- 13 Jun 2005 01:39
#660127
India: A Failed State
by Ravi Shanker Kapoor
Political commentators in India are fond of calling Pakistan a “failed state,†given the havoc wrought by uncontrollable jihadis in our neighboring country. Few Indians, however, are willing to admit that their own country is hurtling towards anarchy. While Leftwing extremist violence and Islamic terror are rising at an alarming pace, the Indian state and the intellectual class refuse to even recognize the existence of any serious threat.
Military help was sought on May 18 against Naxals, the Leftwing extremists, to rescue senior police officials in the central Indian state of Chhatisgarh. Quoting Union Home Ministry officials, The Indian Express (May 20, 2005) reported that “Naxals carried out a series of coordinated attacks on two police outposts adjoining the Abujmarh Hills...They had also laid land mines along the exit and entry points,†trapping the senior officials who had rushed to the spot. “Ministry officials said that the Naxals wanted to loot arms and ammunition from the police. Ten policemen were injured in the attack.†That Leftwing extremism has assumed alarming proportions becomes evident from the fact that it was the first time that a military helicopter was used in anti-Naxal operations.
Hardly a day passes when the media does not inform us about killings by the various Naxalite groups. According to expert estimates, Naxal influence has spread from 55 districts in nine states in October 2003 to more than 150 in 13 states (in India, there are 602 districts).
Peace talks with the Naxalites in Andhra Pradesh -- the southern coastal state where Leftwing extremism is six decades old and is very strong -- ended unsuccessfully on April 4. Right from the beginning -- that is, October 2004, when the talks began -- there were doubts about any meaningful outcome.
State police chiefs met on November 4 last year. A news report in The Indian Express quoted the police chief of Chattisgarh, a state in central India, OP Rathore as saying, “Actually, there is nothing to talk. These people are ruthless. They are killing poor and innocent people and indulging in extortion.â€
According to Rathore, “The country has never witnessed internal insurgency of this extent, spread over such a large geographical area. And what we see is only the tip of the iceberg. Tough measures are required to tackle it.†Another senior police official was quoted: “It is alarming the way Naxalites are spreading their activities, right from the Nepal border down to parts of Kerala now. New mergers are happening… Foreign elements are supporting them.†The police chief of Uttaranchal, a northern state, Kanchan Chaudhary, wanted her state to be included in the list of Naxal-infested states.
Naxal violence is not the only threat India faces; there is also demographic invasion from Bangladesh, which is linked with Islamic terror.
On April 16, 2005, an assistant commandant of India’s Border Security Force (BSF), Jeevan Kumar, along with a BSF soldier, went to the Akhaura Border checkpost in the Indian State of Tripura to seek a meeting with Bangladesh Rifles (BDR) officials, following a report that an Indian national had been abducted by Bangladeshi miscreants. But it was a trap to ensnare Kumar, who had proved effective in checking smuggling and illegal immigration of Bangladesh nationals. He was tortured and murdered in cold blood. His subordinate was also tortured and left for dead, but he survived to tell the tale.
Exactly four years earlier, on April 16, 2001, as many as 16 BSF personnel were similarly murdered in the Boroibari area of the Mankachar sector bordering the Indian state of Meghalaya. The bodies of some BSF men were tied onto bamboo poles, in the fashion that killed beasts of prey are tied, and paraded through the villages. Photographs of slain soldiers appeared prominently in all newspapers.
The two instances are part of a pattern: Bangladesh’s espousal of lebensraum policy to push its nationals to India and its promotion of the Islamist cause. In an interview with rediff.com, Lt Gen SK Sinha (Retd), former governor of the Indian state of Assam bordering Bangladesh, said in July 2000, “Even a friend of India like Sheikh Mujibur Rehman [father of Bangladesh, erstwhile known as East Pakistan] wrote in his book that East Pakistan should be given more space and the mineral wealth of Assam for his people to improve their lot. And in the 1990s, intellectuals in Dhaka began talking about lebensraum, which in German means living space, and they have been targeting Assam and the northeast. They have even been saying that with globalization, you have free movement of goods across international boundaries. There should also be free movement of labor, which means movement of population.â€
Dhaka also believes in another kind of globalization: spreading Islamic terror in the entire region. In an article in South Asia Intelligence Review, Ajai Sahni and Bibhu Prasad Routray wrote, “Bangladesh has long supported terrorist organizations operating in India’s Northeast; Dhaka has been complicit in the massive demographic invasion and destabilization of India’s East and Northeast; BDR personnel have disrupted every Indian effort to construct a fence along the border by firing on the workers and BSF personnel engaged in this task; Bangladesh has emerged as the primary source of illegal arms and explosives for virtually every insurgent and criminal operation all along India’s East and Northeast; and the BDR supports a wide range of smuggling and criminal operations along the border.â€
The response of the political class to growing Naxalite violence and Islamic terror has been, to put it mildly, pusillanimous. After observing the ritual of lodging a “strong protest†with Dhaka over the killing of Kumar, India’s national security adviser MK Narayanan directed the BSF to “exercise restraint.†Similarly, the federal government, which depends on the crucial support of the Left Front from outside, continues to oscillate between tough talk and reconciliatory posturing in its response to the Naxalites.
However, it is not only the incumbent United Progressive Alliance government that has behaved in an abject manner in its dealing with the threats to the nation. Even the earlier regime of the National Democratic Alliance (1998-2004), which was accused of being jingoistic and anti-Muslim, ended up appeasing Bangladesh by refusing to bring the culprits to justice. The real factor behind the NDA’s, and now the UPA’s, capitulation was the fear of losing Muslim votes. Besides, there was the fear of getting targeted as anti-Muslim by the intellectual class. Not surprisingly, in the words of Sahni and Routray, “the then Union Home Secretary [during the NDA regime] went so far as to inform the media that it was ‘a unilateral action by the BDR troops and Government of Bangladesh was not aware of it.’ The fact that Dhaka chose to take no action against the guilty -- and that it has till now taken no such action -- has not deterred the pronouncements of Delhi’s political and bureaucratic illusionists.â€
The illusionists are not confined to the political and bureaucratic circles; the intellectual class is not far behind. Some of the issues which engage our experts, scholars, and media brahmins are: when would India become a developed country, how to build an Indian century, when would we achieve the superpower status. When Prime Minister Singh was chosen to speak for Asia at the recently concluded Bandung conference of Asian and African countries, intellectuals started celebrating. The choice of Singh to speak for Asia was called “yet more evidence of India’s rising eminence on the global stage†by The Times Of India. The rest of the media was no less ecstatic.
This is not to suggest that there are no grounds for optimism. India registered 6.9 percent growth in 2004-05; this fiscal year, the GDP growth is projected to be in the region of 7.5 percent. Industry grew by 8 percent in the last fiscal year, and the high growth rate is expected to continue in 2005-06. Similarly, many other indicators -- exports, foreign exchange reserves, etc. -- are also encouraging. A major concern, however, is spiraling government expenditure; this is mainly a legacy of socialism, which molded economic policy till 1991. On the face of it, the economy appears to be sufficiently resilient; but such resilience is because of private enterprise and robust values of Indian society; as the Indian state retreated from the economic arena after the economic reforms of 1991, the creative forces of Indian society filled in the gaps, giving rise to a veritable feel-good factor in the economy.
But politics is different from economy: if the state does not deliver in the economic arena, it can just withdraw; but it cannot give up its primary duties of maintaining law and order and protecting the nation. The Indian state has failed not in just its peripheral functions -- like running government-owned businesses -- but also in its primary duties.
But the political and intellectual illusionists refuse to see such failures of the Indian state; instead they keep pontificating about the need to make India a permanent member of the UN Security Council, given its “rising eminence on the global stage.†It is another matter that the aspiring superpower meekly watches the slaughter of its soldiers.
Source
by Ravi Shanker Kapoor
Political commentators in India are fond of calling Pakistan a “failed state,†given the havoc wrought by uncontrollable jihadis in our neighboring country. Few Indians, however, are willing to admit that their own country is hurtling towards anarchy. While Leftwing extremist violence and Islamic terror are rising at an alarming pace, the Indian state and the intellectual class refuse to even recognize the existence of any serious threat.
Military help was sought on May 18 against Naxals, the Leftwing extremists, to rescue senior police officials in the central Indian state of Chhatisgarh. Quoting Union Home Ministry officials, The Indian Express (May 20, 2005) reported that “Naxals carried out a series of coordinated attacks on two police outposts adjoining the Abujmarh Hills...They had also laid land mines along the exit and entry points,†trapping the senior officials who had rushed to the spot. “Ministry officials said that the Naxals wanted to loot arms and ammunition from the police. Ten policemen were injured in the attack.†That Leftwing extremism has assumed alarming proportions becomes evident from the fact that it was the first time that a military helicopter was used in anti-Naxal operations.
Hardly a day passes when the media does not inform us about killings by the various Naxalite groups. According to expert estimates, Naxal influence has spread from 55 districts in nine states in October 2003 to more than 150 in 13 states (in India, there are 602 districts).
Peace talks with the Naxalites in Andhra Pradesh -- the southern coastal state where Leftwing extremism is six decades old and is very strong -- ended unsuccessfully on April 4. Right from the beginning -- that is, October 2004, when the talks began -- there were doubts about any meaningful outcome.
State police chiefs met on November 4 last year. A news report in The Indian Express quoted the police chief of Chattisgarh, a state in central India, OP Rathore as saying, “Actually, there is nothing to talk. These people are ruthless. They are killing poor and innocent people and indulging in extortion.â€
According to Rathore, “The country has never witnessed internal insurgency of this extent, spread over such a large geographical area. And what we see is only the tip of the iceberg. Tough measures are required to tackle it.†Another senior police official was quoted: “It is alarming the way Naxalites are spreading their activities, right from the Nepal border down to parts of Kerala now. New mergers are happening… Foreign elements are supporting them.†The police chief of Uttaranchal, a northern state, Kanchan Chaudhary, wanted her state to be included in the list of Naxal-infested states.
Naxal violence is not the only threat India faces; there is also demographic invasion from Bangladesh, which is linked with Islamic terror.
On April 16, 2005, an assistant commandant of India’s Border Security Force (BSF), Jeevan Kumar, along with a BSF soldier, went to the Akhaura Border checkpost in the Indian State of Tripura to seek a meeting with Bangladesh Rifles (BDR) officials, following a report that an Indian national had been abducted by Bangladeshi miscreants. But it was a trap to ensnare Kumar, who had proved effective in checking smuggling and illegal immigration of Bangladesh nationals. He was tortured and murdered in cold blood. His subordinate was also tortured and left for dead, but he survived to tell the tale.
Exactly four years earlier, on April 16, 2001, as many as 16 BSF personnel were similarly murdered in the Boroibari area of the Mankachar sector bordering the Indian state of Meghalaya. The bodies of some BSF men were tied onto bamboo poles, in the fashion that killed beasts of prey are tied, and paraded through the villages. Photographs of slain soldiers appeared prominently in all newspapers.
The two instances are part of a pattern: Bangladesh’s espousal of lebensraum policy to push its nationals to India and its promotion of the Islamist cause. In an interview with rediff.com, Lt Gen SK Sinha (Retd), former governor of the Indian state of Assam bordering Bangladesh, said in July 2000, “Even a friend of India like Sheikh Mujibur Rehman [father of Bangladesh, erstwhile known as East Pakistan] wrote in his book that East Pakistan should be given more space and the mineral wealth of Assam for his people to improve their lot. And in the 1990s, intellectuals in Dhaka began talking about lebensraum, which in German means living space, and they have been targeting Assam and the northeast. They have even been saying that with globalization, you have free movement of goods across international boundaries. There should also be free movement of labor, which means movement of population.â€
Dhaka also believes in another kind of globalization: spreading Islamic terror in the entire region. In an article in South Asia Intelligence Review, Ajai Sahni and Bibhu Prasad Routray wrote, “Bangladesh has long supported terrorist organizations operating in India’s Northeast; Dhaka has been complicit in the massive demographic invasion and destabilization of India’s East and Northeast; BDR personnel have disrupted every Indian effort to construct a fence along the border by firing on the workers and BSF personnel engaged in this task; Bangladesh has emerged as the primary source of illegal arms and explosives for virtually every insurgent and criminal operation all along India’s East and Northeast; and the BDR supports a wide range of smuggling and criminal operations along the border.â€
The response of the political class to growing Naxalite violence and Islamic terror has been, to put it mildly, pusillanimous. After observing the ritual of lodging a “strong protest†with Dhaka over the killing of Kumar, India’s national security adviser MK Narayanan directed the BSF to “exercise restraint.†Similarly, the federal government, which depends on the crucial support of the Left Front from outside, continues to oscillate between tough talk and reconciliatory posturing in its response to the Naxalites.
However, it is not only the incumbent United Progressive Alliance government that has behaved in an abject manner in its dealing with the threats to the nation. Even the earlier regime of the National Democratic Alliance (1998-2004), which was accused of being jingoistic and anti-Muslim, ended up appeasing Bangladesh by refusing to bring the culprits to justice. The real factor behind the NDA’s, and now the UPA’s, capitulation was the fear of losing Muslim votes. Besides, there was the fear of getting targeted as anti-Muslim by the intellectual class. Not surprisingly, in the words of Sahni and Routray, “the then Union Home Secretary [during the NDA regime] went so far as to inform the media that it was ‘a unilateral action by the BDR troops and Government of Bangladesh was not aware of it.’ The fact that Dhaka chose to take no action against the guilty -- and that it has till now taken no such action -- has not deterred the pronouncements of Delhi’s political and bureaucratic illusionists.â€
The illusionists are not confined to the political and bureaucratic circles; the intellectual class is not far behind. Some of the issues which engage our experts, scholars, and media brahmins are: when would India become a developed country, how to build an Indian century, when would we achieve the superpower status. When Prime Minister Singh was chosen to speak for Asia at the recently concluded Bandung conference of Asian and African countries, intellectuals started celebrating. The choice of Singh to speak for Asia was called “yet more evidence of India’s rising eminence on the global stage†by The Times Of India. The rest of the media was no less ecstatic.
This is not to suggest that there are no grounds for optimism. India registered 6.9 percent growth in 2004-05; this fiscal year, the GDP growth is projected to be in the region of 7.5 percent. Industry grew by 8 percent in the last fiscal year, and the high growth rate is expected to continue in 2005-06. Similarly, many other indicators -- exports, foreign exchange reserves, etc. -- are also encouraging. A major concern, however, is spiraling government expenditure; this is mainly a legacy of socialism, which molded economic policy till 1991. On the face of it, the economy appears to be sufficiently resilient; but such resilience is because of private enterprise and robust values of Indian society; as the Indian state retreated from the economic arena after the economic reforms of 1991, the creative forces of Indian society filled in the gaps, giving rise to a veritable feel-good factor in the economy.
But politics is different from economy: if the state does not deliver in the economic arena, it can just withdraw; but it cannot give up its primary duties of maintaining law and order and protecting the nation. The Indian state has failed not in just its peripheral functions -- like running government-owned businesses -- but also in its primary duties.
But the political and intellectual illusionists refuse to see such failures of the Indian state; instead they keep pontificating about the need to make India a permanent member of the UN Security Council, given its “rising eminence on the global stage.†It is another matter that the aspiring superpower meekly watches the slaughter of its soldiers.
Source
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