Opinion

There’s No Voter Apathy in India

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With 2019 Lok Sabha elections a few days away, I have been thinking of one question: what explains the voters’ confidence in Indian governments to provide them with guaranteed incomes, guaranteed pensions, or guaranteed work even when governments are terrible at doing what they must – fix market failures?

In other words, the Indian State’s performance on law and order, education, and public health, is poor. And yet there’s wide support whenever Indian governments and political parties promise new schemes to accomplish even grander things. What explains this paradox?

I have two hypotheses.

One, the political enthusiasm hypothesis. This is the reverse of the voter apathy idea. It means that the voters who have a disproportionate influence on setting the political agenda (read middle-income voters) were never apathetic to politics but only to government provision of public services.

They became apathetic towards government provision of public services because with rising incomes, they could substitute the missing services with their own private solutions. Having done that, politics became a means to achieve other outcomes – those unrelated to market failures. Voting apathy never meant political apathy.

See this from the Exit, Voice, Loyalty thesis. Loyalty makes exit difficult. So the median Indian voter never really exited from Indian politics and instead chose to voice concerns unrelated to government provision of basic services.

My second hypotheses is more charitable to the Indian voter. I call it the expanding moral arc thesis. It is based on the book The Moral Arc by Michael Shermer. The book argues that the moral arc is continuously expanding. A few decades ago, the arc excluded non-White men in large parts of the world. Today, it includes all humans and even animals.

The key insight for us is that Indian politics is being played out in the background of this rapidly increasing moral arc. This makes the Indian developmental challenge more moral but less fast. The demand for universal basic incomes in India is a reflection of this expanding moral arc. The government’s role in India is seen as a moral project not a utilitarian one and hence we are okay to give its record on fixing market failures a free pass.

The Police Should Not Police Hate Speech

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A recent report (of which I was a co-author) looked at the way in which hate speech provisions in the Indian Penal Code, 1860 (the IPC) need to be reconfigured to fulfil their function and prevent their abuse. The report recommended replacing certain existing provisions in the IPC with narrowly constructed alternatives that do away with vague standards and instead hold liable only that speech which incites violence.

As I think more about how this will be an improvement on the status quo, I also believe that more must be done to further reduce the scope for abuse. One way of achieving this is by rethinking the way these hate speech provisions (in particular, sections 153-A, 295-A, and 505 of the IPC) are categorised under the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973 (the CrPC).

These provisions are cognizable offences at present. What this means is that a police officer receiving a complaint about one of these offences can arrest anyone without an order or a warrant from a magistrate. The subjective satisfaction of a police officer that this entails is a recipe for disaster. This is particularly so for complaints regarding hate speech, where there is a need to evaluate the content of the speech itself and its proximity to violence before taking any action. It is too much to expect police officers to perform this function. Thus, in addition to reworking the provisions of the law, it would be prudent to classify them as non-cognizable offences under the CrPC to ensure an additional layer of scrutiny.

Unbundling “household work” to get more women to work

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At a recent Takshashila roundtable, I met Shruti Rajagopalan and we discussed the challenges faced by working women in detail. An enriching conversation, Shruti provided various insights such as looking at the female labour force participation as an inferior good. As the household income increases, the demand amongst households to send the women to work reduces and is substituted with women focusing only on household chores. Reasons as Shruti pointed out varied from lack of household help to the increasing pressures of being a working mother. The conversation brought out an interesting insight: the biggest problem with reducing household chores for women is that it is a bundled good.

What is commonly referred to as “household work” contains a bunch of varied tasks like cooking, cleaning, stocking food, managing the assets at the house, managing vendors and neighbors, etc. A set of two or more goods or services when sold or consumed together are called bundled products. Due to the bundled nature of the products, it is difficult to create specific markets for individual subsets within the bundle. For instance, it is difficult to break down the household tasks such that separate agents manage vendors and assets at the house. The closest we have come to distributing the tasks is still within the household unit and yet to create a market where external agents that can be hired for it.

Each of the tasks under “household work” would cost a certain amount to the household. Hence, when a household reaches a certain income, instead of hiring an external agent, the household substitute the cost by letting go of the income earned by the female in the house. Only two chores have been unbundled till date- cooking and cleaning. The exclusive nature of the tasks and clear job description has helped in building both demand and supply for these chores. Hence, being able to unbundle the tasks would help households to outsource the chores as the income increases rather than substituting it with the income earned by the women.

The other obvious solution is to reduce the pay gap between men and women such that the income earned by women are not dispensable enough to be substituted for household chores.

More than a source of empowering women, creating a market for household chores would help solve the increasing job crisis in India. We need to create 20 million jobs per year in order to cater to the people entering the workforce and the disguised unemployment in the agriculture sector. One of the ways to generate these new jobs would create a services market for household chores. As per the study was done by  Bela Bandyopadhyaya, and Hilary Standing in the paper “Women’s Employment and the Household-Some Findings from Calcutta”, high-income families create 1.5 jobs per household for the child and household care (full time and a part-time employee). As most of the domestic care is under the purview of the women in the house, each working women helps increase the household income and generates jobs for a cook, a housekeeper, a cleaner and for general domestic work.

As I unravel the giant problem of declining female labour force participation rate in India, I have realised that social mindsets play an integral part in keeping the status quo intact. Hence, the change in the viewpoint towards household chores and the distribution of the agency would only improve as the social narratives are altered. Until then, making it easier for women to chose between staying at home and working should be a step in the right direction.

Of Referenda and Loaded Questions

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Reading this excellent review essay by Mohammed Hanif, I realised that when you are a dictator and you want a veneer of legitimacy, you can always conduct a referendum. And to be sure of your victory, you can ask an extremely loaded question with a binary choice.

Sample this question that ‘sought endorsement’ for Zia-ul-Haq’s Islamisation programme in 1984.

Do you endorse the process initiated by the President of Pakistan, General Mohammad Ziaul Haq, for bringing the laws of Pakistan in conformity with the injunctions of Islam as laid down in the Holy Quran and Sunnah of the Holy Prophet (peace be upon him) and for the preservation of the ideology of Pakistan, and are you in favour of continuation and further consolidation of that process and for the smooth and orderly transfer of power to the elected representatives of the people?

There’s no way that anyone is going to answer a ‘no’ to that question with such a framing. I’m actually surprised that 1.5 percent answered ‘No” to this question. Maybe it was Zia’s men at work lest anyone accuse the referendum of being unfair.

Then Musharraf also held a referendum in 2002 to seek approval for a five-year extension to his rule. Check out how that question was framed:

For the survival of the local government system, establishment of democracy, continuity of reforms, end to sectarianism and extremism, and to fulfil the vision of Quaid-e-Azam [Great leader – ie Pakistan’s late founder, Mohammed Ali Jinnah], would you like to elect President General Pervez Musharraf as president of Pakistan for five years?

Another loaded masterpiece to say the least.

Further reading: An excellent question on why the Brexit referendum question was unsatisfactory.

Fissures Emerge in the Pakistani Military-Jihadi Complex

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Not all’s well with the Pakistani military-jihadi complex (MJC). The anti-blasphemy protestors have blocked arterial roads in Lahore, Karachi, Islamabad, and Rawalpindi. Led by the Tehreek-e-Labaik (TLP), they are opposing the Supreme Court’s acquittal of Asia Bibi in a blasphemy case.

The current showdown — amongst other things — is different in the sense that it threatens the unity of the Pakistani MJC. In our chapter for the Contemporary Handbook of Pakistan 2017, we had argued that there are five factors that keep the MJC afloat. One of the factors was ‘Islam as the ideological refuge’. And it is here that trouble has been brewing now.

The TLP is outdoing the other elements of the MJC in championing the Islamist cause. Having failed in the last elections, they seem to have decided that mobilised violence is their weapon of choice. And this time around, they are leaving no stone unturned. A cleric, Afzal Qadri, speaking to a group of protestors earlier in the week even called for a revolt against the army chief and the putative government. The Pakistani army soon went on the defensive with DG, ISPR issuing a statement that the army had nothing to do with the Supreme Court’s decision. Last time around when the TLP protested in November 2017, the army managed to get the protesters off the streets by throwing money at them. Thus the stakes are much higher now and a similar move will most likely be rejected by the TLP. This means that a showdown within the MJC is likely to take place in the days to come.

PS: It is almost as if Pakistan is hellbent on writing a playbook called Why and How to not be Pakistan.

 

 

CAATSA Implementation Makes US Strategy in Afghanistan Even More Unsustainable

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The next chapter in the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA) saga will unfold on November 5, 2018. On this day, the provisions reimposing sanctions on entities trading with Iran in certain sectors will come into effect.

In India, the primary discussion point has been whether India will receive a significant reduction exemption on November 5. Such an exemption will allow Indian companies to continue importing Iranian oil without coming under ‘menu-based’ sanctions. It is quite likely that India might receive an exemption for both oil imports and for development of the Chabahar port. However that is not the only point of contention for India and the region.

Regardless of the decision on November 5, CAATSA is already closing the door on new solutions for the war in Afghanistan.

First, it increases the costs for Iran and India to collaborate on Afghanistan. We had written last year that not only will the Chabahar port help Afghanistan, the US will have much to gain from a connectivity project for Central Asia which does not have China at its core. But with the threat of secondary sanctions looming, companies at the margin will not invest in any project that involves Iran — why assume the risk of a volatile geopolitical environment which comes at a prospective cost of making business in the US market difficult?

Second, it also closes the door on a Russia – US understanding in Afghanistan. What we often forget is that ouster of the Taliban after 9/11 was made easier by an alignment of interests between US and Russia albeit for a brief period of time. Russia at that time provided critical logistical support from Afghanistan’s north and shared crucial intelligence for US-led coalition forces. CAATSA makes any such arrangement in the future even more unlikely.

Combine these two effects with the fact that the US attempt at talks with the Taliban are making no headways, and what you get is that there are zero new possibilities to end the war in Afghanistan. Only two scenarios remain. One involves the US withdrawing out of Afghanistan completely. The second involves the US returning to its dependence on Pakistan. Both scenarios will leave Afghanistan worse-off.

 

 

Reevaluating Citizenship

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Last week saw the European Union raise concerns about golden passports, schemes that amount to little more than a sale of citizenship by some EU member-nations to rich individuals in lieu of investments. The EU is understandably worried that many individuals with questionable credentials could use a golden passport to enter and operate in the region. This is an excellent opportunity to wonder aloud about what citizenship entails in today’s world, particularly because there have been plenty of other cases in the past year alone that drive home the need for more clarity on the subject.

First, there was the case of Roman Abramovich, a Russian billionaire, being granted Israeli citizenship and using that to enter the UK when the extension of his original visa was held up by red tape and tensions between the two countries. Israel grants citizenship to any person of the Jewish faith who wishes to relocate to the country and a person holding an Israeli passport can visit the UK without a visa for short periods. But is not a citizenship based on religious denomination an anachronism? Religion remains a powerful identifier but should it be a sufficient condition to gain citizenship of a country?

Second, the conversation following France’s football World Cup win earlier this year shows the need to distinguish between citizenship and nationalism. Hamsini Hariharan has written about this nationalism debate before in the Pragati Express. However, what would be of interest is to know how many of the victorious French squad hold dual-citizenship, something that is recognised by France. If the answer is yes, how would it affect the existing conversation?

Third, and not really connected to citizenship, is the farcical case of Boris Becker, the former tennis player seeking immunity from bankruptcy proceedings by claiming he has a diplomatic passport from the Central African Republic, which the latter denied. While there are genuine reasons for the continued existence of diplomatic immunity, an illustrative list of other cases from the past shows that the system can be abused. And, in the context of this post, if an individual with sufficient funds and influence manages to gain not just citizenship but also diplomatic immunity, there is surely a need to revisit the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations to see if a change to the status quo is necessary.

Closer home, two features of Indian citizenship bear mentioning. One, the absence of dual-citizenship. Two, the absence of a monetary component, be it through net worth or investments in the country, to become a naturalised citizen under the Citizenship Act, 1955. These are sound positions, lending citizenship an exclusivity while at the same time avoiding the pitfalls that come with ascribing a monetary value to it. It would be interesting to see if the world moves towards a similar system in the future.

Note: It would remiss to end this post by only mentioning the positives of Indian citizenship without mentioning the recent furore over the register of citizens in Assam, which surely demands a better way of being handled than stripping four million people of their citizenship.

The Opportunity Cost of Counter-terrorism

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Today marks seventeen years since 9/11 happened. If terrorism is theatre, all its shows have been running full house since that fateful day in September 2001.

India has of course been dealing with the threat posed by terrorism long before 9/11. But that attack made the rest of the world take notice of the dangers posed by terrorism. In the US for example, new strategies were made, new intelligence organisations were setup, and armed forces were retrained for counter-terrorism in the aftermath of 9/11.

Similarly, India underwent a change to add teeth to its counter-terrorism strategy and the question that I want to focus on in this blog post is: at what cost have we achieved counter-terrorism effectiveness? Let me explain.

The cost of terrorism is a subject that’s been discussed in great detail. But lest we forget, a cost is incurred for countering terrorism as well. By cost here, I mean the economic cost and not merely the explicit accounting cost. Economic cost is the sum of accounting cos and opportunity cost. And the opportunity cost of a choice is the value of the opportunities lost (Cowen and Tabarrok). So, is the value of the opportunities lost by India in choosing to focus on counter-terrorism significant enough that we should lose our sleep on it?

To be sure, counter-terrorism requires spending money and deploying resources. At a macro-level, every resource spent by the government on counter-terrorism could’ve instead been used on something else. But because the threat of terrorism is so potent, it probably makes sense to incur the cost of letting other opportunities slip by. But is there any component of this opportunity cost that needs a relook?

I believe there is one component that needs some rethinking – the opportunity cost of getting R&AW involved in counter-terrorism. Because we probably will never have solid data to understand the resources diverted from R&AW to focus on counter-terrorism, my claim is only based on statements made by intelligence officers.

One such statement I came across was in a recently televised interview of two highly respected retired intelligence officers Tilak Devasher and Vikram Sood. At 10:25, Mr Devasher paraphrases from Mr Sood’s book The Unending Game, saying:

The focus is on terrorism and immediate actionable intelligence. What everybody is looking for is an instant coffee book report. So nobody is looking at the longer-term picture. What happens six months or six years down the road, where is that country headed, what are the vulnerabilities of that country which will affect us, those capabilities have been diminished.

Assuming this is how R&AW has actually transformed itself for countering terrorism, the opportunity cost is not at all trivial. This is because R&AW is a small organisation with limited resources at its disposal.  On the other hand its mandate is huge – it is perhaps the only Indian organisation that is tasked with collecting intelligence and conducting operations in other countries. If such an important organisation is disproportionately focused on counter-terrorism, it means that there is diminished focus on extremely critical questions such as: what will happen in China over the next six months? What should India’s stance be with respect to persecution in Xinjiang? How should India influence political events in Afghanistan? What will be the security implications of a water crisis in Pakistan?

This is a huge opportunity lost. Particularly so because terrorism is not just the only threat facing India. The conventional threats of an arrogant China and an irreconcilable Pakistani military-jihadi complex are just two others in a larger list of long-term threat vectors that India needs to be worried about. The US can afford to focus on counter-terrorism disproportionately because probably it really is the largest threat, given its geography and relative power. But India’s threat matrix looks very different and hence an assessment of opportunity costs of counter-terrorism is necessary.

PS: I suppose the same case of high opportunity cost applies to the Indian army. With its focus on countering terrorism in J&K, one needs to ask, what is the value of other opportunities being lost.

 

 

How do we address the Maoist challenge?

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Extract from the proceedings of the National Conference on “Central India – Towards Conflict Resolution” organised by the Nelson Mandela Centre for Peace & Conflict Resolution, Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi, September 26-27, 2012.

Speaker: Nitin Pai

“It has been recognized that successful counter-insurgency strategy has three distinct but overlapping stages: “Clear, Hold and Build”. The first involves military operations to clear territory of insurgents, the second calls for holding territory and protecting the population from insurgent attacks, and the third consolidates military successes by building functional institutions of state that in turn can deliver effective governance.

While the security forces are equipped, trained and prepared to handle the Clear and Build stages, they find themselves inadequate to take on the challenge of the third, Build stage (more correctly, the Rebuild stage, after the destruction caused by the insurgents and collateral damage caused during counter-insurgency operations). By then, on the one hand, the local civil agencies would have atrophied and left without substantive capacity to undertake development in a conflict-ravaged area. On the other, media, public and political attention will move on to other issues once the statistics of violence show a degree of improvement.

Mr Pai, speaking about structural and governance shortfalls, pointedly stated that there were more convergences than divergences in the previous day’s sessions, about what he believed in and what his fellow panelists spoke on. His view spanned over three areas: how he viewed the Maoist issue, the fundamental errors we have made in addressing it, and what needed to be done.

He began with emphasizing on the problems and stated that the reason for the conflict was not merely limited to poverty, deprivation or lack of security – but essentially one of a governance deficit. People in many parts of India, especially towns and cities have a multi-dimensional engagement with the state. The ability to access people running the government is easier – though often unsatisfactory. They thus have a more balanced perspective of the state. However, people in many other regions – like parts of Central India – have a limited interaction with the Indian state, usually through police, forest guards and local officials. Often there rampant corruption and these public servants have no sense of purpose in their job and duty. Maoists exploit this and convert the dissatisfaction and anger arising from unsatisfactory quotidian interactions with government officials into a rejection of and revolt against the Indian state.

He also saw it necessary to distinguish between people who are angry because of the governance deficit versus people who have an ideological agenda to violently overthrow the Indian state. There is also a difference between adherents and sympathisers of Communism and those who take up armed struggle. Policy and public discourse must recognise these differences and address each group differently.

Mr Pai then spoke about fundamental errors in dealing with the issue in Central India. One of them being the attempt to make security forces deliver governance to people, because very often, they are the only ones with the capacity to do so. He cited the example of the BRO, where it is called upon to build roads in conflict areas. Such measures create and perpetuate a conflict economy, where everyone from the combatants to ordinary people develop an interest in keeping the conflict going. Second, flawed economic reasoning by the government is another error. It has tried to buy back weapons from militants, pay lumpsums on surrender and provide ex-militants with stipends. Such measures do not work because they can be easily manipulated both by militants and unscrupulous individuals.

Mr Pai then steered his case towards what needed to be done. Ideally, civil administration should take over when security forces leave. But this transition from counter-insurgency to normalcy is not well thought through. Bringing normalcy includes a process of governance, one that is well planned and executed.

It is necessary to create structures of governance while understanding that no existing organization can do this task. Civil administrators are unlikely to want to work in post-insurgency areas. It is undesirable to let security forces deliver public services like law and order, water, roads, public transport, banking etc. So it is necessary to create a new organisation with the capacity to handle the specific task of nursing a post-insurgency region back to health. Its purpose is to carry out the rights, privileges and guarantees given to the people of India. It must be created to deliver step-down care. For example, bank accounts, financial inclusion, roads, electricity, etc. These must be delivered within a span of two years.

Such an organisation should comprise of civilian experts but organised along military lines, and placed under the Home Ministry. It should, within a span of two years, be able to deliver governance and build transition in the post-conflict society. It should include all stakeholders, including the local politician with the aim to facilitate a quick and smooth return to normalcy, without affecting developmental goals. He stressed on the example of medical personnel and their requirement to serve rural areas.

In his concluding thoughts, Mr Pai said we have not learnt from our successes or failures. In fact, some mistakes only get worse with time. There is still a need to learn more about step-down care. So while the PM says, ‘Money does not grow on trees’, similarly, Mr Pai argued that capacity too did not grow on trees. It is something that needed to be created. While such a set-up would not totally solve violent or non-violent conflict – but somewhere in between was a marginal person, who would be less inclined to do anything off-track, if such a set-up is supportive of his or her well-being.

Recap: Naxalism rises because of governance deficit

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I wrote this back in March 2008 after reading a book that helped be better understand why Naxalism/Maoism continued to exist in India. In a phrase: it is because it is because many parts of India are effectively outside the Indian Republic, and in some of those parts even the promise and hope that the Indian constitution offers is absent or unknown.

Playing into the Naxalites’ hands

Even well-intentioned people can become pawns in the Naxalites’ insidious propaganda war

(Mail Today | March 2008)

Sudeep Chakravarti’s Red Sun: Travels in Naxalite country is a very important book, for it offers an excellent account of the nature of the Naxalite threat. The Naxalite movement thrives on disillusionment and disaffection. It collects unaddressed grievances and unredressed complaints and channelises them into anger against the “Indian State”. It tells rape victims, dispossessed tribals and bullied villagers that the appropriate target of their ire is not the local landlord, policeman or politician but that abstraction called the “State”. But beyond seductive dogma and the logic of the inevitable armed struggle to upturn the status quo, it offers no positive solutions. The fact both Communism and Socialism failed doesn’t matter to the Naxalite leadership, ideologues and sympathisers: people in remote, backward districts of India don’t know 20th century history.

If Naxalite leaders rally support for themselves through mobilising local grouses into a movement against the State and its symbols, their ideologues and sympathisers provide covering fire in the broader strategic psychological war. By dissing India’s economic achievements, by spreading canards about the ‘failure of neoliberal reforms’, by an incessant, exclusive focus on the negative side (in the fashionable name of ‘dissent’), by playing up the myth of ‘two Indias’ and even by openly championing violence, these opinion makers create an context that leads the the average Indian citizen into thinking that there might be something legitimate about the Naxalite movement. There isn’t.

But the left-leaning and left-wing commentariat has succeeded where the pseudo-secularists have failed. The average Indian believes that the Naxalites are not quite as serious a threat as the jihadis—although Naxalites actually hold a broad swathe of territory. Little wonder then that Indian politicians feel no serious pressure to do anything about the Naxalite threat.

Even where there was significant public outcry, the UPA government decided that its perceived vote-banks were more important than national security: it is not half as serious about the jihadi threat as it should be. But where public attention was lower, it literally abdicated its responsibility. The presence of the incompetent Shivraj Patil at the home ministry didn’t help. So while the Naxalites consolidated into a nation-wide movement a few years ago, the central government continues to claim that this is essentially a matter for the states, and it would only play a co-ordinating role.

In the absence of a coherent national anti-insurgency strategy states were left to their own devices. Y S R Reddy’s government in Andhra Pradesh, got into bed with the Naxalites in order to win the election. It was a mutually beneficial bargain: the Naxalites took a breather (after being pummelled by the previous government led by Chandrababu Naidu) and regrouped. It ended predictably, when the negotiations failed and the Naxalites went back to their armed struggle. Why predictably? Well, because “armed struggle” is an inseparable part of the Naxalite dogma: Comrade Prachanda, the leader of Nepal’s Maoists, is being criticised for relenting on this even after they joined the government.

If this was the situation in Andhra Pradesh, with its relatively higher state capacity, what of places like Jharkhand and Chattisgarh, where state capacity is extremely weak? Faced with fighting a war with what they had, they engaged in some extremely flawed strategies. Setting up Salwa Judum, an extra-constitutional counter-insurgency militia, was a big mistake. So is the draconian law which suspends the freedom of the press. The Chattisgarh authorities identified the problems correctly. But the tools they used to solve these problems were ill-considered, ham-fisted and ultimately counterproductive.

Chattisgarh’s government and political leaders cannot escape responsibility for these bad moves—but in the absence of cohesion, determination and resources from New Delhi, it is not surprising that they chose that course. Understandable, but still not acceptable. But it’s no use criticising the Chattisgarh authorities for their dubious strategies. The anti-insurgency war against Naxalites is a national one. The Union home ministry should be held to account for its sins of omission that directly caused Chattisgarh’s sins of commission. The next government in New Delhi has its job cut out—and parties would do well to put their anti-Naxalite war strategy in their manifestos.

If Left-leaning commentators and Naxalite sympathisers are batting for the Naxalites, what should one make of genuine liberal human rights activists? It is possible to construct a reasonable argument that violations of human rights by the government must be criticised every time they occur. The danger with this, though, is that well-meaning individuals and groups can inadvertently end up batting for the Naxalites. Compared with their usual backers, the Naxalites derive greater benefit when reputed individuals and organisations criticise the government. On the war’s psychological front, NGOs and human rights groups end up strengthening the Naxalite movement to the extent they add fuel to the fire of disillusionment and disaffection. Rights activists and do-gooders would do well to heed the old injunction primum non nocere—first, do no harm.

There are bound to be some who evaluate this trade-off and argue that holding the government’s feet to the fire is important in the even larger context of democratic accountability and good governance. Well, to be taken as bona fide, such individuals and organisations must unequivocally condemn Maoism and violent armed struggle. They must also unambiguously accept that only the state has the normative legitimacy to use violence. In other words, there is no room for moral equivalence: it is fair to criticise the government and government officials for their failings. But it is necessary to make the distinction between the State’s legitimate right to the use of violence and the Naxalites’ armed struggle.

Now there has been a controversy brewing for several months over the arrest of Dr Binayak Sen. The Supreme Court has turned down his bail application, yet sections of the media have been projecting him as an innocent being victimised by the state. Quizzed about the affair, Chakravarti contends that Dr Sen is a soft target for the state. “Having him in jail” he argues “allows the state government and police a victory in the face of organisational and security disasters on the ground. But this is a pyrrhic victory. It stifles a moderate voice, and has done nothing whatsoever to curtail or solve in any way either the raging Maoist rebellion in Chattisgarh or issues of development”

Innocent or guilty, only the courts can tell (and Dr Sen has unfettered access to them). But the media coverage of the affair is playing into the hands of the Naxalites. In the absence of a nation-wide anti-insurgency strategy, will critical media coverage compel Chattisgarh and other weak states to take a more enlightened, sophisticated route? Given the situation on the ground, that’s unlikely. The interests of freedom and rights will be better served if the central government is compelled to really fight and defeat the Naxalites.

And then there is the non-security aspect of the anti-Naxalite strategy, wrongly characterised as the need for “development”. It misses the point because people don’t resort to violence because they lack development. They do so when there is a lack of governance.

A Test with Imran Khan

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If India wants to have a stable and constructive engagement with the Imran Khan government, it must temper its enthusiasm for a quick breaking of ice and totally avoid any attempt to secure a “big” breakthrough.

That’s because dealing with Pakistan is playing cricket simultaneously against two distinct teams on the other side, each of which has a different interest and expection from the game. The Imran Khan government might well have been helped to power by the Pakistan Army, but the military-jihadi complex is a distinct entity and has interests of its own. Based on historical experience, whenever there is an expectation of an upswing in bilateral relations, we should expect the complex to throw a spanner in the works. This usually takes the shape of a military adventure, cross-border terrorism or some other ugly rabbit out of the khaki beret. This creates an impasse and an inevitable downswing in relations.

The way to avoid this is for New Delhi not to demonstrate any eagerness for new beginnings. Don’t try for quick wins. Don’t create expectations. Don’t even fall for photo opportunities. Prime Minister Khan has made sensible statements on dialogue and trade. Let these be worked out at the staff level in the ministries concerned…not by high profile political leaders and government functionaries.

(As an aside, I do think the Pakistan Army will realise they got more than they bargained for by promoting Imran Khan. They don’t learn from their previous experience. From Junejo to Jamali, the army has found that once in office prime ministers develop backbones and don’t always yield to the generals’ diktats. If Junejo could stand up to Zia, imagine what a personality like Imran can do.)

What New Delhi does need to think about seriously is having an official outreach to the military establishment. Diplomatic protocal and normative policies are one thing, but if the Army calls the real shots and will do so for the foreseeable future, realism demands that we find a way to engage the generals directly. We should stop pretending that dealing with foreign ministers and foreign secretaries of Pakistan is an effective way to deal with that country on political and security issues.

As for how to deal with Imran Khan and his government, New Delhi should adopt the temperament of playing a test match. If you play with a Twenty20 or one-day international mindset, you’ll come to grief.

New Perspectives for Independence Day

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Last week, India celebrated more than seventy years of being independent. This is a fact that Indians should be proud of and we are, judging by the articles and news segments that are common during this time of the year. At the same time, it is useful to not look at the country’s independence and its progress in isolation. Taking a step back and looking at the experiences of other countries can provide an interesting perspective on our own journey and offer some lessons for the future. I thought of this as I came across some literature about Kenya over the past few weeks.

First was the novel A Grain of Wheat by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, set during the time Kenya became independent in the sixties as well as the long period of emergency that preceded it. While the book illuminates much about how Kenya gained independence and how ordinary Kenyans approached it, what took me by surprise were the multiple references to India. India, by then, had already been an independent nation for the better part of two decades and was a model of resistance for people still struggling against colonialism elsewhere. One of the characters in the book makes repeated references to Gandhi and the spirit of non-violence that contributed to India’s liberation. There are also less charitable references to Indians vying with the Europeans to seize local markets at the cost of the indigenous population.

The second was about the prosecution service in Kenya which is, on paper, an excellent and well thought out mechanism. It provides for the Director of Public Prosecutions to be a Constitutional position answerable to the Parliament with adequate safeguards against executive interference. It is also a relatively recent system, with the current version of the Kenyan Constitution having been in force for less than ten years. It shows the advantage of learning from the mistakes of other countries. For instance, as was pointed out to me, it would be difficult for India, without a Presidential form of government and with the anti-defection rule in place, to adopt a similar model even if it guarantees to be an upgrade on our existing system.

So, to recap the lessons learnt: one, we should be mindful of our influence and our power in being role models for other countries. And two, wherever possible, we should take advantage of being late to the party by adopting systems and institutions that do not carry the heavy burden of legacy while being best-suited for our unique needs.