Conducting India-Sri Lanka relations the Modi way

               

Conducting India-Sri Lanka Relations
                         the Modi Way 
                                  By
                           G. Padmaja    

 

 

India's Narendra Modi and Sri Lanka's Maithripala Sirisena. Photo Credit: Sri Lanka government.

            
Mar 30, 2015                                                        

                                                   

         On March 18, 2015, the Indian External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj made a statement in parliament on Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Seychelles, Mauritius and Sri Lanka which took place from March 10-14. She began by saying: “The importance of these visits can be gauged from the fact that an Indian prime minister has paid a bilateral visit to Seychelles after 34 years, Mauritius after 10 years and Sri Lanka after 28 years.”

 

 Prior to Modi’s visit and after that too these facts have been repeated by many. This statement no doubt brings out the significance of the visit, but implicit in it is also the acceptance that the Indian foreign policy has either failed in conducting its relations with these countries at the highest level or faces challenges which prevent it from doing so.  The immediate question which arises is what has changed that the Modi government is undertaking these visits where the earlier governments hesitated to do so. In this context it is argued that the new government at the centre believes that India’s national, regional and global interests are best served by having these bilateral visits at the highest level. This article looks specifically at India-Sri Lanka relations to bring this out.

 

 Like the earlier governments, the Modi government too has been influenced by domestic interests and pressure groups from Tamil Nadu, especially with regard to the issues related to Sri Lankan Tamils.  Modi swept to power with an overwhelming majority in May last year. His government has not allowed the Tamil Nadu parties to dictate foreign policy. Whereas the earlier government could not resolve domestic dilemmas and undertake bilateral visits at the highest level, the Modi government did.  While conducting relations with Sri Lanka, Modi in no way diluted India’s stated position on important issues. On the contrary the prime minister, throughout his visit to the island nation, forcefully articulated India’s concerns. It’s only on the basis of strong trust and continuous engagement at the highest level will India’s long term political, economic and maritime strategic interests be served. Not engaging at the highest level is no longer a policy option for Indian foreign policy. It will only result in other external political actors actively engaging with Sri Lanka, which in the long run is not beneficial for India.

This paper looks at some specific issues to bring this out.

 

Overcoming Domestic Dilemmas

 

 The former Indian prime minister Manmohan Singh after much debate did not attend the CHOGM (Commonwealth Heads of Government Meet) which took place in Sri Lanka in November 17-18, 2013. In October 2013, the Tamil Nadu assembly passed a unanimous resolution demanding that India completely boycott the meet in Sri Lanka and seek temporary suspension of the island nation from the Commonwealth till Tamils are given rights on par with the Sinhalese and are able to live freely. All political parties, including the Congress, had supported this resolution. They argued that participation would give legitimacy to the then Mahinda Rajapaksa government which they believed had carried out human rights violations in its war against the LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam). The then foreign secretary Sujatha Singh had said: “Foreign policy is an extension of domestic policy. It is meant to protect domestic interests and any decision that will be taken will be keeping in view the domestic interests, foreign policy and international obligations.” Finally the then external affairs minister Salman Kurshid participated.

 

 
In May 2014, when the SAARC (South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation) leaders were invited to attend the swearing-in-ceremony of Prime Minister Modi, the major political parties in Tamil Nadu once again criticised the decision. The Modi government however went ahead with the decision and all the SAARC leaders, including then president of Sri Lanka Mahinda Rajapaksa participated.
 

 

The ‘neighbourhood first’ policy of the Modi government, which he once again articulated in Sri Lanka by saying, “I am convinced that the future of any country is influenced by the state of its neighbourhood”, clearly implied engaging with the immediate neighbourhood at the highest level without compromising on India’s interests. The bilateral visit gave him an opportunity to address the Sri Lankan parliament and share his views on political, economic, maritime security issues concerning the two countries. He spoke of India’s own experience in centre-state relations. He said: “Today, my top priority is to make the states in India stronger. I am a firm believer in cooperative federalism. So, we are devolving more power and more resources to the states. And, we are making them formal partners in national decision making processes.”

Later in his media statement he said: “We stand with you in your efforts to build a future that accommodates the aspirations of all sections of society, including the Sri Lankan Tamil community, for a life of equality, justice, peace and dignity in a united Sri Lanka. We believe that early and full implementation of the 13th Amendment and going beyond it would contribute to this process.”

 

 He became the first Indian prime minister to visit Jaffna. He participated in the various rehabilitation activities being undertaken by India for the Sri Lankan Tamils. He now gave a ‘face’ to those activities. By being there, he once again championed their cause and India’s commitment to them. He further said, “For India, the unity and integrity of Sri Lanka are paramount. It is rooted in our interest. It stems from our own fundamental belief in this principle.” This statement would surely allay any fears from any quarters regarding India’s intentions.

 

 Other Issues

 

 A sense of realism too guided the complex fishermen’s issue where Modi was of the opinion that since it concerns livelihood and humanitarian concerns on both sides, the fishermen associations of both countries should meet and work out a mutually acceptable solution. Economic relations was also given focus. Modi while urging Sri Lankan businessmen to benefit from India’s growth story also agreed that the trade gap which is to India’s advantage needs to be addressed. He called for the early conclusion of the Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement.

 

Modi also spoke of how the Indian Ocean was critical to the security and prosperity of both the countries. He referred to the maritime security cooperation between India, Sri Lanka and Maldives and how it needs to be expanded. It is important to note here that in July 2013, these three countries had signed an agreement on Trilateral Cooperation on Maritime Security (TCMS) to address common maritime security threats and challenges and enhance security through cooperative measures. In March 2014, the third National Security Advisor- level Trilateral Maritime Security Cooperation was held in Delhi where delegations from Mauritius and Seychelles participated as guest countries. Meaningful maritime security cooperation with other countries is indeed of critical importance. However, it cannot work in isolation of the nature of bilateral relations India has with them. They need to be built on strong bilateral relations and Modi’s visit sought to achieve this.

 

 Looking Ahead

 

 The sensitive issues involved in India-Sri Lanka relations make it one of the most difficult bilateral relations for both the countries. However, it can become the most beneficial for both countries if constant engagement at the highest level takes place to build trust which helps in resolving issues. 

 

 China is an important factor in India–Sri Lanka relations. China has close economic, political and security relations with Sri Lanka which at many times is perceived as being detrimental to India’s security concerns. One of the mechanisms for India to safeguard its interests while Sri Lanka–China relations are carried out is by actively engaging at the highest level. Prime Minister Modi’s visit sought to exactly do this. In this context Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena’s bilateral visit to China from March 26 will be eagerly watched by India.

 

(G. Padmaja, a former UNIDIR (United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research) Visiting Research Fellow at the United Nations, Geneva, is presently an independent researcher writing on SAARC and India’s policy towards its immediate neighbours.  She is based in Visakhapatnam. She can be reached at: sri2003ja@yahoo.com)

 




1, Analysis, India, Sri Lanka











 

YEMEN - Eye on Sana’a

SOURCE:
http://www.msn.com/en-in/news/world/eye-on-sana%e2%80%99a/ar-AAamzZN






                                                 YEMEN - Eye on Sana’a

Saudi Arabia has got together with its inner circle of states in the Arab League to set things right in neighbouring Yemen, where a civil war is raging between a deposed president backed by Saudi Arabia and another president who was earlier deposed by it. Yemen’s own president has already run off to Riyadh. But there is a catch here.

 

The rebels include the Houthi tribe. They are called Shia but are actually Zaidi, which means they do not recognise the Twelve Imams of Iran because Imam Zaid was the son of the fourth Imam, which is where they end their confession. Iran is supporting the Houthis, backed by a split Sunni army in Yemen, which is also home to two other anti-Saudi killer outfits: al-Qaeda and the Islamic State. This means the Saudis are being squeezed in the south by more or less the same forces squeezing them from the north in Iraq.

 

Put Saudi Arabia together with the states of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), of which it is a member, and you have a clutch of very rich market states that can afford to spend on the Yemen invasion. They are target-killing the Houthis in Sana’a, Aden and elsewhere, without any “boots on the ground”. The big army of Egypt is on board, but the “biggest Muslim army of Pakistan” is not yet taking part.

 

 In Pakistan, no one supports participation in the invasion, forcing Islamabad to say Pakistan will go in if Saudi Arabia is invaded.

 

 

 

It is a tough decision not to go in and bomb the Iran-supported Houthis. Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, who is ruling Pakistan, was plucked out of prison in Karachi in 2000 —  where he was to serve a life sentence for having tried to kill his army chief, General Pervez Musharraf —  and given a comfortable life-in-exile in Saudi Arabia. Even earlier, when Nawaz faced sanctions for having tested a nuclear device in 1998, the kingdom had given him free oil for three years at the rate of $12 billion annually, which comes to a lot of money. In exile, Nawaz was able to restart his business in Saudi Arabia.

 

 

Saudi Arabia didn’t like socialist PM Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, who took Pakistan leftward. But it took to General Zia-ul-Haq, who hanged Bhutto and then Islamised Pakistan with a lot of Saudi money. Bhutto had built up Libya’s then President Muammar Gaddafi in opposition to the Saudi king during an Islamic summit in Lahore in 1974, thus taking sides in a polarised Arab world. The kingdom, thereafter, never really took to Bhutto’s Pakistan People’s Party and fawned on the right-wing Muslim League supported by the Pakistan army.

 

 

Zia rolled back Bhutto’s leftist legacy with hard Islam. Lucky for him, he had America and Saudi Arabia fighting on the same side in Afghanistan against the Soviet Union. That meant Iran had to be ignored. The Soviet invasion had coincided with the Islamic Revolution led by the anti-US Imam Khomeini, who had mauled the US embassy in Tehran and started destabilising the small states across the Gulf in 1979. Zia was strapped for cash after the Bhutto interregnum of bad economics. He just couldn’t be neutral.

 

 

In the 1990s, the Muslim League (Nawaz) and the PPP (Benazir) alternated in power, with the army calling the shots, cutting short their tenures and expanding into Afghanistan with American and Saudi money. In 1996, Pakistan put in place the dreaded Taliban government and recognised it. The world stood aside, but Saudi Arabia and the UAE went along with Pakistan. In 1998, the Taliban killed Iranian “diplomats” in Mazar-e-Sharif and invited Tehran’s wrath. Pakistan, thereafter, became the arena of “relocated” sectarian mayhem that has, today, forced the country into a popular stance of neutrality as the Arabs and Iranians take each other on.

 

 

MUST READ: Nearly 400 Indians to be evacuated from Yemen in second phase

 

 

By the time Musharraf was ousted in 2008, he had already upset the Saudis because of the way he had treated Nawaz. The PPP alternative was never to the kingdom’s liking. When the party came to power after Musharraf, it favoured the Iranian pipeline project because America had imposed sanctions on a “nuclearising” Iran and India had ducked out of it earlier. At the fag end of the PPP rule in 2013, its leader, Asif Ali Zardari, went to Tehran as president and signed an impossible deal with his Iranian counterpart, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad — Pakistan would build its side of the $7.6 billion pipeline or pay $200 million a month if it failed to buy Iranian gas by December 2014.

 

In 2013, Nawaz returned to power, but wisely didn’t say how hopeless the pipeline project was under the sanctions. Tehran wooed him by proposing to lend him money for his part of the project. It then waived the post-December 2014 fine. But nothing moved. What moved was new Iranian President Hassan Rouhani’s palm-bearing diplomacy and the newfound “heroic flexibility” of Ayatollah Khamenei, who produced the clinching fatwa that Islam forbade nuclear weapons. Washington and Europe (P5+1) bit the bait and put Saudi Arabia — and Israel — off, landing Pakistan in an awkward locus of two very hard places.

 

 

Pakistan was unstable and broke. Iran has the rial but not much of it, and under sanctions, that too is scarce. Saudi Arabia has the riyal too, but its supply is abundant.

 

The kingdom played its cards better than Iran. Proud Iranians had backed a restless Ahmadinejad, who needled the region with dubious adventure and saw his oil — which he didn’t refine —  come under sanctions. The kingdom, pragmatic and plugged into the global economy, was heavy with dollars and purse-proud. A measure of its power was experienced when it refused to cut production in 2014, during a demand slump and piled more hardship on Iran through tumbling prices. It funded the generals in Egypt and propped up a Pakistan that can’t say no, paralysed by terrorism.

 

 

 

 

© Provided by Indian Express A photo taken by an Indian expat of an airstrike in Sanaa. 



 

Pakistan is going to get into more trouble in Afghanistan unless it gets together with India to fight the post-withdrawal war there, which no one is going to win after the 3,00,000-strong Afghan National Army takes to its heels — and the Taliban, now anti-Pakistan, kills all the “empowered women” in Kabul and pushes millions more refugees into Pakistan.

 

 

India is now a bigger presence in Afghanistan than Pakistan, and the Afghans are clearly not too enamoured of Pakistan. Singly, India and Pakistan will both come to grief. But a mutually agreed upon plan of action against the Taliban can stop the Islamic State — which Afghan President Ashraf Ghani says is already in Afghanistan — from entering Pakistan on its way to India as the “Army of Khorasan”.

 

 

 

Both Saudi Arabia and Iran are equally important for South Asia. The GCC states give employment nearer home and are the only kinds of states that Muslims provisionally seem able to run well, if you can keep democracy away. If India and Pakistan act clever and coordinate their plan of action, they can benefit from the mushrooming manpower of South Asia.

 

 

 

The writer is consulting editor, ‘Newsweek Pakistan’

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

SOURCE:
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/31/opinion/the-price-of-damming-tibets-rivers.html?emc=edit_ty_20150331&nl=opinion&nlid=60529223&_r=0

               The Price of Damming Tibet’s Rivers

                                        By

                         MICHAEL BUCKLEY

MARCH 30, 2015

                       

                 

campaign: nyt2015_sharetools_mkt_opinion_47K78 -- 271975, creative: nyt2014_sharetools_mktg_opinion_47K78 -- 375123, page: www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/opinion/the-price-of-damming-tibets-rivers.html, targetedPage: www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/opinion, position: MiddleLeft

NEW DELHI — CHINA has more than 26,000 large dams, more than the rest of the world combined. They feed its insatiable demand for energy and supply water for mining, manufacturing and agriculture.

 

In 2011, when China was already generating more than a fifth of the total hydropower in the world, the leadership announced that it would aim to double the country’s hydropower capacity within a decade, so as to reduce its heavy dependency on coal-fired power plants. Since the waterways of mainland China are already packed with dams, this new hydropower output could come from only one place: the rivers of Tibet.

 

Rivers gushing through deep canyons at the edges of the Tibetan plateau hold the highest hydropower potential in the world. The headwaters of seven major rivers are in Tibet: They flow into the world’s largest deltas and spread in an arc across Asia.

Two of the continent’s wildest rivers have their sources in Tibet: the Salween and the Brahmaputra. Though they are under threat from retreating glaciers, a more immediate concern is Chinese engineering plans. A cascade of five large dams is planned for both the Salween, which now flows freely, and the Brahmaputra, where one dam is already operational.

The damming does not benefit those who live in Tibet. The energy generated is transferred to power-hungry industrial cities farther east. Tibetans are forcibly deprived of their land; protests against hydropower projects are prohibited or violently dispersed.


 

Even more alarming are projects to divert the waters of Tibet’s rivers for use in mines, factories and other industries. At the eastern edge of Tibet, a planned mega-diversion from south to north would move water from the Yangtze to the Yellow, China’s two greatest rivers. Other plans call for diversion of water from the Brahmaputra, Salween and Mekong — all rivers that cross national boundaries. Including China itself, up to two billion people downstream from Tibet depend on these rivers. Damming and diverting them will have a severe impact on their lives and environment, especially when you consider that rice and wheat require water-intensive cultivation.


 

Rivers support entire ecosystems. They carry tons of nutrient-rich silt downstream, a cocktail of elements needed for growing plants: nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, magnesium and calcium. Silt is essential for agriculture and for bolstering the deltas against rising sea levels. Dams block silt, and they block fish migration. The Yangtze is China’s biggest freshwater fishery, but since the Three Gorges Dam that spans it was completed in 2012, the downstream population of carp has fallen by 90 percent, according to Guo Qiaoyu of the Nature Conservancy in Beijing.

Vietnam, Cambodia and Bangladesh heavily depend on rivers sourced in Tibet. More than 60 percent of Cambodia’s annual fish catch derives from Tonle Sap, a lake that is replenished by the annual flooding of the Mekong. Over the last decade, as new Chinese dams have come online on the Mekong, the fish catch has plummeted. The waters rise and fall at the whim of Chinese engineers.

 

Then there are the direct human costs of damming and diverting: Whole communities must be relocated from areas flooded by a reservoir. They are often shifted to degraded land, where they live in poverty or have to relocate once again. By some estimates, hydropower projects have forced some 22 million Chinese to migrate since the 1950s.

 

In Tibet, since the 1990s, at least a million nomads and farmers — a sixth of the population — have been relocated from grasslands to make way for mining ventures and hydropower projects. These “ecological refugees” are shunted into ghettos. Moreover, China claims complete sovereignty over Tibet’s rivers, oblivious to protest from Tibetans and from the people downstream.

The United Nations has done too little, too late. In 2014, the Watercourses Convention came into effect, spelling out guidelines for transboundary water sharing, but it is nonbinding. More to the point, China is not a signatory — and neither are most nations of South Asia.

 

This will end badly for the nations downstream from Tibet, which are competing for scarce water. Damming and water diversion could also end badly for China, by destroying the sources of the Yangtze and Yellow Rivers.

The solution to these complex problems is simple: Since these enormous projects are state-run and state-financed, China’s leaders can cancel them at will. Though campaigns by Chinese environmentalists have stopped some dam projects, the pro-dam lobby, backed by Chinese consortiums, is powerful.

 There are alternatives to disrupting the rivers: China has made great investments in solar and wind power, but has not significantly deployed them in Tibet.

 

China’s leaders need to consider the costs of forging ahead with these projects. The health of these rivers is of vital concern to all of Asia.

 

Michael Buckley is the author of “Meltdown in Tibet: China’s Reckless Destruction of Ecosystems From the Highlands of Tibet to the Deltas of Asia.”

Gurgaon is no Smart City, it is an example of Failed Urbanisation

SOURCE:
http://www.msn.com/en-in/news/national/mr-jayant-sinha-gurgaon-is-no-smart-city-it-is-an-example-of-failed-urbanisation/ar-BBilzbB










GURGAON IN PARTICULR & HARYANA IN GENERAL HAS SCARCE WATER & RAPID URBANISATION IS BEING DEVELOPED ON UNRELIABLE CANAL SYSTEMS --A classical example of 'DISASTER'   IN MAKING-

                                                            Vasundhra






 Now read what     FirstPost has to say

Mr Minister Jayant Sinha,Gurgaon is no Smart City, it is an example of Failed Urbanisation

                                    By

                         K Yatish Rajawat

Firstpost

 

© Provided by Firstpost

There seems to be serious disconnect between reality and budgetary allocation for developing smart cities.

In a recent interview Jayant Sinha, Minister of state for Finance, when asked about the pittance of Rs 6,000 crore allocation for smart cities, had this to say, "There are many different ways of getting smart cities off the ground. If you look at Gurgaon, for example, and you ask how artfully and how strategically was it developed on the " 'PRIVATE' SIDE".

Gurgaon was certainly artfully developed so much so that the major business district did not have roads until very recently and that it does not have parking for thousands of cars that clog it every morning. Artfully? Yes, and it shows on top of every building with the large chimneys of diesel gensets jutting out from top of glass buildings.

Artfully developed indeed, with the complete absence of public transportation between commercial areas and residential. This has lead to heavy dependence on cabs pushing up costs for companies. It has also resulted in traffic jams and this, in turn, in loss of productivity.


It is so artfully developed that the city still has not connected hundreds of residential area to SewerageSystem.

The art in this development is so obvious that global visitors see these shiny buildings and dug up streets right in front.


If ever there was a failure of urban development,

 Gurgaon is a shiny example of it.



Now, let us consider the strategic part of Gurgaon development. Neither the government nor the private sector had a strategy in developing it whatsoever. The city happened as a result of GE deciding to set up its back office here. The Business process outsourcing (BPO) industry that mushroomed as a result attracted several other companies, none of which followed any strategy. They just followed GE.

If the honourable minister is referring to the strategy followed by the real estate developers then he must be joking. Almost every developer in the city has court cases going on with its tenants or buyers for failure to develop, deliver or hand over premises.

The lack of any strategy handing over development to the private sector has created such a mess of Gurgaon that companies are exiting the city. If this is a vision of development that the government has, then we are heading towards a doomsday scenario very fast.


The failure of urbanisation is the failure of the government to deliver. It is the failure of policies and it is the biggest sign of corruption. The abdication of the responsibility of the government is so clear and it is also the reason why the BJP lost the Delhi state.


Now the finance ministry seems to be again pushing the envelope for development of cities to the private sector. The real estate lobby would certainly rejoice at this manna from heaven, even politicians would be happy.
 As the biggest corruption emanates from land its conversion and by giving it away to the private sector.


Every commercial file for land conversion, building plan, completion certificate in Gurgaon used to be cleared by the Chief Ministers office. If the land rehabilitation bill has given ammunition to the opposition imagine what will be the reaction if the government was to handover the development of smart cities to the real estate lobby.

Expecting that the real estate sector will develop cities that are actually liveable and smart is expecting too much. The sector does not inspire very high expectations of trust or corporate governance from its customers.

The challenge is that if the government looks at a warped up model of Gurgaon where the state abdicated all responsibility for development on the private sector. Especially, at a time that the Ministry of Urban development is busy giving final touches to its urban renewal plan.

After the JNNURM there has been no funds allocated for cities, even states do not consider it important enough to allocate budgets for cities. Cities fall through the cracks when it comes to planning or development.

The only political party that doesn't have this gap is the AAP which is developing urban citizens as its core.

Technically, the urban renewal can be a mission for a longer term. Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission ...JNNURM had a seven-year term that was extended as the budget was not exhausted. It was the first time that several cities got funds for developing urban infrastructure, hope it is not the last.

The finance ministry has to keep this in mind while devising its urbanisation policies.

K Yatish Rajawat is a senior journalist and policy commentator based in Delhi. He tweets @yatishrajawat

In Rural India, Hoping for Jobs and Education in a Growing Economy

SOURCE:
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/16/opinion/in-rural-india-hoping-for-jobs-and-education-in-a-growing-economy.html?emc=edit_ty_20150316&nl=opinion&nlid=60529223


In Rural India, Hoping for Jobs and Education                       in a Growing Economy
                             By                                                                            
                CAROL GIACOMO                            

 

MARCH 16, 2015

                 

campaign: nyt2015_sharetools_mkt_opinion_47K78 -- 271975, creative: nyt2014_sharetools_mktg_opinion_47K78 -- 375123, page: www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/opinion/in-rural-india-hoping-for-jobs-and-education-in-a-growing-economy.html, targetedPage: www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/opinion, poBHESDA KHURD, India — To begin to understand the hurdles Prime Minister Narendra Modi faces in building India into an economic powerhouse and reducing extreme poverty, the rural village of Bhesda Khurd, about 45 minutes from the western city of Udaipur, is a good place to start.
 

It is here where Rohit Nagda, a 29-year-old computer software engineer, lives with his wife, a would-be teacher studying for a master’s degree, and his family. Though he has a degree in computer science from a local university and spent a two-year stint as a commercial web developer that ended last year, Mr. Nagda is losing hope. He has been applying online for web jobs at companies in distant Mumbai, India’s financial center, but has yet to find work.

Seated next to him on a mat in front of the local Hindu temple was Shankar Donge, 26, who runs a small pharmacy near the Udaipur airport but would rather work for a big pharmaceutical company where the benefits are better. “To get a good job, you need to move out of the village, but it’s not talent that gets you big jobs but jack,” he says, meaning political influence or a bribe. He adds that “very often you have to pay people to make the call” just to get a job referral.

Two-thirds of India’s more than 1.2 billion people are under the age of 35. Nowhere is the demand for jobs more acute, and the obstacles more formidable, than in rural areas that are home to more than 70 percent of India’s population, including the 450 households in this village.

In many ways, Mr. Nagda and his friends, who also went to college or technical school, are better off than those who live on the poorer side of the village, a 10-minute drive away. Mr. Nagda’s father helps run the water department at Hindustan Zinc, a local mining company. Most of their neighbors are farmers, and some own cows and goats. Others pick up itinerant work as migrants in Udaipur, or even Gujarat, an eight-hour bus ride away. In their neighborhood, there is a portion of a paved road and minimal drainage and electricity, and some houses are made of concrete. A few have toilets.

 

In the poorer section where lower-caste families live, there is no water piped to houses, which are mostly made of mud, less electricity and no paved road. The fondest wish of Sarjan Bai Jogi, mother of six children and grandmother of eight, is a house where “you don’t get wet when it rains,” she said through an interpreter.

 

We met on the shore of a small lake where her family has lived and worked for 60 years. They survive, barely, on fishing and jobs as laborers, stone crushers and cement mixers.

 Her youngest son is the most educated; he finished seventh grade.

Photo

Sarjan Bai Jogi Credit Carol A. Giacomo/The New York Times

Among several dozen other women I met in this hamlet, only one went as high as eighth grade; only one young man had a college degree. He was earning money as a part-time wedding photographer because he couldn’t find work in his field. In recent years, the village public school expanded from eight grades to 10. For now, students who want to finish 11th and 12th grades must travel to Udaipur, a hardship for many families who can’t afford the expense and fear for their daughters’ safety.
 

The expansion of education has made a difference in nationwide literacy rates. While very few villagers over age 60 have any formal education, more than 90 percent of the younger generation are attending primary school, according to Anirudh Krishna, a Duke University professor who has been doing research in this region for a decade and traveled with me to this village.

 But going on to high school and college remains rare.

 Fewer than 7 percent of Indians (only 4.4 percent of young adults in rural areas) have a college education, and,

 as Mr. Nagda discovered, even that is no guarantee of success.

 

For all of India’s advancement — it has one of the world’s fastest-growing economies — fewer than 10 percent of workers have regular jobs with legal protections and social security benefits and as much as 5 percent of the population falls into poverty every year, Mr. Krishna said. Mr. Modi’s plans for economic growth rest largely on wooing foreign investment, making India a global manufacturing hub and developing a defense industry. And he has set ambitious goals, including building 40 million rural homes with toilets by 2022.

 

Economic expansion will mean millions of people moving from the countryside to the cities, as it has been in most countries, including China. But India is a nation of villages, with a population that has survived for decades on government handouts, without real opportunities for jobs or a way out of grinding poverty.
 

I asked the women of Bhesda Khurd if they thought a future Indian prime minister could come from their village. Mr. Modi, after all, rose to power from the lowly rung of a tea seller.

“Yes,” one woman replied, “if there is education and hard work.”

   

A version of this editorial appears in print on March 16, 2015, on page A18 of the New York edition with the headline: In Rural India, Hoping for Jobs and Education in a Growing Economy.

















 

Governance in India: Corruption

Source:
http://www.cfr.org/corruption-and-bribery/governance-india-corruption/p31823?cid=nlc-dailybrief-daily_news_brief--link18-20150311&sp_mid=48201607&sp_rid=YmN2YXN1bmRocmFAaG90bWFpbC5jb20S1




                                                         

                                                                   

 

             Governance in India: Corruption

                         Author: Beina Xu
                   Updated: September 4, 2014

Introduction

With a booming economy throughout the 2000s, India was touted as one of the most promising major emerging markets. But that breakneck growth sputtered to a decade low in 2012, with many observers pointing to the corrosive effect of endemic corruption—including a spate of scandals under former prime minister Manmohan Singh—as a culprit. Perhaps more than India's weak currency and rising inflation, the graft problem has undermined institutions and thwarted efforts to reduce poverty and catalyze sustainable growth in the world's largest democracy. Public revelations of corruption, including major scandals in the telecommunications and coal industry, have galvanized a rising middle class with increased demands for better governance. The tide has spurred new political movements, and forced the government to address transparency and marshal reforms.

The Roots of Corruption

Corruption in India can be traced back to the country's colonial past, analysts say. The British Raj period, beginning in 1858, excluded Indian citizens from political participation by dividing the country into districts with provincial governments controlled by a commissioner. The 1923 Official Secrets Act made it an offense for officials to reveal state information to citizens, ostensibly to protect military and government intelligence.


After India gained independence in 1947, the new regime implemented heavy economic regulations intended to develop domestic markets; the 1951 Industries Act, for instance, required all new industrial operations to obtain a license from the central government. The policy limited foreign investment and stifled competition, and bribery became part and parcel of doing business. The period up to 1991 was dubbed the "License Raj" as a result of the government's excessive oversight of the economy. The poor often suffered most from the widespread corruption, which diverted large amounts of public revenue intended for public works, aid, and social welfare programs.


"Historically, the roots of India's corruption came from the proliferation of licenses," said former CFR Senior Fellow for International Economics Jagdish Bhagwati. "The idea was to ensure economical use of resources, so you would not waste foreign exchanges. To this day, this is what Indians have been very aware of: that the institution of licenses and permits was responsible for creating corruption on a massive scale."


The first major law to combat government malfeasance was the Prevention of Corruption Act (PCA) of 1947, enacted to prevent officials from cashing in on postwar reconstruction funding. Parliament also established the Anticorruption Bureau in 1961 to investigate violations of the PCA, which has since been amended twice (most recently in 1988). The latest revision was a direct response to the late-1980s Bofors scandal, in which then prime minister Rajiv Gandhi and other politicians were accused of receiving large kickbacks in a weapons bid from Swedish arms company Bofors. Many observers considered the scandal to be a main reason the Gandhi-led Congress Party was voted out of power in 1989.


Under the PCA, bribery is punishable by a fine and up to five years imprisonment. But many analysts believe India's sprawling bureaucracy and weak institutions—the police and judiciary were ranked as the second and third most corrupt institutions in India, respectively, after political parties—have thwarted convictions, and arguably increased incentives for bribery. In recent years, graft pervaded society from small-scale "harassment bribes" (payments for essential social services) to scandals on a national level. At least 42 percent of young Indians have paid a bribe, according to a 2012 Hindustan survey.


"There's been corruption in India for thousands of years—it's endemic—but what you see is the kind of corruption changing," says Milan Vaishnav, a South Asia associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "In the past two decades, there's been a shift toward grand corruption: the recent scandals are just qualitatively and quantitatively bigger than anything we've seen. And a big reason for that is India's rapid growth. Growth has expanded the possibilities for rent-seeking."


A 2011 report from KPMG stated that 68 percent [PDF] of India's total illicit capital loss happened after the country's economic liberalization in 1991, indicating that the reform and rise of India's economy has contributed to the transfer of "black money" abroad.

 

A Spiraling Problem

In 2013, India ranked ninety-fourth out of 176 countries in Transparency International's Corruption Perception Index, alongside Mongolia and Colombia and below neighbors like China and Sri Lanka. The country has steadily slipped since ranking seventy-second of 179 in 2007, when the report debuted. Several recent high-profile scandals have underscored the extent of the problem. In 2010, allegations emerged surrounding the gross misallocation of funds at the Commonwealth Games, which cost almost eighteen times its budget estimate. Reports surfaced of shoddy infrastructure and financial irregularities regarding contracts, and the scandal led to the resignation of two senior Congress Party members and other government officials. The Central Vigilance Commission cited the total misappropriation of funds to be around $1.8 billion.

"There's been corruption in India for thousands of years—it's endemic—but what you see is the kind of corruption changing." —Milan Vaishnav, Carnegie Endowment

Soon after, controversy mired the government again when an auditor's report uncovered a massive telecom scam estimated to have cost the government some $39 billion, making it one of the largest cases of state corruption in Indian history. Telecom minister Andimuthu Raja, accused of orchestrating the sale of licenses below market value, resigned in 2010. (He was arrested in 2011, and was out on bail as of late 2013.) During the affair, outraged opposition parties shut down parliament for three weeks and prompted massive protests in Delhi.


Public anger escalated when the 2012 "Coalgate" scandal, in which an estimated $34 billion was lost, implicated the prime minister himself. The breadth of corruption has even touched the U.S. government, as cables released in 2011 by Wikileaks revealed that a Congress Party aide allegedly showed a U.S. diplomat chests of cash intended as a bribe to secure Parliament's endorsement of a controversial 2008 U.S.-India nuclear deal.

The Fallout From Corruption

Public outrage peaked by the spring of 2011. A social activist named Anna Hazare emerged as a prominent organizer of the anticorruption movement, vowing a "fast unto death" unless the government established a new anticorruption agency (Lokpal) to review complaints at the highest level. Thousands of citizens took to his cause, and the United Progressive Alliance (UPA)–led government announced in August that it would form a committee to draft the law. After stalling for months in Parliament, India's lower house finally passed the bill in mid-December 2013 with both Congress and BJP's support, ending Hazare's nine-day hunger strike in a rare show of unity.

"In the end, the corruption in India is of a form that undermines growth in our institutions. It's a very expensive way to be corrupt." —Jagdish Bhagwati, Council on Foreign Relations

Mounting graft has stirred not only domestic worries, but has also tarnished the country's image among international investors. Since 1947, India has lost hundreds of billions of dollars in illegal capital flows (tax evasion, corruption, bribery, kickbacks, etc.), and was ranked 134th of 189 countries in the World Bank's 2014 Doing Business Report. At Davos in 2013, NGOs warned that the hefty investment needed for India's infrastructure development could breed more corruption.


Some experts note that while there isn't necessarily a direct correlation between corruption levels and India's economic health, the nature of the graft has been corrosive to its growth. "The way corruption has been practiced in India has been particularly harmful," says Bhagwati, who contrasts India's rent-creating corruption, which carves out monopolies for cronies, with China's profit-sharing system, which takes an interest in growth. "In the end, the corruption in India is of a form that undermines growth in our institutions. It's a very expensive way to be corrupt."

 

Campaigning for Reform

As India's economy slowed, successive revelations of graft exacerbated public outrage at the inability of the former Congress-led government to mitigate corruption. In turn, the country saw an uptick of anticorruption rhetoric ahead of state elections in November and December 2013. The Aam Aadmi Party, led by activist Arvin Kejriwal, emerged as a new political party that got its start on an anticorruption platform, while the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) also emphasized good governance. Meanwhile, Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, who leads one of India's poorest states, Bihar, also won accolades for his success in emphasizing good governance.


"What is new and politically relevant has been, in response to citizen outrage, the rise of parties explicitly focusing on governance," says CFR's Alyssa Ayres. "And most importantly, the transformation of campaigning from a mode that focused on a language of empowerment with an appeal to caste, to one focusing on good governance and delivering services to citizens."


The BJP championed the clean track record of its leader Narendra Modi, whose reform efforts as chief minister of Gujarat, made his home state a key driver of national economic growth, and who went on to win the 2014 national election. Yet corruption remains rife in India's political landscape. In 2012, criminal cases were pending against 31 percent of members of parliament and the legislative assembly. Campaign spending limits are low, driving expenditure underground and fostering reliance on "black money." Many experts also point to Indian voters' complex relationship with corruption; research from a wide range of states finds that political candidates often promote their criminality as an indication of their ability to defend the interests of their communities.



 

Prospects for Progress

India's government has made a few attempts at the federal level to combat corruption. The 2005 Right to Information Act allows citizens to request access to any public record and, if approved, receive it within thirty days. The law, which can penalize noncompliance and requires authorities to digitize records, has been hailed as a pivotal achievement in the fight against corruption. The government is also considering moves to strengthen the national antigraft law [PDF], potentially introducing changes that would punish corporate failure to prevent bribery.

"What is new and politically relevant has been, in response to citizen outrage, the rise of parties explicitly focusing on governance." —Alyssa Ayres, Council on Foreign Relations

An increasingly activist judiciary has also taken a stronger stance against corruption; in early 2011, the Supreme Court asked all trial courts in the country to fast-track corruption cases. The next year, it limited the amount of time the government had to decide whether or not to prosecute a public official for corruption. And in July 2013, the top court ruled that it was illegal for politicians convicted of crimes to continue holding office, although, in a highly controversial move, Singh's cabinet withdrew the decree in October. Modi announced in an August 2014 speech that his government will initiate tough initiatives to battle corruption, likening the problem to a "disease."


Technology has also helped. Some states like Gujarat have implemented online systems for state contract bids, allowing for greater transparency. Others have also put land records and death certificates online, while websites like IPaidaBribe.com expose graft associated with common public services. The government is also devising an electronic ID system, which would allow poor citizens to avoid intermediaries and receive aid directly through a bank account.



But technology can only do so much, says Jennifer Bussell, assistant professor of public policy at the University of California, Berkeley. Bussell notes that technology's most important contribution has been granting citizens greater access to information. "Some combination of administrative reforms and local-level technology initiatives to help bring corruption to light—in addition to efforts by organizations like the Comptroller and Auditor General, which is exposing corruption at the highest levels of government—would help. You need all of these things."

Additional Resources

Transparency International India offers statistics and reports about the current state of corruption in India.

Accountability Initiative offers reports and policy briefs using publicly-available data collected from the Right to Information Act.

This CMS India Corruption Study [PDF] breaks down corruption statistics by state and public service.

 

This U4 Anticorruption Resource Center report gives an overview of India's corruption problem and efforts to address reform.

This Fair Observer article asks whether computerization of public service transactions could help curb petty corruption in India.

More on this topic from CFR

• India's Fight Against Corruption
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• Corruption Threatens India's Growth
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• Getting Corruption Right
  Author: Jagdish N. Bhagwati

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