The Tribune, Chandigarh, India

Dream merchants
Punjab’s smokescreen of development

French lore has it that Marie Antoinette, Queen-consort of Louis XVI of France, suggested people could eat cake if they did not have bread! The Punjab Government - Deputy Chief Minister Sukhbir Singh Badal to be precise - has announced that small cinema halls will be built in villages of the state. "It will help in the entertainment of rural masses at low costs." This will likely also help soothe people's pain when they do not get access to a doctor or dispensary in their village. Perhaps this is part of what the state government's spin doctors would call the "Sukhbir model of development".

A key aspect of the Sukhbir model is making development independent of the state of the state's coffers. Accordingly, a few good highways have been built as toll roads. The state is busy taking loans - a lot of them for buying land to build residential colonies, as per their applications to banks - and the Deputy CM is away to Bangalore to woo industrialists. The idea seems to be: go for the big, the small will be taken care of automatically. That might happen too, but the trouble lies with the interim period. Till the 'trickle down' happens, people in the villages have only dreams. The PPP model has little to show for in the social sector, which is one aspect the government can't wash its hand of. The PIMS, Jalandhar, and the Adarsh Schools scheme are prime examples of how the private sector won't step in until there is money to be made.

Punjab has always had a high per capita income. The government's role lies in ensuring the benefits are as widely distributed as possible. As long as it delivers on health, education and policing, industry and trade will take care of itself. All that the government has to ensure for businesses is the basics - power, roads, transparency in concessions and a check on corruption. Conjuring up a false 'environment' won't help; the industry captains know the ground realities. Compassion for the poor and honesty of intent with the rich will help anyone stay in power.

Modi missile misfires
BJP foments trouble in Meerut

Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi at his show of strength in Delhi on Sunday targeted Rahul Gandhi for “insulting” the Prime Minister. But he went on to launch an attack on Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, relying on a cooked-up “dehati aurat” comment which denigrated the Indian Prime Minister and was denied by the Pakistani journalist who had allegedly revealed the insinuation. Mr Modi, who promised the large gathering a “dream team” to replace the “dirty team” at the Centre, spread the irresponsible remark in his nationally telecast address, without caring to wait for its official confirmation or denial, thus displaying political immaturity least expected from a prime-ministerial hopeful.

While it is commendable that Mr Modi did not raise any communal issue at the Sunday rally and confined himself to matters of governance, what happened at Meerut the same day should be seen as part of the larger BJP agenda. There was an attempt to foment trouble, once again, in western Uttar Pradesh. While the wounds inflicted during a series of communal riots in the Muzaffarnagar area are still fresh, the nearby Muslim-dominated town of Meerut erupted when a crowd of about 5,000 villagers, brought together by the wife and brother of a BJP MLA arrested under the National Security Act, clashed with policemen and torched vehicles. The villagers defied the ban orders and organised a so-called all-party “mahapanchayat” to defend the MLA booked for instigating communal riots in Muzaffarnagar which had left 50,000 people homeless.

It is not an isolated incident. Modi has sent his trusted lieutenant, Amit Shah, to manage the state which sends 80 members to the Lok Sabha. The controversial yatra held by the almost dormant Vishva Hindu Parishad and the subsequent trouble at Muzaffarnagar are seen as an attempt by the BJP and the ruling Samajwadi Party to nurture their respective vote banks as part of a mutually beneficial political strategy.

Thought for the Day

Women who seek to be equal with men lack ambition.

— Timothy Leary

ARTICLE

Muzaffarnagar riots
Be ready to face the consequences
by T.V. Rajeswar

The Muzaffarnagar riots, which began on August 27, 2013, claimed 43 lives and uprooted nearly 50,000 people. Though, it all began with eve-teasing by a Muslim boy in a village, the reaction on the part of Jats was unexpectedly disproportionate, resulting in the killing of the boy. Soon the matter went out of control when two Jat boys were killed by Muslims. The Jat community leaders called a Mahapanchayat and then the subsequent events took a serious turn. After the murders, the police was deployed. By then, however, Jats and Muslims in the nearby villages were in a frenzy and on a murder spree. Mosques were attacked and Muslim houses set on fire. Muslims from the affected villages moved to Muzaffarnagar for protection and tension spread to the Muzaffarnagar area. The communal tension spread to the neighbouring areas of Baghpat, Shamli, Saharanpur and Meerut. The Muslims attacked Jats and a number of bodies were dumped in the canal. The clashes continued for the next three days.

Uneasy peace returned by mid-September and by then 43 bodies were counted. Over 50,000 people had taken shelter in Muzaffarnagar, Baghpat, etc. Home Minister Sushilkumar Shinde has said that the Centre had warned the Uttar Pradesh Government on the spreading tension between Hindus and Muslims and the need to take effective preventive measures like the imposition of prohibitory orders, making of preventive arrests. Regrettably, no prohibitory orders were issued. Home Ministry records show that about 100 communal clashes had taken place in Uttar Pradesh this year alone and the Muzaffarnagar riots were the most serious of them of all.

Regrettably, Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav has not been able to come to grips with the administration and the realities on the ground. His ineffectiveness as an administrator could be seen from the fact that the Vishwa Hindu Parishad activists went ahead with their ‘Chaurasi Kos Parkrama’ around Ayodhya even after the yatra was banned. BJP activists, including several MLAs, had made provocative speeches and no effective action was taken against them. Uma Bharati, the fire brand RSS-BJP rabble-rouser, stood on the road outside the Vidhan Sabha and challenged Akhilesh Yadav Government to arrest the BJP MLAs and face the consequences and she got away with it.

RLD leader Ajit Singh, who wield influence in the affected Jat areas of Muzaffarnagar, Baghpat, Shamli and Meerut, described Mulayam Singh Yadav as U.P.'s Narendra Modi. Predictably, Mayawati and other BSP leaders demanded the dismissal of the Akhilesh Yadav Government. A similar demand was made by Jamiat Ulama-i-Hind leader Mahmood Madani.

The BJP, which has designated Narendra Modi as its prime ministerial candidate, seems to believe that the communal tension in Uttar Pradesh provided a good opportunity to reap political advantages. Modi has already despatched his trusted hatchetman, Amit Shah, to Uttar Pradesh to take charge of political affairs before the Lok Sabha polls in Uttar Pradesh. Surely a man like him can be expected to fish in the troubled waters of the Muzaffarnagar area.

An analyst of the Muzaffarnagar events has referred to the traditional alliance between Jat peasants and Muslims agricultural workers brought out by the original Jat leader, Chaudhry Charan Singh, who clearly foresaw that the prosperity of the villages in the area depended upon co-operation and co-existence of both Jats and Muslims. It is tragic that after all these years this alliance should be disturbed so violently by a few incidents like eve-teasing. Surely, the violent turn which events took in Muzaffarnagar villages and later spread to Muzaffarnagar urban areas were not natural or in the normal course. They were clearly incited by BJP and Samajwadi Party leaders. The BJP is determined to make an impressive comeback on the national political horizon. The Samajwadi Party, on the other hand, is keen to retain its own hold which it secured in the Assembly elections of 2012. The Samajwadi Party chief, Mulayam Singh Yadav, is known to be entertaining the ambition to emerge as the leader of the largest parliamentary group to stake his claim for power at the Centre.

The next Lok Sabha polls could well be in the early months of 2014 and electioneering has already begun by parties like the BJP and the Congress. While the Congress will hold up its social and economic reforms like the Food Security Bill and the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Scheme for seeking the people's mandate, the BJP hopes to reach out to the people by harping upon themes like Ayodhya, cow protection and removal of Article 370 which gives special status to J&K. Unfortunately, most of these themes are prone to creating tension between Hindus and Muslims.

The reaction of Muslim leaders on the Muzaffarnagar communal riots was rather muted and stopped with appealing to the Prime Minister for taking action against the Akhilesh Yadav government, and protecting the Muslim community. At a different level, however, the Muslim elements, which constitute the Indian Mujahideen and Lashker-e-Taiba, are bound to react in a different way, to put it mildly. The demolition of the Babri Masjid in December 1992 led to serious violent acts on the part of Muslim extremist groups in various parts of the country. Several Muslim Jihadi elements like Sayed Zabiuddin Ansari, alias Abu Jundal, Yasin Bhatkal, and Zakir-ur-Rehman Lakhvi cannot be expected to remain mute spectators to the events in Muzaffarnagar and the neighbouring villages in U.P. Apart from all these, Hafiz Saeed of LeT, who is still at large in Pakistan and openly training several Jihadi groups for sending to Kashmir and elsewhere in India, may now get new ideas as to how to wreak vengeance. India should be prepared to face more violence in the shape of bombings and armed attacks at several places in the country in the coming months. This is the price which India as a whole may have to pay for the lack of communal amity between the two communities in Uttar Pradesh.

MIDDLE

Life’s achievements
by Harish Dhillon

For twenty-one years of my almost endless teaching career, I was a Headmaster and when I retired three years ago, it was with the conviction that except for an extremely short, disastrous stint at my old school, I had been a good Headmaster — a conviction that was, I might add, greatly contributed to by the fact that so many people had told me, as people are wont to do when you are in the chair, that I was a good Headmaster.

Then, a fortnight ago, I went to help with some interviews for the head of a new school. As the morning wore on, I felt a great emptiness grow within me. Two members of the interviewing panel were also retired heads and they were so brilliant that I wondered how on earth I had ever thought that I was anything more than adequate as a head.

This was further emphasised by three of the candidates, each of whom, I knew, would make a far better head than I had ever been.

I came home with a feeling of worthlessness, a feeling that my pride in my achievements had been a hollow pride.

Then at about six in the evening, I received a phone call. It was a young woman who spoke in a happy excited voice. She told me that she had got my number with great difficulty. It was her parents' silver wedding anniversary and when she rang up later in the evening could I please wish her father. I was confused. I did not know the girl or her father and wondered why she wanted me to wish him.

The phone rang again at about eight. She spoke first and then quickly put her father on the line. I spent the next few minutes saying all the wonderful things that I could think of that would suit the occasion and all the time, I was as perplexed and confused as I had been when his daughter had rung up. I ran out of words and it was his turn.

He thanked me profusely and said I had no idea what this meant to him. He had read all my middles and had, in fact, cut them all out and made a scrap book. He said he drew great inspiration and strength from these middles and that they had influenced his life tremendously. Long after he had rung off, I kept looking at the phone.

His fulsome praise had taken me by surprise. I had always felt that my ordinary middles, about ordinary incidents from my own ordinary life, were forgotten the day after they were published. The fact that in spite of their ordinariness they could affect and influence someone so deeply was balm to my freshly bruised ego.

Life has its own benchmarks to measure our achievements. Our outstanding achievement is, sometimes, only an illusion, a reflection in a pool of water, disturbed even by a gentle gust of wind. While what we consider ordinary, often brings us rewards beyond compare. I may not have been very successful as a Headmaster but I have achieved success, in ample measure, as the writer of middles.

OPED — NEIGHBOURS

Where India fits in China’s worldview
Chinese strategists have crafted ideas on a new model for ‘big country’ relationships. China is seeking accommodation with the US and striving for more cooperation in relations with BRICS, especially Russia and India.
Rajiv Bhatia

A man walks past the Free Trade Zone in Shanghai, which was inaugurated recently. China's leaders will lay out reform plans to transform the world's second-largest economy at a key party meeting in November. Reuters

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi meets US Secretary of State John Kerry in New York during the 68th UN General Assembly. AFP

China ranks high in the foreign policy calculus of India. The two countries need to manage their relations wisely, but this cannot be done in isolation from their relationship with other countries. Following Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s visit to the US, the Indian elite interested in foreign affairs is assessing China’s latest conception of its major country relationships. Its view, marked by a blend of continuity and change, is still evolving, with different influential voices in China, defining it differently. Therefore, it may be worthwhile to dig deeper.

A valuable opportunity to study China’s worldview presented itself as I led a delegation of eminent experts to China, a visit scripted by the Indian Council of World Affairs (ICWA). During the five-day tour in early September, we held dialogues with the Chinese People’s Institute of Foreign Affairs (CPIFA) in Beijing and the Shanghai Institutes for International Studies. In addition, we had substantive discussions with three other academic and strategic community institutions. The hosts had made excellent arrangements, providing a congenial environment for us to exchange views on a range of contemporary questions with Chinese scholars of varying backgrounds and persuasions.

The timing was apt too as China’s new political leadership had settled down well. It has been according high priority to foreign policy, as illustrated by the visits abroad of its President and Prime Minster, and numerous visits of foreign leaders to China.

International context

Although much has been happening around the world, the Arab region and Asia grab more headlines today than any other area. Triumphs and travails of the Arab Spring have kept the world’s attention riveted on West Asia. The election of a new President in Iran and post-2014 prospects of Afghanistan have kept Central Asia in the limelight. Changes in Pakistan, following Nawaz Sharif’s election as Prime Minister and the immense uncertainty and tensions caused by violations of the LOC by Pakistan as well as numerous incursions across the LAC on the India-China border have kept up the political temperature in South Asia.

But it is in Southeast and East Asia that we witness a serious strategic rivalry between the US and China, despite the two countries’ unprecedented economic interdependence. Linked to it is the fluctuating confrontation between China and Japan as well as between China and a few ASEAN countries on claims and counterclaims relating to the East China Sea and South China Sea, respectively. Further, there are global financial, development and climate change issues facing the international community which groupings like G-20, G-8 and BRICS have been trying to address, however unsatisfactorily.

New G-2?

Against this backdrop, Chinese strategists have crafted their ideas on ‘a new model’ for the big country relationships. President Xi Jinping proposed them to President Barack Obama at their recent summit in California. Answering our questions, Chinese scholars spoke of the US as ‘the established power’ and China as ‘the rising power’, and of China’s endeavour to ensure that, unlike pre-World War I and World War II history, ‘power sharing’ in future takes place through peaceful dialogue rather than armed conflict. The US and China, as the two largest economies and as two of the most powerful nations, should accommodate each other’s interests and adopt reconciliation, not confrontation. This was a creative way for China to tackle future challenges, instead of merely complaining about US ‘pivot’ or ‘rebalancing’ strategy in East Asia. Our interlocutors disclosed that the American President’s response was positive, but he had not yet committed himself to this approach fully.

The endeavour to place US-China relations on a new, higher footing could expose Beijing to the charge that it views China as a potential super power and plans to set up G-2, a condominium that may seek to dominate the world. Chinese scholars showed awareness of this downside; they took pains to stress that China’s belief in a multi-polar world had not been abandoned. They argued that Russia and India too were major players with which China wished to establish ‘a new model of relations’. With Russia, they already have very close relations, and with India too their relations were developing quite well. But the Chinese argument was that, unlike Russia and India — ‘the emerging economies’ — the US was ‘the established power’ and hence China’s relations with it would be different from its relations with Russia and India. A scholar stated that China had strategic rivalry with the US but not with Russia or India, a contention that may not be taken at face value in Moscow or New Delhi. Our discussions showed that China would continue moving on two tracks: seek accommodation with the US and strive for more cooperative relations with BRICS, especially its major players — Russia and India.

In China’s listing of major powers, only limited mention was made of the EU or Japan. But, the latter continues to trigger bitterness and hostility. To many Chinese, Japan, despite its close economic linkages with China, represents a threat because of US backing. This explains why some Chinese experts showed much unhappiness with India's growing proximity with Japan and the US.

China-India dynamics

In discussing bilateral relations, we preferred to be quite candid, a stance which enabled the two sides to air their grievances frankly. It was done in a friendly manner, with the aim to deepen mutual understanding of each other’s viewpoint. While noting that considerable progress in bilateral relations had taken place in the past decade, we pointed out that the relationship today was marked by ‘an undercurrent of tensions’. Our ‘shared challenge’, it was suggested, was to alter this perception and to allow the relationship to assume ‘a more positive and benign orientation’.

Barring a couple of scholars who saw India as a ‘threat’ to China, a majority of our interlocutors presented a more positive view. India and China, they said, were partners who could transform Asia and the world and also help each other in securing their development goals. ‘A confident India’, said one of them, ‘is in China’s interest.’ But when queried whether India, like China, was a major power, the response was that India was ‘a regional power.’ Others, more sensitive or polite, chose to depict India as ‘a trans-regional power’ or even ‘an aspiring Great Power.’

Our side voiced criticism of some aspects of China’s South Asia policy, arguing that its ‘forays’ into the region had the potential to affect our security interests adversely. The Chinese side disagreed. Their contention was that connecting southern and western China to South Asia, through the north-south corridor in Pakistan and BCIM projects in the east, would help everyone move towards ‘a shared development community’, accelerating the development of China, India and the other South Asian nations. This throws up the question whether India could adapt to this vision, a subject that needs to be debated widely.

Chinese scholars articulated concern about India's policy towards South China Sea. They were also critical of India’s alleged efforts to regard the Indian Ocean as ‘India's ocean’ from where China could be excluded ‘altogether’. This was a vivid indicator of their misperception of our policy. India remains fully committed to freedom of navigation and safety and security of Sea Lines of Communication (SLOCs) in the world’s oceans. Concerning the South China Sea claims, India has not taken sides, but it is keen on international law to prevail and remains steadfast in opposing use or threat of force.

It is from this melange of differences and divergences that a deeper understanding needs to be built. Fundamentally it boils down to China’s reading of India's intentions as friendly or hostile, and to India's choosing to view China’s rise as benign or threatening in the long term. If we draw lessons from the earlier history of our relationship, we could be optimistic, but if we prefer to focus on the history of recent decades, we must blend our optimism with a substantive dose of realism and caution.

Through media’s eyes

Strategic community in both countries is currently engaged in assessing the role and impact of the media on the bilateral relationship. The subject figured prominently in our discussions in Beijing. The Chinese side was critical of Indian media coverage of recent developments. We referred to our difficulties with some of their media outfits. A Chinese expert candidly conceded that the Chinese media was negative, but he stressed that the Indian media was ‘more negative’. Clearly media representatives need to sit together and get to understand each other better.

We returned with a clear impression that China-India engagement needs to be expanded beyond governments, defence forces and business communities. It should encompass all of us: strategic experts, journalists, tourists, students, entrepreneurs, civil society activists, and youth and women leaders. Many more conversations and interactions are needed because stakes in China-India relations are indeed very high.

— The writer is a former Ambassador and director-general of the Indian Council of World Affairs.