Absolutely no idea of foreign policy

The Government of India, led by the Congress Party of India, or rather, Mrs. Sonia Gandhi, has absolutely no idea what it is doing on the foreign policy front. And there are plenty of reasons to tell me that this is true.

What the Congress is indeed good at is trumpeting successes that do not exist. In a way that is again very similar to the Government of the United States. Readers will recall that their earlier common quality was their efforts to subvert fundamental freedoms of their people.

So Kofi Annan is to step down soon, and there's talk all over the world as to who will take the post next. Before I begin to talk further, I am sure it is obvious that nothing gets done in the United Nations without the hidden consent of the world policeman.

So one fine day the Government of India announces that the current Under Secretary to the Secretary General, Shashi Tharoor, is India's choice for the top job. The announcement takes centerstage in Indian media and we get daily inputs from the governments about how strong his candidacy is.

Then we hear the news that oh, India's new buddy, the United States, has chosen the South Korean foreign minister as their choice for the job. Our netas still try to show that everything is fine and now doubts begin to appear if Shashi is going to get anywhere at all.

Today, as things stand, Shashi Tharoor has stepped down from his candidacy, and the South Korean foreign minister is set to be the next S-G of the United Nations. According to the Government of India, he fought bravely.

The problem with the UPA is that they seem to be putting all their eggs in the United States basket. Some kind words from President Bush once in a while and all the worries are over. Yet, where does the much touted Indo-US nuclear deal stand? The answer is nowhere. It is still not appeared before their Congress, and there is no saying if the deal will ever be through in its present form. The rest of the world knows that if you are not Israel or England, you can't and shouldn't expect the United States to stand up for you. It seems to me that more than making sure of results, the Government of India is just hoping that things work out for them, while they have no idea of how that will come about.

There is an article in The Telegraph by KP Nayar about how the Government of India has been putting up an apalling performance on the diplomatic stage. Apparently our leaders are as much prone to delusion as the Pakistani Army is.

India slips on diplomatic stage

The UPA government’s three ambitious foreign policy initiatives are now on uncertain ground: its much-trumpeted nuclear deal with the US, its high-profile bid to have an Indian as UN secretary-general and its high-stakes effort for a permanent seat in the UN Security Council.

Last month, Pakistan was unanimously elected to chair the Group of 77 (G77), the world’s largest coalition of 134 countries, even bigger than the non-aligned movement (NAM) with 118 members.
According to diplomats of Pacific group countries at the UN, India was handed the G77 chairmanship on a platter, but the UPA government turned down the offer.

Similarly, in the run-up to the Havana summit of NAM countries, India was sounded out about assuming the next chairmanship of the movement it helped found 45 years ago. That offer, too, was turned down by the Manmohan Singh government. As a result, the Havana summit chose Egypt, another co-founder of NAM, to host its next summit in Cairo in 2009.

India’s rejection of the G77 and NAM chairmanships was the result of an illusion in South Block that India was now part of the “big boys’ club” and did not need its traditional allies and partners any longer.

That illusion was reinforced by a gullible view that the US was now India’s “natural ally” and, therefore, everything else was secondary.

But when it came to the crunch, Washington did not support New Delhi’s bid either for a permanent seat in the Security Council or in electing Shashi Tharoor as the next UN secretary- general.

On the defensive against the mismanagement of Iraq, last week the Bush administration further showed its unwillingness to spend too much political capital in pushing through legislation on the Indo-US nuclear deal in the US Congress.

With Pakistan at the helm of G77 and New Delhi’s kid gloves approach to Cuba’s radical leadership of NAM, India is suddenly finding that it has no allies at the UN and no one to turn to for bloc support.

Europeans at the UN have the bloc support of the European Union, the Africans have the African Union behind them, the Southeast Asians have the ASEAN and countries like Pakistan have the solid backing of the Organisation of Islamic Conference.

India has only the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation, but SAARC is often a platform for member countries to use India as their whipping boy.

The Pacific group is the biggest sub-group among Asian members of G77. So when Asia’s turn to lead G77 in 2007 came, Pacific countries approached New Delhi with a request to take over chairmanship, according to their diplomats.

But New Delhi stubbornly rejected the suggestion twice.

Similarly, a large number of NAM members were keen that India should host the 2009 NAM summit, especially to correct any radical deviation that the movement may assume under Cuba’s current chairmanship.

That too was summarily rejected by New Delhi.

For India, whose nominee to the UN Human Rights Committee, Justice P.N. Bhagwati, was re-elected for the fourth time last month with the second highest number of votes, the sudden changes represent an avoidable reversal of fortune.
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We all have heard that we must learn from the past and look to the future. Anybody who has been following the government knows that they do neither. Actually, I believe not learning from the past is an inherent quality of any Indian government, be it at the center or the states. They have always worked on winning minor, but immediate, stakes. The option of playing for long term gains and larger stakes is lost on most Indian politicians. That is a handicap that we have to live with as long as we vote in, or rather, let ourselves be exploited by these clowns.

And I have said it before and i'll say it again - PM Singh has the right mind for his domestic economic policy, but he is a bad, bad diplomat. The Congress Party is a self-serving, visionless party and it shows in the way they deal with issues. Nobody has any idea which direction to take the foreign policy to, and it seems that at every major juncture in world politics, they appear to be taken unawares.

I have often quoted Swapan Dasgupta of The Daily Pioneer on my blog. I like the man and I love the newspaper. This man is straightforward and tells it like it is. And unlike the Tabloid of India of The Hindustan Crimes, The Pioneer does not seem to be overly eager to look western, read, American. Or is an India hating Communist mouthpiece like The Hindu.

PM foreign to real issues

We are in that phase of a Government's life when Prime Ministers, and the retinue around them, start experiencing the monotony of national existence. When that happens, convention demands that the gaze of the Prime Minister's Office is conveniently diverted to "pressing international concerns"- with pleasurable consequences.

For the past two months, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has displayed an over-weaning anxiety to optimise his air-miles. First, there was the long haul to Brazil, followed by the quixotic sojourn in Havana - the high point being Fidel Castro's reminiscences of PL-480 shipments to India. Then there was the Gandhigiri trip to South Africa - a visit which intrigued the hosts and confused the Zulu protestors in Durban.

Last week, the Prime Minister was in England to collect an honorary doctorate from Cambridge. True, there was also a courtesy call on Tony Blair and the mandatory conviviality with the same businessmen he met two days before in Mumbai, but these were obligatory add-ons to confer an official gloss on a worthwhile private visit.

Last year in Oxford he provoked xenophobes at home with a subtle endorsement of the "coconut" trail, his thank you speech. Last week's Cambridge performance was unmentionably soporific. It was dotted with the pedestrian eloquence of the JNU kind: "The gap between the rich and the poor is widening... My appeal is that developed countries should not allow short-term national interests to prevail at the cost of promoting freer trade and combating poverty."

There were also the adulatory references to Jawaharlal Nehru - the head of the family - and Joan Robinson, the socialist economist whose dogmatic influence set the Indian economy back by many decades.

No wonder the Cambridge address secured the ungrudging approval of the certifying authority of progressivism: The Hindu.

Then it was off to what business journalists call the Nokia junket. Normally, Finland is not on any itinerary but this year Helsinki was hosting yet another India-EU summit. A prime ministerial visit to a Scandinavian country is best avoided.

Being unable to comprehend the clutter of Indian democracy and the array of the Indian experience, the countries of northern Europe have been accustomed to treating India on par with say, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, bywords for ethnic strife and poverty. As exporters of conflict resolution and foreign aid, they have never quite grasped India's nuclear imperatives nor really understood why President George Bush insists on treating New Delhi differently from Pyongyang.
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When the attitudes of our leaders are so irresolute and their characters so fragile, how can they expect to win anywhere in the world? You talk to any of our business leaders who have been planting their flags in all the continents of the world and you will find men and women of resolution, those that desire to do better and work hard towards it. Unfortunately, that attitude has not rubbed off on our politicians yet.