SAARC Syndrome: Asia's Burden

re:#116 by ahmedmadani
Ahmad Madani Sahib,
Hope u are keeping a good health.
The world is going global. The 4 Cs are pushing this. Communication, Capital, Corporations and Consumers (not my own; i learnt it from a website!).
India has a large consumer base, cheap, skilled workers. Communication has bridged to a level these workers can now sit in offices in Bangalore, Gurgaon, Delhi or Madras and do the stuff that was once done in Silicon valley or Dallas. MNCs are coming to India because they find it profitable. It is that simple.
If Pakistan can come out of its jehadi mindset, project itself as a progressive society (like Turkey) and join this global agenda, it too will reap the fruit of globalisation. Otherwise there is a good chance it will be left behind.
Pakistan should open up to trade with India and join hands with India at all levels. There is no need to stupidly try to project Pak as an equal rival at every level. People who know the realities are not impressed. Pak keeps shifting the debate away from trade, free market, cooperation to Kashmir. This is not good for Pak.
India too is an upstart in this area of freemarket and globalisation. Taiwan has more GDP growth than India today because it has understood how trade and globalisation works better than India`s babus have.
Sridhar

re:#115 by Ranger
Gujjubania,
India`s GDP might have grown in the last several years but your brain has not.
You seem to suggest in your post to HP that Indian Army is an occupation army in Kashmir. I am sure he and others who have never doubted this would be happy to learn this from u.
I have a different take on this.
Indian Army`s presence in Kashmir is warranted only as long as there are militants coming across the border. Militancy within the state has to be tackled at various levels (economic, political etc) and presence of a large army is not needed. It is time IA phased out of Kashmir slowly.
Sridhar

re:#112 by HP
In India, democracy is not perfect. It is not even well managed and there is a lot of muscle power, money power in use, especially in states of Bihar, UP (and in the so called BIMARU) states. Education level of people are low, so they keep electing scums, criminals.
And, u yourself have listed insurgencies in some states, all of which point to disenchantment with the present state of affairs.
Does that mean democracy has failed? Heck, no.
It only means democracy as it exists in India needs to be futher strengthened.
Bihar just demonstrated that. It rejected Laloo Yadav`s casteist party and selected a party that is committed to (at least in its election manifesto) economic development.
The power of democracy lies in consensus of the people. The change is not swift. It is a slow, painful process, almost invisible. The fruits of change are visible only in decades. India of 2005 is vastly different from India of the 50s or 60s. It is a much more democratic socielty with a free press, cable TV networks and 24 hour newschannels that are not afraid to take on the high and mighty and a booming middle class that is setting the tone for discourse.

Let us turn to somebody who is more informed (about economic issues) and less biased that you are. This is what Shahik Javed Burki had to say:
(http://www.dawn.com/2005/12/06/op.htm)
(One example should suffice the way the Indians have brought different segments of the society into the mainstream of politics. The Dalits were once called the ‘untouchables’ by the higher class Indians. The British, by identifying them in the schedules to the laws they devised to govern India, gave them some protection against social and cultural discrimination. They thus came to be called the Scheduled Castes. Mahatma Gandhi found that term offensive. Believing that by simply changing the way people are identified their position can be improved, he began to call them Harijans, the children of God. Now the Dalits are a powerful force in the Indian political system. They govern several Indian states.

The Indian system, therefore, has proved to be remarkably accommodating of diversity and new developments. It is inclusionary. In Pakistan, on the other hand, the opposite is true. Society uses many devices to narrow the focus of governance rather than expand it. For nearly two decades, the people who ruled the country would not hold a population census since that would have signalled a move in the political centre of gravity from the rural to the urban areas. The landed aristocracy was not prepared to surrender political power to towns and cities.

Similarly, the religious establishment has been singularly exclusionary by forcing those in power to declare communities who profess to be Muslim to be non-Muslim minorities since they are not followers of their interpretation of Islam. The political system was not allowed to develop out of discourse; those who wished to bring about change looked to the barrel of the gun to impose it. This meant constant violation of the system.

The only time the Indian constitution was violated was by Mrs Indira Gandhi who attempted to sideline it by assuming emergency powers in the early 1970s. “The proposal to dilute democracy came from no less a statesman than Indira Gandhi, the prime minister of India” writes Sen in the aforementioned book. “The firmness with which one of the poorest electorates in the world rejected the proposed move to authoritarianism had a salutary effect in discouraging other temptations in that direction. After being voted out of office, Indira Gandhi changed tack, strongly reasserted her earlier commitment to democracy, and regained the prime ministership in the general elections of 1980.”).
Burki is talking about 2 things here. One is the slow upliftment of the dalits through a political process that is almost invisible to most of us. Dalits are still gut wretchingly poor but the system that is in place in India today has allowed them to slowly integrate with the society (that was prevented in the past in a casteist India) and even fight out against oppression. A lot of voices of protest emanating from Dalits is in fact a good thing. It shows they are now finidng a voice where they had none in the past.
The other thing Burki talks about is how Indian electorates chastised Mrs Gandhi after she violated the constitution in the 70s. I remember she lost to a political buffoon by name of Raj Narayan. She never forgot that humiliation and never ever tampered with the constitution again.
Democracy is a slow process but the only way in India to govern a diverse group if cultures and subcultures.
With a good system in place, India is well geared to take care of newer challenges, like the one you mentioned.
If i were u, i would worry about the military dictatorship of Pakistan that has cornered all power, filled the civilian posts with military or ex-military elite and has not allowed any political party to come to power. This is a recipe for disaster waiting to happen.
Sridhar

ahmedmadani....you got brain tumor ? My best wishes for your rapid recovery.

Re: # 106

Mr. Arjun you have developed special ability to look at good news from India and magnify and bad news from IRP .
This big companies 2 billion dollars is nothing much its just changes in their pockets. You know USA govt has committed to give 3 billion( over five years) dollars as friend of people who are front and hunting terrorist. That comed to 600 million dolars/ year. India is 6 times bigger in number. So 6x 0.6 million=3.6 B/year. So we have been getting more dollars than India. So do not give figures. When bill gets home he will forget about it. Big people go to poor countries like in India, when they see so many ppor people they feel they should help poor people. But that just slogan , a show.

Also this help is not real as they will give 2 billion and take out profit at 10 billion out. They just exploit poor Indians and fools get happy as they have little job and they become happy. India is good country and It will be always developing country. I have heard only rich people are in IT business in India and poor people and not allowed to get computer education. Sorry state. pOOR iNDIAN IS HAPPY AS HE GOT LITTLE JOB TO TYPE ON keyboard and carrying on shoulder fat Bill gates and many other rich people. Sorry indians who have no food and will go to moves an and feel proud of their poverty and dirt poor and still arrogent as if they are rich. Bill gate is exploiting India and Indian happy. Big fund made of Indian shares is more controlled by bill gates and his wife foundation, some fund IFF or something like that it is close end. So bill puts little money and over 1 biion dollers of NRI is controlled by Mr. Gates. That fund made over 100% two years back. It meeans poor indians work and pull human carriages and bill gate foundation lots of money. What is meant by closed fund ? controlled by Bill gates is it not. Intel and all others will be killed soon by chinese computer companies as they can produce all at much less money. Soon china is going to take over IT and all indians in USA will be without job and I feel sorry for that. Still you talk of IRP as ``Paki``. So stop hate wright or owner will stop you permanantly. Whenever in this nice morning I drink my Keniyan tea ( No cheat cheap indian smuggled tea- neverand never Indian tea here consumed) but when I read your comments It just silly.
I wish you good luck though yu never wish good luck to your ``Paki`` friends. Sorry poor Arjun.

HP mamu....all that mao-ist stuff and Kashmir is nothing. India has tackled a much more difficult Punjab-Khalistan issue. If it makes you happy keep chanting `Kashmir` , `Kashmir`.....makes no difference. Kashmir problem began in 1989. Since then India`s population has grown from 800 million to 1.1 billion. Per capita incomes have quadrupled. Literacy has almost doubled. Poverty has been halved. Number of soldiers killed over the last 16 years in Kashmir is 2000. Not much for a country of India`s size. Indeed US has lost more in 2 years in Iraq than India has in 16 years in Kashmir.

Its funny if you think `India is barely holding on to Kashmir`. India is very easily holdong on to Kashmir. We have 1 soldier for every 5 Kashmiri muslims - male , female and children. If the issue ever reaches a breaking point , all our boys need to do is shootl 5 Kashmiris each. Easy dont ya think ? And trust me , we are very fanatical about somethings like holding on to territory - will do whatever it takes. We can be utterly shameless sometimes. ;)

Why do we have 700,000 soldiers in Kashmir ? For one 700,000 is no big deal for a country for 1.1 billion which manitains a constant military of over 2 million and an equally large paramilitary.(A very useful source of employment for the people.)

Second , there is a constant strength maintained of 2000 terrorists from Pakistan (kill one , two more arrive from Rawalpindi)..and these guys are spread out through out the valley and mingle with the local population. So traditional military strategy demands that when the enemy is not in one spot but mixed with the given population , then to minismise risks , one must have a sufficiently large military in a decent enough ratio to the population.

If all the 2000 terrorists get together in a single spot and attack as one , we will need no more than 10 soldiers to finish them off. To handle the artillery and stuff.

That is why US is suffering in Iraq. Although there are no more than 3000 insurgents , they are spread through out the country and only 150,000 US troops to manage them.

But all this should be obvious to a moderately intelligent cabbie like yourself. Why do you act so dumb ?

As far as this mao-ist problem is concerned - India is tackling this by employing people from the same areas as the mao-ists into its paramilitaries. Its no big deal to be honest. Its pretty much at a preliminary stage. Last time and the only time it became full blown and mao-ists actually took control of a territory was way back decades ago in a district called Naxalbari. Then the army was called in the all the maoists/marxists were finished off , killed - in a day or two.Shit happens in the badlands of India - Bihar etc.. Let the people who live there handle it. I have never been there , have no reason to go there. As long as B`lore is completely under control , I`m happy.

#112 by HP on December 7, 2005 2:47pm PT


India barely have control over Kashmir


The abandoned bodies of pakis soldiers on the mountains of Kargil suggest otherwise..

Kashmir banega Pakistan..(add the thing pakis say for allah-willing)...

Hydrophobia Skunk wants to shadow box with arguments I never made so he has to forcibly ascribe them to me.

The interesting part is that even though Typhoid Mary and India would blame Pakistan and ISI for the problems in MP,AP, Bihar etc., they still don’t have solution to deal with either Pakistan or the Maoist insurgency in the Red corridor.

That shows the bankruptcy of the political thoughts in the Indian government and the failure of the Indian democracy in every area.

The problem is that by taking a sequence of irrational decisions starting from the nuke test in 1998, the Indian politicians have even cut the Indian army’s hands to deal with Pakistan in any way. Thus the quandary they are in now. India barely have control over Kashmir and now another large part of India is gearing to fall to the reds in the red corridor. In the meantime, Indian army just keeps killing Indians.

What a Hindu foresight.

How do you define losers?

http://www.chowk.com/show_article.cgi?aid=00006046&channel=civic%20center

“In Bihar, Andhra Pradesh and even in Karnataka, Maoists are steadily thriving. Their influence among the lowly and the dispossessed is growing by the day. In Bihar, out of 38 districts, over twelve are now thoroughly Maoist-infested.
According to an intelligence Report supplied to the Home Ministry, after a long fratricidal war, the CPI (Maoists), the Peoples War Group (PWG) and the Maoist Communist Centre (MCC) merged in 2004 to establish what they called a ``Red Corridor``. The idea, apparently, is to establish a ``liberated zone`` stretching from the ``Siliguri corridor” of West Bengal to Andhra Pradesh and consisting of districts in Bihar, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Orissa and Madhya Pradesh.”

This insurgency which clearly is spread over more area and population than Kashmir speaks volumes about the success of the Indian democracy and “Hindu catching up to it”. It is just a matter of time before it will all be blamed on Pakistan and ISI.

Basically Pakistan has become a scapegoat for problems in India. It is easy to blame Pakistan then to figure out how to resolve these issues.

If the talk of the “Red Corridor” is correct than we are talking about another country within India that would be larger than Pakistan in area and population both. Looking at the “Red corridor” problem, Kashmir issue is more like a mustard seed.

What Typhoid Mary has to say about this…the ISI is leading the Moaists, PWG and the MCC…. Go figure… typical Hindu mentality….

#107 any new websites discovered recently? i will warn you against visiting the naxalite ones..FBI keeps tabs. BTW there is also a huge problem in Gadchiroli district near Nagpur

for your enjoyment ;-)

http://www.rediff.com/news/2005/jun/20naxal.htm

arjun_m #108
Hindus must not have any concept of land, Muslims can kill all challengers for gaining control of Muslim land which is anything where the Muslims exceed the nonMuslims by one. India preserves the demography of J&K, Pakistan can settle humongous numbers of nonKashmiris in PoK- different strokes for different folks. The extent to which Indian intelligensia has bought into this double standard is amazing. HydroPhobia skunk is really worried that Indians are catching on to it.

#107 by HP on December 7, 2005 12:33pm PT

You forgot to add :``Kashmir banega Pakistan``...

Typhoid Mary’s post #105 is an example of what people call “hindu mentality”. You object to it, call it in bad taste of may even racist but posts like one we see here show what is really meant by Hindu mentality. The crux of the whole mentality is that “Hindus are always right” and we (hindu) can blame any one for our own follies.

The insurgencies in the Northeast are going on since the time immemorial or at least before Bangladesh even came into existence. Before Bangladesh, it was blamed on China and now Bangladesh and ISI agents in Bangladesh are responsible for it. This shows the pathetic mentality that is a huge reason for India’s problems all over India. Why India fails to resolve internal Indian issues? The answer is the mentality that is depicted here by Typhoid Mary.

It is not only the Northeast, AP had problems since 1950s. Kashmir is unresolved problem since 1947. People like Typhoid Mary would blame everyone for the problems but their own government. Have Indians ever asked their own governments why they have failed to resolve problems in NE, South and Kashmir? It is not they never had the opportunity. They had plenty of time to do that and they never bothered because it is easy to blame others for the problems.

Now it is another stupid thing to assume that others will not take advantage of the problems. Pakistan has a legitimate reason to interfere in Kashmir but what happened in Bangladesh? There was probably not going to be a Bangladesh w/o Indian help but who lost Bengali gratitude? It is India and to the extent now that Typhoid Mary is claiming that ISI runs that country.

There is no denying Pak-India animosity and I think only an idiot would assume that your enemy would not take advantage of your problems.

Pakistan had internal problems in Balochistan. Govt tried to blame it on India but despite not being a democratic country and all that, Pakistanis did not buy it and it is now a purely internal problem that will have to be solved by the Pakistani and I think they realize it. But what happens in India? There is no serious effort in India to resolve problems in Northeast, AP or in Kashmir.
Sending in the army is the only resolution this “great” democratic country has for every political problem.

“It is bad policy to give away land won in war,”

Another example of “Hindu mentality”. China gave up Indian land and sure it was bad Chinese policy.

India needs to hand over Kashmir to Pakiland on a platter if it has any chance of growing economically.....NOT..

$10bn, 11 wks: Global majors home in India
Our Economy Bureau / New Delhi December 08, 2005
In the last 11 weeks, international information technology majors and non-resident Indians have announced investment plans of around $10 billion in the country.

In the last seven weeks, global players including Cisco, Intel, AMD and Microsoft have committed to investing $6.85 billion in India over the next three to five years. These investments span the entire gamut of IT services — software, microprocessors and networking equipment.

Microsoft Corporation today announced its decision to invest $1.7 billion in India over the next four years. Earlier this week, Intel Corporation, the world’s largest chip-maker, announced an investment package of $1.05 billion over the next five years.

To complete the loop, a consortium of Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) and SemIndia (a group of NRIs) and Indian Equipment Manufacturing company (another NRI consortium) announced plans to set up separate fabrication units.

It is bad policy to give away land won in war, on pretext of international image. International image of any country which does that would be mud - in India`s case it would only encourage foreign missionaries and ISI`s friends in Bangladesh to heat up the insurgencies in the North east, the Pakistanis to provide more support to the Khalistan-minded and China to beef up the Naxalites(instead of disowning them as it did recently).


As it is the mercenaries fighting in J&K come from many countries - India would be making its citizens even more vulnerable by rewarding their efforts. People sitting safely in the protection of a foreign military alliance that defends its own can recommend that to India without consequences, but not an Indian in India.

India doesn`t owe any foreign country or the world community anything, it owes its own citizens something. It doesn`t owe its citizens to let them cease being its citizens, it owes them every possible other opportunity which it is well-placed to provide.

Demanding justice and peace for the people of J&K is one thing - but for a democracy to give concessions to the world view of those Pakistanis who are actively sabotaging free political process not only in J&K but in Afghanistan and Pakistan and perhaps Iraq and Bangladesh, will be criminal.

And for purpose should India give legitimacy to those Muslims who consider it a matter of principle to throw out nonMuslims living among them as a prerequisite to asserting their rights. Was India allowing Muslims to throw out nonMuslims from Pakistan (and now Bangladesh) not enough concession to Muslim rights that Indians must now encourage the cleansing of nonMuslims from J&K as well.