O P I N I O N S

EDITORIALS

Two musketeers
Mufti, Sinha are not made for each other
REPORTS that the Chief Minister and the Governor of Jammu and Kashmir do not see eye to eye are disturbing. The situation has come to such a pass that Chief Minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeed stayed away from a high-level security review meeting called by Union Home Minister Shivraj Patil in Srinagar.

Troubled Manipur
Plug the gaps in North-East policy
Manipur is disturbed again, and the lack of a coherent and well-thought out strategy towards the North-East stands exposed once more. Even as the Centre is involved in talks with various insurgent groups, internecine conflict between the different ethnic groups adds an extra dimension that is queering the pitch.

Urban transport
Draft policy shows one way
Traffic chaos in Indian cities may ease to some extent if the draft national urban transport policy, unveiled before Chief Ministers by Urban Development Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad in Delhi last week, is implemented in earnest by the states.

• Thought for the day

ARTICLE

Indo-US defence framework
Why bother about the Left’s views?
by K. Subrahmanyam
A new book by Ms Jung Chang and Jon Halliday, titled “Mao, the Unknown Story”, deals, among various other things, with Mao’s attack on India in 1962. It reconfirms what has been already established by scholars like Roderick Macfarquahar that the 1962 Chinese attack was deliberately planned by Mao and his colleagues.

MIDDLE

When Titans clashed
by Anurag
WHEN the Gujarati community held a reception for Gandhi on his return from South Africa in 1914, Jinnah, as another Bar-at-law, was also invited to speak at the function. When Jinnah started his address in English, Gandhi interjected to say that in a Gujarati assembly it was not necessary to speak in English. 

OPED

Calling the US bluff
by Sunanda K. Datta Ray
EVERY Indian minister who goes to Washington, irrespective of party, boasts of the special treatment he received there. Exploiting that frailty, the Americans, as we now know, lavished flattery on Indira Gandhi even while hating her guts.

Terrorism and globalisation
by Stephen King
People have all sorts of views on globalisation but there can be no doubt that last week, we saw a series of atrocities carried out against a major international city, an ethnic and cultural melting pot, a place that derives much of its vibrancy from its cosmopolitan nature.

Japan and India’s investment allure
by Chikako Mogi
A growing number of Japanese companies are eyeing India as the next crucial investment destination, looking to cut back their reliance on China as much as to tap into the country’s huge market potential.

From the pages of

March 31, 1894

 

REFLECTIONS

EDITORIALS

Two musketeers
Mufti, Sinha are not made for each other

REPORTS that the Chief Minister and the Governor of Jammu and Kashmir do not see eye to eye are disturbing. The situation has come to such a pass that Chief Minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeed stayed away from a high-level security review meeting called by Union Home Minister Shivraj Patil in Srinagar. That the Mufti heads the apex body that controls all security affairs in the state made his absence all the more glaring. For quite some time the Chief Minister and the Governor, General (retd) S.K. Sinha, have been at loggerheads with each other. The Chief Minister is peeved that he was not taken into confidence when the Governor was transferred to J&K after his long innings in Guwahati where, too, he was accused of playing a role larger than what the Constitution permits.

In Srinagar, the problem is that the Governor’s style of functioning does not match with that of the Chief Minister. So wherever possible, General Sinha is known to have acted independently of the advice of the state Cabinet. At one point, he created such a situation on the issue of extending Amarnath Yatra that it could have even destabilised the State Government. The Chief Minister nurses the grievance that the Home Ministry does not listen to his complaints. On his part, the Governor has many grievances against the Mufti. The net result is that governance has been adversely affected. Basically, they do not trust each other.

The Sarkaria Commission had recommended that when a governor is appointed, the chief minister concerned should be taken into confidence. This does not seem to have been followed in the case of J&K. As it is, the Governor and the Chief Minister are two faces of the same government. There can be differences of opinion between them but such differences should not affect the day-to-day functioning of the government. This needs to be emphasised as J&K is a sensitive state. The Governor may be a know-all but he cannot ride roughshod over a democratically elected Chief Minister, answerable to the people of the state. The Centre knows that the relations between the Chief Minister and the Governor continue to be strained. And now that Mr Shivraj Patil has got a taste of their rivalry, the Centre should do everything possible to sort out their differences so that nobody, either in the government or outside of it, takes undue advantage of it.

Troubled Manipur
Plug the gaps in North-East policy

Manipur is disturbed again, and the lack of a coherent and well-thought out strategy towards the North-East stands exposed once more. Even as the Centre is involved in talks with various insurgent groups, internecine conflict between the different ethnic groups adds an extra dimension that is queering the pitch. The weekend torchings of government buildings in Manipur by Naga protestors and subsequent killings of security personnel is a case in point. Manipur is peopled by the Meities, the Nagas, and the Kukis, who have frequently come into conflict with each other, especially over the Greater Nagaland dream espoused by groups like the National Socialist Council of Nagaland (Isak-Muivah) led by their leader Thuingaleng Muivah.

The weekend violence relates to the Manipur government’s declaration of June 18 as Manipur Integration Day. The day commemorates Meitei “martyrs” of the 2001 uprising against moves to carve out Naga-dominated districts as per the NSCN vision of a Greater Nagalim. The All-Naga Students Association of Manipur has been sponsoring a blockade of the Imphal-Guwahati highway. Prices of essential commodities have risen, and hundreds of people are stranded. The NSCN has criticised the Manipur government for being against the Naga people’s aspirations. The Meiteis will brook no break-up.

The Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act (AFSPA) is already a sore issue in Manipur. It was on July 11 last year that Thangjam Manorama’s body was found dead after her arrest by the Assam Rifles. Negotiations with the various violent groups are problematic per se, considering their penchant for violence and sedition. The government has been in talks with Muivah for quite a few weeks now, and though the ceasefire may be extended, no real headway has been made on issues like the continued demand for sovereignty. The government would do well to holistically examine the North-East situation and articulate a comprehensive policy that will aid effective handling of the issue over the long term, even at the risk of offending a few elements in the short term. Making public the Justice Jeevan Reddy panel’s report on the AFSPA will be a good start.

Urban transport
Draft policy shows one way

Traffic chaos in Indian cities may ease to some extent if the draft national urban transport policy, unveiled before Chief Ministers by Urban Development Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad in Delhi last week, is implemented in earnest by the states. Rapid, unplanned and haphazard growth of cities has led to traffic slowdown and wastage of time and resources. Policy-makers so far have adopted a fire-fighting approach to deal with urban growth problems as and when they arise. They would widen roads, construct flyovers, demolish roundabouts to install traffic lights wherever traffic jams became unbearable and lately take to metro rail, skybuses and electric trolley buses.

For a change, the draft policy aims to channel the future growth of a city around a pre-planned transport network. The Urban Development Ministry is already looking for sites near Delhi to set up new cities to decongest the national Capital.The requisite infrastructure and connectivity will be provided to ease pressure on Delhi. Each city with more than 40 lakh residents will be encouraged to plan for a mass transit system depending on its local needs and geographical conditions. The Centre has offered aid and equity participation for viable projects. The National Urban Renewal Mission will provide Rs 50,000 crore to states in the next five years.

Public transport will get a boost, while private transportation may become costlier. Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit has suggested an extra nationwide tax on those purchasing their second vehicle. Another sensible suggestion she has made is about constructing expressways so that one lakh or so non-Delhi bound vehicles need not enter the Capital everyday. After Delhi’s success with CNG, the green fuel will be popularised countrywide. A suggestion frequently made by public-spirited citizens for building separate paths for pedestrians and cyclists also finds a mention in the draft urban transport policy. There is need to generate public debate over how best to clear the uncontrolled urban mess accumulated over the years.

Thought for the day

Fate can be taken by the horns, like a goat, and pushed in the right direction.

— American Proverb

ARTICLE

Indo-US defence framework
Why bother about the Left’s views?
by K. Subrahmanyam

A new book by Ms Jung Chang and Jon Halliday, titled “Mao, the Unknown Story”, deals, among various other things, with Mao’s attack on India in 1962. It reconfirms what has been already established by scholars like Roderick Macfarquahar that the 1962 Chinese attack was deliberately planned by Mao and his colleagues. In fact, the linkage between the Himalayan crisis and the Cuban missile crisis was first mentioned by the American Sinologist, Harold Hinton, as far back as 1960s. It has also been established that the so-called Indian “forward policy” was implemented only within the Indian claim line and had nothing forward about it except General B.M. Kaul’s imaginative attempt to make himself popular and to take Parliament for a ride.

It is not the intention here to dig up the old history after 43 years to hold the present Chinese leadership responsible for Mao’s misdeeds, which included policies that led to 38 million Chinese perishing. The present negotiations with the Chinese should be continued on a forward-looking pragmatic basis. The present Chinese leadership has given up most of Mao’s ideology, especially on economic issues. It is using communism only as a cover to perpetuate one-party rule. It has fully exploited its earlier semi-alliance relationship with the US to build China as a world power of such ranking that the US today looks at it as a future rival. The Chinese, under Deng Xiao Peng’s leadership, had no scruples in providing the US two missile test monitoring stations in Xinjiang to monitor Soviet missile tests, when Ayatollah Khomeini shut down the US stations in Iran.

China is the world’s number one nuclear proliferator. Again during the Maoist period, when the Gang of Four was in power, China concluded the agreement for nuclear proliferation with Z.A. Bhutto during his visit to Beijing in June,1976. Thereafter China has continued its nuclear proliferation support to Pakistan till today. They permitted Dr A.Q. Khan as a conduit for proliferation to other countries as well as to acquire European nuclear technology in the black market for Chinese purposes.

But Mao’s followers in India would like this country not to have nuclear weapons so that India can be dominated by the perpetual hegemony of the Beijing-Islamabad axis.

The Chinese have no objection to have US investments with no conditionalities and buy mostly high-technology equipment from the US. They would love to have US defence equipment but the US, apart from some marine engines they sold in the eighties, is reluctant to sell military equipment for China. Beijing tried to acquire US technology via Israel and after permitting it for some years the Americans put an end to it by stopping Israel from proliferating US technology to China. Beijing tried thereafter to acquire Western European military equipment. Though France, Germany and other European countries are keen to sell military hardware to China, the US has again pressurised them from selling the defence equipment.

All these are normal developments in international relations and India should learn to take them in stride. However, when domestic lobbies try to preach India on the ethics, morality and wisdom of defence policies in the wake of the recently signed US-India defence framework agreement, then it becomes necessary to look at the credentials of the preachers. In 1962 when Mao attacked India, the Communist Party of India split into two. One segment supported Nehru and the other went along with Mao. Till today, in spite of mounting evidence about Maoist aggression, this segment has not acknowledged that Mao committed aggression against India. Surely, those who for the last 43 years have been consistently supporting the Maoist aggression against India cannot be expected to be treated as genuinely knowledgeable advisers of balanced judgement on Indian defence policy.

Nor have they condemned the Dengist aggression on Vietman in 1979, nor Chinese proliferation, China offering bases to the US, Chinese collaboration with US capitalism to build up Chinese market economy, Chinese support along with the US to the Pol Pot regime (1979-86) and Chinese support along with the US to the Afghan Mujahideen. The Chinese did not object when the British Chief of Defence Staff, Admiral Peter Hill-Norton, called China the eastern NATO nor did these people in India take offence to that.

India is a democratic country and in our democracy all kinds of fundamentalists are free to preach their dogmas, whether they are Islamists, Hindutva advocates or Maoists. They are even allowed to get elected and form governments. That is our record as a democracy. That does not mean that mainstream Indian opinion should not evaluate the fundamentalisms of each of these political segments and make its own judgement.

India had excellent defence relationship with the Soviet Union, not approved of by the Maoists. At that time India was accused of becoming a Soviet satellite and being about to be entrapped in Brezhnev’s anti-Chinese Asian security plan. We know today it was either total ignorance or rank prejudice that made such people come out with baseless accusations. All fundamentalists are living in worlds of their own and are out of touch with the current realties of the post-Cold War world in which, except for the people of such fundamentalist persuasions or ignorant men living in a time warp of the past like Gen Pervez Musharraf, Saddam Hussain and the like, war is no longer a viable instrument of politics in the relations among major powers.

Maoism is in the dustbin of history. Maoists who profess loyalty to that fundamentalism are like Khilafat people who professed loyalty to caliphate after Kemal Ataturk abolished it. Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao in their smart suit and ties should feel extremely uncomfortable with Maoists from outside, still professing loyalty to the credos of ancient Maoist holyland. The views of such people on our national security policy need not bother us more than it did during the last 57 years. They come from the stock which called Nehru a running dog of imperialism and who felt gloried on receiving congratulatory telegrams from Mao, wishing them success in overthrowing Nehru. Let us just ignore them as much as Deng did in the case of his fellow Maoists in China and went on to build a powerful China on the ruins left behind by Mao and his benighted policies.

MIDDLE

When Titans clashed
by Anurag

WHEN the Gujarati community held a reception for Gandhi on his return from South Africa in 1914, Jinnah, as another Bar-at-law, was also invited to speak at the function. When Jinnah started his address in English, Gandhi interjected to say that in a Gujarati assembly it was not necessary to speak in English. This was their first encounter, and Jinnah is not likely to have forgotten or forgiven this slight.

When Louis Fischer asked Gandhi: “What did you learn from your 18 days (long parleys ) with Jinnah ?” Prompt came the reply, though uncharacteristic of Gandhi: “ I learned that he was a maniac……….. I could not make any headway with Jinnah because he is a maniac.” That was in 1944.

The partition of India owes a lot to the utter lack of personal chemistry between Gandhi and Jinnah right from the word go. When Gandhi returned from South Africa, Jinnah was already an established Congress leader with impeccable secular credentials. He was an ardent nationalist and a thorough liberal by instinct. He worked as secretary to Dadabhai Naoroji. Having worked with Gokhale and Tilak, he wished to legitimately inherit their mantle.

Even after joining the Muslim League, he professed at the Lucknow session in 1916 to remain a staunch Congressman with no love for sectarian politics. Those were the days when a Congressman could simultaneously be a member of the Muslim League or Hindu Mahasabha !

He opposed Gandhi’s decision to lead the Khilafat Movement, as it would result in the dominance of the obscurantist mullahs. In 1925, he publicly chided a young Muslim: “ My boy, no, you are an Indian first and then a Muslim.”

Not only this, he joined the boycott of the Simon Commission in 1928 and split the League. Even after the Congress refused to accept his amendments to the Nehru report, he had a private conference with Gandhi on August 9, 1942 to sort out the communal question. After the Communal Award he said, “ Now that the Communal Award has given the necessary safeguards, we can work for the early achievement of Swaraj.”

On January 1, 1933, he made a strong appeal for Hindu-Muslim unity at Nagpur, and four months later urged the need for a united front in the anti - imperialist struggle. In 1936, he said: “Whatever I have done, let me assure you there has been no change in me, not the slightest since the day when I joined the Indian National Congress….. My sole and only objective has been the welfare of my country.” No wonder Sarojini Naidu used to describe him as the “Ambassador of Hindu - Muslim Unity”

Jinnah’s ego was deeply bruised at not having got his due in the Congress despite his sincerity. His ruling political passion was to be treated on an equal footing with Gandhi. At the Lahore session of the Muslim League held in 1940, when the demand for Pakistan was formally raised, Jinnah claimed: “It will be remembered that up to the time of the declaration of War, the Viceroy never thought of me, but of Gandhi and Gandhi alone. Thereafter, when I got this invitation from the Viceroy along with Gandhi, I wondered within myself why was I so suddenly promoted, and then I concluded that the answer was the “All-India Muslim League ! Whose President I happen to be,”

Rest is history. When titans clash, the meek and mute are trampled upon.

As for Advani, how one wishes that he would practise secularism at home after having preached as such and as much in Pakistan.

OPED

Calling the US bluff
by Sunanda K. Datta Ray

EVERY Indian minister who goes to Washington, irrespective of party, boasts of the special treatment he received there. Exploiting that frailty, the Americans, as we now know, lavished flattery on Indira Gandhi even while hating her guts. Manmohan Singh knows the United States, where he studied and worked, too well to be taken in. His candid worldview does not permit self-delusion or posturing. Implicit in his lament of a “limited mandate” is the admission that conditions at home restrict his foreign policy options.

When he makes that admission in Washington on July 18 - dissimulation not being his style - his hosts will press on him their recipe for “greatness”. With their appetite whetted by the `New Framework for the U.S.-India Defence’ Relationship, they will demand that India break with Iran, get involved in Afghanistan, Palestine and Iraq, follow the US line on Nepal and Bangladesh, concede Pakistani demands, help to contain China, increase joint military exercises, abolish all import restrictions, privatise all state enterprises and support the Americans in the Doha trade round. In return, as the US ambassador David C. Mulford promised, they will help “India achieve its vision of being a world power in the 21st century.”

That is just idle fancy for a country with more than 300 million people languishing below the poverty line. But the fact that they use this bait shows that the Americans know how easily some of Manmohan Singh’s colleagues - who all see themselves as external affairs ministers — can be stroked into subservience.

It would be interesting to know who first thought of the carrot that Mulford and others are dangling before India’s nose. Was it a state department official who expected India to throw tantrums unless the Americans threw it a sop while granting our neighbour the far more substantial military and financial benefits of a “major non-NATO ally”?

Such distractions are common. When newly independent India was clamouring for arms, equipment, a framework of military cooperation and a system of sharing classified information instead of the one-way flow demanded by the American military attaché in New Delhi, the state department was proud of the sleight of hand it practised on emissaries like Sir Girja Shankar Bajpai. It had countered the “problem” of Indian importuning, it boasted, “by (1) having India classified upwards to the category of countries receiving ‘restricted’ US military information; and (2) making a deliberate effort to furnish the Indian military attaché in Washington with relatively harmless but somewhat impressive military information .” Serve the little pest right if his lollipop turned out to be a stone.

Now, Mulford’s predecessor, Robert D. Blackwill, has thought of another carrot to tempt India’s gullible leaders. He wants the US to “announce” it will support India’s Security Council membership when the United Nations is reformed, confident that “this would not happen for many years.” Blackwill may not have thought of this red herring if India had been content, like Japan and Germany, with making out a reasoned case for a seat at the UN’s high table and placing it with dignity on the world’s agenda instead of displaying all the abandon of a nagging child.

Greatness is hardly a commodity to be bought or bestowed. The Chinese who chant that Mao Zedong taught them how to walk and Deng Xiaoping taught them how to become rich pay tribute to the hard policies that make for greatness. They are now crowing over the report that Pakistan’s 8.4 per cent growth, about the same as Singapore’s, is next only to China’s 9.3 per cent, leaving India behind in the Asian growth stakes.

America’s purpose, as the new `Defence Framework’ confirms, has not changed since the Cold War. The architects of Pax Americana spoke of franchising a trusty satrap in each region long before the Soviet collapse encouraged the US to think of resetting the global compass, as Richard Nixon put it. Though Nehru saw red at the very mention of “sphere of influence” - the customary description then for this arrangement - there is nothing inherently objectionable about it if interests coincide. They did over Operation Cactus in the Maldives, and in Sri Lanka where India’s peacekeeping mission was conceptually sound even if it misfired. But such arrangements also give the US enormous scope for arm-twisting when objectives are not shared.

India’s assessments of China and Pakistan, for instance, cannot justify the surrender of its own capacity for independent action. But both countries are also so central to American calculations that any Indian attempt to distance itself from US policy and act on its own would probably invite swift and severe repercussions.

So much for “natural allies” and “strategic partners”. Like the Agreed Minutes on Defence Relations, the Next Steps in Strategic Partnership did not allow India the access to sophisticated dual-purpose technology that one suspects China enjoyed. Just as Pakistan needs no long-winded pacts and cumbersome bureaucratic structures to get arms, China does not have to cooperate with the US to gain access. The Cox Committee’s concern with only the classified information regarding missiles and nuclear technology stolen from the most secret of US weapons laboratories and research establishments distracted attention from the access to impressive sources of information that China enjoys legitimately, thanks to lobbyists like Henry Kissinger. The president can waive many security restrictions on grounds of “national interest.” Formerly, this meant the Soviet Union; now, it signifies US investment and cheap Chinese imports of ready-mades, footwear and electronics.

No such indulgence is shown to India because it is not in America’s strategic or commercial interest to do so. A nation also marches on its stomach: no one will be fooled into believing that an India that undertakes international duties clutching America’s coattails is anything other than a surrogate. Manmohan Singh should call the US bluff and put an end to this shoddy charade by categorically declaring that India’s unfulfilled duties at home do not permit it to throw its weight around globally at America’s bidding.

Terrorism and globalisation
by Stephen King

People have all sorts of views on globalisation but there can be no doubt that last week, we saw a series of atrocities carried out against a major international city, an ethnic and cultural melting pot, a place that derives much of its vibrancy from its cosmopolitan nature.

International terrorism can be seen as an attack on the more positive aspects of globalisation. As transport costs have come down, and as people’s knowledge of opportunities in other parts of the world have increased, so both people and capital have upped sticks and gone elsewhere.

As they have done, patterns of life have changed. It may be a cliche, but the London restaurant scene has been transformed, in part, because of the “internationalisation” of our cuisine. The same is true of capital flows: whatever one thinks about multinationals, there can be no doubt that capital flows into countries such as China and India over the past decade have provided at least part of the impetus behind their now phenomenal growth rates.

Terrorism threatens these benefits, notably the particular brand of international terrorism spread by Osama bin Laden and Al-Qa’ida. Terrorism increases the costs of doing business, through heightened security costs and possible disruption. It also reduces the willingness of capital to move to areas of the world that might bring the most economic and human benefits and changes attitudes towards immigration: it moves us, if you like, from a climate of opportunity towards a climate of fear.

Al-Qa’ida’s desire - if there is a collective plan at all, given the diversity of the groups that make it up - is to re-establish a Caliphate in the Middle East, thereby creating a fundamentalist Islamic movement that is purposefully at loggerheads with the West. Its philosophy is one of separation, not of integration, and consequently it is, by its very design, inimical to all forms of globalisation. Its terrorist actions are a deliberate attempt to turn back the clock, to choke off all the progress in recent years towards freedom and opportunity for all, regardless of ethnic or religious background.

In that sense, Al-Qa’ida’s attitudes have a resonance with more traditional forms of protectionism, which seeks to reduce levels of trade, migration and capital flows to try to protect one country’s interests, even if that protectionism comes at the expense of others. The irony, though, is that protectionism eventually becomes self-destructive.

At this stage, it is impossible to place any numbers on the longer-term effects of the al-Qa’ida version of international terrorism. Obviously, one can look at the opportunity costs of more expensive security arrangements - money that would be better spent on education, health or improved infrastructure, for example. But additional security arrangements are small fry relative to a possible overall reduction in capital and labour mobility.

If factor mobility does decline in response to terrorist fears, it’s likely to mean that capital stays closer to home. Already, it appears that too much capital stays in the industrialised world and too little flows elsewhere. If risk aversion rises as a result of heightened terrorist attacks, this unequal distribution of the world’s savings will get still worse - and, with it, so will the lives of the world’s poor, those who are least able to get on the first rung of the ladder that eventually leads to economic success. — The Independent

Japan and India’s investment allure
by Chikako Mogi

A growing number of Japanese companies are eyeing India as the next crucial investment destination, looking to cut back their reliance on China as much as to tap into the country’s huge market potential. Concerns about China losing competitiveness when it eventually lets the yuan rise in value and the flare-up of anti-Japan sentiment this year have prompted Japan Inc. to look more closely at India as an alternative.

India’s strengths include its one-billion-plus population, a rapidly emerging rich middle class, well-skilled but still relatively cheap labour and political neutrality with Japan, all of which could offset a shaky infrastructure, say analysts. China remains by far Japan’s most favoured and heavily invested region in Asia and will likely stay so for some time. Of some 4,100 Japanese companies operating around the world, more than half do business in China, compared with just 150 in India, according to a 2004 survey by business publisher Toyo Keizai.

China is also well ahead of India in offering benefits to lure foreign investment, such as special economic zones and good roads and ports. India passed a bill in May to strengthen the legal framework regarding special economic zones in order to give a push to exports and foreign direct investment inflows. “There are as many markets that could grow as there are diversified needs in India,” said Hiroki Fujimori, researcher at

Mitsui Global Strategic Studies Institute. “If Japanese firms can find a niche that suits their own business strengths, then more firms will make inroads into the Indian market,” he said. Prospective investment areas include the automobile market, with both production and sales topping 1 million units last year, and mobile phones with 48 million users. Information technology is another area where Japanese firms can tap Indian expertise and skilled workers for outsourcing such services as call centres to cut costs.

Statistics show corporate interest in India is growing. In a March survey by the Japan External Trade Organisation (JETRO) of Japanese manufacturers operating in Asian countries other than China, 91 percent said they planned to beef up operations in India over the next couple of years. Inquiries about investment in India rose 27.5 percent from a year ago, JETRO said.

India’s ranking rose to third from fifth the year before among countries seen as prospective targets for Japanese investment, according to a fiscal 2004/05 survey by the Japanese Bank for International Cooperation.

Mitsubishi Materials Corp. said it was considering setting up a sales agent in India by the end of 2005 as it expects more demand from automakers for super-hard machine parts. Toyota Motor Corp., which built a record 48,000 cars last year in India, eyes a 10 percent market share by 2010. The Nihon Keizai newspaper said Toyota planned to invest just over 10 billion yen ($90 million) with minivehicle unit Daihatsu Motor Co. to build a factory in India to produce 100,000 small cars a year from as early as 2007.

Challenges remain, like an embedded bureaucracy and difficult living conditions. But an official at Toyo Engineering Corp., which has a 30-year-old joint venture in India, said patience pays off. “Indians value human networks, and once you earn their trust, their connections will bring new opportunities,” he said.

(Additional reporting by Izumi Nakagawa) — Reuters

From the pages of

March 31, 1894

“AU REVOIR!”

ALL India was present in spirit at the great meeting in which Bombay bade farewell to Mr Hume. The very thought of saying good-bye to the man to whom, more than to anyone else, India owes her reawakening, is saddening; and no wonder that the eyes of even the hardest-headed businessmen in the assembly were moist when Mr Hume had finished his speech-probably his last public utterances in this country. The love and the feeling of reverence of young India towards Mr Hume are things of which all Englishmen should feel proud if they view them in their true light. Englishmen have done deeds of romantic valour and have earned imperishable renown by unparalleled achievements in many directions, but no other Englishman, in our humble opinion, can show a record of work equal to that of Mr Hume in his own sphere. A magician who takes some dry bones, and collecting them in a heap sprinkles water over them and makes them instinct with life, does not do a more wonderful thing than Mr Hume had done.

REFLECTIONS

— The Buddha