Vote for progress in state polls

PRAN Nath Haksar, late Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s principal secretary, told me soon after assuming office that he would see to it that state elections were held separately from that of the Lok Sabha.

Until then both were being held simultaneously. A voter was given a ballot paper for the Lok Sabha poll and another for the particular state at the same polling booth. Haksar’s reasoning was that the Lok Sabha election, reflecting the country’s thinking, should be fought on national issues and the one in the states on local issues. He succeeded in separating the two elections and they were held at different periods. But he failed to keep the issues separate. National, regional and local issues continued to be intermingled.

During state elections, political parties in the opposition would use acts of omission and commission of the ruling party at the centre. There was no delineation as Haksar wanted. All of a sudden, things have changed. Elections in five states — Delhi, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Mizoram and Rajasthan — have been fought on local issues. Had Haksar been alive, he would have seen his dream come true.

The terrorist attack on Mumbai was a national issue. The television channels showed the operation for 69 hours without even a commercial break. People were horrified all over the country and felt let down by the central government led by the Congress.Yet the Congress government was returned to power in Delhi. Polling was held on a day when the Mumbai attack saga was still ongoing. The Congress won 42 against the Bharatiya Janata Party’s 23. In the same way, it also wrested Rajasthan from the BJP although the state went to polls after the Mumbai attack. In fact, the Congress increased its seats to 96 from 56.

It is true that the BJP politicised the terrorist attack and suggested that the Manmohan Singh government was not competent enough to face terrorism. Chief Minister Narendra Modi of Gujarat was brought to Delhi and Rajasthan to mix terrorism with parochialism, a set line of his party, the BJP. Still the voters did not flinch from their resolve to return the Congress to power.

No doubt the BJP’s casual attitude towards the demand for national unity went against it. L.K. Advani, the party’s top leader, did not attend the all-party meeting convened by the prime minister to consider steps to confront the situation that the Mumbai carnage had created. Instead, Advani went to Rajasthan for an election campaign. People may have found him indulging in politics at a time that required national unity. There is no evidence that the Mumbai attack weighed with the voter.

In all the five states local issues were in the forefront and they made all the difference. The voter assessed whether the party in power had built schools, roads or health centres. The BJP had a landslide victory in Madhya Pradesh — 142 seats in the 230-member house — because Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chauhan stuck to the development agenda. True, Congress stalwarts fought among themselves and saw to it that candidates of their rivals within the party were not returned. Yet, the state’s progress counted with the electorate.

In the same way, the BJP retained power in Chhattisgarh because Chief Minister Raman Singh worked to ameliorate the conditions of the lower half. He sold rice at Rs3 a kilo and earned the title of chawal baba. Congress expected to do well but, again, infighting was its undoing. The party could have done better but in contrast to the simple Raman Singh, it appeared too pompous. He retained the same number, 50, which the party won in the last election.

Four out of five states have falsified the old notion that the incumbency factor works against the party in power. The voter has let it be known through the ballot that it is economic betterment that matters, not slogans or rhetoric. It is heartening for India that the voter has become mature over the years. He or she knows that elections are a time to show admiration or indignation. With every election the roots of democracy get deeper and stronger.

Caste and religion, ineluctable factors in Indian elections, have swayed people but this time far less than before. The Hindutva card played by the BJP did not yield results, the state’s economic development did. The Bahujan Samaj Party headed by Mayawati did not make much of a showing by consolidating the Dalits at the lowest rung of the society. Does it mean that the nation has come to retrieve its ethos of pluralism? Yes, to some extent. But progress is still pitched in favour of the upper half. The minorities too are beginning to benefit.

Are the polls in the five states a semi-final? Perhaps not but they reflect the thinking of the voter. State elections project a sample survey. Some 15 per cent of the country’s electorate went to the polls covering 79 Lok Sabha seats in a house of 545. This sample survey, four to five months ahead of the Lok Sabha elections, has set political parties thinking.

The communists have won three seats in Rajasthan but are worried about why they are not making any inroads in the Hindi-speaking states. The Samajwadi Party, headed by Mulayam Singh Yadav, is disappointed that the Muslims have not cast their vote en bloc in its favour. The SP’s main strength has been the Muslims who, after getting disillusioned with Congress, went to Mulayam Singh. However, leaving aside the BJP and Congress, the other parties have polled 15 per cent of the votes.

Real stocktaking has to be carried out by the BJP and the Congress. The success or failure of both has been 50-50. Their complaint of intrigues from within is nothing new. They will face the same situation in the Lok Sabha election. Where they can make up is in disseminating new thoughts and putting up new faces. Both parties are, however, stuck in the same mould and refuse to pass on the baton to the younger generation. Congress does not gather mass through projecting a dynastic chain. The party won hands down in Mizoram — 32 seats in a house of 40 — because it fielded new candidates.

Meanwhile, relations between India and Pakistan are worsening day by day and they are going to affect the political scenario. The statement from Pakistan that India could be allowed to interrogate persons detained in Pakistan is an opening. This is more than any previous government has conceded. Can’t we begin from that? We have something with which to break the ice and avert threats of hostilities. A democratic government, however weak, is always a better bet.

The writer is a leading journalist based in Delhi.

What war means

CURRENT affairs programmes on television are providing a lot of entertainment these days. A number of anchors and commentators on various channels are talking about the threat of war but not about the dark reality of conflict.

Some have talked about how, in the event of hostilities intensifying, Pakistan could push the nuclear button, thus putting the onus of not adding to tensions on India. It is believed that because of the nuclear factor, New Delhi did not carry out a pre-emptive strike and would not do so.

Nuclear deterrence seems to have worked for both countries so far. While Pakistan withdrew its forces from Kargil due to the threat of escalating hostilities, India did not go beyond lining up its forces during the 2001-2002 stand-off. However, the caution the two nuclear neighbours have exhibited in the past does not mean that there is no threat of an inadvertent rise in nuclear-related tensions.

The security establishments of India and Pakistan backed by their respective media are behaving cautiously but the tone is aggressive. Even if a full-scale war has been avoided, unfortunate incidents in the future cannot be ruled out. The Indian Air Force avenged the death of its pilots and the embarrassment faced in Kargil by shooting down a Pakistan Navy Atlantique aircraft with several personnel on board. In any case, right-wing elements and the security establishments of both countries have managed to scuttle the peace process and the people-to-people dialogue for the foreseeable future.

The argument on the Indian side is that contact between people didn’t stop the Pakistani establishment from allowing terrorist strikes in Mumbai (assuming that Pakistan is involved in the incident). New Delhi would like to discourage people-to-people contact. This is a soft sanction which would not benefit the two countries in the long term. If India does claim to have a long-term plan of becoming a significant regional state, it would have to connect with other states in the region. Shutting down borders would not explain the trauma to the rest of the region or the world.

Hard moves, of course, would mean military measures such as attacking training camps inside Pakistan’s territory. India lost the window of opportunity to attack by also losing the element of surprise. Some analysts argue that it could still attack in order to raise Pakistan’s costs of supporting terrorism and conduct surgical strikes. Delhi might not be able to find the real target but the collateral damage would be an expression of its willingness to escalate tensions.

Our analysts claim that we are ready to push the nuclear button if confronted with such adverse action. The possible scenario is that Pakistan would respond to any surgical strike by India by deploying its own forces that would elicit a response from the other side. At this stage, either the escalation would stop because of international interference or would continue resulting in the resort to the nuclear option by either state. (The Pakistani military is not about to consider President Zardari’s formula of no first use. Implementation of this proposal requires a certain level of understanding and peace between the two states. This in turn would mean that the military in Pakistan is subservient to political masters and willing to take dictation from the top which doesn’t seem likely right now.)

So the probability is that in case of a deliberate or inadvertent escalation the threat of a nuclear conflict can increase.

However, what many commentators are not considering are two factors. First, that despite its aggressive tone Delhi has not added to tensions by conducting a surprise attack which means that it is still willing to talk. Second, in case there is further escalation of hostilities the onus of stopping this rests on Pakistan as much as it does on India.

Our experts on television do not realise that pushing the nuclear button means total destruction. There would be no India or Pakistan. There would be no people. Many experts talking about the nuclear option out of concern for national honour or even out of a desire for heaven would not have thought of total extinction. If such rabid commentators were put through simulators to experience a nuclear holocaust, they would question the nationalist ethos that they uphold. This applies to both sides of the border.

So the question which decision-makers will ask themselves in Delhi and Islamabad is who would want to be the first to destroy the region and their own homes. The experience of Kargil shows that Pakistani generals acted rationally and withdrew when faced with the threat of escalating hostilities. It is being assumed that Pakistan would be the first one to push the button. This is based on an evaluation of our limited conventional military capabilities and the fact that such an imbalance resulted in Pakistan losing earlier wars with India. It would be under greater pressure now. However, pushing the nuclear button isn’t as easy as it sounds on television. Our home-grown drawing room strategists must carefully consider the consequences before they even talk about it.

This is not to argue that Pakistan take everything lying down from India. But we have to understand that nuclear weapons force us to behave more responsibly. I remember a discussion with one of our former army chiefs after Kargil. The commander was of the view that Pakistan had understood India’s threshold for terror and pain, meaning that the two countries would not engage in proxy wars.

The two states must also be careful not to tolerate or encourage attacks by non-state actors. The lesson of the current crisis is very simple: the region is intrinsically connected despite political boundaries. The crisis of one is bound to spill over to the other. For those who want to destroy Pakistan or India by waging internal wars, the answer is that the overall effect would be terrible and difficult to contain within a certain geographical boundary. In any case, the continuation of terror outfits does not serve the interest of either state.

The writer is an independent strategic and political analyst.

ayesha.ibd@gmail.com

Freaking out America

PAKISTAN’S nukes freak out the Americans. They’d rather we simply not have any, or any nuclear paraphernalia for that matter. For them, Pakistan’s nuclear weapons have a distressingly linear connection to Al Qaeda.

It goes something like this: Pakistan has nuclear weapons; Pakistan has mad mullahs and Al Qaeda running around; ergo, Pakistan may have mad mullahs running around with nuclear goodies next.

If there were any doubts about this construction, ‘World at risk’, a report compiled by the Commission on the Prevention of WMD Proliferation and Terrorism, has put them to rest. Pakistan clearly exercised the authors’ minds. Divided into two sections, the ‘Findings and Recommendations’ section has six chapters, one of which is entitled ‘Pakistan: The intersection of nuclear weapons and terrorism’. It’s not very subtle.

It has not gone unnoticed. Here’s what George Packer, writing in the New Yorker, had to say: “The report includes chapters on biological and nuclear risks, and one titled ‘Pakistan’, which would seem to suggest that the nation itself is a kind of WMD.” Stephen Colbert, the host of Comedy Central’s faux-opinion show The Colbert Report, described Pakistan as “an evil and insidious nation full of terrorists” as he prepared to interview Bob Graham, the chairman of the WMD Commission. “Thank God they’re our ally,” he deadpanned, reminding everyone of the contradictions in the US-Pak relationship.

The report puts America’s Pakistan problem in blunt terms: “Our Commission has singled out Pakistan for special attention in this report, as we believe it poses a serious challenge to America’s short-term and medium-term national security interests.” And, not shy of belabouring a point, the authors add in the executive summary: “Were one to map terrorism and weapons of mass destruction today, all roads would intersect in Pakistan.”The Commission did not travel to Pakistan. It did meet 200 experts around the world though. In case you think that proves a conspiracy to beat up on Pakistan without hearing us out first, the authors explain: “On September 20, 2008, we were in Kuwait City awaiting our connecting flight to Islamabad, where we would be staying at the Marriott Hotel. Suddenly our cellphones began buzzing with breaking news: the Islamabad Marriott had just been devastated by a bomb.”

Pakistan really can’t cut a break.

Of course, Pakistan has a defence. Our nuclear weapons are secure. Guaranteed. One hundred per cent. One thousand per cent. There is no way anyone is getting to them. Trouble is, few believe them. Add the WMD Commission to the long list of sceptics: “Though most US and Pakistani officials assert that these weapons and their components are safe from inside or outside theft, the risk that radical Islamists — Al Qaeda or Taliban — may gain access to nuclear material is real. Should the Pakistani government become weaker, and the Pakistani nuclear arsenal grow, that risk will increase. With each new facility, military or civilian, comes added security concerns.”

Generals at the Strategic Planning Division may go blue in the face defending their foolproof, infallible procedures to secure Pakistan’s most dangerous assets but they miss the point on two counts. First, the procedures are handled by individuals, the officer corps of the Pakistan Army. The army denies this is a weakness and stresses the professionalism of the army and its ability to weed out rogues.

However, Shuja Nawaz makes an interesting point in Crossed Swords: “The Pakistan army today reflects Pakistani society more than at any time in its history. Increasingly it is going to be based on urban recruitment, especially of its officer corps, and the pool of recruits will come from bigger towns and cities in areas other than its traditional recruitment ground in the Potohar plateau of northern Punjab.”

What Nawaz is alluding to is what is on many minds: what will happen to the Pakistan Army as it recruits a new generation of officers who have imbibed the growing religious ethos of mainstream Pakistani society? What if the mad mullahs are already inside, slowly rising up the ranks of the Pakistan Army?

The second fear is less obvious. In the popular imagination here, a WMD is a nuclear-tipped missile. But biological weapons are also WMDs. Didn’t think we posed a threat on that front? Over to the Commission: “Pakistan has biological research laboratories that possess stocks of dangerous pathogens, some of which may not be adequately secured. The United States is currently funding efforts to improve physical security and access control at such facilities. This support should continue until Pakistan has sufficiently reduced the potential danger of theft or accidents.”

How worried are they? “The Commission further believes that terrorists are more likely to be able to obtain and use a biological weapon than a nuclear weapon.”

Pakistan. Mad mullahs. Al Qaeda. Biological weapons. We really do freak out the Americans.

And all of this before the more standard worries about nuclear weapons. The Commission didn’t forget the Pak-India angle: “In October 2008, on the heels of the US-India civil nuclear agreement, China agreed to build two nuclear power plants in Pakistan. This deal — especially if it does not contain mechanisms to prevent nuclear material from being transferred from the new civilian plants to military facilities — signals a nascent nuclear arms race in Asia.”

The deal would be Chasma III and IV, which Pakistanis celebrated for the 680 precious megawatts of electricity they will provide. Few would have realised that also thrown in was a “nascent nuclear arms race”.

The Bush administration shares the Commission’s concerns. On Nov 18, Assistant Secretary of State Matthew Reynolds sent a letter to Edward Markey, a congressman pressing the State Department to disrupt the deal: “The US position is that cooperation on the construction of ... Chashma III and IV would be inconsistent with the commitments China made at the time of its adherence to Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) guidelines in 2004.” Reynolds goes on to state that Chashma III and IV need a consensus approval from the NSG, an outcome Pakistan’s “proliferation record” would make “difficult”.

Simply, the Americans are terrified by an arms race in the subcontinent because more weapons means more complexes and more sites and more risk — of proliferation, of pilferage, of theft, of war itself. And this before the Mumbai fallout.

The good news is that the Commission understands the need to placate Pakistan: “If Pakistani leaders are preoccupied with threats from India’s nuclear forces and the insurgency in Kashmir, then their cooperation with the United States on issues of concern to the United States will be limited.”

Translation: we need to make the Pakistan Army less paranoid of India so that they can focus on our needs.

The bad news is that the language is of a doctor coaxing his patient into a padded cell before slamming the door shut.

cyril.a@gmail.com

Global zero initiative

IF Barack Obama sent the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty to Congress for ratification early in the new session, that would be an excellent start. Since it was signed in 1996, 148 other countries have ratified it, but it cannot come into effect until the United States does, too. And then he could get on with banning the nuclear weapons themselves, not just the tests.

There’s a new initiative, launched in Paris last Tuesday (Dec 9) under the title Global Zero, in which more than 100 world leaders endorse the goal of abolishing nuclear weapons completely. That may have a slightly antique ring to it — don’t these people know that the Cold War ended ages ago? — but in fact the nuclear weapons are still there. Some 20,000 of them, in fact. And last July, at a rally in Berlin, Obama publicly adopted the same goal: “This is the moment to begin the work of seeking the peace of a world without nuclear weapons.”

Admittedly, the 100 “world leaders” are mostly ex-world leaders, and they may be suffering from “retired general syndrome.” All through their careers, generals loyally support the reigning orthodoxy about nuclear weapons, and are amply rewarded for it. Then they retire, the rewards and the status vanish, and some of them begin to wonder out loud if they ever really believed all that. Some people in the peace movement sarcastically call them “generals for peace” and suggest that they would have been more useful if they had seen the light when they still had some power.

Most of the 100-plus notables who signed the Global Zero declaration were not generals, but they are almost all former something-or-others: former US President Jimmy Carter, former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, former British Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett, former German Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher, and former French Prime Minister Michel Rocard.

Not to mention former US National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, former British Defence Secretary Malcolm Rifkind, former Japanese Foreign Minister Yoriko Kawaguchi, Ehsan Ul-Haq, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in Pakistan, and Brajesh Mishra, former Indian National Security Advisor. But for once, the “formers” are not the only ones talking sense.

What makes Global Zero more than the usual empty talk is the fact that this time all the leaders of the major powers seem to be on the same page. Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has called for the elimination of all nuclear weapons, and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said in March that the United Kingdom is ready to work for “a world that is free from nuclear weapons.”

Last June Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh backed the same goal, saying that “the only effective form of nuclear disarmament and elimination of nuclear weapons is global disarmament.” Pakistan and China have said explicitly that they support Global Zero. In fact, the only countries that actually own nuclear weapons that have stayed silent are North Korea and Israel.

North Korea is less of a problem than it seems, because it could probably be persuaded to give up its one or two nuclear weapons in return for strong security guarantees and lots of foreign aid, especially if the United States were getting out of the nuclear weapons business too. Israel is a knottier problem, because it doesn’t even admit that it has nuclear weapons (several hundred of them, in fact), but for the first time it could find itself facing pressure from the one country that really has leverage over Israeli policy, the United States.

One of the most striking aspects of the Global Zero meeting in Paris was the remark by Richard Burt that Israel’s undeclared nuclear arsenal would have to be part of the process.

That’s the real question: is the United States really ready to give up its nuclear weapons? It was the first country to have them, and it has built its grand strategy around them for the past 64 years. But if it were willing to do that, and if the Russians were really willing to follow suit, then that would account for 96 per cent of all the world’s nuclear weapons.

It would take at least a decade to get to zero from here. First, ratify the test ban treaty. Then, in the forthcoming talks to renew or replace the START treaty between the US and Russia (which expires next year), agree on really radical reductions in American and Russian nuclear weapons.

— Copyright Gwynne Dyer