Current Affairs: India & World - Major Issues 10 to 18 August 2010

CAG Weekly
(Current Affairs & GK)
By Om Prakash (Goldy sir)

Indo - us

• U.S. may press India on CTBT

• In an indication that the United States might press India to accede to the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and the Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty during President Barack Obama's November visit, a top administration official here said the U.S. would “strengthen our efforts to achieve ratification of both treaties by ... China, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Iran, Israel, North Korea, and Pakistan...”
• Arguing that the ratification of the CTBT by these countries was necessary for the treaty to enter into force, Assistant Secretary at the Bureau of Verification, Compliance, and Implementation Rose Gottemoeller said the U.S. would also aim to get India and the other listed countries “negotiating a verifiable FMCT”.
• Mr. Obama has consistently emphasised on getting both treaties ratified during his time in office, a priority he outlined in a defining speech he made in Prague last year.
• The White House's keenness on getting both treaties ratified was further exemplified in strong statements by Under Secretary for Arms Control and International Security Ellen Tauscher, pressing Pakistan to end its opposition to the FMCT.
• On Pakistan-Speaking at the Non-proliferation Treaty Review Conference this year she said: “I think everyone shares the disappointment that the U.S. shares that there is a country that is blocking the programme of work that was a very hard fought agreement ... to move forward ... to begin negotiations on a fissile material cut-off treaty.”
• She added that the U.S. joined with its friends and allies in “trying to persuade that country to step away and let the programme of work go forward because it would be a long negotiation.”

• Indo-US totalisation agreement soon

• India is expected to take forward the discussions on the totalisation agreement that would enable expatriate workers repatriate their social security contribution.
• US have reportedly sought some clarification as India does not have social security system in place. What India has are slightly different systems for social security.
• Totalisation agreements are needed because workers employed in another country could end up paying social security taxes in both his country and where he works.
• India's IT industry alone contributes about $1 bn in social security contributions to the US economy.

• India up in arms over the US Senate bill

• India launched a formal protest against the proposed US Senate bill that will raise funds for the Mexico border security by more than doubling visa fees for Indian tech professionals.
• The discriminatory nature of the bill arises out of the fact that it applies only to the US-based companies that have more than half their employees on H1-B or L-1 visas. This will affect companies of Indian origin as most of them have employed majority of their staff from India even though the total number of such employees account for less than 12% of the total visas issued by the US.
• US companies, on the other hand, issue a much larger number of H1-B and L-1 visas in total, but generally have more US citizens on their payroll than foreigners and will, therefore, not have to pay this levy.
• The Indian software industry is already deeply burdened in the absence of a Totalisation Agreement, requiring them to pay more than $1 billion every year to the US in the form of social security.

• India, U.S. review defence cooperation

• Ahead of Defence Minister A.K. Antony's visit to the United States next month, New Delhi and Washington exchanged notes on fostering defence cooperation through more equipment sales, greater joint exercises, frequent high-level exchanges and the possibility of inking three military agreements.
• Led by Under Secretary of Defence on Policy Michèle Flournoy, a team from the Pentagon interacted with its Indian counterparts to prepare for a meeting of the Defence Policy Group, the joint committee headed by top civilian bureaucrats in the two Defence Ministries, that charts bilateral defence cooperation.
• We also want to get some progress ahead of [U.S. President] Barack Obama's visit [in November],” Ms. Flournoy told journalists here after meeting Mr. Antony, National Security Adviser Shivshankar Menon and Defence Secretary Pradeep Kumar.
• Ms. Flournoy described the three military agreements, which the U.S. has been pursuing with India, as “foundational” in nature. This is the same terminology she used while interacting with journalists in the U.S. last month. But during this interaction, she provided more details of why the U.S. wants India to ink the agreements despite its having been cold-shouldered on this count for nearly two years.
• The three “foundational agreements” being offered have been inked with many close partners, and this has enabled the Pentagon to offer cutting-edge defence technology. They also allow the U.S. to “share” the next higher level of technology. “It is not a requirement [for closer cooperation]. It is a choice of the government of India,” she clarified.

• Round II of U.S.-India strategic dialogue in the works

• With President Barack Obama's upcoming visit to India in the backdrop, the State Department has confirmed that discussions held this week with Indian government representatives focussed on the next round of the United States-India Strategic Security Dialogue scheduled for this fall in Washington.
• According to a statement by the State Department Spokesman, Under-Secretary for Arms Control and International Security Ellen Tauscher and Indian Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao had discussed preparations for Round II of the Strategic Dialogue after the exercise began in early June.
• Further, it was confirmed that Robert Hormats, Under-Secretary for Economic, Energy, and Agricultural Affairs, met with Indian Ambassador to the U.S. Meera Shankar, K. Kasturirangan and V.S. Senthil, Minister (Economic), on August 12.
• In particular, the statement noted that Dr. Kasturirangan was leading the Indian delegation for ‘Increasing Meteorological and Agricultural Cooperation between the government of India and the government of the U.S,' an event hosted by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
• Striking an optimistic note on the meetings, the State Department said the U.S. and Indian delegations were “enthusiastic about the continued cooperation in crop and weather forecasting and discussed areas for advancing our cooperation such as agriculture, space and economics.”

• Deal paves way for nuclear liability Bill
• Among the changes agreed upon are trebling of the operator liability cap from Rs. 500 crore to Rs. 1,500 crore and specific exclusion of private operators in the nuclear sector.
• The standing committee's report on the Bill will be tabled in Parliament on Wednesday,” committee chairman T. Subbarami Reddy told reporters a couple of hours before it was finalised at the panel's last meeting.
• The stage was set in the morning when a “draft report” of the standing committee was sent to the BJP. In the note, the government mentioned about raising the cap on operator liability from Rs. 500 crore to Rs. 1000 crore. During the meeting, it agreed to raise it further to Rs. 1500 crore, which could again be raised through government notification.
• On the 300 million SDR cap on overall liability, the BJP wants the equivalent sum of money to be spelt out in rupees with a proviso for enhancing this amount through notification. It was against any reference to the Convention on Supplementary Compensation in the Bill's preamble.
• The government seems to have also agreed to raise the limit for filing claims – in the event of a nuclear accident – from 10 years mentioned in the Bill to 20 years. It has agreed to specify “the Bill applies to plants operated by the government or government-owned companies.”

Indo –Nepal

• The danger in India's Nepal policy

• An intelligence operative in the Indian mission in Kathmandu calls up a member of Nepal's Constituent Assembly and threatens to have his daughter's provisional admission in the embassy-run Kendriya Vidyalaya revoked if he doesn't vote a particular way.
• The threatening phone call was made by the Indian embassy official on the eve of the fourth round of voting in the CA earlier this month between the Maoist candidate for Prime Minister, Prachanda, and the Nepali Congress (NC) candidate, Ram Chandra Poudel. Given the prospect of fence-sitting Madhesi political parties moving over en masse to the Maoist camp, the Indian effort was aimed at ensuring this didn't happen and that the stalemate between the two candidates continued.
• For the record, Indian officials deny the allegation made by the CA member, Ram Kumar Sharma, but there is hardly anyone in Nepal who doesn't believe it is true. Even by the interventionist standards of the past, the threat marks a new low. Leaving aside the moral and diplomatic implications raised by this unpleasant episode, the threat of punitive action against a young girl suggests a wider, even catastrophic, failure of Indian policy. In the past, India always had the ability to work behind the scenes with a wide cross-section of players in order to produce a political outcome that broadly benefited both Nepal and itself.
• Last week, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's special envoy to Nepal, Shyam Saran, who had just been in Kathmandu, and met senior leaders cutting across all major political trends: from the Maoists, who are the biggest party with 40 per cent of the seats in the CA, the NC, the Unified Marxists-Leninists and the different Madhesi factions.
• Even though their views on the current political crisis varied sharply, virtually all the politicians agreed that Indian interference in the politics of the country had reached a new high. Many blamed this interference for the failure of these parties to establish some sort of modus vivendi among themselves.
• This failure is costing the country dear. It has delayed not only the writing of the new constitution but also the completion of the peace process — the integration of erstwhile combatants of the People's Liberation Army (PLA) within the official security forces and the democratisation of the Nepal Army. On paper, these are goals India officially supports. And the fact that Nepal has come so far on all of these questions has a lot to do with New Delhi's earlier support and encouragement, particularly in the struggle against the now-abolished monarchy. But somewhere along the line, India has lost the plot, allowing the paranoia and tunnel vision of its security and intelligence establishment to compromise its long-term strategic interests.
• Ever since the confrontation between the Maoist-led government and the Nepal Army in 2009 led to the resignation of Mr. Prachanda as Prime Minister, India has been dead-set against the Maoists leading any kind of coalition government in Kathmandu. Indeed, the officials running India's Nepal policy made it clear the Maoists should ideally not even be allowed to join a coalition headed by someone else, that they be “punished” — a word Indian diplomats in Kathmandu have used with their counterparts from other countries — for having dared to presume they could call the shots in the wake of their victory in the April 2008 CA elections.
• During the wasted year of Madhav Kumar Nepal's premiership, which India backed to the hilt, New Delhi hoped the Maoists would either split or come under pressure to accept a unilateralist reading of the Twelve Point Understanding and the Comprehensive Peace Agreement — two documents which paved the way for the constitutional and political transformation of Nepal. Though the Maoists see themselves as creating a new mainstream, India wants them to stick to the old mainstream and abandon the hope of restructuring the Nepali state and its institutions in any fundamental way. This the Maoists are not prepared to do.
• After 12 months of political stagnation, matters slowly started coming to the boil again since the end of May when a package deal struck to extend the life of the CA by another year led to the resignation of Mr. Nepal as Prime Minister. Last year, Indian officials split the Madhesi Janadhikar Forum of Upendra Yadav in order to ensure that Mr. Nepal had the requisite numbers to form the government. But efforts to ensure a similar arrangement again are floundering over deep divisions within the UML. A rightist faction led by K.P. Oli shares the official Indian antipathy towards the former insurgents but party leader Jhalanath Khanal believes only a consensual approach towards the Maoists will allow the CA to finish its work.
• Within the charged political atmosphere, an all-party government led by Mr. Khanal with the participation of the Maoists and the NC would have been the most propitious arrangement if the aim is to complete the peace process and write the constitution by the new deadline of May 2011. Indeed, the Maoists last month said in writing that they would support Mr. Khanal, whose party insisted he have not just a simple plurality of CA members backing him but a two-thirds majority. However, the last minute defection of Upendra Yadav meant Mr. Khanal's numbers fell short, leading to Mr. Prachanda and the NC's Mr. Poudel entering the fray.
• Whatever New Delhi may say, UML leaders and politicians from virtually every other party blame Mr. Yadav's sudden change of heart on Indian pressure. What makes these allegations credible is the extent to which the Indian embassy in Kathmandu has got involved in micro-managing political events and even media discourse in the country.
• Last month, Nepal's biggest newspaper group, Kantipur, which has been critical of the Indian position, faced the prospect of suspending publication because supplies of newsprint were deliberately held up by customs authorities in Kolkata on instructions from the intelligence agencies. The issue was resolved only after the newspapers agreed in meetings with Indian embassy officials to adopt a more “constructive” editorial position.
• As matters stand, India does not see the integration of the PLA and constitution-writing as part of an organic process. For that reason, it shares the indifferent attitude of Nepal's old mainstream towards the writing of a new constitution even as it insists the PLA question be resolved quickly. There are a number of proposals for PLA integration and army restructuring on the table, including a non-paper by the U.N. Mission in Nepal. But these cannot be discussed and taken forward in the absence of a consensual atmosphere.
• If the next round of voting in the CA is inconclusive, the Maoists and the NC should withdraw from the fray and explore the possibility of Mr. Khanal leading such a government with the participation of all. The Maoists should realise that 40 per cent is not enough for them to have their way on all issues and that heading a government for just 9 months should not become the be all and end all of political strategy. All constitutions are living documents. If the Maoists win a majority in the next election, they can always try and improve the constitution.
• On their part, the NC and the UML, and the Indian establishment, should stop looking at the Maoists as an ‘insurgent' outfit just because several thousand PLA soldiers are still living in UNMIN-supervised cantonments. These soldiers confer no political advantage to the Maoists since the “people's war,” once abandoned, cannot be restarted. Integrating them into a democratised national army would be a win-win all round. In exchange for the loss of dedicated party cadres — 5,000-8,000 men would never be able to stage a coup or subvert a lakh-strong force — the Maoists want the national army to be ethnically inclusive and brought firmly under civilian control. Surely that is something everyone ought to back wholeheartedly. By working against the possibility of a new political equilibrium that can accomplish these goals in Nepal, India is playing a dangerous game that will eventually boomerang.

Indo- maaynmar

• Senior General Than Shwe, Myanmar's visit

• Crafting a richer India-Myanmar partnership
• the recent visit to India by Senior General Than Shwe, Myanmar's “strong man,” two useful tools are rear view and plainspeak. They would indicate that India-Myanmar relationship has grown in range, depth and vitality in the past decade, but it is not without vulnerable spots.
• In the early 1990s, the government of India showed the capability to take a long-term view by shifting to a ‘two-track' policy on Myanmar. It chose to build state-to-state relations while continuing to support the cause of democracy. As head of a relevant division in the Ministry of External Affairs, I saw from close quarters how the shift evoked opposition. By persisting on that path, but also with due sensitivity, India began to achieve its goals. Gradually, the policy was backed by a wider political consensus. As ambassador in Yangon a few years later, I had the privilege of assisting the Ministers from the NDA and UPA governments as they conducted dialogue with their counterparts in Myanmar. These exchanges prepared the ground for Gen. Than Shwe's first, ‘historic' visit to India in October 2004. He conveyed to us how he was impressed with India. Between then and his second visit last week, both countries worked hard to strengthen their relations.
• Over the years, New Delhi has faced two kinds of criticism on its Myanmar policy. Realists argued that its pro-democracy stance had driven Myanmar into “China's lap.” Later, they maintained that the engagement was moving too slowly. They failed to recognise that it was never in Myanmar's interest to choose China over India. Now curiously enough, there is talk of Myanmar playing China against India and India against China. It does not require rocket science to realise that the best policy for Myanmar is to befriend both. As for India's motivations and compulsions, they are far too well known to be delineated here.
• The other criticism stemmed from ideologues and supporters of democracy in Myanmar who freely advised India to sacrifice its interests. It was difficult to heed their advice or expect them to appreciate the complex argument of realpolitik. As a democratic country, India would love to see democracy prevail in the whole world but it is not our mission in life to spread it globally. Nevertheless, we do sympathise with the victims of the regime, including refugees, the exiled and prisoners of conscience. Above all, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi's commitment to Gandhian principles, courage and contribution to Myanmar is appreciated widely in India. In fact, many of us who had the unique privilege of meeting and interacting with her came away with a clear impression that she is an outstanding personality of our age.
• Against this backdrop, it is noteworthy that the impact of the pro-democracy camp on India-Myanmar policy seems to have diminished considerably. This was evident throughout Gen. Than Shwe's visit as well as in the joint statement issued in New Delhi on July 27. Hidden in a 45-para statement was a small paragraph which reflected India's emphasis on “comprehensively broad-basing the national reconciliation process and democratic changes being introduced in Myanmar.” This, together with informal indications available from the visiting delegation, left one in little doubt about the political realities. Even after the elections, expected to be held towards the year-end, there may not be any material change in the military's role. It is set to continue calling the shots.
• Among political issues, a shared satisfaction with progress in bilateral relations was noted. Both Asean-related and sub-regional cooperation are significant, but what really matters is that India and Myanmar relate to each other as immediate neighbours, linked by geography, history and age-old ties of religion, culture and interaction at people's level. There is still insufficient realisation in India of what a powerful magnet our Buddhist sites represent for visitors from Myanmar. It was no coincidence that Gen. Than Shwe included a 24-hour stay in Sarnath and Bodh Gaya on a full moon night to pray to Lord Buddha, seeking spiritual solace and enlightenment.
• The other important political issue was a common perspective on the reform of United Nations institutions, especially Myanmar's reiteration of support to India's candidature for permanent membership of the Security Council.
• Border security and development appear inter-linked issues in dialogue. Activities of smugglers, insurgents and terrorists constitute a continuing threat to both countries. Hence it is logical for them to enhance their cooperation. Hopefully, the treaty on mutual assistance in criminal matters, signed during Gen. Than Shwe's visit, would spur new measures. However, India needs to do more to address the internal dimension of insurgency in Manipur and other border areas. Myanmar too will need to assist India more effectively, matching its words with determined and visible action. This may well be a critical test for our friendship with Myanmar.
• Economic cooperation is now viewed as the central theme in bilateral relations. A target of $1 billion in bilateral trade has been achieved, albeit after a delay of three years. The balance of trade is unfavourable to India in a 5:1 ratio, posing a challenge to Indian companies. Are they going to be content with exports valued at only $200 million to Myanmar which is hungry for Indian products and services? Specific areas have to be identified; constraints need to be eliminated; and business promotion should be stepped up. Consensus on these issues emerged at an excellent meeting arranged by the FICCI with the business delegation, which included three Cabinet Ministers.
• The most dramatic moment at the meeting came when U Thaung, Minister for Science and Technology, observed that Indian investments in Myanmar presently stood at below the quarter million-dollar mark, adding dryly that Indian business was taking “too long to come, unlike China and Asean countries.” This seemed a wake-up call to India Inc. to re-energise itself for its own benefit.
• The basket of development projects has been expanding at a rapid pace. About two-thirds of the joint statement related to them. After years of discussions, studies and negotiations, the stage is now set for commencing implementation of the flagship Kaladan multimodal transit transport project. When ready, it should contribute to the development of our northeast. The trilateral highway project too has been a subject of discussions and negotiations for long; it needs priority attention now. The range of areas covered by Indian projects is impressive — roads, railways, telecom, power, energy, hydrocarbons, remote sensing, agriculture, industry, IT and education. Let timely implementation be our mantra.
• South Block may well be advised to leave the debate on weighty issues like geopolitical trends, rivalry in the Bay of Bengal and India-China ‘power game' to academics. Instead, it should encourage our Embassy in Yangon to hone its project management skills and help India Inc. deepen its foray into Myanmar.