Throughout history, there have been numerous rulers with the ambition to lord over the entire world or at least a large chunk of it. The Second World War happened due to the over-riding ambition of Adolf Hitler. Thereafter, Soviet Union nourished the ambition to have global ideological sway over the world through its puppet Governments. We all know the end. Today, USA nurtures the same ambition. George W Bush attacked Iraq without any valid reason to control its oil resources as if all the world reserves must belong to the US. Imagine the brutal force of Robert Gates, Defence Secretary of US Administration, frightening Pakistan President Musharraf to be an ally to fight against terror or perish into stone age. That it suited Pakistan, is another matter.
Today, the emergence of China as a world power at par with the US, carries a global threat. Being a neighbour, India should be the most worried country. India has not yet gotten over the humiliation of the 1962 War. The first Indian Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, actually lost vigour and ego.
Ultimately, he did not survive this jolt. He underestimated Chinese designs and diplomacy in spite of timely warning from Sardar Patel explaining expansionist ambitions of the Chinese. Similar thoughts were expressed by Dr Mukherjee, Mr Malkani and Prof NG Ranga. In fact, KM Munshi wrote that China's has an aggressive history. Whenever she was strong, it tried to include many countries in its empire.
Recently, The History of China published by the Chinese Government contains a map showing Chinese territory, which includes Nepal, Bhutan, Sikkim, Ladakh and NEFA (50,000 square miles area). The map also includes Burma, Malay, Thailand, North and South Vietnam, Combodia and chunks of Soviet Siberia, Mangolia, Tajikistan and Khirurgiia. The book declares to bring back every territory. Some think that by-and-large status-quo would prevail in the world order but if one looks at the world's geo-political map of past 500 years, with an interval of 50 years, the map changes drastically. Those who do not think beyond get shocked when international boundaries change.
Nearly 5 months back Defence Minister, AK Antony told that "with China developing anti-satellite missiles, lasers and other space capabilities, India has no option but to be fully prepared for Star Wars in future." Army Chief added that Space War was increasingly becoming the ultimate high ground to dominate war in the future. I can quote dozens of such warnings. China has positioned its nuclear submarines in Gwadar naval base at Baluchistan and more than half a dozen naval bases of Suludao, Quingdao, Shanghai, Hangzhou, Ningbo, Hongkong and others. We have naval bases but inferior submarines at Mumbai, Goa, Kochi, Port Blair and Vishakhapatnam. China has developed observatory towers from where they can watch our movement at Sriharikota and other centres. They have also prepared metal roads till the nearest points of India, Nepal and Sikkim borders. Their missiles in Tibet are targeted towards all Indian cities. Even US targets are included.
It must be noted that the Defence Budget of China viz-a-viz India is atleast double. According to Pentagon's assessment, China's military build up poses a direct threat to India as well as Taiwan, Japan and Russia. China has infiltrated 75 millions 'Hans' to Manchuria, 7 millions to Sinkiang, 8.5 millions to inner Mangolia and 7.5 millions into Tibet. Chinese leadership has always followed the war strategy of their master Sun Tzu. Mao was particularly influenced by him. Sun Tzu has said, "to fight and conquer in all your battles is not supreme excellence, it consists of breaking the enemy's resistance without fighting." This is what China is doing to India through Pakistan. They are aligning with Sri Lanka to develop its war machine. They are also trapping Bangladesh. In Nepal, their mysterious diplomacy has succeeded.
The Defence Ministry's annual report, stated that 50-60 cities are targeted from Greater Tibet. Just this week, Chinese troops entered Sikkim by nearly two kms. Similar happenings have been occurring in Tawang area of Arunachal Pradesh but our Defence Ministry has not taken a serious note and said they are local skirmishes. The Government minimises the seriousness of all these threats.
Our security challenges are multi-fold and include Islamic terrorism in J&K and elsewhere, Bangladeshi infiltration, Left-wing extremism, troubled neighbouring States, insurgency in north-east and Chinese military push.
There are experts in India who feel that there is no immediate threat from China, as its priority is to develop its economy. But this opinion stands discounted by ground realities.
Showing posts with label china. Show all posts
Showing posts with label china. Show all posts
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
Saturday, May 23, 2009
Its all about "power",go to hell with "ideology"
If West Bengal’s CPI(M) stood for Communist Party of India (Marwari), it should now be Communist Party of India (Mamata). Not that Didi will ever follow the ‘Hammer and Sickle’. But her Trinamool Congress resembles the Marxists in many ways as it marches relentlessly to Writers’ Buildings.
There was precious little difference between the two manifestoes for the Lok Sabha election. Both parties employed the same rumbustious methods. And the trickle deserting the sinking CPI(M) ship for the boisterously sailing Trinamool vessel may soon become an avalanche. Most important, Ms Mamata Banerjee’s “Maa, Mati, Manush” (mother, earth, people) slogan, the title of a popular 1975 jatra, touched the same emotive, even perhaps xenophobic, chord that the Left Front exploited to sweep to power in the late-1970s.
The Communists were seen then as a wholly indigenous force pitted against a Congress that was at Sanjay Gandhi’s beck and call and the Centre’s tool. Bengalis equated the party ‘high command’ with the cow belt. Without overtly invoking provincial passions like the Shiv Sena or Amra Bangali idealists, the Marxists presented themselves as local men determined to restore Bengal’s glory. Championing peasants and Muslims, Ms Banerjee similarly projects herself as the voice of the most underprivileged elements in long-suffering Bengal.
It will take West Bengal some time to grasp the full long-term implications of her party’s Lok Sabha representation shooting up from one solitary MP (herself) to 19 and the Left Front’s plummeting from 35 to 15. But the Marxists, whose State committee will discuss the rout tomorrow with inputs from the districts, obviously understand their future is at stake.
In a not dissimilar situation in 1977, the Centre’s Janata Party regime arbitrarily dismissed nine State Governments. Three years later, Mrs Indira Gandhi’s Congress did the same. The Centre held in both cases that the parliamentary election results indicated that voters had lost confidence in the State ruling parties.
That argument is again being peddled. Though the Left Front controls 235 out of 294 legislature seats, even West Bengal’s Land and Land Revenue Minister, Mr Abdur Rezzak Mollah, advises Mr Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee to dissolve the Assembly and seek a fresh mandate. His case is that the Lok Sabha vote showed that the CPI(M) had lost its majority in 198 Assembly segments and that the Congress-Trinamool alliance had made serious dents in the constituencies of 27 Ministers.
Mr Mollah’s principled stand is unlikely to find takers. Instead, the growing clamour among Bengali Marxists against Mr Prakash Karat and the Polit Bureau recalls West Bengal’s history of resentment against central diktats. Mr Jyoti Basu blames the Polit Bureau for not supporting Morarji Desai’s Government in 1979 as he recommended. Worse, it would not allow him to become Prime Minister 17 years later. Apparently, the CPI(M)’s West Bengal unit wanted the parliamentary Left Front to continue supporting Mr Manmohan Singh’s Government last year and was anguished and angered when failing to bring down the UPA regime, the Polit Bureau expelled the Speaker, Mr Somnath Chatterjee, from the party.
It’s difficult to say whether Bengali Marxists reacted to these Polit Bureau decisions as Bengalis or faulted them on political grounds. But the conflict holds unmistakable echoes of the furore over the 1939 Tripuri Congress when Mahatma Gandhi famously regarded Subhas Chandra Bose’s re-election as Congress president as his own defeat since he had sponsored the defeated candidate, Pattabhi Sitaramayya. Irrespective of ideology, many Bengalis see Syama Prasad Mookerjee’s arrest and death in custody in a similar light.
Now, the former Lok Sabha Speaker denounces the CPI(M)’s central leadership without naming Mr Karat, his wife or Mr Sitaram Yechury on two counts. First, leaders should contest elections and be accountable to voters. Second, the ‘Third Front’ was only a “myth”. West Bengal’s Transport Minister, Mr Subhas Chakrabarty, agrees.
Less prominent and more outspoken political activists blame the CPI(M)’s plight on the party general secretary’s high-handedness, and accuse Mr Karat of deliberately committing political suicide by toeing Beijing’s line. They stress that China played a negative role in the Nuclear Suppliers’ Group until US President George W Bush telephoned Chinese President Hu Jintao. The speculation is that having failed to stop the Indo-American nuclear agreement, China sought to sabotage it through the CPI(M)’s obedient central leadership.
Communists with longer memories claim that betrayal of the national cause has a hoary lineage. They recall that pro-China elements in the undivided CPI opposed SA Dange, the party chairman, when he supported India’s stand in the disputes over the McMahon Line and Aksai Chin. These elements broke away in 1964 to form the CPI(M), thereby establishing a tradition of opposing India’s interests to placate China.
If Mr Mollah is to be believed, a far more remote conflict also casts a sombre shadow on West Bengal. He warns that if the Trinamool comes to power, it will try to replicate the grisly bloodbath that engulfed Indonesia in 1965-66. With three million members, the Partai Komunis Indonesia was the world’s biggest Communist party outside the Soviet Union and China. The purge began when six top Indonesian Generals were killed, allegedly by the PKI, and their bodies thrown down a well. The event triggered a reprisal massacre of Communists by the Army under Gen Suharto, probably with US backing.
A CIA study claimed that “In terms of the numbers killed the anti-PKI massacres in Indonesia rank as one of the worst mass murders of the 20th century...” The death toll was estimated at between 500,000 and a million. Sukarno was deposed and Suharto became the ruler in 1967. His dictatorship lasted 31 years.
Such drastic events are inconceivable in West Bengal, even for those who nurse nightmares of the Muslim League’s Direct Action Day and the ‘Great Calcutta Killing’. But turmoil there is bound to be as Communists try to cling to their 32-year monopoly of power and Ms Banerjee, standing high in the Congress’s favour, insists on her reward. She can expect Central help as she sets about storming the bastion of Left Front power.
Mr Bhattacharjee accuses her Trinamool of lacking any “ideological mooring”. She retorts that the CPI(M) is “politically bankrupt”. Both are right. The brewing storm has nothing to do with programmes or policies. It is about power. For ordinary apolitical citizens, therefore, the change can mean jumping out of the frying pan into the fire.
There was precious little difference between the two manifestoes for the Lok Sabha election. Both parties employed the same rumbustious methods. And the trickle deserting the sinking CPI(M) ship for the boisterously sailing Trinamool vessel may soon become an avalanche. Most important, Ms Mamata Banerjee’s “Maa, Mati, Manush” (mother, earth, people) slogan, the title of a popular 1975 jatra, touched the same emotive, even perhaps xenophobic, chord that the Left Front exploited to sweep to power in the late-1970s.
The Communists were seen then as a wholly indigenous force pitted against a Congress that was at Sanjay Gandhi’s beck and call and the Centre’s tool. Bengalis equated the party ‘high command’ with the cow belt. Without overtly invoking provincial passions like the Shiv Sena or Amra Bangali idealists, the Marxists presented themselves as local men determined to restore Bengal’s glory. Championing peasants and Muslims, Ms Banerjee similarly projects herself as the voice of the most underprivileged elements in long-suffering Bengal.
It will take West Bengal some time to grasp the full long-term implications of her party’s Lok Sabha representation shooting up from one solitary MP (herself) to 19 and the Left Front’s plummeting from 35 to 15. But the Marxists, whose State committee will discuss the rout tomorrow with inputs from the districts, obviously understand their future is at stake.
In a not dissimilar situation in 1977, the Centre’s Janata Party regime arbitrarily dismissed nine State Governments. Three years later, Mrs Indira Gandhi’s Congress did the same. The Centre held in both cases that the parliamentary election results indicated that voters had lost confidence in the State ruling parties.
That argument is again being peddled. Though the Left Front controls 235 out of 294 legislature seats, even West Bengal’s Land and Land Revenue Minister, Mr Abdur Rezzak Mollah, advises Mr Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee to dissolve the Assembly and seek a fresh mandate. His case is that the Lok Sabha vote showed that the CPI(M) had lost its majority in 198 Assembly segments and that the Congress-Trinamool alliance had made serious dents in the constituencies of 27 Ministers.
Mr Mollah’s principled stand is unlikely to find takers. Instead, the growing clamour among Bengali Marxists against Mr Prakash Karat and the Polit Bureau recalls West Bengal’s history of resentment against central diktats. Mr Jyoti Basu blames the Polit Bureau for not supporting Morarji Desai’s Government in 1979 as he recommended. Worse, it would not allow him to become Prime Minister 17 years later. Apparently, the CPI(M)’s West Bengal unit wanted the parliamentary Left Front to continue supporting Mr Manmohan Singh’s Government last year and was anguished and angered when failing to bring down the UPA regime, the Polit Bureau expelled the Speaker, Mr Somnath Chatterjee, from the party.
It’s difficult to say whether Bengali Marxists reacted to these Polit Bureau decisions as Bengalis or faulted them on political grounds. But the conflict holds unmistakable echoes of the furore over the 1939 Tripuri Congress when Mahatma Gandhi famously regarded Subhas Chandra Bose’s re-election as Congress president as his own defeat since he had sponsored the defeated candidate, Pattabhi Sitaramayya. Irrespective of ideology, many Bengalis see Syama Prasad Mookerjee’s arrest and death in custody in a similar light.
Now, the former Lok Sabha Speaker denounces the CPI(M)’s central leadership without naming Mr Karat, his wife or Mr Sitaram Yechury on two counts. First, leaders should contest elections and be accountable to voters. Second, the ‘Third Front’ was only a “myth”. West Bengal’s Transport Minister, Mr Subhas Chakrabarty, agrees.
Less prominent and more outspoken political activists blame the CPI(M)’s plight on the party general secretary’s high-handedness, and accuse Mr Karat of deliberately committing political suicide by toeing Beijing’s line. They stress that China played a negative role in the Nuclear Suppliers’ Group until US President George W Bush telephoned Chinese President Hu Jintao. The speculation is that having failed to stop the Indo-American nuclear agreement, China sought to sabotage it through the CPI(M)’s obedient central leadership.
Communists with longer memories claim that betrayal of the national cause has a hoary lineage. They recall that pro-China elements in the undivided CPI opposed SA Dange, the party chairman, when he supported India’s stand in the disputes over the McMahon Line and Aksai Chin. These elements broke away in 1964 to form the CPI(M), thereby establishing a tradition of opposing India’s interests to placate China.
If Mr Mollah is to be believed, a far more remote conflict also casts a sombre shadow on West Bengal. He warns that if the Trinamool comes to power, it will try to replicate the grisly bloodbath that engulfed Indonesia in 1965-66. With three million members, the Partai Komunis Indonesia was the world’s biggest Communist party outside the Soviet Union and China. The purge began when six top Indonesian Generals were killed, allegedly by the PKI, and their bodies thrown down a well. The event triggered a reprisal massacre of Communists by the Army under Gen Suharto, probably with US backing.
A CIA study claimed that “In terms of the numbers killed the anti-PKI massacres in Indonesia rank as one of the worst mass murders of the 20th century...” The death toll was estimated at between 500,000 and a million. Sukarno was deposed and Suharto became the ruler in 1967. His dictatorship lasted 31 years.
Such drastic events are inconceivable in West Bengal, even for those who nurse nightmares of the Muslim League’s Direct Action Day and the ‘Great Calcutta Killing’. But turmoil there is bound to be as Communists try to cling to their 32-year monopoly of power and Ms Banerjee, standing high in the Congress’s favour, insists on her reward. She can expect Central help as she sets about storming the bastion of Left Front power.
Mr Bhattacharjee accuses her Trinamool of lacking any “ideological mooring”. She retorts that the CPI(M) is “politically bankrupt”. Both are right. The brewing storm has nothing to do with programmes or policies. It is about power. For ordinary apolitical citizens, therefore, the change can mean jumping out of the frying pan into the fire.
Sunday, May 17, 2009
Why the future belong to india
'The future belongs to india, not china'...this is a much debated topic throughout the whole world and a lot of confusions too.Now if we realy want to know the final conclusion we must go back before the recession.....now at this time(before recession) india is having a growth rate of 8% on an avg. and china 10%. i know its quite a difference.
Now many of you will ask if we grow by 10% we will save almost 20yrs and thats a generation and we can uplift millions into middle class in this generation only...well i agree with you...but dont you think we had waited for almost 3000yrs for this position so why not 20yrs more in an indian way, well i know many eyebrows will raise now and i wont argue for this and many of you will even say me i am against progress....but i again say why dont we do in an indian way?
I know that the cost of democracy is the price the poor pay in the delay of their entry into the middle class.I did not elaborate the 'Indian way' but it must include taking a holiday on half a dozen New Year's Days! It is easy to get mesmerized by China's amazing progress and feel frustrated by India's chaotic democracy,but do we really want to gain 2% more on cost of democracy?Think...
In referring to the 'Indian way',I mean that a nation must be true to itself. Democracy comes easily to us because India has historically 'accumulated' its diverse groups who retain their distinctiveness while identifying themselves as Indian.
China has 'assimilated' its people into a common, homogeneous Confucian society. China is a melting pot in which differences disappear while India is a salad bowl in which the constituents retain their identity. Hence, China has always been governed by a hierarchical, centralized state - a tradition that has carried into the present era of reform communism. China resembles a business corporation today. Each mayor and party secretary has objectives relating to investment, output and growth, which are aligned to national goals. Those who exceed their goals rise quickly. The main problem in running a country as a business is that many people get left out.
India, on the other hand, can only manage itself by accommodating vocal and varied interest groups in its salad bowl. This leads to a million negotiations daily and we call this system 'democracy'. It slows us down - we take five years to build a highway versus one in China. Those who are disgruntled go to court. But our politicians are forced to worry about abuses of human rights, whereas my search on Google on 'human rights abuses in China' yielded 47.8 million entries in 13 seconds! Democracies have a safety valve - it allows the disgruntled to let off steam before slowly co-opting them.
Both India and China have accepted the capitalist road to prosperity. But capitalism is more comfortable in a democracy, which fosters entrepreneurs naturally. A state enterprise can never be as innovative or nimble and this is why the Chinese envy some of our private companies. Democracy respects property rights. As both nations urbanize, peasants in India are able to sell or borrow against their land, but the Chinese peasants are at the mercy of local party bosses. Because India has the rule of law, entrepreneurs can enforce contracts. If someone takes away your property in China, you have no recourse. Hence, it is the party bosses who are accumulating wealth in China. The rule of law slows us down but it also protects us (and our environment, as the NGOs have discovered).
We take freedom for granted in India but it was not always so. When General Reginald Dyer opened fire in 1919 in Jallianwala Bagh, killing 379 people, Indians realised they could only have dignity when they were free from British rule. The massacre at Tiananmen Square in 1989, where 300 students were killed, was China's Jallianwala Bagh. China today may have become richer than India but the poorest Chinese yearns for the same freedom.
Because the Indian state is inefficient, millions of entrepreneurs have stepped into the vacuum. When government schools fail, people start private schools in the slums, and the result is millions of 'slumdog millionaires'. You cannot do this in China. Our free society forces us to solve our own problems, making us self-reliant. Hence, the Indian way is likely to be more enduring because the people have scripted India's success while China's state has crafted its success. This worries China's leaders who ask, if India can become the world's second fastest economy despite the state, what will happen when the Indian state begins to perform? India's path may be slower but it is surer, and the Indian way of life is also more likely to survive. This is why when I am reborn I would prefer it to be in India.
Awatansh Tripathi.
Now many of you will ask if we grow by 10% we will save almost 20yrs and thats a generation and we can uplift millions into middle class in this generation only...well i agree with you...but dont you think we had waited for almost 3000yrs for this position so why not 20yrs more in an indian way, well i know many eyebrows will raise now and i wont argue for this and many of you will even say me i am against progress....but i again say why dont we do in an indian way?
I know that the cost of democracy is the price the poor pay in the delay of their entry into the middle class.I did not elaborate the 'Indian way' but it must include taking a holiday on half a dozen New Year's Days! It is easy to get mesmerized by China's amazing progress and feel frustrated by India's chaotic democracy,but do we really want to gain 2% more on cost of democracy?Think...
In referring to the 'Indian way',I mean that a nation must be true to itself. Democracy comes easily to us because India has historically 'accumulated' its diverse groups who retain their distinctiveness while identifying themselves as Indian.
China has 'assimilated' its people into a common, homogeneous Confucian society. China is a melting pot in which differences disappear while India is a salad bowl in which the constituents retain their identity. Hence, China has always been governed by a hierarchical, centralized state - a tradition that has carried into the present era of reform communism. China resembles a business corporation today. Each mayor and party secretary has objectives relating to investment, output and growth, which are aligned to national goals. Those who exceed their goals rise quickly. The main problem in running a country as a business is that many people get left out.
India, on the other hand, can only manage itself by accommodating vocal and varied interest groups in its salad bowl. This leads to a million negotiations daily and we call this system 'democracy'. It slows us down - we take five years to build a highway versus one in China. Those who are disgruntled go to court. But our politicians are forced to worry about abuses of human rights, whereas my search on Google on 'human rights abuses in China' yielded 47.8 million entries in 13 seconds! Democracies have a safety valve - it allows the disgruntled to let off steam before slowly co-opting them.
Both India and China have accepted the capitalist road to prosperity. But capitalism is more comfortable in a democracy, which fosters entrepreneurs naturally. A state enterprise can never be as innovative or nimble and this is why the Chinese envy some of our private companies. Democracy respects property rights. As both nations urbanize, peasants in India are able to sell or borrow against their land, but the Chinese peasants are at the mercy of local party bosses. Because India has the rule of law, entrepreneurs can enforce contracts. If someone takes away your property in China, you have no recourse. Hence, it is the party bosses who are accumulating wealth in China. The rule of law slows us down but it also protects us (and our environment, as the NGOs have discovered).
We take freedom for granted in India but it was not always so. When General Reginald Dyer opened fire in 1919 in Jallianwala Bagh, killing 379 people, Indians realised they could only have dignity when they were free from British rule. The massacre at Tiananmen Square in 1989, where 300 students were killed, was China's Jallianwala Bagh. China today may have become richer than India but the poorest Chinese yearns for the same freedom.
Because the Indian state is inefficient, millions of entrepreneurs have stepped into the vacuum. When government schools fail, people start private schools in the slums, and the result is millions of 'slumdog millionaires'. You cannot do this in China. Our free society forces us to solve our own problems, making us self-reliant. Hence, the Indian way is likely to be more enduring because the people have scripted India's success while China's state has crafted its success. This worries China's leaders who ask, if India can become the world's second fastest economy despite the state, what will happen when the Indian state begins to perform? India's path may be slower but it is surer, and the Indian way of life is also more likely to survive. This is why when I am reborn I would prefer it to be in India.
Awatansh Tripathi.
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