Elite capture behind the chaos in Sudan (The Sunday Guardian)

 

The competing power elites have long made money, and expect to make more with the prolonging of the conflict.

In days past, colonialism paraded in plain sight. Even then, elites were groomed to take on the responsibilities that those belonging to the colonising country did not want to themselves do. The flag of the colonising country and the emblems of its authority were everywhere, reminding local populations which country it was that they had been colonised by. While textbooks in those parts of the world that were the most proficient in capturing other countries and ruling them talk of how civilisation and other attributes considered desirable were brought over to the countries that were colonised, the reality was that it was the hunger, the greed, for securing control of human and other resources that was behind the colonial project. Elites that were favoured (or in many situations expressly created) to act as the accomplices of the colonisers saw to it that the country that ruled over them was able to transfer resources of multiple kinds from the colonised to the colonising country. Even as the countries that were conquered saw their populations descend into hellish conditions, the conquerors witnessed a renaissance of the arts and the clambering up from poverty to relative prosperity of several citizens. The colonies provided a destination to which young people could go and build their careers. Large fortunes were made in inverse proportion to the suffering of those enslaved in that process. As for the elites whose task it was to facilitate such exploitation, their riches grew as well, but not to a level that could pose a challenge to enterprises in the colonising power. The riches came out of serving as middlemen funnelling in human and other resources for the benefit of the conquering power. All that was of course in the big, bad past. Fast forward to the present, only to discover that “the more things change, the more they remain the same”. There are parts of the world where populations have been kept away from quality education and occupation, where the bulk of the population is on the borders of subsistence and focused obsessively only on survival, Interestingly, these are often the very parts that have plentiful mineral and other natural resources, the benefit of which remains either unexploited or unavailable to the vast majority of the local citizenry.
Keeping hopes alive in Ukraine that the central government may be able to get back the territory that was lost to it in 2014 and afterwards will not result in such an outcome, although it does have the consequence of the country being enmeshed in a war that appears to be unwinnable unless one of two miracles takes place. Either NATO enters the war directly on the side of the Kiev regime, or the Russian Federation falls apart and its soldiers flee the territory of Ukraine in the manner that Soviet troops fled Afghanistan in 1988 or US forces abandoned their weapons and positions in 2021. This was done by President Biden for much the same reason that his predecessor had consented to a surrender agreement at Doha the previous year, which was to ensure his re-election. The complete US pullout from Afghanistan was the first indication that Joe Biden had made up his mind to be a two-term President, defying age and other issues. In the case of Afghanistan, it was the Afghan people, especially moderates and women, who have suffered as a consequence of the Trump-Biden pullout. In Ukraine, citizens in the US are themselves feeling the aftershocks of the turbocharging of the war against Russia by Biden. The US President joined his European counterparts in misreading the effects of their flooding of weapons into Ukraine and imposing sanctions that have caused much of the non-Atlanticist world to re-examine their traditional policy of seeing the US dollar as a safe asset to buy and keep. The US dollar, the euro, the British pound and the Swiss franc are safe only as long as the governments controlling these currencies act sensibly. Confiscatory sanctions and the disappearance of the treasure troves of Saddam Hussein, Muammar Gaddafi and many other targets of western kinetic action have convinced many outside the West that trusting in these countries or their currencies is the mark of a fool. It is akin to the trust of Saddam Hussein and Gaddafi in the promises of the US and its European allies that they would be safe from retaliation once they handed over their WMD, when in fact, it was that very decision which later cost them their lives, as it almost did that of Bashar Assad, once he let go of his small stockpile of chemical weapons. As trust gets lost in western currencies, the desire to hold gold becomes more pronounced. And it is because parts of Sudan are awash in gold deposits and other minerals that Russia (with China operating behind Moscow’s shadow) is backing the Rapid Action Force in Sudan against the regular army. Russia and China do not want that gold to go to countries that may be at war with the duo in a few years’ time, and are making sure that the more West-friendly Sudanese military government is on the receiving end of the attacks of the other side. As in Ukraine, as in so many other countries that are being torn apart by more powerful geopolitical rivals assisting rival sides, the natural riches of Sudan are what is causing an intensification of the ongoing contest between two generals (each in a different geopolitical camp) to gain control of the entire country.
As in the other countries ravaged by such proxy battles, all but a few of the Sudanese people will be the losers in this conflict. The competing power elites have long made money, and expect to make more with the prolonging of the conflict. Peace clearly does not generate the profits that accrue in wartime. Check with the oil producers and weapons manufacturers in the US, who will be expected by the backers of a second term for President Biden to make sure that his electoral coffers overflow by the time the Presidential polls come by.

Elite capture behind the chaos in Sudan

Caste by birth should not spread but disappear (The Sunday Guardian)

 

It is a matter of surprise that some born into faiths whose scriptures make no mention of caste are seeking to bring caste into their theologies.

The caste system now still practised in India differs from the practices that were followed in the ancient past. In essence, the caste system divides society into four equally important branches of activity. The dissemination of knowledge and the conduct of rituals in places of worship was held to be the responsibility of Brahmins. The acquiring of wealth through individual enterprise was the dominion of the Vaisyas, while the protection of the state and its people was the duty of the Kshatriyas. Other work was the province of the Shudras. It was not at birth that caste identity had been formed, no matter who the parents were, or the family that a child was born into. Caste denotes occupation and expertise. It is illogical therefore to affix caste at birth. After all, simply because a child is born to a doctor or an engineer couple does not endow the infant with the skills needed in those professions. It is only later that skills are picked up and mastered. While in many cases, a child would in later years follow the profession of his or her parents, that was not necessarily the case. As the tradition set in ancient India went, the child of a Shudra could in the course of years, evolve into a practitioner of medicine or engineering, or get immersed in the acquisition and expansion of knowledge, including those relating to places of worship. In Kerala, the present writer, who edited a mass circulation newspaper at the time, was among the protagonists who ensured that an academy of priesthood was set up. Irrespective of birth, young minds could study in the academy and master spiritual philosophy and rituals, ultimately becoming priests in a temple. It was in Kerala that Sri Narayana Guru was born. The Guru consecrated a Shiva temple but met with opposition from hereditary priests, who said that they alone had the right to consecrate temples. Sri Narayana Guru smiled and replied that they were welcome to go to any temple they wished, and that he would be satisfied with those who came and prayed at the temple consecrated by him. Initially, almost all the worshippers were from the “backward class” Ezhava community that the Guru was born into, but soon afterwards, all manner of devotees began visiting the temple consecrated by him. In ancient times, before the mist of wars and conquests clouded the belief systems and practices that had been in vogue for millennia, the Guru would have instantly been accepted as a Brahmin, given the philosophical and priestly qualities he acquired.
Judged not by the accidental yardstick of birth but the standard of subsequent attainment, there is no doubt that one of the founding fathers of the Republic, Dr Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar, was a scholar from an early age, a fact that his writings subsequently confirmed. Consequently, he too could be said to acquire the characteristics of the scholar caste. Subsequently, he became a fighter for causes dear to his heart and mind, thereby moving into the fighter caste whose duty is to protect our country and its citizens. It remains a matter of regret in many that Dr Ambedkar was not chosen as the first Prime Minister of India, for had he been given that responsibility, the country would have evolved in a manner very different from the way it did. Caste ought not to come from birth but from experience and study. Unfortunately, the notion of caste by birth within a particular faith has become embedded in our society, with as yet no sign of the actual system staging a revival. In a context where caste by birth needs to be replaced by caste through learning and experience, it is a matter of surprise that some born into faiths whose scriptures make no mention of caste are seeking to bring caste into their theologies. Those who seek to bring hierarchy by birth into theologies that acknowledge all humanity to be born equal in merit need to ask themselves whether they are being true to the Founders and the Revealers of such faiths by seeking to bring into them a concept alien to the foundational principles of such faiths. The doctrines of Sanatan Dharma, the Bible and the Quran teach about the equality of humankind. As was said during a period of the history of India that appears to have been forgotten, Janmana Jayate Shudra, Karmana Jayate Bahuda. Each is born into the same “caste”, and only subsequently moves on to another. It is said that man and woman do not live by bread alone, so it could be affirmed that society cannot function through just one, any one, of the four castes. Each is needed, each is equal in importance to the others. The “caste” (profession) of an individual, if defined solely by the accident of birth, is akin to the children of a doctor being assumed to be doctors, irrespective of whether they are trained and proficient in that discipline or not. Rather than the doctrine of caste by birth being spread to other faiths, what is needed in the faith where caste still remains is to return to the system of affixing an individual’s caste through his or her learning and experience.

Caste by birth should not spread but disappear

A Karnataka win is key to Rahul’s 2024 dreams (The Sunday Guardian)

 

A BJP defeat in Karnataka would echo around the world, for the state is the southern fortress of the BJP, and losing it would convey an impression of vulnerability in 2024.

Atal Bihari Vajpayee was a much loved Prime Minister, and overall growth rates during his tenure were good. Even the Opposition was resigned to another five years of the NDA government. And then, in 2004 the voting figures resulted in a Congress-led coalition forming the Union Government. As things stand, it seems an impossibility for the BJP led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi to be bested in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, but memories of 2004 are driving Rahul’s efforts at an encore through a united front against the BJP in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls. A still disunited Opposition is raising their poll planks of economic hardship and Chinese belligerence on the border. In order to wipe away memories of the corruption associated with past governments, the Congress Party in particular has been trying to tar the BJP with the same charge of corruption that was so successfully brought against the UPA in 2014. Congress rule implies that once again it will be the writ of 10 Janpath that prevails in South Block. After all, in effect the Congress high command comprises just Sonia Gandhi, Rahul and Priyanka, although their hold has been weakened by the post-2014 lack of access to power at the Centre. In Rajasthan, most Congress MLAs had refused to obey the apparent desire of the party high command to replace Gehlot with Sachin Pilot. The Sonia-Rahul-Priyanka triumvirate had then accepted that if nominated Chief Minister, Pilot would lack the numbers needed to get anywhere near a majority within the state Congress Legislature Party. However, the soft corner that Sonia, Rahul and Priyanka have for Pilot remains, which is why he has once again been tacitly permitted to rebel against Gehlot, despite the harm that such a reopening of wounds not yet healed would do to the party’s prospects for a repeat victory in Rajasthan.
The focus of the triumvirate is less on Jaipur than on Bangalore. Inserting himself into a position of leadership over the other parties opposed to the BJP is a priority for Rahul Gandhi. In such a task, defeating the BJP in next month’s Assembly polls in Karnataka is essential. The calculation is that a victory in Karnataka would diminish the view within anti-BJP voters in several states that a vote for the Congress would be wasted, as it was considered too weak in all but a very few states to seriously challenge the BJP. A win in Karnataka, those around the triumvirate believe, would once again tempt the minorities into the Congress basket and away from the attraction of regional or sectarian parties.
After Gehlot’s “closet revolt”, were the Congress to secure a majority in Karnataka, there is speculation that AICC president Mallikarjun Kharge may become the Chief Minister of Karnataka, leaving Siddaramaiah to decide whether he should serve under Kharge or remain outside what A.K. Antony calls “the cool shades of power”. D.K. Shivakumar, who heads the state unit of the Congress, has already gone on record that he would be happy to serve under Kharge. Rather than say that a shift by him from central to state politics was out of the question, Kharge has remained silent, as has the Congress high command. In a party which Sonia, Rahul and Priyanka dominate, being the AICC president is to have responsibility without power. Meanwhile, although the hold of Prime Minister Narendra Modi remains strong over the national electorate, the Opposition is calculating that economic conditions will worsen as the Lok Sabha elections approach, and that the dagger thrusts from China on the border would multiply. In the meantime, they plan to intensify their efforts at pinning corruption charges on the BJP leadership.
Whether corruption charges gain traction or the economy and the China factor follow the dismal trajectory mapped out by the Opposition, only the future will tell. Rahul, Mamata and Kejriwal are each looking to the economic situation to unlock votes for themselves. In Karnataka, the BJP leadership gave an unexpected promotion to Basavaraj Bommai, and the present Chief Minister’s political fortunes depend on what voters decide in a month. A BJP defeat in Karnataka would echo around the world, for the state is the southern fortress of the BJP, and losing it would convey an impression of vulnerability in 2024. The same international newspapers and television channels that for years have claimed that “democracy is dead” in India will forget having ever said so, and celebrate the defeat of the BJP in its southern citadel as a triumph of the very same democracy that they have so often declared to be extinct. A Congress victory in Karnataka would assist Rahul Gandhi in his efforts at overtaking Mamata Banerjee and Arvind Kejriwal as the acknowledged leader of an anti-BJP opposition alliance during the 2024 Lok Sabha polls. Not so much for the Prime Minister, but for the ex-MP from Kalpetta, a lot rides on the May 2023 Karnataka Assembly results. Rahul clearly shares the view of Jairam Ramesh that the Congress Party ought to be the leader of the opposition alliance, and is looking to a win in Karnataka to make the leaders of other anti-BJP parties accept that logic. Were he to face a disaster in the form of a BJP victory in Karnataka, or a googly in the shape of the AAP seat tally nearing double digits, Rahul’s quest for leadership of the opposition space may continue to be an impossible

A Karnataka win is key to Rahul’s 2024 dreams

Not prosecution but persecution of Trump (The Sunday Guardian)

 

Before District Attorney Bragg stepped into the frame, it would have been easier for a competitor to defeat Trump.

New York has slipped several notches down the safety ladder since Rudy Giuliani was Mayor during 1994-2001. Although a well-regarded former police officer is now holding Giuliani’s old job, robberies and murders have shot up in New York despite his efforts. New York, once an iconic city, is sliding to the depths reached by Los Angeles, a city that has become unlivable for those not wealthy. Indeed, New York is closing in on the title of the most crime-prone metropolis in the US, if the many crimes that are by custom ignored by the police get added on to the tally. Given such a situation, it would have been reasonable to assume that District Attorney (DA) Alvin Bragg should have been spending much time on the waves of crime that are visible in New York, but the DA’s attention is instead on former President Donald J. Trump. He has thrown almost three dozen indictments against Trump. One, details of which was leaked with the ferocity of a thunderstorm, was a payment made to an adult movie star to remain silent about her relationship with Trump during the 2016 Presidential election. Incidentally, President Biden, is still seething that Hillary Clinton lost the sprint to the Oval Office to Trump, an individual both consider to be a buffoon. For this, Biden pinned the responsibility on Vladimir Putin, and in 2022, he finally got what he thought was a chance to humiliate the Russian leader. With the same emotionalism and lack of foresight that made President George W. Bush go after “Sad-Dam” Hussein in Iraq in 2003, Biden has turbocharged NATO’s military offensive against Putin, especially since the President of the Russian Federation launched a war against Ukraine on 24 February 2022.
Only the most gullible would believe that Putin kept information about his impending attack from Xi Jinping when the two embraced each other in Beijing just days before the Russian attack began. That list seemingly includes many of the leaders of Europe, who have been queuing up since the war started to implore Xi to get Putin to reverse course. This when the CCP supremo is the major, some would say the only, beneficiary of Putin’s war on Ukraine. The latest pair of European leaders to make the pilgrimage to Beijing for the honour of the privilege of being ushered into the presence of Xi were Emmanuel Macron and Ursula von der Leyen. It had been assumed within the councils of NATO that the economic havoc caused by the prolonging of the Ukraine war would affect not the West but only the poorer countries, as also Russia itself. Instead, the way the war has developed has also hit consumers in the US and Europe.
Interestingly, China is visibly ensuring that Russia continues to be able to fight a long war that drains NATO of weapons, armaments the alliance may need in a future conflict in the Indo-Pacific. During World War II, the US ensured that the USSR was enabled to fight on until the German Wehrmacht got drained and defeated. Now China is assisting Russia to continue the war until NATO gets exhausted. This would give the PLA the respite it needs to launch its plan of taking control of Taiwan. Given that Biden is paying vastly more attention to Ukraine than he is to Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq, Libya and the South China Sea put together, the calculation within the CMC is that the point when NATO is exhausted as a consequence of the Russia-Ukraine war will come during the third term of CCP General Secretary Xi, thereby enabling him to forcibly occupy Taiwan.
District Attorney Bragg’s team seems to have leaked information copiously about Trump and Stormy Daniels, the adult film actress. Given the conservative nature of several Republicans, it may have been assumed by Democrats that a financial transaction of the sort that the 45th President’s then lawyer Michael Cohen had with Stormy Daniels may turn several voters away from Trump and into the Biden camp. The problem behind such reasoning is that almost nobody in Trump’s support base believes their hero to be anything other than what he has openly been all his adult life, a playboy. The Stormy Daniels indictment has instead ensured that Trump has gained on his competitors. As the Republican nominee, Trump may even choose a feisty lady of colour as his Vice-Presidential candidate, such as Nikki Haley. The DA’s indictment has forced all his Republican competitors to revert to their pre-2021 stance of abasing themselves before Trump, a list that includes a man Trump’s backers had marked out for the hangman’s noose on 6 January 2021, Mike Pence. Over the decades, Trump had evaded prosecution for the many actions that his subordinates carried out, and it is improbable that Bragg would be able to prove in court the felony charges that he has flung at Trump . Even if the ex-President were to be sent to prison for a while on charges that a neutral jury would be hard put to unanimously endorse beyond reasonable doubt, such travail could assure Trump’s victory in the 2024 Presidential polls. Meanwhile, his appeals would wend their way through a legal system that has been transformed in its chemistry during his four years in the White House. Before District Attorney Bragg stepped into the frame, it would have been easier for a competitor to defeat Trump. But that was before the halo of victimhood descended atop his scowling countenance.

Not prosecution but persecution of Trump

India needs greater VVIP accountability, not less (The Sunday Guardian)

 

How many colonial-era laws will the present critics of such laws discard if they return to high office, when in the past, they held on to each such law and used (or rather, misused) them with zest?

Pratap Bhanu Mehta is a greatly respected thinker. He has (in the Indian Express) penned an op ed to the effect that there are traces of vindictiveness within the high echelons of the BJP. An example cited is the manner in which the colonial-era law relating to criminal defamation was used by a little-known complainant to allege that an entire backward caste community was defamed by a remark made by Rahul Gandhi. The Congress leader’s subsequent ouster from Parliament has come in handy for foes of Prime Minister Modi, as they have been touring the world warning that democracy is being made extinct in India. Their argument is that the Prime Minister, assisted by his closest associates, has systematically drained the governance system in India of the effectiveness of the checks and balances designed within the constitutional framework to ensure the absence of authoritarian tendencies within the executive branch. That the BJP has lost several state Assembly elections since 2014 and is looking at an uphill Assembly contest in the party’s southern citadel of Karnataka seem at odds with the picturisation of a rampaging ruling party that subdues all other parties by whatever means that comes to hand.
The maximum sentence the Surat court passed on the criminal defamation suit brought against Rahul Gandhi was a surprise. The complainant portrayed remarks made about the likes of Nirav Modi and Lalit Modi as an attack on OBCs, which implies that both are from that politically consequential segment of Indian society. Neither Lalit nor Nirav Modi are OBCs. For another, such complaints fail to take account of the fact that parliamentary democracy as a process is usually noisy, sometimes even rising to the level of cacophony, yet is infinitely preferable to the absence of jousting narratives in an authoritarian state. Given the Surat precedent, a blizzard of similar cases can be expected against a multitude of politicians, including several in the BJP.
Although triggered by a court verdict that in turn was based on the laws of the land (much of which continues to date back to the British era), Rahul Gandhi’s removal from the rolls of the Lok Sabha has only added abundant fuel to the multiplying number of claims being made that India is no longer a democracy. The most affected by the perception of such an extreme view of the state of Indian democracy is Narendra Modi himself. Despite this being the case, it has been assumed without any substantiation that the events preceding the removal of Rahul from the Lok Sabha’s list of MPs were choreographed by the Prime Minister himself. It is illogical to place responsibility for the Surat complaint and its after-effects on the shoulders of the very individual who is at the greatest risk of reputational damage from the disqualification of Rahul Gandhi. It has become the fashion for critics of Modi to have everything that goes right in India pass unmentioned by them, but to assert that anything going wrong is because of PM Modi. All the blame for problems real and imagined are pinned on a single individual. The Prime Ministers of the UK or India, or the President of the US, does not have the overarching power within a country that a genuinely authoritarian leader such as CCP General Secretary Xi Jinping has. India is a democracy that has numerous elected authorities, many competing against and opposing the BJP itself. Witness the astringent manner being resorted to by Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal when he talks about PM Modi. Which is the authoritarian state where such public criticisms are a commonplace against the Head of Government? Calling India and its contentious, clamorous democracy “fascist” is to be unfair to the people of our country, who have kept the flame of democracy alight for 75 years and counting.
Shakespeare asked “What’s in a name?” According to those objecting to his remarks, the implication made by Rahul Gandhi was that those having a particular surname shared the same proven traits (including presumably the ability to charm bank managers into handing over unsecured loans worth hundreds of crores of rupees) of Nirav Modi and Lalit Modi. There may be a few citizens in India having “Gandhi” as a surname, and yet whose moral character may be the opposite of the saintly example set by the Mahatma. Would it be correct to assume that because of his surname, Rahul Gandhi exhibits the same behavioral patterns as any other individual who has the same surname? Obviously not. Rahul’s quip about the Modi surname must have caused some of the members of his own party to wince.
There is the charge of “persecution of political opponents” that is repeatedly levied against PM Modi. Nine years after Modi became PM, the only charge of criminal conduct brought against Rahul related to him and his mother acquiring controlling shares in the company owning the National Herald. And this charge was initiated not by the Government of India but by Subramanian Swamy, who had nothing to do with the BJP when he first brought the National Herald matter to court. Whether it be in the case of the National Herald matter or in the very few cases lodged by the present government against VVIPs who held prominent governmental positions during the UPA period, these have not even been fast-tracked. The cases linger on and on, in the way usual in this country. Several matters that took place during 2004-14, such as manipulations in price of essential commodities and equity stocks, or in the running and ruining of several PSUs, have yet to witness punishment of the actual VVIP perpetrators. These were those who during the UPA era bore responsibility for departments that exhibited several examples of misgovernance. During the UPA decade, among many other matters of concern, there was the data co-location scam in the NSE, the sudden death of reports of petroleum discoveries in Indian coastal waters, and the way in which Air India and other PSUs became basket cases. Yet who are the UPA-era VVIPs directly or indirectly responsible for such situations that have been punished for such actions? None. A strange definition of “vindictiveness”, indeed.
This may come as a surprise to the New York Times, the Manchester Guardian or other media outlets that claim that all was brightness in India until 2014 but became dark thereafter, but there are many among Modi’s admirers who believe not that the Prime Minister has been excessively harsh with his principal political opponents, but who instead wish that the broomstick of accountability be wielded more vigorously by him. Those who have bulldozed into the dust and dirt of poverty and death countless citizens through wilful misfeasance, those who have terrorized many for decades through goons and guns, need to be held to account, and watch their ill-gotten gains vanish in a cloud of bulldozer-created dust. Their ill-gotten constructions need to either be transferred to public use or face the consequences of the breaking of the law by their owners.
How many colonial-era laws will the present critics of such laws discard if they return to high office, when in the past, they held on to each such law and used (or rather, misused) them with zest?

India needs greater VVIP accountability, not less

PM Modi is fashioning a post-colonial India (The Sunday Guardian)

 

Criminal defamation ought to be removed from the statute books forthwith, and hopefully Prime Minister Narendra Modi will get this done in his drive to cleanse the IPC and the Criminal Code of colonial-era practices.

The British, being colonial masters who were engaged in the suppression of the population, left behind several laws that have no place in the 21st century, nor indeed in any country where the government is elected by the people. In matters relating to industry, Prime Minister Narasimha Rao removed some of the most irksome regressive laws, such as the IDRA regulations providing for the prosecution of officials in a company, were that entity to function efficiently and in the process, produce beyond its government-mandated capacity. A major culling of colonial era laws has taken place only since Narendra Modi took charge as Prime Minister in 2014. So entrenched is the opposition to such removal of colonial laws within the political and bureaucratic structures that the process has encountered roadblock upon roadblock, each needing to be painstakingly removed. There are several Victorian individuals in India, and among them was a group from a Karnataka town. A week ago, they disrupted and stopped a group of ladies from holding a get-together in a hotel in Doddapete, where there would have been dancing accompanied by disco music. Clearly, having a good time was not saintly. It must be admitted that to those not aficionados of disco music, the decibel level is unpleasantly high. Perhaps a regulation needs to be put in place that permits disco music and dancing to take place only in soundproof portals, as otherwise the noise is less than bearable to those not enjoying the fun. However, was the holding of such an event reason enough to try and use the bludgeon of the law to stop it and seek to shame the ladies who were participating in behaviour that the Bajrang Dal regards as inadmissible? With such moral policing spreading in Karnataka, securing investment from outside or inside the country would get difficult. Fortunately, the local Superintendent of Police did not see anything heinous in a get-together organised by the ladies, and refused to book either them or the hotel management. Unfortunately, far too many SPs act differently, and who therefore wield the lash of colonial-era laws and regulations with zest.
Since his party was ousted from power in 2014, Rahul Gandhi has been talking in locations across continents about the effects of colonial era laws in India, but during the UPA period, he did nothing to protect citizens from them. Now he has been found guilty by a court for defamation relating to a surname. His comments were indeed in bad taste, but is the concept of criminal defamation justified in a democracy? Had some individuals having the same surname that Rahul seems intensely to dislike brought forward a suit of civil defamation and asked for Rahul to pay a fixed sum in compensation to persons with that surname, that may have been a better course to adopt than the criminal route. As this columnist has been pointing out for years, criminal defamation ought to be removed from the statute books forthwith, and hopefully Prime Minister Narendra Modi will get this done in his drive to cleanse the criminal code of colonial-era practices. Talking about the police, there are more than a few former members of the Indian Police Service in the BJP, and many of them have had distinguished careers. The point about recruiting an IPS or IAS retired official into a national political party was to ensure that the vision even of its state leaders remains centred around national needs. So far as the BJP is concerned, securing a third term for Prime Minister Modi in 2024 is essential if the mission he began in 2014 is to be accomplished. In every state, those in the BJP placed in charge of state units need to act in accordance with what is needed in terms of not just that state but the entire country. It was therefore a surprise when a former IPS officer, Tamil Nadu BJP chief K. Annamalai, has been saying that he would quit his post were the BJP to not go solo in next year’s Lok Sabha polls. In particular, he was opposed to an alliance with the AIADMK. Once such in-house criticism of an allied party becomes public, it harms relations between that party and the BJP. Given that the DMK under Chief Minister Stalin is steadfast in his support for the Congress Party, the only significant alliance that the BJP has access to in Tamil Nadu is with the AIADMK. Does BJP state president Annamalai believe that the BJP would be able to secure more seats in the Lok Sabha polls solo? If so, his view of the situation in the state is different from that of many others. In 2004, the BJP lost to the Congress party because both its southern allies, the Telugu Desam and the AIADMK were trounced in the Lok Sabha polls. Given the drift of the public mood in Andhra Pradesh, it seems likely that the TDP would this time around get a fair number of seats in 2024 if allied to the BJP. The BJP leadership will need to take a hard look at what is on offer by prospective allies, for in Andhra Pradesh—unlike in Telangana, where going solo may be a better option—an alliance with one of the two principal regional parties in that state is essential. Every Lok Sabha seat will count in the next Lok Sabha, and state leaders in the BJP need to factor in that reality while discussing options, especially in a manner that becomes public. While Annamalai is justifiably proud of being selected as an IPS officer, he needs to remember that the IPS post-Independence is not expected to behave in the same way as they did while serving a foreign power.
TN BJP chief Annamalai needs to win over his team through his behaviour, and not rely on the fact that he was once in uniform. Next, he needs to understand the national ground realities of the 2024 contest, and frame his responses to possible alliances accordingly. Abusing a friendly party in public weakens the bond with that party and affects both the BJP and the other party at the hustings, as numerous elections have shown. PM Narendra Modi is seeking to fashion a post-colonial India. Every institution, every individual, concerned with governance needs to help rather than hinder this super-heavy task.

PM Modi is fashioning a post-colonial India

Modi and Kishida must supercharge India-Japan ties (The Sunday Guardian)

 

Few remember that in 1868, once the reforms consequent to the Meiji Restoration got under way, India was the largest source of raw materials to Japan.

When Fumio Kishida took over as the Prime Minister of Japan in 2021, a widespread perception both in Japan and elsewhere was that he was much less aware of the present-day threats facing Japan than was his predecessor, Shinzo Abe. Since then, Kishida has shown through many of his actions that he too is focused on the manner in which the PRC under CCP General Secretary Xi Jinping is leveraging the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) in order to wrest concessions from several countries while threatening others. Abe made good relations with India a high priority, and gave precedence to the Indo-Pacific rather than to the primary theatre of the 20th century, the Atlantic. While mostly going along with his western partners in the way they have sought to use Ukraine in their longstanding quest to weaken Russia, Kishida has continued with the Sakhalin 1 project, in which Japanese and Indian companies are partnering with each other. As a consequence, not only is Japan getting the benefit of oil from the project, but Tokyo refused to join in the initial chorus of loud disapproval that emanated from Washington, London and Berlin in particular (not to mention Kiev) at India’s realistic stance that a cutting off of purchases from a country that comprises half of the land area of the Eurasian continent was an exercise in self-harm. In this, Japan is different from Taiwan and South Korea, both being countries that have joined with Germany and other NATO powers in seeking a complete cutoff of purchases from Russia. It was clear to the Japanese that Prime Minister Narendra Modi was acting in the national self-interest by ramping up rather than shutting down oil imports from the Russian Federation since the start of the Russia-Ukraine war in early 2022. The way in which western nations are dealing with the war is not just harming their economic futures, but their goodwill in the Global South in particular, no matter what the voting figures in the UN General Assembly show.
It is a sign of the times that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia ostentatiously chose Beijing as the capital in which to sign a peace agreement with Iran. Had Riyadh sought to do so in Washington, policymakers in that capital of inflated egos would have made the acceptance by Iran of conditions plainly unacceptable to its government as the price for the privilege of signing the Saudi-Iranian accord in Camp David. A lot has changed since the 1990s, but it appears as though the hangover of that unipolar decade in world history is continuing in the US and in some of its Atlanticist partners. This when fewer and fewer countries regard good relations with the US in particular to be a priority, a situation caused not only by many of the self-goals made by successive Atlanticist capitals but by efforts (many very much in the open) by the Sino-Russian alliance to wean away as many countries as they can from partnering with the US and its allies. In Asia, not a small continent, only South Korea, Taiwan and Japan have adopted the NATO policy of shunning Russia, and among these three, Japan has made pragmatic exceptions such as the refusal to walk away from the Sakhalin 1 project.
India and Japan have long been partners. Few remember that in 1868, once the reforms consequent to the Meiji Restoration got under way, India was the largest source of raw materials to Japan. In 1883, there was an active shipping route from Mumbai to Kobe, while in 1915, the primary export market of Japan was India. Since Prime Minister Narasimha Rao brought in economic reforms in 1992, South Korea has far outpaced Japan in establishing commercial linkages with India, although under Prime Ministers Modi and Abe, the Japanese appeared to be catching up. Were restrictions on the use of human resources from India reduced in Japan, that country would be able to price Chinese ships in particular out of most markets. Another field where India could be helpful would be in the provision of carers for the elderly in Japan, a demographic that is rising substantially. A promising field is that of nuclear power, where both countries could collaborate in safer, cheaper alternatives to present nuclear power systems. Another is cooperation in setting up cyber defences, and in developing Artificial Intelligence in ways that could blunt the use of AI in non-conventional warfare by a power hostile to both the leading democracies of Asia. What is needed by Japan is the spirit and ambition of Shinzo Abe, and Fumio Kishida. The Japanese PM could, together with Narendra Modi, bring back India-Japan commercial relations to the level they attained a century ago, before World War II and later Cold War 1.0 blighted such progress.

Modi and Kishida must supercharge India-Japan ties

Rahul, please do not trash the India Story (The Sunday Guardian)

 

On his annual sojourns to other countries in the 21st century Anglosphere, Rahul ought not to come across as having a visible and visceral dislike not just for Prime Minister Narendra Modi but for the Republic of India itself.

This columnist confesses to a bias in favour of the two children of one of the nicest individuals he has ever encountered, Rajiv Ratan Birjees Gandhi. Before his mindspace being taken over by both the Congress Party as well as the official bureaucracy that began during 1983 and was complete by 1985, Rajiv sought to free India from a rut that dated back not just to the British period but even sooner. Among the achievements of this interlude of relative freedom from control by the politico-official machine, Rajiv sought to adopt Mani Shankar Aiyar’s plan to broadbase governance in India by strengthening the panchayat system, a move that the Mahatma would have approved of. Satyen Pitroda helped ensure that our country’s first steps towards a communications revolution took place, and there were a few other transformative moves as well. In a way, Rajiv’s backing away through the Muslim Women’s Bill from Arif Mohammad Khan’s desire that the Supreme Court verdict giving justice to Shah Bano be affirmed marked the moment when things started going sour for him. No longer was Rajiv seen as a harbinger of change, instead he was seen as having been co-opted into the pit of the status quo. The tragically shortened political and administrative career of Rajiv Gandhi, which began with another tragedy, the death of his brother Sanjay in an air crash in 1980, ought to have been the foundation of the political education of Rahul Gandhi, who is clearly the choice of Congress supremo Sonia Gandhi for the role of Prime Minister of India, to form for the family a quartet together with his great-grandfather, grandmother and father.
The advice given to Rahul seems not to include the imbibing the lessons from the trajectory of the three Nehru family Prime Ministers of India mentioned earlier. On his annual sojourns to other countries in the 21st century Anglosphere such as the UK and the US, Rahul ought not to come across as having a visible and visceral dislike not just for Prime Minister Narendra Modi but for the Republic of India itself. It is for him not just Modi who needs to change, but the whole of India. It’s always the refrain of India being in a deep moral, even existential, crisis because voters in 2014 chose the BJP led by Narendra Modi rather than the Congress led by Sonia Gandhi to rule. Even in a matter as consequential for a country that our leaders in 1947 allowed to be partitioned on the grounds of faith, Rahul appears to many to question the very meaning of the Union of India by giving the impression of believing that the model he favours for the country is that of the European Union, where independent countries have formed a loose confederation. To Rahul, present-day India appears as a dystopian hell, ruled by an all-powerful autocrat who was presumably therefore responsible even for ordering that the BJP lose 17 state elections and counting since 2014. A Prime Minister who in Rahul’s words has choked to suffocation democracy in India, such that the country has become what Italy or Spain was in the first half of the previous century, a fascist state. Certainly the BJP has overreacted in some matters, such as in its blocking of a tawdry cut and paste BBC hit job on not just Modi but the whole of India, or in the way in which punitive laws capable of being applied in myriad ways to deprive a citizen of his or her liberty continue being used by officials in the manner they have been for the past 75 years. However, India is very far from being what Rahul daily describes it to be during sojourns in countries where the well-heeled send their children to study and themselves to settle down in.
Rahul needs to get a tutorial from the maestro in the use of colonial-era penal laws, Palaniappan Chidambaram, the Home Minister who sent Anna Hazare to jail in 2011 and whose tenure, among other things, saw the wrecking of a thriving domestic exchange that had gone global, to the relief of another exchange familiar to Chidambaram that was feeling the heat of competition from the felled rival. Not to mention the energetic use during successive governments including the UPA of the very agencies that Rahul claims are being used solely to harass individuals that include Abhishek Banerjee, Lalu Yadav and others, most of whom remain unknown. Does Rahul believe that none of the HNI targets of the CBI or the ED have made a rupee more than what they get as salaries. Of course, he would be aware that some of his relatives in Italy saw massive changes in their lifestyle beginning with the 1980s although of course, this must have been a phenomenon entirely unrelated to a hugely influential relative of theirs long resident in India. Unlike Modi, who as PM has eliminated more than half of colonial era restrictive laws, the ten years of the UPA saw the frequent use of such laws without any discernible request emanating from Rahul that such laws and practices be abandoned. There definitely remain more than a few dystopian features to the post-colonial structure of governance in India, but almost all of them were around during 2004-14, the period when Rahul Gandhi had a somewhat greater influence over the workings of government than he does these days.
In 2014, and then in 2019, his family would have been delighted to see Rahul ascend to the Prime Ministership, a view of his capabilities that he does not appear to strongly disagree with. Which is probably why he is working so hard to challenge Mamata Banerjee, Arvind Kejriwal, KCR and Tejashwi Yadav in being the politician who is the most vocally dismissive of Modi’s achievements. Unlike Rahul, however, the others have not so far thrown out the baby that is their country from the bathwater that is their differences with Prime Minister Modi. In an era where India bids fair to drain away a lot of the investment flowing away from China, the verbal interventions of Rahul Gandhi seem aimed, perhaps inadvertently, to prevent tens of billions of dollars of investment needed for jobs and higher incomes from relocating from China into India, rather than going only to Vietnam, Indonesia or Thailand. Fortunately, while his audiences enjoy the repartee and the barbs so frequently flung by Rahul at not just Modi but in effect the country of which both the Prime Minister and the MP from Kalpetta are citizens, much fewer take his opinions as gospel. Many know India better, and despite (or perhaps because of) the clearly Hinduphobic hysteria spewed by the BBC, CNN, NYT or the Manchester Guardian about India, people across the globe sense that this is India’s time. Please don’t try and stop that bus, Rahul, but hop onto it. The India Story is real.

Rahul, please do not trash the India Story

75 years on, time for an accelerated transformation (The Sunday Guardian)

 

2023 should become a year of accelerated transformation towards a system where anomalies and injustices get uncovered and rectified seamlessly.

Since taking over as the Prime Minister of India in 2014, Narendra Damodardas Modi managed to consign to the dustbin more than 30,000 laws and regulations that had not simply been preserved but added on to since 1947. Equal justice under the law is at the core of the democratic process, else the essence of “one man, one vote” would approach the status of a nullity. Over the course of decades in journalism, encounters multiply, such as with a family where the spouse of a smallholder attracted the lascivious attention of the son of a big landholder, who was moreover the village moneylender. Being an only son with four sisters, every wish of the brat was akin to a royal command where his parents were concerned. When monetary inducements failed to tempt the smallholder or his wife to barter away the virtue of the latter, it was child’s play (or in this case, the desire to play of a youth) to ensure that an obsequious policeman from a nearby police station locked up the husband of the woman who was being sought for the pleasure of the youngster, on the basis of an oral complaint made by a nearby landlord who had never actually ever been in contact with the accused, and who had been given a complaint scrawled by the policeman to sign. Subsequently, the wife was told that the only way her husband would be released from the lockup (where he was being daily subjected to kicks and blows by the policeman and his colleagues) would be to succumb to the demands of the big landholder’s son. All that needs to be said is that once the couple were together again, they left behind their patch of land and shifted to a city, where a job in a store was secured on account of the smallholder being more than merely literate. Given the relatively very low bar required for taking away in practice the liberty of an individual in India, such accounts of the misuse of colonial era laws in order to intimidate and harass others are often too numerous to recount even in a village, leave alone a panchayat. Fortunately, the High Courts and the Supreme Court often step in to rectify the abuses of the legal process that come to their attention, but these must only be a small fraction of the many acts of misuse of the law that take place. Even in cases where an obvious miscarriage of justice has been discovered further up the judicial ladder, the penalty for those guilty is not always more than a possible verbal slap on the wrist. As a consequence of the lingering miasma of colonialism that continues to exude its reek of injustice, in too many instances, even those guilty of serially being responsible for deliberate falsification of charges and wrongful arrest seldom get subjected to anything other than a notional penalty. There has been an uproar among some at the way in which the homes of mafiosi are being bulldozed in parts of the country. If such critics were made to encounter the victims, male and female, of the predators that mafiosi are, they would understand why political parties that shelter and defend such criminal elements are losing ground electorally to those that call for stringent punishment for the guilty.
The Indian Police Act (IPA) was promulgated in 1860 and is still in force. There has been much talk of police reform, and certainly this is needed, to prevent a force intended for public good to morph into an instrument rewarding private greed. More than a few who have had distinguished careers in the police service have pointed to changes in the IPA designed to give freedom to the police from political interference. The problem comes when what gets sought is not just avoiding interference but political oversight. With all its faults, the electoral system ensures a check on politicians, and every election and byelection shows how the voter in India has become more aware of the power inherent in exercising the right to vote. Freeing any wing of the wings of government from oversight would create conditions for misuse of those powers rather than ending such an evil. What is needed is to ensure that transparency multiplies, and in the fulfillment of such an objective, technology has become a factor delivering substantial assistance. While such capabilities could be and sometimes are misused, the fact that a smartphone can serve as a video or audio recording would assist in documenting misdeeds, including by the use of the threat of one or the other provision of some colonial era law or regulation to intimidate an individual into submission. The Supreme Court has acted in a welcome manner by permitting the live streaming of proceedings, and a similar facility needs to be introduced in every court in the country. During the days when he was Chief Minister of Gujarat, Narendra Modi once spoke to a visitor, an academic who dabbles in journalism, that his effort was to ensure that there would be online public tracking of every file, so that delays would immediately become evident. Another task would be to reduce the number of stages that a file has to go through before a final decision gets recorded. Since Modi took over the Prime Ministership in 2014, there has indeed been substantial progress in such a direction, and the expectation is that such an ameliorative process will continue. In an era when opacity was the norm, files would inexplicably get piled up at the desk of a particular official or minister, and rapidly diminish were the right visitors to pay him or her a call. Online tracking of the progress of files is becoming the practice in a rising number of operations, and that is indeed a welcome trend. Even in matters as routine, but in so many instances as important, as the delivery of a letter, the sender of a letter by courier or speed post is able to track its progress. The Indian postal service has been doing a lot more than the credit it gets, and the introduction of online tracking is among its practices that need to be generalised across the field of administration.
Consigning to the wastebasket regulations intended only for generating visits from those armed with a packet stuffed with currency notes, or ensuring the online tracking of files on matters of importance to the citizen, are some of the ways in which India can overtake its peers to be an economic and political model for the rest of the world. Others are the courts, which need to ensure that the delivery of justice does not get clogged not just for months or years, but often for decades. In the 75th year of India’s freedom from colonial control, the task of those in charge of the various wings of governance is to ensure that 2023 becomes a year of accelerated transformation towards a system where anomalies and injustices get uncovered and rectified seamlessly.

75 years on, time for an accelerated transformation

Senator Menendez, help defend the Indo-Pacific (The Sunday Guardian)

 

It is substantially in the hands of Bob Menendez whether or not the resolution recognizing Arunachal Pradesh as part of India passes the US Senate.

The Achilles Heel of the Biden Administration is that the President of the United States has stuffed the higher echelons of his administration with wannabe Europeans. Among policymakers, Europeanists act as though Europe and the US were a single entity separated only by the waters of the North Atlantic. Paraphrasing EAM Jaishankar, while the rest of the world’s problems (barring of course the US itself) are usually not considered America’s problems, Europe’s problems immediately are seen as America’s problem. Donald J. Trump may not be the most popular person in Senator Bob Menendez’s party (or, less openly, in its main rival in the political arena), but he was the first US President in a long while to call out the Europeans for putting in a mere penny to assist Washington in its geopolitical forays, but always expecting a dollar from the US where their own issues were concerned. Whether it be in matters of defence or getting the US to act as the spearhead of European efforts to retain primacy in those parts of the world that had in the past been colonies of states in that continent, Washington has run an extra ten to each of Europe’s mile. The visit of every US President to Europe has been an exercise in unsubtle flattery from the hosts accompanied by a list of demands. Ukraine is different, for President Volodymyr Zelenskyy skips the flattery while constantly upping his demands from the Atlantic Alliance. In days past, V.K. Krishna Menon used to say that if you wanted anything from the Americans, “don’t beg them, kick them”. Zelenskyy has shown that Menon was right, given how President Biden is showing the generosity of a trillionaire Santa Claus by shovelling ever more equipment and help to Ukraine free of cost. This is in contrast to the much more meagre help given to other democracies endangered by an authoritarian state. Neither India or Taiwan has been given even a single artillery round gratis by Joe Biden. Instead of enough of the much-needed advanced—repeat, advanced—defensive and offensive (for the first is useless without the capabilities of the other) missile and aircraft systems, the US sent Taiwan House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and will soon send Speaker Kevin McCarthy. A wonderful pair, to be sure, but of limited value in case a kinetic conflict were to ensue across both sides of the Taiwan straits.
Senator Bob Menendez needs to avoid showing that he is one with President Biden in subliminally considering himself to be a European who has swum across the pond, and not an American, or part of a people who are not European, Asian, South American or African but a blend of all four of these continents and its peoples. It was the wannabe European in the White House that would have motivated Senator Menendez to demand that the alliance with India be torn to shreds by President Biden through imposing CAATSA sanctions after S-400 systems were purchased by India from the Russian Federation. Senator Menendez should instead have asked Donald Trump why the US THAAD defence system was not offered to India on concessional terms (given that they would be useful to US security as well) while the S-400 deal was being negotiated by Delhi with Moscow. Is it that “Panda Huggers” in both the Trump as well the Biden administration would fret that their friends in Beijing may pull a long face at any such offer of the THAAD system to India ? After all, if Bob Menendez is so unhappy about Russia’s land grab in Ukraine as to have signed up to Victoria Nuland’s “Let’s Punish India” policy, why is the same anger missing at China’s land grabs in Asia? This is, after all, Cold War 2.0, not Cold War 1.0. In such a context, having India as an ally in the Indo-Pacific against the PRC is essential for the security of the US. Fortunately, there are others in the Biden administration who understand where the principal threat to the US is coming from, President Biden had their wiser counsel, and refused to do what would have delighted both Beijing and Moscow, which would have been to place CAATSA sanctions on India.
It is substantially in the hands of Bob Menendez whether or not the US Senate resolution recognizing Arunachal Pradesh as part of India passes the Senate, before being sent to the House of Representatives and finally to the White House for assent. Should the Arunachal bill get signed into law, it would be an affirmation that the US is with India in resisting the expansionism of the authoritarian superpower rampaging in the Indo-Pacific. Both the Sino-Wahhabi and the Sino-Russian lobbies in Washington will seek to stifle that partnership against tyranny, including by following Nuland’s advice to make its passage conditional on India joining hands with those European powers who are committing hara-kiri on themselves by cutting off from the natural resources of Russia, which comprises half the land area of Europe and of Asia combined. Given the times they lived in, a Zbigniew Brzezinski or a Bill Casey could be forgiven their pro-China tilt. During Cold War 1.0, the PRC was invaluable in assisting the US to stymie the USSR. In the era of Cold War 2.0, a partnership with India is even more of an essentiality for the US than that with China in the past, a memo the Nulands in the Biden administration appear to have ignored. The Arunachal bill, should it become law, promises to be a game changer in India-US relations. Both in the Senate and House, and even in the White House if not yet in Foggy Bottom, this needs to be understood and actioned. Over to you, Senator.

The Achilles Heel of the Biden Administration is that the President of the United States has stuffed the higher echelons of his administration with wannabe Europeans. Among policymakers, Europeanists act as though Europe and the US were a single entity separated only by the waters of the North Atlantic. Paraphrasing EAM Jaishankar, while the rest of the world’s problems (barring of course the US itself) are usually not considered America’s problems, Europe’s problems immediately are seen as America’s problem. Donald J. Trump may not be the most popular person in Senator Bob Menendez’s party (or, less openly, in its main rival in the political arena), but he was the first US President in a long while to call out the Europeans for putting in a mere penny to assist Washington in its geopolitical forays, but always expecting a dollar from the US where their own issues were concerned. Whether it be in matters of defence or getting the US to act as the spearhead of European efforts to retain primacy in those parts of the world that had in the past been colonies of states in that continent, Washington has run an extra ten to each of Europe’s mile. The visit of every US President to Europe has been an exercise in unsubtle flattery from the hosts accompanied by a list of demands. Ukraine is different, for President Volodymyr Zelenskyy skips the flattery while constantly upping his demands from the Atlantic Alliance. In days past, V.K. Krishna Menon used to say that if you wanted anything from the Americans, “don’t beg them, kick them”. Zelenskyy has shown that Menon was right, given how President Biden is showing the generosity of a trillionaire Santa Claus by shovelling ever more equipment and help to Ukraine free of cost. This is in contrast to the much more meagre help given to other democracies endangered by an authoritarian state. Neither India or Taiwan has been given even a single artillery round gratis by Joe Biden. Instead of enough of the much-needed advanced—repeat, advanced—defensive and offensive (for the first is useless without the capabilities of the other) missile and aircraft systems, the US sent Taiwan House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and will soon send Speaker Kevin McCarthy. A wonderful pair, to be sure, but of limited value in case a kinetic conflict were to ensue across both sides of the Taiwan straits. Senator Bob Menendez needs to avoid showing that he is one with President Biden in subliminally considering himself to be a European who has swum across the pond, and not an American, or part of a people who are not European, Asian, South American or African but a blend of all four of these continents and its peoples. It was the wannabe European in the White House that would have motivated Senator Menendez to demand that the alliance with India be torn to shreds by President Biden through imposing CAATSA sanctions after S-400 systems were purchased by India from the Russian Federation. Senator Menendez should instead have asked Donald Trump why the US THAAD defence system was not offered to India on concessional terms (given that they would be useful to US security as well) while the S-400 deal was being negotiated by Delhi with Moscow. Is it that “Panda Huggers” in both the Trump as well the Biden administration would fret that their friends in Beijing may pull a long face at any such offer of the THAAD system to India ? After all, if Bob Menendez is so unhappy about Russia’s land grab in Ukraine as to have signed up to Victoria Nuland’s “Let’s Punish India” policy, why is the same anger missing at China’s land grabs in Asia? This is, after all, Cold War 2.0, not Cold War 1.0. In such a context, having India as an ally in the Indo-Pacific against the PRC is essential for the security of the US. Fortunately, there are others in the Biden administration who understand where the principal threat to the US is coming from, President Biden had their wiser counsel, and refused to do what would have delighted both Beijing and Moscow, which would have been to place CAATSA sanctions on India. It is substantially in the hands of Bob Menendez whether or not the US Senate resolution recognizing Arunachal Pradesh as part of India passes the Senate, before being sent to the House of Representatives and finally to the White House for assent. Should the Arunachal bill get signed into law, it would be an affirmation that the US is with India in resisting the expansionism of the authoritarian superpower rampaging in the Indo-Pacific. Both the Sino-Wahhabi and the Sino-Russian lobbies in Washington will seek to stifle that partnership against tyranny, including by following Nuland’s advice to make its passage conditional on India joining hands with those European powers who are committing hara-kiri on themselves by cutting off from the natural resources of Russia, which comprises half the land area of Europe and of Asia combined. Given the times they lived in, a Zbigniew Brzezinski or a Bill Casey could be forgiven their pro-China tilt. During Cold War 1.0, the PRC was invaluable in assisting the US to stymie the USSR. In the era of Cold War 2.0, a partnership with India is even more of an essentiality for the US than that with China in the past, a memo the Nulands in the Biden administration appear to have ignored. The Arunachal bill, should it become law, promises to be a game changer in India-US relations. Both in the Senate and House, and even in the White House if not yet in Foggy Bottom, this needs to be understood and actioned. Over to you, Senator.

Nikki Haley is a formidable challenger to Democrats (The Sunday Guardian)

 

Ron DeSantis, the favourite of the media, has handed over the First Mover advantage to Haley.

Every member of the Republican or Democratic Party who is aware of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis knows that he wants to be the GoP nominee in next year’s Presidential elections. As yet, however, DeSantis has yet not accumulated the courage to announce the obvious. The ambitious Republican hopeful is waiting for what many believe to be a sure bet, which is that Donald Trump can be expected to blow up his chances with some indiscretion. The former President has in his usual manner careened over the past months, flouting both common sense as well as common decency, such as by sitting down to supper with a White Supremacist together with a Black Holocaust Denier. Given his ignorance or uncaring attitude about what is politically incorrect and even toxic (as are Racial Supremacy and Holocaust Denial), the reaction even from within his adopted party to his cosy dinner with two fringe elements must have surprised him. But Donald Trump has spent a lifetime doing such things, and he is not going to change. What is different is the extent of the fall in the backing that he has within the Republican Party in his craving for a second term in the White House. Given that she is the first Governor of South Carolina (and a Republican at that) to have removed the Confederate flag from the precincts of the state capitol, Nikki Haley is also among the overwhelming majority of US citizens who are unafraid to acknowledge the evil that was perpetrated by the Nazis during the 1941-45 mass murder of millions entirely on account of their Jewish faith. At the same time, while having resigned as Ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley has been careful to not cross swords with former President Trump. Indeed, there may exist a chance that she chooses Donald Trump Jr, Trump’s son, as her running mate, something that may convince Donald Trump to let go of his effort as securing the Republican nomination (and losing to a Democratic candidate, provided that individual is not Joe Biden). The younger Trump has shown himself to be a feisty kickboxer in the political arena, and has a way of energizing the Trump base in a way no other surrogate can. Despite his age and other handicaps, the former President of the US appeals to the cowboy and gunslinger instincts of enough members of the Republican Party to make the Democrats dream come true by securing his party’s nomination. The most likely antidote to that could be the candidacy for the Vice-Presidency of his son, who is young enough to still be considered youthful even were he to wait out even four presidential terms without seeking to step into the job his father won in 2016.
In the way that has happened to Prime Minister Rishi Sunak of Britain, nativists within the Republican party may balk at choosing an individual who not only makes no secret of her Indian roots, and who is a woman as well. It must be remembered that the clueless Liz Truss was chosen over Sunak by the Conservative Party faithful, almost certainly because it was too much for most of them to have a non-white family live in 10 Downing Street. Not the Conservative Party base (which still hankers after Boris Johnson) but party MPs chose Sunak over Truss, to their credit. Despite efforts by his ebullient predecessor to fan unrest and criticism of the UK Prime Minister within the Conservative Party, Sunak has soldiered on. Of course, it has helped neither Britain nor him that the Labour Party has mobilised its cadres to make the UK a country where strikes by essential workers have become a commonplace occurrence. The Labour leaders want a situation that is chaotic to a level that would lead to an economic catastrophe by next year. Should that take place, the UK’s present success in maintaining its lead over the rest of Europe in its financial industry may be lost, and with that, the country’s best hope for an early recovery from woes that have been majorly caused by the hypersonic manner in which Boris Johnson (then Prime Minister) joined hands with President Biden to craft a strategy that was designed by them to kneecap Russia. Instead, the backfire from the Biden-Johnson led moves against Putin’s Russia has damaged oedinary lives not just in Europe but across the world. In creating what the Biden-Johnson duo believed would be a one-way street for Russia, they have succeeded in preventing any visible escape from the auto-da-fé that Ukraine has to its cost become. There is no mercy shown by the Zelensky regime to any Ukrainian citizen who dares to point out that the only way to stop the war with Russia is to concede the territories lost to the Russian side since 2014. That year marked the overthrow of the previous regime in Kiev by a band of Russophobes groomed for the task by the US, Britain and Germany, something that Angela Merkel with refreshing honesty had no qualms about admitting last year. Whatever his private views about the Biden-Johnson escalatory tactics being followed by NATO in Ukraine, Prime Minister Sunak has been forced to join other Atlanticist leaders and worship at the shrine of the Kiev regime. By the time the US Presidential elections take place, it is certain that the Ukraine war will be an albatross on the neck of President Biden, and will define his legacy more than the transformational social welfare programs that he is working to implement. Biden is going the way President Johnson did in Vietnam, of making himself unelectable through the prosecution of an increasingly unpopular war on Russia at a time when China is by far the principal adversary of the US.
With her attacks on the adventurism of Xi Jinping and on the terror machine fashioned by Wahhabi extremists, Nikki Haley has long been a target of the Sino-Wahhabi lobby. She will have to overcome the invectives hurled against her by this lobby, besides the worst instincts of the nativist wing of her party. Despite such handicaps, Haley is articulate and attractive as a candidate. Ron DeSantis, the favourite of the media, has handed over the First Mover advantage to Haley, and that may not be the only thing that he loses out on, now that the former Ambassador to the UN has come forward and declared her candidacy for the Republican Presidential nomination in a country where skin colour and ethnicity matter far less than was the case in the 1950s.

Nikki Haley is a formidable challenger to Democrats