THE HINDU – CURRENT NOTE 04 March
Centre dithers on Western Ghats issue
.•The Environment Ministry has dithered, for the second time in three years, from bringing into force a law that will make about 56,825 sqkm of the ecologically-rich Western Ghats out of bounds for industrial development.
•On February 27, the government resuscitated a draft notification that was first published in March 2014 that specified how much land in various coastal States encompassing the Western Ghats would be earmarked as practically-inviolate. Because it wasn’t made into a final law — thanks to objections from States — this lapsed in a year and a half and on September 2015, a fresh draft notification with the same numbers was reintroduced. This too would expire on March 4.
•The reiterated February notification — open to public comment for 60 days — allows the Centre to create an Ecological Sensitive Area (ESA) in the Western Ghats (WG), a 1,500 km, ecologically-rich strip along the west coast spanning Gujarat, Maharashtra, Karnataka, Goa, Kerala and Tamil Nadu. Regions declared as the ESA will not be allowed to host mining and quarrying projects and building thermal power plants.
Gadgil committee
•Ever since a committee headed by ecologist Madhav Gadgil recommended in 2011 that all of the Western Ghats be declared as the ESA — with only limited development allowed in graded zones— States have forced the Centre to consistently delay imposing the ESA restrictions. A committee headed by K. Kasturirangan, former ISRO chairman, recommended that only about 60,000 sq km — or about 37% of the WG and a significant reduction from that of the Gadgil committee — be declared as ESA.
•Kerala managed to get this down to about 56,825 sqkm after widespread protests and an all-party resolution in the State forced the Union Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF) to exclude 3,117 sqkm of settlements and agricultural land in the State from the ESA. Last week, the Chief Secretary of the State wrote to the MoEF that a further 887 sqkm of non-forest land be reduced.
Fresh representation
•Multiple officials in the MoEF told The Hindu that the 2017 notification, though technically open to public comment only for 60 days, would not automatically become law after that period. On the contrary, it paved the way for fresh representation from States on how much area could be demarcated as the ESA. “There has been no response from Tamil Nadu so far and next month we are even planning to discuss if there should be State-specific limits at all,” said an official privy to proceedings. “We have to be sensitive to the needs of development as well as conserving the pristine nature of the WG,” the official said.
•Union Environment Minister Anil Dave is expected to have fresh meetings with States on the issue next month.
•Another source familiar with the matter said a draft notification allowed the government 545 days to decide on taking a final call.
Dalai Lama’s Arunachal visit irks China
•The China-India border dispute came into sharp focus on Friday after the Chinese Foreign Ministry warned New Delhi not to allow the Dalai Lama to visit Arunachal Pradesh — the State which is at the heart of the Sino-Indian dispute in the eastern sector.
•China’s sharp response against the visit by the Tibetan leader in exile followed a call by a former Chinese boundary negotiator, who stressed that if the two sides managed to overcome their differences in the eastern sector, the final settlement of the boundary dispute would be well within grasp.
•“China is gravely concerned over information that India has granted permission to the Dalai Lama to visit Arunachal Pradesh,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said at a briefing.
•He warned that an invitation to him to visit Arunachal Pradesh will cause “serious damage” to Sino-Indian ties. “India is fully aware of the seriousness of the Dalai Lama issue and the sensitivity of the China-India border question. Under such a background if India invites the Dalai Lama to visit the mentioned territory, it will cause serious damage to peace and stability of the border region and China-India relations,” he said.
‘Stick to commitments’
•“We have expressed concerns to the Indian side, urged India to stick to its political commitments and abide by important consensus the two sides have reached on the boundary question, refrain from actions that might complicate the issue, not provide a platform to the Dalai clique and protect the sound and stable development of the Sino-India relations,” he said.
•The remarks followed the conclusion of the China-India strategic dialogue, led by Foreign Secretary S. Jaishankar last month. Mr. Geng’s stand came in the wake of the “carrot” offered by Dai Bingguo, a former State Councillor and China’s Special Representative for the boundary talks, that both countries stood at the “gate” of the final settlement, provided they could overcome their differences on the eastern alignment.
War, state and martyrdom
•Amid the ongoing commotion triggered by arrogant and puritanical claims about nationalism and patriotism, the words of Gurmehar Kaur, a Delhi University student whose online video of May 2016 has suddenly become a needless controversy, come across as profoundly wise and humane. Ms. Kaur’s moving and thoughtful statement — “Pakistan did not kill my dad, war killed him... I fight for peace between India and Pakistan. Because if there was no war between us, my father would still be here” — has, however, not gone down well with Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leaders and certain celebrities, among others.
•Kiren Rijiju, Union Minister of State for Home, suggested that someone was “polluting this young girl’s mind”, which was soon supported by his party colleague and MP Pratap Simha with an equally disgraceful tweet. Statements by these two leaders and their supporters have displayed an appalling lack of nuance about the larger import and context of what Ms. Kaur was referring to when she said that it was war that killed her father. Such a ‘nationalist’ backlash against thoughtful comments should make us wonder if indeed war is profitable to some sections of society, and hence preferable to peace.
•In a more fundamental sense, the prevailing understating of the nation state as “father”, “mother”, etc. has de-historicised and reified the true nature and context of the modern state, thereby condoning the many atrocities committed by states around the world. There is therefore a need to ‘de-anthropomorphise’ the nation state to gain insights into its historically appropriate character.
Role of violence
•Modern states not only monopolise and organise violence, but more importantly, violence has played a central role in their historical evolution. War-making and the use of force are intrinsic to the modern state, and this deep-seated tendency of the state should be constantly mediated by popular resistance, reasoned debates and peace-building, lest those tendencies run amok. Nation states are not sentient beings to be revered, but entities often controlled by powerful interest groups, whose power and control should be constantly checked and interrogated.
•Moreover, war is not always, as many of us believe, an undesirable evil thrust upon us by ‘immoral’ outsiders, but often something that our politicians and governments create through their actions and engage in for their own selfish political and other interests. As historian Charles Tilly reminds us, “Governments themselves commonly simulate, stimulate, or even fabricate threats of external war.” The argument here is not that we should do away with states altogether or that armed forces should be disbanded. But rather that the state’s so-called national security functions cannot be allowed to continue unquestionably, without critical public scrutiny. Notwithstanding Mr. Rijiju’s advice that “we should stop this habit of raising doubt, questioning the authorities and the police,” we must make it a habit to question the security claims and functions of our state: for our own good.
•States routinely use wars, or as Ms. Kaur puts it, “state-sponsored hatred”, for domestic political ends. Sometimes as diversionary war tactic — to divert our attention from domestic turmoil such as economic slowdown or rising unemployment — and sometimes for political ends like how the BJP cleverly used the ‘surgical strikes’ for electoral purposes, while advising others not to do so. The sharp spike in ceasefire violations in the Jammu sector during the Jammu and Kashmir election in 2014 is yet another example.
•As a matter of fact, ceasefire violations, terror attacks and military casualties have considerably increased ever since the BJP government has come to power: would it not be logical then to argue that the BJP’s political inability to make peace in Kashmir and negotiate the Kashmir dispute with Pakistan has become costly for the country? World over today, the link between conflict and huge costs to the economy is well understood.
Crossing a bridge
•Even in the fraught and volatile framework of India-Pakistan ties, the Permanent Indus Commission mandated to implement the 1960 Indus Waters Treaty (IWT) has met like clockwork, 112 times in 56 years, annually in each country. The commission has experts who look into issues and disputes on the ground over the utilisation of the waters of six rivers of the Indus system. Under the treaty, India has full use of the three “eastern” rivers (Beas, Ravi, Sutlej), while Pakistan has control over the three “western” rivers (Indus, Chenab, Jhelum), although India is given rights to use these partially as well for certain purposes. As a result, there should be little to comment in the normal course when India accepts Pakistan’s invitation to the next round of talks, as it has for the Permanent Indus Commission in Lahore later this month. The move is welcome, as it denotes India’s commitment to the treaty that has stood the test of time and war, and also displays New Delhi’s sincerity on the issue of water-sharing, given that the IWT is seen to be a model in dispute management. In September last year, doubts had been raised over India’s commitment after the terrorist attack on an army camp in Uri, killing 19 soldiers. In the days that followed, senior officials announced the suspension of talks until there was an “atmosphere free of terror” after Prime Minister Narendra Modi held a review meeting on the treaty to consider retaliatory measures against Pakistan for the attack, saying, “blood and water cannot go together”. Mr. Modi repeated some of those angry sentiments at public rallies where he said India would not allow even a “drop of water” to go waste into Pakistan. The atmosphere was also charged after the government announced “surgical strikes” had been carried out along the Line of Control and subsequently pulled out from the SAARC summit in Pakistan, leading to fears of a freeze in bilateral ties.
•In the event, the government has chosen wisely, with some encouragement from the World Bank and persistence by Pakistan, to step back from much of that rhetoric, and allow IWT commissioners from both countries to meet. The decision follows several other moves between India and Pakistan in the past few weeks indicating a softening of positions on some other issues as well: from a marked reduction in LoC firing, the regular annual exchange of nuclear lists, the release of prisoners by both countries, and India being part of the consensus to elect the Pakistani nominee as the SAARC Secretary-General this week. It would be premature to expect that any of these events, some of which are routine, consolidate a thaw in relations between the two countries. However, they reaffirm the high stakes that are woven into India-Pakistan relations, and the need to keep certain issues such as water-sharing above the politics of the moment.
The road to China is through Kabul
•Afghanistan has again emerged as a platform providing new possibilities on the India-China cooperation front. After the restructured ‘Strategic dialogue’ between India and China last week, Foreign Secretary S. Jaishankar said: “On Afghanistan, they certainly seem to suggest to us that their approach and policies are in tandem with us, not on different page.” The strategic dialogue, which was divided into five sub-groups of which Afghanistan was one, focussed significantly on the country. China expressed admiration for India’s developmental work in Afghanistan amidst a broader understanding that New Delhi and Beijing need to strengthen the government in Kabul.
•This development comes against a backdrop of the growing threat of the Islamic State (IS) to China. The IS released a video this week of Chinese Uighur Muslims vowing to return home and “shed blood like rivers” even as the Chinese military displayed its military might as a show of force in Xinjiang. A rattled China is calling for greater global cooperation against the IS, which is also a reason why China has joined ranks with Russia in a bid to engage the Taliban in Afghanistan.
•China has for years blamed exiled Uighur “separatists” for violence in Xinjiang and has warned of the militants’ potential to link up with global jihadist groups. It is worried about the spillover effect of continuing instability in Afghanistan. The impact of Afghanistan’s destabilisation will be felt not only in Kashmir but also in Xinjiang where the East Turkistan Islamic Movement is active. Moreover, China’s mega investment plans in Pakistan are predicated on a measure of regional stability.
•With the Donald Trump administration yet to clarify its position on Afghanistan, and with it looking unlikely to add more American troops to the depleting reserves of Western forces in the country, it is not surprising that China is keen to engage India, the one country that has built a reservoir of goodwill in Afghanistan and has demonstrated some ability to deliver concrete results on the ground.
Divergences on Afghanistan
•But there remain some fundamental divergences in Sino-Indian positions on Afghanistan and broader counterterrorism postures. Just last December, Mr. Jaishankar said that India and China were not able to “cooperate as effectively” as they should in countering terrorism. His statement had come in the wake of China putting on hold the inclusion of JeM chief Masood Azhar’s name in the United Nation’s list of global terrorists.
•Even after last week’s strategic dialogue, the Foreign Secretary was careful to underline the differences. On the Taliban, for example, he suggested that “their [China’s] characterisation was that there were elements of Taliban which are very extreme. In their view there were also elements of Taliban that can work with international community and Afghan government.”
•For long, India sought to include Afghanistan in its discussions with China on counterterrorism. The Sino-India counter-terrorism dialogue was initially viewed as a promising bilateral initiative for dealing with terrorism. But nothing of consequence emerged from these dialogues. For India, the main source of terrorism is Pakistan where the state machinery continues to view terrorism as a legitimate tool of national policy. For China, Pakistan is an important asset in its South Asia policy and an all-weather friend. As a consequence, where New Delhi had, somewhat audaciously, expected to make common cause with Beijing vis-a-vis Islamabad and Rawalpindi, there was only disappointment at the outcome of these dialogues.
•But as concerns started rising in the region about the consequences of the withdrawal of NATO forces from Afghanistan in 2014, China reached out to India. This too couldn’t go far as China continued to emphasise that its relationship with Pakistan was far more important than a regional approach on terrorism with India. In this context, New Delhi should not expect Beijing to change its Afghanistan policy significantly to suit Indian interests. The road to stability in Kabul lies through Rawalpindi, and China has few incentives to challenge the Pakistani security establishment’s traditional adversarial mindset vis-à-vis India that continues to look at Afghanistan for some chimerical ‘strategic depth’. But the fact that China is interested in working with India on Afghanistan suggests that new possibilities on regional cooperation are emerging, which India should not hesitate to explore. Its success, of course, remains predicated on how committed China is in tackling extremism as opposed to hemming in India in South Asia.
Australia wants India to be a ‘consistent buyer’ of its cotton
•Australia, the fifth-largest exporter of cotton, is looking at India to emerge as a consistent and major buyer of the commodity.
•An eight-member delegation representing the Australian Cotton Shippers’ Association held meetings in Ludhiana, Mumbai, and Coimbatore between February 27 and March 3.
•“We came to promote and enhance the use of Australian cotton,” Matthew Bradd, chairman of Australian Cotton Shippers’ Association, told The Hindu here on Thursday. “We want India to become a consistent buyer of our cotton.”
•Australia has close to 1,200 cotton growers and can supply even small quantities to India. China purchased more than 30% of Australia’s cotton production last year. However, this was lower than its usual purchase.
•“India is a big market for cotton and spinners in India said they have had good experience with Australian cotton,” he said.
•Hamish McIntyre, vice-chairman of Cotton Australia and a member of the eight-member delegation, said India used to purchase 5-7% of cotton produced in Australia every year. In 2016, it shot up to close to 23 % due to a drop in production in India.
•Indian textile mills can use Australian cotton as a blend to produce high-value garments. The area under cotton production was increasing in Australia, Mr. McIntyre said.
•K.N. Viswanathan, vice-president of Indian Cotton Federation, said that Australia’s output was limited until last year. India is the largest producer and consumer of cotton globally.
