pragati issue13 april2008 community ed

8/14/2019 Pragati Issue13 April2008 Community Ed

1/24

ISSN 0973-8460

ALSO


2/24

Contents

PERSPECTIVE

2 The unkindest cut Salil TripathiThe loan waiver keeps poor farmers where they are

4 Waiver of mass debt Vijay MahajanHow that money could have been used to really change lives

6 Concerning senior citizens Mukul G Asher & Deepa VasudevanBudget 2008-09 and the implications for a greying population

8 Waiting for modernisation Sushant K Singh & Nitin PaiThe dismal state of long term defence procurement planning

10 Letters On the arms race in outer space

FILTER

11 Foreign aid to Afghanistan; Water and climate change

IN DEPTH

12 Dealing with Chinas Harsh V Pant power projectionA rising China will not tolerate a rising India as a peer competi-tor

ROUNDUP

15 It matters what generals sayK S Madhu ShankarThe army chiefs worrying remarks on the India-China border

16 Options in Sri Lanka T S Gopi RethinarajAnd the risk of Sri Lanka falling sway to outside powers

18 New language formulas Sujay Rao MandavilliFrom an unsatisfactory compromise to a liberal decentralisation

BOOKS

21 Tagore in China Stephen S HayEdited excerpts fromAsian Ideas of East and West

PragatiThe Indian National Interest Review

No 13 | April 2008

Published by The Indian National Interest - an independentcommunity of individuals committed to increasing public awareness

and education on strategic affairs, economic policy and governance.

Advisory PanelMukul G Asher

V Anantha NageswaranSameer WagleSameer Jain

Amey V Laud

Editors

Nitin PaiRavikiran S Rao

Editorial SupportPriya Kadam

Chandrachoodan Gopalakrishnan

AcknowledgementsAjay Shah

C Raja MohanC Uday BhaskarShanta Devarajan

Harini Calamur (Cover Photo)Mint

The World BankHarvard University Press

Contact: [email protected]

Subscription: http://pragati.nationalinterest.in/

Neither Pragatinor The Indian National Interestwebsite are affiliatedto any political party or platform. The views expressed in this publi-cation are personal opinions of the contributors and not those oftheir employers.

2008 The Indian National Interest. Some rights reserved.

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5

India License. To view a copy of this license, visithttp://creativecommons.org/ licenses/by/2.5/in/or send a letter to Crea-tive Commons, 543 Howard Street, 5th Floor, San Francisco, Califor-nia, 94105, USA.

Pragatiaccepts letters and unsolicited manuscripts.

Editions

Community Edition:Pragati (ISSN 0973-8460) is available for freedownload at http://pragati.nationalinterest.in/ - this edition may befreely distributed (in its complete form) via both electronic and non-electronic means. You are encouraged to share your copy with yourlocal community.

Commercial Edition: Pragatialso offers an opportunity for entrepre-neurs to print and sell the publication on a commercial basis. A high-resolution high-quality edition is available upon request.

Podcast Edition: The special audio edition of Pragati is available foronline listening and download.

Note: We recommend that you print this magazine for theoptimum reading experience. For best results set the paper size toA3 and print in booklet mode.


3/24


4/24

posed to have widened economic inequalities, andfarmers, who have not benefited from the reforms,finding no way out of their cycle of poverty, aretaking the ultimate way out.

This narrative has flaws at many levels: farmersare not the only sub-group in India prone to com-mitting suicide. Indeed, on a per capita basis, ur-ban graduates, including students at Indian Insti-

tutes of Technology, women unable to marry menof their choice, and students failing public exami-nations, are all likely to commit suicide, and insome particular sub-groups, the proportion of sui-cidal individuals may well exceed suicidal farm-ers.

There is also statistical evidence to show thatover the past 15 years, India has in fact lifted alarge number of people out of absolute poverty,and the percentage of Indians below the povertyline in 2001 is smaller than its counterpart in 1991.If economic growth has been uneven, why have

the poor in other pockets of poverty not takentheir lives in such numbers? In any case, the Ginicoefficient, which measures income inequalitiesacross the country, does not show any appreciableworsening over the past 15 years, compared toprevious periods.

But even if we were to accept that every deathis a tragedy, and every suicide all the more so, inthat a suicide indicates desperation, despondency,depression, and a perception of failure of dreams,it is impossible to conclude that there is a discerni-

ble pattern in the suicides. Genetically modifiedcotton? Farmers in Gujarat plant it, and are pros-pering; so why does that process not repeat itselfin Vidarbha or Andhra Pradesh? If a farmer killshimself because his brother cheats him out of hisshare of land, can that be blamed on economic re-forms? If lower-caste farmers are unable to accessirrigated water, because other castes, living closerto the source of the check dam have cornered thesupply of water, is it the fault of neo-liberalism?Are more farmers committing suicides, or is therebetter reporting now?

If the aim of the UPA governments loan write-off package was to stop suicides, that hasn't hap-pened: since the budget speech another 200 farm-ers have apparently committed suicide, according

to an activist organisation in Nagpur which keepstrack of suicides. (And it says something of themacabre nature of such activism, that the media-savvy NGO loses no opportunity in informing journalists around the world each time anotherfarmer takes his life, but it does not appear to have

invested in recruiting even volunteer psycho-therapists or social workers, who might weanfarmers from their despair.)

And of course it would not, because the debtrelief is designed such that it will only help farm-ers who have debts of a certain size, and the bene-ficiaries of the largesse won't be cash-strappedfarmers, but co-operative banks with weak balancesheets, who have given tens of millions of rupeesin loans to farmers, and which are otherwise likelyto go under. Established banks in the state and the

private sector have limited exposure to the farmsector, and co-operative banks which do lend tomedium-sized farms are also often the basis ofpolitical patronage in many states. Go figure.

The largesse also destroys India's credit culture.It penalises those who were foolish enough to re-pay loans on time, and rewards those who gam-bled that they won't have to pay back. Worse, firstthe compensation of Rs 100,000 to the survivors,and now the write-off, have created perverse in-centives encouraging farmers to avoid repaying, ortaking their lives. If a farmer looks at the parched

land in front of him, the bleak, sun-baked land-scape, his starving family, and his emaciated ani-mals, if he were to calculate his lifetime's earnings,and compares that with the net present value of100,000 rupees for his family, if he is depressed, hemay feel tempted to take his life. Cruel though itmight sound, it might even seem like an economi-cally rational choice.

In the end, the largesse is flawed because itviews India in stasis. It fails to address the centralproblem of Indian farming: that there are too many

people pretending to be farmers, who are in whateconomists can only call disguised unemployment,who try to eke out a living on ever-dwindlingplots of land, which are poorly irrigated, if at all,and remain dependent on the vagaries of the mon-soon.

The loan write-off is designed to keep farmerswhere they are: on small land-holdings, where of-ten their only source of regular income is labour atthe farm of a bigger farmer with a larger land-holding. Such waged labour is often a better guar-antor of income than the farmer's own plot. And

the reason for that is not far to seek: the plot is toosmall to be economically viable, and it is simplynot productive enough to yield crop that can pro-vide the wealth that can allow the farmer to invest

PERSPECTIVE

3 No 13 | Apr 2008

This largesse is flawed because

it views India in stasis. It fails to

address the central problem of

disguised unemployment peo-

ple pretending to be farmers.


5/24

in better fertilisers, technology, or irrigation on hisplot. You can empower that farmer by giving hima mobile phone and access to the latest prices fromthe mandibut to sell his product at the rightprice, he needs labour, transport, roads, and accessto the market, and the small marginal farmer has

no such access. Every farmer is probably hard-working, but every farmer is not, and cannot be,an entrepreneur or speculator. And yet, Indian ag-riculture requires him to become one. And he endsup being an object of pity and charity.

In the name of supporting "sustainable liveli-hoods" on a small scale, activists, leftists, and cer-tain NGOs glorify the small farmer, insisting thathis life must not be changed, and large corpora-tions be kept out. How inhuman that solution canget! What the farmer needs is access to better tech-

nology, investments, capital and infrastructure.Those tools cannot be provided on a small scale: todo that, Indian agriculture needs to be radicallytransformed, with agri-businesses allocating re-sources to substantially increase farm productivity.It will mean farmers could cease being "owners oftheir destiny" and become employees of corpora-tions, helping till the land, harvest the crop, sort it,package it, and even work in supermarkets. It willalso mean some farmers won't have farming jobsanymore; they will end up becoming part of ancil-lary industries. There's nothing embarrassing

about it: one of the real successes of China's trans-

formation has indeed been the so-called town-and-village enterprises (TVEs) which absorbed surpluslabour from the farms and offered them better em-ployment opportunities.

In the longer run, that is the only way out: noprosperous country in the world has a large pro-

portion of its workforce engaged in agriculture. Inthe United States, one of the biggest producers ofmany agricultural commodities, the figure is lessthan one percent. In India, some 60 percent of thepeople call themselves farmers. Over the past 50years, not only has the share of agriculture as aproportion of India's gross domestic product de-clined steadily, its agriculture growth rate, be-tween 1970 and 2000 has never exceeded 3 percenta year, compared to the double-digit growth ratesof industry and services.

Survey after survey has shown that two-fifthsof the farmers, if given a choice, would prefer todo something else. Migration from rural areas tocities continues. And the face of the Indian farmercontinues to look more like the heart-brokenShambhu in Do Bigha Zameen , and not the all-singing, all-dancing Bharat ofUpkar. If Shambhu'schildren want to work in cities, as car mechanics,at call centres, or indeed, as software engineers,why should anyone stop them?

Salil Tripathi is a writer based in London.

RURAL DEVELOPMENT

Waiver of mass debt

How that money could have been used to really change lives

VIJAY MAHAJAN

IRAQ WAS attacked by the United States and Brit-ain on the basis of a fictional threatWMD, orweapons of mass destruction. We have seen theresults of that lie, with shock and awe. India'sWMD is less costlyRs 600 billion, or only $15billionbut is based on similar half-baked analy-sis of half-truths, and well designed to benefitthose behind itin our case Pawar-ful largecommercial farmers.

According to the National Sample Survey, 59thRound, 2004-05, 51.4 percent of the farmer house-holds in the country did not access credit, either

from institutional or non-institutional sources.Further, despite the vast network of bankbranches, only 27 percent of total farm householdshad any loans from formal sources (one-third ofthese also borrow from informal sources), while 73percent did not. Among the marginal farmer cate-gory, as many as 80 percent did not have any bor-rowing from formal sources.

So the finance and agriculture ministers musthave known in advance that their generosity willonly cover the upper quartile of farmers. Yet, if wego by the details, only those whose bank loans

PERSPECTIVE

PRAGATI - THE INDIAN NATIONAL INTEREST REVIEW 4


6/24

were overdue on December 31st 2007, would get awaiver. So a big grape farmer in Nashik who had abumper crop but was politically aware, and hencedid not repay his loan, will get a waiver of Rs100,000. But a poor rain-fed farmer in Vidarbhawho has sold his less than normal yield cotton

crop to the state monopoly cotton federation, at alower than market price, will be deemed to haverepaid his Rs 15,000 loan from the proceeds that hehas yet to receive, and will not get the waiver.

There is no fig leaf to this pro big farmer loanwaiver, as can be seen by the Reserve Bank of In-dias clarification that not only crop loans but alsoterm loans for tractors and poultry farms will becovered by the waiver. To minimise backlash from

those who did not get the waiver, in Andhra

Pradesh, the chief minister has declared an addi-tional 10 percent bonus payment to all farmerswho sell their produce through regulated marketyardsonce again, the larger farmers.

Apart from the gross inequity in the name ofsmall farmers, the loan waiver is particularly ineptas it completely fails to address the underlyingcauses of the Indian agrarian crisis. These are, first,the dwindling size of land holdings. Second, thelow percentage of irrigation, even protective irri-gation; and where there is irrigation, tapering

yields due to long years of mis-fertilisation andincreasing levels of pesticide resistance.Third, in rain-fed areas, absence of measures to

cope with recurrent drought, no significant varie-tal improvements, nor any agricultural guidanceto farmers.

Fourth, increases in input costs, coupled withlower relative prices for produce, and price fluc-tuation, has meant that agriculture is not veryprofitable even for commercial farmers. For small

farmers, with imputed wages for family labour,farming does not even break even.

The same Rs 600 billion could have been usedto drought-proof 60 million hectares of dryland atRs 10,000 per hectare, which would permanentlysecure the livelihoods of at least 30 million poorer

farmers in rain-fed areas. Dozens of successful ex-amples exist of the rehabilitation of natural water-sheds and traditional water storage structures,both by NGOs and government agencies. Part ofthe funds could also be used to rehabilitate thedilapidated canal irrigation systems, conditionalon the states switching to participatory irrigationmanagement.

Even if one were to accept that the loan waiverwas aimed at gaining electoral advantage, it couldhave been done much more equitably and would

have fetched more votes.Recognising that the debt burden of small andmarginal farmers is more from moneylenders andtraders, a waiver should have been given for both bank and moneylender/trader loans. Given thedifficulty of verifying these, the waiver could have been limited to Rs 5000 per hectare for farmerswith irrigation, and Rs 2500 per hectare to rainfedfarmers, with a cap of Rs 10,000 per farmer in bothcases. Additional amounts from informal lenderscould have been swapped for much lower cost bank loans, as has been tried in Andhra Pradesh

by the "total financial inclusion" program of theIndira Kranti Patham project.

Further, to prevent leakage, the money could becredited to the bank accounts of farmers. Thiswould also have created incentives for banks toopen "no-frills" accounts for 50 million farmerswho don't have bank accounts, as per the recentlyadopted national financial inclusion plan.

Rough calculations show that this alternatemethod would have benefited 100 million farmers,about thrice the number likely to be covered at the

moment.The one mystery iswhy did the Left not ar-gue in favour of a more equitable waiver? Havethey lost interest in the agrarian vote bank afterNandigram? Or is it a deal which we will under-stand many years later?

Vijay Mahajan is a social entrepreneur and chairman ofBASIX, a new generation livelihood promotion institu-tion that supports rural households.

PERSPECTIVE

5 No 13 | Apr 2008

The current generosity will only

cover the upper quartile of farm-

ers. The same Rs 600 billion could

have been used to permanently se-

cure the livelihoods of at least 30

million poorer farmers in rain-fed

areas.

Are you looking for daily opinions and analysis? Bookmark our website

Read our resident bloggers at http://www.nationalinterest.in/


7/24


8/24

been recognised. This in itself is a discouragingsign.

The finance minister has proposed an outlay ofRs 4 billion to establish a National Programme forthe Elderly in the current fiscal year; though de-tails have not been specified. During the 11th plan

period (2007-2012), it is proposed to establish twoNational Institutes of Ageing, eight regional cen-tres, and a department for geriatric medical care inan appropriate medical institution in every state.

However, if the current incompetence (and theruling rather than governing mindset) of the Min-istry of Health is not addressed, and if these insti-tutions are not provided needed autonomy, theyare unlikely to contribute to addressing the prob-lems.

Budgetary support for the Indira Gandhi Na-

tional Old Age Pension Scheme (IGNOAPS) hasbeen enhanced to Rs 34.4 billion, which representsa rise of almost 44 percent from 2007-08. Theoriginal Old Age Pension Scheme was expanded inNovember 2007 to include all persons over 65years in the below poverty line (BPL) category,which resulted in an increase in coverage from 8.7million to 15.7 million beneficiaries. The higherbudget allocation is primarily expected to providefor these additional beneficiaries. A major designand implementation issue in India has been theidentification of the BPL families. Given Indias

dynamic economy and rapid social change, thepopulation which is poor will not be static but dy-namic. The BPL concept does not take sufficientcognisance of this fact. This results in misdirectionof assistance to the poor: some who should receiveit do not, and some who should not, do. This issuedeserves much more careful consideration thanhas been the case so far.

Under the IGNOAPS, the central governmentoffers a monthly pension of Rs 200 to each eligible beneficiary. State governments are expected to

match this amount, and ensure that the pensionreaches the beneficiaries. Thus efficient function-ing of this scheme depends on timely release ofpensions, clear demarcation of responsibilities andaccountability among the various levels of gov-ernment involved in its implementation, and ac-tive efforts to generate awareness about thescheme.

Typically, the budget speech did not mentionthe number of states that have adopted IGNOAPS,nor did it indicate the progress of implementationsince the widening of its scope last year

The budget proposal to put in place a CentralPlan Schemes Monitoring System (CPSMS), alongwith a decision support and management informa-tion system is designed to permit better monitor-

ing of schemes, including the IGNOAPS in thefuture. However, it raises questions about why somany schemes were set up (and so many havebeen expanded in this budget) before establishingsuch elementary assessment mechanisms to ensureeffective use of public resources. Bringing ac-

countability to governance of these schemes is acritical challenge at all levels of government. TheUPA governments failure to make progress inadministrative reform and restructuring is seri-ously constraining the effectiveness of theseschemes.

A road map is needed to integrate the IG-NOAPS into the overall pension system, ratherthan restrict it to persons below the poverty line.Scheme design and eligibility norms need to bereviewed to ensure that it continues to provide

financial support to all the poorest elderly in themedium term. This is because the provident fundand individual savings may prove to be insuffi-cient beyond a certain age. An integrated systemmust be in place to provide at least basic supportto the very old (those above 75 years of age) whentheir savings are more likely to have been ex-hausted.

The tax proposals of the budget were positivefor senior citizens, but inequitable and inefficientfor the economy. The personal income tax thresh-old limit for those sixty five years and above was

raised from Rs 195,000 to Rs 225,000; and tax benefits under Section 80C were extended to theSenior Citizens Savings Scheme of 2004. Exemp-tion by gender or age introduce unnecessary com-plexity and inequities in the income tax. Ability topay should be the only criterion.

A significant feature of the direct tax proposalswas the clarification on reverse mortgages. A re-verse mortgage product can be used to mortgageones property in exchange for a lump sum or se-ries of regular payments from the lender. The in-

come generated by a reverse mortgage would de-pend on a valuation of the property. Thus seniorcitizens who are also house-owners can use thisscheme supplement their financial inflows in oldage. Reverse mortgages were notified by the Na-tional Housing Bank a year ago, following the2007-08 budget. Subsequently several banks andhousing finance companies launched suchschemes, but demand has been constrained by alack of clarity on tax issues.

The budget proposed to amend the Income TaxAct to the effect that a reverse mortgage would not

amount to a capital transfer and hence not liablefor capital gains tax; and further, that the revenuestreams available under a reverse mortgagescheme would not considered as income for tax

PERSPECTIVE

7 No 13 | Apr 2008


9/24

purposes. These clarifications are expected to in-crease the demand for reverse mortgages to someextent, though other barriers such as emotionalattachment to property and desire to bequeathhomes to children will have to be overcome beforethis scheme achieves greater popularity. Interna-

tionally, reverse mortgages have played only amarginal role in retirement financing.

All citizens of India, including the elderly, benefit from a budget that motivates sustainablegrowth, moderate inflation and prudent fiscalmanagement. On these criteria, the 2008-09 budgethugely disappoints. Without high real growth, ac-companied by commensurate employment genera-tion, and moderate inflation, economic securitycan not be secured for either the young or the old.

This budget has cemented the UPA govern-ments notoriety for believing only in politicallymotivated outlays, and not in obtaining outcomesor results in an efficient manner. The challenge ofestablishing a policy and governance frameworkfor addressing the retirement needs of Indias

greying population in a sustainable manner is toourgent and serious to be ignored. The budget rep-resents another missed opportunity in this regard.

Mukul G Asher is professor of public policy at the Na-tional University of Singapore. Deepa Vasudevan is afreelance researcher.

DEFENCE

Waiting for modernisation

The dismal state of long-term defence procurement planning

SUSHANT K SINGH & NITIN PAI

AFTER THE budget for 2007-08 was presented lastyear, defence minister A K Antony confessed thatIndias defence modernisation was 15 years be-hind schedule. He promised that we will makesure that not a single rupee is left unspent fromthe budget this year. More than Rs 42 billion of thedefence budget has been returned unused thisyear;thecompleteunusedamount coming from thecapital expenditure.

It was not an aberration. In no year in the past

decade has the defence ministry been able tospend its entire allocation. The shortfalls havebeen up to 10 percent of the allocation.

As expected, the defence budget for 2008-09has crossed the Rs 1 trillion mark. After adjustingfor inflation, this constitutes an increase of only 5percent. For the first time since the early 1960s,Indias defence outlay has declined to less than 2percent of the gross domestic product (GDP)asign of the chasm between the rhetoric and realityon national security.

Inefficient budgeting and Byzantine procure-ment procedures are largely responsible for theannual surrender of funds by the defence ministry.An appreciation of defence capital expenditure isfundamental to understanding the persistent in-

ability of the defence ministry to spend the entireamount allocated to it.

The capital outlay on defence services caters tothe expenditure incurred on building or acquiringdurable assets. Itemssuch as infrastructure, major weapon systems and platformsthat cost atleast Rs 1 million and have a life span of sevenyears or more are debited to the capital head.

In addition, a part of revenue expenditure cov-ers capital items contributing to replacement or

modernisation. A significant part of defence pro-duction by public sector units and research anddevelopment (R&D) expenditure, which assist inmodernisation, is also reflected under the revenuehead.

Indias transformation into a middle-incomecountry requires its Armed Forces to be morecapital-intensive. Yet only around 10 percent of thedefence budget is actually available for modernisa-tion, compared with around 30-40 percent in de-veloped countries.

This is because, firstly, almost three-fourths ofannual capital allocation goes towards instalmentsfor items acquired in previous years. Indigenousacquisitionsboth from public-sector and someprivate firmsaccount for 40-45 percent of the

PERSPECTIVE



10/24

capital budget, leaving around Rs 280 billion forforeign acquisitions this year.

Secondly, nearly two-thirds of the amount forcapital acquisitions from foreign suppliers, too, ispledged for assured and received deliveries. Pay-ments for major defence purchases from foreignvendors are spread over a number of years. Thisyear, India will pay instalments for earlier pur-chases such as the Sukhoi aircraft, the aircraft car-rier Gorshkov , T-90 tanks, Talwar class frigates,

Scorpene submarines and for many other smallercontracts. Thus, only Rs 80-90 billion (about US$2billion) is available for new acquisitions this year.

The initial down payment on new acquisitionsis generally around one-fourth of the total cost. So,the defence ministry can theoretically sign con-tracts worth US$8 billion for new equipment thisyear. Capital allocations for coming years will thenhave to cater for instalments of these acquisitions.Despite returning more than Rs 42 billion, the min-istry will be asking for additional capital alloca-

tions this year; it justifiably believes that alloca-tions already made will be largely used up by ear-lier contracts.

Defence modernisation is ostensibly based on along-term integrated procurement plan (LTIPP) ofthe defence services. LTIPP for 2007-22, spanningthe 11th, 12th and 13th Five-Year Plans, is sched-uled to be approved by the Defence AcquisitionCouncil by October 2009. Going by the past record,it doesnt signify much. The 10th defence plan wasnever approved by the finance ministry. And twoyears into the 11th Plan, it too has not been ap-

proved so far. Instead, the finance minister has

agreed to an annual increaseof 10 percent during the 11thPlan.The defence ministry is ex-empt from the fiscal disci-pline applicable to other

ministries. In 2006, financialpowers up to Rs 100 millionfor capital procurementwere delegated to the threeservices. This was expectedto cover nearly one-third ofthe procurement cases andexpedite acquisitions. Eventhis has failed to prevent theannual surrender of unspentfunds.

Clearly defence modernisa-tion too is not suffering froma lack of outlays, but rather a lack of outcomes.After the Kargil conflict, the K Subrahmanyamcommission had found that most items needed forthat war were affordable within the available out-lays. Since then, a strong rupee has made foreignpurchases less vulnerable to foreign exchange risksand capital budgets have increased. But procure-ment and prioritisation have held up acquisitions.The lack of an integrated defence headquartersprevents rigourous prioritisation and the order of

charge on the budget.Outcomes can match outlays only if greater

emphasis and attention is given to the process of budget formulation and implementation, includ-ing forecasting, monitoring and control. Zero- based budgeting needs to be introduced for allongoing schemes. Capital schemes should be in-cluded in the budgets of the services only if thereis reasonable certainty of concluding the contractand making an initial payment within the year.The services should include only those schemes in

LTIPP and annual procurement plans where tech-nical and commercial evaluation, leading to con-tracting and initial payment, can be completed inthe relevant fiscal year. Eventually, the form andcontent of budgetary classification has to expandto promote programme-based budgeting.

Unlike current focus on outlays for big-ticketpurchases, a clear and coherent national policy hasto underpin security outcomes.

Sushant K Singh is a resident commentator and NitinPai is editor ofPragati. Courtesy:Mint (livemint.com).

PERSPECTIVE

9 No 13 | Apr 2008

Photo: Vivek Patankar

Raising a red flag


11/24


12/24

Aid shortfall

THERE IS an aid shortfall of

$10bequivalent to thirty

times the annual national

education budget: donors

committed to give $25b aid

since 2001 but have only de-

livered $15b.

An estimated 40% of aid

goes back to donor countries

in corporate profits and con-

sultant salariessome $6bsince 2001.

Largely due to lack of co-

ordination and communica-

tion, the Afghan government

does not know how one-third

of all aid since 2001some

$5bhas been spent.

The US military spends

close to $100m a day in Af-

ghanistan; yet the average

volume of aid spent by all

donors since 2001 is just $7m

per day.Over half of aid is tied,

requiring the procurement of

donor-country goods and

services.

Over two-thirds of all aid

bypasses the Afghan gov-

ernment. According to the

latest OECD figures less than

40% of technical assistance is

co-ordinated with the gov-

ernment.

Only one-third of donor

analytical or assessment work

is conducted jointly.Profit margins on recon-

struction contracts for inter-

national and Afghan contrac-

tor companies are often 20%

and can be as high as 50%.

Most full time, expatriate

consultants, working in pri-

vate consulting companies,

cost $250,000$500,000 a year.

- Matt Waldman, Falling Short

- Aid Effectiveness in Afghani-

stan, Oxfam/ACBAR,

March 2008

Water and climate change

FOUR HUNDRED millionpeopleif it were a country,

it would be the third largest

in the worldrely on the

Ganges River and its tributar-

ies for their livelihood. Sixthousand rivers provide a

perennial source of irrigation

and power to one of the

worlds most densely popu-

lated and poorest areas. TheHimalayas, the water tower

of the Ganges, provide 45

percent of the annual flow.

These facts represent the

potential payoffs to the popu-

lations of Bangladesh, India

and Nepal as well as the

threat that climate change

poses to poor and already

vulnerable people of these

countries.

Regulating water through

reservoir storage in Nepal

could potentially lower flood

peaks and prevent the worst

flood shocks in its own low-

lands, the northern Indianstates and Bangladesh.Nearly fifty million farmers

could benefit from higher

dry-season flows. Estimated

conservatively, Nepal sits on

a hydropower resource of

83,000 MW. Meanwhile, itssouthern neighbour India,

growing at over 8 percent a

year, is thirsty for clean en-

ergy.

In the Rolwaling Valley,

about 20 miles south west of

Mount Everest, lies Tsho

Rolpa, the largest glacial lake

in Nepal, formed over the last

40 years as the Tarkarding

glacier stagnated, melted and

retreated. At about 4600m,the lake, which is over 3.2km

long and up to 152m deep,

continues to expand. An un-

stable natural moraine dam

retains the lake. The current

risk of the dam bursting is

high. A catastrophic outflow

could occur, devastating vil-

lages, farmlands, infrastruc-

ture and taking thousands oflives downstream. It is a

harsh reminder that the Hi-

malayas contain the largest

body of ice outside the Polar

Regions but also present the

fastest glacier retreat of any

mountain range, with poten-

tially catastrophic conse-

quences for the region, in

particular in the dry season.

South of Kirne, along the

Tama Koshi River lies the

Koshi barrage. Built in 1964,

the purpose of the barrage is

to provide irrigation through

manmade canals to India and

Nepal (through the Western

Koshi main canal). India

built the barrage on Nepali

territory under a treaty

signed in 1954 and still con-

trols the opening of the 56

gates during the rainy season.As David Grey, the World

Banks senior adviser on

water resource management

points out, Nepals water

assets are unique and

world-class. It needs world-class capacity to manage

them so that the country can

have domestic prosperity,

peace and growth. Nepal isalso the lynchpin to regional

co-operation and benefit-

sharing, something that has

eluded South Asiathe least

integrated region of the

worldin the past. Perhapsclimate change can provide

the much-needed trigger to

opening this dialogue.- Praful Patel, Water, climate

change and the poor, End

Poverty in South Asia blog,

The World Bank, 4 Mar 2008

FILTER

11 No 13 | Apr 2008

Essential readings of the month

Do you have somethingfor FILTER?

If you have a journal articleor paper that you think yourfellow readers might beinterested in, please email itto us [email protected]

0

500

1,000

1,500

2,000

EU UK Japan Germany Canada India Netherlands Italy Norway Iran Sweden S. Arabia

Foreign Aid to Afghanistan (excluding from USA and multilateral donors)

Aid Disbursed (2002-2008)

Aid Committed (2002-2008) but not disbursedAid Pledged (2002-2011) but not committed or disbursed

US$ millionData Source: Oxfam/ACBAR


13/24

FOREIGN POLICY

Dealing with Chinas power

projectionA rising China will not tolerate a rising India as peer competitor

HARSH V PANT

EARLIER THIS month, China announced that itsmilitary budget for 2008 will increase by 17.6 per-cent to about US$58.8 billion. This was not really

surprising as it follows a 17.8 percent increase in2007 and double-digit increases in Chinas annualdefence outlays most years in the last two decades.But what is causing concern in Asia and beyond isthe opacity that surrounds Chinas military build-up, with an emerging consensus that Beijings realmilitary spending is at least double the announcedfigure.

The official figures of the Chinese governmentdo not include the cost of new weapon purchases,research or other big-ticket items for Chinas

highly secretive military, and, as a result, the realfigure may be much higher than the amount re-vealed. From Washington to Tokyo, from Brusselsto Canberra, calls are rising for China to be moreopen about the intentions behind this dramaticpace of spending increase and scope of its militarycapabilities.

Whatever Chinese intentions might be, consis-tent increases in defence budgets over the last sev-eral years have put China on track to not only be-come a majormilitary power

but the one mostcapable of chal-lenging Americandominance in theA s i a - P a c i fi c .While Chinasnear-term focusremains onpreparations forpotential prob-lems in the Tai-

wan Straits, itsnuclear forcemodernisation, itsgrowing arsenalof advanced mis-

siles, and its development of space and cyberspacetechnologies are changing the military balance inAsia and beyond.

A growing economic power, China is also con-centrating on the accretion of military might so asto secure and enhance its own strategic interests.Thats how great powers have behaved through-out history. The United States will try its best topreserve its own pre-eminence in the region. Whilethe United States has been the regional hegemonin the Asia-Pacific since the end of the SecondWorld War it has been preoccupied with its war onterror to pay significant attention to the region inrecent years.

Traditional US allies have complained that theyare no longer being heard in Washington. So whenRobert Gates, the US defence secretary, visited astring of states in Asia last month, it sent a clearsign to China that the United States is back andhas no intention of ceding strategic space to China.Mr Gatess trip to the Asia-Pacific underlined thecontinued US commitment to a region that is rap-idly emerging as the locus of global politics andeconomics. Chinas rise, while offering opportuni-

ties to other re-gional states, is

also unsettlingother major pow-ers in the regionand beyond.What is Indiadoing to secureits own interests?India is the coun-try that will be(and already is)most affected by

a rising China.China has uppedthe ante on theborder dispute. Itprotested against

IN DEPTH


Cou

rtesy;OhioStateUniv.

Let us rise peacefully


14/24

Prime Minister Manmohan Singhs visit to Arun-achal Pradesh as well as his speech there hailingArunachal as the land of the rising sun for India.While this was in line with its claims to the entireterritory of the state of Arunachal Pradesh, whathas caught most observers by surprise is the ve-

hemence with which Beijing has contested everysingle recent Indian administrative and politicalaction in the state, even denying visas to Indiancitizens from Arunachal Pradesh. The recent roundof boundary negotiations has been a disappointingfailure, despite the reluctance of the Indian gov-ernment to say so for fear of offending their Com-munist allies. There is a growing perception thatChina is less than willing to adhere to earlierpolitical understandings on how to address theboundary dispute.

There is also a growing alarm in India becauseof frequent and strident claims being made byChina along the Line of Actual Control in Arun-achal Pradesh and Sikkim. Foreign Minister

Pranab Mukherjee was forced to go on record thatthe Chinese army sometimes does intrude on itsterritory though he added that the issues are ad-dressed through established mechanisms, what-ever they might be.

While realising fully well that it would takedecades to seriously compete with the UnitedStates for global hegemony, China has focused its

strategic energies on Asia. Its foreign policy isaimed at enhancing its economic and militaryprowess to achieve regional hegemony in the re-gion. Chinas recent emphasis on projecting its riseas peaceful is merely aimed at allaying the con-cerns of its neighbours lest they try to counterbal-ance its growing influence. Chinas readiness tonegotiate with other regional states and to be aneconomically responsible power is also a signalto other states that there are greater benefits in bandwagoning onto Chinas growing regionalweight than opposing its rise. China realises that it

has thrived because it devotes itself to economicdevelopment while letting the United States policethe region and the world. Even as it decriesAmerican hegemony, its leaders envision Pax

Americana extending well into the 21st century, atleast until China becomes a middle-class societyand, if present trends continue, the worlds largesteconomy.

While the United States still remains the pre-dominant power in the Asia-Pacific, the rise of

China and India can no longer be ignored in theregion. Japan is also getting back on track and alsoseems ready to shed its military reticence. The riseof China is a major factor in the evolution of Indo- Japanese ties as is the US attempt to build Indiainto a major balancer in the region. Both Indiaand Japan are also well aware of Chinas not sosubtle attempts at preventing their rise.

Yet when the major focus of the Indian foreignpolicy should be on how to best deal with thedragon in its neighbourhood, the Indias political

elite is consumed by some hypothetical threat toIndias strategic autonomy from the United Statesarising from the nuclear deal.

Indias primary strategic challenge is to breakout of the confines of the South Asian region. Theonly way this can be accomplished is by using thecontemporary global balance of power to its ad-vantage. This involves active and close co-operation with the United States as neither is in-terested in seeing the emergence of an aggressiveChina. Indeed, this was what China did during theCold War when it broke with the Soviet Union, its

Communist ally, and made its historic shift to-wards the United States. No one can credibly ar-gue that China ended up becoming a junior part-ner. On the contrary, China used its unique posi-tion in the balance of power configuration to sucheffect that today it is on the verge of challengingthe United States for global pre-dominance.

China has always viewed India as a mere re-gional player and has tried to confine India to theperipheries of global politics. But after the UnitedStates started courting India the Chinese rhetoric

towards India underwent a slight modification.Realising that a close US-India partnership wouldchange the regional balance of power to its disad-vantage, China started tightening the screws onIndia. While it must be delighted to see the fate ofthe US-India nuclear deal being held ransom to theexigencies of Indian politics, it has further en-trenched itself in the Indian neighbourhood.Boundary negotiations have hit a deadlock even asSino-India competition for global energy resourceshas gained momentum. The development of infra-structure by China in its border regions with India

has been so rapid and effective, and Indias re-sponse lackadaisical. While China has continuedto make claims on Indian territory with impunity,India remains diffident about playing the Tibet

IN DEPTH

13 No 13 | Apr 2008

Realising that a close US-India

partnership would change the re-

gional balance of power to its dis-

advantage, China started tighten-

ing the screws on India.


15/24

card vis--vis China. Despite the Dalai Lama of-fering a number of political concessions to China,Beijing has refused to meet even the most basicdemands of the Tibetans. The repression in Tibet,in fact, is at an all time high as the latest crack-down on protests in Lhasa underscores.

Chinas vigourous promotion of regional eco-nomic interdependence, which some take as a signof Chinese liberal world-view is actually aimed asa tool for power projection, something that wouldreinforce Chinas independence while helping itdevelop links with other Asian countries. Thiswould involve regional arrangements that wouldnot only promote Chinese power but would alsomarginalise the United States, Japan and India.Chinas encouragement towards the creation ofgroupings like the East Asian Community and the

Shanghai Co-operation Organisation should beseen in this light, underpinned as they are by Chi-nese values and norms.

Indian policy towards China continues to bepremised on the liberal fallacy that strategicproblems will inevitably produce satisfactory solu-tions merely because they are desirable and in theinterest of all. India views stable Sino-Indian ties to be in the interests of both China and India. It isindeed in the interest of China to have good rela-tions with India at least in the short-term when itwants to devote its energies to economic develop-

ment. But its policy for medium to long term isclear: establish its pre-eminence in Asia and con-tain India. Therefore there is no reason why Indiashould allow China a free hand in shaping thestrategic environment of the region.

Now there is nothing particularly sinister aboutChinas attempts to expand its own influence andcurtail Indias. China is a rising power in Asia andthe world and as such will do what it can to pre-vent the rise of other power centres around its pe-riphery. It did so in the 1960s and it is doing so

today. Chinas all-weather friendship with Paki-stan, its attempts to increase its influence in Nepal,Bangladesh, and Burma, its persistent refusal torecognise parts of India, its lack of support for In-dias membership to the United Nations SecurityCouncil and other regional and global organisa-tions, its unwillingness to support the US-Indianuclear pactall point towards attempts at pre-venting the rise of India as a player of major im-port. China has consistently and successfully pur-sued this strategy without any apologies.

There is also nothing extraordinarily benign in

Chinas attempts to improve its bilateral relations

with India in recent times. After cutting Indiadown to size in various ways, China would notlike to see India coming close to the United Statesin order to contain China. In this geopoliticalchessboard, while both the United States andChina are using India for their own strategic ends,

India has ended up primarily reacting to the ac-tions of others. This is both because of a lack ofadequate recognition of the forces that drive inter-

national politics in general and also an inability tocome up with a coherent strategy towards Chinain particular.

A rising China will not tolerate a rising India asits peer competitor. Even if a rising India does nothave an intention of becoming a regional he-gemon, China will try its best to contain India as it

has already done to a large extent. And it is thiscontainment that India must guard against.Chinas intentions vis--vis India may seem en-tirely peaceful at the moment but that is largelyirrelevant in the strategic scheme of things. Indiacannot have a foreign policy shaped by the as-sumed kindness of its neighbours. India cannotand should not wear rose-tinted glasses on Sino-Indian relations just because things seem to be go-ing smoothly at present.

Harsh V Pant is a lecturer at the department of defencestudies, King's College, London.

IN DEPTH


It is Chinas interests to have

good relations with India in the

short-term. But its policy for

medium to long term is clear: es-

tablish its pre-eminence in Asiaand contain India.


16/24

DEFENCE

It matters what generals say

The army chief s worrying remarks on the India-China border

K S MADHU SHANKAR

THE CHIEF of Army Staff, General Deepak Ka-poor in a recent television interview opined thatthe Chinese have a different perception of theLine Of Actual Control as do wewhen they comeup to their perception we call it an incursion, like-wise they do.

Considering the very high status and respectthat we in India accord the nation's armed forceswhen compared to the rest of the "corrupt, incom-petent and undisciplined" civilian establishmentthis shocking statement, which betrays a lack of

basic understanding of the history of the issue in-volved or either a deliberate attempt to misleadthe concerned Indian public, went unchallenged. Ifthe same statement had been made by someoneother than the army chiefsay the defence minis-terthere would have been a furore.

So it was left to Jaswant Singh, the leader of theopposition in the Rajya Sabha, to register a proteston the floor of the house. Mr Singh criticised Gen-eral Kapoor for lowering the dignity of his officeand noted that the borders were not a matter of

perception but, rather, of determination.General Kapoors view that the incidents along

the Line of Actual Control (LAC) are a mere matterof differing perceptions of the Indian and Chi-nese sides does not hold up to scrutiny. For one,

even after more than two decadesand eleven rounds of border talks,China has refused to even submitmaps clarifying their claim line inthe Eastern and Western sectors ofthe Indo-Tibetan border. Meanwhile

it continues to dispute the McMa-hon line which India along with thethen independent Tibet had ac-cepted as the international bordernearly a century ago.In the absence of a claim line fromthe Chinese side, it is hard to seehow can there be a "differing per-ception" of where the Line of ActualControl actually lies. How canChina's claim that Indian soldiers

violate the LAC be justified if theChinese have not informed India of their claim?

China routinely protests against Indian activi-ties in the region it claims. These range from theprime ministers Arunachal visit to the building offibre-glass toilets near the LAC. If India had beenquietly violating the line or claiming land to thenorth of it, it is difficult to believe that Chinawould have remained silent about it.

So General Kapoor was clearly overdrawingfrom the huge account of public trust that thearmy has accumulated over the past several dec-ades.

To pointed questioning regarding the improvedinfrastructure on the Chinese side which lets themto virtually drive a luxury car to their border posts,while Indian soldiers need to trek on foot or usemule transport, General Kapoor merely said thatthey were trying their best to match the Chineseside on infrastructure and logistics,and that it willtake time. His body language clearly betrayed asense of anxiety.

General Kapoor also virtually admitted to how

under-prepared the Indian troops are to addressthe threat from China. When it was pointed outthat the Chinese now have the means to movenearly two divisions to the Indian border at a shortnotice of 20-25 days rather than the earlier lead

ROUNDUP

15 No 13 | Apr 2008

Photo:AlickMighall


17/24

time of 3-6 months, the general only insisted thatthe Indian Army is capable of countering it effec-tively even with the present infrastructure. Hewent on to say that in a critical time India will beable to track build-ups through satellite imagery.With Chinese advances in anti-satellite technology

and reliance on information warfare it is unclearwhether the Indian armed forces are really pre-pared for a scenario when this eye in the sky canbe gone in a blink at a critical moment.

The army chief failed to reassure the public thatthe Indian armed forces are well-prepared to ad-dress a military challenge from China. The military balance along the border is undergoing a rapidtransformation with China having upgraded itlogistics capabilities manifold all along the 4,057km LAC.

An important lesson from the 1999 Kargil Warwas the need for integrated command of the In-dian Air Force (IAF) and Army. Yet almost a dec-ade later, this has yet to happen. Back-pedallingpoliticians apart, it is essential that the militarychiefs rise above inter-service rivalries and let theoffice of the chief of defence staff come into being.General Kapoor recognised the importance oftechnology and high ground when he said that he

would need the eye in the sky to track the move-ments of Chinese troops in the event of war. It isnecessary to go beyond that. The Indo-Tibetan border where the Chinese hold the plateau whilethe Indian troops have to climb up from the foot-hills puts the Indian side at a natural disadvan-

tage. Beyond better road building, it is a betterstrategy to introduce air power into the strategicposture. The IAF must be seen as an integral partof a strategy to take the offensive across the borderinto the Tibetan plateau.

Obviously, General Kapoor did not reveal de-tails of Indias plans and level of preparedness. Noone expects him to do this. His television appear-ance was a failure on two important counts: first,his ill-advised remarks can hurt Indias position inthe border negotiations. Second, at a time when

the world is worrying about Chinas opaque mili-tary build-up General Kapoors remarks left Indi-ans wondering if the armed forces are indeed ascapable of defending the Himalayan borders as itis made out to be.

K S Madhu Shankar is a resident commentator on TheIndian National Interest. He blogs at The Catapult(http://catapult.nationalinterest.in)

FOREIGN POLICY

Options in Sri Lanka

And the risk of Sri Lanka falling sway to outside powers

T S GOPI RETHINARAJ

THE OVERARCHING goal of Indias policy to-ward Sri Lanka since the 1950s was to prevent anyhostile power getting a foothold in the neighbour-hood. In line with this objective India pursuedvarious policiessome of them at the expense ofSri Lankan Tamil interestsover the years to pla-cate the Sinhalese leadership. This includes barter-ing away the citizenship rights of over 600,000Tamils who had settled there during colonial timesand acquiescence to racial discriminatory policiesfollowed by successive Sri Lankan governments.Even the brief support to various Tamil militant

groups by India in the 1980s was largely to con-front the scheming ways of the Sinhalese leader-ship that undermined its regional status. As a re-sult, India ended up antagonising various ethnic

groups in Sri Lanka.Indias current policy and approach towards

ethnic crisis is mainly influenced by the fear thatan independent Tamil Eelam will rekindle seces-sionist tendencies in Tamil Nadu. This view lackscredibility because the Tamils in India are at theforefront in asserting their national identity alongwith their ethnic-linguistic pride. India also seeksthe military defeat of LTTE for various reasons,including its role in Rajiv Gandhis assassinationand Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF) debacle.But this overlooks several issues. Rajivs assassina-

tion has left many unanswered questions that havenot been probed further. Publicly stated evidenceclearly implicates the LTTE; however, the possibil-ity of the assassination being part of a larger con-

ROUNDUP



18/24

spiracy involving foreign intelligence agencies hasnot been investigated. The Jain Commission,which probed the assassination, made similar ob-servations concerning the questionable conduct ofsome Indian politicians and middlemen before andafter the tragic incident. And IPKF debacle was

mainly due to the deception and double-gamingpractised by Sri Lanka when India was trappedinto fighting a bloody and protracted war.

Indias Sri Lanka policy from the beginningalso failed to appreciate the deeper historical rootsof the ethnic conflict. The roots of current hostility between the Sinhalese and Tamils can be traced back to the intermittent wars between the Tamiland Sinhala kingdoms during the past several cen-turies. The Sinhalese leadership made this onlyworse by pandering to Sinhala Buddhist chauvin-

ism after the British left the island in 1948. Startingfrom the propagation of a biased history in schools

(which showed Tamils as invaders and late set-tlers), to the discriminatory policies that severelydisadvantaged the Tamils in education and jobs,and the subsequent violent government-led anti-Tamil pogroms, the ethnic conflict has gone

through various phases.The LTTEs conduct in the conflict also has its

share of problems. It has put an entire generationof Tamils in Sri Lanka through immense hardshipby persisting with the armed struggle, employingchild soldiers, and systematically eliminating otherTamil groups. But one cannot also ignore the factthat the Sinhalese dispensation would have suc-cessfully subjugated the Tamils long ago in theabsence of LTTE. In a sense the LTTE is both asource of strength and liability for the Sri Lankan

Tamils in the ongoing conflict. After three decadesof intense civil war the Sinhalese leadership is notmentally prepared for a fair political solution, evensomething along the lines of Indian federalism. Itis quite a different story that the ethnic conflict

would not have assumed violent proportions if theSri Lankan Tamils had been treated as equal citi-zens by the Sinhalese. Even today very few outsideof Sri Lanka are fully aware of the sophisticatedform of an ethnic cleansing unleashed by the Sin-halese majority with state collusion. This long and

bitter history makes rapprochement between theSinhalese and Tamils even more difficult. Giventhese realities, what are Indias policy options inthe ongoing ethnic conflict?

It is increasingly becoming clear that India can-not afford to remain fixated on its past bitternesswith the LTTE while crafting its response to theethnic crisis. The current policy stagnation besidesexacerbating the difficulties of Sri Lankan Tamilscan also be detrimental to Indias security in thelong run. Indias long time interest in making its

southern frontier free from influence of externalpowers made Sri Lanka indispensable for this

larger strategy. The Sinhalese leadership was quiteadept in exploiting this Indian sensitivity over theyears. During the Cold War there was some anxi-ety in India as Sri Lanka began building closer re-lationship with the United States. This was largely

due to Indias suspicion that Trincomalee wouldsomeday end up as a base for the US Navy. Suchconcerns are becoming increasingly irrelevant nowin the light of closer defence co-operation betweenthe United States and India. When Mumbai andChennai offer better options for naval interoper-ability, why would the Americans need Trinco-malee with a hostile population?

However, there are other potential sources ofthreat to Indias southern frontiers. Chinas navalpower projection capability currently doesnt ex-

tend beyond Taiwan. But as China grows and builds a stronger navy it can evolve as a majorpower in the Indian Ocean region through whichlarge volumes of its imported commodities fromMiddle East and Africa must pass. China is al-

ROUNDUP

17 No 13 | Apr 2008

Indias clout with Colombo

will vapourise once the LTTE

is defeated militarily. Why

would the Sinhalese leader-

ship care about Indias sensi-tivities after obtaining a fa-

vourable military solution?

Photo:DushiyanthiniK

An endangered species


19/24

ready playing a major role in building ports andpotential naval bases in some Indian Ocean littoralstates as part of its string of pearls strategy, gen-erating concerns in the Indian defence establish-ment. India formally extracted concession from SriLanka through the 1987 peace accordcurrently in

tattersthat Colombo will not allow any externalpowers in a way detrimental to Indian interests. Itwill be gross mistake if India believes that SriLanka will permanently adhere to this policy.

Sri Lanka has been building parallel defence co-operation tracks with China and Pakistan, and theisland has been brimming with Chinese and Paki-stani intelligence operatives for a long time. Indiahas gone out of way to help maintain Sri Lanka'sterritorial integrity knowing well about these de-velopments which can turn out to be a major secu-

rity problem for the Indian Navy in future. Indiacannot allow this situation to persist while simul-taneously putting pressure on the LTTE and pro-viding military assistance to Sri Lanka. A crediblecase could be built that an independent Tamil Ee-lam will befor ethnic-linguistic-religious rea-sonsfriendlier towards India than the Sinhalesedispensation harbouring a deep contempt for In-dia and its interests. Indias current military assis-tance, understandably low-key for domestic rea-sons, comes at a time when some western coun-tries have begun to take a more nuanced position

toward the ethnic conflict in light of the gross hu-man right violations committed by the Sri Lankanstate against Tamils. Although LTTE is banned in

many countries there is also simultaneous realisa-tion that any political solution ignoring the mili-tant outfit will not be viable in the long run.

Keeping in view these long-term interests, In-dia should review its policy and exert pressure onSri Lanka to seek a political solution for the ethnic

conflict. Ironically, Indias own clout with the Sin-halese dispensation in Colombo will vapouriseonce the LTTE is defeated militarily. Why wouldthe Sinhalese leadership care about Indias sensi-tivities after obtaining a favourable military solu-tion?

Unless India is able to lock the Sri Lankan gov-ernment in a broad bilateral security relationship,the Sinhalese will have no qualms allowing Chinaor Pakistan to get foothold in a way detrimental toIndian interests. This is the real danger of Indias

current detached policy, facilitating the militarydefeat of the LTTE. This view is of course not con-gruent with mainstream Indian thinking about theSri Lankan ethnic issue. But if India were to take ahard-nosed view of long-term interests, a subtleshift in its position against the LTTE will go a longway in safeguarding the countrys strategic inter-est in the Indian Ocean region besides securing theinterests of ethnic Tamils in the island.

T S Gopi Rethinaraj is a member of the faculty at theLee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National Univer-sity of Singapore.

LANGUAGE POLICY

New language formulas

From an unsatisfactory compromise to a liberal decentralisationSUJAY RAO MANDAVILLI

MUMBAI SAW riots in February, instigated by RajThackeray, leader of the Maharashtra NavnirmanSena. The targets of his ire were impecunious mi-grants from Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. AmitabhBachchan, who has roots in Uttar Pradesh and

Chhat Pooja, a major festival among Biharis, fellvictim to Mr Thackeray's verbal broadsidestheformer for taking more interest in Uttar Pradeshthan in Maharashtra despite having made his

acting career in Mumbai, and the latter because itsupposedly provided a platform for politiciansfrom the Hindi belt to display their political might.

Meanwhile Balasaheb Thackeray, his uncle,objected to the Congress Partys proposal that

Hindi be made an official language of the Mumbaimunicipal corporation. He declared that the pro-ponents should be put behind bars. An estimated10,000 people left cities such as Mumbai and

ROUNDUP



20/24

Nashik on buses, trains and private vehicles. Andthen in March, in adjacent Karnataka, activistsfrom the Karnataka Rakshana Vedike ransackedthe office of an IT firm in Bangalore in protestagainst a poem written by one of its employeesthat disparaged the state language, Kannada.

The sons-of-the-soil theories and attacks onIndians from other states quite clearly violate theConstitution, which guarantees citizens the rightto settle in any part of the country. They also runcounter to the pan-Indian nationalist ideals of In-dia's freedom struggle. What has gone wrong? Isparochialism gnawing away at India's vitals?

Indian cultures have interacted with each othersince millennia. Indo-Aryan and Dravidian lan-guages borrowed heavily from each other. Indiancultures share deep-rooted similarities in customs,

traditions, attire, beliefs, religious and festivals.This process of interaction has continued through-out the ages, enriching every part of the nation.

Was the creation of linguistic states wrong?

Even before independence in 1947, there wereseveral proposals to redraw state boundaries tocorrespond with language. Proponents began lob- bying for a Telugu-speaking state in the earlytwentieth century. Sindh and Orissa became sepa-rate provinces during the colonial era. The conceptof linguistic states existed much before the State

Reorganisation Commission of 1953 recommendedit as the guiding principle to be used while re-drawing state boundaries. In 1949 B R Ambedkarhad this to say on the question:

One State, one language is a universal featureof almost every State...Wherever there has beena departure from this rule there has been a dan-ger to the State. India cannot escape (disintegra-tion) if it continues to be a conglomeration ofmixed States. The reasons why a uni-lingualState is stable and a multi-lingual State unstable

are quite obvious.A State is built on fellow feeling. What is thisfellow-feeling ? To state briefly it is a feeling of acorporate sentiment of oneness which makesthose who are charged with it feel that they arekith and kin. This feeling is a double-edgedfeeling. It is at once a feeling of fellowship forones own kith and kin and anti-fellowship forthose who are not one's own kith and kin. It is afeeling of "consciousness of kind" which on theone hand, binds together those who have it sostrongly that it over-rides all differences arisingout of economic conflicts or social gradationsand, on the other, severs them from those who

are not of their kind.

Nehru, however was opposed, as he was wor-ried about the fate of linguistic minorities in lin-guistic states. But he was forced to give into to the

persistent demands of people like Potti Sriramuluwho agitated for linguistic states.

Ramachandra Guha argues in his book Indiaafter Gandhi that the concept actually helped pre-vent Balkanisation of the country by allowingpeople of different cultures to flourish and at the

same time identify themselves as Indians withoutany conflict between regional and national iden-tity.

Hindi as the National language

In 1906, Mahatma Gandhi wrote in his bookHind Swaraj that adopting Hindi as the universallanguage for India, with the option of writing itin Persian or Nagari script would be necessary todrive the English language out of India in shortorder.

The ideal of Hindi as a universal languagewas dogmatically pursued immediately after in-dependence and the creation of linguistic statesthe simpler Hindustani was discarded in favourof heavily Sanskritised Hindi.

Examples of Hindi zealotry abound, and con-tributed in large part to the anti-Hindi agitation ofthe 50s and 60s. These resulted in the compromiseof 1965 agreed upon by the Lal Bahadur Shastrigovernment, when it was then decided that theuse of English would continue. A three-languageformula was developed and it was decided that

English, Hindi and the local language would betaught.

This compromise has been unsatisfactory. Somenon-Hindi speaking states have continued to op-pose teaching Hindi, while no Hindi-speakingstate has implemented the three language formulain its correct spirit, some choosing to teach a lan-guage like Sanskrit instead.

Hindi continued to be an important language,but the three-language formula led to three classesof Hindi speakersthose whose mother tongue

and education was in Hindi in a Hindi-speakingstate; those whose mother tongue was some otherlanguage, but attended a school whose medium ofinstruction was Hindi; and non-Hindi speakerswho took Hindi as a second or third language.

English, on the other hand, came to be seen as aneutral language, offering no undue advantage toany regional group. In spite of this, politicianseven in many non-Hindi speaking states aban-doned English or greatly reduced its power. None-theless, the inconsistency between the policies fol-lowed in central and state governments, the in-

compatibility between language policies and theneed to look elsewhere for job opportunitiesclearly triggered a demand for English. Severalother factors led to a surge in the demand for Eng-

ROUNDUP

19 No 13 | Apr 2008


21/24

lish, among them being globalisation which

strengthened the case for English as the languageof global commerce, and the spread of computersand the Internet.

Most multilingual societies have had neutrallink languages. Those that did not, such as Canadaor Switzerland, have generally promoted multilin-gualism. An example of a link language is Sanskritin ancient India, which was the lingua franca of theelite.

Wherever link languages were not neutral, theywere never spread through force. Where force wasapplied, it could not engender unity. The lan-

guage of a region within a country can neverspread to other parts of the country "on its own"unless it satisfies the principle of mutual inter-estsomebody else must have some kind of a usefor it. Hindi may have thus spread partly becauseof patriotism, partly because of migrations outsidethe Hindi belt, partly because people were taughtit was the national language, partly because it mayhave been too difficult or time-consuming for aperson to acquire knowledge in many Indian lan-guages, partly because they did not have knowl-

edge in English. It cannot provide a win-winproposition beyond all this.In India most major centres of commerce such

as Mumbai, Pune, Kolkata, Ahmedabad, Hydera-bad, Chennai, Bangalore and Ludhiana are locatedoutside the Hindi belt. English is the language ofcommerce within the subcontinent and remainspopular among the elite.

In certain other cases, languages have spreadbecause of acculturation, elite dominance and eth-nogenesis. Such processes have typically operatedvery slowly taking centuries and have in many

cases been coupled with some other unnaturalevents or human rights abuses. This is not the waya democratic country would like to promote na-tional integration. Hindi, or some other lan-

guage cannot therefore re-place English unless someunnatural event occurs.The dynamics of language inIndia seem to have been un-derstood even by supporters

of Hindi. It is not uncommonfor Hindi chauvinists sendtheir children to English-medium schools even whilerestricting the spread of Eng-lish among the public. Thehypocrisy has been evidentamong other regional lan-guages too. In the decade be-fore liberalisation, politicians

in West Bengal, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and

Tamil Nadu tried to restrict or delay the use ofEnglish in government-run schools, while ensur-ing that their own children went to private Englishlanguage schools.

India's language policies have, therefore, notworked as intended. Clearly, they cannot. Insteadthey have been producing a series of counter-reactions, which historians may one day ponderover. If pushed through artificial means, they canonly further destabilise the country.

Some alternative approaches

A recurring proposal to introduce Sanskrit asthe neutral link language is not feasible becausethe of the enormous effort involved, and also be-cause Sanskrit is not as neutral as is claimed by itsproponents. But there are a number of directionsfor a reform of Indias language policies.

A decentralised approach is much likelier towork. Rather than impose Hindi, students couldbe given the choice of opting for any living Indianlanguage (normally their mother tongue) in addi-tion to the local language and English. Schools can

decide to introduce languages depending on de-mand. This approach will lead to greater choice forstudents and a greater variety in the languageslearnt.

The central government could set up a body topromote all Indian languages without prejudice,set up libraries and research institutes all over thecountry and translate international books particu-larly into all Indian languages. It is time for thecentral government to institute a committee toformulate a language policy for the twenty-firstcentury India.

Sujay Rao Mandavilli is a software consultant andauthor of a series of articles on human migration andthe spread of languages.

ROUNDUP


Photo: Shira Golding

Market tongues


22/24

IN EXTENSO

Tagore in China

The poet visited China 84 years ago this month.STEPHEN N HAY

THE SPIRIT of China andthe spirit of India merged inTagores mind into the spiritof Asia. Reminding his firstChinese audience (inShanghai) of the day whenIndia claimed you as broth-ers and sent you her lovehe called for a renewal ofthis relationship, which washidden in the heart of all of usthe people of theEast. The path to it may be overgrown with thegrass of centuries, but we shall find traces of itstill. Reopening this path of friendship betweenIndia and China could also bring together ourneighbours all over Asia. This pan-Asian revivalwould be purely spiritual, he insisted: Asia isagain waiting for such dreamers to come and carry

on the work, not of fighting, not of profit-making,but of establishing bonds of spiritual relationship.

His ultimate ideal was a pluralistic world, bound not by political and economic ties, but bythe mutual recognition of the diverse expressionsof the human spirit. For differences can never bewiped away, and life would be much the poorerwithout them. Let all human races keep their ownpersonalities, and yet come together, not in a uni-formity that is dead, but in a unity that is living.

Tagore delivered his major address (in Shang-

hai) on April 18, 1921 to over twelve hundred lis-teners in the auditorium of the Commercial Press.He had a message for China. What he had seen inone of her largest industrial centres made him fearfor her future:

I feel that China is now going the same way asIndia. I love culture. I love life. I cannot bear tosee Chinese culture endangered day by day.Therefore I sincerely warn you: know that hap-piness is the growth of the power of the soul.Know that it is absolutely worthless to sacrificeall spiritual beauty to obtain the so-called mate-

rial civilisation of the West.Friends! The time has come! We must useall our strength to speak for humanity, to strug-gle against the nightmarish demon of matter.Do not surrender to his power. Bring the world

to idealism, to humanism,and destroy materialism.

*In Nanking the first order ofbusiness on April 20 was tocall on General Chi Hsieh-yuan, the military governor

controlling the region. Fol-lowing the collapse of theChing dynasty in 1911 a

variety of provincial warlords had seized powerand were contending with one another. Tagore begged General Chi to desist from fighting, forthe sake not only of China but of Asia and all ofhumanity. The general, having served champagneto all present, told the poet that he, too, was atheart a believer in peace. Five months later, Gen-eral Chi renewed his attack on the warlord of

Chekiang. *The warlord who controlled Shansi province,

General Yen Hsi-chen, had earned fame as theModel Governor because of his efforts to mod-ernise without uprooting the traditional Confuciansocial order. Indeed, in his concern for the moralreformation of his people, his dislike for industriesand large cities, and his conviction that he was alatter-day sage whose mission it was to regeneratemankind, Yen resembled Tagore.

I have come, Your Excellency, Tagore said,

to propose to you some way of blending our ide-als so that some great civilisation may again be theoutcome of this meeting of the ideals of India andthose of China. The Model Governor replied:The present material civilisation has developedgreatly, and if once again our moral civilisationcould gain control of the material it would be somuch the better for all of us.

*Even as the poet talked (in Peking) he must

have noticed young men circulating through the

seated crowd handing out copies of a printedhandbill. Perhaps he knew that this leaflet was abroadside attack on his message to China, for suchhandbills had been passed out in Nanking andShanghai also. There was opposition to the poet on

BOOKS

21 No 13 | Apr 2008

Excerpts

Asian Ideas of East and West

by Stephen N HayHarvard University Press, 478 pages, 1970


23/24

four grounds: that he was a pacifist, was against

machinery, talked about the soul, and was not aCommunist. Tagore was deeply disturbed. Thesepeople are determined to misunderstand me, hedeclared angrily.

In Hankow (a bustling commercial hub dubbedthe Chicago of China) young men shouted inChinese, Go back, slave from a lost country! Wedont want philosophy, we want materialism! andwaved placards with these same slogans.

*Editorials from Chinese-language newspapers

contain considerable scepticism concerning Ta-

gores ideas and their relevance to Chinese condi-tions. The She-hui jih-pao (Society Daily) in Pekingdiscounted the idea that Tagore had any seriouspurpose in mind at all: He comes to China forsight-seeing, as he is an admirer of our country. Heexpresses his opinions, but he has no political andreligious aims, nor any propaganda to be con-ducted here in China. Therefore it was senselesseither to praise or oppose his ideas.

From Shanghai, the Shen pao (Chinese dailynews) vehemently rejected his message: We can-

not live without the benefits of material civilisa-tion. To neglect them would mean that all our fourhundred million people would be the victims ofthe material civilisation of other peoples. Wouldthis not be terrible?

*Articles, leaflets, and student demonstra-

torsthese were the principal weapons employedin the Chinese Communist Partys anti-Tagorecampaign. A lesser, but still quite damaging in-strument was The Dagger, the closing section ofthe Partys weekly Guide. It was thrust no lessthan thirteen times at the Indian protagonist.

The first thrust set the jibing tone for those thatfollowed. When Tagore came to China, somepeople started a Drive Away the Elephant Party to

oppose him, Chen Tu-hsiu remarked approv-ingly:

It is very appropriate to use the elephant as asymbol for the character of Oriental peoples.The elephant is so large and self-important, butactually he can do nothing. Even though he is

so large, he obediently accepts the commands ofthe elephant boy. He kneels down, and bowssubserviently without knowing any shame.When his skin is broken, when he bleeds, hestill knows no pain. Among all animals, there isnone other who is so large and so numb.

Drive out the elephant! became one of thecries used in the anti-Tagore demonstrations inPeking and Hankow. Chen also seems to have been the originator of the taunt that Tagore cameto China some thousand years too late, the great

age of Chinese Buddhism being irrevocably past.Tagore later noted that the Communists were

his harshest critics in China, but he judged them to be a very small section of the population andconcluded, for all that China received my mes-sage warmly. He was nettled, nevertheless, to thepoint of canceling the last half of the series of lec-tures he had come to deliver. If the Communistswere such a small group, why had their hostilitywounded him so deeply? One answer might bethat they were particularly influential among thestudents, the very sector of the educated class theIndian poet wanted most to impress.

*In less than seven weeks, he had lectured in the

countrys largest city (Shanghai), its nominalpolitical capital (Peking), and in five of its twenty-four provincial capitals. He had talked with stu-dents and scholars, actors and artists, generals andpoliticians, poets, religious leaders, and an ex-emperor. Almost everywhere the general publichad received him well. Many students had seemedreceptive to his ideas, though he could not always

be sure how much they had understood his Eng-lish, or how faithfully and fully his translators hadrendered his words into Chinese. Dissident voiceshad made themselves heard, however, and theirchorus of disapproval grew louder as the poetstour of China progressed.

For his own part, Tagore admitted that hemight have entertained a romanticised view ofChina, a vision formed in his imagination whenhe was reading the Arabian Nights and amplifiedby his impressions of the Chinese paintings he had

seen in Japan.

Stephen N Hay (1925-2001) was professor of history atUniversity of California, Santa Barbara. Copyright 1970. Harvard University Press.

BOOKS


Photo: Thierry

In the end, they didnt listen


24/24

Pragati - The Indian National Interest

Review comes to you from an independentcommunity of individuals committed to increas-ing public awareness and education on strategicaffairs, economic policy and governance.

The themes we care about dearly: economicfreedom, realism in international relations, anopen society, a culture of tolerance and an em-phasis on good governance.

http://www.nationalinterest.in

Map:ArunGane

sh

pragati issue13 april2008 community ed

Documents