The End Of The Beginning

I spoke too soon in my last column. The law and order situation in India is even worse than I had feared. The abject surrender of the Karnataka and Tamil Nadu chief ministers to Veerappan is a shameful act. Whatever the provocation, the idea that the executive at any level can pardon crimes committed in a surrender to a blackmail kidnapping is frankly unbelievable. It is also, I am sure, illegal as well as unconstitutional, though that won't bother the ruling classes.

But the rest of us should worry about it. To be absolutely crude about it, anyone who wants India to prosper economically should worry about it a lot. Bangalore cannot be a cybercity and attract high-powered multinational investment if its streets are not safe from mayhem. Highly paid, highly skilled globally mobile people will not want to come to a city if the local state cannot stand up to cheap blackmail. The Sensex had a hiccup during the days of the Bhujbal-Thackeray confrontation and rightly so. Who wants to do business in a country where the authorities are not only not in control but even do not want to be in control?

 

It is thus the duty of the friends of economic reform to form a powerful lobby and insist that the Indian state gets hold of itself and does the minimal duty of maintaining law and order. Indeed, the political and legal infrastructure of India appears to be just as dilapidated as its physical infrastructure. Now inasmuch as there is a need for FDI to do up the physical infrastructure, it is vital that India's name is not mud abroad as far as the safety of the individual is concerned. Mumbai is already bad enough with gangland attacks on commercial and industrial leaders. But if Bangalore were to go the same way it would be fatal. The industrial leaders of Bangalore have to take the issue seriously and get some sense out of the government of Karnataka.

The same is true overall about India's image abroad. Whatever the Indian press may be telling you, let me say that news like the Brahmaputra flooding and making two and half million homeless is not good. It comes too soon after Orissa and the drought in Gujarat. India's reputation as a dynamic progressive economy is hurt every time such news hits the foreign headlines. What is more, the news about local or even national political response is not very heartening. As I have said before, India's political leaders are quick to line their pockets out of the state fisc but when it comes to helping the distressed they are tardy. This is not the way to win friends abroad.

On the other hand, the news about Kashmir has been good. India's willingness to sit down and engage the Hizbul Mujahideen in a dialogue has done a lot of good around the world. Of course, the talks broke down. That was predictable. Anyone who has watched the problem in Northern Ireland, as I have done over the last 30 years, could have foreseen it. But the breakdown is not the end. It says that the long process has now properly begun. The Hurriyat and the Hizb will no doubt have their detractors but they have to be engaged. I am sure that even after the breakdown the contacts which have been established will not be lost. Somewhere else far away the process will continue in secret. The British government started talking secretly with the IRA all the while denying that they would ever speak with the terrorists. It took a dozen years before the climax came in the Good Friday Agreement of 1998. But a lot of patient behind the scenes work was necessary for that.

The Kashmir problem, while it festers, harms India internationally whatever the merits of India's claim. It is in India's interests, as I have long maintained, to solve the problem in a way that will leave a peaceful and prosperous Kashmir on India's borders. Whether this happens to be an independent or autonomous Kashmir is a wide open question. But now at least the question can be openly discussed. The legitimacy of the Hurriyat, if not of the Hizb, is recognised. At some stage Pakistan will be brought into the conversation. Again, it is best to leave these matters in informal channels which can talk without commitment.

As in the Northern Ireland issue so in Kashmir, the first thing to recognise is that this is not an issue with just two sides