Never, ever forget those sacrifices

It was on February 5, 2013 that the young in Dhaka came out to Shahbag Square to protest and demand capital punishment for the Butcher of Mirpur, Abdul Quader Mollah, along with others who had been sentenced to life imprisonment, for their war crimes during the Bangladesh Liberation War. The movement had quickly spread to the rest of the country and the Jamaat Islami reaction was immediate and has remained violent. Nevertheless, Sheikh Hasina has remained constant in her action against the right wing fundamentalists who, aided by the BNP, acting out of electoralcompulsions and its own convictions, has encouraged nationwide violence.

Sheikh Hasina has remained constant in her action against the right wing fundamentalists who, aided by the BNP, acting out of electoral compulsions, has encouraged nationwide violence

Shahbag was about closure. It was a war against fundamentalism and was not about revenge. Many of the protestors were young boys and girls born after 1971 who gave the famous slogan ‘Joy Bangla’ a new relevance and a new meaning. It is in Bangladesh that they wish to remember the discrimination in all the 25 years preceding 1971 and the genocide in the nine months that preceded that December 16. It was too soon after independence to find out what happened during those horrible months as the new nation had to be built from the debris and the devastation that the West Pakistanis had left behind. Yet they needed to remember all that to build their future.


The then Karachi-based journalist, Anthony Mascarhenas, was the first in June 1971 to break the news internationally of the genocide in East Pakistan, leading the Pakistan Government to white wash the events in its white paper of August that year. The young nation needed more than anecdotal references.
The Bangladesh Collaborators (Special Tribunals) Order soon after liberation and the 1973 War Crimes Tribunals Act were lost in the assassination of Bangabandhu and some members of his family. It took the Awami League twenty years to regain power in 1996 only to lose it to the right wing BNP supported by the Jamaat-e-Islami, the party that had supported the Pakistan Army and had opposed independence.
Attempts at discovering what happened in 1971 and to record Pakistani atrocities remained haphazard. There was no systematic fact finding and War and Secession — Pakistan, India and the creation of Bangladesh by Richard Sisson and Leo Rose in 1991 was more an account covering the military aspects of the war and did not cover the activites of the Pakistan Army before the war.


Robert Payne’s Massacre has several anecdotal references but his book was published soon after independence as was Mascarenhas’ book The Rape of Bangladesh, so could not give accurate estimates. Susan Brownmiller (Against Our Will) refers to 400000 rapes by the Pakistan Army and its collaborators, of which nearly 80 per cent were Muslim women.


Centuries of Genocide (4th edition in 2013) edited by Samuel Totten and William S Parsons has a chapter — Genocide in Bangladesh by Rounaq Jahan that has detailed graphic descriptions of the killings and depredations. She also says 3 million were killed. Yet Sarmila Bose's book Dead Reckoning has remained controversial as it sought to find proof for a predetermined finding that the Bengali claim was grossly exaggerated and accepts the Pakistan Army figure of 26,000 Bengalis killed. Bose is dismissive of Bengali claims about the extent of genocide.


It was left to Dr M A Hasan, a medical student in 1971 who had joined the Mukti Bahini resistance movement. He painstakingly researched the events of 1971 through his NGO, The War Crimes Fact Finding Commission established in 1999 produced an accurate report entitled War Crimes, Genocide and the Quest for Justice in 2008. This report should ideally be in research and history libraries given the meticulous details and perhaps not something the average reader would read. Fortunately, Dr Hasan has now published Beyond Denial — The Evidence of a Genocide for the average reader. Hasan’s study says that the figure of 3 million innocent civilians killed is the more likely figure. The book describes in considerable detail some truly blood curdling systematic massacres; only those with strong hearts should read these pages.
Bangladesh needs full closure of this painful aspect of her history and a move away from fundamentalism that threatens it today. Bangladesh has to see the fulfillment of its Shahbag moment. The recent hanging of Mollah, is a process in that closure. But when Pakistan’s National Assembly expressed concern at the hanging of Mollah and Interior Minister Nasir Ali Khan criticised this hanging, this only shows how dangerously delusional Pakistan’s leaders have become. No wonder this prompted Sheikh Hasina to comment that Pakistan had not accepted liberation of Bangladesh.

 
Source : Mid Day , 26th December 2013 

The message stands delivered

Quite often it is a thoughtless or tactless statement but it also serves the desired purpose of saying something and then denying or giving it a spin. The message stands delivered. Maybe that was what Nawaz Sharif intended when he spoke about flashpoints in the India-Pakistan relationship during his visit to Muzzafarabad. It is to be expected that he would talk about some such issue when in POK and he cannot be expected to talk about subjects like the Iran-US agreement at that venue. Denials followed but that evening we watched our own TV channel go ballistic with the usual panelists from across. We still do not know whether or not this was a Freudian slip or a deliberate statement.

In his absorbing book, Magnificent Delusions -- Pakistan, the United States and and Epic History of Misunderstanding, Husain Haqqani describes a conversation between Henry Kissinger and Air Marshall Nur Khan (then Governor) in Lahore in 1969. Nur Khan told Kissinger that in the prevailing situation Pakistan was not going to get what it wanted. A settlement would require appeasement of India, which would relegate Pakistan to a subordinate status in the subcontinent. Consequently, waiting for an opportunity to arise that would force India’s hand in Kashmir and that Pakistan was in a permanent state of war with India. There was no interest in resolving the conflict through talks.

Mending fences? Nawaz Sharif spoke about flashpoints in the India-Pakistan relationship during his visit to Muzzafarabad and expressed his resolve for settlement of the Kashmir issue

Subsequent efforts to destabilise Punjab through assistance to Sikh terrorists in the 1980s, the jihadi hordes that were thrown at us in the 1990s culminating in General Musharraf's monumental folly on the Kargil Heights, the attack on the Indian Parliament in 2001 and the sustained terrorism that led to the infamous Mumbai Terror in November 2008. Apparently there had been no rethinking in Pakistan military circles to what Nur Khan told Kissinger and what in any case many of us have always believed to be Pakistan’s policy toward India.

Pakistan’s proclaimed support for the ‘Kashmiri cause’ and acting or supporting the wishes of the people of Kashmir has begun to sound hollow and unsustainable given its own track record in dealing with the legitimate grievances of the Baloch, victimisation of Ahmediyas and a relentless violent Sunni campaign against Shias. The world was no longer willing to ignore terrorist activities originating from Pakistan and India was not about to succumb. A new cause for staying relevant in Kashmir had, therefore, to be invented.
It was evident at some of the various Track 2 dialogues a few years ago, where water from Kashmir was the issue that Pakistani delegates wanted to discuss saying that this could become the new flashpoint. Actually, water from rivers that flow through Kashmir has always been the real issue for Pakistan and not Kashmiris or their religion. Ayub Khan, in his meeting with President Eisenhower said he did not trust India because that country “had taken away rivers that should belong to Pakistan and upon which Pakistan’s life depended.” Of course, Eisenhower did not know that of the six rivers, only one, Jhelum originated in the Kashmir valley. Pakistan had been claiming that it was necessary for it to have physical control of the territory in order to ensure that water from these rivers would flow into Pakistan.

The Pakistani plank seeks a reinterpretation of the Indus Waters Treaty without amending it, where water must flow unimpeded. There is no question of sharing waters from ‘my’ rivers with ‘yours’, is the new argument. The Kashmiris must not have electricity, even from run of the flow, hydel projects. The constant Pakistani complaint now getting louder is that water from the Indus, Jhelum and Chenab must flow exclusively for their Punjab even though India is not using fully the acreage allowed under the Treaty and could easily within the rules increase this.

J&K Hurriyat leaders, who go off scampering to meet every Pakistani dignitary who visits India, would do well to understand that Pakistani interest in Kashmir is not about the well being of Kashmiris but for the farmers of their Punjab and themselves.

Source : Mid Day , 13th December 2013   

Being there , with friends

Next year we will  have in our armoury, nuclear capable Agni-V  missiles capable of hitting targets 5000 kms away. We already have an aircraft carrier that is the size of three football fields, is 20 stories high and can cover 600 nautical miles in a day. We are the proud owners of the Chandrayan mission to Mars and have the Brahmos missile which is the world's fastest cruise missile and can be launched from submarines, land or eventually be tested for launching from our  Sukhoi SuMk30 aircraft. India is the largest country, with the largest population, the  largest and paramilitaries in the sub-continent backed by the third largest GDP (in PPP terms) in the world. And one day the country aspires to be a permanent member of the UNSC. All this should give us immense confidence in handling our relations with other countries. Yet, when it comes to handling affairs with our neighbours we seem to be diffident and indecisive.

The latest in this are our relations with Sri Lanka, a neighbour where an Indian  Prime Minister last visited in 1998 and that too to attend the SAARC conference. There has not been a bilateral visit all these years, an adequate reflection of our attention span.  There was an opportunity to visit the island nation earlier this month for the CHOGM conference and convey our message but we snuffed it. The reason for our absence was not because the CHOGM in its present form has become a quaint and irrelevant fossil but because we let sectional interests over ride national interests. We were driven by competitive electoral opportunism of regional politics and New Delhi's inability to ride above short term interests and take care of the country's long term interests. 

The decision not to to the conference after weeks of indecision would be defensible if it were in the national interests but becomes inexplicable to the host nation in the context of bilateral relationships. So when President  Rajapakse remarked that he understood why PM Manmohan Singh was unable to come, we all knew what he understood what he meant. In bilateral relations, local conditions and local sentiments in either country do matter but they cannot be allowed to become over riding factors.  In that sense a foreign policy cannot be allowed to become 'federal' where the regional parties  for their local political battles seek to influence national foreign policies to the extent that has happened in this case.

Considering that some of us are forever keen to talk to Pakistan, to the point of almost wooing them, it is strange logic that we continue to ignore  Sri Lanka. Not talking to neighbours has a negative impact; it is like a silly tantrum by an aged aunt at a wedding who is sulking about an imagined insult. No one pays attention to such sulks and is no substitute to being there at the venue, as the major power of the region and saying your piece. A one-on-one meeting in Colombo with the Sri Lankan President could have been used to convey precisely the concerns we have in Tamil Nadu. Not being there conveys nothing.

The main political protagonists in Tamil Nadu today were perfectly willing, in May 2009, to ignore Sri Lankan Army's action against the LTTE that culminated in the killing of Prabhakaran. The terror of the LTTE had been crushed by the Sri Lankan Army with discreet assistance from the Indian Armed Forces and intelligence.  There was a mutual national interest in ensuring success of this action by the Sri Lankan Army. It was a brutal war as all terrorism and counter terrorism is.  At that time, Tamil Nadu leaders like Karunanidhi went on a fast unto death that lasted all of six hours in sympathy with the Sri Lanka Tamils. That was the extent of empathy for Sri Lankan Tamils and very little has changed except for the forthcoming elections in India and political gamesmanship in the run up that has now become common in india. 

However, elections will not be won or lost because of events in Sri Lanka but Sri Lanka could be lost because of our electoral politics. Our absence at this juncture is akin to a public snub to Sri Lanka and the vacuum that we create and show little intention or urgency to fill, can only be filled by one country - China. This will happen incrementally, one thing at a time as powers seek to protect their growing commercial interests with military power. 

 Source : Mid Day , 28th November 2013 

Looking East, seriously

Judging from the recent stormy exchange between Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and her predecessor Khaleda Zia there is little chance that the deep animus between the two will ever disappear. Ultimately, Khaleda Zia declined to attend the all-party meeting to discuss the arrangements for the next parliamentary elections nor agree to call off the hartal demanding a caretaker government for the elections. This hostility does not augur well for Bangladesh as it goes to polls early next year — and for India too, should Sheikh Hasina and her 14-party alliance lose. A Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) victory win would almost certainly mean a setback in India-Bangladesh relations.

Political Game: The hostility between Bangladesh PM Sheikh Hasina and her predecessor Khaleda Zia does not augur well for Bangladesh as it goes to polls early next year — and for India too, should Hasina and her 14-party alliance lose. File pic

The Awami League government has been far more understanding and co-operative with India’s security interests than the previous Khaleda Zia’s BNP-led right wing combine. Her government had refused to accept that there were camps of India’s North East insurgent groups like the United Liberation Front of Asom in Bangladesh. It was Sheikh Hasina in her second coming who showed courage, understood that harbouring terrorists and insurgents could hurt her own government and people, and therefore necessary for her government to put a stop to these unfriendly practices. Sheikh Hasina did not follow Khaleda Zia’s policy of trying to use India’s logistic vulnerability in the North East by trying to destabilise the region, with assistance from Pakistan.

Internally, Sheikh Hasina’s most significant achievement has been the strengthening of the judicial system in the country through the war criminal trials by collaborating with Pakistan in the Bangladesh war of independence including many Jamaat-e-Islami luminaries who had been sheltered by the BNP.
Hasina has pursued the trial of the killers of Sheikh Mujib ending in the death penalty to five conspirators. Finally, the Bangladesh courts have sentenced 152 soldiers and handed down life sentences to several others for their revolt against the BDR (since renamed Border Guard Bangladesh) in February 2009. The Jamaat-e-Islami has been declared ineligible for the next general elections by the Bangladesh Election Commission following a High Court decision that its registration was illegal.

Faced with several setbacks to its prospects and its ideology, the BNP and its allies which includes the fundamentalist conglomerate the Taliban-like Hefazat-e-Islam, have been leading a campaign of hartals in which at least 18 have died and scores injured. At the same time, despite an overwhelming majority in the last elections in 2008 the Hasina government has been subjected to allegations of incompetence and corruption. As against this, people have not forgotten the predatory corruption of the BNP regime, the anti-Hindu and Awami league campaigns of the BNP and thus fear retrogression to medieval practices should the BNP win the next elections.

Sheikh Hasina realises that pandering to the right wing and encouraging terrorism in the neighbourhood would lead to the kind of disaster that Pakistan faces today and that dealing with India would be beneficial for both countries. An effective judiciary and a disciplined uniformed force under civilian control have been her achievements. Surely, Indians would also realise that with Pakistan lurching towards instability and under increasing thrall of the fundamentalists, we cannot have another neighbour to our east with whom our land border is longer than even with China, similarly succumbing to fundamentalism and anti-India sentiments. Will we see renewed influx of refugees from the Awami League, both Hindus and Muslims, into states bordering Bangladesh? Will we see renewed attempts at fomenting insurgencies in India?

It is therefore in India’s national interest to ensure that there is a friendly stable government in Dhaka which is not swayed by fundamentalist interests. This is not to be done by engineering regime changes and clumsy internal interference. It had to be more subtle where friendship with India is seen as beneficial by the average person in Bangladesh.

Small steps like the proposal to sign the motor vehicles agreement are encouraging but bigger steps have to be taken by India. A deal on the Teesta Waters and the Land Border Agreement would have helped India Bangladesh relations but our compulsions of coalition and electoral interests of different political parties have prevented fruition of both. It may still not be too late to attempt something along these lines because a change of government in Dhaka may not be good news for New Delhi.

If we are prepared to make all sorts of concessions to Pakistan without awaiting action on terrorism, why are we hesitant to help Bangladesh? It is time our famous Look East policy looked at Bangladesh, seriously.

Source : Mid Day , 14th November 2013 

Nepal's democratic hopes, Indian and Chinese interests

Nepal’s efforts to establish a parliamentary democracy have had their difficult and almost hopeless phases for the last decade where political fault lines accentuated since the assassination of King Birendra. The country will hold elections on November 19 if all goes well.

There is still some bad news with threats of boycotts and an armed struggle by breakaway elements of the Maoist hardliner camps. In reality, these groups may just be hoping to scuttle the elections, and chances of political stability in Nepal remain low. Nepalese politicians, with some gentle nudges from India may be able to find their way but what should worry India is the growing presence of China in Nepal.

Between Borders: China and India signed an agreement on October 23 on border defence cooperation after a stand-off along their disputed frontier in April fuelled fears of conflict between the Asian giants. Pic/AFP

 

Chinese long-term planning for its periphery is different. In Nepal, it leaves the political wrangling and sorting out to India. Their suggestion to Nepal that it should consult India and rely on it for economic development is a smart move. Indian involvement, however restrained and subtle to the point of non-existence at times, gives India the role of a marriage counsellor where one of the two parties is always less happy than the other. The Chinese approach in Nepal is similar to theirs in Pakistan. It preserves its ‘higher than the mountains deeper than the oceans’ friendship with Pakistan by playing on that leadership’s fears of India, provides vital military and nuclear assistance and invests in infrastructure projects that benefit China first. The Chinese leave political wrangling and manoeuvring to the Americans who remain prime targets for Pakistani anger and perfidy despite all the assistance they give.

For the present, China may be unable to match India’s economic and political profile in Nepal. It will thus lie low as it gradually builds its capacities over the years. China thus concentrates on strengthening its strategic position by being equidistant from all parties and offering assistance for infrastructure and economic development of the country. China has now become a reliable partner in Nepal’s development, in the areas of infrastructure and human resources development, education, health and food assistance. Tourism and the volume of Nepal-China trade have grown along with the remarkably wide trade imbalance. China has sought to push its business and strategic interests by developing road networks across the Himalayas from Tibet.

China has also successfully sought a thrust towards India’s Gangetic heartland by pushing into Nepal. It took 22 years to construct the Qinghai-Lhasa railway, accompanied by massive infrastructure development in Tibet of highways, airports and military bases. Now China plans to extend the railway from Lhasa to Yadong and Zhangmu on two flanks of the Nepalese border after extending the rail link to Xigatse in Tibet close to the Nepal border. Nepal wants that this link be eventually connected to Lumbini on the Indian border. In response to this, India has proposed six rail links with Nepal in Birgunj, Biratnagar, Bardibas, Nautanwa, Nepalgunj and Kakarbhitta.

In addition to the Lhasa-Kathmandu road link, the Chinese have built a four-lane concrete highway through Eastern Nepal, terminating close to the Siliguri corridor. Nepal too has sought Chinese support to construct four highways on Nepal-China border. While the Indian requests for opening consulates at Biratgunj and Nepalgunj await Nepalese approval, the Chinese will open a consulate in Pokhara in exchange for a Nepalese consulate in Guangzhou. In exchange for all this, the Chinese have succeeded in a change in Nepalese policy towards Tibetans fleeing from Tibet. On a visit to China in July this year, the Nepalese Army Chief, General Gaurav Shamsher Rana, promised that Nepal would take strong action against any ‘anti-Chinese’ (short hand for Tibetan) activities in Nepal. China and Nepal agreed to widen their defence and security ties including training cooperation.

The Chinese have been establishing a number of private language institutions and one Confucius centre in Kathmandu University to “spread Chinese language and culture.” Apart from one such language centre in Pokhara, other centres are along the Nepal-India border

While the Chinese have kept us embroiled with their visa tactics in Arunachal, intrusions in Ladakh as part of an unsettled boundary issue, and nuclear plants to Pakistan they have long endeavoured to seek access and presence south of the Himalayas. They appear to be succeeding in Nepal. India and China signed various bilateral agreements during Prime Minister Man Mohan Singh’s recent visit to Beijing. This should not detract from the fact that an enhanced Chinese presence in Nepal will mean increased vulnerability of our northern states from Himachal to West Bengal.

Source : Mid Day , 31st October 2013

An Unstable Neighbour

India and Pakistan are currently going through their usual mood cycle of some hope and more depression. The incidents on the LOC have crowded out other possibilities for the time being, one would say about a year before hope surges again. One talks of a year because it is by then we in India would have completed the formation of a new government which might by then begin dreaming new dreams. In Pakistan, the Prime Minister would have found his equation with the the new Army Chief - really the man who matters when decisions on Pakistan India relations have to be taken. 

Meanwhile, with only 45 days to go, Nawaz has not yet nominated his new Army Chief. He could give General Kayani one more extension, appoint the senior most Lt General Haroon Aslam, agree with General Kayani's choice which is Lt General Rashad Masood or go further down the list to select the much talked of Lt General Tariq Khan. General Kayani has assured the world he will not be seeking an extension but Nawaz has not spoken a word yet.

The Nawaz-ManmohanSingh  meeting in New York last month was always a non-starter, and Hamid Mir's studied indiscretion on TV ensured that there was no one-to-one session between the two Prime Ministers, something which the Pakistan Army echelons did not want to happen. The meeting was in the backdrop of increased LOC violations since June this year including the Keran incident which remains quite a bit of a mystery. There was a message for both Prime Ministers in these escalated intrusions making it difficult for them to discuss anything substantive.

Apart from showing Pakistani aggressiveness in recent months, the spate of intrusions also indicate that some portions of the LOC have become more porous which allow such incidents to occur. This is no longer a case of cross border intrusions. It is low intensity conflict just short of Kayani's possible departure. The reality in Pakistan is that no matter who is the Army Chief inPakistan, the mindset does not change. For India to keep merely blaming Pakistan for these intrusions is not enough as we are supposed to prevent them. Just as merely complaining to other leaders about Pakistani behaviour is not only not enough, it may even be avoidable.  As a major power with international pretensions, we are expected to look after our own security and other national interests and demonstrate this ability.

 It is fair to assume that by escalating tensions on the LOC, Pakistan is looking after its own interests, however much we may portray this to be misguided. It is not yet known exactly how many troops and what military apparatus the US will leave behind in Afghanistan after 2014. Whatever be that final number, the US and ISAF will be progressively less dependent on Pakistan for logistic support after 2014 for its military supplies and withdrawal. The US release of Coalition Support  Funds may be fulfillment of an earlier commitment but the timing, just before Nawaz Sharif lands is the US makes it appear to be an appeasement. The Coalition Support Funds will however, dwindle and the money tap will dry for Pakistan. So also will the US attention shift away to other problems and Pakistan will be less visible on its radar. The latest call by Nawaz Sharif seeking US intervention for solving Kashmir is typical GHQ speak which does not want discussions under the Shimla Agreement.

 Now is the time, therefore, in Pakistani calculations to begin to ratchet the tensions so that the US and others remain involved with the India-Pakistan question as nuclear weapons draw considerable traction in the US. This would keep Pakistan relevant in US calculations and there would not be a repeat of 1990 when the US lost interest in Pakistan. In these perceptions, tension between two nuclear powers has to be minimised, if not eliminated. Besides, the latest (October 7 2013) and detailed Heritage Foundation special report - A New View of Asia: 24 Charts That Show What's at Stake for America. The report speaks of Asia as America's 'New West' instead of the 'Far East'  and lists Pakistan as the second most unstable country in Asia (after Afghanistan). Any additional instability in Pakistan will continue to draw American attention. And hopefully, financial support and military sustenance. Pakistan can be expected not to deny this report but instead want to prove it !

 

20th October 2013

India shining or China? Investment plans say it all

 

Instead of creating opportunities for our teeming population and capitalising on our demographic dividend we have launched schemes that only create vested interests and are a premium for not working or making progress

In a burst of enthusiasm I for the country, or panic about the approaching elections, the government took a brave but unrealistic decision some six months ago to accelerate the clearance of pending infrastructure projects that had been lying around in various ministries. The last date for finalisation was fixed as August 15 for many of these seventeen projects.

It now turns out that nine of these projects have not even crossed the preliminary stage of request for qualification.

Some of these projects are the Eastern Peripheral Expressway and the M u m b a i V a d o d r a Expressway. The ultramega power projects in Orissa and Tamil Nadu too have missed the deadlines.
As expected, nodal officers in the ministries dealing with these projects had been appointed who were to report on a weekly basis.

Nothing happened, in true Indian tradition.

The writing was on the wall for quite some time and in its report released in June 2012 the RBI had commented that “envisaged investment in infrastructure declined by 52 per cent to `1 trillion from `2.2 trillion in 2012, with power and telecom accounting for most of this fall. Investment in telecom sector has dried-up, while that in roads, ports and airports has also decelerated sharply. This has had a ripple effect on the economy.” Compare this with some of the infrastructure projects the Chinese are pursuing. There is an old Chinese saying that if you want to be rich then you must build roads. Well, not just roads, but ports, bridges, tunnels, dams, nuclear power plants, gas and oil pipelines, airports, railway lines and stations.

All these one hundred odd mega infrastructure projects ranging from $102 million to $1 trillion that include ongoing, or completed projects both in China and in other countries, notably Africa.
They range from $2.2 billion Qinshan nuclear power plant, to $62 billion for a south to north water diversion project that is expected to divert 44.8 billion cubic metres of water
by 2050, to the $1 trillion on the Tianjin Binhai New Area Investment. The total worth of these and several other projects is nearly $4 trillion.

The Silk road along with pipelines from Central Asia to China and highways to Europe through Central Asia will have considerable Chinese investment.

China will soon be the prime economic power in Central Asia and therefore the most influential leaving the Russians and the Americans behind.

The Chinese have cultivated the Central Asian regimes assiduously since the time Li Peng first visited the region in 1994, followed by Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao in later years.

President Xi Jinping was the latest Chinese

President to visit four Central Asian republics.

Turkmen and Kazhak gas now flow into China. By 2020 about 65 billion cubic metres of gas will flow into China. We have nothing even vaguely similar at a much lower scale that indicates our determination to improve our infrastructure that would be the basis for our growth this century. Instead of creating opportunities for our teeming population and capitalising on our demographic dividend we have launched schemes that only create vested interests and are a premium for not working or making progress.

Thus while India will be spending its money on poverty alleviation through entitlements, China has sought to remove poverty through infrastructure projects that pay for working and not through merely the right to earn without having to work.

India boasts 600 universities and 35,000 colleges yet many of them do not make the grade by our own standards, not one of them figures in the top 200 list of world’s universities, not even our prestigious IITs and IIMs.

No wonder we spend $10 billion annually on educating our children abroad.

China has five in this list.

Fifteen Chinese universities figure in the top 100 list in Asia; we have two.

China’s declared military budget for 2012 crossed $100 billion marking an 11 per cent increase. In comparison, the Indian budget was $40 billion before the collapse of the rupee and this would hurt at a time when most of our capital expenditure is on imports.

China spent $296.8 billion on R&D in 2012 compared to a mere $36.1 billion we spent in 2011. China has established 500,000 vocational schools for mid level skills, we have only 11,000 and this is where real power lies -the power to keep a people employed and, possibly, happy . By some estimates, 500 million young will be in the skills and jobs market in the next decade in India -a huge figure by any calculation.  Our trade deficit with China is embarrassing and our industrial and manufacture base remains a mere 16 per cent of our GDP which prevents any major breakthrough. In the latest WEF Report for 2012, we fare poorly in all social infrastructure (health, education, social security) indicators, way below the Chinese.  On the one hand, we agonise about China’s plans to encircle us through Pakistan and other countries in the neighbourhood, but then let OVL and GAIL participate in the construction of a $4.3 billion oil and gas pipeline from Kyaukpyu in Burma to Yunnan to supply energy to China.

We might as well participate in the construction of similar pipelines in Pakistan or in the development of Gwadar for Chinese use.

When Sri Lanka sought our assistance to redevelop Hambantota we showed no interest but got alarmed when the Sri Lankans opted for Chinese assistance.

Instead of setting our house in order and taking advantage of the free world, we locked ourselves in and for nearly 50 years did nothing, absolutely nothing to develop our infrastructure and the economy in the north east for fear that we would be run over again by the Chinese.

When the opportunities came our way, a blurred vision and diffidence held us back and we have not much time left.

The external balance is changing fast with new equations being worked out we need to set our house in order — refurbish our political apparatus, rebuild the crumbling state of our institutions and reorient and revamp our governance capacities.

Above all, we need to provide skills and high-end education.


Source : Asian Age , 18th OCtober 2013