India and Russia: Moving towards a 21st century compact

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The recent summit between President Putin and Prime Minister Singh may have heralded a new inflexion point in the bilateral.

Russian President Vladimir Putin and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh during the press statement following Russian-Indian talks in the Kremlin on October 21, 2013. Source: Alexey Nikolsky/RIA Novosti

It would seem that India-Russia relations might have bucked the season of gloom. For years now, since Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov’s reorientation of Russia’s foreign policy eastwards, we’ve largely seen two governments making positive statements, not matched by actions on the ground and compounded by a general sense of drift. Adding to this has been a waning interest in India of all things Russian and vice-versa. Two close friends gradually drifting apart, a contemporary tale of the engagement between Moscow and New Delhi.

The recent summit between President Putin and Prime Minister Singh may have heralded a new inflexion point in the bilateral. On a cursory comparison of their joint statement issued on October 22 with the previous four summit statements, there seems very little change on the surface and if anything, these statements continue to remain an exercise in blandness. But connecting the dots we get three game changers, which while mentioned, have not been described under the strategic rubric that they perhaps should have.

Indo-Russian cooperation

The first is trade which stood at $7.46 billion in 2009, $8.53 billion in 2010, and $8.87 billion in 2011, and has suddenly spurted to $11.04 billion in 2012, registering a 24.5 percent growth year on year. This was the best performance of Russia’s top 25 trade partners. This is particularly surprising given the present world economic situation, the lack of growth of India’s world trade in 2012 and a marginal growth of 1.8 percent growth in Russia’s world trade.

Does this mean that India today has firmly established itself as a partner in more than just the fields of defence and energy to Russia? Are there initial signs of diversification visible? And how the two countries cement this increase in quantity, quality and diversity of trade will be crucial for the strategic partnership going forward.

The second is Russia’s determination to push through a free trade agreement with India – the comprehensive economic cooperation agreement (CECA). Given that most of this increase in bilateral trade has been in-spite of the two governments (outside of the defence sector), this is of particular significance. This will give the Indian private sector critical access to such landlocked markets like Belarus and Kazakhstan, which are part of a customs union with Russia. Not only does this give a fillip to India-Russia ties, it leverages the growing volume of India-Russia trade, to give the northern access to Central Asia, benefit of new economies of scale.

The former Soviet countries have for long sought a stronger Indian presence, be it economic or political in their efforts to balance China. But thus far, Indian attempts have been frustrated by Pakistan’s refusal to allow transit and the complicated international situation with respect to Iran. What the Russia route means is that India and Russia can now piggyback on each other and create serious strategic congruence and bring synergies into play like never before. But this development could additionally play another critical function. By creating a strong market in Central Asia that is integrated with India, it helps create regional pressure to bear on Pakistan to allow India transit with substantial economic benefits to itself.

In effect, Russia, if this game plays out well, may just end up becoming the ‘x factor’ that normalised trade between India and Pakistan. This is advantageous for Russia, since it would give it a pivotal geo-economic and strategic role on the world stage that it hasn’t played in a very long time with relation to big countries.

14th annual summit: Singh, Putin focus on trade, energy and defence

Lastly, the transactional listing of defence deals in the joint statements is symptomatic of India’s fear that it simply cannot compete with China vis-à-vis Russia when it comes to economic stakes. However, the trade figures should boost India’s confidence in its dealings with Russia. It now needs to take the bull by the horns and insist on a quality-quantity matrix that regulates future Russian arms sales to China. By formally affirming a commitment to maintaining India’s qualitative edge over China, Russia can do much to overcome the almost consistently negative press in India in this regard and bypass other minor irritants in the relationship.

It has never been a better time and never before has India come with this much strength to the negotiating table. In the end, reaffirmation and recalibration of Russia’ role in India’s future was prominent and the short and successful summit was capped by perhaps another nuclear submarine for India and a doctorate for Prime Minister Singh.

Columns/Op-Eds, In the News, Non-Traditional Security

Privacy, property and sovereignty in the cyber age

Privacy, property and sovereignty in the cyber age
Seminar 650, October, 2013

L’affaire Snowden did not tell us anything we did not already know – that
governments spy on us. What is new, however, is how heightened perceptions
of national security and sophisticated technology are combining to
allow these activities by the ‘state’ to go unnoticed and unchallenged. This
paper first examines the three categories of national attitudes that become
apparent from the Snowden affair –specifically with regards to privacy
and, thereafter, attempts to explain how these attitudes and lack of public
awareness are leading to far more dangerous and insidious undercurrents
that challenge the foundations of civil liberties, notions of property and definitions
of sovereignty as we know them.

All indications are that certain checks and balances were/are being
observed – if only on paper – by the United States government in the surveillance
of its citizens. No such checks, however, seem to have been
applied to foreigners, be they resident in America or their respective countries.
What is pertinent, however, is how far America has strayed from its
founding principles governing personal freedom and political liberty. It appears
that the pendulum has swung so far that the debate is no longer about
whether the government should have any right to monitor citizens but rather
what the standards and procedures for extraordinary intrusive surveillance
should be. The debate in the public sphere has become so securitized that
‘national security’ is now an open ticket to trample on every right and
freedom the US once held sacred. If former President George W. Bush Jr.
jeopardized individual liberty with the Patriot Act, President Barack Obama
has bestowed on his government the right to be a virtual presence in the lives
and bedrooms of billions of people around the world – without care,
remorse or debate.

Another disappointment – indicative of this attitudinal shift
in America on the subject of privacy – is the stand of the American press on
the issue. Far from Snowden’s revelations igniting a debate on privacy versus
security, the media seems to have bought the security narrative lock, stock
and barrel. Evidently the memory of 1971, when Daniel Ellsberg was feted
as a hero of liberty by the US media for his leaks exposing ‘Vietnam Lies’
and forcing a policy reversal on the part of the US government, has long since
faded. Every US media outlet has gone to great length to explain the legality
and due process of the PRISM spying apparatus and has, almost uniformly,
painted Snowden in a poor light.

The second ‘state attitude’ is that of the EU, where several governments,
unlike the US government, led their citizens to believe that they were
in fact protected. The EU released its cyber security doctrine earlier this year.

* This essay draws on two previously published op-ed articles, Samir Saran and
Abhijit Iyer-Mitra, ‘No to Peeping Sams’, The Hindu, 18 July 2013 and Samir Saran,
‘Keep Cyberspace Free’, Times of India, 12 September 2013.

It repeatedly referred to the EU’s core values of freedom of expression
and privacy. The document was ostensibly developed around these ‘core
values’.1 But this now sounds like a hollow claim, because even as the
document was being released, many EU countries were actively colluding
with the US and prying into the private lives of their citizens. Unlike the US
government which ostensibly protected its own citizens by some form
of due process, the European governments allowed blatant violation of
their own citizens’ privacy. However, most European press outlets, unlike
the American media have been savage in their criticism of their own governments;
perhaps a more sensitive media ensures the balance of narrative
in the EU.

India, however, represents a curious case, unable to secure its citizens
either through legislation or by the vigilance of its fourth estate. The country
released its National Cyber security Doctrine around the same time that the
Snowden issue came into public focus – paying mere lip service to privacy.
The word ‘privacy’ found mention twice in the whole document,2 appearing
as an afterthought. India ostensibly already has a privacy regime that
is built into the outsourcing bill, not to protect Indians but to keep the outsourcing
industry viable and competitive by promising protection to foreigners
and their data. Barely a few weeks after the release of the document,
CCTV footage from the Delhi metro of couples getting intimate were found
on a pornographic website. No one was held to account, no heads rolled
and no apology was forthcoming from any quarter. This episode summarizes
India’s casual approach to its citizens’ privacy – little concern about privacy,
on the one hand, and a complete lack of enforcement, on the other.

On the Snowden issue as well, the Indian foreign minister played down
reports of US surveillance on Indian citizens, calling it ‘cyber-scrutiny’,
while other members of the government nonchalantly chirped in that ‘we
too have similar systems in place’, as if two wrongs make a right. The Indian
media is another story altogether. Far from being a balancer, a competitive
hunt for eyeballs has ensured that broadcast and other media are themselves
guilty of infringing on private spaces of citizens. Some high profile
court cases are in progress and perhaps their outcomes may decide the
future of boundaries that the press and media may need to adhere to. The citizen
in India in the mean while has no respite.

This analysis invariably will lead us to another set of discussions, three
among which are perhaps most vital today. The first is that governments,
everywhere, snoop and pry on the lives on their own citizens. This is equally
true of authoritarian governments like Russia or China, of new democracies
like India, securitized democracies like the US, and the ‘so called’ liberal transparent
democracies of Europe that ostensibly do not prioritize security
over liberty. Privacy certainly is not a universal or timeless quality.3 It is
defined by who one is talking to, or by the expectations of the larger society
in a given context. And, privacy is not the same as security or anonymity.

It is the ability to have control over one’s definition within an environment
that is fully understood. Something, arguably, no one has any more. As
Danah Boyd, senior researcher at Microsoft research says, ‘Defaults
around how we interact have changed.A conversation in the hallway is private by default, public by effort. Online, our interactions become public by default, private by effort.’

The issue is largely one of societal norms complicated by the fact
that most personal use is marked by low levels of computational, data and
media literacy contributing to heightened fears. This is best exemplified by
how different governments and societies reacted to the Snowden revelations.
Somehow, there is a misplaced notion that private data and information
stored on the cyber cloud is less private than in files in a locker. Possibly
this is why breach of privacy in the digital sphere seems more acceptable.

The second issue is that the lack of public (cyber)awareness and literacy
is allowing governments to get away with a whole host of actions that would
have been unimaginable a decade ago. It is not just dangerous that governments
want to police or spy on us; that is something governments have
always done. However, until recently such action was more often than not
visible; there was a policeman on the road, a camera on the kerb, and so on.
But now what is scary is not just the stealth, but that the lack of avenues to
challenge and question such surveillance has created a new asymmetry
between the government and its subjects. This asymmetry is now
redefining privacy norms, property and sovereignty.

The third is that people tend to trust private companies with personal
information – usually in blocks – but not governments.

1. ‘Cybersecurity Strategy of the European Union: An Open Safe and Secure Cyberspace’,
European Union, Brussels, 7 February
2013.
2. ‘National Cybersecurity Policy’, Ministry
of Communications and Information Technology
– Department of Electronics and Information
Technology, 2 July 2013.
3. Parts of this paragraph have been paraphrased
from Q. Hardy, ‘Rethinking Privacy
in an Era of Big Data’, The New York Times,
4 June 2012.

Yet, the government, with the collusion of private companies,
is easily able to triangulate such information to build up a comprehensive
picture of individuals. For example ones’ Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn
personalities can all be different based on the target audience. Yet the government,
with the active collusion of each of these platforms, can build these
disparate packets into a comprehensive whole.

In many ways the history of datamining and the public’s acceptance of such data mining for advertising purposes
presaged this acceptance of data-mining for security purposes. Data-mining is a complex interdisciplinary
operation that involves computers processing vast amounts of information, matching them against preset algorithms, and finding intersections, what are euphemistically referred to as ‘points of interest’.4 In
the marketing industry, data-mining helps businesses target individuals for
the sale of specific products that they might be interested in. In the domain
of security, this becomes the basis for a warrant to allow, for example, a
human agent to start scanning personal correspondence. It was in effect the
public’s acceptance of this in marketing and the private sector that has now
exposed them, both practically and normatively, to unprecedented personal
surveillance by the government. The private sector has turned out to be the governments’ Trojan Horse.

Perhaps the most dangerous outcome of public laxity over data-mining
is how legal standards for intrusion have been diluted. Up to a decade back,
law enforcement agencies had to painstakingly construct a case of probable
cause and present it to the judge.

Probable cause is defined as ‘information sufficient to warrant a prudent
person’s belief that the wanted individual had committed a crime (for an
arrest warrant) or that evidence of a crime or contraband would be found
in a search (for a search warrant).’5 This then resulted in warrants for
further surveillance to acquire information. Today, given that the information available without the warrant is
already so vast, that it is not a legal process that is required to gauge intent,
but rather a computer code or programme. We are well and truly entering
a stage of ‘Minority Report’ style pre-crime,6 where mere intent –whether actioned or not, is prosecutable
and even worse punishable.

For instance, a husband telling a wife over a casual conversation that ‘the
president should be shot’ would first of all not have been picked up, and second,
it would not have been a crime. However, if this same exchange happens
over email – not only is it intercepted,but it also falls under a class D
felony under United States Code Title 18, Section 871 ‘Threatening the
President of the United States’. So what exactly has changed to merit this
conversation to (a) being overheard and (b) treated as a crime? The latest
example of this slippery slope to precrime and intent is of the Massachusetts
teenager and wannabe rap artist Cameron D’Ambrosio facing 20 years
for intent.7

This ‘intent’ is decided again by the data modelling devised by marketing
agencies where they targeted a particular customer for a particular
product the customer would in fact buy or be very interested in acquiring.
While this probabilistic determination is good for ‘sales’, it cannot be an
acceptable basis for conviction and punishment without a date in court.
For example – drone strikes can be ordered based on intercepted cyber
chatter that determines the so called malafide intent. Such drone strikes
effectively blur the line between legally sanctioned pre-emptive actions8 as
opposed to illegal preventative action.9

The second Trojan horse is how people’s behaviour in the cybersphere
has been changing accepted notions of property. The ease of use, and the
reach of cyber media, have fundamentally changed both consumer behaviour
and created an asymmetric balance of power in favour of the vendor. For
example a decade ago, it was possible to buy a book, lend it to friends, photocopy
sections of it and more under the fair use exceptions to the copyright act.
However, publishing and content houses are today actively underpricing
hard copy versions to make soft copies seem attractive, but with overriding
controls. For example, most commercial e-books cannot be printed,
or even lent to friends. In effect, fair use has been completely removed
from the scope without so much as a discussion. The notion of property
and right to the property has altered dramatically.

What is happening is the enforcement of commerciality through
legislation to force just one kind of transaction which favours the vendor.

4. U. Fayyad, G. Piatetsky-Shapiro and
P. Smyth, ‘From Data Mining to Knowledge
Discovery in Databases’, Artificial Intelligence
Magazine, Fall 1996.
5. Oxford Companion to American Law,
Oxford University Press, 2002.
6. ‘Minority Report’ is 2002 blockbuster
movie starring Tom Cruise in a future where a
special police unit is able to arrest murderers
before they commit their crimes.
7. ‘Bail denied to Massachusetts teen accused
of Facebook terror post’, Reuters, 25 May
2013.
8. D. Shue and H. Shue, Preemption: Military
Action and Moral Justification. Oxford
University Press, New York, 2007.
9. For an in-depth exploration of the legality
of preemption and the illegality of prevention
see M. Doyle, Striking First: Preemption
and Prevention in International Conflict,
Princeton University Press, 2008.

Legislation though is not meant to support a commercial transaction, as
law has to be neutral between contracting parties. Even the option of differential
pricing – where different usages can be bought for different rates – is
limited. For example, on the iTunes store, very few songs – priced higher
– give one the authority to transfer to another device. Most songs are restricted
to the one playback device.

In effect, while benefiting from the unprecedented mass reach of cyber
media, content producers are preventing consumers from benefiting similarly
from the same. One does not tame the oceans just because one wishes to use
the oceans for transport. Rather, the risks are recognized and suitable maritime
insurance is procured. Yet, in the cybersphere, instead of dealing with
the risks and devising the concept of cyber-insurance, companies are
effectively trying to mould this dynamic environment to suit their commercial
interests. Our last mile, our user behaviour and our infrastructure is
now sought to be regulated, monitored and controlled so as to create ‘safe
cyber oceans’ for the ‘virtual ships’ to sail on. Private property is now global
commons.

This raises several debates about what constitutes property in
cyberspace? Contrast the free use exception to copyright laws on hard
copies of books described earlier with the case of Megaupload, where the
US government insists that since it owns much of the cyber-infrastructure
of the world, companies operating outside the US must follow US law.
Effectively this is a restating of the ‘possession is nine tenths of the law’
cliché. On the other hand, it has through legislation stemming from the Trojan
horses described earlier, been progressively disenfranchising consumers
from claiming similar rights. In fact, not only is property being redescribed, territory
and by implication sovereignty itself has acquired a new meaning.

The US has been using cyclic logic to in its attempts at strong-arming to
itself cyberspace ownership by mingling civil and criminal complaints
and using one to justify the other without proving either. A recent example
of such an action by a state on a foreign company is the United States
Department of Justice’s takedown of the website Megaupload. The site’s
owner, the now-famous Kim Dotcom, is a resident of New Zealand and a
German citizen. Megaupload itself is run out of Hong Kong. So far there
does not seem to be any connection to the US. The justification used to go
after Megaupload was that the company had leased several servers which
were located in Virginia, and was allegedly storing and distributing
copyright-infringing files. It has not been proven that any files infringing
copyright were being held on the servers in Virginia. Furthermore,
Megaupload’s users are located throughout the globe, not solely in the
United States.

As of now, the rules, which govern the process by which the US serves
criminal complaints (the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure) require an
address in the United States where the complaint can be delivered. Despite
the fact that the company in question did not have any such address (being
registered and run out of Hong Kong), the US was able to proceed. The Justice
Department is now recommending that the rules be amended to
remove the clause, allowing them to serve complaints on companies
with no physical presence in the US. Megaupload’s case, United States v
Dotcom.

So on one hand while the government is forcing its jurisdiction on
cyberspace through claims of physical ownership it, at the behest of the private
sector, is denying the same freedom to consumers on their home
computers and other media devices. In fact, never before in human history
has a corporation enjoyed this much intrusive influence in human lives as
the internet has today enabled. And yet, it is the corporation that is sought
to be protected.

However, just as private sector datamining proved to be a Trojan horse to
intrusive surveillance, there are signs that such assertion of property laws
will at some point undermine the Westphalian concept of a nation state
and of sovereignty. Sovereignty has further implications of extra-territoriality
which are bound to raise serious hackles in the developing world. For
example, in the Megaupload case, US courts are seen demanding that companies
which operate in the US must follow US law in their international
operations. The argument then is for national sovereignty to be absolute
over such infrastructure, where the placing of virtual property in the physical
domain of another country necessitates the author of such information
to follows the laws of said country. Worryingly, this is a modern example of what European imperial powers
did in the 19th and early 20th centuries, imposing their laws, often through
coercion, on other nations.

Europe has traditionally been comfortable with notions of extraterritoriality
and takes a liberal view of sovereignty. This is evident in its
response to the Snowden episode.The European Union (EU) is after all
formed on the basis of a slow surrender of sovereignty and most EU states
are also members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), allowing
US troops stationed there to be governed by US laws. Extra-territoriality,

therefore, is perfectly legal when it happens with the acquiescence of
the host government. What is surprising though is India’s subdued reaction. This is a
country that gets riled up by interference in its internal affairs or insults
to its sovereignty, perceived or real, owing to its colonial past. Accounts of
how the East India Company ended up controlling most of India by acquiring
properties through crook and stealth rankle. Yet, in the case of the Snowden
revelations, where a foreign government has used stealthy/crooked means
to violate Indian laws and penetrate deep into the lives of its citizens, the
Indian government has brushed it off. This sets a precedent because, for
better or worse, what India has tacitly accepted is US extraterritoriality.

Thoughtless transposition of laws is, however, a recipe for all kinds of
disasters. For example, several strategists have argued that much of the tension
in the South China Sea is caused by the People’s Republic of China
extending its understanding of territorial laws based on it being a continental
power out to sea. The maritime domain though is a very different beast,
requiring very different laws. No analogy is perfect, but this one helps illustrate
how concepts imbibed from customary laws in the pre-Internet era
are bound to cause significant governance blunders. Now take the accepted
paradigm for cyber-sovereignty.

For example, the currently accepted definition is: ‘When those
infrastructure elements are emplaced within the terrestrial boundaries, territorial
waters, or exclusive airspace of a nation-state, it can exert its sovereign
authority over them.’10 However, in light of the Megaupload case, this
now seems a patently hollow assertion. This reinforces the position that old
paradigms that were relevant to the nation state are no longer relevant in
cyberspace and as such the issue needs to be dealt with sui generis.
There is no room for any retrofitting here. And people, communities, states
and institutions must begin a new conversation to address these new
age posers.

Cyberspace is a free-wheeling mindspace at the cutting edge of innovation
precisely because of the absence of sovereignty and artificial barriers.
Declaring sovereignty here is as absurd as extending one’s jurisdiction
deep into the minds of others. One reason for the phenomenal growth of
the Internet has been the easy flow of information. In many ways it brings
the proven scientific synergies of physical megacities into the virtual
world, allowing seamless interaction and massive increases in productivity.
If the property and sovereignty debate is not resolved soon, it will result in a
fracturing of the cyber-whole, destroying much of what has made the
Internet a dynamic force.

There are no solutions that present themselves but certain parting
questions are in order: First, can we agree on a common definition of
privacy and defaults assumptions on what is private? Can we create private
bedrooms and modes for private conversations in the virtual rooms? Second,
should commercial interests allow the idea of property to be redefined?
Why should the exploitation of the web for business and commerce allow
privacy, freedom of expression and property rights to be compromised?
And, third, is cyber a ‘zero-sum game’ and will nations indulge once again in
establishing, capturing and redefining sovereign spaces? Or, will this digital
age bring an end to the over two centuries of Westphalian existence

10. A. Casesse, International Law 81 (2nd edition), 2005.

Columns/Op-Eds, In the News, Uncategorized

Navigating e-commerce: What Alibaba can teach Indian businesses

PUBLISHED:22:18 GMT, 3 October 2013| UPDATED:22:18 GMT, 3 October 2013

Original link is here

Adam Smith once wrote that “to widen the market and to narrow the competition is always the interest of the dealers,” and that therefore any proposal for a regulation or policy that flows within this order, must be “carefully examined”. Adam Smith lived in simpler times.

As the Prime Minister Manmohan Singh concludes his trip to Washington DC, there is palpable pressure on the Indian government to open up the e-commerce space to foreign players.

Large American e-commerce companies are already knocking on the door and reports suggest that one of the senior-most functionaries reporting to the Prime Minister has been given the task of shepherding this process and is seeking response from the DIPP on the underlying issues.

What Alibaba can teach Indian businesses

E-commerce

There are three popular narratives on the opening up of the Indian e-commerce sector to FDI and all of them are somewhat simplified, facetious and misleading. One perspective is that the opening up of the sector will be an Indian payback, a veritable payout, for US support in the civil nuclear mainstreaming of India.

Another is that delay in allowing FDI in e-commerce is part of the policy clutter created by this government, an unintended situation, to which the only suitable response is unencumbered liberalisation.

And the third is that FDI in online space is a matter of national priority, and sovereignty over the e-commerce space must not be ceded to multi-nationals.

The narrative on paying back the Americans is easily refuted. India must be sure enough to bargain for only what is in consonance with its core self-interests. Surely, stable and resilient growth of domestic manufacturing and industry is a core interest.

India is as at a crossroads. Policy decisions taken now are likely to determine whether the country is able to harness the transformative power of SME’s using the access and reach of e-commerce, or whether a haphazard and hurried policy framework is going to hinder the organic growth for the largest employer in the country.

The narrative on the policy clutter can be cross-examined through the growth story of the Chinese e-commerce giant, the Alibaba Group. Alibaba was established in China in 1999, initially funded through a Venture Capital infusion of $5 million by Goldman Sachs.

Prior to China’s WTO ascension, FDI in the sector was not allowed and even now, a local partner is a prerequisite to entering the e-commerce space. However, this has not limited Alibaba’s growth, which has been predicated on a larger state-run economic strategy centred on the SME sector and domestic industrial competitiveness.

China has over 40 million SMEs, many of which are sellers and buyers on the Alibaba platform. The company’s innovative products have created shared value, supporting the SME ecosystem. Through its finance arm, the company has deployed loans to over 10 million Chinese SMEs, therefore facilitating core policy objectives of the Chinese state such as financial inclusion and timely credit provision.

In all of this, of course, the consumer benefits, with lower transaction costs both in terms of average time spent in sourcing products and cost competitiveness. Sales through Alibaba’s online marketplace are expected to surpass those of the total e-commerce market in the United States by the end of the year. Last year, two of its portals handled around $170 billion in sales.

Alibaba’s much publicised and imminent IPO is now likely to be in New York. The company is likely to be valued at around $70 billion. This is significant value creation given its modest beginnings – and indeed value creation must be the strategic objective of any enabling industrial policy; a lesson for India.

In the outlined context, the third narrative on sovereignty over the e-commerce space also appears to be a conflation of hazy opinions. There is no doubt that as India integrates into the global economy with its incumbent need for long term capital formation, opening up various growth sectors to FDI is not an inevitable option.

Regulation

This does not change the fact that there are a number of technical operational issues that require careful examination, not just by the bureaucrats at DIPP, but also by the legal fraternity, the tax collector, SME sector stakeholders and representatives from allied sectors including telecommunications and banking.

Indeed, an inclusive consultative process is an unfulfilled prerequisite. This must be steered by organisations such as the Competition Commission of India, a body which is supposed to function on a proactive mandate in order to obviate the need for a convoluted or retrospective regulatory ring-fence.

Growth

India represents a nascent e-commerce market, which is certain to grow exponentially as internet penetration rates improve and consumption patterns evolve. Estimated revenues from online retailing in India are expected to be at $15 billion by 2015 and $125-160 billion by 2025.

While many home-grown Alibabas can be created, in the absence of a robust legal framework, particularly around warranty, fraud and data protection issues, the consumer, is left vulnerable to the metaphorical ’40 thieves’ as the industry expands.

The IT Act is certainly insufficient and clarifications are required in the Competition Act, on among other things, unfair trade practices or restrictive trade practices, before the FDI question is resolved.

To sequence Indian priorities on the FDI question is fairly simple. Consumer-centrism is paramount. Competitive SME sector growth, which will lead to job creation as well as value addition, is a strategic economic priority, which in turn can be aided by a strong e-commerce industry as has been witnessed in China. While e-commerce must eventually resemble a highway without speed limits, the lanes leading up to the highway must be strengthened to allow for unfettered access.

The writer is senior fellow, Observor Research Foundation

Columns/Op-Eds, In the News, Non-Traditional Security

Keep cyberspace free

SAMIR SARAN | Sep 12, 2013, 12.00 AM IST

It is a global commons that cannot be controlled by any government or corporation.

History today stands on the cusp of a technological pivot much like it did 160 years ago. When US commodore Matthew Perrysailed into Tokyo Bay in 1853, he found a Japan so fossilised in time by its technophobic bureaucracy and protectionist businesses that the very sight of his steam-belching ships was enough to make the nation capitulate.

This same moment is playing out today in the realm of cyberspace where the surge of collective technological creativity of the masses has deeply dented the power of governments and institutions that were once the drivers of innovation.

Consequently one finds a steady stream of Goebbelsian propaganda to create a phantom enemy intended to terrorise a population into giving up its rights and privileges. The government and big private players are the last and only line of defence between civilisation and a complete descent into anarchy — or so the argument goes. Not true. Anarchy and technology go hand in hand; technology and innovation owe their existence to anarchy.

Anarchy and technology must continue to contest and cooperate to shape cyberspace. This is a process as old as the universe and evolution itself, where each new development brings both danger and opportunity. This is humanity’s technological evolution. There must be no space for sovereign or business interests to control, securitise or regulate this evolving virtual space. This is, after all, the only genuinely free market place ever since the advent of capitalism, a market offering equal opportunities, stakes and roles for everyone.

Counterposing national security and cyberspace or making international cooperation dependent on cybersecurity is both pompous and misplaced. Cyberspace is a free-wheeling mind-space at the cutting edge of innovation precisely because of the absence of sovereignty and artificial barriers. Declaring sovereignty here is as absurd as extending one’s jurisdiction deep into the minds of others.

For example, Libya in 2010 decided to seize .Ly URL shorteners, while the US has recently seized URLs of companies operating abroad because their servers were in the US and American law was at odds with the laws of those countries. This is evidently not about security. It’s about control. It’s about testing the waters to see how far one can go and how far people will cower down. Cyberspace is therefore on the frontline of the battle between freedom and control in the 21st century.

Governments though aren’t the only ones throwing a fuss. Some of the strongest proponents of greater regulation and control over the cybersphere are in the private sector. On the one hand they want to use the seamless fluidity, innovation, reach and speed of this space — the ultimate capitalist ideal — to their advantage. On the other, like the very worst kind of communists, they want to lay down the rules for how this space works, but expect everyone to pick up the tab for their security.

If these companies wish to use cyberspace, they need to be willing to accept the attendant risks and costs, just like they are for road or sea transit. Transfer loss and copyright theft are all part of this. To claim that such losses then entitle one to regulate these cyber pathways is about as nakedly imperialistic an argument as the great European powers used to justify their land-grabs in response to any law and order situation in the 19th century. It is critical that the information age does not turn into an age of ‘digital imperialism’.

So, if governments and corporates don’t decide the rules, who does? The reality is that no corporate house or government has the organisational nimbleness to lay the rules here — technology’s moving too fast for that. Technology is both the problem and the solution. Just as every virus results in an antivirus and for every hack there emerges an anti-hack, technology must compete with technology and creativity must be matched by counter-creativity. Ultimately the needs of order cannot and must not be allowed to stifle creativity. Far from it, creativity must decide order.

Some forms of data do need protection though, such as security operations, banking details etc. Wonderful, so the owners and collators of such information should build their own secure parallel systems unconnected to the global commons that they are free to police, patrol and regulate as they see fit. If they want security they need to build their own infrastructure with its own fences. The commons cannot be fenced off, and neither can the property of others.

Cyberspace, however, fits into no single category — it is an intensely personal extension of one’s deepest thoughts and secrets. An extension of the mind, this makes it both private property as well as an outlet of expression, while at the same time being a global common open to everyone. Cede but a little on the right to property in this space and one loses the right to one’s freedom of expression. This debate is also the frontline between personal liberty and authoritarianism.

Every time the interests of the state and the freedom of the individual collide, the balance of the narrative in the cyber-world must lie with the individual. That is what is truly at stake here; the personal liberty of six billion people.

The writer is vice-president, Observer Research Foundation.

Original link is http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home/opinion/edit-page/Keep-cyberspace-free/articleshow/22493280.cms

Columns/Op-Eds, In the News, Politics / Globalisation, Uncategorized

Less corporate, more social

Published: August 10, 2013 01:08 IST | Updated: August 10, 2013 16:55 IST

CSR principles enshrined in the Companies Bill 2012 offer businesses a chance to transform their poor record in community participation and development

Original link is here

Finally we are seeing some signs of life in the business of legislation. Not surprisingly, one of the early beneficiaries is the Companies Bill (2012) which shall replace a six decade-old antiquated law after Presidential assent. The Bill, which was passed in the Upper House this week, was earlier approved by the Lok Sabha in December 2012 and reflects a number of amendments to the Companies Bill, 2011, based on the recommendations of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Finance. It encompasses important areas for the effective governance of companies including clauses on mergers, audit and auditors, appointment of company directors, aside from providing for constitution of a National Company Law Tribunal and a National Company Law Appellate Tribunal to fast-track company law cases and corporate structuring.
Crucial
Perhaps, the most important new element introduced in Clause 135 of the Bill is the notion of mandatory Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). Colloquially referred to as the “2 per cent clause,” it has the potential to transform the landscape of CSR in India. Indian businesses have been loath to go beyond the “glorified worker towns” syndrome or providing employee services and benefits passed off as social interventions. Indeed, “Corporate India” has fared rather poorly when it comes to affirmative action in employment, environmental responsibility and in resource efficiency and revitalisation over the years. Therefore, a scheme that potentially transfers profits towards social causes, environmental management and inclusive development could be the much needed medicine for a nation with such deep socio-economic cleavages. This provision in the new bill must be welcomed and its efficient implementation must be ensured.
It is important that Clause 135 is complemented and supplemented with regulatory and institutional mechanisms to ensure that it actually results in a new paradigm of “stakeholder responsibility” and does not become another scheme where a paternalistic government is able to create another framework of patronage that the politician-businessperson nexus finds favourable for its dealings. This hypothesis needs to be carefully examined, particularly in the context of the upcoming general election, when political masters are at once beholden to corporates for election funding, and where constituency-level CSR commitments could be politically useful.
However, beyond the “profit for patronage” issue, there are some other aspects that must be discussed. The new law will make it incumbent for companies having a net worth of Rs.500 crore or more, or a turnover of Rs.1,000 crore or more or a net profit of Rs.5 crore or more, during any financial year, to spend at least two per cent of net profits towards CSR activities. While this seems uncomplicated, the efficacy in implementation may be in doubt for more than one reason.
The whole concept of CSR must, by its very definition, be a product of the fundamental need to price services, infrastructure and resources that societies provide businesses located in their proximity. By mandating a plain vanilla formula for allocation of two per cent of net profits towards CSR, the law will create a locational distortion, delinking CSR from community responsibility. Businesses must be responsible for proximate communities first, rather than being able to choose the destination of this commitment to society.
There is also a temporal distortion in the construct of CSR as spelt out by the Bill. Paragraph 5 of Clause 135 states that two per cent of the average net profit over three immediately preceding years must be allocated for CSR activities. In the case of most large companies of the sort that would be mandated to allocate net profits, business operations would have had a run-off effect on societies and would have fed off communities for more than three years. Therefore, must not the commitment to these communities and geographies reflect the impact of these businesses over their operation periods? And is there not a case for ensuring sustained “plough back” by the company in these geographies before diverting their commitments elsewhere?
Implementation
Even as we begin to debate how best to address these “time-place” distortions, it is certain that the CSR mandate must be made more robust, ensuring that at the very least it stands up to some simple tests of reasonableness and fairness. There are a number of ways to achieve this baseline objective.
First, voluntary policies that ensure a stakeholder approach to CSR is followed by corporates already exist and must be strengthened. The National Voluntary Guidelines on Social, Environmental and Economic Responsibilities of Business (NVGs) suggest nine core principles which businesses should follow. Principle 8 for instance, directly alludes to coherent, social impact measures and assuring “appropriate resettlement and rehabilitation of communities who have been displaced owing to their business operations.” Integration of NVGs, initiated by the Ministry of Corporate Affairs, in the form of more constructive guidelines for deploying corporate CSR policies, is a viable option.
Second, CSR policies must be determined organically, through demand-driven consensus. Instead of being the mandate of high-level committees, company specific CSR policies should flow from a transparent interface between community stakeholders and corporates. The process must be devolved below the level of the corporation, to the level of the business unit. Corporate leaders and civil servants in the national capital must not determine community engagement strategies. Community stakeholders and the business units concerned must. Allocations must also be made on the basis of how much different stakeholders can absorb.
Employee benefits
Concomitantly, employee benefits must not be passed off as CSR. Such tricks are already used by the banking sector, wherein mandated priority sector lending targets are often met through incredibly convoluted means, including issuance of no-frills/general credit cards for their own contracted workers. A “tick-the-box” approach is simply not legitimate.
The third suggestion also follows from this. A demand-driven process for articulating company specific CSR policies must be instituted at the district level. Consultations can be steered by public officials such as district magistrates, involving village and town leaders and representatives. Decisions could be made through majority outcomes, and the process must be recorded and filed. This sort of a process has the potential to create a public accountability framework for delivery of CSR far superior to legal provisions that we fail to enforce.
Audit
Fourth, as this culture evolves over time, CSR allocations must not remain consigned to bottom line (profits) commitments. Obligations to community stakeholders must be placed alongside the top line (receivables and debt) and must be considered seriously as the next step as CSR must not be an afterthought to profit accumulation. It must be embedded within the very fabric of large businesses.
Finally, there are multiple concerns around the audit of CSR and a discomfort with the lack of audit and oversight required for CSR activities. “Comply or explain” simply has not worked in the case of other existing regulatory frameworks that deal with corporate governance issues. It is time to realise that in India, only a few are in a position to ask, while nobody is in any hurry to explain.

(Samir Saran is vice-president and Vivan Sharan, an associate fellow at the Observer Research Foundation, a New Delhi-based public policy think tank.)

Columns/Op-Eds, In the News, Politics / Globalisation

The IBSA Moment

Globaltimes.cn | 2013-7-22 19:00:36
By Samir Saran and Vivan Sharan

Original link is here

June 6, 2013 was the 10th year anniversary of the seminal Brasilia Declaration by the foreign ministers of India, Brazil and South Africa, formalizing the cooperative mechanism better known as India-Brazil-South Africa Dialogue Forum (IBSA).

India, currently the chair of IBSA, is responsible for steering the agenda for trilateral collaboration.

In its capacity as chair, it is incumbent upon India to revitalize the geopolitical group, which has been so central to the construct of “South-South Cooperation” that engages most political thinkers today.

Developing countries with converging interests have a lot to gain from coordinating positions on a wide spectrum of issues. And indeed India is also uniquely placed to establish its own global identity and brand through the group.

At the end of the Durban summit earlier this year, BRICS resembled a schizophrenic milieu; a strange mix of countries from the Group of 77 and Russia. Under South Africa’s chairmanship, there was a visible failure to shed the identity of reactionary “trade unionists.”

Moreover, consumed by regional aspirations of one member, instead of being representative of a fast moving lithe club of five, BRICS appeared to be burdened with carrying the divergent and diverse aspirations of an additional continent on its shoulders.

The IBSA countries must not let ownership of the South-South agenda slip away. This, we feel, would require at least three conceptual underpinnings.

First, the format for engagement must remain unburdened and the core values undiluted. That is, the dialogue must continue to follow the format already instituted. Proxy memberships of other countries through regional institutions, must not constrain the nimble grouping. Regional issues must be represented, without members themselves becoming stubborn regional representatives.

Second, a common thread which ties all three IBSA members is their robust democratic institutions and frameworks. Democratic values must be kept at the forefront. The legitimacy that such a governance ethos can bring is perhaps unmatched. The cries for reform of the existing global governance architecture converge with the imperative of ensuring legitimacy through democratic transparency.

IBSA offers member countries an audible voice on the global governance high table, and democracy is an undervalued and underutilized trump card that they each possess.

Finally, for each of the IBSA members, the next few decades need to be centred on inclusive growth. Each is an emerging “middle power,” and each needs to harness growth to craft sustainable trajectories, unleashing drivers of socio-economic progress including productivity, innovation and social welfare.

IBSA offers its members a moment for cooperating on this incumbent need. IBSA must focus on itself even as it reaches out.

A lot has already been discussed under the IBSA umbrella. Conversations on reform of Bretton Woods institutions, regional issues (particularly the Arab-Israeli imbroglio), sectoral cooperation ranging from tax administration to higher education, people-to-people linkages, free trade agreements, to name a few prominent areas, have taken place.

Additionally, we suggest that IBSA members must explore collaborating on three specific agenda items.

The first is that IBSA must reach out to other democracies, perhaps initially by according observer status to similarly placed countries. Replicating the format followed by the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation could be a viable alternative, and serve as a suitable whetting process for new members.

Second, IBSA must shed its reluctance to share its own deep reservoir of democratic experiences. Clearly, Atlantic countries cannot and do not offer the only appropriate models of development for democracies. In this post-Washington Consensus era, IBSA members possess a number of experiences which provide a template for the developing world. These must be mapped, shared and discussed.

The third concrete action item must be to move towards a new format for ocean governance. India-Brazil-South Africa Maritime, a naval exercise conducted between the three navies (an element of IBSA’s regional cooperation), is an ideal point of departure.

IBSA members can also begin to address issues dealt under the United Nations Convention on Law of the Sea, to develop a robust international framework for governing the oceans and seas. A new framework articulated by the South would have a compelling weight.

The conceptual underpinnings and agenda discussed here can prove to be levers of IBSA’s transformation. The decade old cooperative mechanism has endured, and now it is time for it to mature and deliver.

Samir Saran is Vice President and Vivan Sharan an Associate Fellow at Observer Research Foundation, Delhi.

Columns/Op-Eds, In the News

‘No’ to peeping Sams

original link is here

The challenge of cybersecurity lies in protecting people without entering their private space or making ‘national security’ an excuse to trample on their freedoms

L’affaire Snowden is the story of three governments. The first is one that claims to protect its own citizens while snooping on everybody else; the second is a government that claims to value personal freedoms above all but actively colludes with the first to violate its citizens’ freedoms and then cover up its footprints. The third is a government that simply does not seem to care about its words or the consequences they bear.

Edward Snowden’s revelations point to certain checks and balances being observed — if only on paper — by the United States government in the surveillance of its citizens. No such checks were applied to foreigners, be they in America or their respective countries. Data-mining is a complex interdisciplinary operation that involves computers looking at vast amounts of information and finding what are euphemistically referred to as “points of interest.” In the marketing industry, data-mining would help businesses target you for the sale of specific products that you might be interested in. In security, this becomes the basis for a warrant to allow a human to start scanning your personal correspondence — if you are a U.S. citizen. If you fall into the non-U.S. citizen category, no warrants are required.

Remorseless America

What is pertinent here is how far America has strayed from its founding principles of personal freedom and political liberty. It seems the pendulum has swung so far that the debate is no longer about whether the government should have any right to monitor citizens but rather about what the standards and procedures for extraordinarily intrusive surveillance should be. Nowhere is this better reflected than in the curious volte face of Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz on the subject. Once termed “the nation’s most peripatetic civil liberties lawyer,” post-9/11, Mr. Dershowitz was actively advocating torture, including of methods like shoving a sterilised needle under suspects’ fingernails. The debate in the public sphere has become so securitised that ‘national security’ is now a ticket to trample on every right and freedom the U.S. once held sacred. If former President George W. Bush Jr. jeopardised individual liberty with the Patriot Act, President Barack Obama has bestowed on his government the right to be a virtual presence in the lives and bedrooms of billions of people around the world, without care, remorse or even an explanation.

Another disappointment — probably indicative of this societal shift in America on the subject of privacy — is the stand of the American press on the issue. Far from Snowden’s revelations igniting a debate on privacy versus security, the media seems to have bought the security narrative lock, stock and barrel. Evidently, the developments of 1971, when Daniel Ellsberg was feted as a hero of liberty by the U.S. media for his leaks of ‘Vietnam Lies’, forcing a policy reversal on the part of the U.S. government, have been long forgotten. Every U.S. media outlet has gone to great lengths to explain the legality and due process of the PRISM spying apparatus and has almost uniformly shown Snowden in a poor light. The inescapable conclusion is that the U.S. media is probably the most socialised, managed and supine media in existence today — buying into the government’s security narrative instead of challenging it.

The United Kingdom and Europe, on the other hand, have a vibrant media which, for better or worse, challenges both ideas and authority on a daily basis. Since the Snowden leaks were made public, the German and British media in particular have mercilessly pilloried their governments for their subservience to America and their collaboration in the blatantly illegal surveillance of European Union citizens. Their attacks have been so sharp that British Foreign Secretary William Hague had to address criticism in Parliament within hours of the first revelations. Further revelations have since put him on the back foot. The ever idealistic ‘Eurocracy’ has tapped into the public outrage and labelled U.S. surveillance as equivalent to an act by an enemy government.

Governments, though, cannot be run on idealism. It was for this reason that the EU released its cyber security doctrine earlier this year. It repeatedly referred to the EU’s core values of freedom of expression and privacy. The document is ostensibly developed around these “core values.” But this is a vacuous claim, because even as this document was being released, EU countries were actively prying into the private lives of their citizens. Unlike the U.S. government which protected its own citizens by some form of due process, European governments allowed their own citizens’ privacy, enshrined in EU and national law, to be blatantly violated. It is however precisely because of a vigilant and free press that European governments are now trying everything they can to cover up their illegal actions, failing which most European leaders would probably be facing jail sentences and premature retirement.

The last story — and possibly the saddest — is that of India. A few weeks ago, India released its National Cybersecurity Doctrine which merely paid lip service to privacy. Hardly a week later, CCTV footage from the Delhi metro of couples getting intimate were found on a pornographic website. The episode summarises India’s callous approach to its citizens’ privacy — not caring about privacy, on the one hand, and the complete lack of enforcement, on the other. India ostensibly already has a privacy regime that is clubbed with the outsourcing bill, not to protect Indians but to keep the outsourcing industry competitive by guaranteeing protection to foreigners. Theoretically, another standalone privacy bill is on the anvil. However as the Delhi CCTV footage incident shows, enforcement is non-existent, as is the security of gathered data. The implications for internal security here are grave. After all, if voyeurs can get their hands on CCTV footage of public installations for a fee, imagine what kind of secrets terrorists could pry out.

This episode tells another story too; one of public apathy and voyeuristic delight, on the one hand, and lack of government sensitivity, on the other. Why haven’t heads rolled at Delhi Metro? Who has been apprehended for leaking surveillance footage? Which minister ought to resign for this incompetence and negligence? The government has been blasé about the entire Snowden episode as well. Foreign Minister Salman Khurshid played down reports on U.S. surveillance on Indian citizens, calling it “cyber-scrutiny,” while other members of the government chirped in nonchalantly that “we have similar systems in place.” It is frightening to imagine India with U.S. or EU level surveillance capabilities without having either constitutional or procedural capacities to ensure that individuals and society are not harmed.

All is fair

Indeed, our checks and balances against the violation of privacy have failed miserably. The Supreme Court has claimed there was nothing it could do about entities like Google and Yahoo which were implicit in PRISM on the grounds of their lack of local agency. This is a tendentious argument, given that Google has enough ‘local agency’ to send advertising fliers to every business marked on Google maps in India, and advertise on Delhi FM radio channels. The press for its part seldom lets the laws or privacy come in the way of a good story. The competitive impulse to dominate ‘media space’ prevents the separation of true investigative reporting from actions that would intrude and tarnish people by disclosing private details and running media trial(s). Everything and everybody is now fair game in a hyper-‘mediated’ India.

As India evolves its cyber-fibre, it has many lessons to absorb. On the one hand, enforcement is a sine qua non of any law. On the other hand, the government needs to realise that cyberspace is not your normal run-of-the-mill state highway that state agencies can regulate, patrol and police. The cyber-highway runs through our bedrooms and living rooms. The challenge of cybersecurity and governance is how to protect people in their bedrooms and in the conduct of their private lives, without having to enter their private space. This remains the ‘holy grail’ no one seeks, or wants, to discover.

Columns/Op-Eds, In the News, Politics / Globalisation

Kerry’s Indian visit and Afghanistan

Original link is here

This column is about US Secretary of State John Kerry’s recent visit to India and the new peace initiative for Afghanistan. Kerry visited India to participate in the fourth round of the India-US strategic dialogue. The dialogue was held soon after the opening of US-Taliban peace talks in Doha. The Indians were not too happy at this development, as they found themselves sidelined. The US Secretary of State had to do some explaining to them and seek to dispel their apprehensions. There would be no compromises, he said, with the “red lines” meaning certain conditions, which the Taliban must adhere to, viz Taliban’s break with al-Qaeda, renouncing violence and accepting Afghanistan’s constitution. Kerry was not quite right as after an earlier exchange, it was agreed by the State Department that these would not be “preconditions” but “outcomes”.
During his stay in India, Kerry called upon New Delhi to play a vital role in the next Afghan elections and help “improve its electoral system and create a credible and independent framework for resolving disputes.”
Mention may he made of a video message to the Indians sent on the eve of the Secretary’s visit, in which he assured of US backing of Indian’s inclusion as a “permanent member of a reformed and expanded Security Council.” “The US,” he declared, “welcomes India as a rising power,” adding that, “a strong India is in American’s national interest.”
More from the message: “The friendship between our two nations is one of the defining partnerships of the 21stcentury. Today, the US and India collaborate closely in almost every field of human endeavour. Together, we are tackling shared challenges and making the most of new opportunities. From higher education to clean energy, from counter-terrorism to space science, we are seizing new opportunities to work together, and in doing so, we are increasing the prosperity and security of both of our peoples. The US and India share a strong and enduring commitment to Afghanistan’s peace and prosperity. And we also welcome India’s leadership in the Asia-Pacific region.”
Despite the various agreements and partnerships inclusive of nuclear status and supplies, space, health, clean energy, defence, counter-terrorism, etc, New Delhi has not been too keen to acknowledge the favours done to it by Washington.
Just read how an Indian columnist, Indrani Bagchi, assesses Kerry’s visit to India in Economic Times/Times of India: What did one make of John Kerry’s whirlwind run-through of the India-US strategic dialogue? ‘Well, we didn’t expect much, so we were not disappointed’ runs the dominant response in this city.
On paper, the bilateral relationship is almost universal in its reach. Innovation, space, health, clean energy, defence, counter-terrorism. The US too has moved from the extensive vision of the Bush years to becoming a transactional power under Obama.
Possibly, the only worthwhile conversation at this point is the dialogue on defence technology that NSA Shivshankar Menon is holding with Ash Carter. Menon has to steer the defence-strategic relationship from a buyer-seller one to one that is more equitable……In their haste to turn off the lights in Afghanistan, the US will find another way to talk to the Taliban to bring them on board in Kabul, with a “ruinous deal” with Pakistan. Look closer home. India should push an investment treaty with the US, using it to straighten out its internal investment strategies and launch the next round of economic reforms. Strategically, let’s look at the Indo-Pacific as the theatre for the next big deal. Notwithstanding China’s categorisation of the Xi-Obama meeting at a ‘New Type of Great Power Relationship’, India and the US have the greatest strategic alignments there. Let’s not get spooked by G-2 either – the bald truth is ‘rebalancing’ is a China-hedge strategy.
As for Afghanistan, the Indian view has been, thus, well-expressed by Samir Saran and Abhijit Mittra in Economic Times/Times of India: “While John Kerry lauded India’s role in his June 23 speech in New Delhi, events of the last 90 days tell a very different story; one in which the US disregards the concerns of both India and the Afghan government and continues to woo the Pakistani military establishment. The US actions have allowed the Taliban to formally open an office in Qatar for direct negotiations, which the Taliban see as the first step towards a new emirate.
“The victory of Nawaz Sharif in Pakistan, in collusion with fundamentalists, allows radicals in that country certain influence over the civilian government and the military’s shadow over foreign policy looms larger and stronger as the US consolidates General Kayani’s pivotal role, established by a hurried and reckless K-3 meeting (Kerry, Kayani, Karzai).
“India’s Afghanistan policy has historically always been long-term and more than capable of absorbing reverses in the short to medium term. It cannot be coy in providing soft and hard military support to its friends, and it must not be seen as an unreliable and indecisive partner. India has in the past succeeded in maintaining Afghanistan as a viable partner for over 60 of 67 years of bilateral history.
“After 1997, India continued to support the Northern Alliance in the hope of better times. That time came in 2001, when, following the US invasion, a government whose core elements had been supported by India, were installed in power. India in 2014 is not the economic cripple it was in 1991; a $290 billion reserve buys more loyalty and battle resilience than 15-day currency reserves.
“Over the last 12 years, India has worked exceptionally hard to win over significant pockets of support among the Pashtuns. Unlike the 1990s when India’s support base was the ethnic minorities, support for India is now deeper and wider. Afghanistan post-2014 must not by default become a neutralised backyard of Rawalpindi and its proxies.”
So, while framing an Afghanistan policy, Pakistan has to keep the following factors in view:
1. After the return of the combat forces in 2014, the US will continue to keep a certain number of well equipped troops in Afghanistan. And the Taliban will continue creating difficult conditions for them.
2. The post-American exit scenario looks murky and uncertain. Pakistan must devise well thought out policies in regard to different emerging situation.
3. The initiative to forge an understanding with the Northern Alliance must continue with a view to securing positive results.
4. India has invested billions of rupees in Afghanistan. Both Kabul and Washington want it to play a significant role in the post-2014 Afghanistan. Karzai has already sealed a strategic partnership with India and Afghan army personnel are being trained by Indian military experts. India’s interests just cannot be ignored. These, to some extent, may have to be accommodated with Islamabad safeguarding its own interests.
5. It is time that a settlement with the Pakistani Taliban is negotiated jointly by the civil government and the military.
6. A competent retired diplomat should be immediately appointed as a special envoy for Afghanistan. He may pilot Pakistan’s case and look after its interests in the US-Afghanistan-Taliban negotiations.
The writer is an ex-federal secretary and ambassador, and a political and international relations analyst

Columns/Op-Eds, In the News, Politics / Globalisation

As the US exits, New Delhi must adopt a gutsy Afghanistan policy to safeguard its interests

Original link is here

SAMIR SARAN & Abhijit Iyer Mittra Jun 27, 2013, 12.00AM IST

While John Kerry lauded India’s role in his June 23 speech in Delhi, events of the last 90 days tell a very different story; one in which the US disregards the concerns of both India and the Afghan government and continues to woo the Pakistani military establishment in search of its elusive salvation.

The US actions have allowed the Taliban to formally open an office in Qatar for direct negotiations, which the Taliban sees as the first step towards a new emirate. The victory of Nawaz Sharif in Pakistan, in collusion with fundamentalists, allows radicals in that country certain influence over the civilian government and the military’s shadow over foreign policy looms larger and stronger as the US consolidates General Parvez Kayani’s pivotal role, established by a hurried and reckless K-3 meeting (Kerry, Kayani, Karzai).

Consequently, India has nowhere to hide. Three eventualities have to be prepared for in Afghanistan, possibly unfolding concurrently. The first is a Karzai government under severe pressure from a heavily armed Taliban backed by the new mandate available to the civilian and military leadership in Pakistan. The second is a Taliban takeover of Kabul. The third is some form of dismemberment of the country again. Each of these eventualities leads to India having to shoulder a greater share of the blowback, than the western countries that seek to drive the current agenda.

India’s exclusion is symptomatic of the short-termism that has plagued western policy that has sought to create a closed information loop to filter out inconvenient truths. The problem is, as history repeatedly shows, an unstable Afghanistan destabilises the region. Importantly, as 9/11 showed, it also has the potential to threaten western power centres. Yet it would seem nothing has been learnt and India would need to very quickly write its own script again.

India’s Afghanistan policy has historically always been cold, calculating, uncompromising, long-term and more than capable of absorbing significant reverses in the short to medium term. Its response today must also support those who it does business with in Afghanistan. It cannot be coy in providing soft and hard military support to its friends and it must not be seen as an unreliable and indecisive partner.

India has in the past succeeded in maintaining Afghanistan as a viable partner for over 60 of 67 years of bilateral history. Wading through the precarious years starting 1989 and through the economic crisis of 1991, India still managed to support one dispensation or another that held inimical forces at bay till 1997. After 1997, India continued to support the Northern Alliance in the hope of better times. That time came in 2001, when, following the US invasion, a government whose core elements had been supported by India, were installed in power.

Pakistan, in spite of its advantageous geography, had succeeded in pacifying Afghanistan for just four to six years at best. Anybody with a cursory knowledge of the region will know that it takes a lot more than common borders to manage bilateral relations.

Going into a winning war is easy but wading into uncertain waters to safeguard vital interests is the true test of realpolitik. That is why India’s Afghan gambit must be gutsy and counterintuitive. Given the high stakes and high probability of failure, too much talk is counterproductive and blueprints for the post-2014 chaos that will be Afghanistan are urgently needed.

India in 2014 is not the economic cripple it was in 1991; a $290-billion reserve buys more loyalty and battle resilience than 15-day currency reserves. Over the last 12 years India has worked exceptionally hard to win over significant pockets of support among the Pashtuns. Unlike the 1990s when India’s support base was the ethnic minorities, support for India is now deeper and wider.

Taliban 2.0, therefore, will find a house divided, facing the enemy without and also within. India has four consulates in addition to the embassy in Kabul. These are the prime nodes of aid dispersal, which is counted as the most effective of any country’s efforts there.

The nearly $2 billion dispersed so far have gone to infrastructure, agriculture and education, especially self-sustaining schemes at the village and micro levels in Pashtun areas. It is precisely these schemes that connect India directly to the Pashtun’s day-to-day life and make India a friend in their view. It will be Pakistan’s inability to deliver â€” systemically and financially â€” on this score that will make Pakistan the outsider.

Afghanistan post-2014 must not by default become a neutra-lised backyard of Rawalpindi and its proxies. Any interference must necessarily require significant injections of Pakistani treasure and blood. India could lay for Pakistan the same trap that the US laid for the Soviets in Afghanistan.

If Pakistan marches in directly or by proxy it gets bogged down and alienates any residual western sympathy. If Pakistan does not, it loses the prize. Win or lose by default Pakistan loses and win or lose by default India is likely to succeed.

The writers are vice-president and programme coordinator, respectively, at the Observer Research Foundation.

Global Times | Samir Saran and Abhijit Iyer-Mitra
Published on May 20, 2013 22:18

Original Link is here

In a significant act of political signaling and foresight, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang chose India as his first ever overseas destination after taking charge of the premiership.

He arrived in New Delhi on Sunday evening and held meetings with Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh first. He also met Singh’s cabinet colleagues and flew to Mumbai and met with Indian industrial leaders.

This visit is important in more ways than one. At the purely bilateral level, an excruciating border episode was just recently brought to a close.

On a global level, the two countries are dealing with a once-in-a-century churning in the architecture of global governance, while at the same time trying to shake of the lethargy that both economies have fallen prey to.

For the first time in many centuries, this continent has the wherewithal to define itself on its own terms. Capitals in Asia will lead the process of shaping the Asian project.

China and India must be partners in this effort, and to get there they need to deal with the hard questions, as the time for sweet talk is now over.

We need to start having brutally frank conversations on our legacy problems and on the more recent challenges.

The parroting of old staid positions and whispering of diplomatic sweet nothings will yield little and allow others to intervene and impose.

It is time for the two countries to grow up and resolve the disputed border. And even as this resolution is discovered, progress on the bilateral relationship must be insulated from this process.

For this to happen, political leadership in both countries will have to demonstrate courage to make their respective security establishments toe the line.

Economic integration is not and will never be the answer to this political poser alone. It can provide the motivation for seeking a resolution, but it is not the answer by itself.

In fact, it can now be argued that the political discord and public perception in both countries are limiting greater economic integration.

Trade shows signs of plateauing, with Chinese firms struggling for access to all projects in India, be they shipyards, roads or telecommunications, despite some early and spectacular inroads.

The two countries now need to realize that they are confronted with the political moment that has been deferred and delayed but cannot be denied. Strong and purposeful measures must be crafted.

There must be a bold statement on the border issue that no matter what the differences, incidents like that in Ladakh recently will not happen again.

While the border management pact recently offered by China may not be the answer, an equitable arrangement that prevents any troop movements remotely close to each other’s claimed territory must be worked upon.

This conversation cannot be delayed. And the process of arriving at this accord needs to be a lot more transparent. Opaque political discussions lead nowhere, and public opinion must be built and sought.

China’s engagement with India must transform from one that is largely seen as transactional, such as the selling and buying of goods and commodities, and more recently functioning as a lender, to one of being a long-term investor and stakeholder in the Indian economy.

Chinese money, businesses and investments must bet on India and be located in this country.

This cannot happen however until businesses and people in China begin to perceive India as a friendly destination, an outcome equally determined by Indian attitudes to China.

India for its part must seriously consider identifying special industrial zones that Chinese firms can develop as centers of large manufacturing and R&D.

There must be a complete, honest and meaningful revamp of the current visa regime. The level of visits is abysmal, and security considerations cannot determine the level of engagement between the two countries destined to be the largest trading partners in a decade or so.

Finally, the two must bilaterally develop a substantial conversation on the cutting edge of global governance issues, including issues of the global commons like climate change, water, health and medicine, and Asian security architecture, as well as issues of space and proliferation, of rules and mechanisms of economic governance, and on new arenas of maritime and ocean governance.

This dialogue must help discover common ground that the two countries can articulate and put forth for the consideration of the global community.

Such articulation will be the first step toward an Asian century. Ultimately a political Asia will be born when New Delhi and Beijing can assume parentage of this Asian geography that until now has only seen many guardians.

Samir Saran is a vice president and Abhijit Iyer-Mitra a program coordinator at the Observer Research Foundation, New Delhi. opinion@globaltimes.com.cn

Columns/Op-Eds, In the News, Politics / Globalisation, Uncategorized

Time for hard questions on Sino-Indian relationship’s future