08 Dec 2023 : The Hindu Editorial

Editorial 1 : No fait accompli

Context: Restoration of Statehood and polls in J&K should not be delayed further.

Introduction

• It has been more than five and a half years since an elected government collapsed and Governor’s rule was imposed in Jammu & Kashmir amidst the suspension of the elected Assembly — a step that heralded dramatic changes in the erstwhile State.
• Subsequently, Article 370 that provided for special status for the erstwhile State was removed, the State bifurcated with the region encompassing Jammu and the Kashmir Valley made into a new Union Territory and Ladakh hived off into another.

Constitutionality of these changes

• The constitutionality of these changes is still under question and the Supreme Court has reserved its verdict on it. But this has not deterred the Union government from bringing about legislation that will change the make-up of the UT’s prospective Legislative Assembly beyond the completion of the delimitation exercise.
   

Jammu and Kashmir Reservation (Amendment) Bill, 2023.

• On Wednesday, the Lok Sabha passed the Jammu and Kashmir Reorganisation (Amendment) Bill, 2023 and the Jammu and Kashmir Reservation (Amendment) Bill, 2023.
• These Bills do not necessarily bring about any significant change.
  • The first increases the total number of Assembly seats from 107 to 114, with reservation of nine seats for Scheduled Tribes (a first), besides empowering the Lieutenant-Governor to effect some nominations.
  • The second seeks to replace the term “weak and underprivileged classes (social castes)” in the J&K Reservation Act, 2004, enacted by the State legislature, to “Other Backward Classes” as declared by the UT.
     

Feeling of Alienation

• Propriety would have demanded that even these changes could have waited for the Supreme Court’s verdict, which is due soon, on the legality of the abrogation of special status besides the bifurcation of the erstwhile State and the procedure adopted to do so.
• Without the involvement of elected representatives from J&K in the process, the changes proposed in the Lok Sabha would only seem to be acts that are presented as fait accompli to the UT’s citizens.
• This should also be taken together with the fact that the last five and a half years have seen the suspension of political and civil liberties of politicians; arbitrary arrests and detentions; communication shutdowns; a chilling effect on the media; and, more recently, long power cuts. Any change to the political life of J&K, citing its status as a region affected by separatism and terrorism, should not be done in a way that the citizens feel alienated.
   

Conclusion

• The first order of business in J&K has to be the restoration of the democratic process by holding popular elections and the restoration of its Statehood. This should help not just fill a glaring void in public life in the region in the immediate but also set the stage for addressing the long-pending issues that have led to the persistence of militancy.

Editorial 2 : India’s growing neighbourhood dilemmas

Context: Most South Asian states are sceptical of India’s primacy in their own ways.

Introduction

• The proverbial Achilles heel of Indian foreign policy continues to be its neighbourhood. Contemporary Indian foreign policy has an ambitious vision — from being the leader of the global South, to be an arbiter in global geopolitical contestations, to making a serious claim to be a pole in world politics.
• But South Asia is not only not keen to jump on the bandwagon of the India story, but it is also seemingly holding India back, albeit indirectly. Neighbourhoods are difficult for any major power, but contemporary India is faced with an exceptionally hard one, complicated by a rising superpower in its neighbourhood, for the first time in its history.
   

Types of dilemmas that India faces in the neighbourhood.

• The rise of politically anti-India regimes in South Asia such as the one in the Maldives where the new government is effectively asking Indians to pack up and leave. While the Maldives is anti-India in an instrumental sense, a Khaleda Zia-led government in Dhaka, which goes to the elections early next year, could turn out to be ideologically anti-India.
• The second type of dilemma India faces in the neighbourhood is structural, resulting from Beijing’s growing influence in South Asia.
  • The growing entanglement of the region’s smaller states in the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and other Chinese projects.
  • Beijing’s assiduous outreach to South Asian states when the rest of the international community abandons or avoids them for normative or other reasons — as was the case with Taliban-led Afghanistan, military-ruled Myanmar and crisis-hit Sri Lanka. India does too, but the overall impact of China’s outreach is far higher than that of India primarily as a function of deeper pockets.              
  • Finally, China’s desire to settle border disputes with its neighbours (minus India), as seen in the case of Bhutan, is also a strategy to win over the region.
     

Causes behind the dilemmas.

• The first is the regional geopolitical architecture characterised by five overlapping elements.
  • Contemporary South Asia is characterised by a diminishing presence of the United States, which, for a long time, was a geopolitical constant in the region. For New Delhi, Washington’s presence in South Asia was not always advantageous, but its departure is disadvantageous, in particular given how China has filled the power vacuum created by Washington’s departure.
  • The aggressive and stupendous rise of China has come as a ‘geopolitical buffer’, at least for now, for the smaller states in the region which have become adept at using the ‘China card’ in their foreign policy assertions. While our neighbours are keen to practise strategic autonomy with us, there is little appetite to do so vis-à-vis China.
  • Third, in one of the least interconnected regions in the world, and poor, it is natural that the inhabitants of the region will tilt towards a power with the ability to cater to their material needs. With India’s ability to meet those needs being limited, China is that power.
  • Fourth, India, for the most part, has had a normative and political approach towards the region, with the states in the region acquiescing, rebelling, and falling in line given the absence of choices. Beijing has changed that India-centric calculus by offering itself as the no-frills non-normative alternative. For the first time in modern South Asian history, the region is a ‘norms-free-zone’.
  • Finally, for much of its independent existence, New Delhi enjoyed unrivalled primacy in the region. Today, the downside of being the resident power in South Asia — with all its attendant cultural, ethnic, refugee and other spillovers — is felt more sharply than being the primary power. China, on the other hand, is the region’s non-resident power which benefits from the absence of complications — ethnic, linguistic, religious — arising out of being a resident power.
• The second cause behind India’s regional dilemma is related to its policy stance which exhibits a deep-seated status quo bias when it comes to dealing with the region’s domestic politics and the multiplicity of actors/power centres therein.
• Furthermore, India’s dilemmas are also caused by two mistaken assumptions that we have long held.
  • For one, there has, for some time, been a strong belief in India that South Asia minus Pakistan would be amenable to Indian geopolitical reasoning which prompted an attempt to deal proactively with South Asia without Pakistan. However, in retrospect, one has to admit that this policy has not exactly panned out that way India imagined.
  • The second (mistaken) assumption that New Delhi approached the neighbourhood with was that India’s special relationship with the region rooted in culture, soft power, history and ethnicity would help the country deal with the neighbourhood better than those without intimate knowledge of the region, namely China.
     

What can be done?

• It is the time in which India should made a mental switch and acknowledged that South Asia and its balance of power have changed fundamentally.
  • Old South Asia where India enjoyed primacy no longer exists. ‘Southern Asia’ which has pretty much replaced South Asia is a space where China has emerged as a serious contender for regional primacy.
  • India’s neighbours and periphery are China’s too, even if we do not like it.
  • Such a realistic and pragmatic framing would help India deal with the reality as it is rather than working with the mental frame of Indian primacy which is long gone.
• New Delhi must proactively pursue the involvement of friendly external actors in the region. That is the only way to deal with the impending possibility of the region becoming Sino-centric.
• Indian diplomacy must be flexible enough to engage multiple actors in each of the neighbouring countries. The art of diplomacy is not about hating the anti-India elements in the neighbourhood, but, instead, lessening their anti-India attitude.
• Finally, here is the highlighting of an issue that has been spoken of ad nauseum — India needs more hands for its diplomatic pursuits. The glaring shortage of sufficient diplomats to implement the foreign policy of a country of 1.4 billion people will prove to be India’s single most crucial challenge going forward.

Conclusion

• The more India’s role in world affairs grows, the more the shortage of personnel will be felt by us and others. If the current state of affairs continues, there will be no one to show up with the Indian flag when opportunities beckon, or crises emerge.

  ---