On Wednesday 10 Dec 2008 10:36:48 pm Badri Natarajan wrote: > Shiv, what do you think India should do?
This may be the topic of another book .. :) But seriously I have some views that I will post 1) Probably the most difficult is political reform. The two major parties and probably a few of the regional parties do have people at the top who can see India as a nation state that has interests that need to be given a degree or priority over partisan interests. But the structure of Indian democracy ensures that all parties have to take the assistance of local goons and assorted criminals to get the numbers that they require to form a government. This means that national parties have to take the support of at least a few criminal politicians, and the criminal politicians ensure the survival of goons who help them intimidate or eliminate opposition. Raj Thackray's goons are the latest example that come to mind in a long series of examples. Long ago I had depicted in a picture how the use of criminals is the end point of a varied group of people who are serving their own interests. http://i8.photobucket.com/albums/a11/cybersurg/brf/nexus.jpg "Political reform" is a most difficult thing in a nation that now survives on the same old tactics in which "if you don't do it, you lose". But perhaps a mandatory course for all politicians in the meaning of "national interest" and the concept of "strategic thought" might be a good idea. This is not difficult - the average junior army officer in his 20s picks this up with ease. I believe that Indian leaders (leaders by election, not by nature) do not understand strategic thought. India (which is basically Hindu in ethos and I am NOT referring to Hindutvadis) is insular and has nothing in its history and literature to teach anyone the meaning of "strategic thought". This likes of Chanakya came up with interesting concepts - but even Chanakya did not have the knowledge or wherewithal to anticipate and manipulate events in faraway places because they would impact something domestically. It was all about getting the better of nearby, domestic competitors. 2) The "lack of strategic thought" among our polity directly impacts what the average Indian is taught and how he is trained to see the world. As I indicated in two earlier email responses to this topic, It would pay to be frank and open about serious problems that exist in Pakistan. But for that the government has to recognise issues at the highest level. I see no evidence of this happening in the degree of urgency required. Indian leaders, and Indians spend inordinate amounts of time and effort in talking about problems within India. But ignoring problems outside of India that directly impinge on India is a strategic error. A lot time is spent on the rhetoric that one must correct oneself and the concept of removing the "beam in one's own eye before looking at the mote in someone else's eye" is dear to the Indian. The world does not wait for you to finish cleaning your house before attacking you. For starters there is so much open source information - much of it written by Pakistanis and non Indians (assuming that Indians are all congenital liars or Hindu fundamentalists) that indicate that Pakistan is creating a monster population that hate India. The generation of Indians who are now in their teens and twenties will have to deal with these monsters who will be in power in 20 to 25 years time. This is all open source. No bullshitting. Even Mani Shankar Iyer has written about this hatred of India years ago (in his book "Pakistan Papers") - hardly a Hindutvadi viewpoint. I am amazed that the Indian government (of any party) does nothing to even try and get hold of Pakistani social studies textbooks (called "Pakistan studies") to check what schoolchildren are being taught. And I am not even talking about madrassas. The Indian government needs to come clean on Pakistan and make it clear to the Indian public that we have a problem brewing in Pakistan. Governments need to stop pussyfooting and imagining that there is some desire for peace and development in Pakistan. 3) The intelligence agencies are tools of their political masters - and are used for political intelligence against political adversaries. The late Hemant Kaksar - chief of the Indian anti-terrorism squad (ATS) who was killed in the Mumbai attacks was quoted as having said when the attacks started (I have no cite) that 90% of the ATS assets were busy investigating the Malegaon blasts case establishing "Hindu terrorism". When you look at the fact that India has had at least 50 terrorist attacks in 10 years the concentration of a large section of the anti-terrorism apparatus on just one case makes it easy to politicise the issue or terrorism and make it victim of partisan politics. In the las few days Narayan Rane of Maharashtra accused other Congress colleagues of being in cahoots with terrorists only after he was eliminated from the list of possible Maharashtra chief ministers. Surely, if he was telling the truth, he should have reported those terrorist connections as soon as he found out. No. That is no what he was doing. He was accusing other politicians of terrorist connections for his personal political benefit. The terrorist connections were not as important to him as his political career. 4) Police reforms need to be brought in as planned. The police have become the chowkidars of politicians - with transfers or rewards and punishments depending on the politicians whim. Note how politicians regularly speak of airline pilots as "glorified drivers". Police too are "glorified pandus" 5) The speed at which the courts work will have to be addressed urgently and judicial corruption appears to be serious issue. shiv
