India-US Relations Blog

The Voice of the Majority – 3 – Religion & Government Legitimacy

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Our second article in this series was based on the proposition that:

  • A regime that is seen, felt and recognized to be respectful and supportive of the majority religion tends in turn to be supported by the majority of the people.

In this article, we examine the related hypothesis:

  • A regime that is seen, felt and recognized to be disrespectful and unsupportive of the majority religion tends to be opposed by the majority of the people.

Think back to America in 2008 and 2009. Remember the 2008 election and the now famous quote of Candidate Obama about people in small towns “clinging to their religion and guns”? Though denied and explained away, this quote lives on as one of the more visible symbols of disrespect of religion and belief systems of the American majority.

The early policies and the tone of the Obama Administration persuaded the American majority that its core belief systems were being trampled. The result was the rise of the Tea Party, a movement that sprung like a geyser from the core of the American majority. The American Elite derided the Tea Party as backward, uneducated, right wing, prejudiced and overtly religious. That did not work.

The emotional and loud protest of the Tea Party culminated in a sweeping victory in the 2010 mid term election. The 2010 victory cooled down the temperature of the country. Gone are the rallies, the placards and the hot emotion that bubbled in 2009 and 2010.

This is why America is a shining validation of our hypothesis. On the other hand, India represents a seemingly perfect counterexample.

Last month New Delhi, India’s capital, witnessed a vicious attack in the dead of night by hundreds of baton charging policemen on a crowd of 50,000 people sleeping peacefully. This crowd had gathered to support a fast until death by Baba Ramdev, an Indian Guru with a national and international following. His fast was a protest against the deep corruption that has reportedly engulfed parts of the Indian Government including Cabinet Ministers.

Unlike another protest by Anna Hazare, a secular “Gandhian” activist, the protest by Baba Ramdev, the Indian Government believed, could become a religious “Hindu” movement. And, based on the 60-year track record of the Congress Government, a “Hindu” nationwide protest was deemed intolerable by the Congress Regime. And so the Indian Government behaved exactly like the minority Bahraini Government and launched a vicious night attack on a large group of peaceful, non-violent sleeping protestors.

This brings to fore the decades long suppression of core Indian belief systems by the Indian Elite. Much like American Elite Liberals, the self-proclaimed “modern”, “secular”, “progressive” Indian Elite have waged a coercive battle against India’s “Hindu” majority. This suppression of India’s majority is organized and planned with the full resources of the Congress Regime. The list of other deliberate legislative, executive acts against India’s majority religion would fill several such articles.

This might surprise many but the American and Indian people are very similar in their belief systems. Both societies are deeply religious and spiritual. In contrast, European and Asian societies are not. Both American and Indian societies are multi-religious, multi-ethnic and tolerant at heart. But their belief systems run deep. This is why foreign films, books and culture do not make inroads into these societies. This is why global Hollywood has not been successful in making inroads into India and US TV Networks have to create purely Indian channels to become financially successful in India.

Then, unlike the American majority, why does the India’s majority tolerate the trampling of its religion and belief systems by its governing regime?

  • One reason is that India’s majority has been under the rule of India’s minority religions for the past 1,000 years. So the behavior of the Congress regime is a continuation of the British and Mughal Regimes.
  • Secondly, India’s majority is totally focused on raising its economic standards. That is today’s top priority for the Indian people. So all other issues are being put aside. But they are not ignored.

But the calm you see on India’s surface is covering up the deep anger within India’s majority. Jim Yardley of the New York Times used the term “visceral rage” to describe the sentiments of India’s Middle Class. This Middle Class is the new factor in Indian society, a factor that will come to dominate India’s Society, Government Policy and its relationship with America in years to come.

India’s middle class is becoming broader, richer and more secure in demanding its rights. It is also much more religious and conservative than the Indian Elite who run India’s Government, NGOs and Media. It is beginning to feel confident in expressing its views in the terms and framework of its religion, culture and belief systems. This will put it in direct conflict with the self-proclaimed mission of India’s Elite to suppress India’s majority religion at the altar of a “modern, secular, progressive” culture.

As we saw in its reaction to the attack on Baba Ramdev, the Indian-American community is beginning to participate in the struggle of the Indian Middle Class. And this community understands the lessons of America’s Tea Party.

Will the Indian-American community succeed in helping India’s Middle Class attain the confident fighting spirit of the American majority? Will India’s majority and its driver, the Indian Middle Class, succeed in changing the regime of India’s Ruling Elite? The answers will drive both India and its relationship with America.

India-US Relations Blog

Lights, Camera, Action

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Bollywood & Hollywood
Among the latest tranche of WikiLeaks cables released by The Hindunewspaper is one that throws light on an under-noticed dimension of U.S.-India relations: Their compatible strengths and convergent interests in the area of global entertainment and media. For all the glamour attached to Hollywood and Bollywood* in their home countries, their potential in fostering bilateral ties has been scarcely appreciated.With the United States and India possessing the world’s largest entertainment and media sectors, both in terms of sheer output and global popularity, the opportunities for collaboration are large for jointly producing new content, forging new creative collaborations and accessing new markets. With a growing middle class, a large English-speaking populace, a booming number of multiplexes and television channels, and a cinema-obsessed popular culture, India is a natural destination and partner for Hollywood studios.

Besides a burgeoning market, India possesses another alluring if sometimes overlooked quality: It is Asia’s most liberal market for foreign media companies, both in terms of investment regime and political climate. On both counts, Star Network relocated its Asia hub from Hong Kong to Mumbai last year (see here and here ), and India has become the most important country for News Corporation’s Asian regional business. As a recent PricewaterhouseCoopers report suggests, India – not China – is emerging as Asia’s media hub.Bollywood firms are similarly expanding their global reach, including in the United States. Reliance ADA Group, one of India’s headline industrial houses, is aiming to create a world-wide entertainment conglomerate. It has entered into a high-profile joint venture with Steven Spielberg to form a new movie studio and has cut deals with a number of Hollywood heavyweights to fund the development of scripts and jointly present proposals to studios. Last year, the company also entered into talks with Universal Studios about creating India’s first film-themed amusement park, as well as purchased a majority stake in IM Global, a Los Angeles-based company specializing in foreign-rights sales.Yet, as a February 2010 dispatch from the U.S. consulate in Mumbai makes clear, greater effort is required in order to exploit synergistic possibilities. Despite Hollywood’s growing interest in the Indian market as a way of offsetting its own sluggish box office sales, the cable notes that the U.S. movie industry has still not found a good working model for partnering with Bollywood. Hollywood films face constrained revenue potential in India, due to much lower box office prices compared to the U.S. but also because cinema-goers prefer big-budget action movies over Hollywood’s other fare.

U.S. and Indian studios have entered into a number of high-profile co-production deals, though to date none of them have enjoyed much commercial success. Given its vital market, U.S. studios will continue searching for the right formula for success. But the cable casts doubt that co-productions will pay off anytime soon given that Bollywood fears opening the door too widely to Hollywood’s presence.

Still, the cable points to useful synergies in a number of behind-the-scenes areas. The Indian film industry, which has rarely enjoyed global success beyond diasporic communities , would profit from Hollywood’s expertise in international marketing and distribution, as well as from sourcing U.S. production and technical talent. In turn, Hollywood would benefit from shipping animation and post-production work to India, taking advantage of its modern facilities and affordable workforce. One might add that Indian studios, which are leaders in experimenting with innovative ways of film distribution, like the Internet and mobile applications, could also be a valuable source of new business models for their Hollywood partners.

Yet even if bi-national movie collaborations have yet to live up to expectations, other interactions in the entertainment and media space are bearing fruit. India is one of the world’s fastest growing entertainment and media markets; a new forecast by the KMPG consulting firm puts its size at $28 billion by 2015 . The number of television-viewing households has exploded in recent years. The country also has the second largest pay-television market after China, with an estimated 105 million Indian households currently subscribing to terrestrial analogue cable, satellite and digital networks.

These headline numbers explain why so many U.S. media companies, including Walt Disney, News Corporation, Time Warner and Viacom have joined up with Indian partners to launch channels over the past several years. Last August, CBS Corporation likewise jumped into the game, hooking up with Reliance ADA Group to launch several English-language channels.

Although many of these venues simply offer a platform for U.S.-made fare, jointly-produced content is also beginning to emerge. Indeed, TV productions that combine U.S. and Indian strengths present a large opportunity, both in India and far beyond. According to the consultancy Media Partners Asia, there is a huge, largely untapped global market with a cultural affinity to television content from India, including Mauritians who watch Hindi-language TV and people in Saudi Arabia, which does not have a local media industry.

All of these developments signal a new era in global entertainment. Although U.S. and Indian government officials would not naturally think of it, enhanced partnership in the entertainment and media sector has important policy implications. Since Hollywood and Bollywood are successful exporters of cultural content, the two countries have a major shared interest in keeping global markets open for their products. Washington and New Delhi should thus craft a common approach on cultural market access and use their combined weight to advance it in international trade negotiations. True, the two governments have been at loggerheads in the Doha Round of multilateral trade talks. But a joint proposal on cultural access would focus U.S. and Indian energies on discrete, easily-managed trade issues in which the mutuality of economic benefit is self evident. Beyond its commercial ramifications, the initiative would have political value, further solidifying the U.S.-India partnership and providing an important example of joint leadership in the global economy.

With broadband penetration continuing to accelerate worldwide, the private sectors and governments in both countries similarly have a common interest in advancing the digital transformation of the global media industry. Washington and New Delhi should thus convene a summit of all relevant parties in both countries to consider implementing this objective on a joint basis. Real-time creative and production partnerships could also be enhanced by the development of advanced fiber-optic networks capable of transmitting data at a rate of one gigabyte per second between the two countries. Efforts now underway by U.S. and Indian universities to create collaborative network tools need to be encouraged by adequate government funding on both sides. Such networks would not only spur interactions in the entertainment and media field but in other innovation economy sectors as well.

Policymakers gathered at next month’s U.S.-India Strategic Dialogue in New Delhi will no doubt concentrate on matters like defense cooperation, the endgame in Afghanistan, and Pakistan’s volatility. But a focus on things like global entertainment collaborations is also worth their while, given the importance of private-sector and societal linkages in helping bind the bilateral relationship together .

* With apologies to the vibrant local-language film industries in southern India, Bollywood is used here as a shorthand signifying the Indian entertainment sector writ large, though strictly speaking it refers only to the Hindi-language movie industry centered in Mumbai.

Immigration Blog

Call Centers, Outsourcing, and Immigration

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Globalization is not a one-way street. It’s really a multi-lane superhighway with multiple entry and exit ramps. Contrary to the view that globalization means the loss of US jobs, we see that trade and immigration that involves Indians and Americans means jobs in both India and America and an increased variety of products and services for consumers.

The Anti-Outsourcing Hysteria of 2004

During the 2004 election campaign Democratic presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry famously declared that U.S. executives who set up operations in India were, in essence, committing treason. He labeled such executives “Benedict Arnold,” after the colonial officer who switched sides and joined the British during the American Revolution. Kerry said, “When I am President, and with your help, I’m going to repeal every benefit, every loophole, every reward that entices any Benedict Arnold company or CEO to take the money and the jobs overseas and stick the American people with the bill.”

It wasn’t just rhetoric. Local lawmakers began introducing anti-outsourcing legislation at a furious pace. In 2003 state legislators introduced fewer than 10 bills to restrict work from being performed overseas. By 2004, that number increased to over 100 such bills. State lawmakers who would never otherwise receive national attention suddenly found that by introducing a bill they could garner appearances on national television with Lou Dobbs on CNN.

The vast majority of the bills did not pass and the pace of such legislation eventually diminished. However, New Jersey passed legislation that forbids work to be performed outside the United States on contracts with the New Jersey government. A legal analysis by the National Foundation for American Policy found such state bills, including New Jersey’s, were likely unconstitutional because only the federal government, not individual state governments, possesses the authority to regulate international trade. (That study can be found here.) However New Jersey’s law was never challenged in court, in part, because the state provided a generous “grandfather” policy that allowed existing contract arrangements with the state to continue.

What’s Happened Since 2004?

The past 7 years have seen changes to globalization. Indian companies have continued to thrive with US-based customers but have adopted an approach that seeks to maintain a U.S. presence with more US workers, according to recent news reports. The goal is not to mollify critics, although that might be a side effect, but rather to be close to customers and supply better service at a reasonable cost.

A lengthy Washington Post article recently detailed the efforts of India call center operations to place more employees in the United States. The key part of the article explains: “India’s outsourcing giants — faced with rising wages at home — have looked for growth opportunities in the United States. But with Washington crimping visas for visiting Indian workers, some companies such as Aegis are slowly hiring workers in North America, where their largest corporate customers are based. In this evolution, outsourcing has come home.”

Conclusion

The bottom line is important. To remain profitable employers, including Indian companies, most compete both on price and the quality of service. The idea that employers hire only employees who will work the cheapest is belied by experience. A company will soon lose customers and profitability if it hires people whose only virtue is to work for little money. Such employees are unreliable and result in labeling a company as unreliable as well. Most importantly, companies will place employees where customers can be served most effectively.

The marketplace is addressing concerns about jobs going to India and U.S. workers “losing” in the process. Globalization is a boon to Americans, who enjoy great products and services made possible by globalization, such as iPods, iPhones, Androids, flat screen television sets, gaming devices and computers that be serviced with a phone call. New restrictions on either trade or immigration that inhibit the growth of such products and services will only make Americans poorer.

Defence And Strategic Affairs Blog

Non-Proliferation Lobby Analysts Seek to Corner India on CTBT

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By Rajiv Nayan

The international community is discussing how to bring India into the multilateral export control regimes. During his November 2010 visit to India, United States president Barack Obama made a few speeches and issued a joint statement with prime minister Manmohan Singh, which contained a number of significant policy pronouncements. The further accommodation of India in the U.S. and multilateral export control regimes was a notable feature of these pronouncements.

President Obama announced that the U.S. would support India’s candidature in the four multilateral export control regimes—the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG), the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR), the Australia Group and the Wassenaar Arrangement. India meets all the criteria for the membership of the MTCR. India may have to add a few items to its dual use technology control list called Special Chemical Organisms, Material, Equipment and Technology (SCOMET) to meet the membership criteria for the Australia Group. For membership in the NSG and Wassenaar Arrangement the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) puzzle needs to be solved. For India, the membership of the NSG is strategically relevant.

After Obama’s announcement supporting India’s membership, the French and the Russians also gave their support, and the idea gained ground that India may be given the membership incrementally. It was generally believed that the Australia Group would come first, followed by the MTCR and the NSG and the Wassenaar Arrangement in that order. However, the Indian establishment wants membership to come as a package. The incremental approach has an inherent danger: the membership of the strategically less relevant regimes would become possible but the membership of the strategically more relevant regime, namely, the NSG, would be problematic because of the NPT issue. The Wassenaar Arrangement’s NPT criteria would also have to be amended to enable Indian membership. As for the MTCR, politics, instead of criteria, may be used to delay or block India’s membership.

The Indian government’s position, by and large, seems to have the support of the Indian strategic community. Now the package approach is seen as being preferable to the incremental approach. As this message has been sent across the world, the concerned players may have two options: either deny India the membership of all the regimes or prepare to give it the membership of all the regimes. India’s new profile as a significant economy that is performing well even during difficult global financial times and as an equally important producer, client and consumer of advanced technology may force these actors to accommodate India in the regimes. Indeed, India’s entry would only enhance the effectiveness and efficiency of the regimes.

The process of the accommodation seems to have begun. Indian officials and those of relevant regimes countries have started interacting to facilitate India’s membership. Quite expectedly, analysts and non-governmental experts are being consulted over the way(s) to include India in the regimes. Although there is very little information about the official-level interactions, the non-governmental community has however begun to write about this. A good example is the short essay “NSG Membership: A Criteria-based Approach for Non-NPT States” by Pierre Goldschmidt for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Although the essay maintains a semblance of objectivity, the piece unfortunately reflects the prejudice prevalent in a section of the U.S. nonproliferation community. The very first paragraph opens with the cliché: ‘The nuclear policy community widely believes this [the 2008 NSG guidelines] exemption undermines the credibility of the global nuclear nonproliferation regime.’

Other non-proliferation writers cite the China-Pakistan deal for building additional reactors at the Chashma complex and Pakistan’s prevention of negotiations for the Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty (FMCT) in the Conference on Disarmament (CD). Even a novice in the field would know that Pakistan and China would have cut the deal irrespective of the India-specific exemptions. The Pakistan-China deal has been cut on the basis of some grandfatherly clause of a previous unseen agreement. Similarly, Pakistan would have found some excuse or the other to block FMCT negotiations. For example, this year, it has included U.S. support for India’s membership in multilateral export control regimes as another reason for blocking FMCT negotiations.

In fact, Pierre Goldschmidt has proposed a set of fourteen criteria for membership of the NSG for the non-NPT countries. He claims that these fourteen conditions can ‘correct the inequality created by the Indian exception’. Eleven of the criteria are part of the Indian policy while the other three look unrealistic and may not be taken seriously in India. In reality, these additional conditions are designed to constrain India. The old agenda of the anti-Indian non-proliferation lobby is being pushed through such new arguments. The argument is based on the grievance as to why India was allowed to get away so easily during the September 2008 special plenary session of the NSG. It is a case of sour grapes.

The argument in the Goldschmidt essay is to persist with the unfinished agenda of the July 2005 agreement of the anti-India non-proliferation lobby. Thus, the second criteria proposes that: “To become a full member of the NSG, a non-NPT state must…have in force a Voluntary Offer Agreement (VOA) with the IAEA whereby the non-NPT State undertakes to place all new nuclear facilities located outside existing military nuclear sites on the list of facilities to be safeguarded by the IAEA… .” This amounts to a reopening of the separation plan. This is unacceptable to India.

Goldschmidt’s essay claims that the India-US nuclear deal gave India some ‘guarantees’ that were not granted to other non-nuclear weapons states. Elsewhere in the essay, the author expects India to take up the obligations of other nuclear weapons states as defined by the NPT. This contradictory position dominates the article. The author, in fact, expects India to take on obligations which have not been assumed by members of the NSG. It is beyond comprehension as to why India should not have been allowed to develop nuclear weapons for its security. Has any other nuclear weapon country given this assurance to gain NSG membership?

Similarly, has the United States ratified the CTBT to retain its membership of the NSG? Did China give this undertaking before joining the NSG? When China was made a member, it was in the news for supplying nuclear and missile items to non-NPT and Non-Nuclear Weapons States. Interestingly, afterwards, not only the U.S. government but also a predominant section of the U.S. non-proliferation community went mute, Chinese proliferation was downplayed and China was declared to be an important stakeholder of the non-proliferation system. Any signature without ratification basically means nothing. So, criteria 8 and 9 are meaningless. Actually, the CTBT is a dead issue. The U.S. nonproliferation community has failed to revive the treaty. Flogging the dead horse only spreads dirt and stink. The treaty and related phenomena need a quiet burial.

To resolve the challenge posed by the NPT criteria, the best solution would be to amend the NPT and accommodate India as a nuclear weapon state. However, this does not appear likely in the near future. Pending membership of the NPT, India’s good standing with the treaty may be factored in. India, after becoming a nuclear weapons state, declared its intention to unilaterally follow articles I, III and VI of the NPT. Targeting India seems to be the only motive of this essay; the set of criteria is not relevant for Israel because it is a different case. For NSG membership, it will not modify its strategy of ambiguous nuclear weapon status. The non-proliferation community should avoid recommending any steps which would benefit a rabid proliferator like Pakistan. Continuing to do so will further undermine the credibility of the non-proliferation community.

(This article originally appeared at www.idsa.in . IDSA and USINPAC are content partners.)

Defence And Strategic Affairs Blog

How not to Exit Afghanistan

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According to Henry Kissinger (“How to Exit Afghanistan,” Washington Post, June 8, 2011), four conditions must be met to make the exit strategy viable: “A cease-fire; withdrawal of all or most American and allied forces; the creation of a coalition government or division of territories among the contending parties (or both); and an enforcement mechanism.” None of the four appears viable at present. Nor do these conditions look achievable in the 2014-15 time frame that the exit strategy is planned to be completed.

As had been widely anticipated, the Taliban has launched a vigorous spring offensive and the US-led NATO-ISAF forces have retaliated with equal force. The Pakistan army has apparently learnt nothing from the killing of Osama bin Laden and continues to pretend that his presence at Abbottabad was a mystery. Instead of reinvigorating its efforts to eliminate terrorists who are undermining Pakistan’s security, the army is still holding off from launching the long-delayed offensive against the TTP in North Waziristan. Meanwhile, reports of US drone attacks against terrorists along the Af-Pak border continue to trickle in virtually on a daily basis. While it is early days yet in this year’s military confrontation, a continuing stalemate can be foreseen.

A U.S. Congressional study report, released on June 8, 2011, has found that nation-building efforts in Afghanistan are floundering as the massive economic aid programme lacks proper oversight and breeds corruption. It says that most local officials are incapable of “spending wisely”. It also says that there is little evidence to support the view that even the “politically pleasing” short term results will be sustainable once the draw-down begins. The report notes that the Afghan economy could easily slip into a depression as it is mainly a “war-time” economy that is a “huge distortion”. It is well known, of course, that the U.S. military conducts its own development programme in the areas cleared of the Taliban to win the people’s support, irrespective of the aid programmes approved by the Afghan government.

The two-year old efforts to move towards reconciliation with the so-called “good Taliban” have not made much headway. Secret talks being mediated by Germany between the U.S. government and Tayyab Agha, said to be a close confidante of Mullah Mohammed Omar, are unlikely to achieve a major breakthrough as no one is quite sure whether Agha is actually negotiating on behalf of Mullah Omar or whether the Taliban are simply using the talks as a ploy to buy time. The Haqqani shoora, that enjoys ISI support and patronage, is not part of the reconciliation process.

While regional efforts to secure peace in Afghanistan remain haphazard, these are likely to slowly gather momentum as the date for the draw-down of forces approaches. During a visit to Kabul in mid-May, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh endorsed President Karzai’s “process of national reconciliation” and said, “We hope that Afghanistan will be able to build a framework of regional cooperation that will help its nation-building efforts.”

There is so far no sign that the U.S. and its allies are planning to make substantive efforts to put in place a viable international peacekeeping force to help the Afghan government to maintain security after their own exit from Afghanistan in 2014. If this is not done, the Taliban will gradually seize one province after another, with covert help from Pakistan, and will eventually force the capitulation of the government – paving the way for their triumphant return to power. Conflict termination on such terms would signify the failure of President Obama’s exit strategy.