In India, invest and get arrested (Sunday Guardian)

MADHAV NALAPAT  Mumbai | 9th Nov 2013

usinesspersons in Mumbai are voting with their chequebooks to leave India for other shores. Over the past six years, there has been a growing tide of investment abroad, be it in Europe, North America or Africa. "Anywhere but India" has become the motto for the Indian private sector, although few have the courage to articulate this publicly. A cross-section of the business community gave reasons as to why India has become "the most dangerous country to do business in", according to a Bangalore-based investor. He and others pointed out that during the past six years, laws and regulations involving business have been changed so as to make the option of arrest and detention available for a battery of offences. "Whether it is income-tax, service tax, excise or matters relating to company management, under the amended laws, any perceived non-compliance invites arrest," a top Mumbai-based company executive said. He pointed out that "in case a company fails to meet a tax demand for whatever reason, all the directors can now be sent to jail". The power of arrest has been given not only to Central bodies but to those at the state and even lower levels, each of whom have come up with new regulations for which jail is often the penalty for non-compliance According to the director of four large companies, the new Companies Act "is draconian". He points out that "there are backdoor provisions in 65 chapters that make it very easy for an executive to get prosecuted on technical grounds. One of his colleagues warned that "the powers given to even the holder of a single share could result in unscrupulous shareholders holding senior management to ransom". In its eagerness to protect the small investor, "the rights of the majority stakeholder have been ignored" and this "will destroy the investment climate in the country". A company chief executive pointed out that "these days, there is a blizzard of notices from various agencies and time spent on dealing with these has gone up manifold". Not surprisingly, "prosecutions have multiplied". The effect, according to all those talked to, has been a huge rise during the past few years on the bribes being paid to officers, "especially at the middle level". The laws that have been passed "have made India a paradise for the corrupt official", because he now has "several sticks to threaten industry with, which get brandished so as to get bribes". According to a senior executive, "a corrupt tax officer can make Rs 5 crore a year while a commissioner gets nothing less than Rs 20 crore". According to a CEO, since 2007 "the percentage of corrupt officers has risen from 45% to 70% because it is so easy to make money and there are so many new opportunities for doing so". Another pointed out that the much-advertised scheme for voluntary disclosure of service tax arrears "contains a provision that the officer need not accept the return. He can reject the application for voluntary disclosure and levy penalties and prosecution." According to him, "Such a provision has been introduced only to ensure a bribe gets paid even after compliance, to stop the officer from rejecting the application". Others too claimed that the raft of new legislation passed by the "reformist" government of Manmohan Singh "has created a nirvana for corrupt officers". Earlier moves to liberalise, such as the shift from FERA to FEMA, have been neutralised. "In place of FERA these days the Prevention of Money Laundering Act with its draconian provisions gets applied to so many cases. We have gone back to the days of FERA," a senior executive lamented, pointing out that "the discretion given to the officer often means that demands have no relation to business realities". Now, a Customs officer can order not just a fine but the arrest of a passenger suspected of having smuggled undeclared goods, "even if these be of a modest value". Worse, "for many such procedures the option of bail has been removed from the rule book and from statutes". So intent has the government been on securing revenue that "service tax is now levied just on invoices, even before payments have actually been made and stamp duty is getting imposed even on some loans". The overall impact has been chilling for business operations in the country, with even industrialised states such as Maharashtra going ahead with regressive legislation designed to "get revenue for a year or two, but kill the business paying the taxes over five years", according to the CEO of a Delhi-based company. Banks have become the victims of the zeal to raise funds anyhow, with "loans from banks and dues to employees now coming behind payouts to government agencies". In the matter of income-tax searches, where formerly seized property was returned after a panchnama was prepared, "these days the property is taken away and comes back only after a bribe gets paid", a senior executive of a Mumbai-based corporate house said. Several executives pointed out that "some officials in the Banking Department interfere informally in bank operations, protecting their favourites and arming their rivals". The name of a senior official was mentioned as being "in the pay of a corporate house, so that he ensures that the flow of funds goes on while that to business rivals gets choked". Because of political patronage, such officers are more likely to be promoted than those (few) who are honest. As for the share market, it was pointed out that the actual index, adjusted for the steep fall in the value of the rupee, should be 13,000 rather than 21,000. The delay in the GST and the increasing number of punitive steps being taken by state agencies at different levels have ensured that "any sane businessman stays far away from investing in India". Clearly, there are more than "international" factors responsible for the halving of the rate of growth from its level in the boom years of the Manmohan era. http://www.sunday-guardian.com/news/in-india-invest-and-get-arrested

India’s three growth-killer ministries (Pakistan Observer)

By MD Nalapat
Friday, November 08, 2013 - Manmohan Singh admires Europe and the US, so commentators and media outlets there repay the compliment by claiming that he was the originator of the 1992-94 economic reforms which to an extent energized the Indian economy. The truth is that Manmohan’s only contribution was to relentlessly push for easier entry of foreign companies into India, rather than seek to ensure that domestic companies were enabled to compete better abroad.

As Union Finance Minister, he presided over such giveaways as a $12 b billion gift to Moscow in the shape of the rupee-rouble pact. Because of this unwise and one-sided decision, India became the only country in the world to repay loans taken from the USSR at an exchange rate several multiples higher than that prevailing at the time. The talk in Delhi was that it was the Bill Clinton administration in Washington that was instrumental in getting India to accept such an expensive policy, because Clinton wanted to funnel financial help to the newly created Russan Federation. Only, he wanted the largesse to come from a desperately poor country, India, rather than from his own. The $12 billion gift to Moscow did not result in any benefits for India, as Boris Yeltsin ignored the former close friend of the erstwhile USSR and refused to make any concessions on sale of defense equipment.

China has emerged, together with South Korea and Japan, as a powerful competitor to the dominance of companies from countries forming part of the NATO bloc. Luckily for all of them, the Sonia-Manmohan duo has ensured that Indian companies now pose no threat to MNCs based in Europe, China or the US. This has been done through multiple agencies. The Reserve Bank of India has been carefully headed only by those known to favour foreign interests. The present Governor, Raghuram Rajan, is a Green Card holder who pines for the day when he will return home to the University of Chicago, or perhaps become the first “non-American” to head the World Bank. Although technically not a US citizen, Rajan can be expected to do all that is necessary to safeguard and advance US interests in the World Bank, thereby enabling Washington to claim that it gave up the US monopoly over the top post in the Bank, even while continuing to get all the benefits of such a monopoly.

Rajan has twice in his brief tenure since coming to office hiked up interest rates, thereby further crippling industry in India and handicapping them from facing foreign competition. A company headquartered in the US or the EU - or indeed in Japan, South Korea or China - gets finance at a rate that is far below the 15 percent paid by an Indian competitor. The new RBI Governor is following in the footsteps of his two immediate predecessors by boosting interest rates and thereby ensuring that banks in India become loaded with no-performing assets, thereby crippling them from competing with foreign banks. Incidentally, Raghuram Rajan has laid out welcome mat for foreign banks. Of course, only those from NATO bloc will be welcome.

Those from the GCC or from Africa or South America are not part of the small group of countries favored by Rajan and his bosses, Manmohan Singh and Sonia Gandhi. The Reserve Bank of India has sliced away a least 2% from the rate of growth of the Indian economy .Another ministry that has fulfilled the same purpose ( of crippling Indian companies in their battle to win markets dominated by foreign companies) is the Ministry of Home Affairs. According to the MHA, investment coming from the GCC or East Asia (especially China) is suspect. Clearance for such projects takes months to arrive, if they ever do. In the meantime, if investors in these locations send their funds to London, New York or Frankfurt from where they get rerouted to India via the Muritius tax haven. Once the money gets rerouted through NATO-bloc entities (who claim a hefty commission for the service), the Ministry of Home Affairs withdraws its objections and permits the investment. It is as though capital from the GCC or from East Asia needs to get purified by getting routed through the NATO bloc in order to be deemed suitable for investment in India. Interestingly, executives of these NATO-bloc financial entities have free access to the highest levels of policy-making in India.

The other ministry that has chopped off 2% from the rate of growth of the Indian economy is the Ministry of Environment. This ministry has made it hell for companies to invest in India, an obstructionist stance that has gone on since Sonia-Manmohan team came to power in

2004. Of course, none of such obstructive tactics have actually improved the environment in India, which continues to he heavily polluted. The Ministry believes that those who are desperately poor must remain desperately poor, a view also held by the many foreign-funded NGOs who are given VIP treatment in Delhi. These NGOs operate in effect on behalf of foreign competitors, by preventing Indian companies from gaining access to minerals and to other requisites of manufacturing. The consequence has been a rise in both pollution and unemployment.

Together, the RBI, the Ministry of Home Affairs and the Ministry of Environment reduce the rate of growth in India by a total of 6% annually. They ensure that the people of this country remain poor and deprived, even as NGOs from countries such as Canada (where per capita consumption of energy is huge but which lectures poor countries on conservation) are staffed by expatriates who seldom venture far from their luxurious residences. With such agencies ostensibly looking after their welfare ,the people of India have no need of foes. Their so-called protectors are doing the job of destruction of their future more effectively that any outside foe can.

—The writer is Vice-Chair, Manipal Advanced Research Group, UNESCO Peace Chair & Professor of Geopolitics, Manipal University, Haryana State, India.
http://pakobserver.net/detailnews.asp?id=223107

The new Indo-Pacific core (Gateway House)

  
 


The new Indo-Pacific core

BY M.D. Nalapat 

DIRECTOR, DEPARTMENT OF GEOPOLITICS, MANIPAL UNIVERSITY
6 NOVEMBER 2013, Gateway House


The India-Japan alliance needs to be viewed through a prism broader than that of "containing" China, and by treating the Indian and Pacific oceans as a single entity. Such an alliance has the potential to strengthen the geopolitical security of India and Japan, along with that of all their allies and associates


Emperor Akihito will be visiting India this month after a hiatus of 40 years. The significance of his trip cannot be overstated; the Emperor in Japan represents more than just the state – he embodies the essence of the Japanese people. The addition of Japan as a genuine ally of India will be helpful in giving our country greater leverage in the emerging new international order.


In the rivalry between the US and China, India should ideally be a “swing” state, navigating between and around these two powers for its own advantage. Embedded within and an inextricable part of the US alliance system, including against China, is Japan. However, the Japanese position need not come in the way of yet another alliance, an “alliance of convenience” between India and Japan. Indeed, now that Shinzo Abe has taken charge in Tokyo, that is t seems to be taking place.


The two countries are finally beginning to coordinate their positions on an increasing number of issues. The collaboration first began in 2005,when Tokyo and Delhi decided to work jointly towards permanent membership of the UN Security Council, along with Berlin and Brasilia. That initiative seems to have no future, particularly as France, the least consequential player within the Permanent 5 in the UNSC,  is wary of having to yield the spotlight to larger players and will join hands with China to stall any meaningful reform of the UNSC. 

This will render the Tokyo-Delhi-Berlin-Brasila bids for permanent membership remains futile.

That reason has been overtaken by a more recent and compelling case for a Tokyo-Delhi alliance: the fusion of the Indian Ocean with the Pacific, more popularly called the “Indo-Pacific.” Given the economic and security linkages between countries in both the Indian Ocean as well as the Pacific Ocean rim, it has become essential to regard this vast expanse of water as a single entity, in need of a common strategy on the part of key countries across the common rim. These will include, from west to east, Oman,the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Kenya, Tanzania, India, Indonesia,Vietnam, the Philippines and Japan.


The size and power of both China and the US ensures them an independence of action in the global arena. Hence these two countries must be viewed separately from other, less consequential powers whose smaller heft mandates their need for alliances to be counted.  Any talk of India being in the same league as China is still unrealistic. We are, at best, a middle power. Poor policy, imperfectly implemented, has kept us that way despite the immense advantages of location and vibrant human capital.


But Delhi now has a unique opportunity to play the keystone role, together with Japan, in crafting the architecture of a partnership in a natural triangle of prosperity within the Indian Ocean. The three sides of this new Indian Ocean construct will be the west coast of India, the east coast of Africa and the Gulf Cooperation Council. India can facilitate Japan’s participation in this new strategic space, Japan can reciprocate the favour to India in the Pacific.


For Japan, the Indian Ocean states triumvirate provides both a market and an arena for cooperation in security and finance – the beginning, perhaps, of new financial architectures outside of the dominant Western systems. Such an architecture will be substantially strengthened if Taipei and Seoul are included. As for the GCC, it has thus far seen itself only from the lens of the Persian Gulf, whereas the financial power of the grouping and the potential of its youthful population requires it to be not just part of the Gulf waters, but of the entire Indian Ocean – and through these lanes, into the Pacific. The goal is to increase prosperity in the region. The GCC has the capital, east Africa the resources and west India the technology to ensure a Triangle of Prosperity, a breakout from poverty, all within a single generation of partnership.


Consequently, the GCC must be brought into fora dealing with the Indian Ocean Rim (IOR). This task can be appropriately performed by India, a country with historical trading and other ties to each of its members. Indeed, a formal grouping of these three sides (of  East Africa-GCC-West India) is to be desired. Abu Dhabi will be an ideal location for the headquarters of this new Indian Ocean grouping, just as Kuwait has the potential of hosting the as-yet-nascent Asia Cooperation Dialogue.


That only western India – specifically the sea coast – and the east African coastal states are included does not mean that the rest of India or the other countries in Africa will be outside the operational purview of the proposed IOR Triangle of Prosperity. Western India will serve as the gateway for the rest of the country, just as eastern Africa can for the rest of that continent. Under the new architecture, east Africa and western India can partner together on a host of trading and maritime enterprises, through which the rest of their continents can participate. This is a more workable engagement, than the existing IOR-ORC institution that is currently too diffuse and diverse to be operationally useful or strategically meaningful.


For the GCC, the benefits are also clear: Kuwait, Oman and the UAE, all sitting in the shadow of the West Asian upheavals, will be able to diversify not only their financial investments but also their geopolitical interests beyond the NATO block. The proposed triangle will accomplish that goal by simplifying procedures for investment and fast-tracking interaction – in the case of India, with the full participation of the central authorities. The intellectual underpinning of the proposed IOR Triangle of Prosperity will be India’s contribution.


This brings us back to the India-Japan alliance, which can now be viewed anew through this Indo-Pacific prism. The goal: to make the Tokyo-Delhi axis the centre of gravity in the Indo-Pacific.


The proposed IOR Triangle of Prosperity is but a single brick in the possible superstructure of an overall Indo-Pacific vision. In the Pacific, the IOR triangle will be replicated – but expanded to link Hanoi, Jakarta, Taipei and Manila with Tokyo in the Pacific. Like Delhi will draw Tokyo into the Indian Ocean, so will Tokyo draw Delhi into the Pacific grouping.  connecting Delhi and Tokyo with Hanoi, Jakarta and Manila.


This panoramic view will allow India to look deeper both East and West, and favour Japan’s comprehensive integration into the West Asian and east African economies – a position now dominated by the West and by China. The gravitational pull of an India-Japan alliance will provide the Indo-Pacific countries a third strategic choice – and a more balanced security and economic global architecture.


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

This article was written exclusively for Gateway House: Indian Council on Global Relations. You can find more exclusive features here. 

For interview requests with the author, or for permission to republish, please contact Rajeshwari Krishnamurthy at krishnamurthy.rajeshwari@gatewayhouse.in or 022 22023371.

Indian PM must come for CHOGM (The Nation, Sri Lanka)

MD Nalapat

Sunday, 03 November

Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh of India has not yet officially indicated whether or not he will be attending the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting in Colombo this month. Although the Oath of Office sworn by the PM and his ministers specifies that they should owe fealty only to the national - as distinct from party - interest, in reality decisions get taken that temporarily boost the fortunes of the ruling party while adversely impacting on public interest.

This is the case with Dr. Manmohan Singh’s participation in the Colombo CHOGM. The state of Tamil Nadu, with its 39 Lok Sabha (lower house of Parliament) seats, may decide which combination of parties gets to rule India after the 2014 polls. Both the ruling AIADMK as well as the opposition DMK (which is a partner of the Congress Party at the center) are opposed to the PM attending a summit that will be graced by every single Head of Government within the Commonwealth save Canada’s Stephen Harper, who is responding to a small section of his voters angry that their dream of an independent Tamil Eelam carved out of Sri Lanka has been laid to rest in 2009 by President Mahinda Rajapaksa.

What NATO has signally failed to achieve in Afghanistan was done by the Sri Lankan military, and in order to cover up their embarrassment at being bested, the member states of NATO are seeking to belittle the 2009 victory by casting doubt on the methods.

Damage

Let it be admitted that this columnist is a supporter of US drone strikes on terrorists hiding out in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Although George W Bush and Dick Cheney ensured that the US homeland was spared a second strike after 9/11, their tactics in Iraq and Afghanistan were a disaster, encouraging recruitment to Al-Qaeda rather than eliminating that scourge of humanity. Bush and Cheney enabled the leadership of Al-Qaeda to escape unmolested from Afghanistan into Pakistan, and failed to eliminate Osama bin Laden despite their joint show of machismo.

It took Barack Obama to take out bin Laden, and to intensify drone strikes in both Pakistan as well as Afghanistan. These strikes have inflicted collateral damage, and several hundred innocents have been killed along with terrorists. Yet the same world capitals that point a finger at President Rajapaksa and at Defense Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa for the death of Velupillai Prabhakaran do not call President Obama a war criminal for having ordered the execution of bin Laden in circumstances where the terrorist was unarmed and with his wives as he was gunned down by heavily armed commandos.

Barack Obama deserves congratulations for both the taking out of Osama as well as for the drone strikes, despite the incidental deaths of innocents. But for him and his NATO partners to hold the Sri Lankan government accountable by standards very different from that they set for themselves is unpardonable, which is why it is good that David Cameron is coming to Colombo.

Disaster

Of course, these days NATO member-states give repeated lectures on ethics and morality to other countries, the way Jawaharlal Nehru used to in the 1950s.Certainly, Cameron will forget the collateral damage his troops have inflicted in Iraq and Afghanistan or the chaos that Whitehall policy has created in Libya and Syria when he dons the robe of a saint and lectures his Sri Lankan hosts.

India, which has long been at the receiving end of such barns from those experts in double standards of behavior, ought to have stood besides Sri Lanka rather than join hands with the NATO countries in Geneva and elsewhere. The LTTE’s Phase One objective was to secure a Tamil Eelam in Sri Lanka. Phase Two was to expand the homeland to cover territories in Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh. Hopefully Prime Minister Singh will be true to his oath to the people of India and come to Colombo so that Sri Lanka remains a strategic partner of India in the Indian Ocean Rim.

We need to interlock the west coast of India, the east coast of Africa and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) into a partnership for prosperity. In such an arc, Sri Lanka should participate. Not going to Colombo would be much worse than a mistake for the Prime Minister of India. It would be a disaster.

http://www.nation.lk/edition/news-features/item/22441-indian-pm-must-come-for-chogm.html

Minister needs an urgent reality check (Sunday Guardian)

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

A view of the Kedarnath temple where prayers resumed following devastating floods and land slides. PTI

3 November 2013. Words but never deeds. The few who visited Kedarnath during this pilgrim season speak of the horrible conditions they had to face on their trek. The road from Gaurikund to Kedarnath remains in a state of disrepair, almost impassable by any other than winged creatures. The debris of the natural disaster that hit the area last year remains uncollected, including the metal skeletons of vehicles and the remains of the thousands of buildings felled by the forces of nature. All that the administration has pressed into service to clear the debris away is a collection of ill-fed individuals armed with iron rods, poking and pulling uselessly at the immense destruction around them. It would not have been impossible to get a few heavy lift helicopters of the Indian Air Force to move earthmoving equipment up to the affected sites, but that would have required commitment and imagination, both clearly in short supply in official Uttarakhand. In days the temple will close because of the oncoming winter, thereby leaving the dirt and muck in place, awaiting the attentions of the stick-wielding crew come six months. If this be the response to what Prime Minister Manmohan Singh termed with some understatement as a "national disaster", what pathetic Band-Aids are being applied to other injuries in the fabric of the nation can be imagined.

Words but never deeds. The geographic location of India has given it a salience that is unmatched. In this era of the Indo-Pacific, Japan and India have become close partners because of the coming to office in Tokyo of a known Indophile, Shinzo Abe. This country in the Indian Ocean and Japan in the Pacific Ocean can be the duo which links together these great sea lanes into a single, seamless entity. The only way the Indo-Pacific can make the transition from textbooks and scholarly journals into ground (or sea) reality is for Japan and India to work out a common strategy for the two oceans. Add to such a mix the possibility of a triangular relationship between the west coast of India, the east coast of Africa and the Gulf Cooperation Council states, and a new arc can emerge in the Indian Ocean Rim (IOR). This far, the GCC states have been kept out of any discussions about the IOR. This must change. The UAE, Saudi Arabia, Oman and Kuwait are in a position to play a key role in lifting the region into prosperity. Western India can provide the techniques, Eastern Africa the natural resources and the GCC the capital needed to actualise potential for growth. A comprehensive plan combining the potential of both the Indian Ocean as well as the Pacific needs to be worked out between the littoral states of the IOR and with Japan. Subsequently, other countries such as Vietnam and the Philippines could be brought in, so as to create a vibrant Indo-Pacific community with Tokyo, Nairobi, Abu Dhabi and Delhi at the core.

But for that to happen, the mindset which sets to work undernourished manual labour armed only with steel rods in a disaster scene of the magnitude of Kedarnath needs to change. Has Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, on his brief visits to India, ever enquired as to what is going on—or not going on— in what is among the most important of India's cultural treasures? Has he been briefed on the chaos and confusion that still prevail in that shattered region, even while techniques for amelioration abound but are not used? The Prime Minister has revealed himself to be proud to belong to a lengthy line of leaders who have been responsible for this country's affairs since 1947. Perhaps he has yet to be told that 400 million of his voters are still desperately poor, or that more than 200 million of them cannot read or write a few lines in any language. He has yet to be informed that standards of nutrition, health, education and housing are often worse than that found in Sub-Saharan Africa. Were he to know such facts, his speeches may perhaps be a tad less triumphal.

The truth is that those responsible for the prosperity of the country have kept it in poverty, and the immense geopolitical advantage of location and a vibrant people have been allowed to go waste, even as speech after soporific speech gets made. Time to get real, Mr PM.

http://www.sunday-guardian.com/analysis/prime-minister-needs-an-urgent-reality-check

Mock anger over Snowden expose (Pakistan Observer)

MD Nalapat
Friday, November 01, 2013 - It was not long ago that governments in Europe coordinated an illegal - by international law - effort at forcing down an aircraft carrying the Head of State of a South American country on his way home from Moscow. He was forced to disembark in Austria and spend hours in the terminal while sleuths from the country searched for Edward Snowden in the aircraft. Clearly, these governments, including those of France and Germany, had very little objection to the international dragnet put out for Snowden by the US and its allies, or for the gargantuan level of spying that he revealed. The world is composed of two parts, the “civilised” and the rest, and only the countries which fall within the NATO umbrella or are ethnically linked to the alliance (such as New Zealand and Australia) belong in the first category. Even Japan, which has tried so hard to be accepted as a part of the “civilised” world, fails the test. Hence the reason why Germany is included in the group of nations ( P5 plus 1) which deals with Iran, but not Japan.

Whether on this or on other issues, there is an effort by the NATO bloc to involve Germany in a way that they do not Japan, a country at least as important and as pro-US as that European tiger. Weeks from now, UK Prime Minister David Cameron will travel to Colombo, where he will be joined by other Commonwealth countries, including Australia but not Canada, whose Prime Minister has decided to stand with the remnants of the Tamil Tigers in his country after the collapse of their effort at creating a separate homeland out of Sri Lankan territory. Stephen Harper is thus far the only Commonwealth Head of Government to boycott the Colombo summit, a deed which is in line with the immense financial assistance that poured into the coffers of the LTTE from Canada during the decades of conflict in Sri Lanka.

Today, the Tamil community of Sri Lanka, easily among the most advanced and versatile of any human population group in the world, is represented not by LTTE Supremo Velupillai Prabhakaran, a devout Christian who led the Tamil Tigers to extinction in 2009. The community is represented by the dignified countenance of Chief Minister Vigneswaran, who was elected by a three-fourths majority in the only Tamil-majority province in Sri Lanka. The election, which was obviously free and fair, is the best reason why the Canadian Prime Minister is wrong in boycotting the 2013 Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting simply because it is being held in Colombo, and why Prime Minister Manmohan Singh ought to be there as well, rather than send Vice-President Hamid Ansari. It is no secret that the Vice-Presidency is a decorative post with little substantive authority, hence the absence of the PM will be taken as a snub by the Mahinda Rajapaksa government in Colombo, with significant negative impact on public opinion in the island as well.

David Cameron’s army, navy and air force have been responsible for killing hundreds of innocent civilians in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere in just the 21st century. His closest ally, the United States, recently executed Osama bin Laden when the gentleman was resting at home with his wives. Thus far, David Cameron has not considered the deaths of so many civilians at the hands of coalition forces a “war crime”, nor does he view the targeted killing of Osama bin Laden as such a crime. However, he comes from the “civilised” world, where - James Bond style - killing is no crime, there being an 007 license for the purpose. Mahinda Rajapaksa comes from the other side of the divide, hence David Cameron finds him guilty for doing precisely what the UK PM has done, which is take action against those accepted as terrorists by international opinion.

Cameron is unlikely to dwell on the victims of US drone strikes in Pakistan or Afghanistan while he is in Colombo, even while he declaims about the deaths of civilians in 2009 in Sri Lanka, deaths caused by the fact that the LTTE used hundreds of thousands of innocents as human shields for their soldiers. And even as they listen to Cameron’s homilies, none of the other Commonwealth PMs are likely to bring up the uncomfortable fact that so many innocents have been killed by NATO in their failed wars in Afghanistan and in Iraq. Nor is any mention likely of the chaos that has descended on Libya and Syria because of the policies of the NATO powers, which have armed and empowered fanatic groups in both countries. Such criticism would not be “civilised”. But then, neithers Cameron’s effort to hold President Rajapaksa to standards that he regards as irrelevant for Barack Obama, Francois Hollande or for himself.

The “protest” by Angela Merkel and other EU leaders about spying by the US falls in the same category of double standards. As her participation in the forcing down of the Bolivian President’s aircraft showed, Chancellor Merkel was perfectly comfortable with shooting the messenger rather than protesting the spying revealed by Edward Snowden. The fact is that the snooping by the NSA is not for counter-terror operations or for national security, although such concerns do matter in a small percentage of the targets of the electronic interception. The NSA spies so as to (1) collect data about the leaders of the “uncivilised” world, information that can be used to blackmail them into obedience to the dictates of NATO and (2) in order to ferret out commercial secrets so that NATO-based companies can compare against their Asian or South American rivals.

The non-NATO segment of the globe needs to find a replacement for Google, Yahoo!, Hotmail and other internet sites that are now known to be collaborators for US intelligence, and the sooner this gets done, the better. It is not spying that Angela Merkel or Francois Hollande is angry about, it is the fact that even they - part of the “civilised” world - were subject to the same snooping as those from the “uncivilised” world. Fortunately for them, President Obama has assured these leaders that the US will no longer snoop on “civilised” Heads of Government. The rest, those outside NATO and its charmed circle of those with European ancestry, had better beware. Just as a civilian death caused by President Obama or Prime Minster Cameton is excusable while that caused by President Rajapaksa is not, spying on “The Other” is regarded as kosher in a way that spying on NATO allies is not .

http://pakobserver.net/detailnews.asp?id=222372

Video: Prof MD Nalapat on India - East Africa relations

Rahul Gandhi is ensuring Narendra Modi’s victory (Sunday Guardian)

MD Nalapat

Narendra Modi during a campaign rally in Jhansi on Friday. he era of Pamulaparthy Venkata Narasimha Rao showed the people of India — though not the Congress Party — that a government run under the aegis of the 44-year-old party (for after all, in 1969 Indira Gandhi created a new party out of the embers which she left behind in the old) need not be headed by a member of the Nehru family to do a reasonable job of governance. It is therefore fortunate for the ruling branch of the Nehru family that their next choice for the Prime Ministership, Manmohan Singh, has turned out to be such a disaster. While there are many who point out that the mild-mannered economist is among the most potent weapons in the armoury of Narendra Modi, what is forgotten is that it is the litany of failures of Manmohan Singh that has sparked a growing consensus within both the Congress as well as Congress-leaning voters that Rahul Gandhi should take over from Manmohan Singh, and soon. Should such a transfer of Prime Ministerial authority take place before the polls, the Congress tally would certainly be increased, although the closer such a transition is to polling day, the lesser will be the dividend of the shift to Rahul Gandhi. That dividend hinges on whether the heir to the Congress abandons his teardrop-generating Mills & Boon routine and focuses in his speeches on governance, and what he proposes to do to improve the abysmal standards of administration in the country. Enough tears have been shed over the years for the AICC general secretary's grandmother and father. Certainly the deaths of both were tragic, and created a national catharsis. However, so far as seeking to place responsibility for their deaths on the BJP is concerned, as yet even the IB or the CBI has not brought forward any credible evidence that Narendra Modi rather than the ISI was behind the Khalistan movement or the wholly indefensible manner in which Bhindranwale was neutered by the Army while taking refuge in the Golden Temple. If there is any record of any BJP leader meeting Beant Singh and Satwant Singh and motivating them to commit their horrible deed, this — as with so much else in Delhi — remains hidden from the public. Similarly, while considering the innuendo that the BJP (now led by Modi) was — even if tangentially — behind even the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi, the presumably extensive contacts between BJP leaders and LTTE supremo Velupillai Prabhakaran, which must have preceded Dhanu's deed, have as yet been kept secret. As for Muzaffarnagar, where the role of Azam Khan appears to have escaped the attention of the Intelligence Bureau officers who apparently brief Rahul Gandhi diligently, what stands out is the — perhaps wilful — incapacity of the state government to protect lives. In Gujarat, the post-Godhra riots of 2002 were the first and thus far the last communal riots that the riot-wracked state has seen during the Modi government. In the case of Uttar Pradesh, there has been a surfeit of riots since Akhilesh Yadav became Chief Minister, but apparently the SP's Good Cop face is yet to learn how to prevent such fires the way Modi has succeeded in doing for the past eleven years. For at least the past four years, it has been clear that in the mind of the voter, the 2014 contest will be a referendum between Rahul Gandhi and Narendra Modi. While even two years ago, Rahul had the edge over the Gujarat strongman, that position has steadily been reversed, and with each month, the attractiveness of Modi to the voter has grown even while Rahul's voter base appears to be shrinking. After all, his is not the only family to have suffered grief in India. In so many riots or railway accidents, there are families which have lost most of their members. Soldiers and police officers are dying with increasing frequency during these insecure years, and each leaves behind a family in as much pain and raw anger as has been described by Rahul Gandhi at Indore. Revealing one's own pain and rage is usually less effective in capturing votes than showing empathy for the pain of others, and the more Mills & Boon becomes the AICC bible, the more votes will flow to Narendra Modi. Indeed, it would appear that the Gujarat-born leader of the BJP is at — or close to — the figure of 220 BJP seats which this columnist predicted as the 2014 result, after Modi had taken charge as the Election Committee chairperson. Manmohan Singh is helping Rahul Gandhi boost his appeal, but mostly within his own party. But with each tearjerker sally, Rahul Gandhi is ensuring the victory of Narendra Modi. http://www.sunday-guardian.com/analysis/rahul-gandhi-is-ensuring-narendra-modis-victory

NATO laughs as India, China bicker (PO)

MD Nalapat
Saturday, October 26, 2013 - Far more than the UK, which from for the past six decades has handicapped itself in Delhi by the way in which it has sought to protect the interests of Pakistan, it is France that is the most influential European country in India. This ascent to the top of the Influence Sweepstakes came about in 1998, when Paris was noticeably less shrill in condemning the Indian nuclear tests of that year than were London, Washington, Ottawa and Canberra. Of the four, the most vicious attacks came from Canada and Australia, who evidently regarded India as an upstart nation suffering from delusions of equality with the NATO powers.

There was more than a tinge of outright racism in the comments and criticisms of the nuclear tests, which were based on the principle that only “civilized” nations had a right to the atomic bomb. Because of this belief in the virtues of ethnicity, neither Canada nor Australia (nor indeed London and Washington) have uttered a word against Israel, which was outed two decades ago as a nuclear weapons state. This is because Israel - to these countries - is a civilized state, owing to the fact that the majority of its population can trace their ethnic roots to what NATO impliedly regards as the only civilized corner of the globe, Europe. Committed as they silently are to the notion of the superiority of a single ethnicity, it was natural that this group of four (three within NATO and the other sheltering within the NATO umbrella) would oppose India having the same sorts of weaponry as “civilized” states.

The exception to this cacophony of abuse in 1998, led by US President Bill Clinton, was France. Those were the days when Paris was run by independent-minded leaders in the mould of Jacques Chirac rather than (0ccasionally growling) poodles of the Nicholas Sarkozy variety. Had the consort of Carla Bruni been President of France in 1998, it is very likely that he would have ensured that his country marched in lockstep with the UK, the US, Canada and Australia in condemning the 1998 nuclear tests by India.

However, he was not yet in power, and from the start, Paris made it clear that it was not willing to impose the harsh sanctions on India that Clinton was mooting. In return, a grateful Atal Behari Vajpayee and his de facto Executive PM, National Security Advisor Brajesh Mishra, gave France pride of place in commercial transactions, especially in the field of defense. That partiality has continued to the present, with lucrative upgrades of French equipment and multi-billion euro purchases of French defense equipment, especially aircraft, with India becoming only the second country in the world (apart from France itself) to trust that country with the sourcing of its advanced strike aircraft. Although Paris is not yet in Moscow’s league, where an airctaft carrier that belongs in the junkyard has been bought by India for close to $6 billion dollars once the full costs of maintenance and operation are factored in, yet Paris comes close to being among the important reasons why India has such a huge gap between its exports and its imports.

Interestingly, there are a group of French scholars who write regularly in Indian publication. Some are firmly tethered to the pro-Congress camp, regularly attacking the opposition BJP in language which comes directly off press briefings from 24 Akbar Road in New Delhi, the headquarters of the All India Congress Committee. Others have the reverse view, becoming even more strident of “the rights of the majority community” than even the more assertive Hindu organisations. Still others tack towards regional parties, adopting their stances as their own and building up contacts with their leaders. In such a manner, across the political spectrum, French scholars have influence in India. The core point that all of them make is the “China Danger”.

They regularly warn of the designs of China on India and demand a strong response from India. Of course, what usually goes unstated (except on a few occasions) is that the best way of countering the “China Danger” is to buy more weapons from France. By helping to create a scare about Chinese intentions vis-à-vis India, these articulate and persuasive commentators are proving of immense value to the French defense industry, which these days depends on Arabs and Indians for its survival. Given the need to create an atmosphere of tension between Beijing and Delhi, it is not surprising that these commentators have been scathing in their coments on Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s just-concluded visit to Beijing. The fact is that Prime Minister Singh and his Chinese counterpart, Li Keqiang, have gone far towards recreating an early-1950s mood of bonhomie in Sino-Indian relations. Both sides understand the importance of better ties for not simply matters of security but also of economic growth.

China can be the source of $40 billion in investment in India, and at least 2 million Chinese tourists can come to India because of their Buddhist heritage. Eventually that figure can go up by many times. It would be transformational for Asia were Beijing and Delhi to become friendly to each other and to cooperate in matters of security. Both Prime Minister Singh and Prime Minister Li understand this, as does President Xi Jinping. However, such a rapprochement will generate frowns across the brows of NATO policymakers. They are delighted at any symptom of tension between Delhi and Beijing, and at each newspaper headline or television report which portrays the Sino-Indian relationship negatively. The success of Singh and Li in burying old ghosts and in seeking to create a better dynamic for ties will be a matter of concern for NATO, even as it will be welcomed by the 2.5 billion people who inhabit China and India.
http://pakobserver.net/detailnews.asp?id=221840

PMO unconcerned about scientist deaths (Sunday Guardian)

MADHAV NALAPAT  New Delhi | 26th Oct 2013

The Research Reactor CIRUS at Bhabha Atomic Research Centre hile there has been substantial international media comment on the unnatural deaths of several scientists working in Iran's nuclear program, similar attention has not been paid to the (much larger) number of unnatural deaths that have taken place of scientists and engineers working in India's own nuclear program. The latest casualties were discovered on 7 October, when the bodies of K.K. Josh and Abhish Shivam were discovered near the railway tracks at Penduruthy near Vishakapatnam Naval Yard. The two were engineers connected with the building of India's indigenous nuclear-powered submarine, Arihant. They had apparently been poisoned and their bodies placed on the tracks to make it seem like an accident. However, they were discovered by a passer-by before a train could pass over the bodies. In any other country, the murder of two engineers connected to a crucial strategic program would have created a media storm. However, the deaths of the two were passed off both by the media as well as by the Ministry of Defence as a routine accident, with only the ordinary police officer tasked with investigations into the cause of death. The inquiries went nowhere. Scientists working in the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) have been particularly liable to "suicides" and murders, with several being reported during the past five years. In each case, the unnatural death in question gets passed off as either a suicide or an unexplained killing. This far, there has been no report of the police having identified any of the perpetrators of the murders of personnel whose brainpower has been crucial to the success of several key programs. On 23 February 2010, M. Iyer, an engineer at BARC, was found dead in his residence. The killer had used a duplicate key to enter the house and strangle the engineer in his sleep. Interestingly, efforts were made by some of the investigating police officers to pass the death off as a suicide. Finally, the Mumbai police decided to register a case of murder. However, as is usual in such cases, no arrests were made and the investigation ran into a stonewall. Forensics experts say that in all such unexplained deaths of scientists and engineers involved in the nuclear program, fingerprints are absent, as also other telltale clues that would assist the police in identifying the culprit. These indicate a high degree of professionalism behind the murders, such as can be found in top-flight intelligence agencies of the type that have been so successful in killing Iranian scientists and engineers active in that country's nuclear program. Unlike Iran, however, which now protects its key personnel, thus far the Government of India has not taken any appreciable steps to protect the lives of those active in core strategic programs relating to the country's nuclear deterrent. While it is true that at least one of the unnatural deaths — that of former BARC scientists Uma Rao on 29 April, 2011 — seems to be a case of suicide, the other suicide verdicts are challenged by the families of the deceased engineers and scientists, who say that there was no indication that their loved ones were contemplating such an extreme step. What is surprising is the inattention of the Government of India towards what many believe to be a systematic outside effort to slow down India's march towards nuclear excellence by killing those involved in the process. Such a modus operandi differs from that followed in the case of the cryogenic engine scandal in 1994, when key scientists working on the program to develop an indigenous cryogenic engine were picked up by the Intelligence Bureau and the Kerala police on false charges of espionage, together with two Maldivian women. The Bill Clinton administration had sought to scupper the Russian sale of such engines to India, but Russian scientists friendly to India had secretly handed over blueprints relating to the making of such engines. This soon became known to the CIA, which is believed to have orchestrated the plan to paralyse the program by sending its key scientists to prison. Although the charges were found to be entirely false, that vindication took a decade to come about, and in the process, the Indian program was slowed down by an equivalent number of years. Thus far, none of the IB or Kerala police officers who acted as the apparent catspaw of a foreign intelligence agency in slapping false charges on key scientists has suffered even a minor punishment, much less be arraigned for treason. According to the Government of India, over just a three-year period, there have been at least nine unnatural deaths of scientists and engineers at just BARC as well as the Kaiga nuclear facility, of which two have been categorised as suicide, with the rest unexplained in terms of bringing to book those responsible. http://www.sunday-guardian.com/news/pmo-unconcerned-about-scientist-deaths