New Ways in the Old Country

I returned from my biennial vacation to the Old Country last week and the one thought that kept running through my mind was that misplaced nationalism, bordering on jingoism was alive and well and doing better than ever. I could be biased - after all, I am an avowed liberal living in the US, who visits India only once every few years and my perspectives are limited, at best. But there is a shrillness that runs through the rhetoric that harkens back to McCartyism even, which is more than a little ironic - historically India's political class has always railed against all things Western, but the country appears willing to borrow all the worst of modern American life and unfortunately very little that is good.

To be honest, there were some changes that were positive and unexpected - my (once-beloved) hometown has acquired a pub culture and love for microbreweries, and I could actually get a very good Hefewiessen at an Irish pub - words that I would never have dreamed of, much less been able to say when I lived in India some sixteen odd years ago. There is a new interest in fitness and state-of-the art modern gyms have sprung up across the more affluent sections of the city, a welcome change from the eighties when there were only a couple of antiquated weight rooms in a city of millions and even the colleges lacked any general fitness culture. For the first time, there were modern buses plying some of the routes and the city has introduced exclusive rapid transit lanes along some of the busiest roads.

But as in all things in my homeland, every step forward is accompanied by not just a step and half backwards but also a couple of giant dance steps sideways for good measure. Now this progress so reminiscent of a drunken ant would be mildly amusing if India had retained it's relaxed attitudes. But today India has awoken to it's potential position in the world and has decided to adopt the language and attitude of a regional power, even if its glittering facepaint hides its feet of clay - middle class India has convinced itself that the country is a superpower and is willing to talk the talk, even as hundreds of millions of its people remain trapped in a hopeless life. It is not that millions have not risen out of poverty, for they have - in fact that is one of the great and positive changes over the last quarter century. But the millions have risen out of a life of abject poverty only to find that all that awaits is air unfit to breathe and water unfit to drink (when one is lucky enough to get any) in cities choked and bursting with hundreds of shiny cars on streets too narrow to accommodate one tenth the number. And all the while the rural poor slide ever further back, left behind in India's rush to modernity and that feeling festers and feeds a huge (and generally non-discussed) class war (Naxalism) that threatens the very existence of India to a degree that her avowed enemy, Pakistan, could never hope to approach.

India has forever been a land of contradictions, and today's juxtaposition of wealthy yuppies side by side with starving farmers would not be cause for alarm - sadness and determination for change, perhaps but not fear and alarm, for India's citizens still retains a positive belief that they can provide a better tomorrow for their children and would rather build towards that future than tear down the upper classes. The cause for fear and alarm is the attitude of those who have and their blind attitude of extreme chauvinism and jingoism. They refuse to acknowledge the shortcomings of their country and instead wrap themselves in the tri-color and declare that any criticism of the way things are is unpatriotic. To be honest, they mostly focus on criticism of security and foreign policy more than domestic, but by creating an environment where nothing but praise for the country is acceptable, they stifle all freedom of expression and damp down very legitimate criticism of economic policy and the deep class divides.

Worse yet, the Modi government has conflated criticism of itself and government policy with criticism of the country as a whole. Somehow, it is now considered unacceptable to disagree with decisions of the Supreme Court; as though a court comprised of very human judges is incapable of error and should be treated with the same reverence usually reserved for gods. Whether one agrees or disagrees with a death penalty handed down by the court to a man accused of involvement in a terrorist attack on the Indian Parliament, every Indian should have freedom to express his opinion. But today, a vocal and aggressive faction of India's educated middle class has taken it upon itself to wage a social media campaign against anyone who disagrees with the current government. Back in the post-Bangladesh War heyday, the prime minister who led India to victory was hailed as the personification of righteous wrath, the Goddess Durga and a slogan was coined that "India is Indira and Indira is India", essentially conflating the entire nation with Mrs. Gandhi and launching the country down a path of sycophantic excess that culminated in the once great Indian National Congress party believing that policy and actions meant nothing so long as their prime ministerial candidate was named Gandhi. The resounding defeat of the Congress party and the overwhelming mandate to Mr. Modi to change the economic outlook and help Indians realize their dream of improving their lives momentarily suggested that India had moved past empty political theater and was embracing the politics of policy. Alas! that lasted only as long as the positive economic news and now India is back in a world where cheap emotion trumps substantial debate.

India has problems enough to debate from now until the twelfth of never, from out of control pollution, woefully inadequate infrastructure, income disparity and above all pervasive corruption. Instead, all discourse is focused on a handful of students who may have abetted some Kashmiri students raising slogans praising the above mentioned terrorist and some anti-India chants for good measure. One would hope that a strong nation would have nothing to fear from such behavior, little as one may agree with the slogans. Yet India's government has reacted with a bustle that would make Kim Jong Un proud, charging the bystander students with sedition (an old Colonial law that should never be invoked in a democracy). Worse yet, its supporters have reacted, violently against anyone who would support the students in some cases, and in general viciously against any and everyone who would oppose their action. The legion of social media warriors have manned the walls, flooding the forums with doctored video purporting to prove the seditious nature of the students and links to videos of speeches that support the government. The social media warriors would be acceptable, if they had eschewed false proofs and if they had shown just a little more tolerance to opposing views. But criticism of any government action is seen as an attack on India itself and the media warriors fly to thwart it with all the patriotic fervor as if they were defending Parliament from the terrorists. Greater fervor perhaps since they are generally happy to sit back in well paid civilian jobs while lauding the bravery and selflessness of the Indian armed forces.

And so, while the many real problems remain, as difficult and crushing as they were a year ago, India's elites close their eyes to the suffering of those with less, and seemingly oblivious of the very real issues that go beyond quality of life and threaten the health and life of hundreds of millions who cannot afford air-conditioned living spaces and bottled water instead tilt at the windmills of Fifth Columnists and traitors within the walls. They lambaste liberals for daring to question national policy and demand that students and institutions with socialist leanings be stripped of their privileges (there is a striking similarity in tone to the Tea Party rhetoric in the US). In nearly every way, by offering a smokescreen of outraged nationalism to obscure the very real issues at hand, they prove Dr. Samuel Johnson's famous words that "patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel".

The Risks of Great Expectations

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The Indian elections of 2014 may well have been unique in the history of that young nation and ancient country and marked an epochal change in its politics. For the first time, at least one of the major political parties sought a democratic mandate based on a straightforward policy of economic progress. Indian elections have been fought on policy before, contrary to general perception, but the policy has usually bordered on the populist and vacuous - promises of social engineering and glorious temples that served to fire up certain sections of the electorate while explicitly leaving significant other sections worse off. This time, the Bharatiya Janata Party (the BJP) pushed their more divisive policies to the background and promoted an all-out message of economic development for all. Unlike past promises of prosperity, this was a message that did not promise free electricity or cancellation of loans - both ideas have been presented numerous times before by parties of all stripes with predictably terrible results when fulfilled; rather it promised a vision of economic development for everyone, with the implicit suggestion that every Indian would be free to pursue their dream of a better life.

Unique as that approach was in Indian politics, the real surprise was the whole-hearted embrace of it by the electorate. Cutting across the traditional divides of Indian polity, blurring the lines between various caste and ethnic groups, Indians across the nation bought into the idea that they could in fact enjoy a better tomorrow. The Indian electorate has usually proved a lot more sophisticated and perspicacious than they are given credit for, so perhaps the rejection of politics as usual should not really shock observers. But the level to which they rejected the tired ideas of the old political order and jumped aboard the BJP train is a surprise - they have given a single party an outright majority for the first time in twenty-five years, ending the incessant mess of unprincipled coalition politics. Undoubtedly the BJP were assisted by the erstwhile ruling Indian National Congress Party which squandered every bit of goodwill extended to it in past elections and produced a primer on how to misrule a nation and set new lows in corruption, all while treating the nation with contempt that would have made Nero proud. With a level of disconnect that bordered on the comedic, they misread every signal of the changing mood in India and attempted to fight an election of ideas and policy with a badly tarnished brand and the tired feudal approach of yesteryear. Unsurprisingly they ended up crashing to the worst defeat ever and the BJP ascended to unprecedented heights of power and popularity.

This is not the largest election mandate in Indian history, not by a long shot. But prior victories of similar proportions were driven by events that ended up skewing the results by large margins - the sympathy for Rajiv Gandhi in 1984 following his mother's assassination in office, the sympathy that followed his assassination in 1989 that propelled his party back to power, the highly divisive politics of caste and religion that lifted the BJP to its first position of power at the end of the last century. This was the first time that a major party sought a mandate on a purely economic agenda and was rewarded for it.

Yet, in that mandate are the disturbing risks that if not ably managed could upend India and make the chaos of the early 90s seem downright peaceful. The nation has bought into the idea that he can replicate at the national level the economic boom that he presided over as Chief Minister of the state of Gujurat, and they have invested heavily in that assumption by voting so strongly for him. Make no mistakes, the belief that Mr. Modi can bring prosperity to all of India was a major factor in his electoral success, an idea that he did much to perpetuate. But the question is whether he can in fact work an economic miracle for all of India and lift twelve hundred million people out of poverty. India is a large and complex nation, and massive swarths of the country are stuck in almost the dark ages in terms of infrastructure. Half the country lacks access of drinking water or modern sanitation; those that enjoy that access still live with intermittent water supply and near constant power shortages. Despite plenty of bombast, roads are pitifully inadequate - potholes are the least of one's worries when traveling the so-called highways. Median separated highways that crisscross every developed nation are few and far between; an utter lack of discipline amongst the driving public reduces even those few real roads to chaos. Corruption is more than a problem, it is a way of life and even those who bemoan it most loudly are often more than willing to indulge it when it suits their personal needs. The Indian State and its executive arm have yet to throw off their colonial approach to government and much of the power of the State is directed against its own people.

This then is the nation that the BJP and their leader Narendra Modi inherits. How does it compare to the state he ruled since 2002? Gujarat while not the most progressive state, has historically been fairly well-developed. At the risk of stereotyping, the Gujaratis are amongst the most entrepreneurial in India, and have long been in the foremost ranks of business leaders. In 2000, after decades of litigation, the massive Sardar Sarovar Dam and Narmada Canal project were green-lighted and the dam was commissioned in 2006. The economic stimulus to the state of Gujarat cannot be underestimated, with almost eighteen thousand square kilometers of drought-prone land brought under irrigation and fifteen hundred megawatts of power generating capacity. Mr. Modi and his state government had nothing to do with making this happen; the project had been conceived before 1980 and successive governments had sought to make it reality; Mr. Modi was fortunate enough to be the Chief Minister when the benefits became available. He will not enjoy anything like the same good fortune as leader of a much bigger, more complex, more factitious and undoubtedly much poorer (per capita) nation.

To be fair to the man, he may well have maximized the advantage and above all did nothing to impede the natural ingenuity and productiveness of his people. It is possible that he will find the means to unlock the potential of all of India. But the greater risk is that he will find it much harder to deliver the kind of prosperity India longs for and that the challenges of delivering development to all of India (significant parts of which are only nominally under the control of the State) will prove beyond his, or anybody's skills. It's not that it is absolutely impossible to deliver on progress; rather it is the timeframe that will be so difficult. When expectations are sky high, people tend to expect that they will be met earlier rather than later. There is a grace period, but it is short and Mr. Modi faces the challenge of managing those high expectations. He does not need to turn everybody into millionaires, he just needs to improve their lives.

But to do this will mean overcoming massive inertia at every level of the State. Not every Indian wants him to succeed (his political rivals, obviously, especially those who have preferred a feudal form of government). There are going to be those who find themselves on the losing side of the equation, for even economic growth is not a win-win game, and they will have far greater reason to oppose him forcefully than the rest of electorate have to rally behind him, even if they supported him today. And given that India is in desperate need of a huge overhaul of it's approach to corruption, at some point Mr. Modi will have to make some decisions that will be unpopular in a great many places. And always, those who have something to lose, or have some grievance are more driven to act and protect their interests than those who are busy reaping the benefits.

The danger lies not so much in a failure to deliver on his promises, per se. After all, if Mr. Modi failed to live up to expectations, India would seek someone new at their next election. But political leaders do not suffer to go quietly to defeat, and if Mr. Modi's party finds their unpopularity rising on the back of failed expectations, they may revert to other political ideas that have served them well before. Even now there is a faction of the party that would see the mandate to deliver prosperity as a great opportunity to revisit older promises, such as a plan to build a grand temple on the ruins of a recently destroyed mosque (which probably stood on the ruins of a destroyed temple), though such an act would be a clear slap in the face of India's considerable Muslim minority and be perceived as a threat to the entire idea of the secular state. Yet, when political fortunes wane, lesser leaders are willing to loose the evils of Pandora's Box upon the world if it buys them a few moments more at the helm.

If Mr. Modi and his party face a disenchanted electorate, there will be a strong temptation to tear at the scabs of sectarian conflict. Mr. Modi has already presided over a violent reaction against Muslims before, and while he maintains that he did not encourage attacks on Muslims (and has been held blameless by inquiry commissions) his responses have also a certain unwholesome vagueness, an unwillingness to deplore the violence that occurred, and a tendency to downplay the scale of violence. Should he face an unfavorable political climate, will he revert to a less suave version of himself and seek to bolster his support amongst a smaller group at the expense of the nation? I hope not, and

People are not wholly unreasonable, and Indians are possessed of an almost legendary patience, bordering on apathetic. I believe that if Mr. Modi can deliver even a down payment on his promises, Indians will recognize his effort and extend him additional time. And hopefully, Mr. Modi will recognize that the only way to rule all of India is to present a vision for all of India. A better life and a better tomorrow means far more to more people than the grandest temple in Ayodyah. The challenge now is for Mr. Modi to manage expectations and work towards delivering on his implicit promise of that better tomorrow. And for his to remember what truly makes a better tomorrow.

This Thing of Ours

Today is India's Independence Day, a day when a nation newly minted stepped forth into the community of free people and prepared to address the critical question of just what kind of government it should adopt. The word is instructive, for India chose her form of government, and while it often leaves much to be desired, and can drive its people to near insanity with its Byzantine forms and methods, it still is the government selected by the people of India. It is a day when I find myself musing on the nature of government itself, and its role in our life today, especially here in the United States.

In my current domicile, faith in government, tenuous at best is dropping once more, driven by a disgust at partisan gridlock and our elected representative's Nero-esque mastery of fiddling and fed in part by a strange delusion that it is American to distrust one's government. Whether such distrust is historic I cannot say, but one thing seems to be fairly certain - the current distrust and hatred of every aspect of our government is fruit of the Reagan revolution. Ronald Reagan, that master of the pithy soundbite, injected a poison into the body politic stronger perhaps than even he realized, and today we still suffer the consequences. When he declared that government was not the solution to our problems, but the problem itself, Reagan gave a catchy slogan to opponents of government and started us on the path to destroying ourselves.

Today, there is a strong constituency in the country that believes that whole government, or at least a very large part thereof should be shut down and those functions handed off to the private sector. This is, to view it charitably, a philosophy that seems largely ignorant of history. The American government, more than any other in the world, and certainly the first of its kind, was not a system of rules imposed upon the nation by an external force; rather it was a compact formed by the people and adopted as the most effective way of meeting the challenges they faced. This is a government, as Lincoln put it, by the people and for the people. And yet today we face a group of people who continually talk about the government as an alien entity that must be opposed and destroyed; one might as well seek to cut off one's arm or leg in a fit of pique.

There are two broad views of the fundamental nature of government. The minimalists believe that the government should be of such size and power that it cannot impact their lives at all, it should have no power to tax, or regulate. Being of the opposite camp, of course, I exaggerate their position, but based on statements by some of the loudest cheerleaders, I do not think I state it very wrongly. They would have people live by their personal means, and would have the government never aid or hinder the progress of any person, nor their destruction. There are naturally shades of difference, and this libertarian viewpoint is often compromised by those who would impose their own social values upon the rest through the medium of government.

On the other hand, there is the liberal view of government, of which I am a firm believer. Government was formed by us to serve our needs and purposes. It is a tool we have created to ensure our safety and progress, and it serves us at every level, from city to state to nation, and we have bestowed powers upon our government to serve specific needs in response to specific challenges. There is no magical level at which government becomes unacceptable and at some point the artificial walls between nations will crumble and be swept away and a world government will succeed our national governments as the highest power - this is the arc of history and we can embrace reality or stick our heads in the sand; the result will be the same with the difference being the level to which we can fashion the government that forms. As a liberal, I believe that we have formed our government to ensure equality and equal opportunity. It is something of an article of faith amongst believers in capitalism that "a rising tide will lift all boats"; we liberals believe in the same concept, that if we help our less fortunate brothers, it will benefit everyone.

It is sometimes suggested that liberalism is the enemy of capitalism. While some left-leaning governments have misstated the case, nothing could be further from the truth, really; the two are not mutually exclusive systems and should in fact bring out the best in both. Capitalism when it works, rewards excellence. A liberal government would actually ensure a healthier market to consume the fruit of a capitalist' labor and by promoting equal opportunity would actually inure the market against it's naturally monopolistic, and self-defeating tendencies. If there had never been a bust up of AT&T would we have enjoyed the explosion of mobile technology, or would we have been forced to suffice with whatever a monopolist company deigned to give us? Can capitalism thrive if there are no consumers for its produce? If capitalism is allowed to concentrate all wealth in the hands a very small number, wherefore the capital to fund development and innovation and improvements, given that great personal wealth rarely is harnessed in pursuit of the greater good?

And that really is the crux of the question: do we want a liberal form of government dedicated to the greatest good of the greatest number or do we wish to plow our lone farrows neither seeking help from anyone else nor offering any in turn? But in the end, no man is an island, and in the words of Disraeli, we must hang together, or assuredly we will hang separately.

Time to Negotiate Tough - Send for Shatner or The Rock

For the past week, the biggest issue relating to the killing of Osama bin Laden has been the one no one wants to confront directly: did the Pakistani government know of bin Laden's hideout and what do we do next? It's an issue that is likely being furiously debated at the highest levels of the US government and every other level besides, including the very inefficient waiter at the pizzeria by my office who told us he was a cousin of Leon Panetta. It is equally clear that Pakistan must be pondering the same question and wondering what the fallout for them will be.

Pakistan would have us believe that they had no idea that bin Laden was hiding just a short journey from their capital, a neighbor almost to their military academy. In a nation that has suffered multiple vicious and bloody attacks by terrorists committed to destroying the status quo and Pakistani state, it certainly stretches credulity that a large compound could be maintained so openly without the slightest knowledge of the government. Now, it is likely that the Pakistani intelligence service is no KGB or secret police service, that they are far from omnipotent, no matter what the Indians and Afghans may claim, and they may not have had the ability or even the mandate to investigate that mysterious complex. But one thing that makes hiding in south Asia so difficult is the pervasive corruption. I do know that the local police would have known there was something strange about that compound and would have suspected that it was either a mujaheddin commander, either Pakistani or Afghan, or a drug dealer. In  either scenario, they would have expected to be bribed to stay silent.  And the most troubling question is whether they could be bribed or coerced into silence regarding the world's most wanted man, that never once did they allow the news to slip out, say in hope of snagging that American reward. If the local security forces were willing to keep secret of this magnitude from the federal government in Islamabad, that may be far scarier than the possibility that the government was sheltering bin Laden. It suggests that even in a seemingly peaceful oasis, the government writ has ceased to run and from greed or fear, the local authorities answer to a different power. For the safety and survival of the Pakistani state, we must hope that is not so.

For the same reason, it is time for India and Afghanistan to face the truth they would rather not: fun as it is to crow over Pakistan's discredited government, we all need that government to remain stable and survive for none of us want to see a failed state with nucleur weapons in the hands of the boldest rather than the sanest claimant. There is but a small window of opportunity now and it will take the greatest act of statecraft since Disraeli bought the Suez canal, but the US must seek to  bring Pakistan, Afghanistan and India to the table together. India has till now resisted all attempts to engage with Pakistan on the larger issues of the region, retreating into a shell of Cold War hostility and knee jerk reactions, opposing even having Special Envoy Holbrook's title mention them at all. But India is deluding themselves, as much as the US does. The three countries, linked by common heritage that predates even the Mughal invasion of the Indian subcontinent, cannot address their issues bilaterally, when the issues go way beyond bilateral interests.

India likes to see all issues with Pakistan through the prism of their conflict over Kashmir. Afghanistan sees Pakistan interference in the Pushtun areas as a mischievous precursor to annexing the southern provinces. And so India plays Afghanistan against Pakistan, cultivating the Tajik and Uzbeks against the Pushtun south, while Pakistan supports a pushtun based insurgency against the Afghan government to remain relevant in Afghanistan. Back in 2001, the US offered Pakistan a stark choice, to join our war on the Taliban or become our enemy. We forced them to drop their tool against India, the strategic depth they desired and then were surprised when they kept their back channels open to their erstwhile clients. We offered the Pakistani government military aid in return, but in doing so we robbed them of all legitimacy in the eyes of their people. And with each drone strike, we further emasculate their government, even as we destroy common enemies. It is this failure to appreciate the nuances of the south Asian imbroglio that has most hampered US interests. We asked Pakistan to act against their own perceived strategic interests to further our own needs and never stopped to ask what the cost for them would be, And equally strangely, we pretended that a dictator ruling by proclamation represented the will of Pakistan when he paid lip service to our demands.

The only way to solve this problem is by ending the three way struggle between India, Afghanistan and Pakistan. By now, even Pakistan's most chauvinistic leaders must know that they will never gain all of Kashmir, just as the most bloody minded Indian knows that no matter what they call the northern part of Kashmir under Pakistani rule, it's never becoming a part of India. And no matter how much they harp on the UN mandated plebiscite, at this stage India knows that no Kashmiri north of the Line of Control is going to vote to join India. Since neither nation is going to give up territory to the other, much less allow an independent Kashmiri nation, it's time for them to quit pretending and convert the Line of Control into a permanent border. Once they drop claims on each other's territory, it will be a lot easier to stop supporting insurgencies in the opponent, and the need to fight a proxy war in Afghanistan will also decrease. If Pakistan accepts that they no longer need the strategic depth to the north, and India no longer seeks to encircle Pakistan, it will become a more straightforward battle in Afghanistan.

Unfortunately, there are deeply entrenched attitudes that will make such a bargain difficult to achieve. Pakistan has since its inception worked on the assumption that India seeks to destroy them; the claim on Kashmir is as old. Changing that mindset is only part of the challenge, since even an elected government must now fear the reactions of the fundamentalists as well as the military whose very raison d'etre is based on the existential threat of India. A bargain would have to involve the government as well as most of the centrist opposition. Winning over the military is best achieved by clearly showing them the cold hard facts and their own interests rather than trying to bribe them as we've done over and over in the past. India is no easier to deal with, stuck in some ways in Cold war prickliness to any American "interference". But in reality, few Indians want the rest of Kashmir as part of India - the last thing they want is more Muslims, much less a group that has no wish to be in India. Strategic needs have long since receded - after all, India has managed without Kashmir for most of its life as an independent nation and the current generation do not even know a time when Kashmir was not a bomb wracked battleground. The diplomatic equivalent of a hard shake and a presentation of harsh reality may actually be so unusual an experience for India that it just might work. And secretly, both India and Pakistan know that their continued conflict helps no one and costs both of them enormously in lost economic possibilities. It's not going to be easy, but if we want to ever get out of Afghanistan and not see another bin Laden rise, we're going to have to engage all the players, even those, like India, who want to pretend that they aren't playing.