Manmohan under attack from “Apex of Greed” (PO)

M D Nalapat

Since he took office for a second 5-year term in 2009, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has been a changed man. During 2004-2009, he stayed silent while a senior official in the Prime Minister’s Office (expected to become Head of the Civil Service in 2011,thanks to his loyalty to the apex of the Congress Party) used to make phone calls on behalf of the political bosses of the party, ensuring that road, power ,coal and other projects got diverted to those in the good books of the powerful. In some cases, individual companies secured benefits amounting to more than $12 billion because of changes in tax laws and in administrative procedures. No wonder that the most powerful in the land regularly travel in luxurious corporate jets maintaned by companies that are given such largesse. Once they land in Europe or elsewhere, jets from locations in Dubai, Sharjah and other such locations await them, to take them to other destinations. Those supposed to be watching out for such activities look the other way, as otherwise, they would be dismissed from the Union Cabinet or from the top echelons of the civil service.

Informed estimates place the personal wealth of the Apex of Power in India at nothing less than $16 billion, not bad for individuals whose only occupation is politics, a field in which (declared) salaries are often less than $1500 a month. Tax records show that the sons, daughters, sons-in-law and other relatives of important politicians have become dollar billionaires, owning vast properties and companies. To take just a single example, the son-in-law of a batchelor leader became one of the largest hoteliers in the country. The Indian media, whose owners are terrified of getting chased by the various departments of the government, never even asked how a batchelor could have a son-in-law! Of course, no media house ever mentioned the fact that this batchelor stayed in the house of a married lady for more than twenty years, with her husband confined to a small room in the same residence, suffering the agony of watching his wife with the batchelor, whose political career continued on its lucky streak, because the public were unaware of his personal habits. As former minister Arun Shourie says, for quite some time, politics in India has become a clubby setup, where both the ruling and opposition sides protect each other in private. Naturally, in public both sides pretend to be opposed to each other, although in the evenings, both sides get together and celebrate their wealth.

Will Wen’s India visit be a success? (PO)

M D Nalapat

During the last quarter of 2010, the Heads of Government of all the P-5 (Permanent Five in UN Security Council) will have visited India. The first to land in Delhi was UK Prime Minister David Cameron, who made an excellent impression in India, in contrast to some of his predecessors. Next followed US President Barack Obama, who created history by setting in stone the foundations laid by George W Bush of a US-India alliance. Next has come President Sarkozy of France, a country that even during the dark days of the Clinton administration was friendly to India (in contrast to the UK, which followed the Clinton line as faithfully as a poodle). On December 15,Premier Wen Jiabao of China comes calling, followed a week later by Russian President Dimitry Medvedev.

Bill Clinton was faithful to the State Department rule that India must always be equated with Pakistan, and visited Islamabad after taking off from Delhi. However, of the five P-5 leaders coming to India, only Premier Wen Jiabao of China is following this script. He will visit Pakistan after India, thereby ensuring that Islamabad enjoys parity with Delhi in his travels. In other matters as well, China differs from Russia, the UK, France and the US on its India policy. It is the only power within the five that has yet to endorse India as a permanent member of the UN Security Council, the reason being that it does not want to seem as though Beijing is favouring Delhi over Islamabad, its all-weather friend since the time of Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto in the 1970s. On Kashmir, Beijing has continued with the line once followed by the US and the UK (but never by Russia and seldom by France) that India should make substantial concessions to Pakistan for the sake of peace. Several in South Block regard an Indo-Pakistan peace as being of much greater benefit to Islamabad than to Delhi, and hence believe that a lot of the sacrifices should be made by Pakistan. This is clearly not China’s view. Policymakers here (and this column is are clear that as the bigger country, India should concede more - much more - than Pakistan. This Pakistan-oriented view is particularly strong within the Peoples Liberation Army, which considers the Pakistan, Myanmarese and North Korean militaries as being their closest allies, with India’s military remaining a concern rather than a source for joy.

No Thaw Across the Himalayas (UPIASIA)

M.D. Nalapat

Manipal, India — Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh returned Wednesday from a four-day visit to Beijing that even his spinmeisters could not categorize as a success. Having made the India-U.S. nuclear deal the foundation of his legacy, Singh had expected Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao to follow through on the promise of "nuclear cooperation" that he had made during a 2005 visit to New Delhi.

While there was a reiteration of that pledge in the Vision Statement released during the visit, this was qualified by subsequent explicit references to any such partnership being within the boundaries set out in the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. As the justification for the deal was that it opened the way for international civil nuclear cooperation with India outside the restrictions imposed by the NPT on powers other than the five recognized nuclear weapons states, this caveat reduced the Chinese offer to a meaningless pleasantry.

Neither in the International Atomic Energy Agency nor in the Nuclear Suppliers Group did the Chinese leadership give any indication during the Jan. 13-15 talks of softening their earlier position that India would have to sign on to the NPT as a non-nuclear weapons power -- in other words, to denuclearize -- before securing international cooperation.

Then came another blow. The new Labor government in Australia reversed the decision by former Prime Minister John Howard to sell uranium to India once the India-U.S. deal becomes operational. Canberra said that India's signing the NPT would be a precondition for such transfers. This is a non-starter in the Indian context of the need for a nuclear and missile deterrent against possible attack.

Manmohan Singh had also hoped to persuade his hosts in Beijing to nudge the long-stalled border talks forward by accepting India's condition that areas with "settled populations" would be excluded from any exchange of territory. Although Wen Jiabao had accepted this condition in 2005, a year later Beijing returned to the earlier hard line that even populated zones were open to negotiation.