for Snowden remaining in Russia was that he must not "further annoy" the US. This admonition goes to explain the drying up of fresh revelations about the National Security Agency and its inquisitive ways. Had Snowden managed to find his way to Ecuador, Nicaragua or Venezuela, such a gag order would most probably have been absent. Clearly, Putin sees Snowden as a chessboard rook that should — if needed — be sacrificed to grab a queen. In this, the Russian leader is exhibiting a hard-headedness that is wholly absent in India, where for millennia (watch Prithviraj Chauhan sending back Muhammad Ghori laden with gifts after defeating the Afghan in battle) sentiment has trumped self-interest in the determination of policy. Putin could have played to the international gallery and given Snowden the same welcome mat that Jawaharlal Nehru offered the Dalai Lama in 1959. That cost India a lot in terms of the relationship with China, but clearly Vladimir Putin does not want to repeat such a fate with the US by giving Snowden anything other than temporary sufferance. Had someone with the Russian's mindset been in charge in India, there would have been no refusal during the 1950s of either a permanent UN Security Council seat (at the cost of China) or a rejection of the offer of Gwadar by the Sultan of Oman, which if accepted would have given the Indian Navy (rather than the Chinese, the current masters of Gwadar) primacy over that crucial waterway. Edward Snowden's only hope lies in the ideological followers of Nehru in South America

http://www.sunday-guardian.com/analysis/there-is-no-nehru-in-vladimir-putin

Don’t talk with guns in China Seas (PO)

M D Nalapat
Friday, July 26, 2013 - When ASEAN was formed in 1967, India was informally approached by the prime mover behind the alliance, Singapore, to join. At that time, the economy of India was much bigger than that of ASEAN, and indeed more than twice that of China. Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was informally advised by Moscow that the new pact was an “anti-communist” alliance and that she should keep her country out of it, which Indira did.

Indeed, Indian foreign policy has been a saga of missed opportunities, including the turning down of the suggestion that Delhi join with Singapore, Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur, Jakarta and Manila in forming ASEAN, which was later expanded to include Vietnam, Cambodia, Myanmar, Laos and Brunei. Only in 1992, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, did policy planners in India acknowledge that a new world had dawned with the fall of the Berlin Wall, and begin the “Look East” policy. In reality, the “Look East” policy was an offshoot of the “Look West” policy of the (1992-96) Narasimha Rao government, which sought to replace Moscow with Washington as the strategic partner of India. Because Delhi wanted to establish a close relationship with Washington, it finally began to give priority to US allies situated to its east.

What needs to be noted is that the effort to get the US to replace the USSR as India’s main strategic partner failed because President Bill Clinton insisted on a solution to Kashmir on Pakistan’s terms and the rollback of the Indian nuclear program as pre-conditions for closer ties with India. Apart from India, Clinton was also responsible for the loss of Russia as a strategic partner, because of the scorched earth policy vis-a-vis the Russian economy and science that he sought to get followed through his friends in Moscow and St Petersburg

Although there was a brief flurry of acceptance of India as a strategic psrtner on the same level as France and the UK during the second term of George W Bush, with the nuclear deal being the centrepiece of the new engagement, President Barack Obama has returned to the traditional (europeanist) policy of seeing India as way below the key EU states as a prospective ally. The consequence has been a continuing – albeit largely backstage - effort to get Delhi to make concessions on Kashmir and the nuclear issue that are politically unfeasible.

Just as Clinton missed the opportunity of cementing a fulls cope partnership with India when a US-friendly PM (Rao) was in charge and the Soviet Union had collapsed, so Barack Obama failed to utilise the positive monentum generated by his predecessaor and the US-friendly duo of Sonia Gandhi and Manmohan Singh,who have been in office in India for nine years, but face elections early next year. This double failure by two Democratic Presidents of the US has given an opening for an India-China partnership that would include Russia, thereby bringing into being the long-talked about India-China-Russia triangle, an alliance which would be at least as powerful as NATO, and very soon outpace that grouping of failed military adventurers

Economics is at the heart of policy in Asia, or ought to be. In the case of India, it follows the trajectory of China in needing huge quantities of natural resources for its economic expansion. Unfortunately, till now India and China have been competitive rather than collaborative in the securing of natural resources. Chinese and Indian companies routinely bid against each other in oilfields across the world, as in other sectors. This causes prices to rise for both,whereas if they had an understanding with each other, they could force down prices and get enough resources for the needs of both their economies. Indeed, when this columnist proposed an “India Taiwan Oil Alliance” leveraging the diplomatic strengths of India with the financial power of Taiwan to jointly secure resources, then Petroleum Minister Mani Shankar Aiyar countered in 2005 with the suggestion of an India-China Oil Alliance, which would combine the strengths of both countries to gain access to oil resources.

Nothing came of the minister’s suggestion, and vested interests made sure that he was removed from the Petroleum portfolio by 2006,being shifted to the insignificant charge of Youth Affairs. China too, refused to accept Mani’s outstretched hand of partnership in the petroleum sector. The challenge before the new leadership headed by CCP General Secretary Xi Jinping is to work out a matrix that would ensure fast growth to the whole of ASEAN rather than rely on the military. The answer to tensions between countries in the China Seas is not guns.
http://pakobserver.net/detailnews.asp?id=213801

RBI governor’s prescription: Indians deserve the whip (Sunday Guardian)

ROOTS OF POWER

MADHAV NALAPAT

www.sunday-guardian.com/profile/madhav-nalapat

RBI governor D. Subbarao releases the Conference Knowledge paper along with Rajya Sabha MP Rajkumar Dhoot (L) at the 7th International Banking and Finance Conference 2013 in Mumbai on 5 June. PTI uvvuri Subbarao, Governor of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), is considered within North Block to be a favourite of the favourites of the Prime Minister whose Economic Advisor C. Rangarajan apparently backs the RBI Governor as he inflicts ever greater blows on the domestic economy. Clearly, the economics textbooks that Subbarao must have swotted over decades back did not contain much about the Indian economy, for the poor man believes that price rise is a much more toxic alternative than higher growth. Somewhere buried within his lecture notes must have been the establishing of a correlation between faster development and higher inflation, for Subbarao has from the start sought to damp down growth in the economy. Only Jayanthi Natarajan, at the Ministry of Environment, has had a more devastating effect on growth than the bureaucrat-turned-banker. His repeated pushing up of interest rates has converted much of domestic private industry into the wasteland that the public sector has become because of managers such as himself. Sectors that were once booming such as telecom are staggering towards the graveyard, while power generation has stalled even while expenditure on its generation is rocketing upwards. Just when a few business persons thought that they had escaped the toxic effects of "Rangavuri" economics, the two Wise Men have joined hands to create a fall in the value of the rupee that has been calamitous to those with foreign exchange loans needing to get serviced out of falling profits in India. Each time Subbarao and his many admirers in the pink press claim that they are racing towards an objective, that goal becomes ever more distant, and very swiftly. The savage increase in interest rates, far from moderating inflation, has in fact added to price pressure, when corporates pass on the costs to the consumer. As for commercial banks, which the RBI claims to protect, they are looking more and more like their counterparts in the US and the European Union, with the difference that the Government of India lacks the funds needed to go in for replenishment of bank assets on anywhere near the scale of Washington or Brussels. Because of the economic slowdown caused by high interest rates and tight money, several companies have become sick, thereby adding to the non-performing asset portfolios of banks. Housing finance was never a problem in India, because unlike the US, where the full value of a house was declared to the bank, in India the declared value is usually much less than the actual price, because of the "black" component. This has ensured that housing loan portfolios remain healthy, although of course Subbarao's predecessor Yaga Reddy (another high interest buff) gave himself credit for this, rather than the under-valuation of properties. As for the rupee, soon after Subbarao once again wielded the whip, the currency has been plummeting. Forget reaching the age of the Finance Minister in numbers per dollar, the rupee is set to slide to the PM's age and thereafter towards the centenary mark, entirely because of defective policy cooked up in it was failing memories of lectures in classrooms in faraway countries. It was Manmohan's favourite Rangarajan, who as RBI Governor put the brakes on the takeoff of the Indian economy which greeted the relaxation of controls by the Industry Ministry. While the ubiquity of Manmohan Singh's spin doctors in the party circuit has resulted in all the credit for the 1992 liberalisation going to the then Finance Minister, it needs to be remembered that for Dr Singh then — as now — the only good policy was (is) one that favours foreign companies over domestic industry. Neither during 1992-96 or now has the Indian taxpayer been given any benefit by Dr Singh, who apparently believes that the poor should tighten their belts so as to assist the rich in avoiding that fate. Small wonder that "liberalisation" has become a swear word in the political lexicon of the country, in a context where genuine freedom from controls and other restrictions is badly needed. On 19 July, Manmohan Singh went before television cameras for what must be the 400th time to claim that he was on the cusp of taking measures which would stimulate growth. Hopefully, the experience of the country will be different from that of the other 399 times, when growth fell soon after the PM promised to boost it. Given that it was Manmohan Singh who gave an extension of tenure to a wrecker of economic growth of the stamp of Subbarao, few will be holding their breath for the economy to turn around.

http://www.sunday-guardian.com/analysis/rbi-governors-prescription-indians-deserve-the-whip

Modimatics: target 220, minimum 175 (Sunday Guardian)

MADHAV NALAPAT  New Delhi | 20th Jul 2013

Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi waves to crowd after his meeting with the businessmen in Mumbai on 26 June. PTI ajnath Singh and Arun Jaitley, two members of the BJP's Delhi-based power quartet, are voluble in backing Narendra Modi, the newest entrant into the party's high command. The other two, L.K. Advani and Sushma Swaraj, are silent about the party's saffron hopes for the 2014 general elections. However, soundings within their confidants indicate that they expect a situation where the BJP gets enough seats to lead the coalition, "but fewer seats than are needed to insist that Narendra Modi be declared the Prime Minister", according to a top strategist of the party. He placed the number of seats that the BJP needed to ensure Modi's ascension to the top job as "175 at a minimum". Meanwhile, loyalists of the Gujarat strongman are aiming at 220 seats for the BJP in the next Lok Sabha. They point to indicators such as a C-Voter poll taken in Karnataka before the Assembly elections, which showed that 62% of voters backed Narendra Modi as PM, while only 25% of voters wanted the BJP to return to power in the state. Those engaged in the "Modimatics" of poll outcomes point to states across the country to explain their confidence in the outcome. "Take Karnataka, where BJP got 20% and Yeddyurappa 10%. The BJP came to power in the previous election with just 34% of the vote," a poll strategist claimed, adding that the combination of BJP plus Yeddyurappa would push the voting percentage "to well past 35%", thereby "ensuring that BJP retain its 19 seats in the Lok Sabha if not add to them". In Bihar, another numbers cruncher calculated that the polarisation caused by the JD(U)-BJP break-up "would increase the BJP tally from 12 to 20", while in UP, "Team Modi is aiming at 35 seats in place of the 10 now". He points out that Narendra Modi has already had "detailed discussions" with party leaders popular in UP, such as Varun Gandhi, who were earlier regarded as unsympathetic to him, and that the Gujarat CM "is collecting a database of more than two lakh party activists across the state, as he is doing elsewhere". Modimatics gives the BJP 20 Lok Sabha seats in Rajasthan (up from 4), 23 seats in Gujarat (up from 17), 24 seats in MP (up from 16) and 5 in Delhi (up from zero). The tally in Uttarakhand is calculated at 4, up from a single seat in 2009. Only Chhattisgarh and Assam are likely to see a fall in the BJP tally "although by a total of four seats in both states, maximum". With his strong federalist stance, and the BJP's willingness to carve out new states, the Telangana Rashtra Samithi is considered a likely post-poll ally, its own tally being calculated at "a minimum of 13 seats, with Jagan Reddy getting about 15 in the Andhra segment". The BJP, according to these strategists, is likely to break the UPA-created "secularism barrier" with Jagan by (1) becoming the party of governance at Delhi (2) viewing his legal travails — seen as politically motivated — sympathetically and (3) fully backing him once he emerges as the largest force in the Andhra half of the state. { Loyalists of the Gujarat strongman are aiming at 220 seats for the BJP in the next Lok Sabha. The federalist argument will also be used to woo Naveen Patnaik, who is calculated as being the winner of 12 seats. "Narendra Modi has come from the states and understands their plight. He will ensure proper devolution of power down the ladder of governance." The federal factor is expected to overcome the fear factor created by the Secularism Barrier against a Modi-led dispensation. They point out that the AIADMK will get "at least 25 LS seats" and that it is very unlikely that this "will ever go to the UPA". These sources expect the BJP to get "a few seats" in Orissa and Andhra Pradesh, as well as a solitary seat in Kerala (Kasaragod) "because of polarization". Turning to the BJP's allies, a senior BJP source claimed that "discussions are on with the NCP to bring that party into a BJP-MNS-NCP alliance". However, others said that "while Raj Thackeray's Maharashtra Navanirman Sena is welcome to join, the BJP-Shiv Sena alliance will continue. The calculation is that the two will get a total of "at least 30 seats" from Maharashtra in the new Lok Sabha. As for Punjab, the Akalis are expected to get at least 7 seats, while Om Prakash Chautala has been bracketed with five and Babulal Marandi with the same number. Very little expectation is there that either Mayawati or Mamata Banerjee will join hands with the NDA, "although they will find it difficult to go along with the UPA either". As for the JD(U), the expectation is that there will be a post-poll split in the party, with the majority of MPs crossing over to the NDA, leaving Nitish Kumar together with his chosen partner, the Congress. "Add to that about 9 MPs from the Northeast, Sikkim and Independents, all of whom always back the winning side, and a Modi-led NDA will have as comfortable a margin as in 1999," these sources claimed. The All India Congress Committee headquarters would, of course, disagree. http://www.sunday-guardian.com/investigation/modimatics-target-220-minimum-175

An Italian stains three Indian PMs (PO)

M D Nalapat
Friday, July 19, 2013 - Last week, Ottavio Quatrocchi, who for decades was in India as the representative of Italy’s Snam Progetti industrial conglomerate, passed away. He was very successful in winning contract after contract for the company from the 1970s onwards, especially in the state-controlled fertiliser industry. When Quatrocchi entered a government office,even Secretaries to Government used to quake in their boots, aware that the Italian could either boost or damage their careers. Those who helped him get juicy contracts got promoted while the few who opposed the many concessions given to Snam and other Italian companies suffered. Ottavio Quatrocchi and his wife Maria being from Italy, and in Delhi at a time when there were few from that country resident in that city, it was not surprising that Rajiv Gandhi’s Italian wife Sonia got to know them, or that the two families became close to each other socially. In India, anything connected with the Nehru family is covered by a veil of secrecy maintained by succesive governments, so there are few records of the contact between Indira Gandhi’s son and daughter-in-law with Quatrocchi and his wife Maria.

These days, those close to the presiding matriarch of the Nehru family, Sonia Gandhi, claim that neither she nor Rajiv was in any way close to the Quatrocchis. That the Italian and his wife were just acquaintances. They deny reports that Ottavio, Rajiv, Maria and Sonia met frequently in India, the UK and Italy, and that their families went on holidays together. If it was not his closeness to Rajiv and Sonia, it must have been his magnetic personality that worked such miracles for Ottavio Quatrocchi, enabling him to get file after file cleared so that his principals landed juicy contracts. Although a stranger to the defense trade, Mr Q was chosen by Bofors to be a commission agent in the howitzer deal that company had with the Government of India, a deal that netted him millions of dollars in commission. What he did was obscure, but Bofors landed the contract, to the anger of the French competitors.

That French companies are masters in information and disinformation in furtherance of their commercial interests is known to every serious analyst in India, and it was not long before items began to appear in the international and the national press about alleged kickbacks being paid to top politicians and officials in India to grab the contract. If this were true, it would hardly be a surprise. Bribes are the norm rather than the exception in government contracts in India, especially those involving large sums of money, such as defense or energy deals. Indeed, there are credible sources who claim that a percentage of every dollar that is paid by certain companies for importing crude oil into India gets transferred to secret bank accounts operated by nominees of a powerful political family in the country. However, an examination of the tax returns filed by the members of this family shows that their annual income is less than the cost of a month’s foreign travel by them, in a context where some members of the family travel abroad on an average of twenty-seven times each year. Of course, no details of such travel (and the places of stay) to Dubai, London, New York and Bangkok are ever furnished by any government in India. Politicians in the country are unlike those in Pakistan, who go after each other. Here, they each protect the other while publicly professing to expose them.

Manmohan Singh, who is known to be personally honest in a government steeped in bribery, is no exception. Indeed, the upright PM now seeks to roll back the Right to Information Act so as to make it more rather than less difficult for ordinary citizens to access information about state shenanigans. Honesty is of zero value to the citizen unless the PM can enforce it across his government, a task that Manmohan Singh has failed to do.

Coming to Ottavio Quatrocchi and his mysterious power over successive Prime Ministers of India, perhaps owing to the natural charm that is present in most Italians, on July 29,1993 then Prime Minister P V Narasimha Rao personally intervened to enable Quatrocchi to flee the country despite being a subject of enquiry by the Central Bureau of Investigation. This columnist knew the Prime Minister (and let it be confessed, admired him in many respects),and he spoke to him about Mr Q, pointing out that it would be wrong to allow a man considered to be at the heart of illicit deal-making in India to leave Delhi for London en route to Milan. The Prime Minister mentioned that a powerful politician had sent a lady Minister of State to meet him with the promise that (the politician) “would forever be an ardent backer” of Mr Rao, should he allow Mr Q to escape. The PM had made up his mind.

Flash forward ten years, to the period when BJP stalwart A B Vajpayee was Prime Minister. A court in Malaysia was hearing the extradition request of the Central Bureau of Investigation (an agency more political in its functioning than any political party). While the hearing was going on, this columnist was having lunch in Bangalore’s West End hotel with a high official from Malaysia, there to visit a friend. When he spoke about Mr Q finally being forced to come back to India, the high official laughed. “Do you know that Quatrocchi’s lawyers are preparing the briefs for the other side? That they are in close touch with each other? There is no chance that he will lose the case”. The official went on to allege that Mr Q was boasting that Prime Minister Vajpayee himself had sent a private assurance that “no harm would be allowed to come to him”. Hopefully, the Malaysian official was either not telling the truth or had been the victim of rumours. To believe that Vajpayee or his Law Ministry would so subvert the course of justice so as to save Quatrocchi strains credulity. However, clearly the CBI lawyers botched up their case, for evidence that had been found compelling by a Swiss court was rejected by the Malaysian judge. By 2003, Quatrocchi was able to leave Malaysia,a free man. Had he brought back Ottavio Quatrocchi, Prime Minister Vajpayee would have been a hero to civil society in India.Instead, many began to believe that Mr Q had been deliberately let off, whatever be the truth or otherwise behind such a perception. The whiff of impropriety that wafted over Team Vajpayee led to the BJP’s defeat the next year, at the hands of the Congress Party. Mr Q had felled yet another politician. 

http://pakobserver.net/detailnews.asp?id=213085

Like him or hate him, Modi is here to stay (Sunday Guardian)

ROOTS OF POWER MADHAV NALAPAT www.sunday-guardian.com/profile/madhav-nalapat

Narendra Modi shows the victory sign to his supporters on 9 June 2013 after being appointed chairman of the BJP Election Campaign Committee for 2014 Lok Sabha polls. PTI he only bad news for a politician is no news about him, and nowhere does this adage work better than in the case of Narendra Modi, who has become the focus of rival campaigns, one by his admirers and the other by his traducers. Aware of his pulling power, television channels beam live presentations of the increasing number of speaking engagements that the Gujarat Chief Minister has, especially in the national capital. Now that they have been back in power for nine years, and despite the fact that regular power supply is still a mirage for most of the country's population (or indeed any electric power at all), the Congress has reverted to the pre-NDA view of themselves as the natural party of governance. For the party loyalists, Delhi belongs to them by right and tradition and they bristle at a "regional" politician getting the prominence that Modi has achieved within the national capital region (NCR), especially one who is so openly disrespectful of the First Family. The NDA had an opportunity during 1998-2004 to make Congress dominance in the national capital history. Indeed, Pramod Mahajan came very close in 2001 to ensuring that more than a third of Congress MPs split to join the NDA, before he was warned off that project by Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, who regards the Congress' First Family as his own family and has always been solicitous of their welfare. Part of the reason why the NDA was unable to break the hold of the Congress over state power was because it was so similar to India's current ruling party. The BJP metamorphosed, from a "party with a difference" to an organisation happy to adopt classic Nehruvian ways. Vajpayee's policy of appearing in RSS rallies as an ardent swayamsevak got combined with the way in which RSS-friendly elements were ignored by his administration in favour of those who were for long Congress servitors. This dual track approach of talking BJP but acting Congress confused the public and helped to ensure that enough voters (who would ordinarily have voted for the BJP) stayed away in 2004 to help cause an upset win for the Congress. Analysts claim that it was the "superior alliance" led by the Congress that ensured its win. The fact is that the Vajpayee-run NDA had become too diffused an entity to benefit its own allies, which of course is the reason why the Congress would like to see another version of Vajpayee take charge of the BJP. Narendra Modi may love and admire Atal Behari Vajpayee, but he is very different from the BJP patriarch. There is no ambiguity in his manner or in his message. Like him or hate him, he will not change. While such a trait makes those steeped in the durbari culture of Delhi wary of the man, it is precisely such directness that has won the Gujarat CM so many admirers. He has cellophane for his packaging, and highlights his regional experience to a country no longer in thrall to Delhi-based leaders. Just as the US electorate began to choose politicians from the states in preference to Washington insiders, so too are Indian voters likely to prefer them to the cosy set that for decades has dominated India through their control of the NCR's levers of power. Should the BJP win close to 200 seats, Narendra Modi will be the PM. Should it get about 165, he could become the Deputy PM, a Sardar Patel to someone who will be far from a Nehru, showing the public just how good an administrator he is, so that they next time around, they will vote the now nationally tested Team Modi into office. Lower than 165, he would still be the Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha, and a determined foe to match wits with. No matter what the 2014 arithmetic is, Modi is here to stay. There are many within his own party who are wishing that the BJP gets less than 180 seats, "so that Modi cannot become PM". They understand that should this man from the provinces take over the reins of power, it will no longer be "business as usual". Although these same voices will ask of Narendra Modi that he refuse any post at the Central level lower than that of PM, the fact is that stepping into Sardar Patel's shoes too would be a shrewd career move. Had the Sardar lived another few years, the steep difference in direction and efficiency between him and Nehru would have led to the pre-Indira Congress replacing Nehru with Patel as the head of the government. Whatever the Sardar handled, he handled firmly and well. Should Modi agree to the 1970s Achutha Menon model, where the CPI leader became CM of Kerala even though the Congress had more seats, he would — should he deliver results — lead the BJP to power during the next election. Hence the political need for him to be central in Delhi, whether as PM, as Deputy PM, or as Leader of the Opposition.

http://www.sunday-guardian.com/analysis/like-him-or-hate-him-modi-is-here-to-stay