Amid the boast of heraldry, the pomp of power, ministers of the new Narendra Modi government took their oaths of office at Rashtrapati Bhavan on May 30, for its second term. India’s great and good were represented in force: politicians, film stars, sports personalities, captains of industry and others, together with a galaxy of foreign heads of state and governments from India’s immediate neighbourhoods and farther afield who attended the glittering ceremony. The message was loud and clear. India was open for business, cooperation in all fields of human endeavour and of enhancing dialogue to that end. Pakistan was the sole exception on this impressive guest list. The sustained abetment and export of jihadi terrorism was the reason. This has been rightly perceived in India as an undeclared war designed to cripple and destroy the country. Pakistan prime minister in the 1970 Zulfiqar Ali was prone to make inflammatory public statements on the subject, as related by his American biographer and historian Stanley Wolpert, who drew much critical material Bhutto’s private archive. Jihadi assaults by Pakistan-based operatives on India’s financial hub, Mumbai in March 1993 and in November 2008, resulted in the deaths of hundreds of innocent citizenry; thereafter, smaller attacks across the country have taken their inevitable toll.
Normal relations in such abnormal conditions were well nigh impossible. Prime Minister Modi made this abundantly clear to his hosts in Western capitals. Such policies threatened not merely the peace, stability and security of India, but also of world order itself. Earlier, in the mid 1980s, India had been one of the principal architects of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation [SAARC], which included Pakistan as top partner. Hopes of cooperative ventures were belied by subsequent confrontations arising from Pakistani deep state funding and arming of Islamist and Khalistan terrorists, in keeping with the goals outlined by Bhutto. Every measure to take SAARC forward was thwarted by Pakistan as advantageous to India. Thirty years of SARRC stagnation brought home to India the need to build an alternate structure to promote friendly regional cooperation without a Pakistani presence. To this end, road connectivity was established from Thailand and Myanmar, in Southeast Asia linking them to Bangladesh, India, Bhutan and Nepal.
Pakistan has been reduced to an irrelevance. Judging from Pakistani media comment on Indian politics and much else, it is clear that the country’s political class possess scarcely any real grasp of Indian realities. The two countries have long ceased to share a common frame, which pious shibboleths continue to conceal. Perhaps a half century or more of meditative silence may quieten fraught nerves and take the edge off ancient animosities. A conversation then may be driven more by curiosity than by stilted totems of prejudice, and hence may yield glimmers of hope of a less troubled future. A dialogue of the deaf simply incites hostility.
From beyond the subcontinent and its environs came the state leaders of Mauritius and Kyrgyzstan, the latter to host the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) conference at its capital, Bishek in mid-June, where Prime Minister Modi will meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin on the sidelines, as he also will separately with Chinese President Xi Jinping.
India’s is constructing a security edifice fit for 21st century purpose. The widely held Western wisdom of a conjoined India-Pakistan relationship – ‘traditional rivals’ is the anodyne description – eludes ground reality. Perhaps India is still regarded as a soft state. Recent events should have laid such notions to rest. India is designing an architecture protective of its regional interests and relationships, while also serving as a manual for its ties with the Great Powers. These too have to be handled with appropriate deftness and understanding.
The situation for India is evolving in the right direction. In a combustible world it spells hope.
Significant signals in new faces
‘All the world’s a stage/ And all the men and women merely players: /They have their exits and their entrances...’ Such is the philosophical Shakespeare gives to figures who come and go in the public sphere.
The new Modi government is a blend of experience and innovation – an injection of energy into an ambling bureaucracy and its routine ministerial habits. Every administrative system, like most other systems, needs a shake-up. Prime Minister Modi, at the helm for the second time in his career, has used his broom. He and his colleagues must stand up and deliver the promises they made during the election campaign. The electorate broadly believed that the first Modi dispensation had been work in progress, the second they expect will witness its completion. The economy is what surely will define the Prime Minister’s niche in his country’s history. His massive landslide has empowered him to push resolutely ahead with his economic reforms; to modernise it for 21st century purpose. Thriving agriculture, robust industry, expanding frontiers of science and technology, coupled with greater opportunities for education and medical care in rising living standards, is the driving forcr of the Modi vision that so enthused the broad mass of the Indian people.
In the space available, it would be best to concentrate on the four significant changes in the Cabinet. Two entailed new appointments, the other two entailed major shifts in ministries. The introduction of BJP President Amit Shah as Home Minister, second only to Prime Minister Modi in political authority was the most critical decision by far. He has been Mr Modi’s alter ego for many years, and their fruitful partnership is set continue well into the future. As Home Minister, Mr Shah will have access to national intelligence at the highest level, enabling him to take strategic decisions on internal security, particularly in troubled areas such as Kashmir. He is expected to be tougher than was his predecessor Rajnath Singh, whose safe pair of hands were designed to ensure political equilibrium above all else.
Next came the ministerial shifts. Nirmala Sitharaman, who replaced the ailing Manohar Parrikar as Defence Minister, was the first woman to hold the post. The frequent changes of ministers here had affected efficiency. Delayed much needed military reforms and held up new arms acquisitions. Minister Sitharaman brought fresh vigour to the ministry and its workings. Military reforms were taken in hand and the wheels began to move. The Minister’s defence of the deal to purchase the French Rafale aircraft in Parliament against its Congress critics was a masterly exposition of technical detail combined with overall cogency, evoked considerable admiration among MPs and reporters. It must have impressed the Prime Minister in equal measure, as he has appointed her Finance Minister, again its first woman. Ms Sitharaman has experience in this field, having been junior minister of commerce, with special responsibility for financial affairs. Her negotiating skills and master of departmental briefs marked her out as a future star. As new Finance Minister, her presentation to Parliament on July 5 will command close attention of the captains of industry, wider business circles and from the public at large.
Rajnath Singh moves in as Defence Minister. He will oversee the momentum of military modernization underway and the speeding up of weapons acquisition. No further delays hereon. As a former physics academic, he should have fewer problems than most understanding the mechanics of modern armaments.
The second new appointment involves S. Jaishankar, an experienced diplomat and once foreign secretary in the Ministry of External Affairs. He now becomes Foreign Minister. His beat previously was the US, China and Japan. His engagement with US and Chinese officials and ministers is certain to test his diplomatic skills to the full.
The US, in particular, appears to have embarked on a course of diplomacy based largely on arbitrary sanctions, threats, bluster and blackmail. Domestically, The US,it would appear, is trapped in an increasingly dysfunctional political system. Washington is presently engaged in a tariff war with China, and with another against India. Worse: senior US State Department officials have warned India of sanctions were it to purchase arms from Russia, most of all Russia’s famed S-400 Trumf long range defence shield. Turkey, too, has been given similar notice.
This bull-in-a-China shop behaviour undermines India’s sovereign right to chart an independent course with a third power. India is unlikely to submit to American blackmail. Consider the following item in the Hindu newspaper (June 1) : ‘A senior administration official had told The Hindu (May 24). ‘The irony of the US pressing India on S-400 is that several former US defence officials have praised the military utility of Russian platforms like BrahMos missies and S 400 system enabling India to face off China.’
‘ The US can’t offer India comparable anti-access/area denial capabilities,’ said Sameer Lalwani, who heads the South Asia program at the Stimson Institute, a non-partisan think-tank in Washington.’
Prime Minister Modi who keeps keen watch on foreign policy is certain to monitor further developments. Meanwhile Mr Jaishankar has his work cut out.
