The grim 2008 forecast by the Economist London about India’s small South Asian neighbors omits to mention the Naxalite armed insurgency, the ‘slow-burn volcano’ in Punjab, et al., which are going to destroy the Indian demoNcracy from within
Washington D.C., Wednesday 23 January, 2008: The Economist, London, (one of the oldest and most prestigious weekly news magazine of the world, read by everybody who is anybody) has a grim 2008 forecast for South Asia.
Its’ correspondent James Astill’s report (headlined, ‘An unquiet periphery. India should do more to help its troubled neighbors’) says that looking at South Asia through the ‘glasses’ of the Indian External Affairs ministry, it seems that, “In Pakistan and Sri Lanka, there will be war; in Bangladesh, there will be protests against army-backed rule; in Nepal, a return to war will be a constant threat. Only tiny Bhutan, a Himalayan recluse whose foreign policy India dictates, will be a peaceful fellow resident of the sub-continental hood.” How smug! Bhutan has just had four synchronized bomb blasts in different parts of that Himalayan Kingdom while the armed Naxalites war cry of ‘Dilli challo’ is getting ever closer to the British-built palaces in New Delhi, standing on stolen Sikh Gurdwara lands, where the Bania/Brahmin dominated Indian ruling elite likes to do its’ strutting.
The correspondent of the Economist, James Astill, predicts, in the grim 2008 forecast, that, ‘Sri Lanka’s government, under the populist president, Mahinda Rajapakse, will prosecute a war in 2008 that is partly of its choosing. Officially, a ceasefire has been in place since 2002 between the government and the Tamil Tiger rebels who control the country’s north. But over the past year it has broken down. Having shelled the Tigers out of another fief, in eastern Sri Lanka, the government will try to conquer the north. Sri Lankan Government forces will gain ground; losing the east has weakened the Tigers. But the government will not end Sri Lanka’s ethnic strife because it does not understand it. It calls the Tigers terrorists, and so they are. Yet they also reflect the grievances of many Sri Lankan Tamils against a bullying Sinhalese majority, the government’s main constituency. So long as the Tamils’basic demands—including autonomy for the north and a proper share of state patronage—are not met, Sri Lanka’s troubles will endure.
As regards the situation in Bangladesh, the Economist predicts that, ‘it will worsen in 2008. Its technocratic administration, installed by the army in January 2007, promises to hold elections in December 2008. It will break its promise. At the army’s behest, it has arrested the country’s main political leaders, Khaleda Zia and Sheikh Hasina Wajed. The charges against the two women—of corruption and extortion, respectively—may or may not be deserved. But, in the absence of other leaders, their parties demand their release. This gives the army a choice: democracy and the two begums (as the feuding Mrs Zia and Sheikh Hasina are known) or no begums and no democracy. It will choose the latter in 2008. Public disaffection with the government will increase during the year. Violent protests are all but guaranteed.’
The Economist correspondent predicts that Nepal, which recently ended a civil war, will enjoy little of a peace dividend in 2008. A key part of the peace process—the election of an assembly to write a new constitution—was due in November 2007, but was postponed. Armed Maoists (read Nepal’s Naxalites) within the transitional government were to blame. They fear they would wither in a democracy. Under pressure from India, they were persuaded not to quit the government.’
As regards Pakistan the Economist report starts with a question. “Who will preside over the mayhem in Pakistan?” The article goes on to hope, “that it would be a civilian—for the first time since General Pervez Musharraf seized power in 1999. General Musharraf had himself re-elected President in October, in uniform. He planned to divest himself of it shortly after, provided that the Supreme Court accepted the legitimacy of the October poll. The court, however, may have had other ideas, and in early November 2007, as its ruling loomed, General Musharraf suspended the constitution. Emergency rule threw Pakistan’s political outlook into deeper confusion. In a free election, the late Benazir Bhutto’s Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) and the Muslim League (Q), which backs General Musharraf, might each win about a third of the votes. The Muslim League (N) of Nawaz Sharif, another former prime minister, and smaller Islamist and regional parties would account for the rest. If an election happens—and assuming General Musharraf is in charge—a long-mooted partnership between the PPP and ML(Q) might be the best hope for stability, though the November “coup” made it less likely. The political troubles will distract the president from an ongoing campaign to defeat a Taliban insurgency along the Afghan border. There is no hope of victory in 2008.”
About India the Economist article concludes by sighing that, “Alas, India is rarely so helpful. It is rightly proud of its more stable democracy; yet India has a poor record of meddling in the politics of its troubled neighbors. It has held back somewhat of late. (Has it?) But India still spurns opportunities to do good. In particular, it could do more to expand its miserly trade with Pakistan and Bangladesh. For both countries, this would bring much-needed relief. And India would profit.”
The India-friendly Economist has failed to mention that the Naxalites’ (so named after Naxalbari, a town in Indias’West Bengal state where a communist rebellion erupted in 1967) and which, in the past forty years, has been spreading like a prairie fire and has already engulfed half of India’s 28 states and has become a major armed political insurgent force in poor states, with substantial tribal populations such as Chhattisgarh, Jharkand and Orissa. The Naxalite insurgency’s enduring foothold across many parts of India remains a serious concern for the central government, so much so that the prime minister last year called it the ‘single biggest internal security challenge ever faced by our country’. Nobody seems to realize in India that the Naxalite armed insurgency is not just a law-and-order issue: it also has implications for the energy and minerals sectors, and highlights dilemmas inherent in the current high-profile drive to exploit the rich mineral and energy resources of the poor underdeveloped states which form a contiguous land corridor from Tamil Nadu in the South to Bihar/ Nepal in the North. A large number of people have been displaced by the armed insurgency as they flee from the Naxalites, although the insurgent movement also benefits from support in rural villages, making policing its activities difficult. Also feeding the conflict has been the relatively recent emergence of a government funded anti-Naxalite tribal militia known as Salwa Judum, which has touted for the corrupt local police and security forces and aggravated the situation.
The Naxalite armed rebellion also has implications for India’s energy security. The rebellion is strongest in states that have reserves of the natural resources, especially coal, that are required to fuel India’s industrial boom. The five states in which the movement is strongest account for 85% of India’s coal deposits. India’s electricity generation is predominantly coal-based (63 %) despite much trumpeting of the nuclear (3.50 %) energy sector. Naxalite rebels have, on occasions, made direct attacks on coal-based energy companies and have so far not headed towards the nuclear energy plants. Some months ago the Economist carried an in-depth report headlined, “India’s Naxalites. A spectre haunting India. Maoist rebels are fighting a brutal low-level war with the Indian state,” which highlighted the magnitude of the issue, which will become India’s Achilles
(http://www.economist.com/world/asia/displaystory.cfm?story_id=7799247 ) heal and which can bring the edifice of the state crumbling down. The article also carried a colored map which graphically illustrated the spread of the Naxalite insurgency in India.
The above Economist report concluded by quoting one Brigadier Ponwar, who joined the Indian army as it went to war in Bangladesh in 1971, who says that, “he spent the rest of his career fighting terrorists at home. After fighting low-intensity wars on its periphery (North-Eastern India, Kashmir and Punjab, Khalistan) for a generation, India risks having to endure another, in its very core, for the next.” The Brigadier was too shy or scared to admit that defeat at the hands of the Naxalites is a distinct possibility.
No wonder India has been having problems recruiting officers for the armed forces because of the spreading Naxalite ‘prairie fire’ in nearly three hundred districts in fourteen states and the ‘slow-burn’ volcanoes in Indian occupied Punjab, Kashmir and the seven North Eastern states. Even the Economist, in a way, has confirmed the above mentioned Brigadier Ponwar’s comment by publishing an article in its’ latest issue headlined “Indian Army. Unfit for service,” by diplomatically
(http://www.economist.com/world/asia/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10534336 ) avoiding to mention the armed insurgencies (and slow-burn volcanoes) and blaming it on ‘A shortage of officer material is another sign of India’s talent deficit.’
