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EDITORIAL
Big Brother Isn't Caring
Why India continues to be a big baddy in its near abroad
It is an image
crisis India could have lived without. By virtue of its size and civil
society, India is the most decisive south Asian power. It is the only
functional democracy in the region. It has the biggest military. Well,
almost everything that makes a regional superpower. But the reality is:
there is a big brother but no brotherhood. Only brother bashing. There
is no admiration, only admonishment. There is no confidence, only fear.
Invariably, India for its near abroad is Big Bully, or an untrustworthy
Big Baddy. True, partly it has something to do with the neighbours themselves;
most of them being unevolved democracies, they need India the bogeyman.
But that doesn't make India's own contribution a lesser factor. Post-regicide
Nepal is the latest example of how India continues to be suspicious in
the eyes of its neighbours. Is it a case of a superpower not knowing how
to manage its power vis a vis its neighbours?
 Looks
like. One of the achievements of the A.B. Vajpayee regime has been in
redeeming South Block from the East Bloc mindset of the Cold War vintage:
today, to a great extent, India is reaching out to the world without any
ideological inhibitions. Sadly, this boldness is not matched by its near-abroad
engagement. A regional power cannot afford to ignore the region. Being
nationally confident and economically better off, India should be taking
the initiative to win the confidence of its neighbours. But that is not
happening. And that is why anti-India forces like the ISI are at home
in places like Kathmandu. Diplomatically, the region, with the singular
exception of Pakistan, occupies the lowest spot in Delhi's priority list,
the calibre of some of the Indian envoys there being a good indicator.
The most effective initiative should be economical, which at the moment
is abysmal. There is a market out there and India has the potential to
tap it. It is time for the superpower to behave like one.
Rivers Of Sorrow
Tokenism couldn't clean the Ganga-and won't the Yamuna
If a photo opportunity
was all that Delhi's Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit was seeking, the sight
of her picking up polythene bags from the Yamuna certainly did the trick.
The exercise was part of a five-day project to depollute the once-proud
river, now reduced to the capital's leading sewer. By a politically correct
coincidence, the period concluded on June 5, World Environment Day. Speaking
to journalists after cleaning up a tiny stretch of the river, Dikshit
said her efforts were part of a larger, sustained campaign that had, however,
not been drawn up yet and the cost of which had not been worked out. About
the only concrete proposal was the idea of a "river patrol force"
to man the Yamuna's banks and prevent people from throwing garbage into
its waters. There is a deathless familiarity to what will follow: jobs
for the boys, more bureaucracy and inspector raj.
 The
Delhi Government is certainly not alone in its culpability. The Ganga
Action Plan was launched in 1986 with a budget of Rs 1,700 crore. Today,
the Ganga is as dirty in, say, Varanasi, as it ever has been and the river
still swallows 1.3 million litres of sewage a day. Every one of India's
13 major river basins-representing 80 per cent of surface water-is diseased,
with pollution levels ranging from 20 to 1,000 times above normal. The
coliform (bacteria) count of the Yamuna should be 500 per 100 ml. As a
study commissioned by this magazine four years ago pointed out, at some
places in Delhi it reaches 1,40,000. Dirty rivers are not peculiar to
India. In April, after a survey warned of the "poor ecological status"
of 50 of 69 river stretches in the European Union, a detailed corrective
programme was announced. It set a realistic deadline: 2015. Daydreamer
Dikshit seems content with five days. No wonder the Yamuna doesn't take
her seriously.
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