Mohamed and the Mountain

Masjid Nimra at Arafat near Makkah

Mohamed and the Mountain


In the extreme media coverage on our own 26/11 event of a year ago and the damp squib of the tabled Liberhan Committee Report after 17 long years, most people may have missed the exhortation from Mufti-e-Azam Saudi Arabia Sheikh Abdul Aziz bin Abdullah Al Sheikh in his Hajj sermon of 26th November.

The Mufti of Makkah’s sermon was both unexpected and surprising, but only in so far as so few of the senior Islamic clergy around the world, and moderate laity for that matter, have thus far condemned Islamic terrorism in unequivocal terms.

Sheikh Abdul Aziz urged the Muslim Ummah not to compromise against terrorism and be united against suicide attacks. The sermon was delivered by the Mufti-e-Azam in Masjid Nimra at Arafat near Makkah to tens of thousands of pilgrims. This is indeed most welcome, coming as it does, from the most prominent cleric in Saudi Arabia, and on the eve of a new decade, after one scarred by much needless strife and bloodshed.

If, like the Mufti’s, enough moderate Muslim voices amongst other clerics and laity, decide to criticise, censure, curb, and eventually expel the warped logic being pushed in the name of Islam, much can indeed be accomplished. Especially,if the change in sentiment is followed by action to cut off extremist lifelines. Even those which fuel the ancient animosity between the Islamic sects of Shias and Sunnis.

After all, every war is probably only one part classical warfare and two parts a battle for hearts and minds. What Islam can do to reorient itself against terrorism from within, no outside retribution from injured people of other faiths can do.

It is certain that the jihadis must know their chances of winning this war against all others, including those Islamic regimes they see as reprobate, is doomed; but as the self- brainwashed Sword Arm of Allah, they see themselves in miraculous, if unrealistic terms.

But sermons such as the Mufti of Makkah’s, holds out hope to give the lie to Samuel Huntington’s dark prognosis of a “clash of civilisations”. Echoing, as it does, the logic of the Crusades of antiquity, it should not gain further ground. If Muslims themselves curb their extreme fringes and refuse them the liberty of giving the vast majority a bad name, this nightmarish progression can be arrested much faster.

Also, jihad, always intended to be an improving and internal battle of the spirit, in which good overcomes evil, stands a chance of returning to its true Islamic meaning, one in which the spilling of innocent blood has no place.

The Mufti of Makkah’s bold and statesmanlike call for a peaceful departure from the terrorist’s “deviant ideology”, taken at face value, can perhaps be viewed as a very important step towards the eventual elimination of terrorism. After all, it is a call from Islam’s highest pulpit, at the start of its most important pilgrimage, one incumbent, at least once, on all true believers.

This sermon, if amplified suitably by others who take up the Mufti’s call, should have great resonance amongst the moral majority. After all, common or garden Islamic terrorism, with its subversive guerrilla tactics, is claiming altogether too many victims both in the world at large and from the ranks of Muslim youth alike. And this, with little or nothing of value to show for itself. It seeks, improbably, to simultaneously overthrow the West, and the Jewish nation, and also the Hindu one, but could nevertheless end up annihilating mankind via a nuclear misstep.

That is why apocalyptic retaliation cannot be seen as anything but pyrrhic, while prevention, even if successful, as a product of a siege-like, freedom destroying and suspicious defensiveness.

Only internal reform and reorientation amongst the Muslim brotherhood can heal this wound in the most effective way. It is ironic though, that in today’s world, the ways of peace sound like a pipe dream. Perhaps it is a bridge too far, as always, but wasn’t mankind meant to learn from the futility of past ideology/religion based warfare?

It is therefore very pleasant to dream of an Islamic terrorism without moral, financial and popular support from other Muslims. This terrorism without roots would not only be doomed in terms of its eventual outcome, but couldn’t even persist and prosper for long.

In the same sermon, the Mufti also blamed the ongoing economic crisis around the globe on the non-observance of Islamic principles in the conduct of business and economic affairs. This of course, tends to put the maximum leveraging ways of Dubai, an Islamic Emirate, in the same boat as several banks and institutions in the Western world.

And while terrorism may not be migrating across ideological frontiers with as much facility as greed, both owe their “deviant behaviour” to exaggeration and excess. The world’s capitalist excesses have the same world searching for moderation, probity and recalibration. This promises, after a season of tribulation, a more secure future with more realistic assumptions.

If there is a parallel between the amoral terrorism of Islamic fringe elements supported darkly by certain Governments and the economic turmoil caused by guardians of capital making much too free and easy with it, it can only be in terms of the extremes that both have gone to.

Since terrorism has the greater potential for ultimate destruction, it is good to read in the Mufti’s message, his juxtaposition of global economic mayhem and the deviant ideology that has produced Islamic terrorism; a subtext of redemption.

The world is being compelled to curb its economic extremism, Dubai being the latest citadel brought to its knees, due to eventual non-viability. By the same token, we can expect terrorism to also see its own depraved face in the mirror some day and realise shattering the mirror won’t do away with its innate ugliness.

It will however, sooner or later implode upon itself, not so much as a consequence of losing its jihad, but more because it will inexorably lose its raison d’ etre.

The Mufti of Makkah’s message is a message of peace and a call for course correction. With the Christians about to celebrate Christmas espousing similar sentiments a scarce few weeks away, and the dawning of a new decade days after that, it may be time to re-frame the world-view defined by the attacks of 9/11 in 2001.

(1,053 words)

November 29th, 2009
Gautam Mukherjee


Published as Edit Page Leader in The Pioneer under the title "Sermon with a difference" on December2nd,2009 and simultaneously online at www.dailypioneer.com. Also archived there under Columnists.

Chinese Chequers

Chinese Chequers


In Chinese Chequers, the skill lies in vaulting over one’s opponent’s counters, into his or her “home”. Ahead, that is, of him or her doing likewise into yours! The Red Chinese have, over the decades since Comrade Deng, proved themselves to be good at this game using a very successful export-based model. But how good is that in absolute terms? Has some of the reportage and commentary on Chinese dominance and mastery run somewhat ahead of itself?

China has indeed invested nearly $2 trillion of its reserves in US Treasury Bonds. But doesn’t this money support the very economy that buys most of Chinese export? And didn’t this export, till recently account for a full 38% of Chinese GDP? So, isn’t the money placed in US Government Bonds helping China as much as it is financing a proportion of the US deficit? And aren’t the Gulf countries and other producers of petroleum eagerly doing the same thing too?

As for the opaque Chinese Renminbi, it is linked to its banking sector, sitting, it is rumoured, on very large non-performing assets, (NPAs). And these NPAs are not acknowledged. But obviously they do have a bearing on the true strength of the Yuan and the national balance sheet despite apparent double digit growth.

Note also that the bulk of the export is made up of labour intensive, low unit value, consumer goods. This suits high wage environments, to have items manufactured cheaply to fixed price contracts in China. It also employs a lot of people at the selling-end of things but doesn’t alter strategic realities. And everywhere in the commercial space, we are reminded that price warriors are vulnerable to diversification of dependence, over which they have little or no control.

To get out of this precariousness, China will have to turn its economic ship to stimulating domestic consumption, particularly when the export gravy train is derailed temporarily or for more sustained duration.

But stimulating domestic consumption in a largely agrarian country with low per capita income is not going to be an easy thing. And keeping the numbers up via export into new territories like Africa will not be quite the same. But for the time being, the growth figures are fine because of the ongoing infrastructure spends spurred by the $650 billion stimulus package.

But later, the export dependence will have to be replaced by manufacturing and services for domestic consumption, and doing that by subsidy, as in exports, will not work. Besides, there is little or no political freedom outside of Hong Kong and this will exert its own pressure particularly as the economic gap keeps widening between the millions in the city and the billions in the countryside.

Technologically advanced countries have been happy to cede the low end of commerce to China and others in favour of high-end technologically evolved armaments, super computers, planes, technical know-how and so forth. But even with a degree of developed competence, nobody is buying high-tech Chinese. Unless, that is, you count Pakistan and other nations and organisations unable to get their small arms, ammunition, larger ambition missiles and even nuclear how-to-do-it kits, from elsewhere.

Historically too, the strength of Chinese exports owes itself to the most favoured nation treatment China received after the Nixon-Kissinger tilt towards China. But that tilt was designed to counteract the influence of the USSR. The USSR is now gone, and it may be time for China, raising its profile, to draw some new conclusions for itself.

With regard to Chinese grumblings about the weakness of the US dollar affecting the value of its own reserves, it may lack both leverage and conviction. Because, China’s Yuan can neither fund the world, any more than a much stronger Euro can, nor risk full convertibility, without losing control over its manipulated books of account. And talk of Special Drawing Rights (SDRs), as an alternative to the US dollar as the reserve currency of the world is, as yet, wildly premature.

But there is decided change in the air brought on by the economic downturn. There are quality and safety complaints. And a recent American poll showed over 73% now resent the ingress of Chinese goods into America. This may or may not portend protectionist sentiments, but the atmosphere is charged, and should China push too hard, the US could move away from it economically. Especially when, and if, the domestic political cost-benefit analysis reveals unaffordable costs!

One or two US regimes, such as the present one, or Bill Clinton’s before it, may indeed try naive appeasement as a stop gap. But sooner or later, America and its NATO allies will have to call China’s bluff and withdraw a proportion of its economic largesse to deflate the so-called Chinese miracle.

China, despite its aggressive military spends and infrastructure build-up, cannot seriously engage in overt military adventurism in today’s world; not even with regard to India. And its clumsy attempts at pressuring the West by proxy, using a host of countries including North Korea, Pakistan and Iran, is transparent. As it is in the Asian theatre as well, via its support to insurgents and rogue regimes and its unsubtle bullying. But will all this deliver the global leverage and regional dominance China seeks or help to consolidate opposition to it?

But even without getting any deeper into the true strength of China, there is a hopeful lesson for India to learn. China has changed its status from third world country into contention as an economic growth engine on the back of a mere three trillion dollar economy and promise of further double digit growth.

But even then, as the beauteous Maria Bartiromo of CNBC put it, China’s three trillion dollar economy cannot rescue America’s 14 trillion dollar one! This is so much any port in a storm talk, and the best thing about it is that India and China and Brazil and Russia are still growing when others are not.

But it does make for some heady flattery from America, and all India has to do to receive similar stardust, is grow its economy three-fold based on its famed domestic consumption. They say the first million, or in this case trillion, is the most difficult, but we’ve already done that and that's without counting our parallel 'black" economy!If we keep this up, we might get good at Chinese Chequers too.

(1,060 words)

20th November 2009
Gautam Mukherjee

Icons

Madhubala

Icons


Technology, 24x 7 TV, the Internet and the access of the Information Age may have put paid to the age of icons. Most that still exist belong to an earlier time when beauty and pulchritude, magnetism and charisma, could evanescence slowly into public consciousness, like candlelight. But those days are long gone, cut down to size by the magnificence of demystifying push-button access.

Richard Linklater, American filmmaker, recently wrote in Blackbook Magazine of New York that, “An icon is someone who floats above the culture,” that spawns him or her. Linklater, who is completing a film on Orson Welles, wisely does not try to define the term. He describes it though, writing: “When you’re an icon, you’re not just a person—you’re a myth,” and, “The supremely talented have a way of upending expectations”.

India, in something of an existential crisis after just over six decades, clearly could do with new icons on its political firmament. The old ones, from legend, mythology, more recent history and the freedom movement, now seem anachronistic. And inducing their spark to fire our imaginations is not what it must have once been.

But since the age of iconography has irrevocably passed, it is hard to fill the perception of a leadership vacuum in the midst of a tumultuous democracy straining more than a little dangerously on a long leash of slack governance. The polity is behaving badly, frustrated perhaps for being a little lost.

No new icons of equivalent stature to the freedom fighters have sprung up since. Not even the children of midnight or thereabouts like Indira Gandhi who carried the political narrative forward to the relatively recent eighties. And though, she unarguably was, despite her despotic side, a staunch Indian patriot. But Indira Gandhi was also from the same drawer. She too was witness to the freedom movement led by the Mahatma, like many of her colleagues, her legendary father, and all the other stalwarts from her father’s and grandfather’s time.

And during, as well as after her time, we have had several able leaders and functionaries, all contributors to the crucial business of nation building. But any among them that were indeed iconic, men such as Jayaprakash Narayan and Atal Bihari Vajpayee, also came from that earlier era. There was, at the expense of sounding revisionist, a sense of mission and greater purpose that animated all these leaders which created an image that enabled them to rise and float above the culture they led.

Rajiv Gandhi, our youngest prime minister to date, had a worthwhile vision too, but, as it turned out, was persuaded too often against his better judgement by cynical vested interests. The disinterested stance of independence era leaders, conscious of the necessity for sacrifice, was also given short shrift by the Gucci wearing, Mercedes driving, young prime minister.

But he might have still achieved iconic status had he lived longer because the late eighties were still not swamped by technology. Perhaps the uncharismatic but erudite Narasimha Rao, his successor, was able to see through, what might have been at least partially Rajiv Gandhi’s vision. And perhaps his success owed itself to over three decades of experience in the governmental labyrinth and much greater maturity of years.

But the transactional style, antithetical to iconic governance, had well and truly entrenched itself by Rao’s tenure, symbolised by pictures and lengthy commentary on entire suitcase-fulls of cash being delivered hither and thither to shore up his government.

But were the old icons benefited because of the stimulus of struggling against a mighty foreign colonial power? And those from the era of kings and emperors and epics of yore presumably lived with entirely loftier terms of reference. But who knows? Icons are a little “unknowable” says Linklater. He calls them perpetual “works in progress” .

But is this all dead aspiration now? Our current leaders seem to have little time for the enunciation of a beneficial vision several sizes larger than themselves. Instead politics has become a sum total of manoeuvres in the name of strategy and wily tactics in the pursuit of pelf, power, perpetuation.

What has come in place of stature acquired through good work and slow release exposure is noisome promotion, publicity and manufactured hype, pumped up considerably as budgets and technology and communication vehicles have improved from the early radio days of the republic.

Perhaps Indian politics itself has diminished in stature as a consequence of relentless exposure warts and all. Besides, those capable of assuming legendary proportions are no longer in it. They are found now on the cricket field, in the movies, in literature, amongst the more reclusive of businessmen, where the unknowable aspects of iconography can still operate. So we do have living legends like Ratan Tata, Amitabh Bachchan, Sachin Tendulkar and Salman Rushdie.

This shrinkage of political stature has been affecting us in a particularly adverse manner for quite some time. Largely unchecked, the corruption is much grown, the dereliction of duty more shocking, and the flouting of constitutional norms more routine. There is a dangerous emphasis on regional issues over the national interest that is beginning, in a serious way, to challenge the very idea of India. And this, at a time when there are grave external and internal security threats as well.

But to be fair, it is certain our current leaders are definitely grappling with a level of complexity and aspiration unknown in the early decades after independence. The information flow is intense, with over 90 day and night news channels on TV and hundreds of newspapers, magazines and online sites. It is difficult to be a hero in the glare of such unrelenting and familiar scrutiny.

The same shortness of shelf-life applies today to celebrity and stardom too. So quelle chance netagiri?

Let us realise there will be no more new Mahatmas and Subhas Chandra Boses. No new Madhubalas, no more Nargises, no triumvirate of Dharam, Vinod and Dilip. No new Raj Kapoor or Dev Anand. Ram Rajya itself would have to be reevaluated for relevance.

It is not easy to float above a culture morphing into the benefits of Space Age technology at ever increasing speeds. But the minimum requirement of netagiri, that of disinterested service to the nation, is still impervious to the ravages of technology.

(1,048 words)

12th November 2009
Gautam Mukherjee

Published as Op-Ed Page Leader in The Pioneer under the title "Looking for new icons" on November 19th, 2009. Also published online at www.dailypioneer.com and archived there under Columnists.

Anarchy Inc.

Elbobo- Pablo Picasso

Anarchy Inc.

A democracy cannot be both ignorant and free. --Thomas Jefferson

The propensity, the scale, and audacity of Government corruption in India of late seems to rival anything associated with Central African regimes or South American dictatorships. Corruption, petted, cosseted and by implication condoned, has mutated and evolved into a ravenous bare-fanged and fast loping Steppenwolf, brazenly keeping pace with our overall rate of progress.

And this corruption is seen to be most fecund amongst the depressed classes in an inversion of the ethical dilemma to do with the privileged and deprived. The humbler the origins of the alleged culprit, possibly less the fear of social ostracision and greater the thirst for rampant brigandage!

And for alleged venality, recent reports on both former Chief Minister Koda of Jharkhand and Union Minister Raja of the Telecommunications Ministry are hard to beat.

In a lesser key, witness that a week-long fire at an Indian Oil Depot in Jaipur that killed 11 and injured over 30 could, it now emerges, well have been arson. The fire may have been lit by IOC officials themselves, callously trying to destroy evidence of massive oil pilferage and associated fraud unearthed by the CBI recently.

The Central Government and its watch-dog agencies seem inept at doing anything to prevent such occurrences. If they get wind of something before it is too late, it is often not acted upon by higher ups more interested in a cover up or to prevent inconvenient public scandal. So, mostly they wake up in time to conduct expensive post mortems and make futile attempts at redressal.

The main thing is that corrupt politicians are not afraid of consequences. Our laws are soft on economic offences and money spread around protects admirably. Besides, many politicians feel only nominally accountable, and more to their party bosses than the public in any case. They view their limited time in office as an opportunity to feather their nests and those of their supporters.

And since everything to do with politicians, including bringing them to book has a political calculus, no action is undertaken on the merits of the rule of law alone. Besides, these are the days of coalition politics which works as a virtual open sesame for political corruption.

As it stands, the various wings of Government, their supporting bureaucracy and associates, fixers and agents inclusive, seem to be in a state of competitive corruption, with the corporate private and public sectors unwilling to be outdone!

But is there a remedy or are we to sink into the morass and quicksand of our greed till we all but disappear? Is this the anarchy come upon us that Winston Churchill prophesied for India run by Indians?

Well, it has often been said by imperialists from the dying days of the Raj, confronted by rising nationalist protest, that the Indian character can always benefit from a bit of stick. This is probably why, in a leftover sense, the symbol and most of the substance of public law and order enforcement to date is still, and literally, the humble danda.

And this, along with light bamboo shields to withstand the brickbats of rioters, in an age of suicide bombers, Kalashnikovs, Uzis, AK 47s and so forth is a little hard to take seriously. Our law enforcement danda may be the supple and seasoned bamboo stave, wielded with dexterity by semi-literate but rangy lads, but they don’t frighten even the local hood with a country made revolver anymore.

Most accusations of police brutality in India might mean a havildar laying about his victim enthusiastically with said danda and have little to do with torture and sadism doled out in dungeons. And this softness of approach and lack of a sinister secret police may well be animating the entire machinery of sarkari retribution and doing its unintended bit to encourage corruption.

After all, there is no sharp uniformed Gestapo/Stasi/Savak/Robocop component to our law enforcement, overt or covert. This includes our investigative and intelligence agencies such as the IB, CBI and RaW, peopled, as they are, with time-serving and out- of- shape babus. There isn’t a single James Bond type in sight outside of the regular armed forces which, constitutionally, and for that matter temperamentally, keep out of politics and domestic administration.

That leaves the Black Cat, the Cobra and other such exotic crack unit seconded from the Army- who look and act the part and are certainly capable of cleaning up the badmashes chop chop.

But in the main, the Rapid Deployment Force apart, they are used to tend to their high profile neta protectees, ironically some of the best of breed that corruption can offer.

So generally, India’s law and order is administered by waved danda, as much in greeting and traffic control as in warning. Figuratively, the danda may well stand for the impressive big stick. But in practice, our danda, for internal strife, daylight robbery or external threat, is not what it ought to be.

If we truly had a big stick, we could, to paraphrase President Theodore Roosevelt’s famous aphorism, speak softly enough as long as we carried it about.

So what can we do being deficient in the menace department, at least for the moment?
Well there’s transparency, and worked properly, it does very well to quell corruption over time.

And recently, two quiet steps towards transparency have indeed been taken. One is to do with the decision to divest 10% of the equity in profitable central PSUs as an opening gambit. This will not only yield at least Rs. 30,000 crores for the Government coffers, but bring about a scrutiny of their functioning by virtue of their listing on the bourses.

The other was to begin monitoring primary items including food and fuel on a weekly basis for inflation, using the base year of 2004-2005, which is far more relevant than the Wholesale Price Index base year of 1993-1994, not to mention its out of date composition.

Everyone knows and feels the pinch of food prices that have rocketed up over 100% in the last year, but the remarkable thing is now the Government is willing to place it in the form of official data before the public, with the intent of controlling it. This is most commendable and will yield good results over time.

(1,052 words)

8th November 2009
Gautam Mukherjee

Intent & Outcome

Intent & Outcome


Abraham Lincoln was drawn into the American Civil War in 1861, almost immediately after being elected President on his anti-slavery platform. This because the declaration to secede, on the part of the 13 Southern States came first. And it was the Confederacy again that fired the first salvo when it attacked the Union garrison stationed at Charleston in North Carolina. These two events wrecked the option to negotiate.

And so it was only left to Lincoln to retaliate. And retaliate with such resolution that it broke the back of the secessionists and swept the old South into the dustbin of history, a process described poignantly in the pages of Margaret Mitchell’s classic Gone With The Wind.

But in hindsight, and in the interests of equity and justice, romancing the South might have been just so much sympathy for the devil. Similarly, liberal sympathy for Maoists, even as they behead people, kill policemen and CRPF personnel, blow up roads and bridges, hold hostages and write slogans on hijacked trains, may be misplaced.

The Indian nation cannot responsibly ignore their declaration of war, emboldened, most probably, by the kid-gloves treatment accorded to them over years of State ambivalence. But the Maoists are dead serious and, seduced by petty successes at armed insurrection, are dreaming of victory over the Republic itself.

The recent hostage exchange in the Lalgarh region of West Bengal was portrayed as an exchange of POWs, and the Bhubaneshwar-Delhi Rajdhani train hijack later was an attempt to spring some other prisoners from captivity. Let us also remember that close cooperation between terrorists of different ideologies and persuasions is a grim reality.

The Maoists would have it that they are justified in waging all-out war against the Union of India. This even as their apologists try to find ways and means to explain their stance. But the time for debating pros and cons of such anarchism, its causes notwithstanding, may have slipped away. And the Indian state, like the America of Abraham Lincoln, is left with no choice but to firmly put down such blatant sedition. The consequence of further ambivalence over the issue will only result in turning problems even more intractable.

The US is now nearly two and a half centuries old. But in 1861, at the start of the Civil War, it must have seemed like a massive risk to both sides. Without the gift of omniscience, no one could have known how the conflict would turn out.
But after the loss of over 600,000 lives, a most effective naval blockade, and the passage of just four years, it all became crystal clear.

American nationhood was steeped in the blood of martyrs, from that of the earlier War of Independence from the British; and again, from their home grown, even harder fought, Civil War. In the interim there was also the shameful genocide of Red Indians and sharp battles with the Mexicans at the famous fort at Alamo.

Through it all emerged an unshakable American nation with no further wars fought on its home turf since. But it consumed over a million lives to get there. And this without counting the American lives lost in subsequent wars fought abroad: in South Korea, in Europe, against Japan; in Vietnam, Iraq and now Afghanistan.

India may have had a reasonably non-violent independence movement led by Mahatma Gandhi, but it did have to send in tens of thousands of Indians to die on foreign shores during WW II. And it has fought three wars against Pakistan and one with China since independence. It has also faced constant challenges to its nationhood from within, in the North East, in Kashmir, in Punjab, and now via the old Naxalite movement grown into present day Maoist insurrection. Blood seems to be the price of nationhood.

Today the threat to India is unprecedented, both from within and without, from Islamic and Maoist terrorism, from Chinese belligerence, Pakistani chicanery, and a variety of secessionist and seditious movements in different parts. And most tellingly, from its state of abject unpreparedness.

But perhaps our policy makers are at last coming around. It is ironic that we should be so threatened when India as an economic entity is poised on the threshold of greatness. There is reasonable commentary that sees the Sensex at 50,000 within five years, implying a more than doubling of the economy in the interim. Good and fine, but will we snatch defeat from the mouth of victory instead?

The American LeT operative Headley let slip to the FBI, news of the stalking of a certain “Rahul”. This may or may not be referring to the scion of the Gandhi dynasty but it tells you how vulnerable the leaders of an open democracy and a soft-state can be.

The Home Minister’s recent clear-cut warning that another 26/11 style attack masterminded from across the border will be met with decisive retaliation is most welcome. It represents a stiffening of the Indian spine not seen since Mrs. Indira Gandhi authorised Operation Bluestar.

There are other stirrings; such as the raising of new and specialised battalions, moves to urgently improve infrastructure in border areas, provide our police, para-military and armed forces with modern arms, equipment, facilities, and move troops and equipment to where they may be needed; on fronts facing both Pakistan and China. These are long overdue steps, and given the right provisioning, India will be no pushover.

Former President George W Bush underscored the realpolitik involved on a recent visit to give the keynote address at the Hindustan Times Leadership Summit. He implied that India’s entry to the UNSC, with or without veto powers, will depend as much on our hard power as our diplomacy.

None of the present five permanent members are going to countenance expansion of the Council, and a consequent dilution of their own power, without compelling bilateral and multilateral benefits. And this applies as much to other contenders such as Japan, Germany and Brazil, as it does to India.

Omniscience may not be a human gift, but prescience can be. India must modernise and strengthen itself on all parameters. We can’t use the piece-meal approach anymore. This preparatory phase of India’s ascension to the big league demands things be done very differently from that of a new nation emerging from the yoke of colonialism to freedom at midnight.


(1,051 words)

November 2nd, 2009
Gautam Mukherjee

Published as the Op-Ed Leader on 4th November 2009 in The Pioneer entitled "Break their back, now!". Also published simultaneously online at www.dailypioneer.com and is archived there under Columnists.