Way out of Indo-US stand-off

BRP Bhaskar
Gulf Today

India and the United States are engaged in a game of blinkmanship. The question is who will blink first. At the same time, away from public gaze, officials of the two sides are exploring ways to salvage their relationship, over which the humiliation of an Indian diplomat in New York has cast a shadow.

Devyani Khobragade, 39, a doctor-turned diplomat, posted as Deputy Consul General, was arrested on December 12 on charges of visa fraud and underpaying her Indian maid, Sangeeta Richard. She was reportedly handcuffed and subjected to strip-search and cavity-search. She was freed on bail on posting a bond of $250,000.

The State Department said as a consular official she did not enjoy immunity from arrest and standard arrest procedures had been followed. Prosecutor Preet Bharara claimed she was accorded courtesies most Americans would not get. He denied handcuffing but confirmed she was “fully searched”.

The case pits the plucky Devyani Khobragade against the equally plucky Bharara, an Indian American, who, since his appointment as prosecutor five years ago, has slapped cases against some top-ranking politicians for corruption and sent to jail 70 persons, including many fellow Indian Americans, for insider trading.

Bharara, known for aggressive prosecutorial methods and unprecedented tactics, used some of them to trap the diplomat. Sangeeta Richard, who went to US in November 2012 to work for Devyani Khobragade, left her last July. Police did not act on the diplomat’s complaint that she was missing and had stolen some money and a phone.

Bharara brought her husband and parents to the US from India, in the name of witness protection. The way they were spirited out of India bears the stamp of a CIA operation, and there is speculation that the US agency was using her to spy on Indian diplomats.

The charges against Devyani Khobragade stem from the statement in Sangeeta Richard’s visa application that she was employed on a wage of $9.75 an hour while she was paid only Rs30,000 a month under a contract made in India.

The police complaint filed in the court says the contracted salary amounts to just $3.31 an hour as against the minimum wage of $7.25 payable in New York. The US law does not take into account the cost of accommodation, food and other benefits the employer provides.

The Indian government, which quietly pocketed insults meted out at US airports to George Fernandes, when he was the Defence Minister, and to former President Abdul Kalam, and made only muted sounds when the extensive US snooping came to light, was ready to take the diplomat’s humiliation also in its stride.

The resentment of Foreign Service officials who realised how vulnerable they are while holding posts in high-wage cities and an open campaign by the diplomat’s father, Uttam Khobragarde, a former civil servant, which attracted media attention, forced the government to respond.

India asked the US to drop the charges against the diplomat and apologise for her mistreatment. It backed up the demand with a few calculated measures, which involved withdrawal of non-reciprocal privileges granted to US diplomats.

No Indian of consequence was ready to meet a visiting US Congressional delegation.  Former Bharatiya Janata Party Minister Yashwant Sinha asked the government to arrest US diplomats’ same-sex partners whom it had granted visas.

Secretary of State John Kerry tried to speak to External Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid. Since Khurshid did not take the call he conveyed the State Department’s regret over the way the matter was handled to National Security Adviser Shivshankar Menon. Not satisfied, the government reiterated the demands for apology and dropping of the case. In a bid to boost Devyani Khobragade’s diplomatic immunity, it transferred her to India’s UN mission.

Devyani Khobragade’s pay is about $6,500 a month and to be on the right side of the US law she was required to pay the maid $4,500 a month. The responsibility for her plight lies with the Indian government which allows officers posted abroad to take maids without making adequate financial provisions for them.

The State Department had prior knowledge of the case against Devyani Khobragade and informed India about it last September. However, there was no serious effort from either side to sort out the issue amicably.

Sangeeta Richard is no innocent victim, as overenthusiastic champions of the poor make out. She accepted the job knowing what she would be paid, and she was paid the contracted salary.

Indian opinion on the issue divided on lines of class and caste. Those nursing memories of bad treatment received at Indian missions abroad vent their spleen in cyberspace. Some dwelt on Devyani Khobragde’s Dalit identity and her involvement in a housing scam in Mumbai, as though these entitled the Americans to ill-treat her.

Some foreign commentators showed fair understanding of the issue.

Hussain Haqqani, who was Pakistan’s ambassador in the US when CIA contractor Raymond Davis killed two persons in Lahore, characterised Preet Bharara’s treatment of the diplomat without regard for her status as a representative of a friendly government, as over-exuberance straight out of an episode of the TV series “Law and Order”. He recalled that the US sought diplomatic status for Davis after the daylight murder.

Peter Van Buren, a former US foreign service employee, chronicled instances of abuse of servants by American diplomats. Citing court documents, he said a woman diplomat, on transfer to Japan, tricked an Ethiopian maid into accompanying her. She was paid less than $1 an hour and repeatedly raped by the diplomat’s husband.

No amount of legal and diplomatic brouhaha can raise Devyani Khobragade’s infraction to the level of the criminal acts of Americans whom the State Department has rescued invoking diplomatic immunity.

New York-based Reuters columnist Alison Frankel suggested that grant of retroactive immunity to Devyani Khobragade may be a way out of the impasse. If Khurshid sticks to his guns, Kerry will have to give in.-- Gulf Today, Sharjah, December 24, 2013.

Threat to peace process

BRP Bhaskar
Gulf Today

With guns booming across the line of control in Jammu and Kashmir for more than a week, the India-Pakistan peace progress has been thrown into jeopardy. In the present context, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Nawaz Sharif will find it difficult to take any meaningful measures to normalise bilateral relations.

Nawaz Sharif had spoken of his desire to improve relations with India during the election campaign and reiterated it immediately after the victory of his Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz). Last month, Pakistan’s National Security Adviser Sartaj Aziz discussed confidence-building measures with India’s External Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid on the sidelines of the Asean summit at Brunei.

Later Sharif sent his special envoy, Shahryar Khan, to New Delhi with a letter to Manmohan Singh. Following this, the two governments made tentative plans for a meeting of the prime ministers when they are in New York for the United Nations General Assembly session next month.

The LoC developments have set these initiatives at naught. Public opinion, incensed by the killing of five Indian soldiers while on patrol duty in the Poonch sector on the night of August 5, has forced New Delhi to slow down the peace process.

Ceasefire violations in the region are not unusual, especially at this time of the year, when terrorist infiltration into Kashmir from across the line of control is at its peak. India has accused the Pakistan army of providing the infiltrators fire cover. Pakistan claims India is guilty of more truce violations than it.

The Indian army blamed the Poonch killings on Pakistani troops. However, in an apparent attempt to soft-pedal the issue, Defence Minister AK Antony told Parliament that the assailants were terrorists in Pakistani army uniform. Loud protests led by the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party forced him to make a fresh statement a day later, laying the blame at the door of the Pakistan army.

Most Indian analysts believe the spurt in truce violations and the gruesome incidents like the Poonch killings and the beheading of an Indian soldier in the same sector a few weeks earlier are part of a deliberate plan by a section of the  Pakistan army to queer the pitch for Nawaz Sharif. They say the army fears improved ties with India will reduce its clout in the Pakistani power structure.

As in Pakistan, hawks and doves are in contention in India too.

Parliamentary elections are due in less than a year, and the BJP, which is making a bid to return to power after a gap of ten years, has picked Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi, a hardcore Hindutva exponent, as its prime ministerial candidate. The party sees stoking India-Pakistan tensions as a means of boosting Hindu sentiments against the Congress-led government.

BJP President Rajnath Singh has demanded that the government scale down diplomatic relations with Pakistan and declare that there would be no talks until Islamabad stopped supporting terror activities directed against India.

The way Samajwadi Party chief Mulayam Singh joined the BJP in the anti-Pakistan chorus in Parliament illustrates how electoral compulsions can weaken a political party’s commitment to the secular ideal.

Beyond the realm of electoral politics, there is a body of opinion which believes it is in India’s interest to help bolster the position of the democratically elected government of Nawaz Sharif. Those who subscribe to this view want Manmohan Singh to go ahead with the plan to meet Sharif.

Developments in Afghanistan have a bearing on the current state of India-Pakistan relations. The United States is looking up to India to play a role in stabilising the situation in that country after it pulls out next year.  Extremist forces operating in Afghanistan and elements of the Pakistan army which support them do not favour the idea.

Those who are keen that the peace process must continue uninterrupted point out that direct engagement between the governments of India and Pakistan at the present stage is necessary to negotiate the Afghan imbroglio in such a way as to ensure regional security.

While Indian experts are agreed that a section of the Pakistan army does not share Nawaz Sharif’s enthusiasm for improved relations with India, there is sharp disagreement among them on how India should respond to the situation. Some want the peace progress to be abandoned, some others want it to be delayed and some others want it to go on. Strangely, those who want the process stalled do not seem to realise that they are on the same side as the hawks in Pakistan.--Gulf Today, Sharjah, August 13, 2013.

Learning the wrong lessons

BRP Bhaskar
Gulf Today

The political leadership has developed a penchant for drawing the wrong conclusions, which does not augur well for Indian democracy.

Time was when the leadership of the Congress party, the premier political organisation, possessed the moral courage and authority to ask a holder of public office accused of misdemeanour to step down and stay out until he is cleared of all charges.

Now the party is in a debilitated state and its leadership has neither the courage nor the authority to act swiftly and decisively at a time of crisis. They vacillated for more than a week before asking Law Minister Ashwani Kumar and Railway Minister Pawan Kumar Bansal, who were caught in acts inconsistent with the solemn oath they took on assumption of office, to put in their papers.

Ashwani Kumar had summoned the officials of the Central Bureau of Investigation, which is probing irregularities in the allocation of coal blocks, and made certain changes in the status report the agency had prepared for submission to the Supreme Court. He also got the agency to show the report to officials of the prime minister’s office and the coal ministry, giving them also the opportunity to make changes in it.

When CBI director Ranjit Sinha acknowledged in an affidavit that the agency had shared the report with the law minister and the officials and that they had made changes in it, government spokesmen sought to justify the interference in the investigation, advancing specious arguments. The law minister claimed he had only made minor verbal changes in the report.

External Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid nonchalantly declared, “The government may be under the scanner but we have a right to find out what is happening.”

The interference of the PMO and the coal ministry constituted a grave impropriety since their acts are under scrutiny in the CBI probe. What’s more, the Supreme Court had specifically instructed the CBI not to share the report with the political executive.

While the government underplayed ministerial and bureaucratic interference in the investigation, the Supreme Court took a dim view of the situation. It described the CBI as a caged bird parroting the words of its many masters.

Pawan Kumar Bansal came under a cloud when the CBI caught his nephew Vijay Singla as he was accepting Rs9 million from a member of the Railway Board alleged as part payment of a hefty bribe for shifting him to another position, which will offer scope for collecting kickbacks in the award of contracts.

In keeping with the current level of political morality, the two ministers sought to brazen out the charges with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh extending silent support. Ashwani Kumar argued that the court’s stinging remarks did not contain any personal reference to him. Bansal claimed he had no business links with his nephew.

When the Congress won the assembly elections in Karnataka, where the Bharatiya Janata Party’s government was embroiled in serious graft charges, Manmohan Singh led an attempt to use the electoral victory to whitewash his beleaguered colleagues. He said it was a verdict against corruption, and the Congress party’s spokesmen attempted to project the Karnataka mandate as implicit rejection of the corruption charge against its own ministers.

Bansal’s continuance as minister became untenable as the CBI’s railgate investigation led to the arrest of some more persons close to him. Since the Supreme Court put off further hearing of the coalgate case until after the summer recess, the government thought there was no need to take an early decision on Ashwani Kumar’s future.

According to media reports, Manmohan Singh was forced to end pussy-footing and seek the resignation of the two ministers when Congress President Sonia Gandhi, realising that procrastination was damaging the party’s image, asked him to resolve the issue without delay. Many believe these reports are part of preparing the ground for Rahul Gandhi’s projection as the prime ministerial candidate ahead of the parliamentary elections due next year. 

It is not just the Congress party that is given to drawing the wrong conclusions from adverse developments. The Karnataka vote has dampened the BJP’s hopes of benefiting from the poor image of the scam-hit Manmohan Singh government. Its leadership appears to be looking up to Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi as the saviour overlooking the reservations of its allies about him in view of his image as an accessory in the communal riots of 2002.

There is a rising demand to take the CBI out of the government’s hands and make it independent. This may be a case of the remedy being worse than the disease. The problem is not that the CBI is under the government but that there is a dearth of men of integrity in the agency and the government. -- Gulf Today, Sharjah, May 14, 2013.