📰 China warns India against ‘trespass’
•India should not use “trespass” into the Doklam area as a “policy tool” to achieve its “political targets,” China said on Tuesday. It asked India to immediately withdraw its troops.
•The Foreign Ministry said it was in “close communication” with foreign missions in Beijing, but refused to confirm whether it held any special briefing for them. “Since the illegal trespass by Indian troops, many foreign diplomats in China felt shocked and [wanted] to confirm whether it was true,” spokesman Lu Kang said.
📰 India set to extradite Bangladeshi to Britain
Signals rising cooperation between nations on extradition
•India is set to extradite a Bangladeshi national, Mohammad Abdul Shakur, to the U.K., where he is accused of murdering his wife and children 10 years ago. This development is seen as another signal of increasing cooperation between the two nations on sensitive, and potentially thorny issues in the Home Affairs arena.
•Mr. Shakur’s extradition was recommended by a New Delhi court in 2013, but a case against him filed in India meant that he remained in the country. However, India has now agreed to drop the case against him, and return him to Britain, something that could happen within the next week or 10 days. “We are willing to extend our cooperation even as they extend theirs,” said a senior source, of the increasing cooperation between the two countries on extradition-related issues.
•The development comes as India’s attempt to extradite liquor baron Vijay Mallya has progressed swiftly, from the formal request made by India in February this year, quickly followed up by Mr. Mallya’s arrest in April, and commencement of court proceedings in June (only delayed by the general election).
•The main hearing is set to take place in the first week of December, despite some attempts by Mr. Mallya’s defence to push it into next year.
Strong ties
•The Crown Prosecution Service which is in charge of making the case on behalf of the Indian government has emphasised its strong working relationship with Indian authorities, who have provided them with over 2,000 pages of evidence against Mr. Mallya over the course of the past few months. While the extradition of Mr. Shakur won’t impact the process for Mr. Mallya, which is now exclusively in the hands of the courts, the movement on these two cases is a sign that the India-UK Extradition Treaty, which has been in place since 1992 is sufficient to deliver the kind of cooperation the two nations have sought, particularly with political backing.
•Last year, in what was considered a significant step forward, Britain extradited Samirbhai Vinubhai Patel, wanted in connection with the Gujarat riots, the first extradition to take place to India since the signing of the treaty.
•Sources in the Ministry of Home Affairs in Delhi confirmed that Mr. Shakur was “detained at the U.K.’s request” and would be extradited shortly. The Ministry of External Affairs did not respond to a question on whether the Bangladesh government had been consulted.
📰 Aadhaar: 9-judge Bench to consider whether privacy is a basic right
SC refers question raised by bunch of petitions against the unique ID scheme
•A nine-judge Bench of the Supreme Court will on Wednesday hear the question whether privacy is a fundamental human right and is part of the basic structure of the Constitution.
•The nine judges will be Chief Justice of India J.S. Khehar, Justices J. Chelameswar, S.A. Bobde, R.K. Agrawal, Rohinton Fali Nariman, A.M. Sapre, D.Y. Chandrachud, Sanjay Kishan Kaul and S. Abdul Nazeer.
•The decision taken on Tuesday by a five-judge Constitution Bench led by Chief Justice Khehar is on the basis of a bunch of petitions contending that the Aadhaar scheme, is a violation of the citizens’ right to privacy. The petitioners have argued that right to privacy is part of Article 21, the right to life, and interspersed in Article 19, though not explicitly stated in the Constitution.
•Two judgments of the Supreme Court — the M.P. Sharma case verdict pronounced by an eight-judge Bench in 1954 shortly after the Constitution came into force in 1950 and the Kharak Singh case verdict of 1962 by a six-judge Bench — had dominated the judicial dialogue on privacy since Independence. Both judgments had concluded that privacy was not a fundamental or ‘guaranteed’ right.
•Though smaller Supreme Court Benches have, over the years, differed and held that privacy is indeed basic to our Constitution and a fundamental right, the arithmetical supremacy of the MP Sharma and Kharak Singh cases continues to hold fort.
Taking a final call
•Now, by forming a Bench of nine judges, Chief Justice Khehar’s Supreme Court has decided to determine once and for all whether privacy is negotiable or not. The nine-judge Bench seeks to bring a quietus to the divergent judicial pronouncements of the past.
•“It is essential for us to determine whether there is a fundamental right to privacy or not. Determination of the question would essentially entail whether decisions in M.P. Sharma and Kharak Singh cases that there is no such fundamental right is the correct expression of the constitutional question,” Chief Justice Khehar recorded in the order.
•“We have to first determine whether right to privacy is a fundamental right or not before going into the issue (on the constitutionality of the Aadhaar scheme),” Chief Justice Khehar observed. “In a Republic founded on a written Constitution, it is difficult to accept there is no fundamental right to privacy... There is a battery of judgments saying privacy is a fundamental right, we cannot ignore them. We have to give serious thought to this question,” Justice Chelameswar told the government.
📰 World’s northernmost corals bleached
Japanese researchers say the habitat in waters off three islands are affected
•Bleaching has damaged the world’s northernmost coral reef in Japan, a researcher said on Tuesday, the latest example of a global phenomenon scientists have attributed to high ocean temperatures.
•Healthy coral reefs protect shores from storms and offer habitats for fish and other marine life, including ecologically and economically important species.
Tough to recover
•After coral dies, reefs quickly degrade and the structures that coral build erode. While coral can recover from mild bleaching, severe or long-term episodes are often lethal, experts say.
•About 30% of the coral reef off the coast of Tsushima island in Japan, which lies in the temperate zone some 1,000 km southwest of Tokyo, suffered bleaching when Hiroya Yamano’s research team observed the area last December.
•There was large-scale coral bleaching in Japan’s subtropical Okinawan chain of islands last summer, said Mr. Yamano, director of the Center for Environmental Biology and Ecosystem Studies at Japan’s National Institute for Environmental Studies. “Recently coral in Okinawa were taking refuge in waters with lower temperatures, expanding their habitat range to (waters off) Kyushu, Shikoku and Honshu,” he said, referring to three of Japan’s four main islands.
•“But now coral in refuges are threatened... the situation is serious,” he said.
•Since 2015, all tropical coral reefs have seen above-normal temperatures, and more than 70% experienced prolonged high temperatures that can cause bleaching.
Barrier Reef in danger
•Early in 2017, the rise in water temperature caused significant bleaching in the Great Barrier Reef in Australia for the second consecutive year and also in American Samoa, which was severely affected in 2015.
•The U.S .National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said last month that coral reef bleaching may be easing after the three years of high ocean temperatures, the longest such period since the 1980s. Its experts said satellite data showed widespread bleaching was no longer occurring in all three ocean basins — Atlantic, Pacific and Indian —“indicating a likely end to the global bleaching event”.
📰 ‘Nil GST on fabrics not feasible’
Also, 28% GST for hotels with tariffs above Rs. 7,500: Ministry
•Organised traders and unorganised sellers in the textiles sector have not been affected by the Goods and Services Tax, according to Minister for Finance, Defence and Corporate Affairs Arun Jaitley, who ruled out a decrease in the tax rate on the sector under GST.
•Mr. Jaitley added that the textile manufacturers’ and traders’ main demand was for a nil tax rate on fabrics, but that this would not be feasible since a nil rate would make input tax credits unavailable. This answer in Parliament follows several strikes by textile manufacturers across the country protesting the GST treatment of the sector.
•At the same time, the Finance Ministry on Tuesday clarified that hotels with a declared tariff of less than Rs. 7,500 per day would attract a GST of 18% and hotels with tariffs above that would attract GST of 28%, regardless of the star rating of the hotels. The clarification was in response to reports expressing doubt as to whether 5-star hotels have to pay a 28% tax regardless of tariffs.
•Meanwhile, the GST Network said there was no possibility of data on the GST portal being mixed up. There is “not even the slightest possibility” of data on the portal being mixed up, with one taxpayer’s details being shown to another, GST Network chairman Navin Kumar said on Tuesday. GST Network also clarified that there were enough safeguards to prevent such a mix up from taking place.
📰 Diary of a dangerous month
Sights and sounds from the Darjeeling agitation
•As we went up the Hill Cart Road to Darjeeling, wondering when the monsoon would arrive, a fellow traveller reminded us: the weather and the politics in the hills can change in an instant. And even though it was hard to miss the underlying tension, with posters of “Gorkhaland Banam Bangal” (Gorkhaland versus Bengal) along the picturesque road, on the surface there seemed to be a semblance of normalcy.
•After the violence on June 8 that happened even as the West Bengal government held its Cabinet meeting, there was a call by the Gorkha Janmukti Morcha (GJM) to boycott government offices. Shops and commercial establishments, however, were still open, with tourists freely moving. Things took a turn for the worse after June 15 when the GJM, angered by the raid on its chief Bimal Gurung’s house, called for an indefinite shutdown.
•But more than the chronology of events that led to the deadlock, Darjeeling presented images, sounds and anecdotes that gave a sense of the anger brewing in the hills.
•The most haunting of all were images of smoke billowing from burnt police vehicles on Lebong Cart Road; bloodstains that could not be washed away after brief spells of rain; and men and young boys with faces covered taking on the security forces with slings and stones.
•There were other sights and sounds too: the slogans in support of a separate State renting the air at Chowk Bazar, suggesting it was no manufactured display of organisational might but a spontaneous outpouring of anger; boys from reputed Darjeeling boarding schools narrating how from the school windows they saw a man being stabbed and describing the burning sensation in their eyes after tear-gas shells were fired; the courage and determination of a young journalist, in her mid-twenties, who refused to leave though the car she was travelling in and most of her video equipment were set on fire; public offices, being torched, and reduced to embers. Older folks in Darjeeling talked of how the situation had been in the 1980s and why they were now ready to face the ordeal of another shutdown, provided a “real solution” emerged.
•We heard a young police officer explaining to a group of journalists how society gets the police it deserves, pointing to the injuries sustained by women constables in a violent stand-off.
•When we were leaving the hills, the roads were deserted; only a few people, mostly daily wage earners, were trudging down the 70 km stretch from Darjeeling to Siliguri. Suddenly, we saw a vehicle with a local licence number. The wind-shield was smashed. The owners said they did not plan to have it repaired, at least not till peace returned.
📰 Get real on Swachh
Responsibility must be fixed on State governments to end manual scavenging
•Despite the most stringent penal provisions in the law against manual scavenging, it continues in parts of India. The recent order of the Madras High Court asking the Centre and the Tamil Nadu government to ensure the strict enforcement of the Prohibition of Employment as Manual Scavengers and their Rehabilitation Act, 2013, in the wake of the death of 30 people engaged in the activity in the State in recent years, points to the malaise. Evidently, the vigorous national campaign for the rehabilitation of those engaged to manually clean insanitary latrines, and urban structures into which human excreta flows without sewerage, has been unable to break governmental indifference and social prejudice. Manual scavenging persists mainly because of the continued presence of insanitary latrines, of which there are about 2.6 million that require cleaning by hand, according to the activist organisation, Safai Karmachari Andolan. In spite of a legal obligation to do so, State governments are not keen to demolish and rebuild old facilities lacking sanitation, or conduct a full census of both the latrines and the people engaged in clearing such waste. The Central government, which directly runs the self-employment scheme for the rehabilitation of these workers, has reduced funds from Rs. 448 crore in the 2014-15 budget to Rs. 5 crore this year. High allocation in the past has not meant substantial or effective utilisation. This is incongruous, as sanitation is high on the agenda of the NDA government, and the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan is one of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s favourite programmes, to which the public is contributing a cess.
•A determined approach to end the scourge requires a campaign against social prejudice that impedes solutions in two ways. Many communities still regard the inclusion of a sanitary toilet as ritual and physical pollution of the house, and even the less conservative are ready to accept only large, expensive and unscientific structures much bigger than those recommended by the WHO. More pernicious is the entrenched belief in the caste system, that assumes Dalits will readily perform the stigmatised task of emptying latrines. Clearly, the law on punishment exists only on paper. Change now depends on the willingness of the courts to fix responsibility on State governments, and order an accurate survey of the practice especially in those States that claim to have no insanitary latrines or manual scavenging. Raising the confidence level among those engaged in manual cleaning is vital; even official data show their reluctance to take up self-employment. Empowerment holds the key to change, but that would depend on breaking caste barriers through education and economic uplift. Compensation sanctioned for the families of those who died in the course of the humiliating and hazardous work should be paid immediately; only a fraction of those with verified claims have received it.
📰 Erdoğan’s excesses
A year after he defeated a coup, Turkey’s President continues to tighten his grip
•Last July, hundreds of thousands of Turkish citizens hit the streets to defend democracy when a faction of the military tried to seize power through a coup. It was a rare occasion of unity in Turkey’s otherwise fractious politics, with most parties denouncing the coup bid and Opposition politicians rushing to the government’s defence. The coup was defeated, leaving President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in a much stronger position. Mr. Erdoğan could have used the victory to usher in a new chapter in Turkey’s democracy. He could have introduced more reforms, expanded human rights and corrected the past wrongs of his government, which contributed to the military unrest in the first place. But what happened was exactly the opposite. Mr. Erdoğan launched a purge in the name of taking on the coup-plotters. The government blamed Fethullah Gülen, a U.S.-based Turkish Islamic preacher, for the coup, and said the crackdown was aimed at removing Mr. Güllen’s “parallel structure” from the government. But the nature and scope of the crackdown suggested it was targeted at more than just Mr. Güllen’s supporters. The government imposed a state of emergency as soon as the coup was defeated; it is still in place. More than 50,000 people have been jailed over the year. Twelve MPs, including Selahattin Demirtaş, a Kurdish politician and former presidential candidate, and at least 120 journalists are behind bars. Around 100,000 people have been dismissed from state service.
•Even as the country was grappling with the post-coup purge and the emergency, Mr. Erdoğan went ahead with a referendum to change the Constitution. He won the vote, setting off a process to transform Turkey from a parliamentary democracy to an executive presidency. Domestically, his strongman image and a conservative agenda that appeals to the religious Turks lend support to his policies. Internationally, Mr. Erdogan’s Turkey is too important a regional power for most countries to antagonise over rights violations and authoritarian tendencies. Though there is occasional criticism, the West is keen to get along with Turkey, a crucial NATO ally. So Mr. Erdoğan may have found this an opportune time to leave his mark on Turkey. But how long can he rule by undermining its institutions? In power since 2002, his AK Party-led government has started showing signs of stress. This year’s referendum scraped through by a narrow margin. The Opposition, especially the Republican People’s Party, is trying to mobilise supporters. Its leader, Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, recently led a ‘March for Justice’ from Ankara to Istanbul. The security situation is precarious, with a civil war raging in the Kurdish-populated southeast and jihadists targeting cities. Today, Turkey needs stability and unity most. But Mr. Erdoğan’s excesses endanger both.
📰 ‘We are slow to adopt science for conservation’
India’s leading tiger conservationist says the government should get out of the business of surveys and leave it to scientists and researchers
• K. Ullas Karanth, an expert on tigers, is the director of the Wildlife Conservation Society-India Programme. In the early 1990s, Mr. Karanth pioneered the technique of using camera traps as a method to get an estimate of India’s tiger population. Despite having been on the boards of several government organisations, he’s also a trenchant critic of government’s conservation policies. In an interview, he explains why India shouldn’t be complacent about the success of ‘Project Tiger’ and how several areas of wildlife conservation in the country continue to be neglected.
The National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) has estimated a rise in the number of tigers killed in the first half of this year compared to the same period last year. Is it a matter of concern?
•As a rough estimate, there are, say, 3,000 tigers in India, 1,000 of whom are females capable of breeding. They breed on an average once in three years and produce a litter of three. You are adding about 750-1000 tigers a year. Assuming that it’s a stable population, it should also roughly be the number (of tigers) dying. Moreover, we only detect a fraction of them (during census). Many die and you don’t even know they are dead.
•The real concern is whether these deaths are due to poaching and if they are being killed inside protected zones where the breeding is taking place. This has to be monitored carefully with rigorous methods, and, unfortunately, the government authorities don’t do a good job.
•Right now, at least in government circles, there’s a great sense of optimism about the rise in tiger numbers. The latest government figures estimate 2,226 tigers, which translates to 60% of the world’s tiger population of about 3,890.
•What is the basis for this optimism? When we started ‘Project Tiger’ in the 1970s, we were supposed to have had about 2,000 tigers and after fifty years you have 3,000. Sure, it’s better than other countries but you can’t say you’ve done a great job.
What in your estimate would be a ‘great job’? Is there an ideal figure that we should have?
•We have roughly 3,00,000 sq. km of forest suitable for tigers and we have only about 10% of it capable of holding them naturally. This can be much higher…
•Last year the government announced plans to double the tiger count by 2022…
•These are unrealistic statements. If we haven’t doubled them in the last 30 years, how can it be done in five years? It’s loose talk. To even begin achieving that, we have to expand the protected area network. It can’t be done by merely declaring areas where there are no tigers as tiger reserves. Several tiger reserves have no tigers. The NTCA (under the Environment Ministry) has become a bureaucracy, it seems.
•We have done a good job in channelling more funds and putting in sincere efforts for tiger conservation compared to other Asian countries. This was specific to the 1970s and ’80s when there was no money. Now things are actually quite easy. Rural incomes have gone up… Hardcore poachers don’t hunt as much as they used to.
As someone now outside the government system, what do you think should be done?
•Well, I don’t consider myself outside the system because I was on the National Wildlife Board and NTCA for many years and I have tried to change the way they function but I have failed. It’s an extremely rigid bureaucracy.
•For one, we are spending too much money in too few sectors and that’s generally true of wildlife conservation in India, not only of tiger conservation. Some tiger reserves have budgets of Rs. 10 crore when the job can be done in Rs. 2 crore. This (lopsided funding) attracts the worst elements of bureaucracy to come here. Places like Bandipur, Nagarhole and Ranthambore reserves — these spectacular ones — are examples of those flush with funds and boast large tiger habitats.
•You need money for, say, relocation and resettling of foresters; but, beyond that, spending money on areas such as procuring water for reserves (during droughts) and mangroves. This needs to be fixed first.
•Recently, the government has got the go-ahead from the National Board of Wildlife to interlink the Ken and Betwa rivers by building a dam and a canal. This will inundate a portion of the tiger reserve but the government holds that there are no tigers in that particular stretch of forest and that the water needs of the drought-prone Bundelkhand region have to be kept in mind too.
•We have 90% of the country for river interlinking. I’m saying: please think carefully before you undertake major projects in the remaining 10%. The fact is we have tapped out our hydropower potential and are going on developing more and more… Reserves like Panna are among our last few. We need more water-use efficiency and cannot just dam every river.
So having a dam over there is a threat to the tiger habitat?
•Well, it won’t wipe out the tigers there but the proposed reservoir is massive and Panna is among the few good reserves that we have. So we should have seen if there were alternative locations or if a suitable alternative site could have been established to compensate for the loss of forests.
Is poaching as big a threat to tigers — and other wildlife — as it was a few decades ago?
•Law enforcement has worked to an extent, else we wouldn’t have had any tigers left. However this efficiency is again uneven. In the Northeast, for instance, law enforcement is practically non-existent. This is due to a number of social and cultural factors. The attention should be over there rather than pumping more and more money into reserves where there are enough resources in place.
•In places such as Kaziranga, we have poachers who come in with AK-47s. In some States like Madhya Pradesh, forest officers even today don’t have a right to bear arms… this is ridiculous. What are they going to do with sticks? While the threat of poaching has dramatically reduced, in the east of India it’s still as bad as it was in the 1980s.
Is it because government has failed to step up policing in these regions?
•That and also due to cultural practices. A vast majority of the people hunt and also management systems don’t have adequate control… in Nagaland, as it’s well-known, government officials have to pay protection money to rebel groups. In such a social environment, how can wildlife conservation be prioritised? They have legal power but no effective power.
Do you think too much money is being spent on tiger conservation and not on other wildlife, say leopards?
•Leopards are smaller (than tigers) and spread over a much-wider area. I would disagree with “too much” money being spent on tigers but there is certainly a lack of attention to several other key species. These include, for instance, wolves and the bustard because they don’t share a tiger habitat. There’s some truth to it but not a black and white situation.
Is it ever possible that we would go back to less than 1000 tigers given developmental pressures in India? Are those days well past?
•My own sense is that we are well past those days. When I was growing up in the 1950s in the Western Ghats, tigers were gone. You wouldn’t see a track… the pressures were immense. Wage labour was Rs. 3 for a man, there was no protein in diets and people hunted because they needed meat, logging was rampant. Now the scenario has dramatically changed. The number of people dependent on land has come down, wages have improved, there are other sources of meat. You have chicken and don’t have to walk miles to hunt a civet. Today, there are developmental pressures, such as the Ken-Betwa project, but development has also served to reduce pressures on wildlife.
•However, that said, we are the 10th largest economy in the world, so much science… we should have at least 5,000-10,000 tigers and not pat our backs with 3,000.
What is a major obstacle to achieving this?
•That government is slow to adopt good science for conservation purposes. I invented the technique of using camera traps for counting tigers in 1993 and it’s only now that it has become a standard practice. It took a commission, chaired by the Prime Minister, where forest officials were ordered to stop the previous methods of estimation (such as counting pugmarks). However, it is still not being done the right way. They combine data from incomparable data sets. Basically, the government should get out of the business of surveys and leave it to scientists and researcher institutions. The other key hurdle is the lack of access to data. Organisations like the Wildlife Institute of India (an autonomous institute under the Environment Ministry and based in Dehradun) have unbelievable amount of money given to a dozen scientists. I know this as I used to be on the Governing Board. They end up monopolising all research, from bustards to tigers... nothing substantial seems to result from it.
•However, researchers from non-governmental, reputable institutions such as the National Centre for Biological Sciences and the Indian Institute of Science face great difficulties to get permissions (to visit parts of forest) for research. Recently, a young scientist from IISc collected a dead skunk, or a similar animal, and he was arrested. It’s not just me alone but there is a general barrier to research.
📰 No common ground on the Doklam plateau
China and India see the stand-off very differently — it’s important for the Special Representatives to meet
•The Doklam plateau has become the unlikely scene of the latest India-China imbroglio. The region falls within Bhutanese territory, but this is now questioned by China. The Chumbi valley is vital for India, and any change is fraught with dangerous possibilities. The incident stems from differences between Bhutan and India on the one hand and China on the other as to the exact location of the tri-junction between the three countries.
•In 2007, India and Bhutan had negotiated a Friendship Treaty to replace an earlier one. According to the revised treaty, the two countries are committed to coordinate on issues relating to their national interests. The terms of the 2007 Friendship Treaty are somewhat milder than the one it replaced, which provided India greater latitude in determining Bhutan’s foreign relations, but there is little doubt about the import of the revised treaty.
Cartographic aggression
•China’s current claims over the Doklam plateau should be seen as yet another instance of cartographic aggression, which China often engages in. It is, however, China’s action of building an all-weather road on Bhutan’s territory, one capable of sustaining heavy vehicles, that has prompted Bhutan and India to coordinate their actions in their joint national interests, under the terms of the 2007 Friendship Treaty.
•Many of the points involved in the current stand-off are disputed or disputable. The Sikkim (India)-China border was the only settled segment of the nearly 4,000-km-long India-China border. It adheres to the Anglo-Chinese Convention of 1890, signed between Britain and China, though the exact location of the tri-junction is today in dispute. The Indian side puts it near Batang La, while China claims that it is located at Mt. Gipmochi further south. The Bhutanese are rather equivocal about China’s claims, acknowledging that Tibetan graziers had free access to the Doklam plateau and the Dorsa Nala area, but accept the fact that the tri-junction is at Batang La.
•China has long eyed this area. It has been keen to establish its physical presence in a region that it claims belongs to China according to the 1890 Convention. With China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) gaining momentum, and completion of infrastructure programmes such as the Lhasa-Shigatse Railway, China appears to have turned its attention to the Doklam plateau, eying an opportunity to establish a strong presence close to the Indian border.
•The Doklam plateau has indirectly figured in the several rounds of border talks that have been held between China and Bhutan. Reliable reports suggest that China is not unwilling to make generous concessions to Bhutan in return for a mutually acceptable border settlement. Thus, China appears willing to make concessions in the north, in return for land in the west, comprising the eastern shoulder of the Chumbi valley which incorporates the Doklam plateau.
•It would be a serious mistake to treat the present incident as another run-of-the-mill border incident on the pattern of incidents reported from different points on the disputed Sino-Indian border. There are substantial differences, for instance, between the current incident in the Doklam plateau and past stand-offs such as the ones in Depsang and Chumar, or even for that matter, the 1986-87 Wangdung incident near Sumdorong Chu in Arunachal Pradesh.
•Neither side appears to be in a mood to cede ground regarding the dispute. The rhetoric from the Chinese side has been unusually shrill with China laying down ‘conditionalities’ that “India should withdraw its troops to the Indian side of the border to uphold the peace/tranquillity of the China-India border areas as a precondition for essential peace talks”. Implicit threats of an even more serious situation developing, leading to even more serious consequences, if India did not step back have also been made. The rhetoric seems to convey the message that these are not empty threats.
Unintended consequences
•China may have temporarily halted its road construction programme, but it appears determined to hold on to its position. India is equally clear that it cannot afford to back down, as of now, having gone to Bhutan’s assistance at a time of need. With both sides intent on a show of strength, the potential it has to provoke an incident with unintended consequences is quite high.
•China and India see the Doklam stand-off very differently. For China, the issue is one of territorial ‘sovereignty’. For India, the issue is one of national security. Both appear irreconcilable. China is generally not known to make concessions when it comes to aspects of territorial ‘sovereignty’. The entire saga of the Sino-Indian border dispute hinges on this, with China unwilling to make territorial concessions regarding areas over which it once claimed suzerainty. India, for its part cannot be seen to be compromising on its national security. This would be the case if Chinese claims to the Doklam plateau are accepted and the tri-junction is accepted to be further south at Mt. Gipmochi. It would bring China within striking distance of India’s vulnerable ‘Chicken Neck’, the Siliguri Corridor, the life-line to India’s Northeast. This has always been seen as India’s ‘Achilles heel’, and ensuring its security has figured prominently in India’s calculation from the beginning. The possibilities and consequences are both immense and serious.
•Diplomacy should ordinarily have been the way out, but relations between India and China are far from cordial at present. Even at the highest levels, there are few signs of a thaw. No bilateral meeting took place between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping at the G20 summit in Hamburg earlier this month. There were no consequential meetings subsequently, including during the BRICS conclave.
•India must read proper meanings into China’s unwillingness to hold talks at the highest level. China is categorically laying down difficult pre-conditions for talks, though India is open to the idea of discussions without pre-conditions. These are well reflected in the differences seen between the high voltage Chinese reaction and the measured response of the Indian side.
The play for Bhutan
•One implication could possibly be that the Chinese wish to convey the impression that this is an issue between China and Bhutan, and it does not recognise the India-Bhutan ‘special relationship’ which provides an Indian guarantee for Bhutanese sovereignty. Another is that the Chinese believe that on their own they can make peace with Bhutan and it is India’s ‘interference’ that is complicating matters. China can be expected to pursue this line vigorously from now on.
•The geo-political situation, meanwhile, is in a state of flux. Scope for mediation from quarters friendly to both countries is, hence, limited. If anything, China seems to be more advantageously placed than India. India’s friends are most unlikely to pressurise or persuade China to step back. This leaves India to play a lone hand.
•The only silver lining is that both India and China, though for different reasons, are reluctant to engage in an open conflict — one that could prove detrimental to both. The Chinese economy is slowing down at present and the main preoccupation is to regain its past momentum. China is also preparing for its 19th Party Congress, at which Xi Jinping hopes to establish full control. It is, hence, anxious to avoid any kind of major distraction. India’s reluctance again centres on the economy. Its concerns are that a conflict would stymie economic growth. Both, therefore, have valid reasons not to provoke a conflict.
•If the deadlock is to be broken, and if diplomacy is ruled out for the present, other measures will need to be considered. One available option is the Special Representative Meeting (SRM) that was set up primarily to deal with border issues. Over the past decade and a half, the SRM has been enlarged to some extent to deal with strategic issues. The issue of the Doklam plateau may not fall neatly into either compartment, but it does not prevent the two countries from pursuing this option.
•It will not be the first time that the SRM has been used in this manner to deal with knotty problems outside border matters, and I can personally vouchsafe for this. As of now, it appears to be the only viable and meaningful option to tackle the impasse. The Special Representatives should, hence, urgently establish contact and work out a modus vivendi that would ensure a solution without loss of face for either side.
📰 Partners in regional security and prosperity
Australia and India can ensure that the Indo-Pacific region remains anchored to a resilient rules-based order
•Australia and India share converging interests and similar outlooks on the strategic changes taking place in the Indo-Pacific region and globally. Building on our historic ties, cultural links and extensive people-to-people connections, our bilateral relationship is strengthening. India is Australia’s ninth largest trading partner, with boundless potential for growth.
•Our Indian-origin residents are the fourth largest group of overseas-born Australians, representing close to 2% of our total population. They make a strong contribution to our country across all fields — business, science and medicine, education, arts and culture and sports.
•In June, we demonstrated our strong naval ties when the Australia-India Exercise (AUSINDEX) was conducted for the second time, this time off Australia’s west coast.
•During my visit to India this week, I will reiterate our shared commitment to ensuring the Indo-Pacific region — the most dynamic in the world — remains peaceful and increasingly prosperous.
Keeping the peace
•Australia is committed to working with India and other nations to ensure our region continues to be underpinned by a predictable and resilient rules-based order. The existing post-World War II order has underpinned the extraordinary economic growth we have seen in many parts of the world, and more recently in our region. It has allowed Indo-Pacific states — large and small — to pursue their national and collective interests, while also providing the mechanisms to resolve any disputes peacefully.
•Increasingly, however, this rules-based order is under pressure. Strategic competition is leading to unilateral action. Rising nationalism is leading to a narrower conception of national interests, and a more transactional approach to negotiations.
•As democracies, Australia and India have systems of government where leaders are accountable and the rights of citizens are respected. These democratic principles and practices, when translated into foreign affairs and the engagement between nations, are the essence of an international rules-based system. We need to build and strengthen international institutions that promote cooperation and manage competing interests in fair and transparent ways, in order to maintain regional and global stability. Peace and security in the region will also be consolidated if countries have an economic stake in maintaining good relations.
•Australia is determined to strengthen regional prosperity by maintaining our open, integrated regional economy, underpinned by liberalised trade and investment. Australia and other countries in the region have opened our economies to one another, and have integrated trade, production and investment in a dynamic regional economy, to the benefit of all. India’s growing economic weight has the potential to help lift standards of living in India as well as contribute to prosperity in the wider Indo-Pacific.
A new phase of investment
•Australia welcomes India’s ambitious reform agenda, including the recent introduction of a Goods and Services Tax, and stands ready to lend support, drawing on our own experience. Economic growth and prosperity in the region will also require continued investment in infrastructure.
•Increasingly, China is lending its enormous economic weight to a new phase of investment in the region and beyond. The Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank — which Australia and India joined as founding members — has a role to play in funding infrastructure. Likewise, Japan makes a significant contribution to investment, both commercially and through development banks. We endorse the concept behind these investments — of enhancing connectivity, in land, air, sea and cyber. The more connected our region, the more business opportunities there will be for the private sector, including Australian firms. To ensure these infrastructure investments are cost-effective and economically viable, competition, transparency and accountability in decision-making are of critical importance. We look forward to India liberalising its trade and investment regime further to realise its economic growth prospects and increase its influence in the region. India’s economic and strategic rise is widely welcomed by the region, and globally.
•India is also fully committed to supporting the role of key regional institutions and to strengthening collective leadership. While less developed than the extensive regional architecture in Southeast and East Asia, the regional architecture of the Indian Ocean is increasingly promoting coordinated approaches with South Asia, in response to shared interests and emerging challenges. India and Australia need to increase our bilateral cooperation and our collective efforts with other like-minded countries. Together we can shape a future region in which strong and effective rules and open markets deliver lasting peace and prosperity — free markets and free people.
