Jack Barton |
The Naxalites control vast swathes
of central India.
platypus1917.org
|
It does not take a great political mind to know that western
governments are falling over themselves to get closer to India, nor does it
take one to realise why. Of the four
BRIC nations it is the one which appears to offer the most from a closer
friendship - strategically positioned between the volatile Middle East and the
threatening China, the West believes that they have something to offer India in
return for their friendship, unlike with some of the other emerging powers. As I have pointed out in previous posts,
India does all it can and more to encourage this impression so that western
governments continue to invest, building stronger economic ties while
overlooking those who suffer at the hands of Indian economic policy. This attitude is not just mercenary and
self-promoting, it is woefully lazy foreign policy. We are investing as much as we can into a
country so detached from our own and growing at such a fast pace that we cannot
be bothered to address the most important question and more importantly the
political fallout from its answer - who is really in control in India?
The most obvious answer is the one governments tend to work
with when dictating foreign policy - Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and the
Indian government. Leaving aside for a
moment the criticisms
levelled against Singh in recent years and the fact that he is attempting to
hold together a coalition government, alternative groupings both old and new
hold such power that they could make policy-making for even the strongest
government an uphill struggle.
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| General V K Singh recently took the government to court - the Indian Express all but accused him of threatening to coup |
Indian news has recently been dominated by a dispute between
the government and the army. Army Chief
General V K Singh has in recent weeks taken the government to court over a
disagreement about his date of birth, claimed in a leaked letter that 97% of
India's military is useless due to lack of supplies and according to some
reports threatened to seize power in Delhi.
The last of these is obviously the most significant; the Indian Express newspaper claimed
that two army units, including a special forces battalion had marched on Delhi
without the government's knowledge.
General Singh and the government have both denied the claims but the
reaction from commentators across the country reveals a great deal about how
real this threat could be. The Indian Express stands by its report and
from the perspective of the general public there is little reason to believe
the government who routinely suppresses or misleads the media. Whatever the truth, the Indian military is
clearly not as reliable an arm of the government machine as Western powers
would like to assume.
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| In February Indian police arrested 47 villagers for protesting against the building of a toxic dump near their village. intercontinental |
Another power-base completely outside the Indian government's
control yet ignored by the West lies in the handful of enormously wealthy
corporations that reach into every aspect of Indian life. Based in their control of vast natural
resources and investment in the booming technology sector, these corporations
have created an elite of incredibly rich and influential men. Their power is not only clear through their control
of the retail market and the media but by the fact that they can quite
clearly do whatever they want with the resources India's exports rely
upon. In 2006 police fired upon people
protesting against the construction of a boundary wall by Tata Steel, in recent
years tens
of thousands of rural people have been displaced by these corporations with
the consent of the Indian Government.
Which brings me onto another aspect of the Indian population
that undermines the power of the Indian government simply by its existence -
the dispossessed, the disenfranchised and the disillusioned. At the extreme end of the Indian population,
the government's attitude towards its rural poor has been so inflammatory that
it has created an insurrection
in the forests of central India, which has grown in momentum in the past decade
to the point of what some commentators are calling civil war. Labelled 'maoists' and 'terrorists' by the
government, this guerrilla army numbers tens of thousands of fighters
(estimates peak at 120,000) who regularly attack military and police
targets. At the less extreme end of the
spectrum, a campaign to have 'none of the above' as an option on election
ballots has been equally
persistent. Apart from the treatment
of the rural (and urban) poor, corruption scandals, failing education, a lack
of medical care and persistent poverty have created mass disillusionment among
all Indian classes - the government's position in dictating policy grows weaker
as its basis of support simply vanishes.
I have not even mentioned the social, ethnic and religious
factionalism that divides the Indian population. But in barely scratching the surface of the
competing powers that undermine the Indian government, it becomes obvious that
the question of ruling India is not as simple as Western leaders like to
assume. When Obama smiles benignly down
and gives the Indian government a pat on the head for reaching out to Pakistan,
when Russia leases them nuclear submarines, it simply looks like good foreign
policy. They must know though that the
Indian government exists because there is no united opposition, that Manmohan
Singh is in every way a figurehead. If we
insist on hoping to gain from a tighter friendship with India it is surely
worth doing it properly, asking the questions rather than relying on
assumptions.
