http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/19/international/asia/19quake.html
LETTER FROM ASIA Pride and Politics: India Rejects Quake Aid By SOMINI SENGUPTA Published: October 19, 2005 NEW DELHI, Oct. 18 - Calamities of nature do not just test the capacity of a state. They can also offer unexpected opportunities for political craftsmanship. Take India. The government has announced that it needs no international aid to recover from the Oct. 8 earthquake that leveled villages in the Indian-controlled part of Kashmir, killed an estimated 1,300 people there and displaced roughly 30,000 families. As temperatures fall to near freezing in the hilltop hamlets of Kashmir, the most liberal estimates suggest that fewer than half of the surviving families have tents to sleep in. Yet a full nine days and nights after the quake, Indian officials say they have no need for the United Nations, nor foreign aid agencies, to bring tents from abroad. Indian officials say that they are able to care for their own, and that tents are coming from private producers and the Indian military. What is more, India has sent aid, including 620 tents, to its neighbor and archrival, Pakistan. "We ourselves are taking care of our victims," said Navtej Sarna, the Foreign Ministry spokesman. "When there are offers by friendly countries and anything is needed, these offers are considered." It is too early to tell whether India, which seeks a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council, can go it alone. Certainly there is anger in Indian-administered Kashmir among people who have been forced to build their own tents out of the wooden beams and tin sheets retrieved from the rubble of their homes. Even so, India's posture says a great deal about the politics of disaster aid, and about India's own ambitions to assert itself as a world power. India also refused international aid in the immediate aftermath of the tsunami, though it later allowed United Nations and private agencies to help. Three years ago, it rebuffed development aid from a number of foreign donors, saying it was no longer necessary. In short, India has been anxious to portray itself as a giver, rather than a receiver. "What we can manage on our own, we do," said Hamid Ansari, a retired Indian diplomat. "There's a certain sense of self-confidence that we can manage it and, let me say, a desire to signal that you are capable of managing things on your own." Pratap Bhanu Mehta, the director of a private research group here called the Center for Policy Research, saw reflected in India's rejection of foreign aid so far a desire to be seen as an emerging global power, or one of what he called "the big boys." "The risk really is that in our refusal to accept aid I don't think we are keeping people to whom aid might go as central," Mr. Mehta said. "We are playing politics with aid, using aid to make a statement." Pakistan's approach has been exactly the opposite. Hit a whole lot harder by the Oct. 8 quake - its official death toll stood at 42,000 on Tuesday- Pakistan has appealed for worldwide help and allowed foreigners to travel to its side of Kashmir and to the traditionally well-guarded pockets of North-West Frontier Province, the two areas that suffered the greatest damage. Pakistan is the world's largest manufacturer of tents, but still cannot produce nearly enough. The United Nations said Tuesday that 350,000 additional tents were urgently needed and that 500,000 earthquake survivors had still not received any medical care, food or other assistance. There is no agreement on whether India has sufficient tents to care for its own. The Foreign Ministry spokesman said the Indian Army would be able to help make up the shortfall. The army spokesman in Kashmir, Lt. Col. S. K. Batra, cautioned that the military, itself badly hit in the earthquake, could not entirely deplete its own stock. The government's joint secretary of disaster management, Aseem Khurana, vowed that enough tents would be sent within a week. So far, roughly 13,000 of the 30,000 tents required have been distributed, he said, slightly less than half sent by the Indian Army. State government officials in Kashmir said they were puzzled about the dearth of tents. "It is really eye-opening for us, that in this country with such a large population base, more than a million-strong army, and so many paramilitary forces we just do not have enough tents," said Muzaffar Baig, the Kashmir state finance and planning minister. "Every day we are getting only 300 to 400 tents from the central government." R. K. Pachauri, director of the Energy Research Institute in Delhi, a private research group, insisted that if India had enough tents, they should have been distributed much more quickly. If it did not, it should have accepted them from overseas right away. "We should really have been able to organize ourselves a little better," he said. That the quake struck the province of Jammu and Kashmir, which has been at the center of a long territorial dispute between India and Pakistan, makes the politics of aid particularly prickly. The Indian government has never been keen on outside intervention in Kashmir, so the subject of foreign aid to the quake victims is a touchy matter. "New Delhi has adopted an enlightened approach to helping Pakistan during this tragedy, and a backward approach to accepting foreign humanitarian assistance on its side of the Kashmir divide," said Michael Krepon, president of the Washington-based Henry L. Stimson Center, which studies security issues. "Part of this has to do with national pride, which is compounded by sensitivity to foreign governments making landfall in the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir." Kashmiri leaders have pressed New Delhi to embrace international aid as a humanitarian gesture. "Allow international organizations to come in and help the Kashmiri people," said Yasin Malik, leader of a separatist group called Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front. "India will gain. They will not lose with this kind of gesture." In the back and forth between India and Pakistan, neighborly solidarity is difficult to distinguish from political gamesmanship. On Monday, Pakistan accepted India's longstanding offer of helicopters to help with relief work, but said it would not take Indian military pilots or crews. On Tuesday afternoon, India announced that it would open a number of telephone lines to enable Kashmiris in its territory to communicate with their relatives on the Pakistani side. By Tuesday evening, the Pakistani president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, called on India to allow Kashmiris to cross the disputed Line of Control to assist in relief efforts. Later in the evening, India said it welcomed General Musharraf's suggestion. "This is in line with India's advocacy of greater movement across the line for relief work and closer people-to-people contacts," a Foreign Ministry statement said. "India is willing to facilitate such movements, but we await word from Pakistan about the practical details of implementing this intention." Hari Kumar contributed reporting for this article. ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> Fair play? Video games influencing politics. Click and talk back! http://us.click.yahoo.com/VpgUKB/pzNLAA/cUmLAA/TySplB/TM --------------------------------------------------------------------~-> -------------------------- Want to discuss this topic? 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