Is India really the world’s fifth most powerful country?
India is the world’s fifth most powerful country, according to a New Delhi-authored national security document, the Times of India reported on Wednesday, as Indian analysts placed the emerging nation above major European powers.
Outranking traditional global powers such as the UK, France and Germany, India’s ballooning population, defense capabilities and economic clout were cited as reasons for its position behind only the U.S., China, Japan and Russia in India’s National Security Annual Review 2010, which will be officially released by the country’s foreign ministry next week.
Its statistical foundations in terms of population numbers and GDP aside — in terms of purchasing power parity, it should be noted — India’s experience of wielding power on the global stage of late, boosted by its temporary seat on the United Nations Security Council, has been less encouraging.
India has failed to cultivate a wholly reciprocal relationship with the United States, despite warm rhetoric in recent years between New Delhi and Washington and a number of big-ticket diplomatic and industrial agreements.
New Delhi appears to struggle to assert itself in the face of growing Chinese influence in south Asia, has dithered on formulating a firm approach to states such as Iran, and risked appearing naive and out of its depth during the lead-up to international efforts to protect civilians in Libya.
Indeed, an apparent united front from Beijing, Moscow and New Delhi, representing three of the top five most powerful nations according to the report, against the no-fly zone in the North African country has had no discernible effect on the ongoing military action against Colonel Muammar Gaddafi’s regime.
Furthermore, India still appears more concerned and engaged with, and distracted by, its long-standing rival Pakistan than wider geopolitical issues.
Should Britain continue its controversial £1bln India aid package?
The UK will continue to send more than £1 billion to India over the next four years, despite huge cuts to government spending under London’s Conservative-led coalition government and soaring economic growth in the Asian giant. Andrew Mitchell, the UK’s international development secretary, told the Financial Times on Monday that Britain’s annual £280 million aid payments to India would not be reduced, in spite of the country’s space ambitions, nuclear energy development, soaring numbers of billionaires and its own aid program to many African nations.
Mitchell’s comments, a day before an official announcement, are likely to infuriate some UK MPs who have seen spending slashed in their constituencies, and those who have called for a reduction in overseas payments as British taxpayers brace for a period of tough austerity measures.
In September, suggestions from Westminster that aid may be reduced sparked a terse response from New Delhi, as Indian officials reportedly mulled rejecting UK support rather than waiting for London to decide whether its slice of the pie would shrink.
British newspapers have questioned financial assistance for a country whose economy is growing at over 8.5 percent with a $31.5 billion defence budget and ambitions to join the U.N. Security Council. Permanent Security Council members Russia and China were told by London last year that continuing to supply aid to them was “not justifiable”.
Yet despite its booming economy and global power aspirations, India still accounts for a large proportion of the world’s poorest people, presenting international donors with a quandary.
“India has more poor people in it than the whole of sub-Saharan Africa. If you’re going to achieve the [UN] millennium development goals, you have to make big progress in India,” Mitchell told the Financial Times.
But should India need cash from British taxpayers to protect the poorest in its society, and could the UK’s overseas aid be better spent elsewhere?
Have the Brits gone crazy or what?? Despite the billionaires and billion scandals in India why would Indian people want to see the money inflow being hampered. Brits can stop aid at risk of getting their investments kicked out of India. Do you want Vodafone to pack up from India and many others as well??? Yes its a blackmail but then Brits looted the Golden Bird for 300 long and painful years…pay the price now!!
Does Indian literature owe its global success to the Raj?
As close to 50,000 people prepare to celebrate India’s bulging roster of nationally and internationally renowned authors and poets at the seventh annual Jaipur Literary Festival, a public spat between its British organiser and an Indian magazine over allegations of perpetuating “a Raj that still lingers” threatens to ignite a decades-old debate over the role of colonial English in the country’s literary success.
As Delhi-based William Dalrymple and his fellow organiser stress the festival’s intent to showcase works from India’s array of states and dialects to thousands of book lovers, an article in India’s Open magazine this month claimed the festival matters “because of the writers from Britain it attracts”.
India’s literary elite has long wrestled with its complicated post-colonial legacy, sharpened by the huge international success of Indian writers such as Salman Rushdie, Vikram Seth and Kiran Desai, who have put the former British colony on the literary map, but live, sell more books and win more awards in the UK or the U.S.
In the past five years, two Indians — Desai and Chennai-born Aravind Adiga — have won the prestigious Man Booker Prize. While the prize has been attacked by some for its arguably colonial legacy of rewarding writers in English from the British Commonwealth, Desai and Adiga saw their international profile soar, replicating the global success of former winners Rushdie and Arundhati Roy.
The article, titled “The Literary Raj” argues that the festival reaffirms the inferiority complex among Indian writers who crave international and specifically British recognition, suggesting that through his western-centric festival, Dalrymple has become “the pompous arbiter of literary merit in India”.
“The festival then works not because it is a literary enterprise, but because it ties us to the British literary establishment,” wrote Hartosh Singh Bal, an Indian novelist himself, in the January edition of the magazine.
My initial impression of Bal’s first piece was that Hartosh Singh Bal has a major chip on his shoulder and/or is a publicity-seeker.
My opinion, after his rebuttal, did not change.
As has been pointed pointed out by numerous commenters and Dalrymple himself, the nature of audiences, sessions and speakers at JLF destroys Bal’s claims. Pre-JLF, Indians complained that no-one was taking notice. Now, Bal has found a new grouse.
In terms of approval, I think there is a larger phenomenon at work here. When it comes to politics and diplomacy, successive Indian Governments always sought the approval of the US in the post-Cold War 1990s period. Registering complaints against what they perceived as ‘transgressions’ by Pakistan occurred regularly. This probably happened because the US was seen as the world superpower at the time.
Similarly, Indians have traditionally grown up on a diet of British literature, reading about well-established British literary awards. It is natural to think of Britain as a leading literary power.
Apropos ‘celebrity’ writers getting more attention than ‘great writers [from Europe]‘, doesn’t the celebrity culture pervade all aspects of public life? Who does Bal think would get more media attention during red carpet movie award/music events?
As for any ongoing need for British approval, more and more Indians in the middle-class see the US as their choice for higher education, etc. American television and cultural influences, American slang, trends are all more prevalent in India today. Gone are the days of domination of English public-school and Oxbridge-educated grandees in the Indian political and diplomatic circles. It therefore baffles me how Bal finds this particular kind of cultural cringe to be very strong in India….. And his tone in his first piece is shockingly offensive (as with most such offensive pieces, a result of his ignorance).
To me, Bal’s pieces suggest his refusal/inability to accept Dalrymple as an Indian writer. And refusal to accept that a British-born writer could head a major Indian literary festival without it having imperial-colonial implications.
Shunning UK aid would show India’s rising confidence
Choosing to jump on its own terms than face the ignominy of waiting to be pushed, India may have politely but firmly asked the UK not to send any more aid from next year in a sign of the country’s increasing self-confidence on the global stage.
Citing whispers in London’s corridors of power that suggest the country’s Department for International Development (DFID) was preparing to radically reduce the cash sent to India, the Indian Express reported on Wednesday that Nirupama Rao, India’s Foreign Secretary, had asked the Finance Secretary “not to avail any further DFID assistance with effect from 1st April 2011.”
A DFID spokesperson told Reuters: “All DFID’s country programmes are currently under review to ensure our aid helps the poorest people in the poorest countries. No decision on future funding to India has been made and we are in close dialogue with the Government of India.” The Ministry for External Affairs were not available for comment.
Since 1998, India has received more British aid than any other country, worth over £1.5 billion ($2.3 billion) in the past five years.
If the report is true, the Indian government’s decision to end aid would signal that the country wants to be in control of its own financial affairs, rather than appearing dependent on others. It demonstrates a confident approach to international relations and an assertion that the country is able to look after itself.
Sending taxpayer funds to India has become increasingly difficult to justify for the cash-strapped British government, who have committed to cutting the country’s record deficit by 25 percent over the next five years.
India is over confident about its economy which in a impoverished country always will dwindle and where the poverty line is intentionally hidden to show a better face of the real situation of the country to the world as if the world community do not know the facts.
It is good that a country can look after itself, aid countries would be happy to see that they are relieved of the burden to some extent. Well the British government will always have a soft corner for its colonial servants especially this very country.
Tony Blair says India to be ‘one of the key leading powers of the world’
Forced to cancel book-signing events in his own country due to the threat of being pelted by eggs by anti-war protestors, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair took the publicity tour for his newly-released memoirs to India with an interview with the Times of India on Saturday.
In A Journey, which has caused a great deal of interest and controversy in the UK, Blair writes: “India remains , still developing, that manages to be genuinely democratic,” and this sentiment continues in the interview:
“I was very keen to move beyond the old-fashioned relationship… My view was India was going to be one of the key leading powers of the world in the times to come. The west in the 21st century, including countries like mine will have to get used to the fact that we’re going to have partners who will be equals, sometimes more than equals,” he says.
Like his successor David Cameron, who led a high-profile trip to India in July, Blair was keen for the UK to make the most of the Indian growth story, visiting the country in 2005 as European Union President to broker trade agreements.
Out of office since 2007, Blair now sees India’s value to the global community as more than just an investment opportunity:
“Lot of people focus on the Indian economy and its diversity, and so on, and all that is true and absolutely right. But it’s also what India has got to teach is in terms of culture, in terms of peaceful co-existence between religions and in terms of dealing with this struggle against terrorism.”
“But it’s also what India has got to teach is in terms of culture, in terms of peaceful co-existence between religions and in terms of dealing with this struggle against terrorism.””…same old, same old.
BA’s Kingfisher deal ups pressure on India’s airline regulators
Willie Walsh, Chief Executive of British Airways, is not afraid of conflict. Having tackled investors who have seen the airline struggle through two years of substantial losses and stared down continued industrial action from his cabin crew, he’s now set his sights on India’s civil aviation regulators.
With the ink barely dry on BA’s merger with Spain’s Iberia, the recently-announced code-share agreement with India’s Kingfisher Airlines marks the UK flagship carrier’s first tentative step into the Indian aviation market. While current rules do not permit any foreign ownership of Indian carriers, he has made it clear that reforms are needed.
“If the rules change, not just British Airways, all airlines around the world will look at the possibility to invest in Indian carriers. I have no doubt Indian carriers would welcome such foreign investment because airlines are looking at strengthening their financial position. Also, consolidation will help. We will be looking at opportunities in the future. We are sponsoring Kingfisher Airlines into Oneworld (a global grouping of airlines) because India is such an important growth market and we want to participate in this growth,” Walsh told India’s Mint newspaper in an interview.
His sentiment is clear. The code-share agreement, which begins on 15 September and will allow customers to book journeys encompassing both airlines’ networks on each other’s websites, and BA’s sponsoring of Kingfisher to join the Oneworld global airline alliance, are tentative steps in the British airline’s desired move into the Indian market.
And Kingfisher isn’t the only airline in Walsh’s targets. As the Financial Times reports, BA executives have drawn up a list of 12 carriers across the globe that they are interested in buying or merging with.
For these grand dreams of acquisition to take flight, however, Walsh knows that government regulations forbidding foreign ownership of airlines across the globe will need to be relaxed.
Next Tuesday, India’s government will study a proposal to do just that. Current indications suggest a long-standing demand to allow stakes of at least 26 percent may be considered.
Hmmm, I think Willie Walsh may have bitten off more than he can chew. We’ll have to wait and see how it plays out.
from Pakistan: Now or Never?:
Dreams from my father: South Asia’s political dynasties
"Whatever the result, this meeting will be a turning point in Pakistan's history," Pakistan President Zulfikar Ali Bhutto told his daughter Benazir as he prepared for a summit meeting with Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in 1972 in the Indian hill resort of Simla after his country's defeat by India in the 1971 war. "I want you to witness it first hand."
If there is a slightly surreal quality to President Asif Ali Zardari's controversial state visit to Britain - where he is expected to launch the political career of Oxford graduate Bilawal Bhutto at a rally for British Pakistanis in Birmingham on Saturday - it is perhaps no more surreal than taking your daughter, herself then a student at Harvard, to witness negotiations with India after a crushing military defeat.
Family dynasties are a tradition in South Asia. Indira Gandhi, the victor of the 1971 war which led to the creation of Bangladesh, then East Pakistan, had learned about international relations from her father, India's first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru. Now her grandson, Rahul Gandhi, is being groomed as a future prime minister while his mother Sonia Gandhi keeps a tight grip from behind-the-scenes on the Congress Party government led by her appointed prime minister Manmohan Singh.
In both countries, the argument has been that the family name is strong enough to win votes, particularly among the millions of rural poor, strong enough to offer a promise of stability, and strong enough to be worth fighting to preserve across generations even in the face of domestic criticism.
Zardari has run into a great deal of criticism for pressing ahead with his visit to Britain while Pakistan struggled to cope with its worst floods in 80 years. He also faced calls to cancel the trip after British Prime Minister David Cameron said during a visit to India that "we cannot tolerate in any sense the idea that this country (Pakistan) is allowed to look both ways and is able in any way to promote the export of terror".
With a war going badly in neighbouring Afghanistan, a spate of allegations against the role played there by its Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency, and a wave of bombings at home which Islamabad/Rawalpindi see as blowback from the Afghan war, Pakistan is having to navigate through very choppy diplomatic waters. On top of that, it has had the floods, a plane crash, and then riots in Karachi.
Assuming Zardari goes ahead with Saturday's rally, he will be bringing the 21-year-old Bilawal - who is co-chairman of the Pakistan People's Party (PPP) but has not yet taken an active part in politics - out into the political arena at a time when his country faces its biggest challenge since its defeat in 1971. But then again, as Benazir's own recollections of the Simla summit testify, there is a history to that. And so far, in the decades since Pakistan and India won independence from Britain in 1947, it has been the family dynasties which have endured.
@007
I guess I have said it before, you guys use the English language which is suitable to express maths and logic, there are other languages to express emotions. Have you ever heard of a collateral damage, its was first used by the USA secretary of state. I even meet some peopl who ask me how could God almighty allow the sufferings of old and children in Pakistan or Haiti?
I do not have the knowledge to your hypothesis, but one thing I am sure of and that is that you guys do not have the faintest idea of the Pashtoon language and their culture. You are completely indoctrinated without your consent by the massive propaganda machinery and calling Talibans, the students, as the total Pashtoon folks.
The one thing common among the hot spots you mentioned is that their respective Govts. are responsible for their plight.
Rex Minor
from Pakistan: Now or Never?:
Britain and the Kashmir banana skin
Memories seem to be short in the British government when it comes to Kashmir. Foreign Secretary David Miliband stirred up a diplomatic row over the region during his visit to India earlier this month. As this piece in The Times says, Miliband angered Indian officials by giving what they described as "unsolicited advice" on Kashmir, over which India has three times gone to war with Pakistan since independence from Britain in 1947 and over which it is in no mood to be lectured by outsiders, let alone the former colonial power. It was on a visit to Pakistan and India in 1997 to mark the 50th anniversary of those two countries' independence that the then British Foreign Secretary, Robin Cook, also got into trouble over Kashmir. Cook, who also served the Labour government, was forced to row back from suggestions that Britain might help resolve the long-running dispute. His intervention cast a serious shadow over the visit by Queen Elizabeth, who was at one point forced to cancel a long-planned speech. The visit, during which the queen was accompanied by Cook, went downhill after that, and at one point a senior British diplomat was seen sitting, head in hands in despair, on the pavement outside Chennai airport. There were even suggestions, denied of course, that the British High Commissioner might be recalled. Tony Blair, then prime minister, had to patch up ties by assuring his Indian counterpart, Inder Kumar Gujral, that London would not meddle in Delhi's dispute with Pakistan over Kashmir. One wonders whether Miliband was reminded of all this before he went to India, and if he was, why did he walk into the Kashmir minefield once again. Or maybe he wasn't, which poses a different set of questions about competence and institutional memory at the Foreign Office.
Bangash,
Are you happy with the Mumbai attacks? Are you admitting it is State sponsored?
Do you know the history of East Pakistan/Bangladesh? Do you know why Mukti Bahini formed?
The very same way we accuse India of State terrorism in Kashmir, is exactly the same thing happening in East Pakistan. But worse.
It ended up in genocide and mass rapes. Are you seriously going to think this was an internal matter and deny it?
I know which side you’re coming from…and I don’t like it one bit…
from Pakistan: Now or Never?:
Miliband’s gift: stiffening Indian resolve over Pakistan
British Foreign Secretary David Miliband may yet end up achieving the opposite of what he intended in India when he called for a resolution of the Kashmir dispute in the interests of regional security.
To some Indians, linking the attacks in Mumbai - which New Delhi says originated from Pakistan - to the issue of Kashmir is not just insensitive, it is also a wake-up call. The lesson they have drawn is this: for all the world's sense of outrage over Mumbai, India will have to deal with Pakistan on its own, and not expect foreign powers to lean on its neighbour in the manner it wants.
Miliband's visit was a "jarring reminder to India to stop off-shoring its Pakistan policy," writes Indian security affairs analyst Brahma Chellaney in the Asian Age. He then goes on to call for a set of measures including a military option short of war to weaken Pakistan.
New Delhi has diplomatic options that it has not yet deployed, he argues. These include recalling the Indian High Commissioner to Islamabad or suspending peace talks, or disbanding a "farcical" joint anti-terrorism mechanism or halting state-assisted cultural and sporting links or invoking trade sanctions.
On the military front, he suggests offensive military deployments along the entire length of the border. This would be different from the 2002 all-out mobilisation for a war that nobody really believed would happen, following the parliament attack in Dec 2001. Such a strategy, Chellaney argues, would put keep Pakistan on tenterhooks as to which front would be chosen for a quick, sharp thrust. Pakistan would have to follow suit and that would put unbearable pressure on a state already in severe financial difficulties.
Plausible? Well, two months after the attacks, you would have to argue the appetite for such tough measures has reduced. . If you had to act, you were better off even in the eyes of your own people to have done it then, rather than now.
But this may well be a pointer to a stiffening mood in India as it heads into an election that could bring the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party into power. And then all bets would be off as to what would be India's policy towards Pakistan.
from Pakistan: Now or Never?:
India – aiming for diplomatic encirclement of Pakistan?
India is piling on the diplomatic pressure to convince the international community to lean on Pakistan to crack down on Islamist militants blamed by New Delhi for the Mumbai attacks.
According to the Times of India, "India has made it clear to the U.S. and Iran as well as Pakistan's key allies, China and Saudi Arabia, that they need to do more to use their clout to pressure Pakistan into acting..." The Press Trust of India (PTI), quoted by The Hindu, said India had used a visit by Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal to Delhi to drive home the same message.
As discussed previously on this blog, in the immediate aftermath of the Mumbai attacks, India's response was to look to the United States to put pressure on Pakistan. It also appears to have won some support from Russia, whose officials said publicly that the attacks were funded by Dawood Ibrahim, an underworld don who India says lives in Pakistan. China, Pakistan's traditional ally, supported the United Nations Security Council in blacklisting the Jamaat-ud-Dawa, the charity accused of being a front for the Lashkar-e-Taiba. China's Foreign Minister has also telephoned his counterparts in India and Pakistan urging dialogue, according to Xinhua.
And to complete the tour of the permanent members of the Security Council, Britain blamed Pakistan-based militants for the Mumbai attacks, while France has also called on Pakistan to take action.
That's a fairly broad consensus in favour of diplomatic pressure. There certainly seem to be more players more visibly involved than in 2001/2002 when India and Pakistan came to the brink of war over an attack on the Indian parliament that India blamed on Pakistan-based militants. You might therefore be tempted to argue that the diplomatic approach is working -- and as long as this stands a chance, the prospects of military escalation are slim.
So what is going wrong? Despite the flurry of diplomatic activity, the military tensions are rising. Pakistan has cancelled army leave and redeployed troops. The Washington Post said thousands of troops were being redeployed from the Afghan border to the border with India.
What to say more for a country who says lies and lies only–previously it says it has provided all evidences to the world about Pakistan involvement in mumbai incident, forget to remove the thread from so-called terrorist hand and then edit photos and remove wrist band. Their PM is nowing to li_ck US sh_it and beg for help to save them from Pakistan, true nation. india has failed many times in its attempt to defame pakistan but as always this time also it has to lick again his own spit back.
Libya? We have three countries meddling in a ex colony of another European great power (Italy) in the name of humanity and all we are doing is creating a bigger unresolved mess.