There has been something akin to an uproar at the military agreement India signed with the United States during US Defence Secretary Ashton Carter’s visit to New Delhi, where he met with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar. The Congress Party was up in arms at what it perceived to be the Modi government’s sell-out of the country’s strategic autonomy for what was seen as India’s participation in an American-led alliance. It was a betrayal of India’s other strategic partnerships, notably with Russia and China, said Congress spokesman Anand Sharma. As Mr Sharma is one of a dwindling band of intelligent members 0f a near moribund organization, he must know that equating Russia with China is not merely false, but simply stupid. With China, an all weather friend to Pakistan, whose terrorist activities in India Beijing prefers to turn a blind eye, New Delhi is under no obligation to treat China with any consideration. Russia is quite another matter.
Let us start with detains o9f the agreement. First, India in-principle nod to a military logistics pact. Second, two new pathfinder projects under Defence Technology and Trade Initiative digital mounted displays and joint biological tactical detection system. Third, the conclusion of an information exchange annexure for cooperation on aircraft carrier technology. Fourth, the US shares two proposals to make fighter aircraft in Indi. Fifth, four government to government project agreements involving atmospheric sciences for high energy lasers, cognitive tools for target detection, small intelligence unmanned aerial systems and blast and blunt traumatic brain surgery. Messrs Parrikar and Ashton Carter issued a statement referring to freedom of navigation on the high seas and over-flights in the South China Sea where China is locked in disputes with five littoral nations, including Vietnam, with whom India has a close defence and strategic relationship.
Secretary Ashton Carter announced that the US and Indian navies will cooperate in exchange of information on submarine development and anti-submarine warfare. In addition, the two sides have agreed to institute a regular ’Maritime Security Dialogue’. Minister Parrikar turned down a US suggestion of joint Indo-US maritime patrols. India has also rejected the US-built aircraft, F16 and F18 Super Hornets, which were offered to the Indian Air Force. Instead the IAF plans to augment its force levels with indigenous Tejas Mark II squadrons.
India is aware that the US shares sensitive intelligence only with the Anglosphere comprising America, Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Ashton Carter’s three-day visit to India has done nothing to alter the basics of the India-US strategic partnership already in operation. Period.
Let us now turn to the Russian view. A recent report by Viktor Litovkin in Russia India Report (March 24) sets the record straight. It quotes the Indian Defence Ministry statement that Russia remains in first position as a source of weapons systems for all three of its armed services. These come with the technologies and ‘Make in India’. Tanks, radars, frigates, nuclear submarines on long lease, particulary the latter symbolize the level of trust between the partners. The formidable Sukhoi MKI30 aircraft are the mainstay of the Indian Air Force; and BrahMos supersonic cruise missiles are operational with the Indian Army and Navy and are being fitted onto the Sukhoir 30MKI warplanes. These and much else have been, and continue to be, sourced from Russia. Arrangements are afoot to speed up the joint production of the Fifth Generation Fighter Aircraft. Russia accepts India’s right to look for appropriate weapons systems elsewhere as and when appropriate. Litovkin points to decades-old, trouble-free relationship between India and Soviet Union and the Russian Federation involving every Indian regime. Such trust cannot be bought, he writes.
India’s External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj is visiting Moscow this week and its outcome will be watched with interest.
India cautions UK on restrictive norms for skilled staff
The lords of humankind are given to chiding India about its restrictive economic policies, on the need to open up its markets to the West. When it comes to the restrictive practices of, say, the European Union, the US or the UK, it is another story. What is source for the goose is clearly not source for the gander. By tightening norms for skilled Indian workers, the UK was interposing Intra Company Transfers with immigration. Overall, this could impact Indo-UK bilateral ties.
The new UK guidelines on ICTs discriminate against India and are inconsistent with World Trade Organization General Agreement on Trade in Services. This comes amid growing concerns of Indian tech companies that such rules would undermine their profit margins. The Indian IT/ITeSA sector will be affected by the stipulation that from April 2017 onwards an India-based company looking to bring a skilled worker into the UK for a short duration, specifically to carry out the work of another organization would be required to pay him/her a minimum annual salary of 41,000 pounds sterling. This threshold would represent a 67 per cent increase from the extant 24,000 pounds sterling.
Gagan Sabharwal, Director (Global Trade Development) NASSCOM said: ‘The reforms proposed include significant salary rises, levies and restrictions that will distort the UK market, restrict access to the much-required services and increase costs for all. These negative impacts are not balanced with any upside: they will not achieve either the government’s aims of an increase in UK skilled workers but negatively impact overall UK productivity.’ Mr Sabharwal said some Indian companies would consider relocating to European countries that were more welcoming and easier for business.
‘Instead of penalizing firms through higher salary thresholds, the UK government should make them partners in skill development initiatives,’ he said. The reality is that the Indian IT workforce account for over 90 per cent of migrants in the ‘ICT category for third party contracts.’ Noting that skilled India workers have helped boost the UK economy and reduced company costs, but the official British take is that the new rules would safeguard jobs for Britons. The Indian trade body NASSCOM suggested a compromise: the minimum salary threshold to be increased in stages over five years. Will commonsense prevail? Time will tell.
Dharavi girls set their sights high
Mumbai’s Dharavi has long been Asia’s largest slum – but it is a slum with a difference. Life is hard but not without hope, as its thousands of denizens struggle valiantly to better their lives, to enlarge their creative space. Dharvi has its small factories producing goods for the market and its entrepreneurs seeking to conquer adversity.
Film maker Navneet Ranjan, founder of the Dharavi Diary project, who moved to India from San Francisco in 2014, says they are trying to build a server for the apps developed by the members of the project, before they can live with several apps in the pipeline. In his office, a small room set in a maze of narrow lanes off the main road, children are hard at work in groups of three with laptops on the floor, each endeavouring to come up with unique solutions to their neighbourhood problems.
‘When we joined the Dharavi Diary programme we decided first to look at the problems our neighbourhood and community faced and then build apps to address those problems. One of the largest issues was that girls my age and younger faced is that we felt unsafe going out at night and parents would feel nervous about it,’ said Ansuja about ‘Women Fight Back’.
Take ‘Paani hai Jeevan’ [Water is Life] developed by 14 year-old Fauzia Aslam Ansari, built to organize water collection for each household by setting up an online queue that alerts people when it is their turn to fill up with water and avoid fights in waiting queues with some pushing their buckets to get ahead of others in the two hours from 7 am to 9am when water is available.
Other apps concern garbage dumped outside prescribed bins to warn the authorities of malpractice or the use of child labour or a cleanliness drive. Navneet Ranjan, who taught at an arts college in San Francisco made a film titled Dharavi Diary and got involved with its community. The girls he started working numbered 15, now they are 200 and growing with boys joining in. Their parents are illiterate, but their offspring are tuning in to a life of hope and enriching experience.
