India’s peace proposal

THE Indian prime minister’s offer of a treaty of peace, security and friendship with Pakistan is a step forward in the on-going composite dialogue taking place between India and Pakistan. But some reservations are bound to be expressed about Dr Manmohan Singh’s statement that also seeks to delink the Kashmir issue from the normalization process. Indeed, it would be wiser to treat all issues that have a bearing on the bilateral relations between the two countries in a wider and integrated framework. To make one aspect of the ties contingent on the resolution of another dispute between them would only add to the complications that characterize India-Pakistan relations. Neither is it wise to prioritize the bilateral issues that need to be addressed. In whichever area progress is possible, the two sides should proceed to work on it. It is therefore a matter of relief that the Pakistan Foreign Office has reciprocated the spirit in which the offer was made and has termed the offer “positive”.

It is significant that both sides are aware of the centrality of the Kashmir dispute in their relations. That is why Dr Singh made it a point to touch on it in his speech offering a peace treaty. Pakistan has also called for bold steps to resolve the outstanding disputes. The Indian leader has called for the animosities and misgivings of the past to be put aside to enable both countries to move ahead in pursuit of their common objective of getting rid of chronic poverty, ignorance and disease. This approach should be welcomed since it would create a climate conducive to meaningful negotiations to resolve other issues too, including Kashmir. Thus Dr Singh has held out the hope of a solution of the disputes on Siachen, Sir Creek and the Baglihar dam. If an Indian newspaper report is to be believed, accords on the first two are ready to be signed.

True, not much headway has been made on resolving the Kashmir issue. The two sides have not been able to narrow down their differences. On Friday, the Indian prime minister suggested that the two sides should begin a dialogue with the Kashmiris in their respective areas of control while soft borders should allow free movement and interaction between Kashmiris on both sides. President Musharraf’s proposal envisages a division of the state into different regions and their demilitarization followed by autonomy for them. The need is now for the two sides to bridge their differences. Given the lack of movement in the APHC-New Delhi dialogue, it was not surprising that the Hurriyat leadership has not jumped at Dr Singh’s proposal. The Mirwaiz has responded by asking India to announce demilitarization of Kashmir and an end to human rights violations there to establish its credibility. Now is the time for Pakistan and India to use back channel diplomacy to explore the areas where progress could facilitate further negotiations. As a first step they should seek to lower the level of militarization in Kashmir to defuse the tension in the state. It would also be worthwhile for Pakistan to explore what the friendship treaty would entail. Negotiations on intricate issues as the one that divide India and Pakistan do not necessarily follow in a straight line. An agreement in one area may be followed by discords in another. But that is how a dialogue process often moves and very often results in an agreement.

Free trade in South Asia

THE formal notification by the Saarc secretariat that the South Asian Free Trade Agreement (Safta) has been ratified by all states is a major development. Beginning from July 1 this year, members will lower tariffs by five per cent, the eventual aim being to lower them to between zero and five per cent within a timeframe ranging from three to eight years depending on factors of economic variation. While the ratification and the coming into effect, retrospectively from Jan 1, 2006, of the treaty are both good developments, there are some caveats which may prevent the full benefits of Safta from passing on to the citizens of the signatories. In this regard, first and foremost comes to mind the stand taken by Pakistan saying that despite the ratification, it will deal with India separately, with implementation depending on progress on the resolution of its disputes with New Delhi, especially Kashmir.

As has been pointed out before, strengthening trade ties with India (especially now that Safta is in effect) and the resolution of the Kashmir dispute need not necessarily be mutually exclusive or interdependent. Pakistan needs to strengthen trade ties with India because that is in its own interest. Lower tariffs on imports from Saarc countries means lower prices for consumers in Pakistan and also greater variety. The point is that we do not produce everything we need and have to import from other countries. So why spend a lot of money on transportation for buying goods from, say, Europe when they can be purchased from countries nearer home? Besides, effective enforcement of the free trade agreement can allow for a far freer exchange of goods such as newspapers, books, magazines and other sources of information that could help improve relations between Pakistan and India. One point of concern expressed by Pakistan is that India needs to reduce its non-tariff barriers. But the fact of the matter is that all countries have non-tariff barriers, including Pakistan. What a free trade agreement does is to provide the momentum whereby trade as well as non-trade barriers (foremost being difficulties in getting visas or bureaucratic red tape) may be reduced over time. That is the goal all Saarc member states should be working towards.

Mindless evictions

WHILE the allegations of Mr Nisar Khuhro, opposition leader in the Sindh Assembly, that the demolishment of settlements and shantytowns around Karachi is a conspiracy should not be taken too seriously, it is true that the recent spate of evictions of squatters around the city has caused misery to thousands of people. Perhaps the most glaring example of this is the uprooting of homes to make way for the Lyari Expressway. No one can dispute the importance of development, especially in a city like Karachi to which hundreds of thousands migrate each year from the rural areas in search of livelihood and shelter. With intense pressure on the existing infrastructure, the city government has no option but to widen roads, build flyovers and undertake other similar projects to ease congestion. This invariably entails evictions in some areas. But to do this in a callous manner, without any feeling of sympathy for the plight of those who are being forced to abandon their homes, is distressing, especially where the decision by the city government to clear an area is arbitrary and taken without prior warning.

It is the absence of careful planning that has led to this chaotic scenario where eviction and relocation have become real threats for the people living in shanty colonies. It is only fair that the government take steps to resettle the uprooted in areas which have not been earmarked for further development that could threaten their homes once more. They should also receive adequate compensation so that they can rebuild their homes elsewhere. Moreover, it is important that urban planning is done in an intelligent way, keeping in mind the needs and conveniences of the population and avoiding projects, especially if other options are available, that are unnecessary or could cause a serious disruption affecting many.

As India joins the club

DESPITE images of spinning wheels and his ambitions for national self-sufficiency through the development of cottage industry and promotion of rural economy, Mohandas Gandhi, leader of the independence movement, nonetheless envisioned a capitalist state as the future of India. It was not perhaps to be a capitalist order as cruel and violent and unjust as the British colonialists, or as many wealthy Indians, wished to inflict, but it was capitalist.

By contrast, Jawaharlal Nehru, Gandhi’s chief aide, wanted to construct a prosperous modern society shaped along socialist lines. Nehru played along with the wishes of his revered mentor only to ditch his philosophy as soon as he was assassinated. Taking power, Nehru commenced to industrialize the economy, mainly through the somewhat frayed model of Soviet central planning.

India, unlike the USSR, was intended to have a mixed economy — much like Western European democracies at the time — but one with a large public sector. Nehru was responsible for laying the foundations of education and economic policies of India as well as its independent foreign policy which resulted in making India what it is today.

Nehru’s daughter Indira Gandhi increased this public sector by adding banking to its fold. It is difficult to run a system without extensive control over lending and also over capital controls. Her son Rajiv Gandhi maintained the dominant public sector policies along with an independent foreign policy. But economic fashions, stemming from Reagan’s US and Thatcher’s UK, took hold.

The last Congress prime minister, Narasimha Rao, broke from Nehru’s economic policies in the 1990s when he started incorporating more “free market” elements of western capitalism, which, if he thought they really operated as in college textbooks, he deeply misunderstood. Western capitalism has always been about unprotected markets for you and rigged or protected markets for me. A so-called Indian entrepreneurial class was clamouring for a change, whatever the cost to everyone else.

Since the early 1990s, as the economic sector opened up, changes in India’s foreign policy become starkly apparent. At home widespread suicides among small farmers are one sad result of the policy shift. Yet, inasmuch as a strong strain of political and economic independence was embedded in the Congress party culture, it took some time to erode its foundation.

The Indian economic elite has been knocking on the door of the American free market ideology for 15 years. Now Bush junior happily administered the coup de grace to Nehru’s India in the course of inducting the eager country as a loyal member of the American global empire. The ‘Indian street,’ however, did not welcome it and mass protests broke out all over the country. These outcries were sneeringly dismissed in BJP circles as the death throes of a dying breed of slackers and obsolete economic agents. Then the BJP got the surprise of its existence when it was dumped at the last election.

During Bush’s recent visit one witnessed angry demonstrations all across India. Only yards away one noticed during a protest march, one of the most important keepers of the public good and social conscience, Arundhati Roy, who was on the streets of Delhi distributing posters asking Bush to go back not just to the White House but to his ranch in Texas and spend the rest of his life safely clearing bushes or pretending to.

When Bush with his massive force of minders and security arrived, prudent planners decided that it was the better part of valour for Bush not to address the parliament since he likely would face hecklers whom his security guards would not be authorized to remove or arrest — as is the case everywhere he goes to in the United States, where he is kept safe from any sign of dissent or discontent. American civil liberties are not what they used to be.

The traditional venue of the Red Fort was out because it happens to have a large Muslim population in the neighbourhood. So the only place which afforded him the customary cocoon of security was the old fort built by 15th century Sher Shah on the ruins of one which belonged to the Pandvas. It also happened to be the abode available for Muslim refugees who fled their homes in Old Dehli during the communal riots in 1947, and who from there departed for Pakistan. The irony is that the most powerful leader of the world, in order to avoid the Indian masses on Delhi’s streets, found himself in the same refuge. From the fort, Bush left for Pakistan after addressing a selected few.

In the words of Arundhati Roy, who takes the measure of the real values that Bush wants to spread and impose, “what is very, very worrying is that if you look at the record of countries that have cooperated with America, that have entered that embrace, most of them have been incinerated.” She said, “I am not talking about the First World but look at Africa, and Indonesia, Latin America, see what happens.”

Roy omitted to mention Pakistan whose sufferings have been so obvious in the last two decades because of its relationship with the US. Pakistani leaders are quite critical and jealous of this new relationship of India with the US. They do not see what costs India will incur by joining the club

After Rao’s “market-friendly” administration, the BJP government followed his policies with greater, unchecked zeal, with the slogan of “India shining”. As it happened, India boasted several shining cities which were coincidentally well favoured by government policy, not just entrepreneurs, so as to draw in jobs from some service sector industries in the US and Europe. But away from these favoured urban areas small farmers suffered terribly once deprived of pre-globalization protection. The BJP lost the last election precisely in those wider areas where India was supposed to shine.

Only Manmohan Singh, an acolyte of America and of free trade nostrums, now pursues BJP’s rejected policies remorselessly. The closer he comes to the United States the more he destroys the political culture and values of the Congress party, and which among other things, were close to Iran’s interests. Now India supports America against Iran. Singh is heading a coalition with the support of the Left which, in the larger interest of secularism, still supports him although unhappy with his domestic and foreign policies.

Recently commenting on the signing of an agreement between Bush and Manmohan Singh, Hashim Abdul Halim, speaker of the West Bengal assembly and chairman of the Commonwealth parliamentary union, said though it is historical in its own way, it threatens to be danger in further boosting the US and guaranteeing its interference in India’s nuclear programme. He feels that this agreement besides giving an opportunity to the US to interfere in India’s nuclear programme also creates suspicion between India and Pakistan which have been coming closer.

An equal partnership with America is an impossibility. Pakistan should know it. The sad truth is that it must be unequal and that India will have to be subservient to American interests in the area. The only bright side is that America is promoting peace between India and Pakistan, in its own interest that will be good for Pakistan as well if this comes about.

But there is a distinct danger that if the Indian-left can stomach no more and resumes pursuing policies in the overall interest of the Indian masses, it will break up the current coalition. In that case, the rightwing in the Congress may try to join hands with the BJP with the backing of the Americans. As the Indian middle class and the moneyed Indian diaspora — the financers of the BJP — is so enamoured of the USA they are blind to the virtual civil war already going on in the Southern and eastern States.

There already are areas that are under the control of rebels. One may call them Maoists or Naxalites or give them any handy dismissive or discrediting name but they are capturing the imaginations, and expressing the bedrock interests, of the deprived. No state government, for instance, has done more for the masses then the CPIM of West Bengal but even they are feeling strong pressure in some areas of their province.

The theatre museum

It was almost 100 years ago that a campaign to create a theatre museum in London was launched. The initiator, Gabrielle Enthoven, had her own collection of theatrical memorabilia which she gave to the Victoria and Albert Museum in the hope that it would eventually expand and become a museum in its own right.

Over the years other collections were added ranging from costumes of Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, including Picasso’s giant 1924 backdrop for Le Train Bleu, to cast-offs of Elton John and Mick Jagger.

Belatedly, in 1987, a theatre museum was opened in the heart of theatreland. It was, alas, in a far from ideal building, a dark converted fruit market beneath the buses and trains of the London Transport Museum in Covent Garden.

— The Guardian, London

March 23 supplement

In some early copies of the March 23 supplement, the following two articles did not carry the names of the writers because of a technical fault: “Issues and problems of democracy” by Hasan Askari, page 5, and “An inimical nexus” by A.R. Siddiqi, page 6.

The fault was corrected in subsequent copies.