The return of the AAP : The Hindu

Over the last month the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) juggernaut has been busy celebrating itself, narcissistically pleased as it looked at the electoral mirror. It has already become the majoritarian phenomenon that critics feared it would become. As a policy formulator, the regime seemed to love spectacles. It was delighted with recommendations from world leaders and the diaspora. Yet it knew that the context was changing in Delhi. The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), instead of destructing itself fully, as many critics hoped it would, has been reinventing itself. It is today a formidable prospect in Delhi. Amit Shah, the formidable strategist of electoral chess, seems to have been outplayed by the AAP. There is a fable here that we must understand.

Politics in India does not get exhausted by current parties. The Congress, the BJP and the Communist Party of India (Marxist) are conventional structures which have no new ideas, styles, or experiments to offer. When the AAP emerged, it created a politics which was different in style and substance. It played out its existence as a protest movement and as a party. Its success was so overpowering that spectators could not decide whether it was a cameo performance or a full-blooded new movie. For a few stunning months, the AAP created hope before destructing itself in a predictable fashion.

What kept it alive was its supporters — its rank and file enthusiasts for whom politics had become the vocation. Behind it were groups of shrewd advisers who worked to stem the rot. These groups reflected something deeper in politics. They were symptomatic of the need for a different politics, an imagination and an organisation which could go beyond the noise of current politics to the silences that haunted Indian democracy.

Possibility of new politics

In its first foray, the AAP provided for the possibility of a new politics. First, it stoked an enthusiasm for politics. I want to emphasise that a pursuit of power is different from a passion for politics. One is an act of self-aggrandisement; the second a creative search for the public good. What marked the AAP was a younger generation of idealists who felt moved by politics and its possibilities.

Second, the AAP did not talk in terms of the standard vocabulary of parliamentarians —of parliamentary privilege or legislative priority — but attempted to create a new language of empowerment. AAP’s was not the old legislative style of politics where politicians proposed and disposed of issues. Here the citizens defined politics as fresh acts of problem-solving. It was this approach that got superficially understood as anarchistic. Our politicians were correct in fearing it and condemning it as anarchism in the original sense; one which sought to empower communities rather than the state. This is why Narendra Modi equated the AAP’s anarchism with Naxals as a threat to the state.

There are dangers of such an experimentalism to the AAP. One makes mistakes and mistakes can lead to a chain reaction of errors which can become tragicomic. But the beauty of the AAP was that it held through the crisis and became sure-footed, even nimble. The leadership realised that Delhi was critical for its future and it apologised for the error of abandoning power in Delhi earlier.

People also realised that the BJP was no great problem-solver. The party preferred shows of strength to acting normatively on that strength. Gradually the AAP’s scorecard, while not impressive, looked credible. The citizens of Delhi, especially the marginalised and parts of the middle class, felt it deserved a second chance.

The BJP is now clear that the AAP, not the Congress, is its real opponent in Delhi. Such a confrontation adds to the magic of the electricity of politics. Democracy feels more justified when the underdog threatens the dominant party.

The BJP’s nomination of Kiran Bedi as the chief ministerial candidate was an attempt to mimic the AAP’s politics by calling an outsider to lead the party. In an ironic way, Ms Bedi appeared mechanical, a gudiya of the party, unwelcome to many in the BJP cadre. She was as stolid as Arvind Kejriwal was effervescent. She seems happier with a lathicharge than the politics of persuasion and negotiation. Worse, she is an indicator that the BJP has been outfought by Mr. Kejriwal.

Future of the AAP

It is clear that the AAP is back. The final numbers can be totalled up tomorrow, but surveys are clear that this party is here to stay in Delhi. The question now is not about the election but about the party’s future behaviour and strategy.

As a sympathiser who wishes to be both critical and constructive, I hope the AAP will be continuously inventive. Its idea of an ombudsman for the party was a creative one. Corruption and drugs were two great issues that it raised in a brilliant manner. It also raised issues about how much should one pay for education, water, electricity if they are to remain public goods. Politics as the search for public goods must now look at services in terms of a new audit of access, quality, participation, everydayness, instead of mere economics. The citizens as user and consumer must have a say in the nature of service provided.

In the first few months, the AAP set the tone and style for such audits. It emphasised that audits in a slum and audits in the middle class areas have to be metered differently. It asked that corporations like Reliance treat the oil they process as part of a commons of resources. These were path-breaking themes which went beyond World Bank pieties.

The AAP also has to rescue livelihood issues from technocratic and managerial notions of the economy which seek to emphasise security and profit. By raising the logics of livelihood, it raises the question of how the marginalised people in a society perceive the mainstream definition of a problem. The idea of livelihood is more complex than employment. Livelihood links life, lifeworld, life cycle, lifestyle to issues of access, quality, and participation. It opens citizenship out to the world of problem-solving instead of treating every problem as a technical answer to a technical question to be solved only by a technocrat.

One sees this most clearly in the debates about nuclear energy. By raising the debates in Kudankulam to a national status, the AAP has showed that local problems are not locally bounded. It argued that fishermen as citizens had the right to respond to the location of a nuclear plant; that their protest did not verge on nuclear illiteracy but showed that citizens could raise technical issues rationally and passionately. The AAP’s ombudsman, Admiral (retired) Laxminarayan Ramdas, has an impressive track record on linking security to issues of livelihood, sustainability and democracy. The politics of livelihood and sustainability should be the party’s running preoccupation.

The party needs to realise that reworking party politics is not enough. It has to reinvent the city, not as a smart city, but as an inclusive urbanism which understands the role of the migrant and the power of informal society.

The party must also realise that the culture of politics needs a theory of politics of culture. It must take stands on issues like gender, religion, science on an active case-to-case basis, according to context.

Deep down the AAP must learn to listen to the silent screams of politics and amplify and translate them. By moving beyond the politics of the gaze, which created structures of planning and surveillance, to the politics of listening, it becomes open to the language of suffering, obtaining a sense of the diversity of world views. Its very inventiveness and everydayness make it the party of the future. The challenge before it is to sustain this politics of hope. In redefining politics and reinventing democracy lies the real future of the AAP.

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India’s tango with the great powers : The Hindu

by Srinath raghavan

The latest trilateral meeting between the foreign ministers of India, Russia and China was held on shifting strategic sands. It would be no exaggeration to say that the triangular relationship between these countries is entering a new phase — one that differs significantly from the past. India’s ability to navigate this unfolding terrain will not only impinge on its relationships with Russia and China, but also on its wider, international objectives and choices.

The drivers of change in this trilateral relationship are primarily geopolitical and economic. The civil war in Ukraine shows no sign of abating, nor indeed does Russia’s involvement in the conflict. The resurgence of the fighting in eastern Ukraine has left the peace talks in tatters. And Russian support for the rebels has ensured that the Ukrainian forces cannot gain the upper hand. Indeed, the Ukrainians have suffered heavily in the recent fighting. This has led to a chorus of calls in the West to arm the Ukrainian forces. Although U.S. President Barack Obama has demurred against this, several influential voices — including Mr. Obama’s nominee for Defence Secretary, Ashton Carter — have come out in favour of providing heavy weapons to Ukraine.

Any such move will lead Russian President Vladimir Putin to dig in his heels still deeper. Russia already faces a raft of economic sanctions imposed by the European Union (EU) and the U.S. The Russian economy is apparently wilting under the one-two punch of these sanctions and the free-fall in oil prices. The projected slowdown in growth, the depleting foreign exchange reserves, the rising inflation, the downgrading of Russia’s credit rating to junk status: all point to a serious economic crunch. The economic sanctions have already led Russia to tilt closer towards China. The talk of providing weapons to Ukraine or imposing further sanctions will accentuate this shift.

The second driver of change is the re-energised relationship between the U.S. and India. The U.S.-India Joint Strategic Vision put out during Mr. Obama’s visit not only singles out the South China Sea dispute but also commits India and the U.S. to work together with other democracies in the Indian Ocean and Asia-Pacific region. The wisdom of issuing such a statement is debatable. Are we staking our credibility before creating capabilities? Does it needlessly restrict our room for diplomatic manoeuvre in the event of a crisis in the South China Sea? New Delhi insists that a strategic embrace of the U.S. need not limit its relations with China. While this may be true in some generic sense, we should not forget that every move on the chessboard of international politics will invite countermoves. We do not yet live in a world that is free of consequences.

India-Russia relationship

The cumulative impact of these two trends points to a new, emerging configuration of the triangular relationship between India, Russia and China. Going forward, Russia-China ties might become the strongest side of the triangle. From India’s standpoint, this is historically unprecedented. New Delhi’s strategic ties with Moscow first took shape in the late 1950s. The backcloth to the blossoming of this relationship was provided by India’s deteriorating relationship with China owing to the disputed boundary. At the same time, ideological and strategic ties between Moscow and Beijing were coming apart. Although the Russians played an ambivalent role during the war of 1962, Indo-Soviet ties, especially in defence, continued to tighten.

The clashes between Soviet and Chinese forces in 1969 led Moscow to propose a treaty of friendship with India. The treaty was eventually consummated at the height of the Bangladesh crisis of 1971. This crisis also saw the American opening towards Maoist China, which subsequently led to a strategic nexus aimed at the Soviet Union. While New Delhi and Moscow were pulled together by their shared concerns about Beijing, India found its choices being circumscribed in other areas as well. For instance, after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, India publicly supported the Russians, while the Americans and the Chinese covertly assisted Pakistan and the Mujahideen against the Red Army.

By the time the Cold War drew to an end, there was a rapprochement between Russia and China. The collapse of the Soviet Union also led India to look more towards the West. Yet, at no point, was there a possibility of a Russia-China entente of the kind that is now crystallising. Nor did the normalisation of the Russia-China relationship outweigh Indo-Russian ties. Most importantly, the developing relationship between Moscow and Beijing did not impact on New Delhi’s immediate interests.

All this appears to be changing. In June 2014, Russia announced the lifting of its long-standing embargo on arms sales to Pakistan. In November, Russia and Pakistan signed their first ever military cooperation agreement. The Russians argue that if India can buy defence equipment from the U.S., why couldn’t they sell to Pakistan. The problem for India, of course, is the strategic import of such moves by Russia. Then again, we must realise that our growing proximity to the U.S. reduces our leverage over Russia. As does Russia’s increasing tilt towards China. As always, a bit of history can be useful.

Back in the 1960s, the Russians first mooted the idea of selling military equipment to Pakistan. The Indian response was swift and sharp. In a meeting with Soviet Premier Alexei Kosygin, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi bluntly said that “nothing should be done from which it could be inferred that the Soviet Union treated India at par with Pakistan.” India, she added, was “especially worried with regard to Soviet help [to Pakistan], as such help might neutralise what we have obtained from the Soviet Union.” Moscow promptly backed off. The Russians did so because they needed Indian support in their own problems with China. Moreover, India — unlike Pakistan — was not an American ally.

Security architecture

The strategic picture now is rather different. Discussions in the recent trilateral meeting underscored the complexities that will confront India. The joint statement issued in Beijing makes the usual noises about the desirability of a multipolar world. Yet, several points need to be unpacked. The statement calls for a security architecture in Asia that must be “open, inclusive, indivisible and transparent”. The use of “indivisible” is interesting. This refers to the American “pivot” and attempts at rallying its allies. By contrast, the India-U.S. statement supports — at least rhetorically — the U.S.-led efforts. The Chinese and Russians have clearly taken note.

Things would be easy for India if it confronted stark choices between the U.S. and China. Consider the position taken by the three countries on climate change. The statement hopes that in 2015, a legally-binding instrument would be arrived at on the basis of “equity, common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities.” This fits with India’s negotiating position so far. But the fact is that the U.S. and China have already agreed upon a plan that effectively carves out an exceptional space for themselves and leaves little for countries like India to work with. This is a nice example of the “G2” solutions for which India will have to watch out.

Another instance of this might be in international trade. The joint statement affirms that the World Trade Organization (WTO) must remain the “preeminent global forum trade”. This reflects their concern about U.S. efforts to create new regional trading blocs in Europe and Asia. The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) being negotiated by the Obama administration aims to bring into force a very different kind of Free Trade Agreements (FTA) in Asia-Pacific, which will bring on to the trade agenda a new set of norms and standards. The Chinese have been explicitly kept out of it by the Americans — in the hope that China will eventually have to come to terms with this trade agenda. Indeed, as the TPP negotiations near completion, the Chinese have informally conveyed to the U.S. their desire to get on board. As in climate change, a U.S.-China convergence on this issue will hurt Indian interests.

Then again, there are issues where the three countries’ interests seem closely aligned — and in opposition to the U.S. They have agreed to support a U.N. General Assembly (UNGA) resolution prohibiting intervention and “forced regime change”. This cuts against the idea of Responsibility to Protect (R2P), which was introduced by the western powers through the UNGA and sought to be built up as a norm governing interventions.

India’s relations with the great powers, then, are entering a period of unprecedented complexity. There are no pat solutions or simple trade-offs. And every move we make will be consequential.

(Srinath Raghavan is Senior Fellow, Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi.)

http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-opinion/indias-tango-with-the-great-powers/article6866983.ece