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:: India Perspectives |
Soften these borders
From Lhasa to Kandahar and from Myanmar to Balochistan, India's borderlands are aflame. For the last few days, it has been the extraordinary political revolt in Tibet that has weighed on India's mind. A few weeks ago, it was the Madhesis threatening the peace process in Nepal. A few months back, it was the defiance of the military regime by Buddhist monks in Myanmar that demanded India's attention. A couple of years ago the uprisings in Balochistan and Nepal caught our eye. The Pashtun insurgency across the borders of Pakistan and Afghanistan has steadily gained momentum since the ouster of the Taliban from Kabul in 2001. Each of these crises underlines the more profound structural crisis that has engulfed India's borderlands.
The Winner Will Need Brains and Guts
Watching the run-up to the U.S. presidential elections from proud and self-indulgent yet weak and cowardly Europe, I am disturbed that so little attention has been paid to electing a President who will have the courage to provide leadership--and, if need be, resolute action--in an increasingly dangerous world.
I have to escape from the death chamber, says Taslima
Controversial Bangladesh author Taslima Nasreen, who has decided to quit India for good, has in an email to IANS called the guesthouse here where she has lived for months as a "torture chamber". She has outlined her agony in the mail:
Saying no to the USS Kitty Hawk - The irony of Gorshkov
"These rumors are nothing but a hoax created by the media." Admiral Sureesh Mehta told a news conference in Moscow last week. "As far as I am concerned, our country has never received such an offer". He was referring to the latest angle to the ups and downs of securing a second aircraft carrier for the Indian navy---the speculation that the United States intends to offer the USS Kitty Hawk, an almost 50 year old vessel that is slated for decommissioning from the US Navy.
Cold Warriors Do a Flip
George Shultz, William Perry, Henry Kissinger and Sam Nunn have little in their distinguished careers that would point to a strong advocacy of nuclear disarmament. On the contrary, their preoccupation as public servants was to maintain US nuclear deterrence against its Cold War adversary, the Soviet Union. They dismissed the goal of nuclear disarmament as fantasy.
Poll verdict augurs ill for Musharraf
The successful completion of the February 18 elections in Pakistan and the results they have thrown up can be described as being truly 'historic' in the context of the recent political history of that country and the tragic experience of its people. Belying all the anxiety about intimidation, violence and rigging by the pro-Musharraf constituency, the people of Pakistan turned up in reasonably large numbers (about 40%) to exercise their choice.
Gates and the Great Game
When US Secretary of Defence Robert Gates swings through New Delhi this week, India's civil nuclear initiative is unlikely to be at the top of his agenda. To be sure, there are growing anxieties in Washington about the UPA government's inability to bring around its communist allies on a deal that is so patently in India's favour. Gates, however, knows that there is very little that Washington can do to change the political dynamics in New Delhi.
Lonely mission
The recently concluded Indian Ocean Naval Symposium (IONS) held in New Delhi attracted as many as 31 of the 33 littorals - Iran and Pakistan apart. This is a commendable initiative by the Indian Navy (IN) to chart a new course for the tricolor in the 21st century. It is rare that as many as 26 naval chiefs come together for a conclave and this is indeed a mini diplomatic coup. The IN remains the most credible navy within the Indian Ocean region (IOR) and this despite the reality that it is the Cinderella service as compared to its peers - the Army and the Air Force.
Is India readying a military-industry combine?
Is India readying a military-industry combine to feed the voracious appetite of its armed forces and to push the hitherto nascent export of armaments? This is the distinct impression one gets from the response of global defence manufacturers to India's newly enunciated Defence Procurement Procedure (DPP) that for the first time mandates technology transfers in all defence deals and 30 percent offsets in all deals worth over Rs.3 billion ($75 million).
Too Early To Celebrate
I recall the last free and fair election held in Pakistan in 1970 and the euphoria with which it was greeted in India. Many of our academics, journalists and politicians hailed it as the dawn of a new democratic age in Pakistan. I was compelled to play the role of Cassandra and warn people about the ambitions of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and the Pakistan army. Tragically my forebodings proved right. I am keeping my fingers crossed this time.
Deal's Now on the Skids
So it is official now: time is running out for the India-US civilian nuclear deal. A three-man team of US senators led by Joseph Biden, who heads the influential Senate Foreign Relations Committee, disclosed this on Wednesday at a press conference in Delhi. Much water has flown down the Yamuna and the Potomac since Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and President George W. Bush inked the deal in July 2005. It focuses on developing India's civilian nuclear power programmes in exchange for placing its civil nuclear facilities under International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safeguards. But controversy has dogged it from the word go, with detractors - chiefly the Left partners of the government - deriding it as a potential 'sellout' of India's interests.
Chance For Redemption
Pakistan is poised on a momentous cusp as it prepares for elections on Monday. The big question is whether the pro-Musharraf parties with the PML-Q at the helm will come back to power, or whether the anti-Musharraf constituency comprising the PPP and the PML-N will prevail. The run-up to this long awaited national election has been bloody and contested. The tragic assassination of Benazir Bhutto apart, the two attacks on the Awami National Party in the NWFP in early February, which killed 38 innocent people, is illustrative of the widespread violence in Pakistan.
Allah's will and US strategy
Pakistan has decided in favour of peoples' power, ending the darkness of dictatorial President who has been reduced to saying "he is willing to work with anyone". Pervez Musharraf has become the most untrustworthy Pakistani. India must rejoice at this.
Maoist mayhem
Friday's Naxal attack on police stations in Orissa's Nayagarh district is the latest wake-up call for India's security mandarins. With every passing day, the Maoist guerrillas seem to be tightening their grip on the country, claiming some 500 lives every year. In some areas, the situation is so alarming that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh recently described the menace as a "virus" that threatens the very idea of India. He asked states to pool their resources and crush the leftist rebellion once and for all. The states have been trying to fight the Maoists for some time, but with little success. The reasons are not too difficult to understand.
For a change, let's listen to him
I was just six years old when I had the first 'darshan' of Mahatma Gandhi. I cannot really say that I talked to him, but it was a rare and unique experience. I belong to Nagpur and Gandhiji's Sabarmati Ashram was just 80 km from there. Gandhiji used to travel by train in a third class compartment. That day my mother sent me and my cousin to the railway station to receive my uncle. The train was coming from Mumbai via Nagpur to Howrah.
'Why not India (to mediate with LTTE)? I trust neighbours, if they are ready. I think they know LTTE's mentality'
Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa walks the talk with Shekhar Gupta.
* My guest this week, in Colombo's presidential palace, is one of the most unassuming men to become a head of state. President Mahinda Rajapaksa, welcome to Walk the Talk. A wonderful setting, in the shade of a banyan tree that's nearly 200 years old.
Let's Get Real
When CIA and MI6 operatives descended on Tripoli, Libya, on December 12, 2003 they were astonished at the amount of documentation they recovered on Pakistan's clandestine nuclear assistance to Colonel Gaddafi's regime. The documents recovered included designs of nuclear weapons and other data stuffed into a bag of Pakistani scientist A Q Khan's favourite tailors in Rawalpindi. The nuclear weapons designs were all Chinese.
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