Must end-users end up as fools?

Breakfast at terrorist-decorated Taj, with Ratan Tata and Mukesh Ambani on either side -- what triumphant symbolism to crown Hillary Clinton’s public relations tour de force in India. But did it work? It did make possible one impossibility; uniting the BJP and the Communists in a common cause. They were equally agitated, as indeed were some ruling party MPs, over the “hidden details” of the agreements the American lady finalised with our Government.

What offended them, and a lot of others, was the way America insists on American laws overriding the laws of other sovereign nations. They want our business – billions of dollars worth military equipment. But when we buy them, we must also buy the superiority of American laws which demand the right of inspection by American officials of our equipment and their deployment. Even the Indian Prime Minister’s special aircraft is subject to American inspection/approval from time to time because a US company supplied it.

The problem here is an attitude of mind. Remember the saying, “What is good for General Motors is good for the world”. Well, it now stands proved that it was not even good for General Motors which has collapsed. But the attitude of mind has not changed. What the US Congress resolves for America is binding on the world.

There is a further problem. The high-falutin attitude works only with orderly countries that have their own functioning parliamentary and legal systems. It never worked with Pakistan, for example. Massive quantities of American arms were supplied to Pakistan to strengthen its democratic forces. But most of the weaponry was used against India. America did not or could not take action under its end-user laws. Pakistan is smart enough to know that America recognises only West-ward looking terrorists. So they mounted a serious campaign against the Swat Talibans and won applause from the likes of Hillary. Which left Pakistan free to carry on merrily with east-ward looking terrorists. (V.K.Krishna Menon used to scorn Americans for assuming that their guns supplied to Pakistan could only fire in one direction).

Why is it that India appears unable to call this kind of bluff? Is it just a matter of Manmohan Singh’s avowed admiration for America? Or is there, additionally, a lingering colonial mentality in our bowing to the West as a matter of habit?

Our history since independence is studded with events that suggest such a predilection on our part. We internationalised the Kashmir issue (when there was no need to do so) because Nehru was easily influenced by the Mountbattens. Imagine China taking the Tibet issue to the UN. In 1994 in the wake of the Bhopal gas tragedy, we allowed Union Carbide boss Anderson to walk free. Indian law was rendered toothless. In 1995 after a foreign aircraft dropped arms in the remote area of Purulia, five Latvian and one British crew were finally sentenced. But all of them were given executive pardon and allowed to go home. Will the American system allow any such leniency to jailed fashion designer Anand Jon who is widely believed to have been framed by business rivals in Los Angeles?

Six decades after independence, we are still to learn how to stand up for our dignity. Imagine how dramatically equations will change if we do a few things the American way. Give our business, for example, to European suppliers of weapons and nuclear plants who do not have humiliating end-user specifications. And ensure that a departing American dignitary or two are body-searched at our airport. That’s a language that will be instantly understood.

Why Rs 1417030000000 won’t save us

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One followed by seven zeroes, a crore, is easy to conceptualise. It’s the unit in which politicians count their money. But one followed by twelve zeroes? It takes an Indian budget to think in those terms – 1417030000000 being the allocation for defence in the Mukherjee budget. It’s 34 percent higher than last year’s but it’s for our defence, so no one will grudge it.

That’s a pity because we must indeed grudge it. And precisely because it is for defence. Not that the money is too much. India spends only 2% of its GDP on the military. Pakistan spends 5% and China 7%. But the problem is that, unlike them, we don’t get the full benefit of the money we earmark.

So the services remain seriously handicapped. The army badly needs light helicopters and artillery guns, but has been “unable” to buy them. Half the submarine fleet is useless for war. IAF crashes in recent months have pointed to the need for urgent equipment upgradation. Even fast patrol boats the Coast Guard desperately requires are yet to be acquired.

Actually the services were given Rs 48,007 crore last year. But as much as 7000 crore out of it remained unspent. The Coast Guard, for example, was given Rs 947 crore, but it returned Rs 200 crore unspent.

Why are they unable to buy what they want though they have the money? The lay mind will immediately think of the corruption that has plagued defence purchases for long years. Maybe because huge sums of money are involved, middlemen have become active in this field. Neither the law nor proverbially clean defence ministers seem able to get rid of the manipulations.

V.K.Krishna Menon had many failings but corruption was not one of them. Yet, he was caught in the jeep scandal. George Fernandes, not considered corrupt, was badly cornered by Tehelka. The evidence of kickbacks was all on camera, yet the Defence Minister’s response was to destroy Tehelka through foul means.

Rajiv Gandhi was still wearing the Mr Clean halo when the Bofors bomb exploded. The institution of middlemen had officially been abolished by then, but powerful middlemen pulled strings, from Italy and elsewhere. It’s entirely possible that Rajiv Gandhi knew about things only after things happened, but he evidently went along thereafter. Otherwise, the coverup operation would not have been so effective and Ottavio Quattrochi, a professional middleman, would not have received the sustained protection that he did.

The current defence minister is cleaner than any other Mr Clean before him. Nevertheless, middlemen remain. The 10,000-crore missile contract with Israel earlier this year involved a 6 percent “business charge”. Who got this? And why was the contract signed with a company that was already being investigated by the CBI?

Some answers came from the Israeli newspaper Haaretz. It revealed that the company gave large commissions to Sudhir Chowdhury to fix the deal. CBI had issued an arrest warrant against this man over a 2006 missile deal and he had then moved his base to London. He is one of three middlemen who are said to control nearly 80 percent of India’s defence procurement.

A gentleman like A.K.Antony would be unaware of such goings-on, let alone be party to them. But the innocence of leaders like him only helps the crooks who operate unseen. This ground reality adversely affects the quantity and quality of our military purchases and therefore of our capability to counter a hostile neighbour or an invading terrorist group. Unless this problem is addressed and solved, one followed by all the zeroes in the world won’t help us.

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Diffident us V/s combative them

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By any standard, the violence against Indian students in Australia is nasty business. What lends an astonishing edge to it is the Indian Government’s routine, pedestrian, unfeeling handling of it. Indeed, non-assertiveness seems to be a characteristic of the Manmohan-Sonia leadership.

By contrast, Australia took a combative position. First, police bosses remained almost indifferent, refusing to see any racial angle in the repeated attacks on Indian students. At the political level, high-ranking leaders chose to express themselves against violence in general terms while declaring Australia as “the safest country in the world” for students.

On top of this exercise in nationalistic self-justification, the Australian Prime Minister turned provocative last week. He indirectly accused unnamed Indian politicians of seeking to inflame passions. And then he said that Australians in India had also been violently attacked. In the last decade, he said, there were 20 such cases.

Ill-advised words from an inexperienced Prime Minister. White thugs in Australia may well interpret this belligerence as a call to even up the score. (Against 20 Australians attacked in India, only a dozen Indians have so far been attacked in Australia. So another eight can “legitimately” be attacked. Then what about the interest outstanding from a decade ago?)

The strongest statement from the Indian Prime Minister is that “we are appalled” by the attacks. The External Affairs Minister wasn’t even appalled; he just asked Indian students to “concentrate on their studies”. What a noble race we are, combining the virtues of Mahatma Gandhi and Jesus Christ, and turning the other cheek to our tormentors.

Just as Indian students are contributing massively to Australian economy today, Malaysian students were the mainstay of British revenues from education in the 1980’s. Seeing it an easy way to boost the national income, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher ordered a big increase in the fees of overseas students. Malaysian families felt cheated and exploited. Their Government then announced the “Look East” policy. Imports from and industrial collaboration with Britain were cut down significantly and Japan given preferential treatment. Hit where it hurt, the famous Iron Lady lost her iron and withdrew the fees increase on Malaysian students.

Malaysia then was governed by neither Mahatma Gandhi nor Jesus Christ, but by the no-nonsense Mahathir Mohammed. He was feared by the West but admired by Malaysians whose quality of life reached international standards during the twenty years of his stewardship. Manmohan Singh is loved by the West, especially by the likes of George Bush. So they feel free to do what is in their national interest and ask us to tag along. And we do.

Even Indian business houses show more assertiveness. From Arcelor to Jaguar, world famous companies have become Indian-owned against stiff resistance. Indian entrepreneurs seldom receive the governmental backing American and Japanese companies routinely receive. In fact, companies like Essar and Reliance have faced problems in major markets like Iran because of American pressure and lack of counterveiling Indian support.

Developing an Indian presence in the Iranian oil scenario would have pointedly benefited India’s national interest. But we surrendered to American national interests even on the critical Iran-Pakistan-India pipeline. America’s policy towards Iran may get friendly tomorrow. By then we will have been overtaken by China and Russia and even Europe on the Iranian oil front.

Why is our national leadership so diffident? Even as they talk of India as an emerging world power, why do they buckle under small-time Australian goons? Why do they forget that even the Christian George Bush never turned the other cheek? He gave’m hell.

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Why we can never do a 40-km trip in 8 minutes

T.J.S. George, has been a longtime China watcher. In fact, when he was in Hong Kong, he was a resource person for many world media with respect to South East Asian affairs. After a gap of about 10 years he happened to visit China again and witness the Olympic preparations and a Modern Super Power.

Here goes the first of a six-part series.



The speed at which China is transforming itself is not just impressive; it is scary.

Can such massive cities come up in the twinkling of an eye? Can such elaborate infrastructure be put in place in a jiffy? What is the engine that drives this frenetic pace of progress? Is there a target such an engine cannot achieve if it wants to?

When I visited Shanghai less than 10 years ago, Pudong was a sprawling marshland which had just been drained to make the soil ready for construction activities. The first highrise hotel was coming up and a landmark TV tower was rising.

Today, Pudong is a marvel of modernity, a glittering financial and corporate centre with facilities and institutions bigger and better than the best in the world.

A fairyland kind of suspension bridge, for example, is the most spectacular link across the Huangpu river that used to separate Pudong from Shanghai. There are several other bridges, several ferry services and several state-of-the-art underwater tunnels that make that separation a thing of the past.

Consider the road system. Shanghai was a notoriously congested city—a tangled web like central Bombay. It was impossible to untangle it. But the authorities found a way: Put an elevated road system over the city’s “ground floor.”

Today an overhead network of crisscrossing flyovers make it possible to go from point A to point B without traffic lights. From the centre of Pudong I drove for 36 kilometers before the car was stopped —by a tollgate.

This determination to do what is necessary—and do it quickly and efficiently—is what is helping China catch up with lost time.

They do everything on the grand scale, planning for a hundred years ahead. The new Pudong international airport will be good enough for virtually a century. It is about 40 kilometres from the city and magnetic levitation train covers the distance in eight minutes.

Compare that with Bangalore’s agonising access problems over the new airport.

There is nothing that China has achieved which others cannot. The difference is that China has the national will to achieve it, and the leadership to turn that will into action. We may say that the authoritarian system facilitates quick execution of plans unlike in a democracy.

Is that an argument we want to push when authoritarianism is so palpably constructive as it is proving in China, and democracy so chaotic as it has become in India?

Perhaps the key lies elsewhere.

Aldous Huxley provided an insight as far back as in 1926. Talking about “the dense, rank, richly clotted life” of Shanghai, he wrote:

"Each individual Chinaman has more vitality, you feel, than each individual Indian or European, and the social organism composed of these individuals is therefore more intensely alive than the social organism in India or the West."

In other words, whether it is communism or capitalism, the Chinese have a national character that tends to give them an edge over others.