CPEC, Is it corridor of opportunity for INDIA?

What is CPEC?

At the time of the economic slowdown, Chinese leadership has started to invest abroad strategically to save the country from the slow economic growth. With large population , unequal income distribution, large internal debt, surplus industrial output, lack of jobs ,stagnant investments and idle money with Chinese government made the xi’s government to initiate the Silk Road Economic Belt(One Road One Belt) initiative. Among the several corridors in the OBOR, The most important one for the india is CPEC( China-Pakistan Economic Corridor), which has the $46 billion dollar investments from the china, which is nearly 20% of Pakistan’s GDP.

With a spectacular GDP having trillions of dollars in reserve, China is seeking to invest in projects abroad that can enhance connectivity, utilise idle capital and sustain its economic growth. China has created support clusters to fund infrastructure projects outside through AIIB, Silk Route Fund, and through its own CITIC, China Exim Bank. In this context, CPEC is conceived as a project that will give China overland access to the Arabian Sea through the Pakistani port of Gwadar, bring development and prosperity to Pakistan - a long-time friend and ally, and cement strategic ties between the two. Innocuous as it may appear, with its passage through the disputed territory of Gilgit-Baltistan and its access and control of Gwadar port - situated in close proximity to the energy-rich Western Asian region, CPEC has provoked the regional/sub-continental security debate ever since it was announced with great gusto by China and Pakistan.

Enveloped in a geopolitical chimera, the focus of the emerging discourse on CPEC is clearly tilted towards its economic and strategic imperatives. However, the flip side of the project concerning its political viability is being ignored. Considering that the CPEC is set to traverse through Xinjiang, Gilgit Baltistan and Balochistan simmering with large-scale political discontent, there are lurking uncertainties facing the future prospects of the project, widely hailed as a harbinger of enhanced regional connectively and trade.

The staple factors put forth to justify the CPEC include China’s geographical constraints vis-à-vis southern waters in the Indian Ocean as well as Pakistan’s ever intensifying energy crisis. The idea of connecting China to the strategically important waters of the Arabian Sea though has evolved over a period of time, way back to when the Karakoram Highway was constructed during the 1960’s and 1970’s. The strategic highway built through the only land link between China and Pakistan (read Gilgit Baltistan) in many ways blueprinted the idea of an intensive connectivity network of what is today envisaged as the grand CPEC project.

The issue brief is an attempt to assess the CPEC on the viability quotient as it stands on the plank of long-raging political questions and evaluate the level of concord in the three major geographical segments of the corridor. Premised on the fact that the political conflict in these regions has received comparatively lesser attention in the overall CPEC discourse, the issue brief seeks to un-layer strands of commonalties in these regions vis-a-vis political unrest and collate the larger complexities of prolonged neglect and abject exclusion. Parallel to the political prism, the brief takes into account the geopolitical discontent triggered by the CPEC, whilst looking at likely impacts to be incurred on the complex triangular geopolitical equations between India, Pakistan and China in general and CPEC in particular.

The Chinese President’s visit gave rise to the signing of 51 Memoranda of Understanding and projects worth $46 billion in sectors which include energy, infrastructure, security, and broader economic development. For energy, $34 billion investment was envisaged and $12 billion in infrastructure projects. It was estimated that $15.5 billion would be spent on coal, wind, solar, and hydroelectric projects. The ambitious plan includes energy projects with a capacity close to 10,000 MW to be completed by 2018, with more to follow. Most of the money is expected to be spent on the construction of the corridor itself. One of the key externalities to the Chinese investment is the fact that a “Special Security Division” of the Pakistan Army, consisting of perhaps 10,000 Pakistani troops and headed by a Major General, would be set up to guard the Chinese workers and their investment, particularly in Balochistan, given the militancy and insurgency in the province.

Let us merismos the Geography:- 

The CPEC stretches across zones witnessing conflict, subjugation and political exclusion. These regions continue to be tarred in raging political discontent and are inflicted by deep seated deficit of trust. Slated to originate in Kashgar in the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region (XUAR), the corridor is designed to enter Gilgit Baltistan via the Khujerab Pass before spreading out in parts of Pakistan. In Pakistan, the CPEC travels through Khyber Paktunkhwa, Punjab before culminating at the warm water deep sea port at Gwadar, situated at the southern edge of the restive Balochistan province. While Xinjiang for long has witnessed an incessant ethnic strife offering stiff resistance to Han dominance, Gilgit Baltistan is reeling under lack of constitutional status and political ambiguity since the region’s violence-embroiled accession to Pakistan in 1947. Balochistan in Pakistan is infested by insurgency and prominent political groups led by ethnic Balochs have directly challenged the writ of the state during multiple phases of extreme violence and conflict.

All three regions - Xinjiang, Gilgit Baltistan and Balochistan - share rather conspicuous parallels concerning territorial contestations, rejection of state apparatus by the local populace who claim a legitimate right over local resources. Similarly, all these geopolitically key regions contain vast expanses of landmass - Xinjiang is the largest administrative division of China, Balochistan forms 46 per cent of Pakistan while Gilgit Baltistan forms the major portion of what is referred to as Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir (POK). It is rather intriguing that the CPEC which is riding high on the developmental, network-connectivity agenda, boasting of a mammoth multi-billion budget, is traversing regions where the state has allegedly been deeply involved in altering demographics to diminish/wipe their exclusive ethnic characters. As a result, strong undercurrents of rebellion and dissidence prevail in these geographical entities.

Xinjiang: Xinjiang, the western most part of China where the CPEC originates, has been reeling under strife owing to political and ethnic reasons. The political discontent stems from ethnic/identity issues and of late has been triggered by relentless subjugation of the majority Uighur population in the province (and a minority in China). Groups such as Turkistan Islamic Party (formerly the East Turkestan Islamic Movement-ETIM) advocate Xinjiang’s independence from China. They have refused to accede to the Chinese control on the region obtained in 1949, challenging it on the pretext that the origin of the state lay somewhere else and it does not belong to the Peoples Republic of China (PRC).

Gilgit-Baltistan: As noted earlier, Gilgit Baltistan is part of POK. While under Pakistan’s territorial control, the region is still not considered a part of it either constitutionally or politically after almost seven decades. More significantly, the region is claimed by India as part of the erstwhile princely state of Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) ever since the Instrument of Accession was signed in India’s favour by Maharaja Hari Singh in October 1947. An inordinate wait for political rights and identity has been aggravated by a prolonged phase of political neglect and state apathy. Nationalist sentiments have spawned in Gilgit Baltistan over the years and have found vent in an array of nationalist/political groups some of whom are defiant to the extent of seeking independence from Pakistan.

Balochistan: Balochistan did not immediately accede to the newly formed Pakistan in 1947. Its formal accession to the latter in March 1948 was preceded by a spell of uncertainty and intervention by the Pakistan military. Ever since then, the region has been embroiled in a perpetual state of turmoil and political tussle with the Pakistani state. The insurgency in Balochistan has refused to recede even after military’s stringent measures to tide over violence. The Balochistan situation has degenerated especially since 2003-04 under a patently ruthless regime involving indiscriminate state action against individuals, institutions and political groups refusing to comply with Pakistan’s control. Draconian tales of forced disappearances, death squads and extra-judicial killings have continuously poured out of Balochistan on a regular basis.

Resources: Coincidentally, the three in-focus regions are rich in natural resources. Designated as ‘‘national energy strategy base’’, Xinjiang houses oil reserves that run in billions of tons, accounting for 1/5th of China’s aggregate oil reserves. Besides, coal reserves are about 40 per cent of the total followed by the largest gas reserves within China.Irrespective of ethnic strife, China has engaged in expanding refineries and extraction activities in the region. Gilgit-Baltistan has vast reserves of minerals and hydro power potential while Balochistan is blessed with significant gas reserve.

The availability of resources unfortunately does not reflect as much in the development indexes concerning these regions. For long, these resources remained untapped before the states in question decided to harness these by either outsourcing them to external players like China (in Balochistan and Gilgit Baltistan) or diverting the resource wealth towards purposes other than local development. Sustained neglect of local interests has accentuated popular angst in these regions which has frequently led to protests and disruptive activities.

Though these regions are endowed with many resources, these regions are underdeveloped and became zone of contentions for their respective states. To bring the stability and prosperity, Sustainable development, inclusive growth and good governance are required. 

Thatswhy, This CPEC is planned to bring the stability, prosperity, security, economic growth to regions, through which it passes. Though CPEC is giving a lot to the china and pakistan, it is looking as provocative for the India. Though, India has the security and geographical implications, it has to engage with china and pakistan for amicable solutions without loosing its territorial sovereignty over the Gilgit-Baltistan region, which is part of the india as per the maharaja hari singh’s treaty of accession.  By engaging with CPEC, India will enter into the inaccessible areas such as deep into the heart of pakistan, afghanistan, central asia and other regions too. India has the chance to convert the existential threat into the opportunity to increase trade, commerce, connectivity, security, people-to-people contacts, energy security and many other things. To achieve that India has to propel forward with sense of dynamism(we cannot inhibt the dynamism of engagement in international affairs for example more russian engagement with pakistan would definitely irksome to india), instead of looking at the Pakistan and china with the lense of suspicion. 

Back Door Diplomacy:- More engagement with china will definitely increase the pressure over the Pakistan. Historically, more engagements happens through back route channels for example, president nixon's trip to china and last year modi' december 25th trip happend through back route channel only and this type of back door engagement with pakistan may bring the peace in the most problematic Radcliffe line region.

Development projects in tribal areas under the PMGSY

The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs recently approved a ₹11,700-crore project to improve rural road connectivity in the worst-affected left-wing extremism (LWE) districts.

The scheme, named Road Connectivity Project for LWE Affected Areas, will be implemented under the Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana (PMGSY) in 44 districts.

“Under the project, construction or upgradation of 5,411.81 km road and 126 bridges or Cross Drainage works will be taken up at an estimated cost of ₹11,724.53 crore,” an official release said, adding the roads will be operable throughout the year irrespective of weather conditions.

The Centre will fund 60 per cent of the road project and the rest will come from States. However, in the north-east, Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand, the Centre will provide 90 per cent funding.

-the hindu

Where is Inclusive growth for the BONDA Tribes?

A bank near their habitat still remains a distant dream for the primitive Bonda tribals of Malkangiri district in Odisha at a time when the Centre is planning to drag Indians towards cashless digital transactions.

Bondas are considered to be one of the most primitive tribes in the world. With time they have got linked with the banking process. But to reach their nearest bank branch at Khairaput, they have to travel over 12 km.

These tribals either have to walk through the hilly terrain or spend at least Rs. 50 for to and fro travel to Mudulipada by a passenger vehicle. It is said that banking agents also do not prefer to visit the remote villages. Security threat due to Maoist presence as well as lack of telephone and Internet connection in this remote region inhabited by Bondas is said to be the reason beind non-opening of a bank branch at Mudulipada.

Remote villages:

        As per an official survey in 2015, around 8000 Bonda tribals live in 32 villages of four panchayats under the Khairaput block. Their villages are located in remote and isolated hilly region in the northwest of the Machhkund river. Their remote habitat in Khairaput block is called Bonda valley.

        Project leader of Bonda Development Authority (BDA) Manga Panna said the State Bank of India had agreed to open a branch at Mudulipada, but it has not materialised yet. In the past, the issue of opening of bank at Mudulipada has also been taken up with the State government, administration and bank authorities. Bank officials are also sceptic about transportation of cash to this remote place traversing roads that passes through Maoist-infested hilly forest region. Added to it, bank staff may also not be ready to work at Mudulipada as it lacks basic modern amenities.

Barter system:

        Due to continuous efforts of the administration and BDA, the Bondas have left behind their old barter system and accepted currency notes as mode of transaction. “Most Bonda families now have bank accounts, but lack of proximity to a bank branch is posing a problem,” Mr. Manna added.

        They have accounts in branches of the SBI and Utkal Gramin Bank at Khairaput. To get their allowances, various monetary support from government as well as for other transactions, the Bondas are compelled to travel to their bank branches at Khairaput. After demonetisation these tribals had also lines up at bank branches at Khairaput to exchange or deposit their old Rs. 500 and Rs. 1000 notes.

       The BDA feels if a permanent bank branch is not possible to be established at Mudulipada, bank authorities can take up measures to have camp banking there for at least three days in a week, said Mr Manna.

      -the hindu

excellent article on israel-palestianian conflict

On December 23, the United States Ambassador to the UN abstained on UN Security Council resolution 2334, which condemned Israel’s settlement activity in the occupied territory of the West Bank and East Jerusalem. The language is tentative. It does not call the settlements illegal, but only having no “legal validity”. In the world of international law, the difference might not be significant. Israel pressured Egypt to withdraw the resolution, which it did, and it pressured the U.S. to veto it, which it did not. Malaysia, New Zealand, Venezuela and Senegal sponsored the resolution, which passed with 14 votes in favour and one abstention (the U.S.). Ambassadors around the table hoped that the vote would push towards the two-state solution, the “common aspiration of the international community”, said Chinese Ambassador Wu Haitao.

The resolution and the occupation:

Five years previously, during the high point of the Arab Spring, the U.S. had vetoed a similar resolution. Then U.S. Ambassador to the UN Susan Rice said that her country rejects “in the strongest terms the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlement activity”. So then why veto the resolution, which the U.S. would abstain on five years later? In 2011, Ms. Rice said that the resolution would not further the negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians. Israel, the subtext read, would lash out against the Palestinians. This is precisely what the Israelis now promise to do: build more settlements, fully annex the West Bank and East Jerusalem and thereby annul any prospect of a two-state solution.

The UN resolution — important as it is in itself — is not what Israel fears. What troubles Tel Aviv are the steps that would come after this resolution, particularly from the International Criminal Court (ICC). In January 2015, the ICC’s Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda opened a preliminary investigation into Israel’s actions during the 2014 bombing of Gaza and into the illegal settlements. Ms. Bensouda has since made it clear that she would not move forward to a full criminal investigation without substantial political clarity from the UN Security Council. Resolution 2334 produces the political will for such a move by the ICC. With Palestine as a recognised state in the UN as of 2012, and as a member of the ICC since 2014, and with this resolution now in force, the ICC could move in the next few months to a rigorous investigation of Israeli criminality. This would threaten the settlers in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, but it would also pressure Israeli soldiers to refuse to serve in any future criminal bombardment of Gaza. Whether the Palestinian leadership has the courage to insist on this remains to be seen.

In 1967, Israel seized the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip — parts of Palestine that had been outside its control. The UN Security Council passed a series of resolutions (242, 252, 298) within the next decade, asking Israel to withdraw from this land and — in resolution 446 (1979) — to desist from building settlements on the occupied territory. The U.S., which had already become the shield for Israel, abstained from the major resolutions.

It was on this occupied territory that it was then assumed — against Israeli opinion — that a Palestinian state would be built. The two-state solution, the international consensus for the Israel-Palestine conflict, is premised on Israeli withdrawal from this land occupied in 1967. No wonder that the UN has periodically returned to censure Israel for its ongoing occupation and — in violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention — the construction of settlements on occupied land.

The first major UN resolution to define the terms of the Israeli occupation was 242, sponsored by the United Kingdom and passed in November 1967 with unanimous approval. There was no abstention and no veto used by the permanent members. U.S. Secretary of State Dean Rusk said at that time that despite the U.S. and Israel being “sharply divided” on the issue of territory, the U.S. made no commitment “to assist Israel in retaining territories seized in the 1967 war”. Even when the administrations in Washington defended Israel’s annexationist policies — such as during the term of Ronald Reagan — the U.S. did not veto to defend the settlements.

The element of criminality: 

The Oslo Accords (1994) put in place the possibility of a Palestinian state, although it did not have an explicit statement to end settlement activity. Israel continues to eat into the potential Palestinian state. Neither does Israel want a two-state solution nor a one-state solution. This negative approach to the ‘peace process’ means that Israel is committed to a permanent occupation of the Palestinians. It continues to harbour dreams of a Greater Israel (Eretz Israel).

Four years after Oslo, the international community passed the Rome Statute for the establishment of the ICC. It was this new development — the ICC — rather than the Oslo Accords that increased the vetoes exercised by the U.S. in the UN Security Council to protect Israel. The Israeli establishment worried that the ICC would legitimately turn its gaze on issues such as population transfer and war crimes. The ICC — under pressure to investigate crimes outside the African continent — could find that Israeli actions provide a legitimate site of inquiry. The vetoes from Washington prevented any legal foundation for ICC action against Israel.

Prosecutor Bensouda’s investigators visited the West Bank and East Jerusalem in October this year. The ICC said that this was not part of its preliminary investigation, but it is hard to imagine that this is true. The new UN Security Council resolution harkens back to more radical postures from it in 1979 and 1980 as well as to the International Court of Justice’s 2014 finding that the ‘apartheid’ wall that entraps the West Bank is illegal. Pressure will mount on her to take her investigation forward.

Tel Aviv’s triumphalism:

The tone of Israel’s rejection came when Ambassador Danny Danon said that Tel Aviv has the right to build “homes in the Jewish people’s historic homeland”. The settlements, for the Israeli government, are essential for their own project. They see nothing short of — as Ambassador Danon put it — “a Jewish State proudly reclaiming the land of our forefathers”. Ambassador Danon is fully in agreement with Washington’s incoming Ambassador to Israel, David Friedman, who believes in a Greater Israel and denies the existence of Palestine. U.S. President-elect Donald Trump has vowed to undo the resolution and threatened to end U.S. funding to the UN.

António Guterres, the UN’s new Secretary-General has indicated that he will send a UN Support Mission to push for a two-state solution. Mr. Guterres and Ms. Bensouda will have to thread the needle between the consensus of the international community (a two-state solution) and Israel’s own illegal territorial ambitions. Optimism for progress would be unwarranted.

- The hindu, Vijay Prashad’s most recent book is ‘The Death of the Nation and the Future of the Arab Revolution’.

Discrimination on Divyang

Despite the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) repeatedly issuing circulars to all scheduled commercial banks across the country to provide banking facilities to customers with disabilities at a par with non-disabled people, the majority of disabled people continue to be inconvenienced by the banks. The situation is especially grim in rural areas and post the demonetisation announcement.

The hurdles for disabled people to access banking services are plenty. Many disabled people, especially in rural India, find it difficult to sign bank documents, and are denied ATM cards, cheque books and Internet banking. The majority of commercial banks have archaic rules in their statute books which debar people with disabilities from opening independent accounts. Persons with disabilities are compelled to produce witnesses every time they visit banks to make online transactions through real-time gross settlement and national electronic funds transfer.

Denial of banking services

The banking industry has classified its customers; it prioritises those it considers suitable for the banks’ business, be it in terms of customer needs, interest in certain product features, or customer profitability. Disabled persons are excluded. In this age of technology, banks have embarked on a slew of innovative strategies to woo the general public. We have been witnessing a lot of tailor-made financial products and services for general customers. However, there is a common perception among bank officials that disabled people do not require banking products and services. This is perhaps why most bank websites are inaccessible. The majority of them offer graphical ‘captcha’ to enable customers to proceed on these sites. These make it impossible for a fully blind person to access available services. Moreover, disabled customers are perceived as dependent on their family members; they are seen as lacking independent agency to make their own decisions.

In many rural areas, if a visually impaired person or a person with low vision walks into a bank to open an account, most banks don’t comply. Bank officials often insist that the person should open a joint bank account with a person with sight, or open an account with no ATM card/cheque book facility or both. The situation is worse for those with hearing impairments and intellectual disabilities. If a person who is deaf visits a bank for availing the benefits of a scheme or service, the branch more often than not lacks the manpower to understand or interpret sign language. People with psycho-social disabilities are the worst hit — they require a guardian to sign a contract on their behalf.

The launch of the Pradhan Mantri Jan-Dhan Yojana (PMJDY) in 2014 provided an impetus for financial inclusion. Under the PMJDY, the mandate is not restricted to opening accounts. The aim is to provide easier access to banks through the issuing of RuPay cards, which, incidentally, carry an inbuilt accident insurance cover of Rs.1 lakh. Providing small-value overdrafts based on satisfactory conduct of account, availability of low-cost life insurance (Pradhan Mantri Jeevan Jyoti Bima Yojana) and accident insurance (Pradhan Mantri Suraksha Bima Yojana) and pension scheme (Atal Pension Yojana) are also part of the PMJDY initiative. However, disabled people are denied loan facilities. A majority of banks refrain from offering insurance to people with disabilities. The call for financial inclusion has thus become an illusion for disabled people.

Demonetisation and disability

The demonetisation move has further aggravated the problem. First, the Prime Minister uses a patronising term to refers to those with disabilities: ‘divyang’ (those with divine bodies). Second, there are long queues outside ATMs and banks, and disabled persons find it difficult to avail of cash and services in such an environment, especially in rural areas. Despite the RBI stating that “banks have to take necessary steps to provide all existing ATMs/future ATMs with ramps so that wheel chair users/persons with disabilities can easily access them”, most ATMs remain inaccessible. In the current environment, the government has proposed that there should be separate queues for persons with disabilities and for senior citizens, but the reality is starkly different.

The call for financial inclusion is a distant dream for disabled people who face harassment from financial institutions across the country. Banks and companies that offer insurance policies are not yet ready to accept disabled people as respected clients. The monthly state-sponsored pension, which is the sole meagre monetary support for many disabled people, hardly reaches them on time. The RBI and the government need to take punitive action against those errant officials and banks that contravene the RBI’s guidelines for providing banking facilities to disabled people. We must uphold the spirit of Article 41 of the Constitution (Right to public assistance for the disabled).

carrot in the hands of Pakistan

On January 20, next year, Donald Trump will take over as the 45th President of the United States of America, at a time when the U.S. remains engaged in the longest war in its history — the war in Afghanistan. He will be the third President to deal with the war launched in 2001 by U.S. President George Bush and sought to be brought to a conclusion by his successor U.S. President Barack Obama.

Even though ‘Operation Enduring Freedom’ ended on December 28, 2014 implying an end to formal combat operations by the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) forces, the U.S. still maintains approximately 9,800 troops as part of the international troop presence numbering over 12,000 under ‘Operation Resolute Support’. Primary responsibility for fighting the insurgency was transferred to the Afghan National Security Forces (consisting of the military and the police) two years ago but U.S. presence is essential to provide critical domain awareness, intelligence and surveillance support, air power and special forces.

For Mr. Bush, the war against al-Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan was an integral part of his “war on terror”, launched on September 20, 2001. The U.S.-led effort enjoyed broad international support which continued even after Mr. Bush’s ill-conceived invasion in Iraq in 2003 in search of the non-existent weapons of mass destruction. The Iraq invasion however diluted Washington’s focus on the challenges it faced in Afghanistan.

In 2009, Mr. Obama drew a clear distinction between the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, describing the latter as “a war of necessity”, a “war that we (USA) have to win”. He ordered a troop surge in 2009 while simultaneously announcing the date for withdrawal of the U.S. from combat operations. This flawed decision may have been the result of domestic compulsions but it breathed fresh life into the insurgency.

Much blood and treasure has been expended in Afghanistan. The U.S. alone has spent more than $800 billion in Afghanistan, of which $115 billion has been spent on reconstruction; more than the inflation adjusted expenditure under the Marshall Plan for rebuilding Europe after World War II at $105 billion! The ISAF (consisting of over 40 countries) suffered 3,500 fatal casualties during the last 15 years, with the U.S. bearing the largest loss at 2,400 lives. At the NATO summit in Warsaw earlier this year, it was agreed to maintain the current international troop presence till 2020 while providing annual financial support of $4.5 billion for the Afghan security forces.

It is clear that this is unlikely to bring about a material change in the situation in Afghanistan. In fact, casualties among the Afghan forces and civilians have risen rapidly in recent years. The total civilian casualties are estimated at 31,000; this year witnessed a spike. The Afghan security forces have suffered significant casualties, rising from 21,000 in 2014 to about 30,000 today.

Out of 408 districts, the government writ holds in 258 while 33 have come under the control of the insurgents, largely in the south. The remaining 116 districts are contested zones.

It is true that some progress has been registered. Life expectancy has gone up from 40 years in 2002 to 62 years today. From 9,00,000 boys in school then, the number of children in school is now more than 8 million, more than a third are girls. Literacy figures have gone up from 12 per cent to 34 per cent in 15 years. Today, with a median age of 18 years, Afghanistan has one of the youngest populations with 60 per cent of the population below 21 years of age. This progress can be sustained only if peace can be restored.

Former Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai realised early on that the key to restoring peace and stability in Afghanistan lay in Pakistan. He described the Taliban as “Pashtun brothers” and tried to improve relations with Pakistan. In many of his speeches, Mr. Karzai referred to India “as an old friend” and Pakistan as “a brother and conjoined twin”. The metaphor may not be apt — because half the conjoined twins are stillborn and an additional one-third die within 24 hours — but it does capture Pakistan’s critical role. Eventually, he became exasperated with Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf’s rebuffs and tried, unsuccessfully, to open up his own channels for dialogue with the Quetta Shura, first with Mullah Obaidullah and then with Mullah Baradar, only to have them successively neutralised by the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI).

Mr. Ghani went a step further. Having witnessed Mr. Karzai’s doomed efforts and conscious of the political fragility of his National Unity Government, he swallowed his pride and even called on the Pakistani Army chief, Gen. Raheel Sharif, at the GHQ, in Rawalpindi in 2014, a departure from protocol that raised many eyebrows. He tacitly accepted Pakistan’s demand that Afghanistan diminish the salience of its relationship with India, in the expectation that Pakistan would play a positive role to ensure political reconciliation. A new track was opened with the Quadrilateral Coordination Group consisting of Afghanistan, Pakistan, China and the U.S. However, Mr. Ghani too felt betrayed when he learnt that the myth of Mullah Omar had been sustained for at least two years and despite his pleading, the ISI went ahead with the anointment of Mullah Mansour as the new Taliban leader. As insurgency grew, he publicly blamed Pakistan of sending “a message of war” when he had held out a hand of peace.

In their own fashion, both Mr. Bush and Mr. Obama saw the Pakistan problem but were content to manage the situation rather than push for a solution. Mr. Bush ensured the first round of peaceful elections in Afghanistan by laying down clear redlines for Gen. Musharraf but during his second term, he was preoccupied with Iraq. Mr. Obama tried diplomacy by appointing the high profile U.S. Ambassador Richard Holbrooke as Special Representative for AfPak but eventually decided that the best way for the U.S. to address the issue was to reduce its role and presence in Afghanistan. The Kerry-Lugar assistance package for Pakistan turned out to be more carrot than stick.

Given a porous border with Afghanistan with tribal linkages cutting across the Durand Line, Pakistan’s legitimate interests can be understood as also the fact that it is critical to any political reconciliation in Afghanistan. However, what Pakistan has been seeking is to exercise a veto over Kabul’s relations with Delhi which the Afghans are unwilling to concede.

Pakistan’s policies towards both India and Afghanistan are determined primarily by the Army which sees India as an existential threat. Looking at its relations with Afghanistan through the India prism makes it inevitable that Pakistan can only have a relationship with Afghanistan that is mired in mistrust, suspicion and hostility. Since relations with India are unlikely to normalise in the foreseeable future, the only way out for Pakistan to play a constructive role in Afghanistan is to accept the idea of Afghan sovereignty and autonomy and refrain from making it a zone of India-Pakistan rivalry.

Unless Pakistan changes its attitude, political reconciliation in Afghanistan will remain unlikely. The Taliban today is a fractured lot, neither a Vietcong nor even a Hezbollah. Its fragmentation does not affect its ability to launch terrorist attacks in Afghanistan but certainly makes it more difficult to get it to the negotiating table.

Meanwhile, the National Unity Government in Kabul is not a strong and united entity thereby reducing its negotiating space. All this diminishes Pakistan’s ability to deliver the Taliban too; it can ensure presence for a one-off meeting but lacks the political capital needed to underwrite the reconciliation process.

The challenge for Kabul is that it has to engage in multiple reconciliation processes — with the Taliban and with the Pakistani army. The hardline Taliban represented by the Haqqani network is determined to continue the fight militarily. However, even the more moderate who are willing to talk demand the exit of all foreign forces from Afghanistan. Not only could this bring about a collapse of the fragile coalition in Kabul but it would also reduce the international financial support which is critical to keep the government machinery working. Power sharing can be worked out, as demonstrated recently in the accord with Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, but no government in Kabul can accept this Taliban redline.

India has had the most effective economic cooperation programme, having spent more than $2 billion and committed another billion dollars earlier this year. Indians have also lost lives in deliberate attacks linked to the Haqqani group and the Lashkar-e-Taiba but this has not diminished the Indian role. It has only cemented Afghan-Indian relations which are now developing a military dimension. Never again will India be forced to close down its embassy in Kabul as it happened during the Taliban regime.

When President-elect Donald Trump takes charge, he will find that he has little choice in the matter. A complete withdrawal is out of question. His challenge will be to change the calculus of the Pakistani establishment, increase capabilities of the Afghan security forces to inflict attrition on the insurgents, and, in 2019, support an election in Afghanistan that brings about a more cohesive government. In all this, he will find the Narendra Modi government to be a reliable and trusted partner.

- rakesh sood, former indian diplomat.

Annual Report of Ministry of Tribal Affairs

The tribal population in India lags behind other social groups on various social parameters, such as child mortality and infant mortality and women’s health, says the latest annual report of the Ministry of Tribal Affairs.

Tribal population, with a vast majority engaged in agricultural labour, has a higher incidence of anaemia in women when compared to other social groups.

The community also registered the highest child mortality and infant mortality rates, when compared to other social groups, the data indicates.

While educational achievement on the whole has improved, statistics cited elsewhere in the report shows that the gross enrolment ratio among tribal

students in the primary school level has declined from 113.2 in 2013-14 to 109.4 in 2015-16. Besides, the dropout rate among tribal students has been alarming.(for example:-  Nellore district of A.P has drop-out rate of 78%,which is alarming one)

While the overall poverty rates among the tribal population have fallen compared to previous years, they remain relatively poor when weighed against other social groups.

Health infrastructure has also been found wanting in tribal areas. At an all-India level, there is a shortfall of 6,796 sub-centres, 1,267 primary health centres and 309 community health centres in the tribal areas as on March 31, 2015, the report points out.

Gaps in rehabilitation

      Further, it exposes the gaps in the rehabilitation of the tribal community members displaced by development projects. Of an estimated 85 lakh persons displaced due to development projects and natural calamities, only 21 lakh were shown to have been rehabilitated so far, the report states. even the 21 lakh resettlement figure in the report is questionable as there is no way to verify this data.

      Based on past experiences in the case of displacement caused by mining plants and captive power projects set up in the past in Angul, Koraput, Raigadh and Kalahandi districts in the State of odissa,  it was tribal land acquisition and not tribal development that was the focus of the government.

      “Rehabilitation only happens on paper, and any compensation for displaced adivasi folks is siphoned off by others in their name”.

Source:- the hindu

10-years of Environmental Impact Assessment(EIA) in India

Assessed, approved but scant attention to compliance

September 2016 marked a decade of the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) notification, a short, ‘subordinate’ legislation whose powers far outweigh its text. Promulgated first in 1994 under the Environment (Protection Act), 1986, and then ‘re-engineered’ in 2006, this legal tool is ostensibly our mechanism to arrive at a balance of environmental priorities and developmental needs. The law provides for an informed process for site selection and grant of approval for an industry or project in any area. It involves the drafting of an EIA report with a statement of how impacts could be mitigated or offset and under what conditions the project should be approved, if at all. Like most environmental matters, this would have been an extremely technical process, but for one reason: the process of public hearings and consultations.

The first phase of socialisation

One of the first environmental public hearings was held for the Enron project in Karnataka in the early 1990s under police protection. At that time, the government imagined it as a forum for seeking consent from the people who would live in the neighbourhood of these projects. The public hearing process was made a part of the 1994 EIA notification only in 1997. This space is the legacy of a generation of activists within and outside the government — those who had a healthy criticism of the state and what it could do in the name of “public interest” as well as those who felt that better decisions came from dialogue. Despite legal amendments to restrict this forum and cynicism on the part of the participants that they are being co-opted into an inherently unjust project approval process, the public hearing process till date gets enormous numbers of people to debate thorny questions of development.

Public hearings have been successful in drawing attention to the large-scale impacts that projects have on communities and the environment. When projects have gained approvals despite severe public opposition, these hearings have been excellent open classrooms to learn about the political economy of development and the passing on of risk to the poor and vulnerable. In several recent cases, these fora have been used to negotiate the mandatory conditions under which projects should be given approvals.

The compliance gap

What happens after public hearings and a project is granted environmental approval? This phase deserves urgent attention if we are to make any dent on the issues of air quality, shortage of freshwater, and degradation of productive farms and fishing areas. Every project granted approval from the Environment Ministry, the State departments, or specialised bodies such as the Pollution Control Boards or Central Ground Water Authority come with conditions that have to be followed. The regulatory regimes for project approval pay scant attention to the compliance of these conditions. Environmental compliance has been left to the vague and closed-door practices between two parties — the government and the project developer. With no third party to oversee the process or the results of compliance, it remains a facile, bureaucratic exercise.

What this means is that in Janjgir in Chhattisgarh, coal-fired power plants dump noxious fly ash on roadsides and farms routinely; in Odisha’s Keonjhar district, slurry from iron ore mines have denuded paddy fields and freshwater streams for over 15 years; and on the Saurashtra coast of Gujarat, bauxite or limestone dust saturate the air. Over 12,000 projects all over the country have been given EIA approvals with conditions that are meant to reduce harm to the environment and those who live around them. The number is greater if pollution consents are added to the list. There are only a few independent studies by researchers and the Comptroller and Auditor General’s office to show the poor levels of compliance.

Environmental institutions collect some data on a regular basis through their monitoring mechanism but these data are not accessible to citizens in any meaningful way. While regulators complain that they have no organisational resources to do this well, it is also true that there has never been enough reason for them to pay attention to the compliance of projects that they once approved. After all the biggest-ever government programme on clean-ups, the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan, has preferred to focus on how citizens create filth rather than the environmental mess that state practice has produced systematically since the 1950s.

A renewed engagement

As we close in on a decade of the new EIA notification, it is imperative to expand the process of socialising environmental governance to the arena of compliance. Rather than an empty legal or regulatory category, compliance needs to be seen as the minimum acceptable standards of development through a social contract between projects, governments and communities. It could tie the expectations of communities to be protected against risk with their aspirations for development through production. In each one of the scores of projects that are operational today, it is impossible to know if the safeguards in their approval letters are adequate and what their upper limits are. These issues can be addressed meaningfully only when communities that are forced to live near these projects are allowed to engage with environmental regulators. The priority or value setting that takes place at the time of public hearings has to be sustained through the life of the project through the process of compliance. In addition, systematic data collection and developing of public archives on the compliance of projects over time, sectors and regions can go a long way in reframing the knowledge and regulatory structures for environmental governance.

Source:- the hindu