📰 Firing at LAC clouds Jaishankar-Wang talks
It will be the first meeting between the two Foreign Ministers since the border crisis started
•External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar reached Moscow on Tuesday night to attend a meeting of the eight-nation Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, which is expected to prepare for the SCO summit later this year, possibly in October.
•All eyes, however, are on an expected meeting between Mr. Jaishankar and his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi on the sidelines of the meeting (September 9-10), amidst a sudden escalation in military tensions at the Line of Actual Control (LAC) after the first gunshots fired there in 45 years. This would be the first face-to-face meeting between the two foreign ministers since the beginning of tensions four months ago.
•“The Council of Foreign Ministers (CFM) meeting in Moscow will review the preparations for the forthcoming SCO Summit and also exchange views on international and regional issues,” said a statement by the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA). “External Affairs Minister’s visit in Moscow will include the participation in the Council of SCO Foreign Ministers and other bilateral meetings,” it added.
•While officials would not confirm the timing for the India-China meeting, Mr. Jaishankar had acknowledged last week that he would meet with Mr. Wang whom he had known “for a very long time”. On Monday, he said the “very serious situation” at the LAC called for “very, very deep conversations between the two sides at a political level”.
•The meeting between the foreign ministers will follow a week after Defence Minister Rajnath Singh met with his Chinese counterpart General Wei Fenghe, also in Moscow, to discuss easing LAC tensions, but made no breakthrough.
•The diplomatic challenge ahead of Mr. Jaishankar is heightened by a number of factors, including the fact that the current situation at the LAC is unprecedented, said experts, with undertones of the run-up to the previous India-China war in 1962.
‘Boilerplate approach’
•“The Chinese have taken a rather boilerplate approach so far, talking about “rights and wrongs”, just as they did in 1959 as relations began to deteriorate. But political level contacts must continue even as the EAM said yesterday that the crystal ball is pretty clouded at the moment. The situation is not looking good,” said former foreign secretary and former Ambassador to China Nirupama Menon Rao. “I don’t believe there is ground for much optimism on outcomes for such a meeting given the positions taken by each side,” she told The Hindu .
•The gunshots fired on Monday, which India has blamed the Chinese PLA for starting, were the first firearms used since 1975 at the LAC in Arunachal Pradesh, and the first in Ladakh since the 1962 war. In addition, the killing of soldiers at Galwanwere also the first since 1975, while the death of an SFF soldier, who stepped on a vintage landmine while patrolling near Pangong Tso last week, was the first publicly known killing of a Tibetan soldier at the LAC in Ladakh.
Parliamentary committee head disallows questions, cites national security
•At a meeting of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on External Affairs on Tuesday, questions from members on the situation on the Line of Actual Control (LAC) were disallowed on the grounds of “national security”, sources said.
•The meeting was called on the agenda of “India’s Neighbourhood First Policy’. Foreign Secretary Harsh Vardhan Shringla, along with other senior officials from the External Affairs Ministry, deposed in front of the committee.
•The questions raised by some of the Opposition members included reports on the PLA’s claim that Indian troops crossed the LAC and fired shots to deter them from patrolling the Pangong Tso area. The MPs also wanted to know how much of the area, which based on the Indian perception of the LAC, is in Chinese control.
•The MEA in a statement this morning on the reports of gunshots has already stated that at no stage “has the Indian Army transgressed across the LAC or resorted to use of any aggressive means, including firing”. The Ministry further said it was the PLA troops who were attempting to close-in with one of India’s forward positions along the LAC and when dissuaded by their own troops, PLA troops fired a few rounds in the air in an attempt to intimidate their own troops.
‘Not part of agenda’
•However, sources said Committee chairperson and BJP leader P.P. Chaudhary pointed out that for one, this subject is not part of the agenda and therefore, it is unfair to the external affairs officials to expect them to answer the questions. Second, he also pointed out that since the situation is still unfolding and it is an issue of national security, it is best that the committee does not wade into it at present.
•Mr. Chaudhary did not respond to The Hindu ’s efforts to speak to him. Mr. Shringla and others also did not respond to questions.
•External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar on Monday had said the situation at eastern Ladakh, where Indian and Chinese troops have been in an eyeball-to-eyeball confrontation since April, was “very serious” and called for “deep conversations between the two sides at the political level”.
•Members of the Committee expressed concerns that India’s relations with Sri Lanka, Maldives and Nepal have soured while China has managed to strengthen its position among these countries.
📰 GDP to shrink 14.8%: Goldman
Brokerage cuts FY21 estimate on COVID-19 hit; sees sharp rebound next fiscal
•The Indian economy is the worst-hit among major economies, American brokerage Goldman Sachs said on Tuesday, sharply cutting its FY21 GDP forecast to a contraction of 14.8%.
•It had earlier estimated that the economy of the country, which is now home to the second-largest number of COVID-19 infections, to contract by 11.8%.
•The estimate comes days after official data said the economy contracted by 23.9% for the June 2020 quarter, as activity across all sectors barring agriculture contracted due to the lockdowns. The nearly two-month-long lockdowns chilled economy activity but was unable to contain the number of infections, which stands at 40 lakh.
•“India’s GDP hit from COVID-19 [is] the highest across major economies,” analysts at the brokerage wrote. They now believe that the economy will contract 13.7% for the September quarter and 9.8% for the December quarter, compared with the 10.7% and 6.7% contractions, respectively, estimated earlier. “Our estimates imply that real GDP falls by 11.1% in 2020, and by 14.8% in FY21,” they added.
Most pessimistic
•The 14.8% contraction is among the most pessimistic of all the analyst estimates till now. Earlier, analysts at India Ratings and Research revised down their estimate to an 11.8% contraction for FY21, while economists at India’s largest lender SBI are now expecting a 10.9% contraction.
•The brokerage said there would be a sharp rebound in FY22 due to the low base.
•It estimated GDP growth of 15.7% in the next fiscal. Assuming 70% of the output lost in June is recovered in June 2021, they expect real GDP growth of 27.1% in the April-June 2021 quarter.
📰 A case for down-to-earth governance
Strong local governance remains the unfinished agenda to make India’s democracy strong and deep
•Nine years ago, Anna Hazare ended his historic fast when the Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh, informed him that Parliament had expressed support for proposed changes to anti-corruption legislation; “the ‘sense of the House’ was behind Anna Hazare’s key demands”. The historic bending of Parliament to the people’s will was the result of a remarkable movement of citizens — rich, middle class, and poor — coming together to take politics back from politicians and to demand Parliament’s accountability to citizens. Since then the nation’s attention has moved on, from weaknesses in institutions of governance, to threats from China on the nation’s borders and to global problems caused by COVID-19.
Hazare’s point
•The single point demand of the Anna movement was the institution of the Jan Lokpal to try all government functionaries when accused of corruption; even the Prime Minister. Anna Hazare is a controversial person. However, one should not throw the baby out with the bathwater, and the thought he left while breaking his fast is worth recalling. He said Lokpals and Lokayuktas would not eliminate the root causes of corruption in politics and government. Electoral reforms and decentralisation of power were essential.
•Parliamentarians of all parties were affronted by the claims of leaders of the Anna movement that they were the representatives of the people rather than the Parliamentarians. They taunted leaders like Arvind Kejriwal to prove it by winning elections. This spurred the formation of the Aam Aadmi Party. It joined the system which had to be reformed and had to play the game by the system’s rules. This dismayed many and the movement for fundamental reforms of governance lost its steam.
It is about money
•Around the world, electoral democracies have become infected by the disease of funding political parties and elections. Money is required to win elections legitimately, even when people are not bribed to vote, which is illegitimate. Communications with citizens, essential for democracy, can be very expensive. Advertisements have to be paid for as well as teams of professionals for managing social media. If one party raises a million to spend, and the other raises two million, the first must raise even more or its million would have been wasted were it to lose the election. Thus, the race to raise more money for legitimate electioneering purposes can corrupt the process of funding parties and elections. Solutions are not easy because the right to free speech, and to put one’s money where one’s mouth is, is a fundamental right that cannot be denied as the Supreme Court of the United States ruled.
•The debate continues about which is a better system. A presidential system, like the U.S. or the French one; or a parliamentary system, like the British one which India has adopted. Though the U.S. has a presidential system it cannot implement reforms to its flawed health-care system nor control the spread of dangerous weapons because party divisions within its democratically-elected Congress and Senate seem to make it impossible. Debates within India’s Parliament, in which all members have been elected by the world’s most impressive election machinery, hardly inspire citizens’ confidence in their representatives’ ability to govern the country.
Process and deliberations
•The problem in electoral democracies is not only with the process by which representatives are elected, but also in the conduct of their deliberations when they come together. This problem is not due to the quality of the individuals — whether they are ‘educated’ or not or even whether they have criminal records or not. It is inherent in the design of the process for electing representatives.
•The framers of the U.S. Constitution had worried about this problem. Representatives of the people must be chosen by smaller electorates within geographical constituencies. However, when they meet together in the national chamber, they are expected to govern the whole country. They must shed their local hats and put on a national hat to consider what will be best for the whole country. However, if the people who elected them find they are not protecting local interests, they will not be elected again. Constituency favouring leads to challenges for equitable solutions for sharing of river waters, and to railway stations where there are very few people, because representatives fight for the largest share of the pie for their constituency rather than the growth of the whole pie.
•Electing good representatives to Assemblies is not enough to ensure good decisions will be made. Imagine 500 representatives in a chamber, each clamouring for his constituencies’ interests. How will decisions be taken? As James Madison wrote in The Federalist paper No.55 (https://bit.ly/3h7Pn9V), “had every Athenian citizen been a Socrates, every Athenian assembly would still have been a mob.”
Inner democracy
•Political parties in electoral democracies provide a solution to the problem of creating an alignment of views among representatives from hundreds of constituencies around the country. A party’s point of view on fundamental matters can unite many. Therefore, all representatives need not be heard from in Parliament. One can speak for many. It is easier to form effective governments in electoral democracies when there are fewer parties. When there are too many parties and too many contradictory points of view to be accommodated within a coalition, governance can break down. Therefore, political parties are not evil. However, when political parties are not internally democratic, they become reviled as the means for self-aggrandising politicians to amass power and wealth, and democratic nations suffer.
•It has become very difficult in representative democracies, for reasons explained here, to arrive at good and fair decisions for the governance of a large state or country. It is tempting to abandon political parties and parliaments and revert to direct forms of democracy where every decision can be put directly to all citizens to vote on. New Internet technologies make this possible. But, if all voters have not understood what is at stake, they cannot decide well, as Californians have learned over decades with their forms of direct democracy, and the U.K. has too with its hasty Brexit referendum.
•Complex issues, where many interests collide, must be resolved by reason, not settled by the numbers. Hence there is no alternative to good local governance, wherein citizens manage their local affairs democratically. Locals know best how to balance the preservation of their water sources while making it easier for local enterprises to do business, and how to make their local schools and health facilities accessible to all citizens. One-size solutions devised by experts at the centre cannot fit all: therefore, local systems solutions are essential to solve global systemic problems of environmental sustainability and inclusive growth.
Citizens must solve issues
•No doubt, electoral funding must be cleaned up, and democracy within political parties improved to make representative democracy work better. This will require big changes to entrenched systems, yet will not be sufficient for good, democratic governance. Citizens must appreciate that they have to be the source of solutions, and not become only the source of problems for governments and experts to solve for them.
•Citizens must learn to listen to each other’s perspectives in their villages and in their urban neighbourhoods. Those with the most needs in the community must be enabled to participate, alongside the most endowed, in finding solutions for all. Since India’s Independence 73 years ago when the power of government was transferred from a centre in London to a centre in Delhi, strong local governance remains the unfinished agenda to make India’s democracy strong and deep.
📰 What is in a NAM and India’s alignment
The country has not yet found a universally accepted successor, as a signature tune for its foreign policy
•India’s External Affairs Minister, S. Jaishankar, said recently that non-alignment was a concept of relevance in a specific era and a particular context, though the independence of action enshrined in it remains a factor of continuity in India’s foreign policy. This is about as explicit an assertion as one is likely to get from our political leadership of an obvious post-Cold War fact: that non-alignment, as a foreign policy concept, is dead.
United by a campaign
•Non-alignment was a policy fashioned during the Cold War, to retain an autonomy of policy (not equidistance) between two politico-military blocs. The Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) provided a platform for newly independent developing nations to join together to protect this autonomy. It was a disparate group from many continents, with varying degrees of proximity to, and dependence on, one or the other bloc; and broadly united around NAM’s flagship campaigns for de-colonisation, universal nuclear disarmament and against apartheid.
•One of the blocs was disbanded at the end of the Cold War. De-colonisation was largely complete by then, the apartheid regime in South Africa was being dismantled and the campaign for universal nuclear disarmament was going nowhere. Freed from the shackles of the Cold War, the NAM countries were able to diversify their network of relationships across the erstwhile east-west divide. Non-alignment lost its relevance, and NAM its original raison d’être .
•For a few years now, non-alignment has not been projected by our policymakers as a tenet of India’s foreign policy. However, we have not yet found a universally accepted successor as a signature tune for our foreign policy. Successive formulations have been coined and rejected. Strategic autonomy was one, which soon acquired a connotation similar to non-alignment, with an anti-U.S. tint. Multi-alignment has not found universal favour, since (as the External Affairs Minister said elsewhere) it may convey the impression of opportunism, whereas we seek strategic convergences. Seeking issue-based partnerships or coalitions is a description that has not stuck. “Advancing prosperity and influence” was a description Dr. Jaishankar settled for, to describe the aspirations that our network of international partnerships seeks to further.
China factor
•In the wake of the current stand-off with China, there have been calls for India’s foreign policy to shed its inhibitions and make a decisive shift towards the United States, as the only viable option to counter China. The government has been more nuanced in its approach. The External Affairs Minister clarified that a rejection of non-alignment does not mean a rush to alignment: India will not join an alliance system.
•The fact is that ‘alliance’ is as much a Cold War concept as non-alignment. During the Cold War, the glue that held countries of an alliance together was composed (in varying proportions) of ideological convergence and an existential military threat. With the disintegration of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) and the Warsaw Pact, this glue dissolved and the international options of alliance partners widened, just like those of NAM countries. The strategic interests of alliance partners are no longer congruent. This is evident in the Euro-Atlantic alliance. U.S. President Donald Trump’s words and deeds have highlighted divergences within the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), and even widened them, but strains have periodically surfaced even earlier — over the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, for example, or on policy towards Russia or West Asia. Turkey is constantly exploring the limits of NATO discipline.
•Alliances in the Asia-Pacific face a bigger definitional dilemma. They were originally forged to deter the USSR. The threat to the alliance partners today is from an assertive China, which they are reluctant to define as a strategic adversary, because of their economic engagement with it and the huge military asymmetry.
Geography link
•It is often overlooked that geostrategy derives from both geography and politics. While politics is dynamic, geography is immutable. Two major imperatives flow from India’s geography: economic and security interests in the Indo-Pacific space and the strategic importance of the continental landmass to its north and west. The former has inspired the Act East policy of bilateral and multilateral engagements in Southeast Asia and East Asia and the Pacific. Shared India-U.S. interests in dealing with the challenge from China in the maritime domain have been a strategic underpinning of the bilateral partnership since the early 2000s.
•In the immediate-term, Indian and U.S. perspectives are less convergent in India’s continental neighbourhood. Connectivity and cooperation with Afghanistan and Central Asia need engagement with Iran and Russia, as well as with the Russia-China dynamics in the region. Russia bestrides the Eurasian landmass bordering India’s near and extended neighbourhood. Seemingly paradoxically, a close Russia-China partnership should move India to broad-base relations with Russia (beyond the traditional defence and energy pillars). A strong stake in relations with India could reinforce Russia’s reluctance (which still persists) to be a junior partner of China.
•As the U.S. confronts the challenge to its dominance from China, classical balance of power considerations would dictate a modicum of accommodation with Russia. There was an analogous logic in the Richard Nixon-Henry Kissinger outreach to China in 1971, when the Soviet Union was the more formidable rival. The political lessons from the current pandemic could help reawaken that historical memory. Equally, the U.S. could acknowledge that India’s development of trade routes through Iran would also serve its strategic interest of finding routes to Afghanistan and Central Asia, bypassing Pakistan and Russia, respectively.
A template and UNSC term
•Five years ago, a group of U.S. strategic analysts had suggested (in a report for the Council on Foreign Relations), that the U.S. should see ties with India as a joint venture (not an alliance), in which they could pursue shared objectives to mutual benefit and accept that differences of perspectives will have to be addressed.
•This template could have wider applicability for bilateral relations in today’s world order, which former National Security Adviser Shivshankar Menon has described as militarily unipolar, economically multipolar and politically confused. COVID-19 may scramble the economics and deepen the confusion further.
•India will acquire a larger global profile next year, when it commences a two-year term on the UN Security Council. The strategic choices that it makes in its bilateral partnerships will be closely watched.
