Modi reinvents himself

BRP Bhaskar
Gulf Today

Prime Minister Narendra Modi surprised foes and friends alike by turning his swearing-in ceremony into an occasion to celebrate democracy and promote goodwill among South Asian nations.

For the first time, India invited the heads of governments of its partners in the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation to the swearing-in of a prime minister and all of them responded positively. As it happens, all Saarc countries now have elected leaders although some of them have seen violent changes of government in the past.

The Indian media has given Modi the entire credit for creating history, but Pakistan’s Nawaz Sharif is also entitled to a share. He had invited Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to attend his swearing-in last year. Singh did not go. While congratulating Modi on his election victory, Sharif extended an invitation to him to visit Pakistan. Modi decided to invite Sharif and the other Saarc leaders to his inaugural.

Media reports have suggested that the Pakistan Army did not favour Sharif’s India visit. His brother and Punjab Chief Minister, Shahbaz Sharif, met Army Chief Gen Raheel Sharif and impressed upon him that the visit would be beneficial.

Several civil society groups urged Nawaz Sharif to accept the invitation but Hafiz Muhammad Saeed, chief of Jamaat-ud-Dawa, vehemently opposed it and held a big protest rally in Islamabad. India has identified Saeed as the mastermind behind the 2008 Mumbai terror attack. The UN has declared JuD a terrorist front and the US has put a price of $10 million on Saeed’s head.

On Friday, the Indian consulate at Herat in Afghanistan had come under terrorist attack. It did not prevent President Hamid Karzai from joining the Saarc get-together in New Delhi. According to Pakistani reports, the Herat attack strengthened Sharif’s resolve to visit India.

During the election campaign, Modi had repeatedly castigated the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance government for being soft towards Pakistan. Supporters who expected him to take a hawkish line on Pakistan could not easily reconcile themselves to the swift transition from street-fighter to statesman.

Uddhav Thackeray, leader of the Shiv Sena, which is the BJP’s largest partner in the National Democratic Alliance, could not fully reconcile himself with Modi’s new avatar. He said he expected Modi to press the nuclear button if Pakistan did not change.

The Shiv Sena has resorted to violent agitations in the past in protest against Pakistani cricket team’s visits to India.

Dharmawati, wife of Hemraj, an Indian soldier who was beheaded by Pakistani soldiers near the Line of Control (LoC) in Jammu and Kashmir last January, said at Mathura, Uttar Pradesh, that she would be on fast while Sharif remained in India.

A financial newspaper suggested that the motive behind Modi’s gesture to Pakistan was not desire for peace but desire to do a good turn to the Adani Group, which financed his election campaign. It said the Adanis want to export to Pakistan the bulk of the power from the 10,000 megawatt thermal station they are setting up in the Kutch district of Gujarat.

The invitation to Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa angered the government and people of Tamil Nadu, where there is considerable sympathy for the island’s Tamil minority. Leaders of the BJP’s allies in the state went to New Delhi and pleaded for withdrawal of the invitation. Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa stayed away from the swearing-in ceremony and political parties of the state staged protests to coincide with it.

Rajapaksa, in an attempt to mollify the Indian Tamils, asked CV Vigneswaran, chief minister of Sri Lanka’s Tamil-speaking Northern Province, to join him on the India trip. Not wanting to annoy his Indian supporters, Vigneswaran refused. However, Jaffna’s Tamil Mayor, Yogeshwari Pathkunarajah, joined Rajapaksa’s delegation.

Modi took the opposition to Nawaz Sharif and Mahinda Rajapaksa in his stride. His gesture brought immediate gains from Pakistan and Sri Lanka in the form of release of fishermen jailed in these countries for alleged intrusion into their territorial waters.

Some social network users are not impressed with Modi 2.0. They see the Goa police’s case against a young man for an anti-Modi Facebook post and the Karnataka police’s case against five Muslim students for circulating an anti-Modi SMS as early indications of what life in the Modi era will be like. Modi has no direct connection with the cases, both of which are based on private complaints, the first by a pro-BJP businessman and the second by an activist of unclear political affiliation.. .

It is, of course, too early to draw conclusions about Narendra Modi’s prime ministership. He hasn’t been in office for 24 hours yet. -- Gulf Today, Sharjah, May 27, 2014.

CHOGM dilemma

BRP Bhaskar
Gulf Today

To go or not to go, that is the question before Prime Minister Manmohan Singh as the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Colombo approaches. 

India has been an active participant in the Commonwealth of Nations, a grouping of Britain and its former colonies, since its formation in 1949. In fact, it was India’s readiness to be associated with the former colonial power which made the grouping possible.

Since 1971, CHOGM has become institutionalised as a summit held once in two years in the different member countries by turns. Beginning 1977 the host country has set a theme for each meeting.  The theme selected by Sri Lanka for this year’s meeting is “Growth with Equity; Inclusive Development,” a subject of great relevance to India.

Manmohan Singh’s dilemma arises from the vociferous opposition of the government and major political parties of Tamil Nadu to his visiting Sri Lanka when the island’s Sinhalese-dominated government pursues a discriminative policy towards the Tamil minority.

Last month the Tamil Nadu state assembly passed a resolution, moved by Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa, demanding that India boycott CHOGM and seek Sri Lanka’s suspension from the group until it grants equal status to the Tamils.  All parties, including the Congress, which heads the government at the Centre, voted for the resolution.

With parliamentary elections due early next year, the state’s parties are engaged in a competition to emerge as the greatest champions of Tamil interests. Jayalalithaa has been pursuing the issue with the Centre since March when she wrote to Manmohan Singh asking that he work for shifting the CHOGM venue.

State legislatures have no role in matters of foreign policy. Yet the Tamil Nadu Assembly has passed resolutions on the Sri Lankan Tamil issue on three occasions. Although the problem has not generated much interest outside the state successive central governments have taken note of Tamil sentiments and intervened on behalf of the island’s ethnic minority.

Video recordings which surfaced recently have yielded conclusive evidence of gross human rights violations by the Sri Lankan army during its successful campaign against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, which had posed a violent challenge for three decades. Apart from LTTE chief Velupillai Prabhakaran, his teenage son and several mediapersons, at least one of them, a woman, were murdered in cold blood after being caught alive.

In a report to the UN Human Rights Council five weeks ago, High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay noted that the Sri Lankan government was evading an international inquiry into the rights violations and stressed the need for an independent investigation of the alleged war crimes.

Several human rights groups and Sri Lankan Tamil refugees in foreign lands have called upon Commonwealth members to boycott the Colombo CHOGM. So far only Canada has responded favourably. Its prime minister, Stephen Harper, has decided to stay away and send a representative instead.

Jayalalithaa has said it is unfortunate that India with 80 million Tamils has not acted with the same determination as Canada which has only a small Tamil population. She deliberately glosses over the fact that, unlike Canada, India has much at stake in Sri Lanka.

Sri Lanka received tactical support from India and weapons from China in the last stages of the war against LTTE. Coinciding with the cooling in the relations with India, which had been pressuring it since the end of the war to take political measures to meet Tamil aspirations, President Mahinda Rajapaksa has expanded ties with China. 

So far China has committed about $4 billion for infrastructure development in Sri Lanka. Its contributions include a $500 million container terminal which was commissioned in August and a $292 million airport highway which was opened last week. Work on a $272 million railway project has just begun. 

After India voted against Sri Lanka on a US-sponsored resolution in the Human Rights Council, the Rajapaksa administration announced it would renegotiate the 2003 agreement with India with regard to the use of oil storage tanks.

Yielding to Indian pressure, Sri Lanka held elections in the Tamil regions, and a provincial government headed by CV Vigneswaran, a former judge, has taken office. He finds himself in the unenviable position of being disliked by both the Sinhalese majority and the Tamil minority. Manmohan Singh still has more than a week to make up his mind as the actual meeting of heads of government will begin only on November 15. Such influence as New Delhi has over Colombo will be in jeopardy if he stays away from CHOGM. -- Gulf Today, November 5, 2013.

 

Neighbourhood challenges

BRP Bhaskar
Gulf Today

China-watchers are speculating on the implications of Beijing’s involvement in infrastructure projects in Sri Lanka and the Maldives, two small countries where India has vital strategic interests. Foreign media accounts speak of a “string of pearls” from Pakistan to Myanmar, comprising Chinese-funded port development projects.

The largest of these is the Hambantota port in southern Sri Lanka, the first stage of which, built at a cost of $360 million, was opened to ships in 2010. When its second stage, for which China has provided $810 million, is completed, it will become the largest port in the region.

Conceived as a refuelling and service point for cargo vessels, Hambantota is expected to handle about 45,000 metric tonnes (MT) of ship fuel this year. In the next two years its handling capacity will go up to 125,000MT. China has also offered $500 million for the expansion of the Colombo port.

Since 2007 China has committed $6.4 billion for various projects in Sri Lanka. Out of this $3.6 billion has been disbursed. An international airport for which China lent $209 million is due to open next week. Chinese companies have secured at least 14 major infrastructure projects in the island without going through the tender process.

Already Sri Lanka’s biggest partner in trade and development, China is all set to assume an even bigger role in its economy. The country expects China to provide more than half of an estimated $21 billion needed for various projects in the next three years.

In the last decade China’s trade with the Maldives has grown from $3 million to $60 million. When the country terminated its airport agreement with the Indian company GMR there were insinuations that it was acting at China’s behest. Later, Maldivian Defence Minister Mohammed Nazim visited China, leading to speculation that President Mohammed Waheed, who seized power ousting elected president Mohamed Nasheed, plans to take relations with China beyond diplomatic and economic levels.

When the Maldives sought a soft loan from China for information technology and communications projects, India was concerned it may have implications for its own security.

The US Congressional Research Office, in a report two years ago, had said China was “building or wanting to build” naval bases along the sea lane linking it with Gulf oil sources. China, it added, was following a “places, not bases” strategy: it was building commercial ports, not military bases.

Around the same time the International Institute for Strategic Studies, London, quoted a retired Chinese naval officer as saying China might set up its first overseas base somewhere in the Middle East. However, the Defence Ministry denied any overseas base was planned.

The emergence of divergent voices from China may be indicative of differences of opinion within its powerful political establishment. Contrary to the conventional view of foreign experts, different views are known to be in contention within it.

Justifying China’s increased presence in the Indian Ocean, Sri Lankan Defence Secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa, who is a brother of President Mahinda Rajapaksa, points out that it has a vital interest in the region as it imports 200MT of oil a year to sustain its industry-intensive economy. The Chinese-aided projects in the island are purely commercial, he says.

Sri Lanka receives investments from India, the US and Japan also but they cannot match cash-rich China’s soft loan terms. China provides assistance in the form of cash grants, interest-free loans and long-term concessionary loans on which the interest rate may be as low as two or three per cent.

Some domestic analysts disapprove of Sri Lanka’s excessive dependence on China. A former diplomat, Dayan Jayatilleka, reminds the administration that, unlike Pakistan, Sri Lanka has no land link with China, and it is highly improbable that China will bruise its relations with India over anything other than its own core interests. 

While the interests of India and China do not always coincide the two are sensitive to each other’s vital concerns. Attempts by China to understand India’s position in Afghanistan, which is at variance with that of its long-time ally Pakistan, is a case in point.

The most worrisome aspect of India’s relations with its small neighbours is not China’s growing economic links with them but its own diplomatic and political failures. It has not been able to persuade Sri Lanka to give its Tamil minority a fair deal or the Maldives to respect the rules of democracy. -- Gulf Today, Sharjah, March 12, 2013.