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| Sunday, June 13, 2004 |
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| Sunday, June 13, 2004 |
|
Central Asia: A Strategy for India’s
Look North Policy
The first four chapters of the former Air Commodore’s study deal with different facets of the Central Asian landscape: the historical perspective which is sketchy at best and offers little on the pre-Soviet era; natural resources; "the Islam factor"; the Republics as nation states wrestling with stability and conflict. The penultimate and the concluding chapters dilate on the interests of global and regional players and "A Strategy for India in the Look North Policy". Expectedly, the interested reader is floored and looks forward to an exciting fare. Sadly though, the promise held out by the book’s ambitious layout does not translate into reality. The harsh truth is that there is a singular lack of perspective and a seeming overemphasis on the strategic factor. This citation should help to underline the author’s dilemma, as also perhaps the reader’s: That is where (i.e. in the vast heartland of Central Asia) the Great Game as the Tournament of Shadows was played in the past and continues in its new manifestation of tournament in the shadows. India has to play the geopolitical role ascribed to it in the light of these new realities. Oddly, this rhetoric of the Great Game, both past and present, and future (?), without an adequate explanation of what it implies, carries the author away. He draws heavily for his sustenance on periodical literature and newspaper articles. There is little argument; even less analysis. No wonder the reader is left completely high and dry and a little less than sure as to what precisely the strategy is for New Delhi’s "Look North" policy. The study represents the author’s recent doctoral work at Osmania University (2001). Dissertations do not by definition translate into good books; the requirements in both cases being so diametrically diverse and different. The overemphasis on the strategic aspect notwithstanding, there is no map or sketch, barring the one on the hard cover, where India is conspicuous by her absence. Not one map to highlight the region’ s fabulous oil and natural gas reserves; the politics of its pipelines, existing as well as projected, and the ethnic composition of the republics, which offer rich material for future conflicts. The author offers three pages of glossary, but seems to be innocent of the meaning of the term, which certainly does not stand for abbreviations such as CARs (Central Asian Republics), JNU (Jawaharlal Nehru University) or UN (United Nations). Nor does his long litany of ethno-territorial disputes in Central Asia in 1992 (Appendix B) have much relevance. A bibliographic note would have been a great help; this reviewer at least would like to know more of Karen Dawisha and Bruce Parrot (Ed) The International Politics of Eurasia, which appears in the footnotes with singular repetitiousness on almost every page. |
A
good measure of the interest that Central Asia
evokes may be gauged from the number of titles that continue to appear
on its varied themes, and happily not a few by Indian authors. Another
book on Central Asia is welcome in its own right; the present doubly so,
in that its author has a rich defence background.
