Edits

Editorials

India Today
Sep 14,1998

Out of Africa

Mandela's rebuff should propel India towards realistic diplomacy

Edits In bringing up Kashmir at the Non-Aligned summit in Durban, Nelson Mandela has done India an unlikely service. Delhi may be taken aback by the supposed perfidy of an old ally but any student of realpolitik will not be. No doubt, India was a source of sustenance for Mandela and the African National Congress through the struggle against racial discrimination. Even so, Mandela's priorities as president have been different. Propelled by South Africa's economic needs, he has cultivated the West. As such, his comments on Jammu and Kashmir and opposition to Pokhran II are in keeping with his broader external vision for his country. If India has been caught unawares, it has nobody to blame but its foreign ministry. At one level, India has failed to convince even a friend like Mandela of its case on Kashmir. India's cardinal sin, however, is the inability to recognise that diplomacy does not flow from sentimentalism. International relations are governed by a sense of self-interest, not self-importance.

Nevertheless, the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) sits smug in the Jurassic age. It has failed to capitalise on India's goodwill in South Africa -- and the fact that both countries are Indian Ocean-rim states -- by building a substantial commercial partnership. Even its choice of high commissioners has been guided by a link, ideological or familial, with Mahatma Gandhi. This harking back to a near-forgotten history has impressed nobody, least of all the South Africans. It is akin to Jawaharlal Nehru believing the Chinese would never attack India simply because the Congress had sent a team of doctors to assist Mao Zedong in 1938, during the Japanese invasion. If India has any pretensions to great power status, it has to complement its nuclear arsenal with a proactive geopolitical doctrine. Modern diplomacy is all about opportunism and timing. It is the realm of hawks, not -- as the MEA seems to believe -- mawks.

Fear of Flying
Post-Tata, India's governing system can't be trusted with economic reforms

Anybody who worries about the lack of a political consensus in India can rest assured. Parties across the spectrum have just identified the country's public enemy No. 1: the Tata airlines project. This past week, the Tata Group withdrew its application to set up a domestic airline after four years of failure. In this period, India has been ruled by the Congress, the United Front and the BJP. Each regime has framed its own set of rules, especially concerning foreign equity. The Tatas have re-drafted their proposals accordingly. Yet, permission has not been forthcoming. Now that the project has been successfully smothered, the BJP Government has resolved not to "mollify" the Tatas. The Opposition hasn't lagged behind either, with the Samajwadi Party even accusing the Tatas of "monopolistic ambitions". Truly, the Indian politician's instincts have not changed since the days Jawaharlal Nehru sneered at profit, that "dirty word".

The case of the aborted airline has taught the Tata Group a bitter lesson. There is a larger lesson for India as well. One of the premises of liberalisation is that the state's role will be, in essence, limited to a facilitator of business activity. Yet the Government has been only too willing to fall prey to lobbyists, to decontrol selectively. The Foreign Investment Promotion Board is more suited to the role of Foreign Investment Obfuscation Board. Ministries are capricious in issuing approval certificates for projects which fall within their purview. Projects are sanctioned on a case by case basis -- "suitcase by suitcase basis", as some put it. This is not a brave new world; this is capitalism's dystopia. The solution has to be drastic. Abolish the plethora of clearance bodies, publish a set of rules and let whoever conforms to them set up shop. In the infrastructure sectors at least, India could do with some free market shock therapy.

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