📰 India should believe in the EU
Their ties assume significance as a rules-based order gets challenged by the rise of exceptionalism
•In today’s fragmented world, the power of any aspiring global player depends on the number and quality of its bilateral and multilateral relationships. In which partner should India invest? The European Union (EU) is one.
•The EU and India have much in common. Both aim to enhance strategic autonomy and their global standing. Diversifying strategic value chains is also a common interest, as is the urgent need to address climate change. The EU and India can support each other in these endeavours.
•On purely economic terms, the EU is India’s first trading partner and the biggest foreign investor, with €67.7 billion worth of investments made in 2018, equal to 22% of total FDI inflows. But there is still room for improvement — especially when compared to EU investments in China which, in the same year, amounted to €175.3 billion. Enhanced business cooperation can help both the EU and India diversify their strategic value chains and reduce economic dependency — notably on China. India could succeed in attracting EU investment that might be moving out of China, but to do so, it must address the mutual trust deficit. Facilitating people’s mobility and connectivity is a good way to improve mutual understanding and create opportunities for innovation and growth.
Talks on FTA
•The EU and India must also tackle the elephant in the room: the stagnating Free Trade Agreement (FTA) negotiations. A new study from the European Parliament assesses the potential impact of an EU-India trade agreement at between €8 billion and €8.5 billion gains from increased trade for both sides, with a more significant increase of trade gains likely to flow to India. The study also refers to additional potential gains from enhanced coordination on the provision of global public goods, such as environmental standards.
•On climate change, the EU is building on its ambitious target to render the continent carbon-emission neutral by 2050, through its new industrial strategy, the Green Deal. “Investing in fossil fuel-driven recovery is a wasted opportunity, and we only have one chance to make it right”, says the Executive Vice President of the European Commission, Frans Timmermans. Should both the EU and India succeed in transforming into carbon-neutral economies by 2050, we all would gain from the investment.
•In geopolitical terms, India finds itself facing increasingly restive, powerful rivals. The Indo-Pacific region is increasingly the focus of attention, so India should capitalise on its geopolitical leverage there. Stronger cooperation with like-minded, democratic powers can support this effort, especially towards assertive competitors like China. Even India’s strongest bilateral relations with individual EU member states do not come close to the potential of dealing effectively with the EU as a whole. New Delhi must learn how to maximise benefit from this strategic partnership.
Ruptures caused by COVID-19
•The ruptures caused by COVID-19 have been the occasion for the EU to prove its worth. The measures put in place at supranational level show a strong willingness to buttress the fundamental pillars on which the EU is built. The “Next generation EU proposal” submitted by the European Commission has surprised many by its bold approach. This is indeed a game-changer, not only in its financial implications — as it allows the EU to take on debt — but because it shows that the ties that bind the EU extend well beyond treaties and individual members’ self-interest.
•But the value of the EU reaches far beyond its economic clout. The EU champions the rules-based international order, which is being increasingly challenged by the proliferation of exceptionalism. The EU and India must join forces to promote sustainable reform of multilateral institutions, with the World Trade Organization (WTO) first in line.
•Hence, a strong partnership would help both EU and India become global decision-makers.
Its moves are spurring support for coordination between other Indo-Pacific partners, with their desire for U.S. leadership
•India’s deadly encounter with China in the Galwan Valley is not an outlier in Beijing’s recent behaviour in Asia. China’s coronavirus “mask diplomacy” has given way to tense geopolitical confrontations with a growing array of its neighbours, from stand-offs with Vietnam and Malaysia in the South China Sea to threatening Australia with boycotts of wine, beef, barley, and Chinese students.
Catalyst for change
•Beijing’s blatant aggressiveness is accelerating long-standing debates about the underlying costs of reliance on China and spurring support for closer coordination between other Indo-Pacific partners. The Indian, Japanese, Malaysian, and Australian governments have all taken concrete steps to reduce their economic exposure to Beijing, spanning investment, manufacturing, and technology. India and Australia recently inked a new military logistics agreement in the “virtual summit” between Prime Ministers Narendra Modi and Scott Morrison, and a similar agreement between Delhi and Tokyo may follow. The Quadrilateral Dialogue between Australia, India, Japan, and the United States is growing stronger and even expanding. And recently as well, Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Foreign Ministers issued one of their strongest statements to date on the South China Sea, insisting that maritime disputes must be resolved in accordance with the UN Law of the Sea treaty.
•Other responses are bottom-up. Chinese cyberbullying of a Thai film star spawned a new “Milk Tea Alliance”, thus named after the popular beverage, to forge solidarity between Taiwanese, Hong Kongers, and Southeast Asians online. Overtly rejecting China’s attempts to play up support for the “One China” principle, online supporters quickly propelled a hashtag that translates as “Milk Tea Is Thicker than Blood” to nearly one million tweets in a matter of days. It also garnered the praise of Hong Kong activist Joshua Wong, who called for “pan-Asian solidarity that opposes all forms of authoritarianism”.
•Asian multilateralism has often been born out of crises. The Chiang Mai Initiative — a financial swap mechanism between China, Japan, South Korea, and Southeast Asia — emerged in the aftermath of the late 1990s financial crisis. The grandfather of all Asian regional organisations, ASEAN, was created in 1967 but did not convene its first heads of state meeting until Southeast Asian leaders were shocked into action by the fall of Saigon in 1976. As Lee Kuan Yew later argued, “The seriousness of purpose came only with the shock of the terrible alternatives.”
America and geopolitics
•If crises and wars tend to be the crucibles in which new orders and institutions are forged, the COVID-19 crisis is likely to be no exception — it may be remaking the geopolitics of the Indo-Pacific. The ongoing crisis seems to have imbued countries in the region with a new seriousness of purpose about the risks of a slow slide toward Chinese hegemony. This is handing the Trump administration openings it has long sought: more credible multilateral coordination among allies, pushback against online disinformation, and the desire to better integrate like-minded economies and supply chains. At the same time, the crisis is also raising renewed questions about the durability of American leadership. Writing as two Americans, the question now facing the U.S. administration is whether it can harness this new regional momentum — or whether President Trump’s anarchic instincts will squander the opening.
•Thus far, Mr. Trump continues to make unforced errors that create distance with U.S. allies and partners — more often than not, at exactly the wrong moment. For example, the President’s focus on cutting support for the World Health Organization (WHO) and asserting that COVID-19 originated in a Wuhan lab alienated Canberra, right at the moment when Australia was stepping up more forcefully to assert regional leadership, launch an impartial international investigation of the pandemic’s origins, and push back on Beijing. Similarly, the administration’s suspension of various worker visas is a move that will almost certainly have serious repercussions in India.
What the U.S. needs to do
•To improve, the U.S. needs to make two major shifts. First, U.S. policy needs to start supporting, rather than attempting to commandeer, regional efforts to build a less China-centric future for the Indo-Pacific. U.S. leaders need to remember that while Chinese aggression provides a powerful motivation for coordination, U.S. partners are seeking an agenda that is framed in broader terms than simply rallying to counter Beijing. Asian countries have strong, historically-rooted ideas about their own security and the future of the region — American leaders should recall the long-standing resonance of the Non-Aligned Movement in a region that resists a “new Cold War” framing. Australia’s efforts to call for a COVID-19 investigation through WHO, as well as Japan’s desire to take the lead on a G-7 statement on Hong Kong, reflect not just an effort to push back on Beijing. They also reflect concern that the current U.S. administration may box them into an untenable corner.
•If the U.S. wants to better harness the growing desire to reduce reliance on Beijing and “re-couple” investments and supply chains among allied nations, it is going to have to make compromises — an approach this administration has been loath to embrace. U.S. leadership would be far more effective if it worked with Indo-Pacific partners on the issues that they prioritise and provided them significant space for independent action. Second, while China certainly has the power to coerce, it also has a tremendous ability to be its own worst enemy by pushing too hard on its neighbours. It is often China’s own overreach (rather than Washington’s entreaties) that stiffens the spines of other Asian nations. Washington should avoid repeating Beijing’s mistakes and offer a clear alternative in word and deed to China’s “Wolf Warrior” diplomacy. Moves such as demanding that a G-7 communiqué refer to COVID-19 as the “Wuhan virus” and blocking mask shipments to close allies are the kind of counterproductive bullying that the U.S. should leave to China.
•For their part, regional partners should see that Beijing’s recent aggression is not an aberration but part of a growing pattern. Asian nations will not be able to avoid making difficult policy choices and investments to preserve their sovereignty and strategic space. As Beijing’s confidence in its growing material and military power solidifies, its neighbours will need to think carefully about the long-term decisions necessary to preserve an open regional order.
U.S. versus China
•Across the Indo-Pacific, the desire for U.S. leadership remains strong, with the U.S. still viewed more favourably than China, according to Pew. Similarly, the U.S. public continues to express widespread support for America’s alliances and partnerships. Facing the unprecedented health and economic crises spawned by COVID-19, the U.S. and Asian partners will need to coordinate more closely than ever. They have a unique chance to build more equal and capable regional partnerships and institutions in the long recovery ahead.
•Asian countries, too, have an opportunity to continue strengthening their own regional networks, which will challenge and complicate the views of those in both Washington and Beijing who would see the region only as a sparring ground in a bipolar U.S.-China competition.
•For American and Asian leaders, the choice is stark: encourage and foster this trend, recognising that stronger regional coordination will require more compromises as well as tougher choices, or resist it and risk being left behind.
📰 Putting victims on trial
Rape myths and stereotypes echo the deeply entrenched patriarchal biases of the players in our justice system
•In late June, a single bench of the Karnataka High Court granted anticipatory bail to a man accused of rape. One of the first reasons mentioned for granting bail was that the seriousness of the offence alone cannot be a ground for depriving a citizen of her/his liberty. While this is true, the Court ought to have considered that in cases of rape, the issue in granting bail is not just seriousness of the offence, but the very real possibility of intimidation of the complainant, which would prevent her from being an effective witness in the trial. Furthermore, the Court anchored its reasoning in unsubstantiated, damaging inferences drawn from the behaviour of the complainant. While the contentious remarks were subsequently expunged on an application made by the state, the continued and frequent use of these rape myths and stereotypes deserves discussion.
•Rape myths or stereotypes are widely held, false and prejudicial notions about rape, rapists, and the survivors of rape. The underlying assumption of such stereotypes is that ‘genuine’ victims/survivors can be recognised by the discernibly common patterns of behaviour they exhibit. To begin with, ‘genuine’ victims/survivors of rape are expected not to put themselves in situations which, it is believed, might lead to rape. These situations may include anything that is seen as a social taboo for women: whether it is drinking, partying, or indeed, as stated by the defence in the infamous Nirbhaya case, simply being out at night. The implication here is either that willingness to participate in such activities is equivalent to consent to sex, or that engaging in social taboo is tantamount to inviting rape.
Shifting the burden onto the victim
•Another common stereotype is that ‘genuine’ victims/survivors physically resist their assailants or shout for help. For instance, in Mahmood Farooqui v. NCT of Delhi (2017), the High Court of Delhi had held that the complainant’s ‘feeble no’, even when spoken, would not be sufficient evidence of lack of consent. This case also repeated the widely held belief of Courts that where the victim/survivor had a past sexual history with the accused, her consent would be assumed, and any ‘unwillingness’ or ‘hesitation’ on her part would be disregarded.
•The greatest evil of rape myths or stereotypes is that they put the victim, rather than the accused and society, on trial. The focus shifts from whether the accused committed the offence to whether the victim/survivor’s behaviour met patriarchy’s exacting standards. With the narrative that the victim/survivor could have avoided the rape, or indeed, asked for it, the blame is conveniently shifted from large-scale social and systemic failures to the victim/survivor herself.
•The rape law for adults in India, as amended in 2013, specifically states that failure to resist cannot be taken as evidence of consent. In fact, consent, whether verbal or non-verbal, has been defined to mean ‘unequivocal voluntary agreement’. Passive submission (which may arise out of fear or deep-rooted social conditioning) or acquiescence to non-sexual acts such as drinking together, cannot and should not be equated with consent to sex. The 2013 Amendment also laid down that consent would mean willingness to participate in a ‘specific’ sexual act. Therefore, consent given for a particular sexual liaison cannot be read as ongoing consent, given in perpetuity.
No universal script
•It is impossible and unjust to have a universal script against which the behaviour of individual victims/survivors is assessed, because each person and each circumstance is distinct. Unfortunately, however, the reliance on rape myths and stereotypes is painfully common in the Indian criminal justice system. In a country that has abysmally low rates of reporting for sexual offences, and even lower rates of conviction, the continued reliance on such stereotypes raises important questions and concerns. How can we expect survivors of rape to come forward knowing that they will be doubted every step of the way? What is the purpose of enacting purportedly progressive or ‘victim-centric’ legislation when those tasked with implementing them continue to put the victim/survivor on trial?
•Rape myths and stereotypes echo the deeply entrenched patriarchal biases of the players in our criminal justice system, and of society at large. When used in judgments, they become a permanent part of the legal record. As precedent, they create a chilling effect for all future victims/survivors of rape, making the criminal justice system even more unapproachable than it is. This calls for urgent and renewed efforts towards sensitisation and for the need to make sensitivity in handling sexual offences part of our judicial incentive structure.
