Sino-Japanese frictions could be advantageous for India (Sunday Guardian)

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

A Chinese protester destroys a Japanese made police car during the anti-Japanese protests on 19 August 2012. REUTERS hether out of a sense of guilt at the wartime conquest of much of China or because the country provided a cost-effective production platform, Japanese companies began flocking to China since the 1980s in numbers which rivalled their investment in Manchuria during the 1930s. Along with Taiwan, it is investment from Japan that has been the prime mover of Chinese economic expansion. Today, there are around 39,000 Japanese enterprises operating within China, and at the least around 20% of these are now seeking to re-locate from the People's Republic of China (PRC). More than economics, the reason for such an attempted exodus is political. The South China Sea has become a useful means of stoking nationalism among the Chinese people, thereby turning their focus outwards towards perceived injustices by foreign powers (principally Japan) than inwards, towards an examination of the Chinese political system. Japanese managers in China have had to face obloquy and worse, while regional bureaucracies have begun to show differential treatment of Japanese enterprises, as compared to the welcome mat laid out for firms headquartered in other countries. India has the potential of becoming a significant gainer from Sino-Japanese tension, fissures which seem certain to continue into the foreseeable future, now that Beijing has shown that it is willing to court unpopularity throughout Asia by claiming sovereignty over the South China Sea in a manner which negates not only the rights of the rest of the world to navigate within its waters, but that of other countries whose coastlines abut the now contested sea. While Thailand and Indonesia have been relatively quiet as compared to Vietnam and the Philippines, the reality is that every country in Asia other than China (and, interestingly, Taiwan) opposes the Chinese claim to the South China Sea. This claim has been put forward through the use of arguments that could very easily be used by India to claim Tibet as its territory (seeing that the Maharaja of Kashmir had "Tibet Adhipati" as one of his titles and that both Kailash and Mansarovar are located in land now controlled by China). Indeed, if Beijing can claim Tawang on quasi-religious grounds, India can easily follow suit by claiming Kailash and Mansarovar on the same basis. Not, of course, that the timid souls atop Delhi's Raisina Hill would ever dare follow Beijing's precedent. { If Beijing can claim Tawang on quasi-religious grounds, India can easily follow suit by claiming Kailash and Mansarovar on the same basis. Not, of course, that the timid souls atop Delhi’s Raisina Hill would ever dare follow Beijing’s precedent. What they can do is to take advantage of the commercial opportunity provided by Sino-Japanese geopolitical frictions, and fashion a welcome mat for Japanese enterprises seeking to re-locate from China. Given the rot within the Indian administrative system, both Vietnam and Indonesia are as of now far better alternative locations for Japanese companies than India, a country where the quality of infrastructure exactly matches the nation-building capabilities of the political class. Rather than swoon over the European Union, as Commerce Minister Anand Sharma is wont to do, more time and effort need to be spent by the minister on Tokyo. Already, the Japanese are working on a Delhi-Mumbai transport and industrial corridor, and there is talk of a similar Chandigarh-Kolkata corridor as well. Both these would pass through some of the poorest states in the Union of India, and hopefully kickstart growth there. Work on them needs to get expedited, including by reminding Jayanthi Natarajan that the worst pollutant is poverty. These days, the influence of trendy NGOs — each with a complement of bright-eyed volunteers coming from countries where per capita energy consumption is horrendous — seems rampant in the Ministry of Environment, which seems to be vying with the stay orders getting passed by India's courts in damping fresh industrial and service initiatives with job-creating potential. Shinzo Abe, the new Prime Minister of Japan, is a friend of India. The time has come for a Japan strategy, so that this unique and technologically superb power can do for India from this year what it has done for China since the mid-1980s.

http://www.sunday-guardian.com/analysis/sino-japanese-frictions-could-be-advantageous-for-india

Rogue Pak colonels behind LOC killings (Sunday Guardian)

MADHAV NALAPAT  NEW DELHI | 12th Jan 2013

Army soldiers carry a coffin containing the soldier’s body, who was allegedly killed by Pakistani forces. PTI ilitary-civilian sources in India warn that the command structure of the Pakistan Army is being challenged by a growing number of fanaticised officers. They are unwilling to obey COAS General Ashfaq Kayani's orders to focus attention on counter-terror operations to the west rather than continue the old eastward India-centric policy. The fanaticised officers aim to "create a series of incidents along the Line of Control (LoC) that they hope will lead to conflict with India, thereby giving them an excuse to downsize anti-Taliban and anti-terrorist operations along Pakistan' s western frontier". The revised Pakistan Army military doctrine worked out by General Kayani places stress on challenges along and across Pakistan's western frontier rather than the border with India to the east. Since 2011, some units of the Pakistan Army across the LoC have been "unusually aggressive across the wide sector guarded by India's 25 Infantry Division", whose remit includes Rajouri, Poonch, Mendhar, Haji Pir and Nowshera. Because the border fence set up by India is located more than a kilometre inside Indian territory, "the intention of the Pakistan side seems to be to make the fence the new boundary, by denying access to Indian soldiers who patrol the other side of the fence, albeit on Indian territory". Since 2011, "the Pakistan forces have planted mines near the fence, so as to discourage patrols there". Last month, five jawans lost their lower limbs because of such mines, a fact thus far not revealed to the public. These sources warn that "it is not only the civilian leadership (of Pakistan) that has lost control of army units in the field but the higher echelons of the Pakistan Army as well". They claim that "there is widespread anger within the ranks at General Kayani's insistence that extremists are a bigger threat than India", in view of the close operational relationship that has existed between the Pakistan Army and extremists since the 1979 covert war against the USSR got launched in Afghanistan. "Should such provocations continue, it would mean that Kayani has lost control of his men", and that the strategy of the COAS of concentrating forces in the west is being sought to be reversed through a replay of Indo-Pak tension. They point out that Kargil occurred "just when it seemed that peace had a chance in 1999", the difference being that at that time, the then COAS (Pervez Musharraf) was fully behind the provocative policy of his men, whereas General Kayani, according to information reaching India, "understands that India has zero intention of launching a war against Pakistan". The higher echelons of the Pakistan Army have lost control of units in the field.  Sources within the civilian side point out that beheadings and other mutilation of Indian soldiers by fanaticised segments of the Pakistan Army is not new. "A similar incident took place in 2003 that was hushed up by the Atal Behari Vajpayee government, while two soldiers of the Kumaon regiment were beheaded in mid-2011". That incident too was downplayed in the euphoria of a possible Aman ki Asha. A military source claims that "the head was not the only body part that was severed as a trophy by the Pakistan side", other parts of the body were mutilated as well. He added that an effort was made to decapitate the second killed soldier as well, "but this was thwarted by fire from the Indian side". Civilian sources warn that the only way to deter such attacks "is to develop offensive covert capabilities in Pakistan". They complain that in 1997, I.K. Gujral began downsizing covert capabilities in Pakistan's policy, which has been continued under both Vajpayee and Manmohan Singh, both of whom seem to believe that India can outsource its defence against Pakistan to the United States". They point to the recent disbanding of the Technical Services Division (TSD) after General V.K. Singh remitted the office of COAS last year. The unit was accused of spying on civilian leaders at the behest of General Singh, a charge "which conveniently overlooked the fact that the TSD functioned not under the COAS but under the Defence Intelligence Agency, a specialised unit operating under the Ministry of Defence. Military sources say that the "Off Air Interceptors" of the soon-to-be-disbanded TSD "are of immense value in finding out what is going on across the borders", and rue the fact that "this capability is now being given up". It needs to be mentioned that the present COAS, General Bikram Singh, is reported to have decided to disband the TSD on the recommendation of a panel headed by a lieutenant general. Both military and civilian sources agree that "covert capability needs to be created" that can deter rogue elements within the Pakistan Army and their collaborators in Lashkar-e-Taiba and other terror organisations from carrying out attacks on India. They warn that "at present, such capacity does not exist, thereby creating a window of opportunity for fresh terror strikes on the scale of 26/11". The worry is that, having failed to generate hostilities between the conventional armies of both sides by provocations such as the beheadings, out-of-control fanatics within the Pakistan Army will sponsor fresh mass terror attacks on India, so as to achieve their objective of conflict. http://www.sunday-guardian.com/news/rogue-pak-colonels-behind-loc-killings

Roosevelt’s policy may guide Obama (PO)

By M D Nalapat

Friday, January 11, 2013 - Franklin Delano Roosevelt was one of the three greatest Presidents of the United States, together with Abraham Lincoln and George Washington. The current US President has the potential to join the list of all-time greats, but only if “Obama becomes Obama”. Throughout his first term in office, Barack Obama followed a Clinton Lite policy, placing in key positions those loyal to the Clintons rather than to him. As a consequence, his record for the past four years has been one of stagnation rather than innovation.

The 2008 financial crash had its origins thirteen years earlier, when Bill Clinton obeyed the commands of his donors and savagely slashed regulation of the financial markets, doing away with firewalls against greed that had done useful service for six decades. In his policies towards the financial sector, George W Bush adopted a policy of Clinton Neat, a super strong version of the policies of his predecessor, while his successor, Barack Obama, followed a policy of Clinton Lite.

However, now that he has won re-election and is in the final four years of his stint at the world’s top job, early indications are that Barack Obama is finally distancing himself from the Clinton shadow and is becoming his own man. His nominations for CIA Director, Secretary of Defense and now Treasury Secretary reveal this to be so. None of the three nominees - Brennan, Hagel and Lew - would have passed muster with Bill Clinton, who was ever attentive to the views of lobbysists. The three are individualistic men not afraid to swim against the tide of “conventional wisdom”, a formulation which is often code for the views of lobbyists expert in creating misperceptions in the minds of the public. Outgoing Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have done immense damage to long-term US interests. Geithner continued the policy of sops to Wall Street, arguably the most venal bit of geography on earth, thereby stunting the recovery and enabling the depredators who made hundreds of billions of dollars out of thin air escape any legal claim on them.

While pickpockets get jail terms in the US, those stealing billions get to keep their cash hoards,their private aircraft and their freedom. The wave of speculation that such elements have unlashed on the globe has led to the price rises in commodities which has impoverished hundreds of millions and created social unrest on a scale sufficient to overturn long-established governments. It was the rising price of bread and meat which caused the French revolution, not abstruse concepts of popular privilege, and it is the same reason which drove most of the congregation in Tahrir Square in early 2011 to demand the fall of Mubarak. Speculation in commodities has become one of the greatest threats to international stability, leaving behind even such factors as global terrorism. However, the big speculators remain a privileged group, protected by the likes of Timothy Geithner, an acolyte of the Clintons who joined numerous other Clintonites in the so-called “Obama” administration in 2009.

Hillary Clinton took as her own the policy of Turkey and Qatar towards first Libya and now Syria, throwing the support of the US behind the groups backed by Ankara and Doha. There are those who claim that huge donations have been received from Qatar, Kuwait, the UAE and Saudi Arabiar by the foundations controlled by Bill Clinton, hinting thereby that it is no accident that Hillary’s policy so closely hews to that suggested by the GCC monarchies. Thus far, the Clinton foundations have not released lists of their big donors, so there is no way of knowing if claims that the GCC (directly or indirectly) accounts for a huge share of donations to his foundations is correct.

Barack Obama has the opportunity to fashion a set of policies as revolutionary as those crafted by Lincoln and Roosevelt. An example is Lend-Lease, the Rooseveltian policy of transferring surplus US military equipment to the UK and Russia during World War II. But for Lend-Lease, it would not have been possible to send across war materiel to the USSR in quantities sufficient to enable the Red Army to first hold and then throw back the German army when the latter was at the very outskirts of Moscow, Leningrad and Stalingrad.

In 2013-15,the time has come for Lend-Lease II. This would involve the transfer of surplus US military equipment (naval vessels and aircraft included) to countries such as Vietnam, the Philippines and India. Given the economic condition of all three, there is no way this trio of sea powers can build up sufficient heft to collectively become a formidable force in nearby seas, except if given a boost through the transfer of surplus US military equipment. Such a Lend-Lease II would create immense goodwill for Washington all across Asia, and could later on be expanded to cover Indonesia, Pakistan and Thailand. However, such a policy would represent a complete break from the cautious and super-incremental Europeanist policy of the Clintons, who regard as normal the excessive interest shown by former European colonial powers in their previous possessions, the latest example being the French activism on Syria.

Lend-Lease II would transform the security architecture of Asia in a way designed to ensure peace. Once the countries given assistance through the program make their new equipment operational, there would be zero incentive by any power to disturb the peace. What Asia needs is peace, and the avoidance of the conflict which characterised Europe till 1945.Only military might can ensure peace. However, this can come about only hand in hand with economic development. Countries in Asia need to avoid excessive spending on defense that could destroy their economies. At the same time, they need the security only strength can bring. This I possible, should Barack Obama follow Franklin Roosevelt and introduce a Lend-Lease plan which in 2013-15 transfers surplus US military equipment to selected powers in Asia.

http://pakobserver.net/detailnews.asp?id=191064

Dirty Dancing is not rape; it won’t destroy India (Sunday Guardian)

M D Nalapat

People protest against moral policing. t is not only in Tunisia, Syria, Libya or Egypt that the ability of cell phones to take photographs and even capture action on video is making waves. A certain Akbaruddin Owaisi, apparently unaware that he was not a resident of Taliban-infested Quetta but India's own Hyderabad, held forth in considerable detail about the sexual prowess or lack of it of males subscribing to a particular faith. The MLA from Andhra Pradesh seems to have considerable interest in the reproductive accoutrements of males of a certain faith, judging by the time he devoted to the subject in his Adilabad speech. And because some enterprising owner of a cell phone recorded Owaisi's speech in full and disseminated in such a manner as to make it go viral online, the entire country is now aware of the nature of the MLA's tendency to aggregate hundreds of millions of widely diverse people into a single, simplistic, category. Owaisi's speech is a cry of pain, of agony, at being forced to live in a secular, multi-religious society rather than in the more pristine environs of a state that cleanses itself of any human beings not subscribing to the dominant faith. Rather than undergo the torture of coming into daily contact with those including, thankfully, the overwhelming majority of India's Muslims who do not subscribe to his hardcore Wahhabi tenets, perhaps it is time that Owaisi began to shop around for an alternative country of residence. This cannot be in the GCC (Gulf Cooperation Council), as all the countries in this group host millions of varied faiths, including that particular faith which our long-suffering legislator seems to loathe the most. Perhaps some corner of Somalia or Sudan will serve the purpose of giving the refreshingly frank legislator a place of residence where there are only hardcore Wahhabis such as the man himself. Soon, however, Owaisi may not need to relocate to Sudan or Somalia in order to savour the pleasure of living in a monochrome society, such as that sought to be created in Afghanistan by the Taliban. From all across India, an intolerance of lifestyles and views different from one's own has begun to show itself. A few days ago, a corporator from the Trinamool Congress was apparently drummed out of his party because he committed the presumably heinous crime of attending a dance performance by a few leggy women, and actually tossed cash in their general direction. Some snippets of the performance were screened on television, to gasps of horror from studio anchors and discussants, none of whom had apparently been to nightspots in Paris or New York or indeed to multiple such shows across India itself. However, the difference is that such shows and much raunchier variations are ignored by the media in France and the United States. { Owaisi may not need to relocate to Sudan or Somalia in order to savour the pleasure of living in a monochrome society, such as that sought to be created in Afghanistan by the Taliban. If even a spot of Dirty Dancing is seen by the mavens of the media and the political class as beyond the limits of tolerance, it may be time for Manmohan Singh to ask Mullah Omar, wherever the man may be hiding, to locate a suitable Minister of Culture for his team. Television anchors who have been with justification declaiming about the "moral police" who seek to enforce their own restrictive views on the rest of society. Amusingly, some of these same television anchors became livid onscreen at what they saw as an intolerable attack on Indian culture, a dance performance and a corporator who hopefully has paid his taxes before throwing the rest of his money away on dancers showing a bit of an arm and a pair of legs, but not much else. Dirty Dancing is not rape, and to treat the two as morally equivalent is to demonstrate a patriarchal mindset, which lends itself to abuses against women. The women of India have the right to wear what they please, and to be protected from perverts and criminals while doing so. Hypocritical moralising about dance shows and the like will not take away the failure of the Indian state to ensure an environment where democratic freedoms can be exercised, including in one's personal life. http://www.sunday-guardian.com/analysis/dirty-dancing-is-not-rape-it-wont-destroy-india

Congress’ Inner Core group plans UPA III (Sunday Guardian)

MADHAV NALAPAT  New Delhi | 5th Jan 2013

hile television cameras get focused on "Core Group" meetings of the Congress, insiders claim that the actual heart of strategising within the ruling party comprises an "inner core group". According to these sources, this consists of Ahmed Patel, Jitendra Singh, Milind Deora, Manish Tewari and R.P.N. Singh and Rahul Gandhi aide Kanishka Singh. In the Union Cabinet, the two ministers most involved in plans for a UPA III are Home Minister Sushilkumar Shinde and Finance Minister P. Chidambaram. The task given to the inner core is to ensure that the Congress returns after the next general elections to head a coalition, by once again emerging as the single largest party. Or, get enough seats to cobble together like-minded groups to repeat the 1990-91 Chandrashekhar experiment of a minority government kept going by outside Congress support. The "Inner Core Group" of the Congress sees the BJP as its primary foe, and in particular Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi. The game plan is to encourage fissures within the BJP at both the national as well as the state level, a strategy that is expected to deliver Karnataka to the Congress. "Discussions are ongoing with Yeddyurappa to form a coalition, in case the Congress fails to get a majority on its own," a Karnataka leader claimed. The expectation is that a combination of corruption scandals and infights will dent the BJP's image sufficiently to enable Congress to move ahead of it in the number of seats won. "The effort to place legal responsibility for the 2002 riots at Modi's door has failed, so now the strategy is to investigate whether corruption allegations can be laid" against the Gujarat CM. The Inner Core has been enthused by the Supreme Court upholding Governor Kamla Beniwal's choice as state Lokayukta, despite Modi's opposition. Through the Council of Ministers, the party's strategists have sought to ensure that "reliable" officers get posted to sensitive agencies. Former director of Intelligence Bureau (DIB) Nehchal Sandhu, has been inducted into the National Security Council Secretariat to take over as Deputy NSA after the present incumbent, Lata Reddy, retires in two months' time. "Sandhu has shown his reliability during the General V.K. Singh controversy," an inside source said, adding that "he has the backing of not only Chidambaram but Prime Minister Manmohan Singh as well". This source claimed that the PM offered the post of Advisor in the PMO to Sandhu soon after the latter's retirement, "but we (in the core group) felt that it would be better to place him at the heart of operations, rather than just be an advisor". There are also reports that he may be shifted to Kashmir as Governor, being a favourite of Farooq Abdullah. Among other crucial appointments, the Inner Core has expressed "quiet satisfaction" at the appointment of Asif Ibrahim as the new DIB. Interestingly, among those "regularly consulted for their wisdom" is Vice-President Hamid Ansari, who will certainly become President within five years, if Congress comes back to power. The new IB chief is expected to bring to his new post his formidable talents in political analysis and national security management, and is considered a likely NSA in case the UPA comes back, replacing the "apolitical" Shivshankar Menon. The team is also working on a set of "policy options" designed to boost the UPA's electoral fortunes, among which is the expected announcement of Telangana state. http://www.sunday-guardian.com/news/congress-inner-core-group-plans-upa-iii

Out of gloom, light beckons (PO)

By M D Nalapat

On December 29,2012,a 23-year old woman gave up her life after a struggle that lasted almost three weeks. For December 16 was the day when she and a companion boarded a private bus in Delhi, after being told by a 16-year old inside the vehicle that it would take them to their destination. A few minutes after the bus began to move, five men (including the minor) moved in on the woman and her companion, repeatedly beating the latter with an iron rod before inserting the same into the most sensitive parts of the woman. That is after they had each assaulted her. The bus driver kept the bus moving on its normal route, knowing that the Delhi Police would not bother to check the vehicle and find out the horror that was taking place inside. The reason why the bus driver and the animals clustering around the young women knew they were safe was simple. They had paid a bribe to the police, so that all down the route, the vehicle was permitted to pass unmolested by police pickets.

One look at the license plates was enough to tell policemen that this was a vehicle whose owners had paid their (illegal) dues to the police force. The rapists went about their devilish work unhurriedly, knowing that the men in uniform would never disturb them. Finally, after they had dumped the naked bodies of the woman and her companion onto a deserted stretch of highway, and after they had tried - but failed - to run them both down, the six parked the bus at its usual nighttime halt, of course ensuring that all traces of blood were washed away. The death of the 23-year old was the feather that finally displaced the inertia of the people of Delhi (and subsequently the entire country) at the fact that the capital of India is among the most unsafe cities on the planet, despite the billions of dollars spent on its police force ( 37% of which are in one way or the other concerned only with providing security to about 600 VIPs). Unbidden, unknown people began to march towards the colonial-era offices of the Prime Minister and the Home Minister. After “freedom” came on 15 August 1947, Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and his ministers wasted no time in occupying the houses and the offices of the departed British colonials. They retained the same system of laws and jurisprudence that was created in order to ensure that the citizen of India remain perpetually under the thumb of the administration. Even the nomenclatures were not changed.

The administrative head of the District, the Collector, retained the same title under democratically-elected Prime Ministers as was the case under the Viceroys. This was not surprising. From the beginning, the new native administration saw the collection of revenue as its primary task, exactly the way the British had. Today, India is among the highest-taxed countries on earth, at least for those who pay their taxes honestly. A professional pays a service tax of about 12% over and above a 30% rate of income-tax. Besides this, he pays indirect taxes each times he buys a commodity or uses a service.

Some estimates claim that about 70% of the income of a highly productive (and therefore high earning) citizen goes into national, state and local taxes, both direct and indirect. In exchange, what the taxpayer gets is cratered roads, frequent power cuts, water shortage, a dishonest and incompetent administration and a public health service that specialises in turning the moderately healthy into terminally ill persons.

Because the woman who was raped comes from an underprivileged background, her father earning just $100 a month as a loader working at the airport for a private airline, the huge apparatus of the Native Colonial state moved into action in an effort to completely airbrush her name and other details, including her family. She was flown to Singapore just a day before she finally passed away. According to some doctors, this was doe so that she would pass away in a foreign country and not India, and after it was already clear that she would soon pass away. After her death, her body was brought back to India by a special aircraft that took off at such an hour from Singapore that it landed in Delhi in the pre-dawn darkness. After that, a hurried cremation took place, almost before the sun came out. Why this cloak of anonymity? Why not?

After all, was this not happening to hundreds of millions of underprivileged people across the country, people who were seen as a statistic rather than as human beings by the native successors of the British Raj? For those without money and power, a multitude of laws exist to keep them in a state of fear and servitude, while for the very rich - with a few, usually temporary, exceptions, there is no law at all. After all, as the six rapists were aware when they plied their bus safely across Delhi on December 16, money ensures that the police and other authorities look the other way. Except that this time, something happened. The frustration of decades of second-class status thanks to the straitjacket of the colonial system suddenly erupted into action.

Tens of thousands marched across VVIP Delhi, being met by water cannons, tear gas and such other favourites of the colonial state. Sometimes, clearly deliberately, gangs of ruffians infiltrated them archers for justice and created mayhem, so as to give all the marchers a bad name and to give the Delhi Police an ersatz justification for their brutality. British-era sections of the British-era Indian Penal Code began to be invoked with monotonic regularity. Clearly, the Native Colonials were of the view that only they had the right to enter VVIP zones, not the common people, those without a red light on their car or a police escort even to visits to places of ill fame. Because of the immense arbitrary powers wielded by the Income-tax and other coercive government departments, officers in which obey the orders of their political masters with alacrity, almost the entire media in India has effectively muzzled itself. Those that step out of line, even a little bit, get the stick.

For example, an evening paper published the real name of the dead victim of the gang rape. It’s editor is now facing prosecution, by the same Delhi Police whose venality and incompetence have made Delhi a city as unsafe as any war zone. Naturally, the laws invoked date back to the British period. This columnist has for thirty years been pointing out that India cannot be called a democracy so long as it bases itself on the colonial model (being ruled by brown people or white people makes no difference to those at the receiving end of the governmental stick).

At last, others have begun to echo the same cry. At last a whiff of change seems to be in the air. Those who have fattened on the Native Colonial State for seven decades will resist, but the mood of the people indicates that civil society is finally engaged in the process of ensuring genuine democracy in India. 

http://pakobserver.net/detailnews.asp?id=190064