Getting connected at the SAARC Summit

Between leveraging India and respecting the spirit of regionalism, the 14th SAARC Summit took place in Delhi on 3-4 April.

By Sukumar Muralidharan

Among the ceremonial events that marked the opening of the 14th SAARC Summit in Delhi in early April, was the flagging-off of a car rally. Beginning two weeks earlier in Dhaka, the rally had briefly halted in Delhi en route to covering all of the member countries (then seven) of the regional grouping, in the space of a month. It was a rather literal-minded effort to underline the Summit’s ostensible theme of ‘connectivity’. But even as the cars went their way, proudly emblazoned with the emblems of generous Indian corporate sponsors, nine forlorn youths from Maharashtra were making their way back from the Wagah border. They had cycled 2000 kilometres over a few weeks, in the expectation of visiting Lahore on a peace-and-goodwill mission – only to have their visa applications rejected at the last moment.
Is ‘connectivity’ about a coming together of the people of Southasia? Or is it merely a means of creating greater opportunities for Indian business? Certainly, as Prime Minister Manmohan Singh addressed his summit partners shortly after assuming the SAARC chair from Bangladesh, he seemed to be advocating connectivity in its widest possible sense – a confluence not merely of “physical, economic” attributes, but also “of the mind”. Southasia as a region, he said, has traditionally only flourished when it has been connected within itself and to the rest of the world.
Prime Minister Singh was reprising a much-favoured theme: that of the endeavour to make borders irrelevant, and to give the people of the region the wherewithal to move freely across the vast, populated expanses of Southasia, searching out and utilising every opportunity available for both their own betterment and the larger social good. This is undoubtedly a noble vision, yet it overlooks a significant point. As the cyclists from Maharashtra found, they probably do not enjoy the same privileges of cross-border mobility as the owner of a car. While connectivity within Southasia could become a right theoretically enjoyed by all, it may in practice remain the preserve of a mere handful.
To give him due credit, what the Indian prime minister envisages is a situation in which the freedom to travel becomes a reality for a broad cross-section of the people of Southasia. And thus, he promised that India would soon announce a unilateral liberalisation of visa rules and procedures for students, academics, journalists, and individuals traveling for medical treatment. India would also provide duty-free and quota-free access for imports from SAARC member countries that happen to be classified among the “least developed” – excluding Pakistan from the party. The sensitive list of commodities to which the new rules would not apply would, the prime minister assured, be pared down and soon made public. No time frame was specified within which these decisions would be made and operationalised, though the history of SAARC is strewn with promises made in the effulgence of a summit, only to be forgotten just as rapidly.
It was little surprise that the assembled dignitaries were underwhelmed by Prime Minister Singh’s announcement. As former Indian Foreign Secretary Muchkund Dubey has commented, trade liberalisation in Southasia has been “flawed” from the start – and this has been a conscious “political choice” on all sides. A key aspect of all such agreements is the ‘negative list’, which specifies the product lines where free trade does not apply. As yet, no Southasian country, least of all the region’s largest, has shown the generosity or courage to prune this list to a meaningful level. In the inchoately formed and contentiously interpreted South Asian Free Trade Agreement (SAFTA), India’s negative list is four times larger than that on the most recent offer it has made to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).
Regional tokenismWhen it is not of purely symbolic value, the fact is that ‘duty free’ access could also be a means of increasing opportunities for Indian business. India’s free trade agreement (FTA) with Sri Lanka, which came into effect in 2000, has been an umbrella under which shrewd businessmen have managed to arbitrage customs-duty differentials on third-country imports. Sri Lanka, for instance, allows duty-free imports of copper scrap and Indian businessmen have been sharp enough to spot the opportunities this affords for investing in copper smelters in Sri Lanka, for re-export to India. A similar process has been underway in the vegetable-oils market. Value addition in Sri Lanka from these exports, which account for the bulk of its trade with India, is minimal. The principal upshot has been that a few Indian businessmen have managed to enrich themselves. How Sri Lankan business groups have fared in the same sectors remains to be documented.
On the other hand, India could be using the promise of duty-free access for the region’s least-developed member countries as a means of leveraging greater trade openings within Southasia, with an eye towards emerging as a major investor in regional light industry, transport and telecom. This is likely to encounter competition from China, which perhaps could underline its own investment ambitions with a greater infusion of funds. Moreover, as long as the smaller countries in Southasia remain locked in a low-level equilibrium of poverty and slow growth, the opportunities for such investments are not likely to be particularly large in the near future.
As home to the largest concentration of the world’s poor, Southasia needs to reconsider how well the process of trade liberalisation truly aids in increasing social welfare. There is at least an equal risk that liberalisation within the region could become a zero-sum game, with each country trying to out-compete the other in lowering wage levels – in other words, in using poverty as a source of competitive advantage. Trade liberalisation has all too often been seen exclusively as a charter of rights for business. What Southasia needs in order to escape from its grinding poverty is a social charter, one that will secure at least the barest entitlements to subsistence for its people.
Of all the pronouncements made in the Summit’s Delhi Declaration of 4 April, two may have a direct bearing on mass welfare. The first concerns the SAARC Development Fund, which has now been ordered operationalised in full conformity with the charter of the association. Second is the creation of the SAARC Food Bank, which is intended to “supplement national efforts to provide food security to the people of the region”. Scepticism would not be out of place with regard to either of these endeavours, especially since India’s management of its own food economy over the past decade and a half of globalisation has been little short of chaotic. In short order, the depleted warehouses of the early 1990s were swamped with an over-abundance of food, which was subsequently disposed of by exporting it at prices lower than those reserved for India’s poor. Since the severe drought of 2002, the pace of stock depletion has accelerated, and the last two years have seen grain imports of unprecedented magnitude.
When the efforts of national governments have been so disastrously askew, there seems little reason to believe that trans-national efforts at cooperation will fare much better. Anybody viewing the financial allocations that have been made would be justified in concluding that these programmes are but the barest tokenism. They would serve little purpose other than of sustaining the somnolent SAARC bureaucracy through another year. The much-needed fillip they would impart to the various track-two efforts that have rather ineffectively sought to energise ‘regionalism’ thus far would be an outcome to celebrate, even if it is unintended.
A regional institutionThis does not mean that the Delhi Summit was a complete fiasco. As Indian Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee said, it was the smoothest and least contentious such gathering in many years. This despite SAARC’s new member, Afghanistan, having provided a rather colourful prelude, in President Hamid Karzai’s trenchant attack on Pakistan just before his arrival in Delhi. In remarks to The New York Times, published to much consternation in Delhi just as the committee of SAARC foreign ministers was in session, President Karzai accused Pakistan of harbouring a “colonial” mentality, and being intent on transforming Afghanistan into a satellite state. Landing in Delhi, President Karzai would have undoubtedly been comforted by the thought that most of the member countries of SAARC were undergoing transitions, though with varying degrees of tension and trauma. Indeed, aside perhaps from Bhutan and the Maldives (the two smallest members) and India (which is too big to feel the pain of its million mutinies too acutely), every other SAARC member state might witness a change in the character of its ruling arrangement before the next summit. This raises some interesting questions about just how far the decisions made in Delhi will stand the test of changing times.
Yet for all the cynicism that customarily shrouds the SAARC organisation, there was at least one decision made during the Summit that was welcomed across a broad spectrum. If all goes according to plan, a Southasian University could soon be a part of the academic landscape of the region. Its central campus would be in India, with satellites and perhaps entire faculties being located in other countries. An intergovernmental steering committee has now been tasked with drawing up the charter of the university.
Considering the record of earlier initiatives in the realm of education (for instance, the little-known SAARC fellowships programme), there is reason to believe that things may not indeed pan out quite as well as the more optimistic observers believe. Presumably, with the Southasian University’s location having been broadly settled, any residual uncertainties on this count would be an internal matter of India’s. There are believed to be two contending opinions within the Indian government, the first of which seeks to convert an existing campus – such as the Viswabharati at Shantiniketan, West Bengal – into a Southasian institution; while the second favours an entirely new establishment, based in all probability in Delhi. Quite apart from these decisions, there is immense potential for discord between the member nations when the charter of the new centre of learning is drawn up.
With the extravagance of hope continually bumping up against the recognition of reality, some scholars believe that the best course for the new university to follow would be to go to the heart of the most contentious subjects that divide the Subcontinent: history, comparative religion, contemporary politics, international affairs and the like. Southasia is a region divided as much by conflicting readings of history as by competing ambitions of national elites. And for reasons of history and sheer geopolitical clout, India has assumed for itself the mantle of representing the civilisational ethos of the region, in a manner that neighbouring states find insensitive, if not hegemonic.
The groves of academia may well afford a congenial environment in which an alternative vision could be constructed – one that provides room for all Southasians to participate, and respects their particularities. Though optimism is at a premium after the indifferent performance of SAARC over the first 22 years of its existence, there is still room, presumably, for the occasional extravagance of the imagination.

Source: Himal SouthAsian

Patenting Genetic Manipulation: A Threat Looming Large in the Indian Subcontinent

- Mira Kamdar

The Green Revolution that transformed Indian agriculture in the last century was an American invention. It began in 1944 with a project sponsored by the Rockefeller Foundation in Mexico. Dr Norman Borlaug, a plant geneticist from Minnesota, was sponsored by the Foundation to assist in breeding new plant hybrids that would boost yields of basic food grains. The project was enormously successful: Mexico was transformed from an importer of wheat to an exporter within a couple of decades. In the 1960s, the Rockefeller Foundation helped bring the Green Revolution to India, which was facing such severe food shortages that there was fear of a major famine. The hybrid seeds developed in Mexico were planted in Punjab, where yields soared.
In addition to the new hybrid seeds, the Green Revolution made heavy use of new pesticides, herbicides, synthetic fertilisers and irrigation techniques. However, it quickly became clear that the organochlorine pesticides were harming crops more than agricultural pests. The 1962 publication of Rachel Carlson’s Silent Spring drew attention to the dangers of ddt, and helped launch the worldwide movement against the chemical.
The cost of synthetic fertilisers has risen in tandem with that of natural gas, increasing the cost of food production. Moreover, pollution from these fertilisers in the form of nitrates is a serious problem the world over. In the United States, where nitrogen fertilisers are a key factor in the most productive agriculture in the world, more public water supplies have been closed due to the violation of drinking water standards from nitrate than from any other contaminant. Without these fertilisers, the high yields of the post-Green Revolution era would not be possible, yet they pose serious risks and may permanently damage our environment, especially our water. Too much water, delivered via irrigation, can be environmentally harmful. Over-watering has negative impacts on soil composition, especially in conjunction with the use of nitrogen fertilisers where it increases the salinity of the soil. Farmers are increasingly facing these problems in Punjab, where India’s Green Revolution took off.
Dramatically increasing the production of food did not end hunger in India. Though India claims food self sufficiency, more people in India go hungry than in any other single country. At least 232 million people in India do not receive sufficient food. According to a unicef report last year, 200 million children — one third of all the malnourished children in the world — live in India. Nearly half of India’s children, 47 percent, are severely underweight.
Last year, India could not meet its food grains need. The country imported 2.2 million tons of wheat, including orders from American giants Cargill, the world’s largest grain trading company, and Archer Daniels Midlands. India’s strides in increased wheat production — achieving about 70 million tons annually — cannot keep up with the steady growth in population and swelling consumption. The diversion of land by subsistence farmers from food crops to cash crops such as cotton contributed to the problem, as did the reduction of land put to cultivating traditional hardy and nutritious food grains such as jowar (sorghum) and bajra (millet). The shortfall in wheat production caused prices of wheat flour, the ingredient for India’s flatbread that is the staff of life for hundreds of millions, to rise by 30 percent last year.
A key component of the closer India–US relationship is a new agricultural development initiative that President Bush hailed as “a second Green Revolution” during his speech at Delhi’s historic Purana Qila fort when he visited India last year. The initiative is called the US-India Agricultural Knowledge Initiative. Dr Norman Borlaug, after winning a Nobel prize for his work on the first Green Revolution, is participating in the new joint effort. The goals of the agricultural initiative are listed as follows: (1) raise agricultural productivity to promote food security (2) increase technology transfer, including biotechnology (3) build a sound policy and regulatory environment (4) expand trade and investment and promote integration of India into the global economy (5) ensure a key role for the US and Indian private sectors and (6) reinvigorate US-India university partnerships.
On first glance, it seems odd to name an agricultural deal a “knowledge initiative.” But a core goal of the agreement is to expand patentable intellectual property. According to the Ministry of Agriculture at the government of India’s website, the private sector participants are Masani Farm and itc on the Indian side, and Monsanto, Archer Daniels Midland, and, of all companies, Wal-Mart, on the American side. Monsanto and Archer Daniels Midland are already, as we have seen, deeply involved in Indian agriculture. Wal-Mart has every intention of being so the moment the Indian government changes the law to let the company in. The Hindu newspaper reported last year that “transgenic research,” meaning research on genetically modified organisms (GMOs), “in crops, animals and fisheries would be a substantial part of the collaboration in biotechnology.” Reporting for the respected science journal Nature’s biotechnology publication Nature Biotechnology, KS Jayaraman asserted: “What critics resent most is the presence of Monsanto, the second largest gm seed producer in the world, and Wal-Mart, the world’s largest retailer, on the board of the new initiative.” The article goes on to quote Indian food policy analyst Devinder Sharma on the role Indian universities are likely to play with regard to Monsanto and Wal-Mart: “With them on the board, the US multinationals are all set to determine the Indian agricultural research agenda.”
The combination of India’s rich plant and animal genetic diversity, its potentially large market, and its proven capacity as a research and development centre, are all powerful attractions for US agribusiness concerns. They can look forward to dramatically expanding the scope of their intellectual property rights holdings, using Indian brain power to help unlock new applications in biotechnology and transgenic research, using Indian fields to test new transgenic products, and then selling these products to Indian consumers, whether to Indian farmers or to Indian retail customers.
I called up Suman Sahai of Genecamp in Delhi to ask her about her take on the US-India agricultural deal. Genecamp is an ngo focused on indigenous knowledge, biopiracy, community rights, and intellectual property in agriculture. Suman has been very vocal in criticising the deal, saying India will gain little and give away too much. “The agricultural deal is pay-off for the nuclear deal. I see it very much that way. It’s easy to understand why Monsanto needs India. There is a huge amount of resistance to GMOs in Europe, Africa and Japan. Who are they going to sell this stuff to? An agricultural giant like India is hugely important for them,” she said.
In 2006, farmers in Arkansas, Missouri, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas and California sued Bayer Crop Science after an unapproved genetically modified strain of rice it had developed entered the food chain and contaminated the US rice crop. The modified rice contains a protein dubbed Liberty Link that allows it to resist herbicides used to kill weeds. After the contamination was discovered, Japan banned imports of US rice and the eu instituted testing requirements to ensure that rice coming from the United States was not contaminated. This was a major blow to US rice producers. No one knows the long-range potential effects of altered plant or animal genes entering the food chain.
I asked Suman why the Indian government would give so much genetic capital away to the United States. Suman would not take names, but she said that influential policy-makers “have direct tie-ups to this”. American companies aren’t the only ones favoured. Swiss biotech giant Syngenta, for example, is working with the Vasantdada Sugar Institute in Pune on genetically modified sugarcane. In general, “there has been a huge buy-in at the top level of the Indian government on GMOs,” Suman said.
“This has been packaged very cleverly by linking it to the Green Revolution,” she said. “For Indians, the Green Revolution gave us our sovereignty, it made us self-sufficient. To call this deal ‘a second Green Revolution’ is very shrewd, but this is nothing like the Green Revolution. All the knowledge generated by the Green Revolution was public knowledge. This will all be private knowledge. This is about intellectual property rights and monopoly corporations extending the reach of what they own.”

excerpts taken from Kamdar’s book Planet India: How the Fastest-Growing Democracy is Changing the World (Scribner)

"The Assault on Reason" Al Gore, excerpt

Not long before our nation launched the invasion of Iraq, our longest-serving Senator, Robert Byrd of West Virginia, stood on the Senate floor and said: "This chamber is, for the most part, silent - ominously, dreadfully silent. There is no debate, no discussion, no attempt to lay out for the nation the pros and cons of this particular war. There is nothing. We stand passively mute in the United States Senate."
Why was the Senate silent?
In describing the empty chamber the way he did, Byrd invited a specific version of the same general question millions of us have been asking: "Why do reason, logic and truth seem to play a sharply diminished role in the way America now makes important decisions?" The persistent and sustained reliance on falsehoods as the basis of policy, even in the face of massive and well-understood evidence to the contrary, seems to many Americans to have reached levels that were previously unimaginable.
A large and growing number of Americans are asking out loud: "What has happened to our country?" People are trying to figure out what has gone wrong in our democracy, and how we can fix it.
To take another example, for the first time in American history, the Executive Branch of our government has not only condoned but actively promoted the treatment of captives in wartime that clearly involves torture, thus overturning a prohibition established by General George Washington during the Revolutionary War.
It is too easy - and too partisan - to simply place the blame on the policies of President George W. Bush. We are all responsible for the decisions our country makes. We have a Congress. We have an independent judiciary. We have checks and balances. We are a nation of laws. We have free speech. We have a free press. Have they all failed us? Why has America's public discourse become less focused and clear, less reasoned? Faith in the power of reason - the belief that free citizens can govern themselves wisely and fairly by resorting to logical debate on the basis of the best evidence available, instead of raw power - remains the central premise of American democracy. This premise is now under assault.
American democracy is now in danger - not from any one set of ideas, but from unprecedented changes in the environment within which ideas either live and spread, or wither and die. I do not mean the physical environment; I mean what is called the public sphere, or the marketplace of ideas.
It is simply no longer possible to ignore the strangeness of our public discourse. I know I am not alone in feeling that something has gone fundamentally wrong. In 2001, I had hoped it was an aberration when polls showed that three-quarters of Americans believed that Saddam Hussein was responsible for attacking us on Sept. 11. More than five years later, however, nearly half of the American public still believes Saddam was connected to the attack.
At first I thought the exhaustive, nonstop coverage of the O.J. Simpson trial was just an unfortunate excess - an unwelcome departure from the normal good sense and judgment of our television news media. Now we know that it was merely an early example of a new pattern of serial obsessions that periodically take over the airwaves for weeks at a time: the Michael Jackson trial and the Robert Blake trial, the Laci Peterson tragedy and the Chandra Levy tragedy, Britney and KFed, Lindsay and Paris and Nicole.
While American television watchers were collectively devoting 100 million hours of their lives each week to these and other similar stories, our nation was in the process of more quietly making what future historians will certainly describe as a series of catastrophically mistaken decisions on issues of war and peace, the global climate and human survival, freedom and barbarity, justice and fairness. For example, hardly anyone now disagrees that the choice to invade Iraq was a grievous mistake. Yet, incredibly, all of the evidence and arguments necessary to have made the right decision were available at the time and in hindsight are glaringly obvious.
Those of us who have served in the U.S. Senate and watched it change over time could volunteer a response to Senator Byrd's incisive description of the Senate prior to the invasion: The chamber was empty because the Senators were somewhere else. Many of them were at fund-raising events they now feel compelled to attend almost constantly in order to collect money - much of it from special interests - to buy 30-second TV commercials for their next re-election campaign. The Senate was silent because Senators don't feel that what they say on the floor of the Senate really matters that much anymore - not to the other Senators, who are almost never present when their colleagues speak, and certainly not to the voters, because the news media seldom report on Senate speeches anymore.
Our Founders' faith in the viability of representative democracy rested on their trust in the wisdom of a well-informed citizenry, their ingenious design for checks and balances, and their belief that the rule of reason is the natural sovereign of a free people. The Founders took great care to protect the openness of the marketplace of ideas so that knowledge could flow freely. Thus they not only protected freedom of assembly, they made a special point - in the First Amendment - of protecting the freedom of the printing press. And yet today, almost 45 years have passed since the majority of Americans received their news and information from the printed word. Newspapers are hemorrhaging readers. Reading itself is in decline. The Republic of Letters has been invaded and occupied by the empire of television.
Radio, the Internet, movies, cell phones, iPods, computers, instant messaging, video games and personal digital assistants all now vie for our attention - but it is television that still dominates the flow of information. According to an authoritative global study, Americans now watch television an average of 4 hours and 35 minutes every day - 90 minutes more than the world average. When you assume eight hours of work a day, six to eight hours of sleep and a couple of hours to bathe, dress, eat and commute, that is almost three-quarters of all the discretionary time the average American has.
In the world of television, the massive flows of information are largely in only one direction, which makes it virtually impossible for individuals to take part in what passes for a national conversation. Individuals receive, but they cannot send. They hear, but they do not speak. The "well-informed citizenry" is in danger of becoming the "well-amused audience." Moreover, the high capital investment required for the ownership and operation of a television station and the centralized nature of broadcast, cable and satellite networks have led to the increasing concentration of ownership by an ever smaller number of larger corporations that now effectively control the majority of television programming in America.
In practice, what television's dominance has come to mean is that the inherent value of political propositions put forward by candidates is now largely irrelevant compared with the image-based ad campaigns they use to shape the perceptions of voters. The high cost of these commercials has radically increased the role of money in politics - and the influence of those who contribute it. That is why campaign finance reform, however well drafted, often misses the main point: so long as the dominant means of engaging in political dialogue is through purchasing expensive television advertising, money will continue in one way or another to dominate American politics. And as a result, ideas will continue to play a diminished role. That is also why the House and Senate campaign committees in both parties now search for candidates who are multimillionaires and can buy the ads with their own personal resources.
When I first ran for Congress in 1976, I never took a poll during the entire campaign. Eight years later, however, when I ran statewide for the U.S. Senate, I did take polls and like most statewide candidates relied more heavily on electronic advertising to deliver my message. I vividly remember a turning point in that Senate campaign when my opponent, a fine public servant named Victor Ashe who has since become a close friend, was narrowing the lead I had in the polls. After a detailed review of all the polling information and careful testing of potential TV commercials, the anticipated response from my opponent's campaign and the planned response to the response, my advisers made a recommendation and prediction that surprised me with its specificity: "If you run this ad at this many 'points' [a measure of the size of the advertising buy], and if Ashe responds as we anticipate, and then we purchase this many points to air our response to his response, the net result after three weeks will be an increase of 8.5% in your lead in the polls."
I authorized the plan and was astonished when three weeks later my lead had increased by exactly 8.5%. Though pleased, of course, for my own campaign, I had a sense of foreboding for what this revealed about our democracy. Clearly, at least to some degree, the "consent of the governed" was becoming a commodity to be purchased by the highest bidder. To the extent that money and the clever use of electronic mass media could be used to manipulate the outcome of elections, the role of reason began to diminish.
As a college student, I wrote my senior thesis on the impact of television on the balance of power among the three branches of government. In the study, I pointed out the growing importance of visual rhetoric and body language over logic and reason. There are countless examples of this, but perhaps understandably, the first one that comes to mind is from the 2000 campaign, long before the Supreme Court decision and the hanging chads, when the controversy over my sighs in the first debate with George W. Bush created an impression on television that for many viewers outweighed whatever positive benefits I might have otherwise gained in the verbal combat of ideas and substance. A lot of good that senior thesis did me.
The potential for manipulating mass opinions and feelings initially discovered by commercial advertisers is now being even more aggressively exploited by a new generation of media Machiavellis. The combination of ever more sophisticated public opinion sampling techniques and the increasing use of powerful computers to parse and subdivide the American people according to "psychographic" categories that identify their susceptibility to individually tailored appeals has further magnified the power of propagandistic electronic messaging that has created a harsh new reality for the functioning of our democracy.
As a result, our democracy is in danger of being hollowed out. In order to reclaim our birthright, we Americans must resolve to repair the systemic decay of the public forum. We must create new ways to engage in a genuine and not manipulative conversation about our future. We must stop tolerating the rejection and distortion of science. We must insist on an end to the cynical use of pseudo-studies known to be false for the purpose of intentionally clouding the public's ability to discern the truth. Americans in both parties should insist on the re-establishment of respect for the rule of reason.
And what if an individual citizen or group of citizens wants to enter the public debate by expressing their views on television? Since they cannot simply join the conversation, some of them have resorted to raising money in order to buy 30 seconds in which to express their opinion. But too often they are not allowed to do even that. MoveOn.org tried to buy an ad for the 2004 Super Bowl broadcast to express opposition to Bush's economic policy, which was then being debated by Congress. CBS told MoveOn that "issue advocacy" was not permissible. Then, CBS, having refused the MoveOn ad, began running advertisements by the White House in favor of the president's controversial proposal. So MoveOn complained, and the White House ad was temporarily removed. By temporarily, I mean it was removed until the White House complained, and CBS immediately put the ad back on, yet still refused to present the MoveOn ad.
To understand the final reason why the news marketplace of ideas dominated by television is so different from the one that emerged in the world dominated by the printing press, it is important to distinguish the quality of vividness experienced by television viewers from the "vividness" experienced by readers. Marshall McLuhan's description of television as a "cool" medium - as opposed to the "hot" medium of print - was hard for me to understand when I read it 40 years ago, because the source of "heat" in his metaphor is the mental work required in the alchemy of reading. But McLuhan was almost alone in recognizing that the passivity associated with watching television is at the expense of activity in parts of the brain associated with abstract thought, logic, and the reasoning process. Any new dominant communications medium leads to a new information ecology in society that inevitably changes the way ideas, feelings, wealth, power and influence are distributed and the way collective decisions are made.
As a young lawyer giving his first significant public speech at the age of 28, Abraham Lincoln warned that a persistent period of dysfunction and unresponsiveness by government could alienate the American people and that "the strongest bulwark of any government, and particularly of those constituted like ours, may effectively be broken down and destroyed - I mean the attachment of the people." Many Americans now feel that our government is unresponsive and that no one in power listens to or cares what they think. They feel disconnected from democracy. They feel that one vote makes no difference, and that they, as individuals, have no practical means of participating in America's self-government. Unfortunately, they are not entirely wrong. Voters are often viewed mainly as targets for easy manipulation by those seeking their "consent" to exercise power. By using focus groups and elaborate polling techniques, those who design these messages are able to derive the only information they're interested in receiving from citizens - feedback useful in fine-tuning their efforts at manipulation. Over time, the lack of authenticity becomes obvious and takes its toll in the form of cynicism and alienation. And the more Americans disconnect from the democratic process, the less legitimate it becomes.
Many young Americans now seem to feel that the jury is out on whether American democracy actually works or not. We have created a wealthy society with tens of millions of talented, resourceful individuals who play virtually no role whatsoever as citizens. Bringing these people in - with their networks of influence, their knowledge, and their resources - is the key to creating the capacity for shared intelligence that we need to solve our problems.
Unfortunately, the legacy of the 20th century's ideologically driven bloodbaths has included a new cynicism about reason itself - because reason was so easily used by propagandists to disguise their impulse to power by cloaking it in clever and seductive intellectual formulations. When people don't have an opportunity to interact on equal terms and test the validity of what they're being "taught" in the light of their own experience and robust, shared dialogue, they naturally begin to resist the assumption that the experts know best.
So the remedy for what ails our democracy is not simply better education (as important as that is) or civic education (as important as that can be), but the re-establishment of a genuine democratic discourse in which individuals can participate in a meaningful way - a conversation of democracy in which meritorious ideas and opinions from individuals do, in fact, evoke a meaningful response.
Fortunately, the Internet has the potential to revitalize the role played by the people in our constitutional framework. It has extremely low entry barriers for individuals. It is the most interactive medium in history and the one with the greatest potential for connecting individuals to one another and to a universe of knowledge. It's a platform for pursuing the truth, and the decentralized creation and distribution of ideas, in the same way that markets are a decentralized mechanism for the creation and distribution of goods and services. It's a platform, in other words, for reason. But the Internet must be developed and protected, in the same way we develop and protect markets - through the establishment of fair rules of engagement and the exercise of the rule of law. The same ferocity that our Founders devoted to protect the freedom and independence of the press is now appropriate for our defense of the freedom of the Internet. The stakes are the same: the survival of our Republic. We must ensure that the Internet remains open and accessible to all citizens without any limitation on the ability of individuals to choose the content they wish regardless of the Internet service provider they use to connect to the Web. We cannot take this future for granted. We must be prepared to fight for it, because of the threat of corporate consolidation and control over the Internet marketplace of ideas.
The danger arises because there is, in most markets, a very small number of broadband network operators. These operators have the structural capacity to determine the way in which information is transmitted over the Internet and the speed with which it is delivered. And the present Internet network operators - principally large telephone and cable companies - have an economic incentive to extend their control over the physical infrastructure of the network to leverage control of Internet content. If they went about it in the wrong way, these companies could institute changes that have the effect of limiting the free flow of information over the Internet in a number of troubling ways.
The democratization of knowledge by the print medium brought the Enlightenment. Now, broadband interconnection is supporting decentralized processes that reinvigorate democracy. We can see it happening before our eyes: As a society, we are getting smarter. Networked democracy is taking hold. You can feel it. We the people - as Lincoln put it, "even we here" - are collectively still the key to the survival of America's democracy.

Source: Time

"Last Hope: The Need for Durable Solutions for Bhutanese Refugees in Nepal and India "

An extract from a latest report by New York based Human Rights Watch . The following is the conclusion from the report:

The U.S. offer to resettle up to 60,000 Bhutanese refugees is the first significant movement in 15 years toward resolving one of the world’s most intractable refugeesituations. But to be truly effective this offer cannot operate in isolation. The U.S.resettlement offer should be a catalyst for a comprehensive solution to theBhutanese refugee crisis.247 This requires a three-pronged strategy.

First, given that resettlement is likely to be the only feasible durable solution for themajority of the refugees at the present time, countries other than the U.S. should joinin a coordinated effort to maximize the total number of resettlement places availablefor this refugee population. In addition to more than 100,000 refugees living in thecamps in eastern Nepal, as many as 15,000 unregistered Bhutanese refugees liveoutside the camps in Nepal and another 30,000 live in India. Thus if the U.S. offer toresettle 60,000 stands alone and neither repatriation nor local integration becomeviable options, the majority of refugees will remain without durable solutions.While the government of Nepal should continue to demand that the government of Bhutan honor its obligation to permit refugee repatriation, Nepal should not makecooperation with resettlement contingent on the outcome of further rounds ofbilateral talks with Bhutan.248 As one refugee said, “The conclusion [of a new round of bilateral talks] might be that the government of Bhutan prolongs our refugee lifeby 15 or 20 years, by restarting the verification process. By that time our generationwill be ruined totally.”249

Nepal should work together with the resettlement countries to ensure that thoseBhutanese refugees in its territory who are offered resettlement places are issuedexit permits without delay.250 Nepal must respect refugees’ right to leave the country,in accordance with article 12(2) of the ICCPR, which provides: “Everyone shall be freeto leave any country, including his own.”251

Second, refugees need a real alternative in the form of local integration, includingguarantees of freedom of movement and the right to seek a livelihood in Nepal.Those refugees who express a preference for local integration over resettlementshould also be given the possibility to acquire Nepalese citizenship.252For the resettlement program to be truly voluntary, refugees need genuine choiceswhether to accept the offer of resettlement. Nepal’s willingness to integrate refugees would give the refugees real options. A refugee said, “I am fearful about the future. Ifthey [resettlement countries] will not take us, maybe we are in the street here inNepal or in India, maybe somewhere else, begging for food.”253

Third, the United States and other resettle countries should redouble their efforts toconvince Bhutan to allow refugees who want to repatriate to do so under conditionsthat are compatible with human rights law. The possibility, now, that the majority ofBhutanese refugees currently in Nepal will opt for durable solutions other thanrepatriation ought to make it that much easier for Bhutan to accept repatriation, andfor resettlement countries to press Bhutan for a genuinely comprehensive solutionthat utilizes all three durable solutions to resolve this protracted refugee situation.All relevant parties should emphasize to the refugees and the government of Bhutanalike that the options of local integration and third-country resettlement do notextinguish refugees’ right to return. Rather, refugees are offered these options onhumanitarian grounds, to allow them to end their refugee status. Refugees’ interimchoices do not deprive them of their right to return to Bhutan. Equally, no offer of adurable solution, be it local integration in Nepal or resettlement to a third country,extinguishes Bhutan’s obligations under international law to respect the refugees’right to return to Bhutan. Moreover, the options of local integration and third-countryresettlement do not extinguish refugees’ right to have restored to them any housing,land, or property of which they were arbitrarily or unlawfully deprived, and to becompensated for any housing, land, or property that cannot be restored to them.254To diffuse the current tensions in the camps between the proponents and opponentsof resettlement, the U.S. and other resettlement countries should emphasize that thedichotomy between resettlement and the right to return is a false one. A member ofthe Bhutanese Refugees Durable Solutions Coordination Committee observed:

Resettlement is not an option that is opposed to repatriation. We canlobby from other countries for change in Bhutan. If people areresettled to countries that respect human rights, they can exercisetheir right to go back. Moreover, there is nothing sure about beingtaken back to Bhutan from the camps in Nepal.

The resettlement countries should present the refugees with a clear message thattheir offer of resettlement is not intended to undermine the efforts to realizerefugees’ right to return to their own country. To enforce this message theresettlement countries should bring pressure to bear on the government of Bhutan torespect and protect the fundamental human rights of the remaining ethnic Nepalis inBhutan, and to allow those refugees who wish to repatriate to exercise their right toreturn. A young refugee man said:

The U.S. offer may be welcome to many of the refugees. People willbegin to experience a new life. But America should also work withequal force to enable those refugees who want to go back to repatriate.I hope that the U.S. will keep an eye on Bhutan, and that Bhutancomes in the frontline with respect to democracy and human rights.

Refugees voiced to Human Rights Watch persistent fears that Bhutan might use theresettlement offer as a pretext to force its remaining ethnic Nepali citizens to leavethe country. One refugee said, “Government officials in villages are saying toLhotshampas, ‘Your relatives are going to America, now is the right time to meetthem.’ So they are encouraging people to leave, saying, ‘This is your goldenopportunity.’”257 Another refugee said, “Subdivision officers are going toLhotshampas, saying to them, ‘Your relatives are going to America, why are you stillhere?’”258 Yet another refugee said:

The U.S. offer should not be an encouragement for the Bhutangovernment to evict more people. The U.S. and other countries shouldtalk to Bhutan that these people in Bhutan should not be evicted.These conditions should be there, otherwise Bhutan will evict morepeople. The purpose of the [2005] Bhutan census is to clear thesouthern Bhutanese away. Our concern is that our relatives in Bhutanshould not be made to suffer like us.

The international community, and in particular the U.S. and other resettlementcountries, and those countries who maintain diplomatic relations with Bhutan, mustput real pressure on the government of Bhutan to ensure respect for the rights ofBhutan’s ethnic Nepali population on a non-discriminatory basis, and in particular toensure that all ethnic Nepalis in Bhutan are protected from arbitrary denationalization.

To read the full report, please go here.

"...a contest of ideas and not weapons" - Congressman James T Walsh

Congressman James T Walsh, a republican, has been in the Congress for the last 18 years. Perhaps, he is the only member in the Congress who speaks fluent Nepali and keeps a close tab on Nepal, where he served as a Peace Corps volunteer during 1970–72. Walsh was instrumental in drawing considerable Congressional attention to the political developments in Nepal last year and the years before. As the Chairman of the United States Congress’ Friends of Ireland he was closely involved with the Northern Ireland peace process. He is an influential member of House Appropriations Committee of the Congress that controls the power of the purse. John Narayan Parajuli spoke to Mr. Walsh in his office recently in Washington, D.C. about his experience in the Congress, his connection to Nepal and his take on Nepal’s peace process.

Tell us about your experience in the new Congress.

It’s not as much fun as it was. Being in the minority, I don’t get to make the decisions, I made before. I have to work with my new [Democratic] Committee Chairman and Subcommittee chairman. I have been here for 18 years, and I think I have the respect of my colleagues. And in areas where I am knowledgeable, I think I am still able to help make policy, and certainly will continue to follow issues of importance to me, and certainly Nepal is one of them.

It’s my impression that the Republican Congress held more hearing on Nepal last year than the new Congress. Is it party politics, or just the timing of the events?

I think it’s probably timing and probably priorities. I was in a position where I can get other members to hold hearings because it was timely with the revolution and the ceasefire and there was a lot happening in Nepal in the last couple of years. And probably people think things are quieter now. But also I think there were Republicans members like myself, who wanted to get more public attention to what was happening in Nepal. Hopefully the Democrats will also do that.

Now you keep a close tab on Nepal. What is your connection with Nepal?

It goes back a long time. When I was just finishing up my college, I applied for the Peace Corps, and I was accepted in an agriculture program, which surprised me because I had very little practical agriculture experience. I was sent to Nepal. I lived in Nijgarh, Bara. Our district capital was Kalaiya. We had a dera in Birgunj that we shared with four-five of my Peace Corps friends. When we went to the district krishi bikas meeting, we would stay in the dera, and would take the bus back and forth to Kalaiya. It was a very bumpy ride. I worked with farmers in Nijgargh Pachayat. I worked with people who moved down from hills and people who were indigenous in the terai-- the tharus. I grew wheat, corn, rice vegetables. I did a little bit of everything. I was able to see a lot of Nepal while I was there. I traveled to the West: Pokhara and Annapurna, and to Namche and the Everest region. I try to, as best I could, maintain my ties with friends whom I lived with. I email back and forth. I obviously follow the politics and the recent changes in Nepal.

I understand that you are planning to go back to Nepal. Have you planned anything specific yet?

Actually my hope is that I could go and observe the elections. That would be ideal. I think the elections are the critical event in the near term history of Nepal. But when I first came back here in 1991, and the government changed and democracy was established, we wrote to the king, and asked the king to respect the students and people who went to streets asking for democracy. And I saw the impact that the United States had, and I think that the United States continues to play a positive role encouraging democracy. So if I could go for the election, that’s when I would go.

The Maoists have joined the government. What’s your take on it?

I think it’s very significant that they have decided to participate in democracy. It should now be a contest of ideas and not weapons. I am pleased to point that they have relinquished their weapons. I think it is very important that they honor that commitment; that they not continue to threaten violence.
They should forswear weapons, put them aside forever and participate in democracy truly and fully.

Do you agree with the administration’s policy of isolating the Maoists as long as they don’t swear-off violence?

I don’t know if I would be as strict as the administration. The Maoists have set aside their weapons, if that continues, that builds confidence. And there should be other confidence building measures for the Maoists, if they continue to respond in a positive way, I think we should engage them. I think the international community should engage them. But they have to continue to keep their word and swear-off violence, and not use the threat of violence. But the fact that they still have guns does make one pause.

You have been closely involved with the Northern Ireland peace process, what’s your experience? Is there a lesson Nepal can learn from it?

I think there are some parallels. In Northern Ireland, people think it’s about religion. It was not really about religion. It was more about national aspirations. There is a group of people who align themselves with England; others align themselves with the republic of Ireland.
Basically there is a difference of opinion amongst people. The Republican and the Loyalists paramilitaries fought for 30 years, killed thousands of people. But they came to the conclusion that it would never be resolved militarily. They decided to work things out through ceasefire, elimination of weapons, what they referred to as “putting weapons beyond use,” confidence building, dialogue, and comprise. And it has taken a lot time—13 years since the ceasefire and they still don’t have a government. But very soon they will. And it is going to require the same process [in Nepal]: patience and persistence. And it will require the international community to stay engaged, to watch what’s happening. Just as the United Nations has steeped-in in Nepal, a group of countries have involved themselves in the Northern Ireland.

Critics say the United States was rather soft on the Irish Republican Army (IRA), and that it is unwilling to be equally flexible on the Maoists. Does ideology play a role in such considerations?

There‘re subtle differences. My view is that if, as I said, if the Maoists continue to perform and keep commitments, we should engage them, we should talk to them. This is somewhat different than the administration. The administrations under President Clinton and President Bush, there were time when they would not deal with the IRA. They continued to consider them terrorists even after the ceasefire. I have always been of the opinion that you have to engage, you have to talk, break down barriers and build confidence.
I think the fact the Maoists are communists is more of a problem, although the IRA is very much a socialist organizations.

As a member of the House Appropriations Committee, will you be willing to sponsor a bill to increase funding for Nepal, if the Nepal government requests, or on your own initiative?

Yes. I have always supported the additional funding for Nepal. I think we need to be helpful with the election process.
I would very much like to see the United States working with international organization like the World Bank help Nepal to create and harness the hydroelectric power that it has. Nepal has vast hydro electric potential. Before the Maoists revolution began, there was some real movement on harnessing some of the rivers in Nepal. It’s somewhat environmentally controversial. But there are ways to harness that power that would make Nepal energy independent, in fact an energy exporter.

State Department officials say they don’t want to been seen as competing with India—in terms of assistance. Is that a fair benchmark?

India is certainly much closer to Nepal, physically, culturally and spiritually. But I think that the United States can play a positive role working with Nepal’s neighbors in helping to coordinate activities. When I was there, you had Soviet Union, India and U.S. building the east west highway. Everyone was building a section. We should be able to continue to do that sort of thing.

How optimistic are you about the peace process?

So far, so good. I really want to see the elections; I want to see the elections run fairly. I don’t want to see any ballot intimidations by the Maoists or anyone else. I think Prime Minister Koirala is a remarkable man. I have met him a number of times. I think he has got the country headed in the right direction, but there are a lot of pitfalls between here and there. But I very hopeful that once the elections are over, the people of Nepal, who this is really ultimately about, will have the confidence that the government they elected is the government they wanted.

Anything you would like to add?

Just dherai namaskar and namaste to mero daju bhai, didi bahinii, and I miss Nepal, and I am looking forward to coming back.

Source: The Blog

John Narayan Parajuli is a Nepali journalist. Click here to visit his blog.

Time for SAARC to combat global warming

- Kuldip Nayar

The news is that India spent more than Rs 44,000 crores on weapons in the last three years, but not a single paisa on combating global warming. Even the Rs 3,500 crores meant for afforestation have been lying unspent since 2004. I thought that the various reports warning India against the colossal dangers of global warming would have awakened New Delhi to think of measures to combat the menace. Apparently no.

The famous Sunderbans in West Bengal has lost 10 per cent of its area, as well as some rare species, to the rising water. On the other hand, experts in the West say that glaciers are melting, raising the surface of seas. Because new glaciers are not replacing the old ones, many rivers have less water than before.

Environmentalist Sunder Lal Bahuguna who has been living not far from the source of the Ganga, Gangotri, complains that during the last three decades he has seen the river shrinking over the years. It appears that this is the story all over the region comprising India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal and the Maldives which have found time to discuss everything under the sun, but never the environment, ecology or climate. Yet, these are the countries where global warming is affecting the environment the most.

The disappointing part is not the lack of knowledge, but the lack of interest. The worst may happen in Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and the Maldives, but India’s coastal cities may suffer equally. Climate change may turn fertile lands in the region into deserts. It is estimated that 200 million people will be forced to leave their hearth and home to new places where the influx of a large number of people may create its own problems. Less rain or too much of it at certain places is a relatively recent phenomenon.

I recall Prime Minister Indira Gandhi asking the agriculture ministry to analyse the reasons behind disturbed rainfall cycles. But there was no follow-up. The examination never went beyond the collection of press clippings and Mrs Gandhi’s own statement. The Department of Environment was set up in 1981. It is lost in trivialities. Studies done in India, however, indicate that economic development has been halved by hazards like climate. This is true of Pakistan and Bangladesh as well. Their growth has also been curtailed by unpredictable natural factors.
One need not believe the World Wildlife Fund report which warned that humans would need to find two other earths in space to survive because the planet’s resources would be exhausted by 2050. Yet, immediate steps should be taken to save resources. Sometime ago, a Nobel laureate economist told me in Delhi that India’s problem would not be population, but water. This is true, because there is already a running battle between the states over the share of river water. Chief Justice of India, K.G. Balakrishnan has revealed that the largest number of legal disputes pertains to water shortage. Punjab, Haryana. Tamil Nadu and Karnataka are in constant litigation over water sharing. One hears shrill voices over the construction of the Kalabagh Dam from across the border.

Groundwater sources are also depleting in Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Bangalore, Lucknow and Hyderabad. This is true of cities in Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka as well. On top of it, trees are being cut indiscriminately in the region. For example, the Army has played havoc in Delhi by illegally building houses on the age-old ridge, cutting down hundreds of trees. As many as 30,000 trees are in the process of being uprooted in Lahore alone.

No doubt, we, the developing countries, are devoid of sensitivity over ecology. But strange is the attitude of the developed world, particularly the West, which has progressed at the expense of the poor nations. We are paying for their sins. Ugandan President Y. Museveni has aptly described the emission of gases by the developed countries as "an act of aggression" against the poor. "They have polluted for decades and we pay the price in lost landscapes and lost lives." Developed countries are also responsible for the gases concentrating in the atmosphere. This has been taking place cumulatively over the last 150 years, says Dr R.K. Pachuri, chairman of International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) at Brussels. "Even today if you look at the per capita emission, China and India are nowhere near the developed countries."

It is, therefore, not surprising that the Security Council’s first meeting on global warming could take place only a few days ago. As expected, the United States was opposed to the very idea of the meeting. Russia’s opposition is understandable, but definitely not China’s. Maybe, the latter is behaving like a passenger travelling on a third class compartment, shutting out the others after getting in. Dr Pachuri has predicted dire consequences: 30 per cent species will be wiped out, 3.2 billion people will face water shortage and large-scale melting of the Himalayan glaciers will play havoc in the Gangetic plains. If the sea level increases by a mere one foot, it will endanger Mumbai and Kolkata as much as it would Karachi, Chittagong and Colombo.

Whatever the reservations of America, Russia and China — the strange bedfellows — the Security Council’s meeting on global warming turned out to be an impressive show. As many as 52 nations participated in it, apart from the Council members. A preponderant majority argued that climate change posed a clear threat to international security. The West, like the haves, does not understand that the have-nots may one day become desperate if the distance between the two is not spanned. This applies as much to trade as it does to agricultural products and ecology.
America has already spent around $600 billion on wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Had it utilised one-third of it, $200 billion, to help the developing and underdeveloped countries adopt a low carbon economy, it would have changed the fate of millions of people in poor countries.

It is time the Saarc summit or countries in the region considered a strategy against global warming. An emergency meeting must be called, and India should take the initiative. But New Delhi is hardly active. Its silence is similar to its moribund attitude towards population explosion. The excesses committed during the Emergency stalled the birth control programme. The police reached the bedroom. Since then political parties have been afraid to even mention "birth control," lest they lose the vote as did the Congress in 1977. Pakistan and Bangladesh avoid even the phrase "family planning," because the fanatics there have linked it with religion.
Global warming is worse than the population explosion waiting to hit the region.

Source: The Asian Age

Rising India: A View from the Neighbourhood

India’s relations with South Asian countries function like traffic-lights and have failed to establish a stable, mature relationship based on mutual trust and a long-term vision of cooperation

By Nischal N. Pandey

Two point four billion people, or 40 % of the world’s population, live in China and India . Currently the United States has the largest and most technologically advanced economy in the world, with a per capita GDP of $43,500 but with economic growth between 8 and 10 % per year, economists say that China and India are fast catching up. China’s current per capita GDP is $7,600 and India’s is $3,700 but all projections under realistic scenario made by the World Bank reveal that these two Asian giants are set to become the second and third largest economies in the world in PPP terms by 2020 next only to the USA. According to a report prepared in early 2005 by the National Intelligence Council, an in-house think tank of the CIA, “ India and China increasingly will flex powerful political and economic muscles as major new global players by 2020 likening the rise to the emergence of the U.S. as a world power, a century ago.”

Let us analyse how India’s emerging economic status in Asia and its strengths in many areas on the global level is re-defining its self-image leading to a new political role and leave the China perspective to more observant analysts than me from Vietnam, the Philippines, Cambodia, Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore. Its nuclear testing in 1998, the sheer number of its growing population, expanding middle class which in itself is the second largest market in the world, its robust military establishment, the acquiring by its navy of an aircraft carrier and the country's increasing sophistication in high-technology are shaping India as a rising political, economic and military power of this century. I would even say that this rise is “inevitable”. The checkerboard pattern of the Cold War alliance has long gone and the new India is now in the threshold of claiming its legitimate place in the international arena.

Once proudly non-aligned, India has turned its back on strategic policy independence through a military cooperation agreement with the U.S. that analysts say is the most far-reaching and comprehensive military agreement that India has signed with any country. Simultaneous improvements in relations with the U.S., the EU and Russia, Southeast Asia, Japan, and China demonstrates that for the first time in diplomatic history, India is forging significant strategic ties with both the east and the west. Although its Cold War alliance gave India access to much-needed industrial and military technology from the former USSR, it unfortunately remained backward and underdeveloped for decades due to the socialist policies of its successive governments. Since the economic liberalization initiated in the early 90s, which led to growth rates of 6-7 percent per annum, India’s global presence has been clearly visible. Its well-educated, young population has embraced state-of-the-art computer and information technologies, which has made it a global knowledge hub with a central place in the transitional movement of knowledge and services; India’s comparative advantage lies in the large and relatively young population. 70 percent of its population is literate, many of them speak fluent English and about half of them are under 30. In fact, according to one study there are more English speaking people in India than in any other country. So, while it is undoubtedly a rising power in the software, design, services and precision industries it must not be overlooked that the Indian Diaspora and Indians working abroad are playing invaluable roles in global innovation chain like here in Singapore. Today, Motorola, Hewlett-Packard, CISCO systems all rely on Indian teams to devise software platforms and dazzling multi-media features for next generation devices.

Rarely has the ascent of a relatively poor nation been watched with such a mix of wonder, opportunism and skepticism basically because India, despite these achievements in so many areas still contains half of the world’s chronically hungry.

There are a few crucial issues that if left un-tackled are likely to hinder India’s emergence as a major world-power of this century. First, the liberalization wave and the ‘India Shining’ attribute that has been talked about with such glamour hasn’t reached places like North Bihar, North Bengal, Jharkhand, Chattisgarh, the entire seven sister states of the Northeast, and many other rural areas of India. There are still jolting signs of extreme poverty even in urban centers supposedly to be the show-cases of economic development such as Dharavi in Mumbai which is Asia’s largest slum. These regional disparities in levels of economic development of the states and the slow pace of development in rural India is likely to thwart progress of the rest of the country.

The second area of concern is the South Asian region which is a big disadvantage for India in comparison to China as it “rises” to be a major power of this century. The east coast of China is situated in a highly dynamic and rich neighborhood. Neighbors like Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, Singapore plus Hong Kong and Macau provide capital for investment, markets for Chinese exports, tourists from abroad, more advanced technology, and expertise. The neighborhood of India, in comparison, is less dynamic. Moreover, China has settled differences with all its neighbours in Southeast Asia and long given up the policy of exporting its ideology around its vicinity. It has since the early 80s shown little interest in the domestic politics of these countries and deals with a constructive outlook no matter which regime or leader is in power in these countries. Although hiccups remain in bilateral relations with Japan and on issues such as the nuclearization of the Korean peninsula and Taiwan, these are not likely to substantially impact on China’s speed of progress.

On the other hand, India’s relations with South Asian countries function like traffic-lights. The chronic tension, occasional conflict and perennial lack of trust between India and Pakistan and the frequent strain in relations between India and the immediate neighbors is likely to be a major barrier for re-defining its self-image and the world’s perception of India. As the largest country of the region, it bears a disproportionate responsibility for the success and failure of regional and sub-regional cooperation efforts in the region as compared to other countries; therefore it is condemned to be both the necessary engine as well as the likely obstacle in the fulfillment of the region’s potential. The last five decades of New Delhi’s policies towards its neighbors has comprehensively failed to establish a stable, mature relationship based on mutual trust and a long-term vision of cooperation.

The Indo-Pakistan relations has even been termed as a “tarot reader’s paradise.” The issue of Jammu and Kashmir has been and is likely to deter all efforts towards the harmonizing of bilateral relations and thereby prevent India from emerging as an international player especially as the Kashmir issue is sentimental to the larger Muslim world. It is an “unfinished agenda of partition” and the “core issue” in one view and an “un-vacated aggression” and “an externally sponsored terrorism,” according to another. There seems to be no middle-ground. But the sooner Indo-Pak relations improve the better for India’s long-term goal of “rising” as a major power.

New Delhi must also not forget that with increasing political and economic clout comes increased responsibility which demands a larger heart while dealing with neighbors. But although it aspires to be a permanent member of the UN Security Council, we can’t see how in contrast to its pre-1990 foreign policy, India is engaging with its neighbors differently. In the past, India frequently resorted to passionately transmitting internal trouble within the territory of smaller neighbours but the genie´ has most of the time uncorked from the bottle and rose up against its benefactor as in the case of more than two thousand Indian Peace Keeping Forces being killed in Sri Lanka and Former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi being assassinated by a LTTE sponsored attack. Despite this grim memory, Delhi can neither aggressively back the Sri Lankan Army through a joint military cooperation because of the sentiments of Indian Tamils in Tamil Nadu nor support a Tamil eelam as wanted by V Prabhakaran because of the LTTE being branded as a terrorist outfit and the larger ramifications that it will have on India’s fragile southern flank. This policy bewilderment continues even as the LTTE now has already erected a mini air-force along with a navy of its own.

Nepal is another paradox of India’s neighborhood policy. Every major political change in Nepal since 1950 has been the outcome of the deterioration of its relations with India but every government that comes to power has had difficulty accommodating Delhi’s interests within Nepal. With every change, follows an invisible undercurrent of anti-Indian feeling which within a few years transforms into a dangerous surge of mass anti-Indian euphoria like it happened during the anti-Tanakpur demonstrations and the Hritik Roshan riots. History keeps on repeating and Delhi keeps on committing the same mistakes.

In 2005, it facilitated an understanding between the underground Maoists and the seven political parties in New Delhi although the Maoists at that time (and till today) were declared terrorists by the Government of India in order to help usher in democracy in Nepal. But India’s sympathy for democratic forces stops at the Nepal border and doesn’t cross over to neighboring Bangladesh where since January this year, 95,000 have been arbitrarily arrested, 19 people have been killed since the emergency was declared and while former Prime Minister Khaleda Zia has been accused of massive corruption another former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has been accused of plotting murder. All these questions raise doubts that if India cannot solve problems effectively in its own backyard how can it play a greater role in the international front? Or is it the innate desire of some powers to want India to be bogged down so much in its own neighborhood that it cannot go ahead? Therefore, as the largest country in the region, it must make sure that these countries become its natural allies not by fear but by genuine bond of friendship. This can only happen when it stops taking sides and having “preferences” in internal political dynamics of these countries. They should feel that India is an opportunity for them whereby the SAARC as a whole becomes the most vocal advocate of India ’s legitimate place in the permanent category of the UNSC.

The third area of crucial importance is how India manages the Naxalite problem because as we have seen Indian states including Bihar, Jharkhand, Chattisgarh, Andhra Pradesh, parts of Orissa are badly affected by Naxal terror. Communism being a communicable disease has engulfed all these states in such a major way that the Naxal problem has now been regarded as the second most dangerous conflict taking place in India after Kashmir. The fourth area of concern is the multiplicity of crises stemming from recurrent and escalating conflict in the Northeast region. Northeast India and Southeast Asia have a long history of affinity and shared religious, cultural and economic ties; thus it is a vital determinant for the success of the ‘Look East Policy’.

Lying at the inter-section of Southeast Asia and South Asia; India’s Northeast shares more commonalities ethnically, culturally and linguistically with its Southeast Asian neighbours than any other country of South Asia. The region is an abode of 200 diverse ethnic and tribal groups who belong to the Southeast Asian region’s culture zone, bearing striking societal similarities. Northeast India is also a natural land bridge linking the two regions as it is at the cultural and ecological crossroads of South and Southeast Asia . Unfortunately, it continues to be beset with massive infiltration of people from outside the region, ethnic strife and geographic isolation . It also harbors the oldest insurgencies of independent India that are becoming increasingly intractable. In fact, four states – Assam , Manipur, Nagaland and Tripura-- witness scales of conflict that can be categorized as low intensity wars. There has to be a combination of economic development, massive central investment and negotiations with these outfits to resurrect the Northeast which is extremely vital for the success of India ’s Look East Policy.

There are other emerging challenges as well such as energy and water crises which are going to be great barriers to economic and social progress in the coming years. Furthermore, at least five million Indians are currently living with HIV. According to UNAIDS Report on the Global AIDS Epidemic published in 2006, India has the largest number of people living with HIV than any other country in the planet. India also needs to do more in the sports sector which in comparison to that of China is dismal if one is to compare the medals tally in the Olympics and the Asian games. It must try to hold the Commonwealth games by 2010 and even the Olympics by 2020 to project its growing eminence in the international scene.

Although the challenges are enormous, the prospects are bright for India which is not only in Information Technology and trained human resources but also in the realm of “cultural power”. Its culture and music, arts, Indian Miss Universe and Miss Worlds, Hindi films and its free media are only some of the vital elements facilitating its soft power status. Most importantly, India is a functioning democracy. If it is able to loosen up infrastructural bottlenecks, resolve implementation problems due to political and bureaucratic hassles, change its mind-set as regards to dealing with neighbors; it maybe second or third to the U.S. and China in the loop but it is ultimately going to win the marathon.

(Excerpts of the author’s presentation at an international dialogue on “Regional Perceptions of Asian Powers for Global Change: With Focus on Rising China and India” organised by the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies and the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, held in Singapore 26-27 April 2007. A strategic analyst and former director of the Institute for Foreign Affairs, the author can be contacted at nina@ntc.net.np)

Source: Nepalnews