📰 Military exercise in Bangladesh ends
General Naravane attends closing ceremony
•Multinational military exercise Shantir Ogrosena, under way in Bangladesh for the last 10 days, concluded on Monday. Army Chief Gen. Manoj Naravane, who is on a visit to the neighbouring country, witnessed the validation phase of the exercise.
•“The exercise culminated with a validation phase and closing ceremony organised on the theme of robust peace keeping operations jointly undertaken by contingents of Indian Army, Royal Bhutanese Army, Sri Lankan Army and Bangladesh Army, preceded by an Army Chiefs Conclave,” an Army statement said.
•Gen. Naravane also interacted with the senior officers of the participating nations and Military Observers from other countries, the statement said. On Sunday, he had also delivered a keynote address on “Changing Nature of Global Conflicts: Role of UN Peacekeepers.”
•The 10-day long exercise, which started on April 4 at Bangabandhu Senanibas (BBS), has participation by four countries along with observers from the U.S., the U.K., Russia, Turkey, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Singapore. The aim of the exercise is to strengthen defence ties and enhance interoperability amongst neighbourhood countries to ensure effective peace keeping operations, the Army said.
They were “harassed, abused and traumatised” and disparagingly called ‘coronavirus,’ says study
•A study commissioned by the Indian Council of Social Science Research (ICSSR) on racial discrimination and hate crimes against people from the northeast States found that the “northeast India seamlessly fits [an] Indian’s imagination of a Chinese person”.
•The study found that 78% of the people from the region who were interviewed believed that physical appearance was the most important reason for prejudice against them.
•The study said amid the COVID-19 outbreak last year, people from the region “faced an increased number of acts of hate and prejudices against them”.
•A series of attacks were reported in various parts of the country where people from the region were “harassed, abused, and traumatised” and were disparagingly called ‘coronavirus,’ the study said.
•The Hindu accessed the findings of the unpublished report. The Centre for Criminology and Victimology at the National Law University (NLU), Delhi conducted the study under the aegis of the ICSSR, Delhi, on the prevalence of hate crimes against the people of the region in six metropolitan cities — Mumbai, Pune, Delhi, Chennai, Bengaluru and Hyderabad.
•Around 1200 persons, mostly women from Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Meghalaya, Manipur, Mizoram, Nagaland and Tripura were interviewed for the research. The study’s associate is Dr. Garima Paul of the NLU.
•G.S. Bajpai, Chairperson of the Centre, said the majority of those interviewed faced discrimination when it came to renting an accommodation, visit to a restaurant and even transportation.
•“The study revealed that the hate crime and racial discrimination against people from the northeast is deep-rooted even in the cosmopolitan cities. Most of them faced problems while renting a house, even in restaurants they faced issues forcing them to eat mostly in eateries run by people from their communities. These issues cannot be solved by policing alone,” Prof. Bajpai said.
•The study quotes a 2020 report from Right and Risks Analysis Group (RRAG) that found a significant upsurge in acts of racial discrimination against people from the region. It mentions 22 reported cases of racial discrimination or hate crimes between February and March 25, 2020.
•It examined various kinds of security concerns and experiences faced in their daily life.
•“The risk of being victimised in racial hatred remains subtle yet deeply entrenched. The highest number of incidents were reported from Mumbai (44.7%). Interestingly, 78% of the northeast people believed that physical appearance was the most important reason for prejudice against them. It appears as if the northeast India seamlessly fits Indian’s imagination of a Chinese person,” the report said.
•Offensive and abusive language were reported to be most common across all the six cities. Mumbai recorded the highest offensive and abusive language related crime (74%), followed by Chennai (72%), Pune (67.3%), Delhi (64%), Hyderabad (48.7%) and Bengaluru (43.3%). More than 60% of the persons who were interviewed said their studies and work were seriously hampered by such experiences.
•“The most pervasive reasons behind hate crime incidents against the northeastern people as per our data analysis were public attitude and insensitivity (44.5%). The incidence of non-reporting of the incidents was as high as 32.3%. As many as 34% of persons faced a common issue of refusal to file FIR by the police. The fear of hate crime was experienced to be particularly high in Chennai (74%),” the study said.
•It said the M.P. Bezbaruah Committee in 2014 recommended amendments to the IPC by creating new offences under Section 153C and 509A to to deal with comments, gestures and acts intended to insult a member of a particular racial group. “It also suggested to make such offences as ‘gender-neutral’, ‘cognizable’ and ‘non-bailable’ with imprisonment extendable up to three years or five years with fine, respectively. The Supreme Court in Karma Dorji & Others vs Union of India & Others (2014) made several recommendations for the prevention and monitoring of racial hatred and violence. Though, not much seems to have been done in this regard,” said the study.
•Earlier in December 2020, a report by the Nagaland government said the stranded State residents were subjected to “racism and harassment” in the wake of the March 24, 2020 nationwide lockdown.
📰 Save the deal: On U.S. and Iran resolving nuclear crisis
U.S. and Iran should rebuild the lost trust and resolve the nuclear crisis before time runs out
•The Vienna talks between the remaining members of the Iran nuclear deal — China, Russia, the U.K., France, Germany and Iran — have raised hopes for the revival of the agreement from which then President Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew the U.S. in May 2018. After the initial round of talks, European and Iranian diplomats have said efforts to revive the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), as the deal is officially called, are on “the right track”. An American delegation, led by Robert Malley, the White House special envoy for Iran, is also in Vienna, though the Americans and the Iranians would not hold direct talks. All sides agree that bringing the deal back on track is ideal, but who will blink first? The U.S. wants Iran to end its uranium enrichment and centrifuge development programmes and return to the 2015 agreement, while Tehran has demanded the U.S. lift all sanctions imposed by Mr. Trump and still enforced by President Joe Biden. The agenda at Vienna, therefore, is to produce a road map for the revival of the JCPOA by addressing these two critical issues — Iran’s nuclear enhanced programme and American sanctions.
•The Biden administration has displayed flexibility in its approach towards Iran. The President appointed a special envoy, ended the U.S.’s support for Saudi Arabia’s war against the Houthis, Iran-backed militants, in Yemen and promised to lift sanctions if Tehran returns to the JCPOA terms. The administration has also reportedly made an offer to Iran to release $1 billion of Iranian money frozen in South Korea as part of the sanctions in exchange for ending its 20% uranium enrichment. But a wary Iran, which was fully compliant with the agreement when Mr. Trump abandoned it and slapped back sanctions, has rejected the offer, seeking more concrete measures from the U.S. The challenge both sides are facing is a lack of time. Iran holds its presidential polls in June. If the U.S.’s best chance to address Iran’s nuclear programme is through the revival of the JCPOA, the best possibility of reviving the agreement is to do it (or at least agree on a road map) before the presidential election. There are external dangers as well. Iran-backed Shia militias in Iraq continue to target U.S. forces and bases in Iraq. The Israel-Iran shadow conflict is now being fought inside Syria and on the seas. Last week, an Iranian ship was attacked in the Red Sea. If security tensions rise in the region involving Iran and its proxies, it could derail the diplomatic efforts. The U.S. and Iran should exercise restraint, stay focused on talks and rebuild the lost trust, and take measures to get the deal back on track that would resolve the nuclear crisis in return for dismantling the sanctions regime.
📰 A second chance for Nepal’s young democracy
An all-party consensus government seems the only way to break the deadlock and ensure stability
•It can be said that the only constant in Nepali politics is ‘unpredictability’. Nepal’s democratic transition has been shaped through the efforts and sacrifices of common citizens and leaders and the expectation was that the forgotten Nepali would soon get something better than the discriminatory political culture that started way back in 2015 with the new Constitution and selective political manoeuvrings.
•While it was time to deepen the footprints of the key institutions of democracy, Prime Minister K.P. Sharma Oli succeeded in making himself a bigger institution than the Constitution and Parliament. It was never possible for Mr. Oli to grow beyond a permissible stature in a functional democracy without misinterpreted nationalism, vulnerable Presidential, federal system and flawed decision-making processes.
•Supported by the President Bidya Devi Bhandari, which was a surprise, Mr. Oli briskly dissolved the Lower House of the federal Parliament on December 20, 2020, which only undermined the democratic spirit and dampened the prospects of stability and equitable growth in the country even further. Even when the Supreme Court reinstated the dissolved Parliament on February 23, 2021 and disputed the legal status of Nepal Communist Party (a merged entity of Communist Party of Nepal-ML and Communist Party of Nepal-Maoist Centre), Mr. Oli continues to survive in the new age of Nepali politics where accountability is seldom seen as a virtue.
•The obsession with the positioning of India and China, more so with the abolition of the monarchy, has been a survival game in Nepali politics. The tendency to raise the bogey of the “hostile” neighbour has weakened politics and has failed the idea of representing constituent interests. It would be helpful to reckon the present round of serious institutional crisis as the culmination of an accountability-free political culture and the misunderstood institutional processes — where the successes or failures of decisions are attributed to outsiders — instead of opting for probity in public life and owning the outcomes.
Constitutional provisions
•Among the key factors of the ongoing political stalemate in Nepal are certain rigid constitutional provisions that have made it possible for Mr. Oli to take cover behind a shield and continue, as getting into election phase or looking for the possibility of a caretaker coalition government is a very difficult proposition. Instead of incorporating the provision of a no-confidence motion in its true spirit as a multi-party democracy, Nepal gets an unusual clause (Article 100(4)) in its new Constitution that allows a no-confidence motion only two years after the formation of the government — and even this can happen only when one fourth of the total number of existing members of the House of Representatives may table a motion of no-confidence in writing that the House has no confidence in the Prime Minister. Article 100(5) is even more perplexing which necessitates the motion of no-confidence shall also indicate the name of a member proposed for the Prime Minister.
•Overcoming such arduous challenges is surely very tough for the three leading parties (Nepali Congress, Maoist Centre and Janata Samajbadi Party) seen in the race to bring the Oli government down. Even to exercise the choice of a no-confidence motion, two parties of these three have to be on the same front for getting the magical number of 68 Parliamentarians. With no consensus or ethical obligations among the wary political parties, the hiatus is likely to sustain itself.
•The three major parties opposing Mr. Oli’s continuance as the Prime Minister have 142 seats in Parliament, a number that is well sufficient to end the deadlock, enter into a post-Oli era and form a new government.
•However, Mr. Oli has astutely managed to outwit his political opponents both within his party and the Opposition by playing on their differences. While the Nepali Congress is facing an endemic limitation with the decision-making process, its leadership has not shown any clear temptation to explore the possibility of playing any significant role in the ongoing crucial phase in Nepali politics.
•The Baburam Bhattarai-led Janata Samajbadi Party was expected to be playing an active role in coalition experiments with the Maoist Centre, Nepali Congress and Madhes-based parties, however, no such action was noticed from this camp as well. Maoist Centre Chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal and Baburam Bhattarai and former Co-Chair with Mr. Oli in the erstwhile Nepal Communist Party formed an informal alliance with Madhav Kumar Nepal as they both wanted Mr. Oli to be unseated in the wake of his decision to dissolve the House of Representatives on December 20 and demanded his resignation. Their demands were limited only to Mr. Oli’s resignation and were not oriented toward the building of an alternate front, which gave a much needed respite to Mr. Oli.
•After the Supreme Court of Nepal reinstated Parliament in February this year, it came out with the next historic verdict on March 7 in which the top court had scrapped the legal status of the ruling Nepal Communist Party. This led to a formal division in the united communist alliance, besides ensuring a split in the Dahal-Nepal faction. Mr. Nepal, along with other UML leaders loyal to him, was left with no option but to return to the old party. Mr. Dahal had to revert to his old party, the Maoist Centre, even as four of its law makers defected to Mr. Oli’s UML. Mr. Dahal has also missed taking a political step, in playing safe.
A way out
•The political muddle apart, this is no time for elections, especially with a second wave of COVID-19 infections. Nepal also stares at a lack of sufficient numbers of vaccines which has left the population vulnerable. Also, good governance cannot be ensured by a government that is caught up in survivalist compulsions.
•The best way forward would be in giving democracy a good chance. For now, this can be made possible by the political parties alone. They have to aspire to ensure peace, progress and stability; the easiest option would be to work towards a consensus government with all the major parties joining hands and running it collectively.
📰 Not on the same page at sea
L’affaire Lakshadweep shows not a betrayal by the U.S. but a different understanding of navigational freedom
•India’s strategic community was agitated last week when the USS John Paul Jones carried out a freedom of navigation operation (FONOP) 130 nautical miles west of the Lakshadweep Islands. Indian observers reacted with shock and dismay at what some described as an unnecessary provocation by the U.S. Navy. The disquiet in Delhi was heightened by an unusual press release by the Commander, U.S. 7th Fleet, that said the operation, which was carried out in India’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ), “asserted navigational rights and freedoms... without requesting India’s prior consent”. Many saw this as political signalling by the U.S., oddly, at a time when U.S.-India relations are on a high.
Different interpretations
•In the aftermath of the incident, the U.S. Pentagon defended the military operation off India’s waters terming it “consistent with international law”. For the U.S. Navy, FONOPs are a way of showing that the maritime claims of certain states are incompatible with international law. India’s requirement of prior consent for the passage of foreign warships through Indian EEZs, U.S. officials believe, is a violation of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). Articles 56 and 58, Part V of the Law of the Sea, they point out, entitle U.S. warships to high-seas freedoms in the 200-nautical mile EEZs of another coastal state.
•India interprets the maritime convention differently. Indian experts note that the UNCLOS does not explicitly permit the passage of military vessels in another state’s EEZ. When it ratified the convention in 1995, New Delhi stated, “India understands that the provisions of the Convention do not authorize other States to carry out in the exclusive economic zone and on the continental shelf military exercises or manoeuvres, in particular those involving the use of weapons or explosives without the consent of the coastal State.” This position is consistent with India’s domestic law — the Territorial Waters, Continental Shelf, Exclusive Economic Zone and Other Maritime Zones of India Act of 1976 — and remains unchanged.
•Despite disagreements over navigational freedoms, however, India and the U.S. have refrained from a public airing of differences. Indian observers have come to accept U.S. FONOPs as an instrument in Washington’s military and diplomatic toolkit that gives the U.S. Navy leverage in the contest with China in the South China Sea. U.S. officials, too, have learnt to take Indian posturing in their stride. Washington knows New Delhi’s real concern is the possibility of greater Chinese naval presence in Indian waters, in particular the threat of People’s Liberation Army Navy submarines near Indian islands. Delhi’s pronouncements on foreign military activity in Indian EEZs, they know, don’t need to be taken literally.
•Needless to say, U.S. FONOPs in Indian EEZs have been relatively low key, serving mainly to check a box on the U.S. Navy’s record of activity in Asia. Since 2016, the U.S. Navy has carried out three forays through Indian EEZs keeping well outside Indian territorial waters. In contrast, U.S. warships challenged excessive Chinese claims thrice in 2016, four times in 2017, six in 2018, eight in 2019, and nine in 2020. Most patrols are said to have come within 12 nautical miles of the territorial sea limit around China’s islands. Those statistics say something about the U.S. Navy’s strategic priorities in Asia.
Lakshadweep: A smart choice
•The choice of Lakshadweep for the FONOP doesn’t seem incidental. U.S. planners are likely to have known that a U.S. naval foray close to the ‘strategic’ Andaman and Nicobar Islands would be controversial. Besides necessitating a response from New Delhi, it could have exposed a wrinkle in the relationship that both sides have so far been discreet about: the disagreement over interpretation of the UNCLOS. U.S. planners are likely to have calculated that a naval operation in the waters off Lakshadweep would be unremarkable. With maritime boundaries around the Lakshadweep more settled than the Andaman and Nicobar Islands (where straight baselines on the Western edge of the islands have in the past raised uncomfortable questions), Indian officials could even afford to ignore the operation.
•To guard against any misreading of intent, the U.S. Navy coupled its FONOP in Indian waters with another sail through the territorial seas of the Maldives, a country with which the U.S. signed a defence agreement in 2020. The idea, ostensibly, was to signal to China that the U.S. Navy is committed to uphold the rules-based order in the waters of opponents and partners alike. Alas, the U.S. 7th Fleet erred in releasing a press statement that set the issue ablaze. Once social media picked up the story, it took on a life of its own.
Bridging the divide
•There are lessons for both India and the U.S. from l’affaire Lakshadweep. The U.S. must recognise that FONOPs have implications for New Delhi that go beyond the infringement of Indian jurisdiction in the near seas. Such operations normalise military activism close to India’s island territories that remain vulnerable to incursions by foreign warships. The U.S. Navy’s emphasis on navigational freedoms in the EEZs encourages other regional navies to violate India’s domestic regulations in the waters surrounding the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. U.S. hectoring on the subject isn’t acceptable as Washington is yet to ratify the UNCLOS.
•But New Delhi, too, must rethink its stand on freedom of navigation in the EEZs. It isn’t enough for Indian officials and commentators to say U.S. FONOPs are an act of impropriety. The reality is that India’s domestic regulation is worryingly out of sync with international law. India’s declaration of straight baselines delineating zones around the Andaman and Nicobar Islands (on the Western edge), in particular, is a discrepancy that cannot be explained as a minor departure from the provisions of the UNCLOS.
•The U.S. Navy sail through the waters off Lakshadweep highlights a gap in the Indian and American perception of navigational freedoms, complicating an already complex domain of international maritime law. Yet it is not the betrayal of a friend that many have sought to portray the FONOP to be.
📰 India’s South Asian opportunity
Peace with Pakistan is not just a bilateral matter, but is essential for India to transform South Asia
•The statement issued by the Director Generals of Military Operations of India and Pakistan, in late February, that they agree to strictly observe all agreements between the two countries, coincided with a statement made by Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan in Colombo that “our only dispute is Kashmir and it can only be resolved through dialogue.” This was later strongly endorsed by Pakistan’s Army Chief, General Qamar Bajwa. This shows that there is a growing, but unstated, realisation that neither country can wrest parts of Kashmir that each controls from the other. Rather, it is best to focus on resolving issues that blight the entire subcontinent — poverty, malnutrition and an unconscionable neglect of the young. It is a realisation that the India-Pakistan animosity hurts regionalism and South Asian growth.
Economic integration
•A fair peace between India and Pakistan is not just good for the two states but for all the nations constituting the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC). Reports such as the World Bank publication titled ‘A Glass Half Full’ and others from the Asian Development Bank and the European Union conclude that there is explosive value to be derived from South Asian economic integration.
•While SAARC has facilitated limited collaborations among its members, it has remained a victim of India-Pakistan posturing. As External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar observed in a December 2020 interview to this newspaper: “If SAARC is a serious regionalism initiative, and [Pakistan] blocks trade and connectivity and people-to-people ties... what regionalism are we speaking of?” Now, given that the two countries have agreed to maintain ceasefire, it is time for India to seize the moment and become more South Asia-concerned and much less Pakistan-obsessed.
•An economically transformed and integrated South Asian region could advantageously link up with China’s Belt and Road Initiative and even join the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, the world’s largest trading bloc of 15 countries, accounting for 30% of its GDP, as a much valued partner.
•Writing in a commemorative volume in honour of the late Sri Lankan economist Saman Kelegama, Professor Selim Raihan of the University of Dhaka brings out India’s overwhelming ‘size imbalance’ in South Asia: “The shares of India in the total land area, population, and real GDP of South Asia in 2016 are 62%, 75%, and 83%, respectively. The two other big countries in South Asia are Pakistan and Bangladesh with shares in regional GDP of only 7.6% and 5.6%, respectively.”
•Given its size and heft, only India can take the lead in transforming a grossly under-performing region like South Asia. Collectively with a population of slightly over 1.9 billion, South Asia has a GDP (PPP) of $12 trillion. Contrast this with the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN). Numbering nearly 700 million, ASEAN has a GDP (PPP) of around $9 trillion and a per capita income which, at $14,000 (PPP), is closing in on China, with member states like Vietnam starting to grow spectacularly.
India’s moment
•This is the moment for India to think big and act big by ambitiously aiming to engineer a South Asian economic miracle in half the time China did. If this sounds impossible, so did China’s rise in 1972. But for that to happen, India needs to view a peace with Pakistan not as a bilateral matter, to be arrived at leisurely, if at all, but as essential and urgent, all the while viewing it as a chance of a lifetime, to dramatically transform South Asia for the better, no less.
