Date: Sat, 1 Feb 1997 18:41:27 -0800
From: djones-AT-uclink.berkeley.edu (rakesh bhandari)
Subject: M-I: India: South Asian cooperation


The views of political observers regarding our top bureaucrats were
already cited. Most disturbing is that the virus has infected the
judiciary, from the bottom to the Supreme Court at the apex. A very large
proportion of judges is willing to pass verdicts for a "consideration." As
Gramsci (1971: 246) remarked, "lapses in the administration of justice
makes an especially disastrous impact on the public." India is only a
short distance away from the nadir.
        From all indications, the "crisis of governance" is likely to deepen
in the immediate future. A slide toward Hindu fascism and growing anarchy
appears to be barely resistible. On the communal question, the secularists
and leftists are trying to stall the BJP through mass meetings, electoral
alliances, cultural programs, etc. As Alam (1991) put it,   the organized
Left is not psychologically or intellectually equipped
to enter into political activity when the terms of intervention -
language, debate, and activity - are not set by them but by the
oppressors. This is particularly so when the idiom and language of
discourse are fundamentally of a non-class nature.

     The effective answer lies in bringing to the fore meaningful, class-
based political issues. In this context, it is worth recalling that the two
communities fought shoulder to shoulder in the Great Revolt of 1857
against British rule. To quote from the British opposition leader,
Disraeli, accusing the then government at the House of Commons on July 27,
1857: "For the first time in the history of your rule, you have the Hindu
and Mahomedan making common cause against you" (cited by Chaudhuri, 1957:
281). In the Khilafat movement, during Gandhi's non-cooperation movement,
in the Naval "mutiny" of 1946, in the course of innumerable strikes by
workers, and in militant peasant struggles to this day, Hindus and Muslims
in India have acted in unison.

     Various powerful grass-roots movements are spreading out all over the
country. Since the late 1960s, militant peasant struggles by Marxists have
surfaced in West Bengal, Bihar, and Andhra and remain strong in the last
two states (Gupta, 1993). Another significant force is the "Alliance for
Liberation" at Chattisgarh, a tribal belt in Madhya Pradesh. It combines
the roles of a trade union among casual workers, who have been engaged for
years in mines and factories at wages well below the statutory minimum, a
consumer cooperative to prevent the double exploitation of workers who
used to buy their necessities from "truck shops" run by traders often in
league with owners of mines and factories, and a social movement to
promote literacy, establish equal rights for women, and abolish
alcoholism, which impoverishes workers and leads to frequent wife-beating
by the men. When severe state repression failed to contain the Alliance,
its leader was murdered in 1991. Despite protests from most political
parties, the state government run by BJP tried to terrorize the several
hundred thousand Alliance members and supporters. Next, in some of the
sick industrial units, workers have made a small beginning by taking over
ownership on a cooperative basis. A new dimension has unfolded with the
emergence of militant ecological groups to save forests, prevent large
irrigation projects that rarely yield more social benefits than costs, and
fight against pollution of coastal and lake waters by large fishing
companies that have deprived whole fishing communities of their
livelihood. Last but not least, the women's movement is gathering
strength. Far from being a purely middle-class affair, the liberation
ideology is penetrating different sections of society. Political parties
are waking up to these challenges much too slowly. It would be naive to
expect that out of all this a new type of political formation will take
shape in the near future, but the prospects, one hopes, will be brighter
in the long run.
 South Asian Cooperation

     Even in the heyday of the Non-Aligned Movement when Nehru's India
drew accolades from progressive and liberal forces around the world, the
neighboring countries had a very different perception. Leaders with a
social democratic orientation, such as the Bandaranaikes of Sri Lanka,
Mujibur Rahman of Bangladesh, or the Koiralas of Nepal, did feel inspired
by Nehru, but there was simultaneously a deep suspicion about India's big
brotherly attitude. Of course, no Pakistani leader has ever been
reconciled to Nehru's intransigence over Kashmir, or to the intervention
of Indian troops in helping Bangladesh secede from Pakistan. Yet
Bangladesh also soon found herself embroiled in disputes with India. In
Nepal, there is a widely shared feeling that the landlocked country's
economy is virtually controlled from New Delhi in place of the Nepalese
right to travel and work in India. Sri Lanka has been torn asunder by
ethnic fights between the Tamils (aided by their brethren in Tamil Nadu)
and the indigenous Sinhalese people, who are afraid of turning into a
minority in their homeland; the Sri Lankan government was almost compelled
to invite the Indian Army to contain the Tamil rebels and after a few
years asked the Indians to quit. Bhutan, another landlocked country, is
for all purposes India's satellite. Finally. Sikkim, bordering Nepal, used
to be another satellite kingdom inhabited by the Lepchas, until Indira
Gandhi forcibly incorporated it within the Indian Union. It is also worth
recalling that during the India-China border conflict of 1962-1963, some
non-aligned countries led by Sri Lanka's Bandaranaike, who had a close
personal friendship with Nehru, offered to mediate. Nehru did not budge
and even obtained limited military assistance from the U.S.

     Thus, the apprehensions in neighboring countries about India are not
unfounded. The relative size of the Indian armed forces, the range and
sophistication of weapons manufactured domestically or imported, and the
fact that she possesses nuclear capability and has refused to sign the
Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty lend further credence to the fears.

     Without an amicable settlement of major disputes within the framework
of international law, it is inconceivable that a network of regional
cooperation envisaged in the agreement on South Asian Regional Council
(SARC) will flourish. In the near future, the Hindu fundamentalists would
try to sabotage any attempt at settlement. There is no doubt that Islamic
fundamentalists in Pakistan and Bangladesh would be equally hostile to
normalization; if the Indians can overcome Hindu chauvinism, however, the
former would lose a good part of their raison d'etre. Hence, the fates of
secular and democratic forces in South Asia are closely interlinked and
the main responsibility lies with those in India. Unfortunately, even our
Left parties have not understood the wider implications of the impasse
over Kashmir, and remain prisoners of their own past when pro-Soviet India
was equated with "progress" and pro-U.S. Pakistan with "reaction," and the
Kashmiris' desire was conjured away. It is all the more incomprehensible
after the Afghan tragedy, which, incidentally, enriched ruling circles in
Pakistan beyond their wildest dreams; none of the Left parties, not to
mention the Indian government, have reexamined their blind support for
Brezhnev's Afghan policy.

     Beyond these political factors, economic ones are also impeding
cooperation within South Asia. One is the foreign-aid syndrome that
prevails everywhere in the region. So long as it persists, and OECD donors
look after their own interests, regional cooperation will take a back
seat. A united front of beggars has never succeeded in raising the quantum
of alms; indeed, one fatal weakness of the New International Economic
Order of the 1970s promoted by the Third World was the demand that the
rich nations enhance their aid. On a more practical plane, if a power
plant is built with a soft loan, the supplier can offer large bribes to
politicians in the developing country because it can charge much more than
the "market price"; in the case of a global tender with a limited price
preference for the regional supplier, the scope for bribing is drastically
reduced. Further, if the globalizing tendencies under the Fund-Bank
umbrella persist, and the TNCs have unhindered access, the scope for South
Asian cooperation will diminish. Questions concerning the location and
financing of industries as well as marketing the products will be decided
at the corporate level, with governments as mute spectators.

     Can one conceive of a NAFTA-like arrangement for South Asia? India
will gain decisively in the process and few manufacturing industries other
than textiles and agro-processing would survive in the neighboring
countries. Under NAFTA, if the protagonists are correct, Mexico might lose
many of her large industries, but she would be more than compensated by
the relocation of U.S. firms looking for cheap labor. Since Indian wages
are no higher than elsewhere in the region, Indian capital would have no
incentive to relocate production. The pre-partition Muslim League and
Muslim businessmen correctly understood that the advantages of free trade
would lie entirely with the Hindu industrialists. Unless the partners, or
at least several of them, are evenly matched as in the European Community
or in ASEAN, trade blocks usually do not work to mutual satisfaction.

     On the other hand, if world trade becomes increasingly concentrated
in rival trade blocks with significant barriers against outsiders,
developing countries must seek alternatives. Already, South Africa has
sounded out India for special links. In view of the disparities within the
developing world, care must be taken to ensure that benefits are more
equitably shared.

     Raul Prebisch in his last days proposed that instead of demanding
preferential tariffs on South-South trade (as against imports from the
OECD region), newly industrialized countries should subsidize their
exports of manufactures so that they, rather than the poorer importing
countries, bear the cost of protection. A second possibility is to forge
strategic alliances similar to those taking place among the TNCs. Recently
HAL, one of the largest public sector enterprises in India, a Malaysian
firm, and one Korean chaebol have entered into a tentative agreement to
produce an Asian passenger aircraft in 10 years. The Koreans are among the
leading players in a certain range of electronic chips, while Brazil and
India are very strong in other segments of electronics; together, they can
break the hegemony of some OECD giants. As for the industrially backward
among the developing countries, they will gain from such alliances insofar
as world prices fall for these product lines. They can gain more if there
is a planned development of industries across the region(s).

     In the planning era up to 1980, the Indian government set up (against
the orthodox, static theory of location) some key industries in backward
areas to promote their industralization. Sometimes the experiments failed,
but in many instances the erstwhile backward regions were transformed into
throbbing centers of growth. What was possible within India can be
replicated in South Asia as a whole, provided there is political
determination on all sides. As far as the near term goes, the prospects
are again slim, which in no way detracts from the long-run merits of
democratic and planned cooperation at a regional level. For the potential
to materialize, however, the existing balance of class forces within each
nation must be radically altered.

Bibliography upon request




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