'Globalised world needs rule of law': Interview with Ricardo Lagos, President of Chile

January 30, 2005
The Hindu

Interview with Ricardo Lagos

"Globalised world needs rule of law"

The first Chilean head of state to visit India, President Ricardo
Lagos, spoke to Siddharth Varadarajan, Deputy Editor of The Hindu,
about the anti-neoliberal mood in Latin America, the trial of the
former dictator, Augusto Pinochet, and the nee d for a world that
recognises cultural diversity and the rule of law. Excerpts:

Siddharth Varadarajan: Given the enormous distance that separates
Latin America from South Asia, what is it that India and Chile can do
for each other?

Ricardo Lagos: That reminds me of my visit to China when President
Jiang Zemin told me, `You are from such a faraway country, I assume
you have something very important to tell me!' But seriously, beyond
the historical things and the multilateral issues, India is an
emerging country, extremely important as an economic force. Chile is a
small country with only 15 million people but our path of development
has been to integrate with the world. Trade accounts for more than 65
per cent of our GDP, and if we add services, that's 80 per cent. In
other words, India has a huge internal market but when you are a small
country, you see the world. And we would like to be here.

On the other hand, the fact that you too are an open economy means the
possibility of investment in and using Chile as a springboard to go to
other countries. Quite a number of European firms are now going down
to Chile, because they can go free of tariff to the U.S.; and on the
other hand, some Americans are coming to Chile because they can go to
Europe tariff free. So Chile is offering to India the market of the
Europeans, Americans, Canadians and Mexicans, with whom we have free
trade agreements and zero tariffs for most products.

At the same time, societies are more than economies. There are
cultural issues, the design of public policies to help the poor, where
we can learn from each other. I think it is time to say globalisation
is not just about business but about some other things...

Varadarajan: There has been in India recently a certain re-evaluation
of the different dimensions of globalisation, a feeling that we tended
to ignore Latin America, Africa. In the past year, we have seen the
creation of a very promising new forum linking India, Brazil, and
South Africa. Do you see that kind of initiative as something Chile
could connect with?

Lagos: I think India, Brazil, and South Africa are part of a broader
coalition - the so-called G-20 and still counting - of countries
that went together to present similar views in the Doha round of trade
talks at Cancun. Now, there are the negotiations in Geneva and I think
the time has come to present similar views. There are the questions of
anti-dumping laws, agricultural subsidies, and intellectual property
rights. It's there that we are going to be discussing these things...
So that's an area where, if globalisation is going to be here as it
is, you need some rules. Globalisation without rules means that the
rules are going to be imposed upon us. I don't want that. And from
that point of view, India, Brazil, and South Africa are the major
countries providing some leadership in this question. We feel part of
that group.

Varadarajan: I was in Venezuela recently for a conference at which
there were a lot of scholars and artistes from Latin America. I got a
feeling of a new confidence in the region linked to the fact that
after a long period, there are five or six progressive governments in
the continent - Lagos in Chile, Nestor Kirchner in Argentina, Lula in
Brazil, Chavez in Venezuela, and, of course, now Uruguay. What
accounts for this turn to the Left? Is it because of Latin America's
negative experience with neoliberalism?

Lagos: There is a sense in the region that we tried to do everything.
That during the 1990s, under the so-called Washington consensus, we
were supposed to be open to trade, we were supposed to have an
independent monetary policy, no fiscal deficit, privatise quite a
number of firms. Now, most Latin American countries did all those
things. Nevertheless, growth didn't arrive, and in those cases where
you have growth, this didn't mean poverty was being reduced. The only
exception, to some extent, has been Chile. And you know why? Because,
in addition to the Washington Consensus, we had quite a number of very
specific policies.

Varadarajan: You mean social welfare programmes?

Lagos: Yes, for the poor. In education, for example, we discriminate.
Equal opportunity in education means you have to discriminate in
favour of those schools that are far away, in rural areas, poorer
people. There's no question. We have computers now in 90 per cent of
our schools but, needless to say, for many kids the computer in the
school is the only computer. Also, one of our programmes was to target
women-headed households. Ninety-five per cent of them are poor so to
target them is very easy. So, in a housing programme, for instance,
the priority was these households. With our targeting, we have managed
to reduce those in poverty, by our own definition, from 40 per cent of
the population to 18 per cent.

So I have a feeling that what happened in the region is that there is
a move away from neoliberal thinking that growth is enough. People
discovered that growth is not enough. And that if you don't have these
kind of very concrete - I am not talking about populist policies -
straightforward public policies that are essential. This is not to say
that in some cases, you couldn't have a privatisation or a
build-operate-and-transfer scheme. We introduced, for instance,
private money in our highways. Well, I can build a highway through a
toll system but the money could be better used to build a school or
help the fishermen, bringing water for the rural poor. Almost everyone
in rural areas has drinkable water but let me tell you, this is only
public money because the peasants cannot afford that part of the
story.

Varadarajan: Given the ideological affinity among several of the
Governments in Latin America, is it possible to have a certain
coordination of policies? Mr. Chavez and Mr. Kirchner are talking of
building Petrosur to link South America's oil companies. How does
Chile view these kind of pan-Continental institutions?

Lagos: I think that geography will tell you need some kind of physical
integration in terms of highways, roads, and telecommunications.
Needless to say we have a tremendous reservoir of hydroelectric energy
in the southern part of Chile. If some other country has gas or oil,
and it is possible to have pipelines and trans-electric cables, that
is possible. Already, we receive a little gas from Argentina and
provide electricity.

These kinds of things are essential. But it is also necessary to have
some kind of coordination in terms of our own economic policies.
Because what is the purpose of integration and reducing barriers if
you are going to devalue your currency by 50 per cent! So I think we
need physical integration like energy, transportation etc., and
integration of macroeconomic policies.

Varadarajan: How are Chile's relations with the U.S.? As a member of
the U.N. Security Council in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, Chile
surprised many by refusing to go along with America's plans to get the
U.N. to sanction the war...

Lagos: You see, everybody assumed we were going to say yes because we
were in the middle of trade negotiations with the U.S.

Varadarajan: Exactly, so did Chile incur a penalty for its opposition
to the war?

Lagos: I would say no, but our opposition to the war has to do with
something much more essential. It is not only a question of ethics,
but in this kind of world that is global, you are going to need some
kind of rule of law. It is impossible not to have that. And the only
way is by the United Nations and the multilateral institutions.

This is the reason that nine months after the non-resolution on Iraq,
when there was a resolution on Haiti, 72 hours after the resolution
asking for troops, we sent troops there. So, without the Security
Council, we say no, and within a unanimous vote of the council, we say
yes. This is the only way for small countries if we are going to be
living in a more civilised world.

Varadarajan: The U.N.'s high level panel has made recommendations
about reform, including the Security Council. There's been some
disappointment largely because they have felt the veto system cannot
be changed. India feels the expansion of permanent membership should
come with veto power but Latin American countries have tended to
favour doing away with vetoes altogether. How does Chile view the
question of reform?

Lagos: The time has come to update the U.N. Charter. It represents the
world as it was in 1945. I think it is necessary to have more
permanent members. There are two proposals and we will be with
whichever receives more backing.

I think it's improbable that countries with a veto will not veto the
proposal to abrogate the veto! In that case, why not have a system of
contra veto? One country says `I veto', and two others say, `I veto
your veto'. That could be a practical solution, but we are open to any
suggestions. What I wouldn't like is that because of the question of
the veto, we don't introduce reforms that are essential, not just in
the U.N. but also in economic institutions like the World Bank and
IMF.

Varadarajan: There's a perception that Chile prefers to remain aloof
from regional integration in South America and reach its own
understanding with the U.S. on trade. In the context of the ongoing
debate, don't you think it prudent to postpone discussion on the
Washington-proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) till such a
time you have greater coherence of policies among South American
countries first?

Lagos: Every country has different realities. As I said, 65 per cent
of our GDP is represented by exports and imports. Do you know how much
it is in Brazil? 22-23 per cent. Argentina has something similar.
Because these countries are so huge, the internal market is very
important for development. The way you address the issue of trade is
different when you have such a huge market.

Varadarajan: So Chile does not want to become a full member of
Mercosur?

Lagos: I'm in favour of Latin American integration. And I think this
is essential. But how are we going to integrate if you have 14 per
cent tariff and I have 6 per cent? Should I increase my tariff? That's
impossible. Should they reduce? In the long term, they are planning
that. So the question of integration has to do with what is the
reality in the different countries. Why don't we have integration in
the political arena? The Ministers of Health and Education meet twice
a year among Mercosur countries. I say if a customs union is essential
to be a member of Mercosur, then I cannot be a member. I'm only an
associate member. But if there are many other things and not only a
customs union, I will be a full member. So it is not that Chile would
like to go alone.

The decision to start negotiations with the EU was taken together by
Chile and Mercosur. The idea was to start at the same time and have
parallel negotiations, but in the end it was extremely difficult for
the Mercosur countries to agree among themselves. So we have ended up
doing the negotiation with Europe alone while the others are still
discussing. Now, there has been a decision to have discussions on a
trade agreement between Mercosur and India. Chile also now has an
agreement. I hope in this case we will be together.

Varadarajan: Turning to a domestic issue, how important for Chile is
it that Pinochet be prosecuted for the human rights violations and
other crimes committed during his dictatorship? Are you confident the
process can be followed through without negative consequences from the
military?

Lagos: There will be no negative consequences no matter what happens
on this issue. The question of the armed forces is settled in Chile.
There is a tribunal and there are several prosecutions. Our democratic
institutions are now very strong.

Varadarajan: But how far down should legal accountability be fixed,
given that there are a large number of people who received an amnesty
earlier?

Lagos: Your question is quite relevant because quite a few members of
the military are saying, `Look, I was obeying orders, so my
accountability is not as big as you think it is'. This question has
not been settled. Today, more than 60 former officers are in prison
and the number being prosecuted is much larger.

Varadarajan: I happened to be in the memorial cemetery in Santiago in
1995 when the body of one of the hundreds of young men who had
disappeared during the Pinochet years was being buried. It was a very
moving ceremony but at the time, none of his relatives or friends
really believed there would be justice. Chile does seem to have come a
long way in the past 10 years.

Lagos: I would say there are very few countries that have been able to
see what happened in the past... In November 2004, a presidential
report was issued - the result of a high-level committee's

investigation into what happened with the political prisoners, the
torture. It's had a tremendous impact on public opinion, first because
the report was released, and second that the Chilean Government will
be paying pension for life for all the 28,000 people who were
recognised as political prisoners in that report. This tells us about
the strength of political institutions in the new Chile.

Varadarajan: Is there any possibility that the drive to have full
accountability for 1973 might at some stage lead to a request from
Chile for the right to interview or interrogate officials from the
U.S. who have information on the coup, torture techniques,
disappearances. One sometimes hears calls for Henry Kissinger's
prosecution.

Lagos: Well there has been some talk of that but all this is up to the
tribunal. If they, if someone being prosecuted says `I received orders
or training or whatever it is, then it would be up to the tribunal to
make a decision to ask for some foreign people to appear.

© Copyright 2000 - 2005 The Hindu

Inside Myanmar IV: Remembrance of things past

21 January 2005 The Hindu> Inside Myanmar - IV Relics of the past abound here By Siddharth Varadarajan YANGON, JAN. 20. The Burmese capital is where Bahadur Shah Zafar — the last Mughal emperor and titular leader of the First Indian War of Independence — finally got his do gaz zameen, or two yards of (burial) space. He died in 1862 but the precise location of his grave remained a secret until it was discovered by accident in 1991. His mazaar, which was built earlier, is an important destination for any Indian visitor, but also for many Pakistanis. In 1952, the Government of Pakistan wanted to shift the shrine to Lahore but the Burmese authorities did not allow it. Since then, India has paid for the upkeep of Zafar's last resting place; building an assembly hall and retiling the courtyard, all with the Myanmar Government's concurrence. India is consulted on major structural changes to the mazaar but its rights to the shrine are by no means absolute: last year, when an Indian documentary maker wished to film the mazaar, the Myanmar authorities refused permission. In 1998, alarm bells rang in Delhi when the local authorities here okayed a Pakistani proposal to construct an Islamic library and madrassa in the complex. Ultimately, the Indian view that the shrines remain a secular monument — whose historical value was shared by the peoples of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh — prevailed. In May 2001, Gen. Pervez Musharraf visited the mazaar and announced a donation of $50,000 for the construction of a new building in the complex. A plaque to this effect has been put up but the money has not been spent. The general also reportedly referred to Zafar in the visitors' book as "the last emperor of Pakistan". *** The downtown area of Rangoon is so full of well-preserved colonial buildings that it probably looks a little like the way Calcutta used to before the teeming masses moved in from the impoverished countryside of Bengal and Bihar. Skyscrapers housing modern hotels have begun to appear here and there, but the architectural integrity of the colonial quarter remains more or less intact. Despite these visible intimations of modernity and prosperity — or perhaps because of them — there are a lot more street vendors now than this writer remembered from an earlier visit in 1995, selling the usual assortment of cheap goods that poor people around the world buy and sell in order to make ends meet. Second-hand books are a particular favourite, in both Burmese and English. Though the Burmese Communist Party is banned, translations of Lenin are freely sold. Two blocks from the Sule Pagoda is a particularly handsome street where the city's gold merchants are concentrated. Shwe Bontha street (shwe is Burmese for gold) was known as Mughal Street earlier because of the large number of ethnic Indians who used to live and work here. Many still do. At one end of the street is an old whitewashed mosque and at the other, a grand banyan tree with statues and portraits of Hanuman, Rama and Sita. In between are the gold shops and impromptu roadside tea and food stalls — with men and women lounging comfortably on impossibly tiny plastic stools, taking in the joys of Yangon café society. *** Tailpiece: China looms large over Myanmar's northern frontiers and is the source for most consumer products at the lower end of the price spectrum. The only trouble is quality. Hence this joke, which apparently originated at a Mandalay market: One man tells another, "I used to be really worried about the SARS epidemic before I heard it came from China." "So what," his friend asks. "Well, if it's made in China, it probably won't last very long!" (Concluded) © Copyright 2000 - 2005 The Hindu

Inside Myanmar III: Censor's pen makes it difficult to read between the lines

20 January 2005
The Hindu

Inside Myanmar - III

Censor's pen makes it difficult to read between the lines

Yangon: In the 1949 film, Patanga, Shamshad Begun sang wistfully about waiting for a telephone call from her piyaa, or lover, in Rangoon:

Mere Piyaa Gaye Rangoon
Kiya Hai Vahaan Se Telephoon
Tumhari Yaad Sataati Hai, Jiya Mein Aag Lagaati Hai

In 2005, our Bollywood hero would probably use email to stay in touch from here, but he would have to make sure it's not Hotmail, Gmail, Sify or Yahoo. For along with the hundreds of websites that Myanmar's military rulers block access to, most popular web-based email services are also firewalled out. The idea is to prevent dissident groups (like mizzima.com) from disseminating information within the country. English language newspapers from the West are accessible but Indian news sites weren't until the Indian embassy requested that they be unblocked. One can also access Google without a problem, but a search for the key words `Myanmar' and `human rights' is likely to generate an error message: "Inappropriate search field".

The Internet being what it is, of course, local residents can always open an account with less well-known email providers and receive `contraband' information in their inboxes. And the situation today is a huge improvement over what prevailed earlier, when there was no Net and modems were illegal. But the systematic censorship of the web here suggests the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC) government is perfectly capable of adapting its political and administrative practices to the changing technologies and modes of communication that economic openness inevitably brings.

Sanitised pages

As for older media technologies like newspapers, good old-fashioned pre-censorship ensures that Myanmar has the most anodyne, sanitised news pages within 2,000 kilometres of Pyongyang.

If all one reads is English, the only daily newspaper here is the New Light of Myanmar, a Government-run tabloid where the lead story on a typical day last week was, `Senior General Than Shwe enjoys Tatmadaw (Army, Navy and Air) Golf Tournament.' There are virtually no opinion pieces, and editorials deal with such virtuous topics as `Try best to become noble-minded nurses' and `Knowledge of history the key to a better future.' The only news from Myanmar consists of brief accounts of official announcements and visits, though coverage of foreign news — especially from China, and from Iraq — is ample.

In the Burmese language, the situation is better: there is a choice of three state-run dailies. But, in a variation on Henry Ford's dictum on the colour of his cars, you can buy any newspaper you want but the news in them will always be the same. There are a number of private weeklies and fortnightlies, including Myanmar Times, an Australian joint venture. But pre-censorship by the `Literary Works Scrutiny Committee' means the papers' contentis tightly regulated.

Last September, a Burmese business weekly, Dhana, was reportedly suspended after it carried a photograph of the jailed student leader, Min Ko Naing. The photo was actually inadvertent. The paper had interviewed the famous artist, U Thet Nyunt, who happened to be the father of the student leader, and it was a portrait of his son which was visible in one of the photo frames. Today, Dhana is back on the stands. And in one of those bizarre turns of event, Khin Nyunt — the military intelligence chief and Prime Minister who oversaw the censorship process — is in jail while Min Ko Naing is a free man, released by the SPDC in an amnesty following Khin Nyunt's arrest.

Reflection

The state of the media, of course, closely mirrors the state of politics here. Though the visible trappings of military rule are absent — gone are the ubiquitous hoardings in praise of the Tatmadaw — and Yangon is no longer the economic backwater it was a decade ago, the SPDC regime is in no hurry to usher in a wave of glasnost. The National League for Democracy leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, who was freed from house arrest in May 2002, was rearrested a year later and remains in "protective custody". Since then, the authorities have come up with a `Myanmar Roadmap' to "genuine and disciplined democracy" involving the convening of a National Convention. A number of rallies and meetings with `national race groups' (i.e. ethnic minorities) have been held and the National Convention met in May last year. Though as many as 54 NLD delegates were invited to participate, the party decided to stay away.

While there are many who question the credibility of this roadmap, it is clear that the NLD has not been successful in working out a strategy that can combine a flexible response to the SPDC's overtures with fidelity to its basic programme. It is also apparent that pressure from the U.S. and others is not helping the process of national reconciliation but only hardening attitudes all around.

With the dismissal of Khin Nyunt as PM, the perception here is that the government will adopt a tougher line towards it opponents. However, Myanmar is due to hold the rotating chair of Asean in 2006 and it is possible that some members of the South-East Asian grouping could insist on more visible progress towards democratisation by then.

© Copyright 2000 - 2005 The Hindu

Inside Myanmar II: Distant neighbours warm to each other, but slowly

19 January 2005 The Hindu Inside Myanmar - II Distant neighbours warm up to each other, but slowly By Siddharth Varadarajan Yangon: When the Government of India took a major policy decision in 1991 to build good relations with the military regime in Myanmar, the assumption was that ending New Delhi's open support for Aung San Suu Kyi and the democracy movement there would generate a strategic payoff. India wanted Myanmar's active cooperation in fighting the Naga and Manipuri insurgent groups. Balancing China's growing footprint was also a concern, as was India's desire, since the mid-1990s, to use Myanmar as a bridge to Southeast Asia. Thirteen years on, those objectives remain only partly fulfilled. There is cooperation on the insurgent groups but the Indian side feels there is a gap between Myanmar's stated policy and action on the ground. India has a growing economic presence in Myanmar and is a significant player in the country's gas sector, but is still dwarfed by China. New Delhi's concerns about the Chinese presence at naval and communication facilities here remain, even though various agencies of the Indian Government have differing assessments on the extent to which these facilities actually impinge on India's security. As for integration with Southeast Asia, Myanmar has helped but the lack of good transport infrastructure in the country — as well as in India's northeast — means regional integration is still some distance away. Border trade at Tamu-Moreh in Manipur and Zowkhatar-Rhi in Mizoram is around $20 million per annum but is much less than Myanmar-Thailand or Myanmar-China border trade. Officials say this is because Indian rules do not allow the use of rupees for trade at the border. Ambitious projects On the anvil now are two ambitious transport projects — the trilateral India-Myanmar-Thailand highway and the trans-Asian railway. India has provided $57 million for the upgrading of the Yangon-Mandalay railway line but work has yet to begin. Eventually, the Mandalay line could be extended into India via Kalewa but the absence of proximate railheads in the northeast means trans-Asian rail travel will not be possible for many years to come. India has helped build and maintain the Tamu-Kalay road but the trilateral project is still hanging fire. One month after the route alignment for the western and eastern sectors was settled trilaterally in December 2003, the Myanmar side came up with a "new concept." Since then, no further meeting has been held. When Senior General Than Shwe visited India last October, he told the Indian side that poor access to border areas in northwest Myanmar was limiting his army's ability to act against the Indian insurgent groups. Since then, Yangon has handed over a request for earth-moving equipment and suggested eight new road projects to be taken up with Indian assistance. While New Delhi is evaluating this request, there is also a feeling of frustration at the lack of cooperation in other anti-insurgent situations where the lack of roads is not the issue. In May 2003, for instance, the Indian Home Ministry last year prepared a questionnaire for the Myanmar authorities to use in the interrogation of Indian insurgents in custody in that country. But New Delhi feels the response from Yangon has been far from satisfactory. The request to allow Indian teams to interrogate captured insurgents in person has not been granted. There is also a feeling that the regime has been turning a blind eye to the activities of PLA and UNLF representatives in Mandalay, many of whom, it is believed, run successful businesses and even use Myanmar passports to travel to other countries. The big question Since many of these individuals likely liaised with Myanmar's military intelligence (M.I.), the big question is what will happen now that the entire M.I. set-up has been disbanded following the dismissal and arrest last year of the M.I. chief Khin Nyunt as prime minister. For now at least, India remains committed to its policy of non-interference in Myanmar's internal affairs. But the Manmohan Singh Government also seems prepared to take a more "clear and consistent stand" on the question of political reform and democracy. At a high-level policy review meeting on Myanmar chaired by the Foreign Secretary, Shyam Saran, in September 2004, it was decided that India's approach to the military regime, known as the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC), would include the call for Ms. Suu Kyi's release, support for the SPDC's own stated goal of a national convention reconciliation process and for U.N. endeavours. None of this, it should be pointed out, amounts to a course correction. In general, the Indian approach to the restoration of democracy in Myanmar continues to be aligned to that of ASEAN, rather than Britain or the U.S. © Copyright 2000 - 2005 The Hindu

Inside Myanmar I: India, China vie for energy, influence

January 17, 2001 The Hindu Inside Myanmar- I India, China vie for energy, influence By Siddharth Varadarajan Sittwe: Dressed in an orange jumpsuit with calf-length boots and the salt-and-pepper mane of a man who has spent long years at sea, Captain Ajay Chadha is floating along the newest frontline in India's quest for energy security. We are on the deck of the `Frontier Duchess,' a drill ship anchored securely more than 50 miles off the coast of Rakhine, or Arakan, on Myanmar's Bay of Bengal littoral. As the waves crest and fall, a drill runs gallantly through a hole in the ship down several hundred metres below the seabed prospecting for the natural gas that geologists say lies trapped in abundance between sand and sediment in the belly of the earth. The ship is Norwegian but operated by Daewoo. The Korean company, along with ONGC Videsh Ltd and GAIL, owns the concession to exploit the energy-rich offshore block known to oilmen simply as A-1. The crew is international, with a generous sprinkling of Australians and Canadians. The fact that their captain is an Indian — who came here via Bombay High — is, of course, a happy coincidence. Pipeline to Bengal If the geologists are right, a permanent rig will eventually replace the `Frontier Duchess.' And four years from now, a network of undersea pipelines from A-1 and other offshore blocks will carry the gas produced all the way up to the coast and then onwards to Bangladesh and eventually West Bengal. The Petroleum and Natural Gas Minister, Mani Shankar Aiyar, believes Myanmar could supply as much as 10 to 15 per cent of India's gas consumption by 2025. In turn, OVL and GAIL have been asked aggressively to bid for fresh exploratory offshore and deep-sea blocks being offered by the authorities here. Rakhine was once one of Myanmar's most prosperous provinces and Sittwe, formerly Akyab, a rich port with connections to Bengal. India's independence and partition in 1947 broke these links and Rakhine slowly withered. Gas is one way to revive the old geographical synergies. As Indo-Myanmar ties grow, however, one of the concerns Indian officials have is the aggressive presence of China in Myanmar's growing energy sector. Apart from several onshore blocks, Chinese companies have picked up offshore blocks A-4, D, M and M-10 and are likely to get C-1, C-2 and M-2 as well. But more than the gas prospecting, it is the Chinese proposal to run a 1,200 km pipeline from Sittwe all the way northwards up to Kunming in Yunnan that provides some indication of Myanmar's strategic significance for both Beijing and New Delhi. Chinese proposal The Chinese pipeline proposal is still at the idea stage but its utility both for gas and oil is self-evident. Apart from being the cheapest way to get hydrocarbons in to southern China, the Sittwe route would also reduce China's dependence on the Straits of Molucca, through which more than 80 per cent of its oil imports currently pass. While Myanmar is open for business with literally any country — Korea's Daewoo and Malaysia's Petronas are also aggressive players — the Chinese have successfully leveraged their proximity to the country's military rulers to build strong economic links. The sudden removal of military intelligence chief Khin Nyunt as Prime Minister last year was a setback for Beijing as it had developed a close relationship with him. But China has moved quickly to build bridges with the new incumbent, Soe Win, a man with whom India also has a good relationship. Strategic cooperation Acknowledging that there is an element of strategic competition between China and India on the energy front, Mr. Aiyar also feels the two Asian powers could enhance their energy security by working together. If the Iran-Pakistan-India and Myanmar-Bangladesh-India pipelines eventually go through — as Indian oilmen fervently believe they should — the next idea bubbling on the surface is a gas pipeline from Iran to China via India. The Chinese have begun work on a 3,000-km pipeline from Kazakhstan to western China but are still relying on costly tankers to transport LNG (liquefied natural gas) out of Iran. If the Iran-Pakistan-India and Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India pipelines become a reality, New Delhi and Beijing could work together to run an extension pipeline across the Gangetic valley into Assam and then Myanmar and Kunming in China. According to Mr. Aiyar, a trans-South Asian pipeline would let China tap into Iranian and Central Asian gas. In turn, India could recoup the transit fees it pays to Pakistan from China. Moreover, the fact that the same pipeline which supplies India would also go on to feed China would provide a virtually iron-clad guarantee against Pakistan turning off the tap. Outlandish though such a pipeline sounds, perhaps the way to an energy secure future lies in cooperative projects of this type. © Copyright 2000 - 2005 The Hindu

India, Bangladesh and Myanmar agree to lay pipeline

14 January 2005 The Hindu International - India & World India, Bangladesh and Myanmar agree to lay pipeline By Siddharth Varadarajan YANGON, JAN. 13. India, Bangladesh and Myanmar ended their historic trilateral meeting here on Thursday with a formal joint statement committing themselves to the construction and operation of a pipeline which will allow natural gas to flow from fields off the coast of Myanmar through to India via Bangladesh. When it is completed, the pipeline would be the first cooperative energy project of its kind in South Asia and is likely to serve as a catalyst for a wider set of bilateral and trilateral initiatives that could transform the economic geography of the subcontinent. "The Government of Myanmar agrees to export natural gas to India by pipeline through the territory of Bangladesh and India to be operated by an international consortium as may be agreed upon by the parties concerned," the joint statement issued by the Energy Ministers of the three countries noted. "Bangladesh and India reserve the right to access the pipeline as and when required, including injecting and siphoning off their own natural gas." Some fleet-footed work by Indian and Bangladeshi diplomats overcame a minor hurdle involving the question of whether the pipeline should be linked to certain bilateral transit and trade issues raised by Dhaka. Bangladesh had initially proposed, inter alia, that the question of accessing electricity from Bhutan and Bangladesh via Indian territory be mentioned in the trilateral joint statement. In the end, the two sides settled on a compromise in which the trilateral statement encourages merely Governments to pursue bilaterally those "issues of bilateral cooperation which impinge on their trilateral cooperation such as hydroelectricity and other diversified sources of energy supply, trade and transit." At the same time, a separate bilateral statement was issued which took note of Bangladesh's specific concerns and India's assurances to examine these in a positive manner. As matters stand, the precise route of the proposed pipeline will be decided on the basis of "ensuring adequate access, maximum security and optimal economic utilisation." A techno-commercial working committee comprising of representatives from the three Governments will meet in Yangon next month to begin work on concretising the proposal. Complex arrangement Characterising the agreement as `win-win-win' for the three countries, India's Petroleum and Natural Gas Minister, Mani Shankar Aiyar, told The Hindu that the pipeline would not just involve point-to-point shipment of gas from Myanmar to India. Rather, it would be a more complex and cooperative arrangement in which gas from Tripura and from Bangladesh's own fields in the Sylhet region could flow in to be used by petrochmeical industries in Khulna or Jessore in the west. "Our statement also provides for the siphoning of Myanmar gas. Thus, if Bangladesh wants to use some of that gas for domestic consumption, it can. And tomorrow, if it turns out that the Tripura gas is not enough for the needs of our own northeast, the same pipeline could be used to take Myanmar gas there." Though several routes will be explored, Bangladeshi officials said the easiest would be to run the pipeline from the Arakan coast into Bangladesh via Cox's Bazaar. "That way, we minimise the hilly terrain. There could then be separate spurs for Tripura and Sylhet gas," said S.R. Osmani of Petrobangla. © Copyright 2000 - 2005 The Hindu

India to acquire stake in Myanmar's energy sector

12 January 2005 The Hindu International - India & World India to acquire stake in Myanmar's energy sector By Siddharth Varadarajan YANGON, JAN. 11. Taking a strategic view of the fast developing energy sector in Myanmar, India has decided to play an active role in the exploitation of off-shore and deep-sea gas and petroleum blocks being offered by the Government here. Though Indian energy companies such as GAIL and ONGC Videsh Ltd. are reportedly unsure about the quality of the data underpinning several blocks, the Manmohan Singh Government appears to be taking the view that it is in India's strategic interest to acquire a stake in what is being offered. On Tuesday, the Prime Minister of Myanmar, Lt. Gen. Soe Win, met the visiting Indian Minister for Petroleum and Natural Gas, Mani Shankar Aiyar, and urged India to get involved in the development of his country's energy resources. Crucial issue Senior ONGC and GAIL officials, who are here as part of Mr. Aiyar's delegation, are set to begin talks with the Myanmar Energy Ministry on Wednesday itself, the day Mr. Aiyar will discuss with his Bangladeshi and Myanmar counterparts the crucial issue of a pipeline running from off-shore blocks in the Bay of Bengal to the mainland and then Tripura and West Bengal via Bangladesh. While the idea of India sourcing Myanmar gas via a pipeline through Bangladesh has been talked about at various levels, Wednesday's meeting between Mr. Aiyar, Brig. Gen. Lun Thi and the Bangladeshi Minister of State for Energy, A.K.M. Mosharraf Hossain, will be the first time the issue is taken up concretely. It is also the first time the Bangladesh side will formally enunciate its position on the proposal. India has already a 30 per cent stake in two Myanmar off-shore gas blocks, A-1 and A-3. The A-1 block, where GAIL had drilled an appraisal well, is estimated to contain reserves of 14 to 42 trillion cubic feet (tcf). Though the more lucrative A-5 is no longer available, on offer now are A-2, A-7 and a number of blocks in the M series. ``We lost other blocks because of our nervousness," a senior Indian official told The Hindu . "Myanmar is our neighbour and if we are not quick off the mark, China can always come in to fill the void. That is why we are coming round to the view that there is great strategic value in playing a pro-active role." Pact signed On Tuesday, Mr. Aiyar met Brig. Gen. Lun Thi and signed a memorandum of understanding for cooperation in the petroleum sector. India has also decided to extend a $20 million line of credit to help Myanmar upgrade its Thanlyn refinery. Forty per cent of that amount will be used to finance import of equipment and machinery from India. Indian officials say New Delhi is also keen to help the Myanmar side in the expansion of downstream capabilities and that Mr. Aiyar told Brig. Gen. Lun Thi that the special economic zone in the province of Rakhine could provide the framework for India to get involved in industrial projects. © Copyright 2000 - 2005 The Hindu

India's poor need a radical package: Interview with Amartya Sen

Date:09/01/2005 http://www.thehindu.com/2005/01/09/stories/2005010900161400.htm Front Page India's poor need a radical package: Amartya Sen IF THE Manmohan Singh Government is serious about ending the chronic under-nutrition that so many poor Indians suffer from, it needs to think seriously about the public provision of basic healthcare, nutritional support for children and income sup port for the unemployed poor, says Nobel Prize-winning economist Amartya Sen in an exclusive interview to Siddharth Varadarajan of The Hindu. Siddharth Varadarajan: If one looks at the social policy commitments of the UPA Government — for example on education and employment — health seems to have something of a low priority. You have been involved in a recent study on the state of healthcare in rural areas. Based on those findings, what do you feel the Government's approach to health services should be? Amartya Sen: We need a radical change in the way health delivery in the public sector occurs. India spends a lower percentage of GDP on public health than almost any other country, including those of similar income levels. The neglect here is massive, particularly because this has led to both the substandard delivery of public health and the development of an immensely exploitative private enterprise in healthcare that survives on the deficiencies — and sometimes absence — of public health attention. What we found in the Pratichi Trust survey in West Bengal but also much more sharply in Jharkhand — and based on other information we have, the picture seems fairly widespread — is that when patients go to many of the primary health centres, they find no one there. Sometimes, when they find someone, they will be referred to private doctors. Also, the medical system in the public sector offers no diagnostics, even of basic illnesses like malaria or TB. Patients are usually told to go to private practitioners for testing. Sometimes the testing isn't very good and, in any case, the economic cost could be ruinous. On top of that, the care that is often provided by the private sector comes from quacks. We found an incredible proportion of quacks in Jharkhand, particularly, but a significant proportion even in West Bengal, who provide almost no serious medical attention and instead give saline injections for malaria, which is not really known anywhere in the world as a cure. These are modern quacks, not ojhas? Modern quacks. There are ojhas too, who are at least cheaper. The modern quacks are no more effective than the ojhas and are very expensive. So they have the effect of making the illnesses linger while whatever meagre economic assets the poorer families have may be lost in the process. This is a dreadful situation. There are many areas where more privatisation might make sense — hotels, tourism, a number of industries — but this is not one of them. And the high private share in the provision of healthcare in rural areas is a major deficiency of the Indian system. Private medical treatment can work quite well when, as in Kerala, the public health sector provides a minimum care for all. On the basis of that, you can then get special care on a private system. But that's quite different from relying primarily on a private health system, especially when the patient has no idea who is a quack ... Is the poor state of public healthcare the result of systematic low investment over the years, bad monitoring, or "corruption," as the critics of public provision are fond of saying? There are three different deficiencies here. First, there is an awfully inadequate amount of investment, so that the amount of public resources going in to providing healthcare for all is extraordinarily little. Secondly, the monitoring of the performance of public health centres is often totally absent or thoroughly defective. Thus, the absenteeism of doctors is quite high and the incidence of doctors trying to recommend that patients go and see them in their capacity as private practitioners is distressingly high. Third, there is no way the Government helps patients diagnose who is a quack and who is not. That requires a monitoring not just of the public health service but of medical services as a whole. All three things act together to ruin the rural poor who, from their meagre resources, must spend whatever they can to deal with that which is of greatest importance to them — namely their health. And they get hit both by the continuation of illness and economic ruination. Corruption is there in the sense that a doctor in a public health service asks patients to go to himself or a friend in private care, instead of providing treatment. Accepting a salary and not being at the job is also a type of corruption. But to see the problem primarily as a penalty of corruption would be to lose the precise story in the health sector deficiency in a more general story of corruption. We ought to clearly point out the defect of under-investment in public health care, the under-monitoring of public health delivery, and the lack of diagnosing of medically trained personnel compared with quacks. These three things together produce the dreadful situation in which we are. If you look at the priority of political parties nationally, the NDA wanted more super-speciality hospitals like AIIMS and the public health priority seems to be on the building of large, grand hospitals at the cutting edge of medical technology. You seem to be suggesting the priority has to be at the level of basic care. Given the economic inequalities in the country, you will get a tremendously unequal delivery of medical attention. There is no way of escaping it. There are a lot of rich people in the country and there is no way you can prevent them from having state-of-the-art medical attention within India if they can pay for it. There is no way you can say it's all right to buy a yacht or a villa but not medical treatment. But what you can do is to rely on the private sector precisely for that because these are people who are wealthy or fairly well off, and it's a question of their being able to get medial treatment of a very specialised kind which may not be available to others, on the basis of their high income. I don't like the system — I see that as an inescapable necessity — but if this is done by the private sector, at least it is not a drain on the public sector. I think public sector resources have to provide basic medical care for all, basic medicine, basic diagnosis, blood and urine tests, x-rays and so on, which go with the normal practice of medicine, and providing treatment for well known ailments and doing the best that the doctors can to help the patient, without going into an extremely expensive system of medical care. In some ways we have gone particularly wrong here. Rather than the public sector providing basic coverage to all Indian residents, you end up in a situation where a large proportion of the population remains under-protected by the public health sector. On the other side, there is always an attempt to use public money to expand the cutting edge of medical treatment. Now, I have nothing against the cutting edge of medical treatment. Indeed, I would not be alive today but for the fact when I had cancer at the age of 18, I could get radiation in Calcutta that cured me, that was 52 years ago, so I take it I am cured now! I did pay for it, it was in a hospital in Calcutta, and indeed my father could just about afford it. So I have nothing at all against getting this type of treatment, and indeed, hopefully cancer treatment of a standard kind should be available for all, and if you look at the costs of that, they are within an affordable budget. I think specialised health care, including sophisticated medicine and surgery, should be available. But quite often what happens is that one is trying to go at the very extreme cutting edge of medicine. When that happens for AIDS, it makes a lot of sense since there are a great many patients involved. But generally, the idea that first, basic healthcare should be covered by the public sector and second, that if rich people want to have specialised services, they should be able to access this through the private sector — seems to me a kind of compromise that the Indian political economy would tend to regard as quite natural. It's the kind of system that exists in Britain ... Are you then advocating a dramatic increase in budgetary outlays on health at the Central level? I am advocating that if it is part of a broader package. My difficulty in dealing with some of the debates that are going on today is that you cannot separate one of the elements of a composite package and say that this is our priority. Well, there are a number of things that have to be done, and if you look at the health sector, yes, I would strongly recommend that we spend a lot more on public healthcare. But along with that, we have to introduce a better monitoring system for the delivery of public health services, and we also have to introduce a system of weeding out quackery. I think the combination of quackery and crookery which takes place in the form of private medicine in some of the poorest areas of India and which mainly has the effect of making poor people part with whatever little money they have, rather than providing a cure, is something which has to stop. So if one just puts in more money, without making any other change, we would be caught in a very sticky ground, but we have to do these things together, and yes, along with the other changes, there is a case for a very dramatic increase in public health expenditure. Another possible component of a broad package for social policy would be the role of mid-day meals in providing nutrition to pupils in schools. Most State Governments have introduced cooked mid-day meals in primary schools during the last two years. What are your impressions of this initiative? I am very encouraged. Obviously we haven't yet had a chance of studying this programme systematically yet in those parts of India that have just introduced it, but we have a number of separate pieces of evidence on the basis of which we can construct a plausible story. First, there are areas like Tamil Nadu where mid-day meals have been provided for a long time and we do know what the favourable impact has been. Last year, a survey initiated by the Centre for Equity Studies found encouraging results in three other States. In the area of the country where the Pratichi Trust has studied the introduction of this scheme, namely West Bengal, the reports are also extremely positive. It's important to recognise what we expect of the mid-day meal. I would say there are five things. And they are all equally important. First, India has a higher level of under-nourishment than almost any other part of the world with the possible exception of our neighbours in South Asia. It's not often recognised that the regular level of under-nourishment in India is higher than that of sub-Saharan Africa, where about 20-40 per cent of children are chronically undernourished in terms of criteria like weight for age and other anthropometric criteria. In India, the figure is 40-60 per cent, a very high proportion indeed. Our level of anaemia is much higher, our level of maternal under-nourishment is much higher. Providing meals in schools is one good means of dealing with this vast problem of chronic under-nourishment. Second, it increases the attractiveness of schools, from the point of view of attendance, because of the fact that while we often have much higher enrolment ratios than before, the attendance levels have remained systematically lower because of a lot of dropouts. So you can achieve higher attendance and lower dropouts by making it attractive for the kids to come to school. Third, the imparting of education is badly affected by under-nutrition. In the context of my forthcoming book, The Argumentative Indian, I was looking at a discussion in the Chandogya Upanishad where Shvetaketu's father is giving him an education. At one stage Shvetaketu decides not to eat. After 15 days, when his father says, can you follow me, he says, no I cannot. And the father says that is because your intelligence doesn't work if you are starved. If you eat now, you will be able to understand what I am telling you. This points to the elementary fact that under-nourished children don't find it easy to learn, and the attention deficit and ability to comprehend is a serious problem. Fourthly, there is the problem of teacher absenteeism in a number of schools in India. As long as the teachers are just providing education and students go and find no teacher, they know in some sense their long-run future is being affected. But it is dramatically different if they go and find there is no teacher to unlock the store on the basis of which the cook will cook the meal. It deprives people immediately. So the pressure to be present is much stronger, the monitoring becomes much easier also because there is a genuine interest on the part of students to make sure the entire teaching staff — teachers and cooks — are present every day, and it has had this effect of increasing the regularity with which schooling and education takes place. Fifth, and this is very dialectical, one of the objections had come from `upper' caste parents who did not want their children to have meals with `lower' caste children. While this has often been seen as a criticism of the mid-day meal scheme, the fact is that the other side of the story is very positive. If one actually insists on providing meals of this kind, the system adjusts. People get used to eating together, get used to eating food cooked by someone whose caste you do not know, I think that is a positive thing from the point of view of cohesion of society. In all these respects, the results are positive. These are early days and we'll do a fuller study in the summer of 2005 but for the moment what we have seen is very positive. There are problems — the nature of food is quite elementary — it might be fine for kids who have no food at all, but not for the richer kids, but if you take the rough with the smooth, there is no question that it is having the effects desired. And attendance has increased. In the villages we studied in West Bengal, there was 60 per cent attendance in the pre-mid-day meal days, now it is 70 per cent, and seems to be going up continuously. So this is one of the very positive things happening in India. Does it surprise you that despite such an obvious rationale for this scheme — and positive political payoffs for parties and politicians — the implementation of mid-day meals required so much pressure from activists and the Supreme Court? Yes, it did surprise me. The Pratichi Trust was set up with my Nobel money in 1999 and right from the beginning, this has been one of our strong demands. Jean Dreze and I had written about it before as well, and it seemed to us that the rationale for it was extremely clear and simple. Most political leaders want to do things that will make them popular, and this certainly would. I think the fear here was of three kinds. Some people thought too much time may be taken in cooking and eating and that this would take time away from education. Now the fact is that the time taken in education was small anyway because of the absenteeism of teacher and student, but when the meal is well organised, it need not take any time off from teaching. Second, it was feared that there would be an `upper' caste opposition, and this has happened, and these people are quite vocal. So given the power structure in rural areas, it was felt mid-day meals would be a bit of an uphill battle. Third was the question of finance. As it happens, most of the States are pretty bankrupt, especially after the Fifth Pay Commission award, and the States would have found it quite difficult to pay for it, though a number of States had. But the Supreme Court judgment, combined with the present Government's commitment to Central support for mid-day meals, has certainly removed that barrier. Could one make a case that the success in providing mid-day meals through the public education system could lead the way to a broader revival of public provision of social services — in education, health, and even income support? I think that's exactly right. The need for radical thinking on this is very strong in India now. I think the health services, including nutritional arrangements, suffer badly from reasons that have to be investigated along with the problem of educational under-performance and under-attendance. In fact, I would go further. Even the much debated question of Employment Guarantee, to a great extent, has to be integrated with the issue of child under-nourishment because what the school meals do in providing publicly supplied food in schools and thereby reducing under-nourishment can be supplemented by private income generated by employment, especially of very poor people who are ready to work for a low wage. The removal of massive under-nourishment in India requires a combination of health initiatives, nutrition interventions such as mid-day meals, and the creation of extra income, particularly for those whose families are hungry because they have no work. So we have to think of these things as a package, and that is one of the reasons why I felt slightly hesitant about the way the debate has unfolded about the Employment Guarantee — that to some extent it is being seen as a stand-on-its-own scheme when it is really a bigger package that requires talking about many things together. As an economist, I don't dismiss the argument that the budgetary implications have to be looked at. Fiscal responsibility isn't a dirty word for me, one has to look at that. But one has to see what the objectives really are and how they link with each of these schemes, and since I'm very ambitious, I really do think the time has come for us to make a dramatic change, in public health delivery requiring a lot of money. So one has to look at the financial implications together. I think in any way of looking at the financial implications, the manifest gigantic problems in India — the biggest child under-nourishment in the world, very defective public health delivery system along with an utterly exploitative private health care arrangement, and consistently under-performing schooling system, all these have to be thought through together and put through together. And with the new Government at the moment, I think this is a very good moment to do just this. And I get the impression that there is at the very highest level a great deal of sympathy for talking of this kind of comprehensive approach to the deprivations in India. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has himself made strong statements on this. If you link these issues in the way you have just done — education, health and the notion of some kind of private income through a well designed employment guarantee mechanism — this too could become a strong political asset for any party in the same way as mid-day meals. Absolutely. I think politically this could be very useful for the parties. I am not a politician myself so I am seeing it mainly as an economist and social activist and from that point of view the case is strong but you are right, this is something which has a political payoff. I know our Prime Minister well since his days as a student and as a colleague; his commitment comes not from strategic political reasons but from a commitment to removing the basic deficiencies. Whether your suggestions are followed through or not, isn't the sea change that has taken place in the political terrain in India amazing? This time last year, the topic of discussion everywhere was the mandir controversy, etc. Now, the whole country is discussing employment and other basic issues. In my book, The Argumentative Indian, which was written a year ago in the time you mentioned, I discuss how one of the penalties of the sectarian politics we have was not only that secularism had been threatened and the minorities' lives have been made less secure, but also it has deflected discussion from the constructive agenda which we could have taken up. © Copyright 2000 - 2005 The Hindu

Dixit leaves foreign policy void that is hard to fill

4 January 2005
The Hindu

Dixit leaves foreign policy void that is hard to fill

By Siddharth Varadarajan

NEW DELHI, JAN.3. A hard-nosed strategist with a keen sense of diplomatic history, J.N. Dixit was arguably the most important player in the foreign policy establishment of the Manmohan Singh Government. While the day-to-day conduct of diplomacy has remained the preserve of the External Affairs Ministry and its leadership, Mr. Dixit, as National Security Adviser, played a decisive role in defining India's evolving terms of engagement on three key fronts: its relations with Pakistan, the United States and China.

Unfortunately, Mr. Dixit's departure comes at a time when this process of definition is incomplete.

On all these fronts, crucial issues remain unresolved. India's relations with Pakistan are more precariously poised than the crowded calendar of bilateral meetings suggests — or the Foreign Office bureaucracy is prepared to admit. On China, talks on the guiding principles for resolving the boundary dispute are only now entering the stage of hardball. And as for relations with the U.S., the central problem that Mr. Dixit was grappling with — harmonising India's long-term quest for a multi-polar world with the imperatives of a `strategic partnership' with Washington — has still not been satisfactorily resolved.

Mr. Dixit's back-channel contacts with Tariq Aziz, Adviser to General Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan, played a key role in producing a breakthrough on at least two occasions: first, on the eve of the talks on nuclear confidence-building measures when India and Pakistan made a huge conceptual leap in declaring each other's possession of nuclear weapons a factor for stability, and again before Gen. Musharraf met the Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh, on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly meeting in September. Since then, this back-channel process has been less effective — something, Mr. Dixit recently told The Hindu , that was directly linked to the Pakistani establishment's tendency to leak details of forthcoming meetings and agendas.

Even so, Mr. Dixit was aware of the role he and Mr. Aziz would have to play in keeping the composite dialogue ticking along — by discussing different scenarios on the big questions of Kashmir and peace and security while producing "deliverables" on some of the smaller issues from time to time. Mr. Dixit, for example, supported the Prime Minister's call for "out-of-the-box" thinking on Kashmir and refused to back those in the Home and External Affairs Ministries who had reservations about last month's Pugwash meeting in Kathmandu between the Hurriyat leaders and politicians from Pakistan-occupied Kashmir.

Tempting though it is to read Mr. Dixit's role as that of a balancer — many saw his realpolitik and pragmatism as the perfect foil to the Nehruvian internationalism of the External Affairs Minister, Natwar Singh — the truth is that both Mr. Dixit and Mr. Natwar Singh had pivotal roles to play in helping India restore a sense of balance in the articulation of its diplomacy towards the big powers.

If the United Progressive Alliance's victory set off fears in Washington of an "anti-American" turn in Indian policy, the appointment of Mr. Dixit as National Security Adviser was seen as a sign that the new dispensation in Delhi was keen to continue doing business with the United States. Mr. Dixit helped shepherd the Next Steps in Strategic Partnership process along by advising the Government to agree to a set of export restrictions that his predecessor, Brajesh Mishra, had baulked from signing. Yet, Mr. Dixit had no intention of putting all of India's eggs in Washington's basket. He pushed for a strategic partnership with the European Union and decided that India should back the E.U. against the U.S. on both the Galileo satellite system and on France as the location for the fusion energy project.

And yet, several challenges on the U.S. front are still to be handled. India is under pressure from Washington to expand its engagement with the puppet Allawi government in Iraq. U.S. National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice wanted Mr. Dixit to commit India to paying a part of the bill for the upcoming Iraq elections. A decision on this has yet to be taken. There is also the collaboration with Washington on missile defence, something Mr. Dixit had raised questions about while in the Opposition but which the UPA Government has chosen to say precious little about. On the question of India joining the controversial U.S.-led Proliferation Security Initiative, Mr. Dixit helped temper the unrestrained enthusiasm in some quarters by outlining a specific set of Indian concerns.

© Copyright 2000 - 2005 The Hindu

Tsunami relief should be led by U.N.

Date:03/01/2005 http://www.thehindu.com/2005/01/03/stories/2005010304031100.htm Opinion - News Analysis Tsunami relief should be led by U.N. By Siddharth Varadarajan NEW DELHI, JAN. 2. Stung by criticism that its initial response to the tsunami disaster had been "stingy," the United States has moved swiftly to try and impose its "leadership" over the international relief effort underway. When the United Nations Undersecretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, Jan Egeland, used the `S' word last week, Washington's aid package for the region had just been upped from an initial $15 million to $35 million. By way of comparison, India, a poor country with more than 10,000 dead of its own to contend with, had immediately pledged $25 million in aid to Sri Lanka alone. Even though it made a firm commitment to spend just $10 million more than India, the U.S. sought a larger profile by floating the idea of a "core group" of countries — consisting of itself, Australia, Japan and India — coordinating the provision of relief in areas worst hit by the disaster. In his weekly radio address, President George W. Bush said on January 1 that the U.S. was "leading an international coalition" to help with rehabilitation, adding, somewhat patronisingly, that India, Japan and Australia have "already pledged to help us coordinate these relief efforts." Japan had pledged $500 million and India at least $25 million; yet credit for the generosity of these two Asian countries was being attributed to U.S. leadership. In any event, why such "leadership" was thought necessary when the U.N. had already swung into action in collaboration with the affected governments is a question that has not been answered by the U.S. or any of its `coalition' allies, including India. New Delhi, which suspected that Washington was seeking to establish its leadership on the cheap, is anxious the efforts of the "core group" be dovetailed to those of the U.N. Yet it also seems to have been tempted by Washington's offer of a place at a chimerical high table. In any disaster of this magnitude, it is only the U.N. that can coordinate relief at the macro level while the affected government coordinates the disbursement of relief material and services at the micro level. Thus, there was no need for any "core group" to oversee the Indian Navy's own overseas humanitarian efforts — such as the despatch of hospital ships to Sri Lanka and Banda Aceh in Indonesia. Once it was clear that establishing a self-appointed core group was not giving it the leadership profile it desired, Washington abruptly increased its aid package to $350 million. And the U.S. Secretary of State, Colin Powell, sought to dispel the impression that Washington was undermining the U.N. relief effort by stressing during a press conference with Kofi Annan on December 31 that the U.S.-led "core group" intended mainly to support the U.N. Two members of this "core group," Australia and Japan, are Pacific powers that sit on the outer peripheries of Asia and are traditional military allies of the U.S. The Indian landmass, with the exception of the Maldives and Somalia, frames the western limit of the tsunami's destructive path. Between these three corners lies the vast expanse of the Indian Ocean littoral that bore the brunt of last month's natural disaster. India is not quite a military ally of the U.S. but military exercises involving the two navies and air forces have established a degree of inter-operability that could be useful in disaster relief as well. The U.S. military has had more extensive interaction with the armed forces of Thailand, Indonesia, Singapore and the Philippines but Washington chose instead to link up with India. For this reason, the inclusion of New Delhi in Mr. Bush's "core group" has generated some misplaced excitement amongst a section of foreign policy analysts. Collaboration between militaries at times of natural disaster is expected even of adversaries, not to speak of close friends like India and the U.S. If there are specific humanitarian projects that require Indian and U.S. military assets to be operated side by side, no rational person would object. To the extent these joint efforts improve each side's political understanding of the other, they may even generate positive externalities. India, however, needs to be wary about Washington cherry-picking the situations in, and the terms on, which it seeks engagement with New Delhi. A multinational effort of this magnitude will be effective only when the world body is in charge of coordinating and directing relief. Countries such as the U.S. with considerable military assets in the region should place these at the disposal of the U.N. and deploy the same in close consultation with the governments concerned. That is why the multilateral relief summit called by Indonesia and the Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN) for January 6 is so important and deserves the fullest support of Asian powers such as China and India, even if Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is unable to attend because of the Pravasi Divas conference. Beyond the seductive pull of a U.S.-led core group are other coalitions and initiatives which India needs to think about — which enhance Asia's own economic and military capacity to respond to natural disasters and humanitarian tragedies. India is a major Asian power and it must lead from the front. © Copyright 2000 - 2005 The Hindu

India and the World: Four preconditions for greatness

2 January 2005
Sunday Magazine, The Hindu

Four preconditions for greatness

SIDDHARTH VARADARAJAN

THANKS in part to physical size and the sheer weight of its population, its rapidly growing economy and its technological and military profile, India is today undoubtedly a power to be reckoned with in world affairs. What gives India added currency is that the world itself is in a state of flux. The core achievements of the United Nations system — including respect for state sovereignty, the Geneva Conventions, the ban on aggressive war and military intervention — are being undermined as the United States attempts to rewrite the rules of the international system on the basis of its military, economic and political strength. At the same time, the U.S. is finding that its ability to impose its own will on the world — whether under the guise of promoting democracy, opposing terrorism or stopping the spread of weapons of mass destruction — is limited. It had the power to override the world on the question of invading Iraq but it has not succeeded in stabilising its control over Iraq. It can incite international opinion against Iran and North Korea on the nuclear weapons issue but it does not have the ability to wage a war against these two countries.

AFP

A technological and military profile that is respected.

A choice before India

What these examples tell us is that India today faces a choice. It can either accept the unipolar world order being fashioned — crudely and unsuccessfully — by Washington and seek accommodation within it; or it can help in the construction of a world order that recognises the limits of American power and seeks to build, on these limits, an international system that is genuinely multipolar.

In practical terms, this means India's principal foreign policy challenge will be to engage with the reality of U.S. power while, at the same time, acting in concert with other countries and powers to contain and limit the expression of that power. The balance called for is a difficult one. The Vajpayee government erred on the side of excessive engagement, especially when it endorsed Washington's destabilising missile defence programme. The Congress (I), on the other hand, which, while in opposition, acted as if it understood the need for the containment of U.S. power, is today not deviating significantly from the foreign policy of the previous government. There is clarity on some fronts, such as recognising the significance of the European Union's Galileo satellite positioning system and signing India up for it, but not on others. There is, in particular, unwillingness in New Delhi to recognise just how cynical and self-serving Washington's war on "terrorism" or the spread of nuclear weapons really is.

Engagement with the world

Apart from rationally structuring the terms of its engagement with the U.S. so that its short-term policies contribute towards the strategic goal of building a multipolar world, there are three other steps India must take to ensure its rightful place in the international system.

First, it must be at peace with its neighbours, and particularly Pakistan. If this means making unilateral trade and economic concessions, so be it. Allowing Pakistani manufacturers duty free access to Indian markets will give a big boost to bilateral relations, as will taking a liberal approach on the question of trans-Asian energy pipelines that traverse Pakistani territory before entering India.

Second, India, which is a reluctant nuclear weapons state, should continue to leverage its nuclear status in order to push for global disarmament and the criminalisation of nuclear weapons first-use under any circumstances. This would also involve being at the forefront of international attempts to prevent the spread of the arms race to outer space, something the U.S. very much intends doing under the guise of missile defence.

Finally, India must think of globalisation in a multidimensional manner. Of all the possible spatial and factor-of-production axes along which international economic collaboration can take place, the West has imposed an unequal bargain, in which developing countries must open their markets to foreign investment and products while being unable to export labour or many categories of products to the developed world. This is not just unfair but irrational as well, especially given the greying of populations in Europe, Japan and North America. In the next 10 years, then, India must take the lead in pushing for easier international labour migration norms, as well as in establishing new and mutually beneficial circuits of trade and investment within the developing world — with Africa and Latin America, in particular.