P Kharel

On the dying last few eves of Gregorian calendar 2020, India makes an interesting - perhaps intriguing - study both for its prospects of economic prosperity and international influence in the ensuing decades. Since its independence in 1947, the former British colony’s 1.3 billion people have found the ground very hard because of poor political leadership. Merely setting big targets does not make a nation a major world power. Superlative finance, international backing and technological sophistication enable a nation to join the exclusive club of truly mini-superpowers or full-fledged superpowers. The quality of governance is another acid test of a such privileged grouping.
In India, opposing a lifetime ban on politicians from contesting election if they were convicted of serious charges, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government wants retention of the existing provision that disqualifies convicted persons from contesting elections for six years only. Available data indicate as many as 34 per cent of the 545-member popular chamber Lok Sabha’s MPs with unsavoury records in 2014.
Criminalisation features consistently in Indian politics since the 1980s. The opposition parties, truncated in the 1984 general elections when the Rajiv Gandhi-led Congress party won a landslide majority on the plank of a massive nationwide sympathy wave in the wake of the assassination of sitting Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, had demanded changes in the related regulations. They no longer remain as vocal today. In a 2019 verdict, the country’s supreme court remarked that “criminalisation of politics is a bitter manifest truth”. The election commission recommended life ban on elected representatives who were sentenced for serious offences.
That is that.

External affairs
Another aspect of India’s ambitions demands gauging the changing conditions and emerging power equations in the international landscape. The country’s first and foremost task is to giving no valid reasons to its South Asian neighbours any reason to complain about attempts at interference in their internal affairs. That Bhutan refuted claims in India that China had encroached upon parts of its territory spoke of Thimpu’s desire to be left alone while the two giant neighbours engage in border clashes and compete for regional and international influence.
Likewise, Bangladesh should not be taken for granted. Its interests do not necessarily match those of New Delhi’s, something the Indian establishment chose to ignore ever since Indian military support to Sheikh Mujibur Rahman Mukti Bahini quickened the pace and delivered the independence of what was until late 1971 was East Pakistan. Registering the fastest economic growth rate in South Asia, Bangladesh does not want to be dragged down in the American idea of Indo-Pacific Strategy, to which India increasingly leans, oblivious of potential repercussions.
The Maldives never had a multiparty system until the new millennium finally saw the proponents of political pluralism succeed through relentless protest rallies against Maumoon Abdul Gayoom’s one-party regime for 30 years. Popular unrest paved way for multiparty system in 2008. New Delhi never raised the issue of democracy in that tiny island chain of 500,000 people because Gayoom was considered a strong supporter to India’s interests and views at international forums.
New Delhi imposed at least four major economic blockades on Nepal since the early 1960s, and picked numerous holes in the governance and political culture - a yardstick reserved exclusively for Nepal and Pakistan. It goes out of the way to humour authoritarian regimes in West Asia and everywhere else, be it in the past or currently. Indian troops pitched camp at Kalapani in Nepal without any formal approval. Its expansion covered the Nepali territories of Lipulek and Limpiyadhura, too. New Delhi having ignored Nepal’s decades of quiet diplomacy to resolve the issue, the KP Oli government this year went ahead with a map portraying the territories as Nepal’s.
India’s misadventure in forcing upon Sri Lanka “Indian Peace Keeping Force” in 1987-90 was welcomed neither by Colombo nor the armed Tamil militant outfits. India’s minority coalition government headed by VP Singh in 1990 recalled the troops home and ended the embarrassing mess. Indian Prime Minister (1984-89) Rajiv Gandhi was killed in an attack by a suicide squad member of the very Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam that was trained in south India. As Lankan President Mahinda Rajapakse (2005-15) did not do New Delhi’s bidding during his decade-long presidency, the Indian establishment eyed the opposition as investment for the future.
During the five years in power, the Rajapakse opponents failed to impress voters. Several Rajapakse brothers and close relatives made it to parliament this year. Gotabaya Rajapakse, Mahinda’s younger brother, is the executive president while his former president brother dons the premiership now. The two have indicated that their ties with India or the West will not grow at China’s expense.
Never a big high even at barely normal times, Indo-Pakistani ties have in the past few years dipped disturbingly low, even as Sino-Pakistani relations have deepened and heightened Islamabad’s regional profile, which extends to West Asia as well. The scrapping Article 370 of the Indian Constitution that had granted the disputed territory of Kashmir a special status has distanced many a Muslim country from West Asia to the Far East. Pakistan’s strong protest was predictable. Moreover, carving out two separate union territories of Ladakh and Jammu and Kashmir, has meant Ladakh being ruled directly by the central government. Given China’s claim over the Ladakh territory, Sino-Indian relations face a situation fraught with uncertainty.

Treading tightly
China’s per capita income in 2020 stood thrice that of India’s. This should suffice to identity whose status stands where. The future is full of challenges and opportunities. As the new situation progresses, the US will lose much of its international clout. Europe’s fate will suffer, given that the mainstream continent’s global influence is basically attributable to its reflected strength from the United States. Mount the American tiger and regret how difficult it is to descend. Risk having breakfast with the tiger but find out who leaves the table unscathed.
It would be a fallacy to underestimate the emerging alternatives for India’s neighbours. South Asians have more options today than ever in the post-World War II years. Stripped of rhetoric, India’s world power ambitions sound excessively exaggerated unless the spade work starts speedily from the home region. Its External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jayashankar’s new book believes that India’s high moral ground will ultimately prevail. The question is: which moral compass?
New Delhi’s hopes of a new era should begin from Nepal in a pragmatic and honest manner to effectively disprove believers in force, intimidation and manipulation. India can stabilise the region considerably if Modi’s neighbourhood first policy gets put in practice. Mahatma Gandhi’s highly pertinent remark should be of guidance: “Everybody is eager to garland my photograph and statue. But nobody wants to follow my advice.”

(Professor Kharel specialises in political communication.)