The Indian Panorama

Tag: China

  • US military to boost Philippines presence; China tells army to be prepared

    US military to boost Philippines presence; China tells army to be prepared

    MANILA (TIP): US and Philippine officials are expected to agree on an increase in the number of US military ships, aircraft and troops rotating through the Philippines, Filipino officials said, as tensions simmer with China over its maritime claims.
    Though he made no direct reference to the territorial disputes, new Chinese Communist Party chief Xi Jinping urged his military to prepare for a struggle. He made the comments during his visit to a South China Sea fleet ship in southern Guangdong province, but did not name any potential aggressor.

    Senior US and Philippine officials met on Wednesday in Manila to discuss strengthening security and economic ties at a time of growing tension over China’s aggressive sovereignty claims over vast stretches of the disputed South China Sea. Philippine defense and diplomatic officials said they expected to see more US ships, aircraft and troops for training exercises and disaster and relief operations. “What we are discussing right now is increasing the rotational presence of US forces,” Carlos Sorreta, the foreign ministry’s assistant secretary for American Affairs, told reporters.

    A fiveyear joint US-Philippine military exercise plan would be approved this week, he added. The size of the increase in the US military assets in the Philippines, a former US colony, was unclear. Pio Lorenzo Batino, Philippine deputy defence minister, said there were “substantial discussions” on a possible new framework allowing Washington to put equipment in the Southeast Asian state. “There has been no discussion yet on specifics … (these are) policy consultations and the specifics would be determined by the technical working groups,” he told a news conference, saying the new framework was discussed in the context of increasing rotational presence. US assistant sevretary of state Kurt Campbell said the two allies’ relationship was “in a renaissance”.

    The discussions come as the Philippines, Australia and other parts of the region have seen a resurgence of US warships, planes and personnel under Washington’s so-called “pivot” in foreign, economic and security policy towards Asia announced last year.

    Wary of Washington’s intentions, China is building up its own military. Its claims over most of the South China Sea have set it directly against US allies Vietnam and the Philippines, while Brunei, Taiwan and Malaysia also claim parts of the mineral-rich waters. Xi, who assumed the role of military chief about a month ago, called on the 2.3-million-strong People’s Liberation Army to “push forward preparations for a military struggle”, state news agency Xinhua said. Xi, speaking during a three-day inspection of the PLA’s Guangzhou base starting last Saturday, did not say against whom the struggle might be fought.

    His remarks echo those he made a week ago and are a common refrain by Chinese leaders. Xi replaced President Hu Jintao as chairman of the Central Military Commission on November 15. Xi also said the army should “modernize” for combat readiness, but gave no specific details.

    Military bases
     US and Philippine officials say there is no plan to revive permanent US military bases in the Philippines – the last ones were closed in 1992 – and that the increased presence would help provide relief during disasters such as a typhoon last week that killed more than 700 people.

    “The increase rotation presence is in areas where we have been traditionally exercising,” said Sorreta. “There are other areas for example where we have been experiencing more disasters. So we might be expanding exercises there.” One US official said Washington was not ready to wade directly into the territorial dispute in the South China Sea and instead would focus on strengthening security ties with longstanding allies such as the Philippines. “I don’t think you’ll see any real movement on the South China Sea,” the US official said. “I’m sure it will come up, but we aren’t trying to step in and ‘solve’ that issue. We really want the solution to be done by the claimants themselves and are hoping the Code of Conduct discussions move forward,” said the official, referring to a Code of Conduct aimed at easing the risk of naval flashpoints. Sorreta told Reuters the Philippines also favored an increased deployment of US aircraft and ships “so we can make use of them when the need arises”, citing last week’s typhoon. He said they would also welcome more US humanitarian supplies.

  • Three countries, one center of gravity

    Three countries, one center of gravity

    United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Australia’s Defense Minister Stephen Smith, India’s National Security Advisor Shivshankar Menon and Foreign Secretary Ranjan Mathai have all spoken of the “Indo-Pacific” – a region spanning the Indian and the Pacific Oceans – as the world’s new “strategic centre of gravity.” What is behind this new-found discovery of the Indo- Pacific and does it imply a strategic convergence between these three democracies?

    A closer analysis suggests that the Indo- Pacific regional construction is driven more by a desire to resolve distinctive domestic and foreign policy preoccupations rather than promote a common regional vision. For the U.S., central policy issues include reversing the slide in its economic fortunes and dealing with the shift of power to Asia in ways that preserve existing international rules and the U.S.’s position as the world’s foremost rule-maker. Australia has long been preoccupied by the disjuncture between its geographical positioning in Asia and its historical links with the West.

    The implications of continuing a close alliance with the U.S., while growing increasingly economically enmeshed with Asia, have dominated recent foreign policy debates. The Indo-Pacific regional construction is a key part of the U.S.’s “pivot to Asia,” which Australia has supported. For both the Australian and U.S. policymakers, adopting and shaping the “Indo-Pacific” as a geostrategic category helps them resolve their key domestic and foreign policy dilemmas while maintaining their positions in the global order as a great power and middle power respectively.

    Fitting in India
    But how does India fit into this emerging concept? While India supports a basic adherence to international law, freedom of navigation and peaceful dispute settlement, it is increasingly clear that its preferred regional architecture in the “Indo-Pacific” will be shaped by the demands of its domestic economic restructuring and its continuing adherence to the principle of strategic autonomy.

    For this reason, any assumption that India will sign up to an Indo-Pacific security architecture devised in Washington and Canberra fundamentally misreads the domestic political projects that animate India’s own vision of the Indo- Pacific. To see how different domestic imperatives lead to distinctive Indo-Pacific regional constructions, we can examine some of the major regional initiatives that have recently been promoted by the U.S., Australia and India.

    Leaving out China
    The U.S. has recently launched the Trans- Pacific Partnership (TPP), a free trade initiative that does not involve China and includes trade, investment, intellectual property, health care, environmental and labor standards. It has also called for a “regional architecture of institutions and arrangements to enforce international norms on security, trade, rule of law, human rights, and accountable governance” in the Indo-Pacific region.

    These regional initiatives are built on the promotion of regulatory frameworks in the Indo-Pacific – in areas such as intellectual property rights – that serve domestic political and economic agendas, namely increasing the competitiveness of the American economy and maintaining U.S. prominence as a global rule-setter. It is thus central to emerging geo-economic competition over the regulation and rules of the regional and global political economy.

    The Australian bridge
    Australia, meanwhile, is attempting to act as a classic middle power bridge between the East and West by balancing its commitment to a U.S.-driven framework of rules and regulations with the knowledge that its economic future is increasingly intertwined with Asia and China, in particular.

    To manage these growing tensions, it has encouraged the U.S. pivot to the Indo- Pacific while advocating greater political, economic and strategic enmeshment between the U.S. and China and refocusing its attention on the Indian Ocean Rim- Association for Regional Cooperation (IORARC). Australia has also welcomed both the U.S.-centred TPP as well as the Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN)- centred Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP).

    The RCEP includes China and focuses on a narrower set of issues than the TPP, excluding issues such as labor standards, which would deter China from ascension. Despite the differences between the two schemes, Australia regards the TPP and RCEP as complementary pathways to a regional free trade area and has vowed to promote the inclusion of elements such as environmental and labor standards during RCEP negotiations.

    Despite embracing the Indo-Pacific concept, India is not a member of the TPP but has joined the RCEP. The TPP’s rigid objectives of regulatory coherence do not fit with India’s stated desire for a “plural, inclusive and open security architecture in the Indo-Pacific” and India has long resisted the inclusion of non-trade related provisions in multilateral trade negotiations.

    RCEP’s provisions for “the different levels of development of the participating countries” and ASEAN’s emphasis on consensual decision-making are far more conducive to the type of regional architecture that India desires, since they are more congruent with its domestic imperatives of development and autonomy. This suggests the contested nature of the Indo-Pacific.

    Domestic imperatives also drive India’s increased attention to regional groupings like the IOR-ARC and smaller, more specialized forums that deal with issues like piracy, energy and food security. These initiatives focus on non-traditional security issues, which India sees as posing the most significant external threat to its economic development.

    This bottom-up, issue-driven approach to Indo- Pacific regionalism may prove, over the long run, to be more sustainable than the elitedriven regional projects that were the hallmark of Asia-Pacific regionalism. Hence, a new “Indo-Pacific” era may well be dawning. But the adoption of the concept in the foreign policy debates and vocabularies of India, Australia and the United States reflect a heightened focus in all three countries on domestic political and economic challenges rather than a strategic convergence or a common regional vision.

  • Nasa Photo Error Puts Mount Everest In India

    Nasa Photo Error Puts Mount Everest In India

    KATHMANDU (TIP): The world’s highest mountain should not be hard to spot but American space agency Nasa has admitted it mistook a summit in India for Mount Everest, which straddles the border of Nepal and China. The agency said on its website that Russian cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko’s snap from the International Space Station, 370 kilometres above Earth, showed Everest lightly dusted with snow.

    The picture spread rapidly via Twitter and was picked up by media around the world, including the USbased magazine The Atlantic, astronomy website Space.com and US cable news channel MSNBC. But Nepalis smelt a rat and voiced their suspicions on social media. Journalist Kunda Dixit, an authority on the Himalayas, tweeted: “Sorry guys, but the tall peak with the shadow in the middle is not Mt Everest.” Nasa confirmed on Thursday that it had made a mistake and removed the picture from its website.

    “It is not Everest. It is Saser Muztagh, in the Karakoram Range of the Kashmir region of India,” a spokesman admitted in an email to AFP. “The view is in mid-afternoon light looking northeastward.” He did not explain how the picture from the space station, a joint project of the US, Russia, Japan, Canada and Europe, had been wrongly identified. Everest, which is 8,848 metres (29,028 feet) high, is an sought-after photographic target for astronauts in orbit but is tricky to capture, according to astronaut Ron Garan, who lived on the International Space Station last year. “No time is allotted in our work day normally for Earth pictures. So if we want to capture a specific point on the ground we have to first know exactly when we will fly over that spot,” he told The Atlantic.

  • An Indian grammar for International Studies

    An Indian grammar for International Studies

    A little over three years ago I wrote in The Hindu that at a time when interest in India and India’s interest in the world are arguably at their highest, Indian scholarship on global issues is showing few signs of responding to this challenge and that this could well stunt India’s ability to influence the international system.

    As we meet here now, at the first real convention of scholars (and practitioners) of International Studies from throughout India, we can take some comfort. A quick, albeit anecdotal, audit of the study of International Studies would suggest that the last three years have been unusually productive.

    So much so, that we are now, I believe, at a veritable “tipping point” in our emergence as an intellectual power in the discipline. Hoffman, Professor of International Relations (IR) at Harvard, once famously remarked that IR was an American social science.

    The blinding nexus between knowledge and power (particularly stark in the case of IR in the United States) perhaps made him forget that while the first modern IR departments were created in Aberystwyth and in Geneva, thinking on international relations went back, in the case of the Indian, Chinese and other great civilizations, to well before the West even began to think of the world outside their living space. Having absorbed the grammar of Western international relations, and transited to a phase of greater self-confidence, it is now opportune for us to also use the vocabulary of our past as a guide to the future.

    2011 survey
    Recovery of these Indian ideas should not be seen as part of a revivalist project or as an exercise that seeks to reify so-called Indian exceptionalism. Rather, interrogating our rich past with its deeply argumentative tradition is, as Amartya Sen put it, “partly a celebration, partly an invitation to criticality, partly a reason for further exploration, and partly also an incitement to get more people into the argument.”

    In the context of international relations it offers the intellectual promise of going beyond the Manichean opposition between power and principle; and between the world of ideas and norms on the one hand, and that of statecraft and even machtpolitik, on the other. In doing so we are not being particularly subversive.

    A 2011 survey of American IR scholars by Foreign Policy found that 22 per cent adopted a Constructivist approach (with its privileging of ideas and identity in shaping state preferences and international outcomes), 21 per cent adopted a Liberal approach, only 16 per cent a Realist approach, and a tiny two per cent a Marxist approach. When academics were asked to “list their peers who have had the greatest influence on them and the discipline,” the most influential was Alexander Wendt, the Constructivist, and neither the Liberal, Robert Koehane, nor the Realists, Kenneth Waltz or James Mearisheimer.

    Mohandas Gandhi once said that “if all the Upanishads and all the other scriptures happened all of a sudden to be reduced to ashes, and if only the first verse in the Ishopanishad were left in the memory of the Hindus, Hinduism would live forever.” Let me make what may seem like another astounding claim, and which I hope, in the best argumentative tradition, will be heavily contested.

    If all the books on war and peace were to suddenly disappear from the world, and only the Mahabharata remained, it would be good enough to capture almost all the possible debates on order, justice, force and the moral dilemmas associated with choices that are made on these issues within the realm of international politics.

    Uncertainty in the region

    Beyond theory, we are faced with a period of extraordinary uncertainty in the international system and in our region. Multilateralism is in serious crisis. While the U.N. Security Council remains deadlocked on key issues, there is little progress on most other issues of global concern, be it trade, sustainable development or climate change. As academics, we cannot remain unconcerned about these critical failures.

    Our continent is being defined and redefined over time. Regions are, after all, as much shaped by the powerful whose interests they seek to advance as by any objective reality. Whatever nomenclature we adopt, and whatever definition we accept, we are faced with, what Evan Feigenbaum and Robert Manning described as two Asias: the ‘Economic Asia’ whose $19 trillion regional economy drives global growth; the “Security Asia,” a “dysfunctional region of mistrustful powers, prone to nationalism and irredentism, escalating their territorial disputes over tiny rocks and shoals, and arming for conflict.” The Asian Development Bank says that by nearly doubling its share of global GDP to 52 per cent by 2050, Asia could regain the dominant economic position it held 300 years ago.

    Yet, as several academics have pointed out “it is beset by interstate rivalries that resemble 19th century Europe,” as well the new challenges of the 21st century: environmental catastrophes, natural disasters, climate change, terrorism, cyber security and maritime issues. An increasingly assertive China that has abandoned Deng Xiaoping’s 24-character strategy of hiding its light and keeping its head low, adds to the uncertainty of the prevailing strategic environment. India’s military and economic prowess are greater than ever before, yet its ability to influence South Asian countries is less than what it was, say, 30 years ago.

    An unstable Nepal with widespread anti-India sentiment, a triumphalist Sri Lanka where Sinhalese chauvinism shows no signs of accommodating legitimate Tamil aspirations, a chaotic Pakistan unwilling to even reassure New Delhi on future terrorist strikes, are symptomatic of a region being pulled in different directions. Can our thinking from the past help us navigate through this troubled present? Pankaj Mishra, in his brilliant book, From the Ruins of Empire: the Revolt Against the West and the Remaking of Asia, describes how three 19th century thinkers, the Persian Jamal-al Din al-Afghani, Liang Qichao from China and India’s Rabindranath Tagore, navigated through Eastern tradition and the Western onslaught to think of creative ways to strike a balance and find harmony.

    In many ways, these ideas remain relevant today as well. For if Asia merely mimics the West in its quest for economic growth and conspicuous consumption, and thAlittle over three years ago I wrote in The Hindu that at a time when interest in India and India’s interest in the world are arguably at their highest, Indian scholarship on global issues is showing few signs of responding to this challenge and that this could well stunt India’s ability to influence the international system. As we meet here now, at the first real convention of scholars (and practitioners) of International Studies from throughout India, we can take some comfort. A quick, albeit anecdotal, audit of the study of International Studies would suggest that the last three years have been unusually productive. So much so, that we are now, I believe, at a veritable “tipping point” in our emergence as an intellectual power in the discipline. Hoffman, Professor of International Relations (IR) at Harvard, once famously remarked that IR was an American social science. The blinding nexus between knowledge and power (particularly stark in the case of IR in the United States) perhaps made him forget that while the first modern IR departments were created in Aberystwyth and in Geneva, thinking on international relations went back, in the case of the Indian, Chinese and other great civilizations, to well before the West even began to think of the world outside their living space. Having absorbed the grammar of Western international relations, and transited to a phase of greater self-confidence, it is now opportune for us to also use the vocabulary of our past as a guide to the future. 2011 survey Recovery of these Indian ideas should not be seen as part of a revivalist project or as an exercise that seeks to reify so-called Indian exceptionalism.

    Rather, interrogating our rich past with its deeply argumentative tradition is, as Amartya Sen put it, “partly a celebration, partly an invitation to criticality, partly a reason for further exploration, and partly also an incitement to get more people into the argument.” In the context of international relations it offers the intellectual promise of going beyond the Manichean opposition between power and principle; and between the world of ideas and norms on the one hand, and that of statecraft and even machtpolitik, on the other. In doing so we are not being particularly subversive.

    A 2011 survey of American IR scholars by Foreign Policy found that 22 per cent adopted a Constructivist approach (with its privileging of ideas and identity in shaping state preferences and international outcomes), 21 per cent adopted a Liberal approach, only 16 per cent a Realist approach, and a tiny two per cent a Marxist approach. When academics were asked to “list their peers who have had the greatest influence on them and the discipline,” the most influential was Alexander Wendt, the Constructivist, and neither the Liberal, Robert Koehane, nor the Realists, Kenneth Waltz or James Mearisheimer.

    Mohandas Gandhi once said that “if all the Upanishads and all the other scriptures happened all of a sudden to be reduced to ashes, and if only the first verse in the Ishopanishad were left in the memory of the Hindus, Hinduism would live forever.” Let me make what may seem like another astounding claim, and which I hope, in the best argumentative tradition, will be heavily contested. If all the books on war and peace were to suddenly disappear from the world, and only the Mahabharata remained, it would be good enough to capture almost all the possible debates on order, justice, force and the moral dilemmas associated with choices that are made on these issues within the realm of international politics. Uncertainty in the region Beyond theory, we are faced with a period of extraordinary uncertainty in the international system and in our region. Multilateralism is in serious crisis. While the U.N. Security Council remains deadlocked on key issues, there is little progress on most other issues of global concern, be it trade, sustainable development or climate change. As academics, we cannot remain unconcerned about these critical failures. Our continent is being defined and redefined over time. Regions are, after all, as much shaped by the powerful whose interests they seek to advance as by any objective reality.

    Whatever nomenclature we adopt, and whatever definition we accept, we are faced with, what Evan Feigenbaum and Robert Manning described as two Asias: the ‘Economic Asia’ whose $19 trillion regional economy drives global growth; the “Security Asia,” a “dysfunctional region of mistrustful powers, prone to nationalism and irredentism, escalating their territorial disputes over tiny rocks and shoals, and arming for conflict.” The Asian Development Bank says that by nearly doubling its share of global GDP to 52 per cent by 2050, Asia could regain the dominant economic position it held 300 years ago.

    Yet, as several academics have pointed out “it is beset by interstate rivalries that resemble 19th century Europe,” as well the new challenges of the 21st century: environmental catastrophes, natural disasters, climate change, terrorism, cyber security and maritime issues. An increasingly assertive China that has abandoned Deng Xiaoping’s 24-character strategy of hiding its light and keeping its head low, adds to the uncertainty of the prevailing strategic environment.

    India’s military and economic prowess are greater than ever before, yet its ability to influence South Asian countries is less than what it was, say, 30 years ago. An unstable Nepal with widespread anti-India sentiment, a triumphalist Sri Lanka where Sinhalese chauvinism shows no signs of accommodating legitimate Tamil aspirations, a chaotic Pakistan unwilling to even reassure New Delhi on future terrorist strikes, are symptomatic of a region being pulled in different directions.

    Can our thinking from the past help us navigate through this troubled present? Pankaj Mishra, in his brilliant book, From the Ruins of Empire: the Revolt Against the West and the Remaking of Asia, describes how three 19th century thinkers, the Persian Jamal-al Din al-Afghani, Liang Qichao from China and India’s Rabindranath Tagore, navigated through Eastern tradition and the Western onslaught to think of creative ways to strike a balance and find harmony.

    In many ways, these ideas remain relevant today as well. For if Asia merely mimics the West in its quest for economic growth and conspicuous consumption, and the attendant conflict over economic resources and military prowess, the “revenge of the East” in the Asian century and “all its victories” will remain “truly Pyrrhic.”e attendant conflict over economic resources and military prowess, the “revenge of the East” in the Asian century and “all its victories” will remain “truly Pyrrhic.”

  • China, Japan in Air Duel Over Disputed Isles

    China, Japan in Air Duel Over Disputed Isles

    BEIJING (TIP): A day after China’s top leader Xi Jinping asked the People’s Liberation Army to intensify its “real combat” awareness and “military readiness” in view of its tension with Japan over disputed islands, Japan on Thursday scrambled eight of its F-15 fighters to counter any possible threat from a Chinese aircraft that flew in close to Japan-controlled Diaoyu island. The move alarmed Washington and several other capitals.

    The day also happened to be the 75th anniversary of the Nanjing massacre by Japanese soldiers, and the Chinese government aircraft flying close to the disputed island was seen in Tokyo as a violation of Japan’s airspace. This is the first military move by China after Xi Jinping recently took the post of the Central Military Commission. Analysts said the fact that the Chinese aircraft flew in towards Japanese waters just days ahead of general election in Japan reflected Beijing’s worry that the vocally anti-China leader Shinzo Abe might get elected as the next PM. Japan described China’s action as “highly deplorable” .

    The Chinese ambassador in Tokyo was also summoned to hear a formal Japanese protest . But the Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Hong Lei said the action was “completely normal” because the area belonged to China. “The Diaoyu islands and affiliated islands are part of China’s inherent territory,” he said. “The Chinese side calls on Japan to halt all entries into water and airspace around the islands,” Hong said. The action may have future implications for China’s neighbours including India because Beijing might flex muscles in areas of South China Sea, which is being disputed between China, Vietnam and the Philippines. Beijing insists that India withdraw from oil exploration in the disputed area of South China Sea. Japan is already under strain after the satellite on Wednesday by North Korea, which has been antagonistic towards Tokyo.

  • SIKKIM beckons you

    SIKKIM beckons you

    Sikkim, a mountainous region in the eastern Himalayas, has 600 species of birds, or about half of the over 1200 species to be found in India. Perched between Nepal in the west, Bhutan in the east, and Tibet( China) in the north, Sikkim is 7300 square miles in area and contains Mount Khangchendzonga, the third-highest peak in the world. Formerly a kingdom, since 1975 it has been a tiny land -locked province to India.

    Sikkim, with its rich biodiversity, has 150 lakes ranging in altitude from 200 meters to almost 8000 meters. Besides birds, Sikkim has 4000 species of flowering plants, making it a botanist’s paradise. It has 600 species of orchids, and 40 species of rhododendrons. With the introduction of eco-tourism, including serious birding, Sikkim has begun to focus on enterprise-based conservation.

    BIRD WATCHING
    Sikkim is considered a hot spot of biodiversity in the Himalayas. Sikkim is rich in avifauna and is considered to be a birdwatchers paradise. Its avian population extends to almost 550 species. The climate varies between the tropical heat of the valleys and the alpine cold of the snowy regions.

    The altitudinal zones of vegetation range from tropical, sub tropical, temperate to Alpine. In some places only 10 Kms in a direct line separate the warm valleys from perpetual snow.

    The telescoping of terrain has created marked altitudinal zonation in the humidity, rainfall, climate and vegetation. This factor is responsible for the great variety and abundance of the resident bird life, making this area arguably one of the richest areas of its size anywhere in the world.

    PLACES TO SEE
    The terrain of Sikkim, being rugged, is not conducive to agriculture and even industrialization here is not updated. So the bulk of the economy of the state of Sikkim is shared by the tourism industry of the place.

    There are some fabulous places to see in Sikkim, making it one of the most frequented tourist destinations in the north eastern part of India.

    The variety of sightseeing spots in Sikkim ranges from parks to lakes, monasteries to political buildings, from sanctuaries to research institutes. Some of the places to see in Sikkim are:
    ENCHEY MONASTERY:
    This most important ‘stupa’ of Buddhism, a 200 years old monumental building is the seat of the Nyigma order.
    RUMTEK DHARMA CHAKRA
    CENTER: Built in 1960 by the 16th Gyalwa Karmapa, it is a replica of the original Kagyurpa Monastery in Tibet.
    TSOMGO LAKE: Home of Brahmini and other migratory ducks, it is situated at an altitude of 1200 ft. NATHULA PASS: It is situated on the Indo-Chinese border, hale a day’s ride from Gangtok.
    HIMALAYAN ZOOLOGICAL PARK: Covering 205 hectares, this park houses barking deers, bears, red pandas and a variety of Himalayan birds. The park also exhibits hundreds orchids and flowers.
    SIKKIM RESEARCH INSTITUTE OF TIBETOLOGY: This is an internationally acclaimed center of Buddhism and Tibetan studies.
    PELLING: Located about 4 hours ride from Gangtok, this place has some voluminous waterfalls.
    WHITE HALL: 5 minutes from Gangtok, it was built in 1932 to commemorate the first Political Officer of Sikkim.
    TASHI VIEW POINT: This spot presents a scenic view of the majestic Kanchenjunga and other surrounding hills. Apart from these beautiful spots, there are other sightseeing spots in Sikkim.
    They are:
    1)Hanuman Tok
    2)Ganesh Tok
    3)Shri Nalanda Institute for Higher
    Buddhist Studies
    Water Garden
    Jawaharlal Nehru Botanical Garden
    Sa-Ngor-Chotshog Center
    Ridge Park, Deer Park
    Do-Drul Chorten
    Government Institute of Cottage Industry
    Saramsa Garden
    Menmecho Lake
    Fambong La Wildlife Sanctuary and many more to make Sikkim a tourist’s nirvana

  • Saina Nehwal faces elimination from Super Series Finals

    Saina Nehwal faces elimination from Super Series Finals

    HYDERABAD (TIP): After her second straight loss Saina Nehwal is on the brink of elimination from the BWF World Super Series Finals in Shenzhen (China).

    Saina was outplayed by Ratchanok Intanon of Thailand 13- 21, 16-21 in her Group B second round robin league match on Thursday. The only hope for Saina is if Tine Baun – who lost to Juliane Schenk on Thursday 21-14, 16-21, 8-21 – loses to Ratchanok on Friday and Saina defeats Juliane in her last Group B match. In that case, Ratchanok will top Group B and qualify for the semifinals and the player with a better game average (difference between total number of games won and lost) among the other three will advance to the next stage.

    Saina was listless on Thursday, probably not having fully recovered from the shock loss against Tine on Wednesday. The 22-year-old, who enjoyed a 4-1 career record against the Thai teen before that contest, never looked to be in the game. Ratchanok started with a 7-2 lead in the first game and did not look back.

    Trialing 4-14, Saina came up with an eight-point burst but failed to maintain the tempo as Ratchanok hit back with six successive points from 15-13 to wrap up the game. Saina looked better in the second game and even she caught up with Ratchanok at 6-6. However, Ratchanok, who is known for her unorthodox strokes, notched up five straight points from 16-16 to leave Saina shattered.

  • Inder Kumar Gujral A Gentle Statesman Prime Minister

    Inder Kumar Gujral A Gentle Statesman Prime Minister

    Born on the 4th of December in 1919, in the district headquarter town of Jhelum in the then Rawalpindi division of pre-1947 united Punjab, former Prime Minister of India Shri Inder Kumar Gujral died just four days short of turning ninety three on October 30, 2012.

    Throughout his long eventful life, he remained a very decent and gentle human being. He never ruffled any feathers. His father Avtar Narain Gujral, a freedom fighter, and mother Pushpa Gujral were both very suave and soft spoken individuals and social workers. Academically Inder Kumar Gujral was a very bright student. He completed his education up to 10th standard from his native place Jhelum. For his college education he moved to Punjab’s capital of Lahore, from where he graduated in arts.

    While studying in Lahore, he inculcated love and affinity for Urdu/Persian as a language and developed special interest in Urdu poetry and became an ardent listener of “Ghazals. He especially liked the voices of Kundan Lal Saigal, Mallika Pukhraj, Mehdi Hassan and Begum Akhtar.While studying in Lahore, he came in contact with some freedom fighters and some left leaning student activists. He was always considerate towards the poor and the under privileged and this tendency brought him into the fold of the Communist Party of India for some time.

    In 1947, India attained its hard fought independence from the British Raj, which resulted in painful partition of the province of Punjab. Ugly riots of unseen dimensions erupted thereafter and a lot of humanity was massacred for no reason or rhyme. Inder Kumar Gujral’s parents entered India through the bloody Lahore – Amritsar corridor and finally settled in Jalandhar, but Inder Kumar Gujral himself, along with his wife traveled all the way to Karachi, from where they sailed to Bombay. From Bombay they came by train to New Delhi, where they virtually starved at the railway station for three days and nights.

    Eventually Inder Kumar Gujral settled in New Delhi, but maintained a strong bond with his parental place of residence in Jalandhar. Mrs. Indira Gandhi liked Mr. Gujral’s uncommon humility and intellectual brilliance. She made him the union minister for information and broadcasting during early nineteen seventies. As a minister Mr. Gujral strengthened the Urdu Service of All India Radio with high powered medium-wave transmitters located at Rajkot and Jalandhar. He streamlined all the language services to the neighboring countries like Pakistan, Bangladesh, Tibet, China, Afghanistan, the Middle-East and Iran.

    He was also instrumental in taking first steps towards expansion of government owned television services in several important areas away from New Delhi. Under his able stewardship, government television was successfully introduced in Bombay, Amritsar and Srinagar and several other projects all over India were planned, which included the establishment of a modern television studio complex for the state of Punjab in Jalandhar. After the promulgation of national internal emergency in 1975, Mrs. Indira Gandhi took away the portfolio of information and broadcasting from I.K. Gujral.

    She sent him to Moscow as India’s Ambassador to the Soviet Union. This was a very important assignment. His stay in Moscow was instrumental in furtherance of Indo-Soviet cooperation. When Mrs. Indira Gandhi lost power in the general elections of 1977, her successor Morarji Desai did not replace him and kept him in his Moscow assignment throughout his own two year long tenure. After P.V. Narsimha Rao’s scandal ridden five year tenure was over in 1996, the Congress was badly defeated.

    Even the main opposition the Bharatiya Janata Party could not win enough seats to form a government on its own. At that time a coalition government under the banner of united front government headed by Deve Gowda of Karnataka was formed in New Delhi. It was supported by the Congress from outside. Mr. Gujral served as the Union Minister of External Affairs of India.

    Within ten months the patience of Congress ran out and Dewe Gouda was shown the door. He was replaced by his most gentle foreign minister, a suave and humble parliamentarian Inder Kumar Gujral. During his scandal free but not too long prime ministerial tenure in 1997, Mr. Gujral improved India’s relations with all the neighboring countries including Pakistan, China and Bangladesh.

    Unfortunately his term was also abruptly cut short. As the Prime Minister I.K. Gujral did a lot for Punjab. He wrote off entire loan obtained by the Government of Punjab to fight militancy during the eighties and nineties. He strengthened the broadcasting services in Punjab by strengthening the existing medium-wave transmitters with high powered ones. He wanted to establish an international airport in Punjab, which could serve the needs of the Punjabi diaspora spread all over the world.

    His desire was to establish this airport on the Jalandhar – Kapurthala Highway. But land was too expensive in that area. Eventually he agreed to let the existing Rajah Sansi Airport on the outskirts of Amritsar to be upgraded to an international airport. For Jalandhar, however he did a lot. As prime minister he took personal interest to sanction money for a lot of road over rail bridges.

    In Kapurthala, he sanctioned the establishment of an ultra-modern high tech science city, which is now the biggest tourist attraction of Kapurthala and the Bist Doab region.

    For the past few months in 2012, he was not keeping good health. When he breathed his last on Friday November 30, the entire nation was plunged into mourning for a departed gentle statesman. A seven day mourning has been ordered by the Government of India.

    During this periods, the national flag of India will fly all over the world at half mast.We salute Inder Kumar Gujral for what he was and what he stood for.

  • Restrictions on Tourist visa re-entry within two months lifted

    Restrictions on Tourist visa re-entry within two months lifted

    NEW YORK (TIP): The government of India has reviewed the provision relating to two months gap between two visits of a foreign national to India on a tourist visa. A Press Release from Indian Consulate in New York says the restriction has now been lifted except for nationals of China, Iran, Pakistan, Iraq, Sudan, Bangladesh, Afghanistan, foreigners of Pakistan and Bangladesh origin and stateless persons.

  • India: the warped history and geography of Non Alignment 2.0

    India: the warped history and geography of Non Alignment 2.0

    In the aftermath of the disintegration of the Soviet Union, the Narasimha Rao government reworked India’s dysfunctional economic and foreign policies to improve India’s abysmal terms of trade with the rest of the world. The latest global financial crisis seems to have shaken the United States’ global dominance and is forcing India to revisit its post-Soviet foreign policy.

    Choices Asian countries like India make in the near future will affect the chances of the emergence of an ‘Asian Concert’ that, in turn, will influence the United States’ ability to sustain its dominance by ‘rebalancing’ toward Asia. A second term for President Obama means that Asian countries may be compelled to respond to ‘rebalancing’ sooner rather than later. Obama’s first foreign tour since his re-election is a case in point. But as usual India is struggling to discover the right balance between strategic independence and alignment, and soft and hard powers. NonAlignment 2.0: A Foreign and Strategic Policy for India in the Twenty First Century, a document released in February 2012, is of interest in this context, as it is one of the most comprehensive contributions to the ongoing debate within India.

    It discusses India’s strategic opportunities and attempts to outline India’s foreign and strategic policy over the next decade. While the authors, including well-known academics, retired government officials, journalists and industry representatives, ‘were administratively supported by the National Defence College and Centre for Policy Research’, the usual disclaimers apply. Written over a year, the document’s release coincided with the Chinese foreign minister’s visit to India and was attended by the current and past National Security Advisors, who mostly disagreed with the document. The document indeed does not throw much light on India’s foreign policy conundrum – ‘to enhance India’s strategic space and capacity for independent agency’. It largely restricts itself to presenting a bulleted list of what ought to be done. The authors were ‘driven by a sense of urgency… that we have a limited window of opportunity in which to seize our chances’ and the belief that ‘internal development will depend decisively on how effectively we manage our global opportunities’.

    But they seem to be torn between nostalgia for India’s earlier non-alignment policy and the belief in India as a quintessentially nonaggressive country, and the reality of an emerging multipolar world, where hard choices are unavoidable and hard power counts. NonAlignment 2.0 then appears to be a convenient, if not ad hoc, solution to India’s foreign policy conundrum in the midst of the growing chances of confrontation between the US and China, as well as between Israel and Iran. Three aspects of this document – which limit its usefulness – are striking. First, the document is devoid of idealism, which, irrespective of its impracticality, could have helped build overarching structures to reconcile the otherwise irreconcilable claims upon foreign policy. Second, the discussion is not built upon any theoretical and strategic framework, given the ad hoc nature of the solutions presented in the document. Third, the document does not empirically substantiate the assumptions that inform the solutions.

    The discussion essentially happens in a vacuum without engaging in parallel or preceding debates. The document does not even refer to the Non-Alignment Movement. Unsurprisingly, the authors neither explain why and in what ways the earlier non-alignment policy needs to be changed, nor do they explain in what respects NonAlignment 2.0 is different. Moreover, the authors think in largely non-institutional terms, which is surprising given their commitment to nonalignment that ideally entails multilateralism. This is evident from the absence of references to key organizations and blocs such as ASEAN, the EU and SAARC. With the exception of the IMF, UN and the G20, other international organizations are rarely, if ever, mentioned. And there is hardly any discussion on potential alternatives to the existing international organizations. A narrow geographical focus compounds the historical and institutional vacuum at the heart of NonAlignment 2.0. Global pretensions notwithstanding, the document largely focuses on China and Pakistan – the only countries that have sub-chapters devoted to them. Most references to the US are related to Pakistan, Afghanistan and China. Even Pakistan is thought of ‘as a subset of the larger strategic challenges posed by China’. SAARC members, excluding Pakistan and Afghanistan, are referred to merely seven times, of which five references are to Bangladesh.

    And Indonesia, another important neighbor, and Japan, an important partner, attract less attention than Iran. In fact, Iran completely overshadows the Middle East in the document. Viewed alongside the lack of engagement with international institutions and India’s history, the skewed geographical focus of NonAlignment 2.0 suggests two things that should disturb those who, for some reasons, hope that India will step up and play a larger role in the emerging international order in Asia. Firstly, a significant section of the Indian strategic community continues to be obsessed with Pakistan and, increasingly, China and, hence, is oriented toward India’s northern land borders. Such an orientation is obsolete given India’s ever increasing marine footprint and growing economic and strategic engagement with countries across the world. Secondly, they also continue to be unable to imagine international institutional solutions to perennial regional military and diplomatic concerns.

    For instance, NonAlignment 2.0 informs us that in future, Chinese attempts to escalate the China-India border conflict ought to be countered through ‘effective insurgency in the areas occupied by Chinese forces’. This is a solution from another age. But as veteran journalist BG Verghese pointed out, this document is important insofar as it challenges others to think aloud.

  • As I See It:Welcome Change

    As I See It:Welcome Change

    One must congratulate the Government of India for taking the bold step of joining the 138 nations voting ‘Yes’ for the resolution to upgrade Palestine to a non-member observer state in the United Nations.

    What is commendable is that despite India’s recent strategic overtures to the United States and its cooperation with Israel on defense matters, India demonstrated independence and courage in voting for the Palestinians. In the past, while India made some feeble noises in spurts regarding the Palestinians’ cause and about international morality, India’s policy had seen several flip-flops and had lacked boldness. It was the usual customary dubious statements after every incident involving or affecting the Palestinians; the nature and careful wording of the official statements after the fact reflected its spineless foreign policy.

    Gladly, this time it was different. Along with the newly found courage, one hopes that the policy is backed by a firm sense of purpose. This sense of purpose should be revealed in its reaction to America’s actions in Syria, another Arab country. Barack Obama, weighed down by the difficult task of showing results in the domestic economy and particularly in the unemployment rate during his second and last term of presidency, may take cover under results in his foreign policy.

    After his tacit approval of the happenings so far in Syria, he may now plan for a stronger action to dislodge President Bashar Assad. As it is, the effects of the uprising against Assad and the suppression of the unrest by the present Syrian government have been devastating for the people of that country. There is a humanitarian crisis, as US’s ally UK’s prime minister David Cameron has said recently.

    But, it is going to be complicated further by escalating the armed conflict in that country. The first step the US and its allies may take is to deploy surface to air missiles in Turkey, thus dragging the latter into almost a war. Will India show its true mettle by advising its new strategic partner – the US – against any misadventure in Syria? If India believes in the larger issue of peace and justice, it should put it in practice by being able to prevent escalation of the Syrian conflict to Turkey and then its further spread elsewhere. After the George W Bush era, the Americans have agreed, if not very vocally, that the ‘weapons of mass destruction’ theory was a lie. The threat of biological war by Iraq was also an unfounded fear.

    Indian foreign policy had been to keep its lips zipped through the entire episode. It was neither for the Arabs nor against them. Not a good policy for a country that depended so much on the Arab world by importing oil and exporting labor force in large numbers.

    No significant help
    What India got in return was some leniency in the international nuclear power production regime and nuclear reactors that the US and its European allies anyway wanted to sell us during their recessionary times. That a highly risk-prone nuclear power production would not help our energy crunch in any significant way is another matter. Since the fall of Saddam Hussein, the Arab world has seen increasing turmoil and the western world has become bolder in its initiatives in the Arab countries.

    There is a huge room for doubt regarding the genesis of the so-called ‘Arab Spring’. Hosni Mubarak of Egypt was toppled by what seemed like a popular uprising against his rule which lasted over three decades. His replacement, Mohamed Morsi who has enacted draconian laws giving him sweeping powers, does not appear to be any messenger of democracy for the people of that country.

    The effect for the Arab region and the countries nearby has been one of some degree of destabilization. Whatever may have been the demerits of the Hosni Mubarak government, it had an influence in holding the regional countries together. Egypt had a moderating influence in a region that was moving towards increasing fundamentalism. During the entire Tahrir Square movement, India remained a mute spectator, as though a strategy of non-commitment was a prudent policy. It remains unsure even now.

    The fall of and killing of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi of Libya was another sordid saga in which, again, India practiced silence. Gaddafi may have been a dictator, but the situation that has replaced his regime is no better; Libya has not gone any farther after Gaddafi; if any, it has sunk into endless internal squabbles. India did not take any active diplomatic interest to defuse the crisis and better the prospects of the country. Arabs and now Iran are at the receiving end from the western powers that obviously have an eye on the oil resources in this part of the world. Peace, stability and prosperity of that region are in the best interests of India.

    If India does not support their cause out of a sense of helplessness, then the same sense of vulnerability will manifest when it has to deal with the border problems with China and Pakistan and several other issues with Bangladesh, Myanmar, Sri Lanka and Maldives. If an era of toughness and principled stand has indeed commenced for India as indicated in the case of the recent UN vote on Palestine, it is a significant event. India needs to be firm and focused as regards its relations with the outside world. It needs to be candid with its strategic allies like the United States.

  • China Omits India, Pak from 72-Hour Visa Free Travel

    China Omits India, Pak from 72-Hour Visa Free Travel

    The list mostly includes US and European countries but China’s neighbours in South Asia, including India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Myanmar and Sri Lanka are missing
    BEIJING (TIP): China announced a 72-hour visa free stay in Beijing for travelers from 42 countries but India, Pakistan and the rest of South Asian nations were conspicuously missing from the list. Beijing will start a 72-hour visa-free stay policy for citizens of 45 countries from January 1 next year in a bid to increase the inflow of tourists to the Chinese capital, state-run Xinhua news agency reported. Tourists holding third country visas and plane tickets can apply for a transit without visa (TWOV) in the capital city at Beijing Capital International Airport. The list mostly includes US, European countries as well as Japan and Russia.

    All most all of China’s neighbours in South Asia, including India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Myanmar and Sri Lanka did not figure in the list. The 45 countries were listed in accordance with the numbers of inbound overnight visitors in Beijing from 2009 to 2011, the Xinhua report said. ‘The policy may enhance the status of Beijing Capital International Airport as an international air hub, said Gao Lijia,’ a general deputy manager with the airport. The airport has seen about 7.6 million inbound and outbound foreign passengers during the first nine months in 2012 and 521,600 out of them are transit passengers, Gao said. He predicted that the policy will bring 600,000 to 800,000 transit visitors to China in 2013. To help with the transit visitors, the airport will improve service facilities in the airport including special visa-free channels, said Li Chunfang, manager with the planning and development department of the airport.

    ‘We will set up a special service zone for transit visitors in our terminals, offering drinking water and reading materials. Moreover, services including foreign currency exchange, mobile phone rental service, and left-luggage office will be provided for the convenience of tourists,’ he said. Foreign visitors are not permitted to leave Beijing to other Chinese cities during the 72 hours, and have to depart from Beijing. Visitors have to register at a police station with their visas within 24 hours of their arrival, according to the government. The 72 hours will be calculated starting from the moment visitors get their transit stay permits, said Gao Dahua, deputy director of the exit and entry administrative corps of Beijing Municipal Public Security Bureau. Beijing Capital International Airport is the only entry-exit port applicable for the policy, Gao stressed.

  • South China Sea: India Backs Access to Resources

    South China Sea: India Backs Access to Resources

    India says it is aware that the sovereignty of many parts of South China Sea is disputed, but it supports freedom of navigation, right of passage and access to resources
    NEW DELHI/BEIJING (TIP): Unfazed by China’s fresh assertion in South China Sea and its stern warning to Vietnam to stop unilateral oil exploration in the disputed waters, India on Thursday underlined its support for freedom of navigation and access to resources. “We have made our position clear several times.We are aware that the sovereignty of many parts of South China Sea is disputed. India is not a party to the dispute,” Syed Akbaruddin, the spokesperson of India’s external affairs ministry, told reporters to queries about China’s renewed assertion in its claims over the South China Sea.

    “We support freedom of navigation, right of passage and access to resources,” he said in New Delhi. The stress on “access to resources” is important as India, in the face of Chinese objections, has stuck to its position that its three oil exploration deals with Vietnam adhere to international norms. China Thursday upped the ante and asked Vietnam to immediately stop ‘unilateral’ oil exploration in the disputed waters in the South China Sea. ‘Vietnam should immediately stop unilateral oil exploration in that part of the (disputed) sea and stop interrupting Chinese fishing boats so as to create conducive atmosphere for relevant negotiations,’ Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei told reporters in Beijing.

    In a stern message to India, China has reacted sharply to Navy chief, Admiral DK Joshi’s remarks that the Indian Navy was prepared to protect its interests and deploy its forces in the contested waters. Asked about Admiral Joshi’s comments, China’s foreign ministry spokesperson said China ‘hopes relevant countries respect China’s sovereignty and national interests’. ‘China opposes any unilateral energy exploration and development activities in the disputed areas in the South China Sea,’ Hong was quoted as saying by the communist Party-run Global Times newspaper

  • How Crash Cover-up Altered China’s Succession

    How Crash Cover-up Altered China’s Succession

    BEIJING (TIP): “Thank you. I’m well. Don’t worry,” read the post on a Chinese social networking site. The brief comment, published in June, appeared to come from Ling Gu, the 23-year-old son of a highpowered aide to China’s president, and it helped quash reports that he had been killed in a Ferrari crash after a night of partying. It only later emerged that the message was a sham, posted by someone under Ling’s alias — almost three months after his death. The ploy was one of many in a tangled effort to suppress news of the crash that killed Ling and critically injured two young female passengers, one of whom later died.

    The outlines of the affair surfaced months ago, but it is now becoming clearer that the crash and the botched cover-up had more momentous consequences, altering the course of the Chinese Communist Party’s once-in-a-decade leadership succession last month. China’s departing president, Hu Jintao, entered the summer in an apparently strong position after the disgrace of Bo Xilai, previously a rising member of a rival political network who was brought down when his wife was accused of murdering a British businessman.

    But Hu suffered a debilitating reversal of his own when party elders — led by his predecessor, Jiang Zemin — confronted him with allegations that Ling Jihua, his closest protege and political fixer, had engineered the cover-up of his son’s death. According to current and former officials, party elites, and others, the exposure helped tip the balance of difficult negotiations, hastening Hu’s decline; spurring the ascent of China’s new leader, Xi Jinping; and playing into the hands of Jiang, whose associates dominate the new seven-man leadership at the expense of candidates from Hu’s clique.

    The case also shows how the profligate lifestyles of leaders’ relatives and friends can weigh heavily in backstage power tussles, especially as party skulduggery plays out under the intensifying glare of media. Numerous party insiders provided information regarding the episode, speaking on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals from the authorities. Officials have investigated the aftermath of the car wreck, they say, including looking into accusations that a state oil company paid hush money to the families of the two women. Under Hu, Ling had directed the leadership’s administrative center, the General Office, but was relegated to a less influential post in September, ahead of schedule.

    Last month, he failed to advance to the 25-person Politburo and lost his seat on the influential party secretariat. Hu, who stepped down as party chief, immediately yielded his post as chairman of the military, meaning he will not retain power as Jiang did. “Hu was weakened even before leaving office,” said a midranking official in the organization department, the party’s personnel office. Ling’s future remains unsettled, with party insiders saying that his case presents an early test of whether Xi intends to follow through on public promises to fight highlevel corruption. “He can decide whether to go after Ling Jihua or not,” said Wu Guoguang, a former top-level party speechwriter, now a political scientist at the University of Victoria in British Columbia. “Either way, this is a big card in Xi Jinping’s hand.” Ling, 56, built his career in the Communist Youth League. At an early age, he secured the patronage of Hu, who led the Youth League in the early 1980s and brought Ling to the General Office in 1995. “Hu didn’t come with a lot of friends, but Ling was someone he knew he could trust,” said the organization department official. ”

    Officials said that if Ling called, it was like Hu calling.” Ling played a central role in moving Youth League veterans into high offices and undermining Hu’s adversaries. Ling also wielded leverage over internet censorship of leaders’ affairs, and sought to use it to benefit his patron. “Negative publicity, including untruths, about Xi Jinping were not suppressed the way publicity about Hu Jintao was,” said one associate of party leaders. As his influence grew, Ling tried to keep a low profile. About a decade ago, his wife closed a software company she owned and formed a nonprofit foundation that incubates young entrepreneurs. The couple sent their son, Ling Gu, to an elite Beijing high school under an alias, Wang Ziyun.

  • U.S. to pursue stable, constructive relationship with China: White House

    U.S. to pursue stable, constructive relationship with China: White House

    WASHINGTON (TIP): The U.S. government will pursue a stable and constructive relationship with China, as part of its strategy of rebalancing to Asia, in order to address diplomatic and economic challenges in today’s world, a senior White House official said on November 15 Speaking at the think tank Center for Strategic and International Studies, Tom Donilon, national security advisor to U.S. President Barack Obama, outlined the reasons and goals of the U.S. Pivot to Asia that the Obama administration began implementing during his first term. Donilon said the rebalancing is a sustained mutli-dimensional strategy, and “a long-term effort to better position ourselves for the opportunities and challenges we’re most likely to face in this century.” Pursuing a stable and constructive relationship is one of the essential elements of the strategy aimed at advancing U.S. national security interests, he said, citing “there are few diplomatic and economic challenges that can be addressed in the world without having China at the table: from North Korea (the DPRK), to Iran, to Syria, to global economic rebalancing and climate change.” “Getting the U.S.-China relationship right is a long-term effort, and we will continue to make this a priority in President Obama’s second term,” he said.

    Noting that there are elements of both cooperation and competition in the U.S.-China ties, Donilon said the U.S. policy has been to seek to balance these two elements in a way that increases both the quantity and quality of its cooperation with China as well as its ability to compete. “At the same time, we seek to manage disagreements and competition in a healthy – and not disruptive – manner,” he added. Donilon said through highlevel consultations with Beijing, such as the Strategic and Economic Dialogue, the U.S. approach toward China has yielded important results that advance U.S. national security interests

    The U.S. has elicited “significant and sustained Chinese cooperation regarding Iran’s and North Korea’s (DPRK) nuclear and missile programs.” On the economic front, the U.S. coordinated with China to jump start the global economic recovery in 2009 and to build the G20 into the leading global economic institution, while the U.S.-China military relations have been gaining momentum, he said. While urging Beijing to assume responsibilities commensurate with its growing global impact and its national capabilities, Donilon said one of U.S. policy goals is “to work with China to strengthen institutions … and enhance the ability of these institutions to address regional and global challenges.” During his speech, Donilon also explained the reasons why Obama chose southeast Asia as the destination of his first foreign trip since winning reelection last week. Obama is set to visit Thailand, Myanmar and Cambodia on Nov. 17-20, during which he will also hold talks with leaders of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and attend the East Asia Summit. “His decision to travel to Asia so soon after his re-election speaks to the importance that he places on the region and its centrality to so many of our national security interests and priorities,” he said.

  • Hedging Bets: Washington’s Pivot to India

    Hedging Bets: Washington’s Pivot to India

    In November 2010, President Obama visited India for three days. In addition to meeting with top Indian business leaders and announcing deals between the two countries worth more than $10 billion, the president declared on several occasions that the US and India’s would be the “defining partnership of the twenty-first century.” Afterward, Obama flew straight to Jakarta without any plans to visit Pakistan, officially the US’s major non-NATO ally in the region.

    No president, except Jimmy Carter, had done such a thing before. The US has traditionally seen its India and Pakistan policies as being deeply linked, and except for Richard Nixon’s brief “tilt” in 1971, the US has been cautious of elevating one neighbor over the other. Despite India’s non-aligned status and pro-Soviet posture during the Cold War, Washington has tried to ensure that its relationship with Pakistan would not disadvantage India.

    Obama’s visit, however, illustrated that this era of evenhandedness was now over. With India’s economic rise, fears of Chinese hegemony, and the unraveling relationship with Pakistan, the US is now pursuing what previously would have been regarded as an asymmetrical foreign policy agenda in South Asia. As part of its new Asia-Pacific strategy, the US is committed to strengthening India in all major sectors of national development, with the hope of making it a global power and a bulwark against Chinese influence in Asia. Meanwhile, Washington is looking for a minimalist relationship with Pakistan, focused almost exclusively on security concerns.

    The US and India are natural allies, but Obama has let China and Pakistan get in the way of New Delhi’s importance. Early signals of this gradual tilt toward India can be found in the final years of the Clinton administration. During his 1999 visit to South Asia, President Clinton spent five days in India, praising the nation’s accomplishments, and mingling with everyday Indians. During his speech to the Indian Parliament, Clinton referred to the US and India as “natural allies” and offered a program for a close partnership in the twenty-first century. In sharp contrast, his stop in Pakistan lasted only five hours and was blemished with security concerns, a refusal to be photographed shaking hands with the country’s military dictator, General Pervez Musharraf (who would become the country’s president in two years), and a blunt warning that Pakistan was increasingly becoming an international pariah.

    The Bush administration took office wanting to take this policy even further by actually de-linking the US’s India and Pakistan policies, and enhancing its relationship with India. As former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage explained to me, “The Bush administration came in with our stated desire to obviously improve relations with India, but also to remove the hyphen from ‘India-Pakistan.’” And the administration did just that. While relations with Pakistan improved dramatically in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, they were based almost exclusively on combating terrorism. On the other hand, relations with India, which deepened more slowly but also more surely, were focused on broad economic, security, and energy sectors. The most significant achievement in this regard was the US-India civilnuclear deal that was announced during President Bush’s 2006 visit to New Delhi. The fact that this agreement was extremely controversial because India, like Pakistan, has not signed on to the Nuclear Non- Proliferation Treaty, was evidence of the US’s commitment to transforming relations with India and facilitating its rise as a global power.

    This redefinition of regional priorities has continued during the current administration. While the strategic partnership with India continued to be strengthened, Pakistan was declared the source of America’s Afghanistan troubles in the first few months of the Obama presidency. Since then, as mutual mistrust has grown because of policies such as US drone strikes in Pakistan’s tribal areas and Pakistan’s eight-month blockade of NATO supply lines, the US-Pakistan engagement has reached one of its all-time lows. The difference between Washington’s relationship with India and its relationship with Pakistan is best illustrated by the actual words used by members of the administration. While Secretary of State Hillary Clinton describes US-India ties as “an affair of the heart,” Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta characterized relations with Pakistan as “complicated, but necessary.”

    This affair of the heart is hardheaded and unemotional. The defining feature of evolving US-India relations is that, unlike the US and Pakistan, the two countries actually share a number of common interests, and have also managed to create a broad-based partnership centered along deepening trade ties and energy and security cooperation. Bilateral trade and investment are the most significant components of the two countries’ engagement. The US-India trade relationship has become increasingly strong over the past decade-especially after the lifting of US sanctions in 2001-with the result that today the US is India’s thirdlargest trading partner (see Figure 1). India’s industrial and service sectors have now become increasingly linked to the American market. In the first half of 2012 alone, the US imported almost $20 billion worth of goods and $16 billion worth of services from India, while in 2011 US-India bilateral trade in goods and services peaked at almost $86.3 billion. Standing at $18.9 billion in 2001, bilateral trade in goods and services has doubled twice within a decade. This steady rise has made the US one of the largest investors in the Indian economy. According to the Office of the US Trade Representative, US foreign direct investment in India was $27.1 billion in 2010 (latest available data), a thirty-percent increase from 2009. Even Indian FDI in the US increased by forty percent between 2009 and 2010, reaching $3.3 billion.

    It was, of course, cooperation over energy that symbolized the coming-of-age of Indo-American relations. The landmark civil-nuclear deal signed in 2008 was intended to help India meet its growing energy demand through the use of nuclear technology. The US agreed to supply nuclear fuel to India and convince members of the Nuclear Suppliers Group to follow suit. In addition to this, the US has also been helping India access oil from suppliers other than Iran, with the aim of reducing Indo-Iranian cooperation.

    Along with deepening economic and energy ties, the two countries’ defense cooperation has also strengthened over the past decade. In addition to closely cooperating with India over counterterrorism and conducting joint military exercises with it since 2007, the US has included India in the “Quad” forum, along with Japan, Australia, and Singapore, thereby making it an integral part of its emerging Asian security architecture. Moreover, during his visit President Obama also announced more than $5 billion worth of military sales to India, adding to the $8 billion of military hardware India had already purchased from US companies between 2007 and 2011. As reported by the Times of India, India will spend almost $100 billion over the next decade to acquire weapons systems and platforms. This push for sales comes partly from the US Defense Department’s strong desire to equip India with modern weaponry, to collaborate with it on high-end defense technology such as unmanned aerial vehicles (“drones”), and to become India’s largest weapons supplier.

    Beyond defense technology, the US and India have also cooperated successfully in space. The joint venture between NASA and the Indian Space Research Organization during India’s Chandrayaan-1 lunar mission, which detected water on the lunar surface for the first time, is a significant example. Moreover, members of the US and Indian public and private sectors have also promoted the idea of cooperation to harness space-based solar power. Finally, the US has offered New Delhi increasingly strong political support as exemplified in Obama’s unequivocal backing of India’s bid to become a permanent member of the UN Security Council. Furthermore, despite Pakistan’s request for American assistance in negotiating the Kashmir dispute, the US has yielded to Indian demands that it not get involved. When Richard Holbrooke was appointed the US special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan in 2009, India and Kashmir, as revealed by US officials to the Washington Post, were covered within Holbrooke’s mandate under “related matters.” The Indian government, however, lobbied the Obama administration swiftly and strongly with the result that Kashmir was eliminated from Holbrooke’s portfolio altogether.

    Although the evolving Indo-American partnership is rooted in multiple areas of common interest, from Washington’s perspective one priority looms larger than others in its partnership with India, and that is China. Simply put, India has become a central component in America’s grand strategy to balance Chinese power in Asia. China’s strengthening military capabilities and several moves in Asia, such as its claim of territorial sovereignty in the South China Sea, assertiveness in the Pacific Ocean, and growing naval and commercial presence in the Indian Ocean, have increasingly worried the US. For example, China’s aggressive posture and territorial claims inundated Secretary Clinton’s agenda when she visited the region in September. Further, according to one report, in 2007 a senior Chinese naval officer even suggested to the former US Pacific Fleet commander, Admiral Timothy Keating, a plan to limit US naval influence at Hawaii. Moreover, through its “string of pearls” policy China has acquired rights to base or resupply its navy at several ports from Africa though the Middle East and South Asia to the South China Sea.

    Over the last decade Washington has considered several strategies to check Chinese power, with India essential to all of them. The National Security Strategy 2002 made it clear that India could aid the US in creating a “strategically stable Asia.” George Bush’s secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, had also voiced this view in a Foreign Affairs article written during the 2000 presidential campaign. Moreover, a 2011 report by the Council on Foreign Relations and Aspen Institute India argued that “a militarily strong India is a uniquely stabilizing factor in a dynamic twenty-firstcentury Asia.” India’s role in balancing China was most vividly described later on in the Obama administration. The 2012 Defense Strategic Review recognized that China’s rise would affect the US economy and security, and declared that the US “will of necessity rebalance [its military] toward the Asia- Pacific region.” Secretary of State Clinton had previously outlined this policy in greater detail in an article titled “America’s Pacific Century,” explaining that to sustain its global leadership the US would invest militarily, diplomatically, and economically in the Asia-Pacific region. The US security agenda, she highlighted,

    would include countering North Korea’s proliferation efforts, defending “freedom of navigation through the South China Sea,” and ensuring “transparency in the military activities of the region’s key players.” Two of the three objectives, in other words, were targeted directly at China. While in the past the US had projected power into the Asia-Pacific through colonization and occupation-notable examples being Guam and the Philippines in 1898 and Japan after 1945-its new presence is based on creating strong bilateral economic and military alliances with regional countries, and efforts to organize the region into multilateral economic and security institutions to balance China’s economic and military influence. Thus, in addition to strongly supporting the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and the Asia- Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), America also backs other organizations like the Trans- Pacific Partnership and Pacific Islands Forum, and formal security dialogue groups such as the “Quad” and the US-India-Japan trilateral forum.

    Not only is the US looking to enhance India’s Pacific presence by integrating it into these organizations, but, as described in the Defense Strategic Review, through its long-term goal of helping it become an “economic anchor and provider of security in the broader Indian Ocean region.” The grand strategies are in play, but will the US and India be able to manage a strong alliance whose chief objective is enabling the US to effectively accomplish its goals vis-à-vis China? To put the question more simply, will India play the balancing game? And will India also support the US on other foreign policy objectives in Asia?

    The strategic goals of at least a section of the Indian foreign policy elite can be gauged from the report Nonalignment 2.0, published in 2012 by the Center for Policy Research (CPR), an influential Indian think tank. The report’s study group included prominent retired officials such as Ambassador Shyam Saran, who helped negotiate the US-India civil nuclear deal, and Lieutenant General Prakash Menon. The deliberations were also attended by the sitting national security adviser, Shivshanker Menon, and his deputies, thus signaling some level of official endorsement. The report argued that “strategic autonomy” in the international sphere has and should continue to define Indian foreign policy so that India can benefit from a variety of partnerships and economic opportunities to spur internal development, which in turn will propel its rise to great-power status.

    Even if India were to abandon strategic autonomy, as some of the report’s critics advocate, it is essential to note that the Sino-Indian relationship is a little too complex for the sort of balancing game the US played with the USSR during the Cold War. As highlighted by Mohan Malik, the relationship faces several tensions, including territorial disputes, China’s aggressive patrolling of borders, maritime competition, and the race for alliances with littoral states in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. But China also happens to be India’s second-largest trading partner. Sino- Indian bilateral trade in 2011 peaked at almost $74 billion. In short, the relationship is adversarial in certain areas, but symbiotic in others.

    India is also engaged with China in international forums that are often perceived as emerging balancers against US power, such as the India-Russia-China forum and the Brazil-Russia-India-China- South Africa (BRICS) group, which has not only criticized US policies, but also called for replacing the US dollar as the international currency. Furthermore, the Indo-US relationship has troubles of its own, especially in dealing with Iran and Afghanistan, which signal the limits of Indian support for US policies in Asia. Because Iran is a key resource for energy supplies, India has not participated in efforts to pressure Iran economically to curtail its nuclear program. When US sanctions against Iran were heightened in early 2012, Iran and India proposed a plan to barter oil for wheat and other exports. India is also perturbed by the US’s planned departure from Afghanistan in 2014, which it fears may lead to chaos there. Moreover, it is wary of US-Taliban negotiations, afraid that the Taliban’s return to power will put Indian investments in Afghanistan at risk and also offer strategic space to anti-Indian militant groups.

    For these and other reasons, while the US and India share a range of common interests now and have been cooperating in a variety of areas, they still have a long way to go before establishing a truly close partnership. While the growing strength of this relationship is obvious, so are its limitations, and the ultimate nature of this relationship is as yet an open question. India’s global rise and the position it can acquire within US grand strategy is also dependent on things beyond America’s control-its continued economic growth and ability to tackle domestic challenges such as poverty and underdevelopment, infrastructural weaknesses, and multiple insurgent conflicts. It also fundamentally depends on the US’s continued ability to financially and politically afford a strong military and diplomatic presence in Asia. The current strategic commitments of American and Indian policymakers have also placed limits on the relationship. In Washington’s game plan, India is only one country in a larger web of alliancesstretching from India to Japan and Mongolia to Australia-that the US is developing. For its part, New Delhi is not looking to commit to an exclusive alliance with the US, but rather enter into a series of partnerships with a number of countries to gain what it can in terms of resources, trade, and security cooperation.

    Nevertheless, while this affair of the heart may remain unconsummated, both parties are growing more serious about each other and implementing policies to strengthen the strategic partnership. As for the US and Pakistan, they should limit their relationship to cooperation over issues that are truly of common interest. Moreover, though Islamabad will remain uneasy with increasing US-India coziness, this partnership does not necessarily forebode trouble for it. Such an outcome is especially avoidable with continued normalization of diplomatic relations and increased trade relations between India and Pakistan. That the Pakistani military and civilian leaderships are becoming committed to reducing tensions is a welcome sign.

  • US-India Strategic Partnership Set to Grow in Second Obama Administration

    US-India Strategic Partnership Set to Grow in Second Obama Administration

    The re-election of President Barack Obama is likely to be more promising and fruitful for the growing strategic partnership between India and the United States. During the second Obama administration, his India policies are expected to be upgraded further and there would possibly be more tangible outcomes from policy pronouncements made in the last four years.

    This strategic partnership is based on a foundation of shared values and interests. But due to the different state of their domestic constituencies and regional strategic environments, there could be differences in their understanding and responses on a few issues. That is why it is essential for leaders and policymakers in New Delhi and Washington to develop a deeper understanding of existing ground realities for negotiations on various issues.

    It is evident that India and the United States have been making a move forward. There have been issues in recent times such as defense procurements in India, the Libyan crisis, nuclear liability, outsourcing, allowing FDI in retail sector in India, Iranian nuclear program, Syrian crisis, etc.where India and the U.S. appear to have realized the other’s positions well. This has helped them successfully reduce friction and develop a mutual understanding – which is expected to improve further during Obama’s second term.

    The strategic partnership saw an upward trajectory during the first Obama administration with deepening cooperation in all sectors. It may be suggested here that after Obama’s reelection, there is a need to expedite the implementation process of policy pronouncements made by both New Delhi and Washington in the last four years. This will lead to more concrete outcomes. During the final phase of its first term, the Obama administration announced the re-balancing of its policy towards the Asia-Pacific, recognizing it as “the most rapidly growing and dynamic region in the world”. It appears that the U.S. has realized the need for enhancing its presence in the region so that it can secure its interests and influence.

    As China enhances its economic and military capabilities and becomes more assertive vis-à-vis its neighbors, it is likely that the second Obama administration would be seeking more cooperation with its allies and partners to successfully implement its rebalancing strategy. Also, with this rebalancing, it appears to be assuring its allies and partners in the Asia- Pacific region that it will be working with them to ensure peace and stability. India needs to deeply consider this evolving U.S. policy in the region and should prepare its response to successfully deal with emerging scenarios.

    This rebalancing is also about internal balancing. It is likely that the second Obama administration will be working more closely on domestic issues in the United States so that it can enhance its economic growth as well as national capabilities in sectors such as education, health and energy. This is imperative for the U.S. to deal with any future challenges such as the rise of China.

    India also needs to resolve its internal challenges and strengthen its national capabilities. It is essential to expedite these nation-building processes so that the growth momentum can be upgraded which will lead to a secure and prosperous future for India. During the second Obama administration, India and the United States – the world’s two largest democracies – should also collaborate more closely in their national capability building processes.

  • XI Jinping takes China’s Helm with many Tough challenges

    XI Jinping takes China’s Helm with many Tough challenges

    BEIJING (TIP): Long-anointed successor Xi Jinping assumes the leadership of China at a time when the ruling Communist Party is confronting slower economic growth, a public clamor to end corruption and demands for change that threaten its hold on power. The country’s political elite named Xi to the top party post on Thursday, and unexpectedly put him in charge of the military too, after a weeklong party congress and months of divisive bargaining. The appointments give him broad authority, but not the luxury of time.

    After decades of juggernaut growth, China sits on the cusp of global pre-eminence as the second largest economy and newest power, but it also has urgent domestic troubles that could frustrate its rise. Problems that have long festered – from the sputtering economy to friction with the U.S. and territorial spats with Japan and other neighbors – have worsened in recent months as the leadership focused on the power transfer. Impatience has grown among entrepreneurs, others in the new middle class and migrant workers – all wired by social media and conditioned by two decades of rising living standards to expect better government, if not democracy. All along, police have continued to harass and jail a lengthening list of political foes, dissidents, civil rights lawyers and labor activists.

    Two young Tibetans died Thursday after setting themselves ablaze in far west China, Radio Free Asia said, in the latest of dozens of suicide protests over Beijing’s handling of its Tibetan regions.

    In his first address to the nation, Xi, a 59- year-old son of a revolutionary hero, acknowledged the lengthy agenda for what should be the first of two five-year terms in office. He promised to deliver better social services while making sure China stands tall in the world and the party continues to rule. “Our responsibility now is to rally and lead the entire party and the people of all ethnic groups in China in taking over the historic baton and in making continued efforts to achieve the great renewal of the Chinese nation,” a confident Xi said in nationally televised remarks in the Great Hall of the People.

    He later said “we are not complacent, and we will never rest on our laurels” in confronting challenges – corruption chief among them. By his side stood the six other newly appointed members of the Politburo Standing Committee: Li Keqiang, the presumptive premier and chief economic official; Vice Premier Zhang Dejiang; Shanghai party secretary Yu Zhengsheng; propaganda chief Liu Yunshan; Tianjin party secretary Zhang Gaoli; and Vice Premier Wang Qishan, once the leadership’s top troubleshooter who will head the party’s internal watchdog panel. Xi gave no hint of new thinking to address the problems.

    The lack of specifics and the new leadership heavy with conservative technocrats deflated expectations for change in some quarters. “We should be expecting more of the same, not some fundamental break from the past,” said Dali Yang of the University of Chicago. Fundamental for the leadership is to maintain the party’s rule, he said. “They are not interested in introducing China’s Gorbachev” – the Soviet leader whose reforms hastened the end of the Soviet Union – Yang said. Many of the challenges Xi confronts are legacies of his predecessor, Hu Jintao. In addition to relinquishing his role as party chief, having reached the two-term maximum, Hu also stepped down from the party commission that oversees the military.

    The move is a break from the past in which exiting party leaders kept hold of the military portfolio for several years. During Hu’s 10 years in office, policies to open up China to trade and foreign investment begun by his predecessors gathered momentum, turning China into a manufacturing powerhouse and drawing tens of millions of rural migrants into cities.

    Easy credit fueled a building boom, the Beijing Olympics and the world’s longest high-speed rail network. At the same time, Hu relied on an ever-larger security apparatus to suppress protests, even as demonstrations continued to rise. “More and more citizens are beginning to awaken to their rights and they are constantly asking for political reform,” said rights activist Hu Jia, who has previously been jailed for campaigning for AIDS patients and orphans. “The Communist Party does not have legitimacy.

    It is a party of dictatorship that uses violence to obtain political power. What we need now is for this country’s people to have the right to choose who they are governed by.” Chief among the problems Xi and his team will have to tackle is the economy. Though Hu pledged more balanced development, inequality has risen and housing costs have soared. Over the past year, the economy has flagged, dragged down by anemic demand in Europe and the U.S. for Chinese products and an overhang from excessive lending for factories and infrastructure.

    With state banks preferring to lend to state-run companies or not at all, private entrepreneurs have had to turn to unofficial money-lenders. “The bank just asked me to wait,” said Deng Mingxin, who runs a zipper factory with 10 employees in Jiangsu province. “Maybe it’s because I didn’t offer enough ‘red envelopes’” – a reference to bribes.

    The World Bank warns that without quick action, growth that fell to a threeyear low of 7.4 percent in the latest quarter may fall to 5 percent by 2015 – a low rate for generating the employment and funding the social programs Beijing holds as key to keeping a lid on unrest. Analysts and Beijing’s own advisers have said it needs to overhaul its strategy and nurture consumer spending and services to meet its pledge of doubling incomes by 2020. “China will need a very different economy in the next decade,” said Citigroup economist Minggao Shen. In foreign policy, the U.S. and other partners are looking for reassurance that China’s policy remains one of peaceful integration into the world community.

    Tensions have flared in recent months between China, Japan and the Philippines over contested islets in the East and South China Seas. Mistrust has also grown with the U.S. as it diverts more military and diplomatic resources to Asia in what Chinese leaders see as containment. Fresh in office, Xi can ill-afford to bow to foreigners, crossing a nationalistic public and a military that may still be uncertain about his leadership.

    “The leaders can’t look like they are being soft on the U.S. or foreign policy because they will lose power in terms of people,” said Robert Lawrence Kuhn, a business consultant and author of the book “How China’s Leaders Think.” Kuhn expects More tough rhetoric than action in the months ahead, but expects Xi’s leadership to develop a more nuanced foreign policy as it consolidates its authority at home. Of all the knotty long-term challenges, few threaten to derail China’s march to a more prosperous society more than its rapidly aging society.

    Baby boomers whose labor manned the factories and construction sites are starting to retire. Meanwhile fewer Chinese are entering the workforce after a generation of family planning limits and higher incomes led to smaller families. If left unchecked, the trend will further stress already pressed social security funds.

    Scrapping the rule that limits many families to one child would help in the long run, and is being urged by experts. But the leadership for years has delayed change, in part because it sees smaller families and fewer births as having helped raise incomes overall. “China has wasted some time and opportunities partly because its growth over the last 10 years was so spectacular,” said Wang Feng, director of the Brookings-Tsinghua Center for Public Policy and an expert on China’s demographics. “Now it no longer has that luxury.”

  • IIM-Calcutta ties up with CEMS for global expansion

    IIM-Calcutta ties up with CEMS for global expansion

    KOLKATA (TIP): In a bid to expand its global footprint, Indian Institute of Management-Calcutta (IIM-C) has become the first institute in India to tie up with CEMS, an international alliance of management institutes across 28 countries in the world. “This is part of the internationalisation strategy by IIM-C.We will become the only school in India to be a part of this alliance.

    We are going to sign a memorandum of understanding with CEMS, through which our students will have the opportunity to get masters in management (MIM) degree from CEMS,” said Ashok Banerjee, dean, new initiatives and external relations, IIM-C. CEMS currently includes 28 academic institutions from Europe, North and South America, Asia and Australia.

    It also has about 70 companies and some non-governmental organisations as its partners. “Based on the agreement, we will have a three-year exclusivity with CEMS in India. Our students will be able to study in the best global institutes and in exchange, the students there will be coming to IIM-C.

    This will also help us in getting rated among the best management institutes in the world,” said Banerjee. The CEMS MIM is a post-graduate degree open to a selective group of students enrolled on a master’s programme in one of the 28 listed institutions. The course will be available for IIM-C students from 2013-14.

    CEMS, formerly known as the Community of European Management Schools and International Companies, had gone on a globalisation strategy opening up to institutes in Asia, Australasia, and North and South America since the middle of the last decade. The last country to be a member of CEMS was China in 2011.

  • As i see it : Obama Win: Some Indicators

    As i see it : Obama Win: Some Indicators

    President Obama win in 2008 was a truly historic occasion as the election of a non-white to the presidency represented the far reaching social change that had occurred relatively undetected in the American society over the years. His second win consolidates that social transformation. This does not mean, however, that racism has vanished from America’s social landscape.

    Many Republican whites could never fully reconcile themselves with Obama in the White House. The right wing swing of the Republican party after 2008 resulted in political gridlock in the US Congress, especially after the Republicans won a majority in the House of Representatives. This was despite Obama’s genuine efforts to reach a bi-partisan consensus on vital social and financial legislation.

    With this second defeat, bitterness in the Republican camp is set to become more acute. This election has more sharply polarized the country, with white, middle-aged, rural America broadly pitted against the Blacks, Hispanics and young, urban whites. With the Republicans retaining their majority in the House, the political gridlock will continue, making governance in America more difficult. The “fiscal cliff” looming in January 2013 will severely test Obama’s second presidency.

    Obama’s victory is not as “overwhelming” as some claim. His share of the electoral vote, and more particularly, the popular vote has come down, the first time this has happened in 100 years for a second term president. Obama had disappointed his democratic base early into his first presidency by seeking compromises on legislative measures he had promised and his failure to withdraw quickly from Afghanistan etc. In foreign policy, despite an unwarranted Nobel Peace Prize, he broadly continued Bush’s end-of-the-second-term policies. Antipathy towards Romney rather than a full endorsement of Obama seems to have affected the choice of voters.

    For India, Obama’s re-election provides continuity. We are familiar with his attitude and policies towards India. He has a good personal rapport with our Prime Minister. His initial views on Pakistan, Kashmir, terrorism, Afghanistan and China were problematic for us. But he has learned on the job, and today US policies on all these issues are more congenial for us. The US now considers India as the lynchpin of its “re-balancing” towards Asia. This shows the direction of US thinking on its strategic partnership with India.

    The India-US bilateral agenda pursued in Obama’s first tenure is richly textured. The opportunities and the obstacles are known to both sides, with realization that the pace of implementation will be determined by political compulsions. The relationship lacks excitement but is steady. Differences over Iran, Libya and Syria have been delicately balanced, which a Romney victory could have unsettled.

    On outsourcing Obama has remained negative, undeterred by larger political considerations. Visa fees hikes and visa denials to Indian service providers is an irritant. Our IT industry, chary of Obama’s win, fears the president will put tax penalties on US firms that outsource jobs. Obama has alienated the most pro-American segment of the modern, knowledge-based entrepreneurial class in India. Bangalore, a hi-tech job creating symbol of India-US ties in many ways, is presented parochially as a threat to US jobs by Obama.

    Whatever, our grievance on this score, the IT sector cannot be the defining test of the India-US relationship. We will have to keep voicing our concerns to the US, in the expectation that it would also want to contain the fall-out of these differences on the overall bilateral relationship. By squeezing us here, the US will also lose diplomatic ground in canvassing for more economic reforms in India.

  • Hard work ahead for re-elected Obama

    Hard work ahead for re-elected Obama

    On November 5, 2008, Barack Obama, an African-American, made history when he was elected the 44th president of the United States. The world’s oldest democracy had finally broken the race ceiling and a ‘man of color’ was set to occupy the White House.

    This year, on November 6, that part of history did not matter. President Obama was re-elected by a convincing majority and will now join the ranks of two-term U.S. presidents. And when he completes his second term in 2016, Obama would still be under 56.

    The challenges for Obama are stark and complex — both in the domestic context and on the external front. On the home front, the economic stasis and related unemployment figures (7.9 percent) will need urgent attention, more so against the backdrop of campaign promises about getting America back on track. The ‘fiscal cliff’ looms large and a divided U.S. Congress will not make for easy or amicable consensus on tax cuts and public spending.

    The foreign and security policy challenges are no less daunting and time critical. For a president who assumed office in January 2009 even as the United States was waging two wars — Iraq and Afghanistan — the radar screen is cluttered, particularly in relation to Asia. Iran looms large and Af-Pak has the 2014 deadline drawing closer.
    The China factor is the overarching presence in the continent and it is no coincidence that Beijing is set to elect its own president, Xi Jinping this week. With a new hand on the tiller, Beijing’s orientation towards the U.S. against the backdrop of the Obama Asian pivot will be the critical determinant in defining the geo-strategic texture of the Asian region.

    While seeking to restore economic vitality in the domestic context, Obama will have to concurrently establish U.S. credibility as a security guarantor with its anxious allies in Asia. Both East Asia and South East Asia are in a dilemma about how best to balance their own relations with an assertive China and a reticent United States. West Asia remains wary with an Arab Spring that has turned into a sullen autumn.

    South Asia is the more intractable nettle for the U.S. given the tenacity of the terror complex that inhabits the Af-Pak swathe and the obduracy of a nuclear armed Rawalpindi which remains inflexible about nurturing the forces of right-wing Islamic religious extremism.

    It merits recall that in March 2009, in his maiden address on this issue, Obama asserted: “We have a clear and focused goal – to disrupt, dismantle and defeat al Qaeda in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and to prevent their return to either country in the future … to the terrorists who oppose us, my message is the same: we will defeat you.”

    The Abbottabad operation of May 2011 that eliminated Osama bin Laden was one of the major successes in Obama’s first term and played no small role in burnishing the profile of the U.S. president as a competent commander-in-chief. But as Libya demonstrated, the footprint of anti-U.S. sentiment that takes recourse to terror and pre-meditated violence has gone global and the goal of March 2009 may still remain elusive — even after 2014.

    Paradoxically, while China and Japan had good reason to weigh the pros and cons of an Obama or Romney victory, for India either outcome would have seen a continuity in the bilateral relationship. The U.S.-India relationship has moved from prickly estrangement to tentative engagement since 2008 and bipartisan support in the U.S. Congress apropos imparting greater content is widespread.

    While differences over issues like Iran will persist, for India there is comfort in working with an Obama administration that has already invested four years into the fine print of the partnership. Given the fact that India will be preparing for its own general election in early 2014, the next 12 months are the only window left for the UPA government led by Manmohan Singh to pursue the big-ticket issues with the United States.

    New Delhi can derive satisfaction from the reality that it has the comfort of continuity in the White House and has been spared the vagaries of a new U.S. administration getting its own team into place — a process that can be time-consuming and contested. If Manmohan Singh can find the political will to engage with President Obama and pursue the many stalled bilateral initiatives with the United States, hopefully the next year will be more meaningful for a partnership that seems to have been adrift for some time.

    If the campaign trail was a hard slog, the tough part for Obama begins now.

  • Manipal University inks pacts with 2 Chinese varsities

    Manipal University inks pacts with 2 Chinese varsities

    Mangalore (TIP): Manipal University has signed agreements with Shanghai’s Tongji and Tianjin universities for mutual, comprehensive partnerships.

    Quoting the Vice-Chancellor of Manipal University, K. Ramnarayan, a press release said here on Monday that the MoUs are for mutual, comprehensive partnerships in the areas of student exchange, faculty exchange, joint degrees, twinning programmes, and the exchange of research scholars and post-doctoral fellows.

    It will also facilitate exchange of academic publications, materials and information.

    Ramnarayan signed the documents on behalf of Manipal University, and Xia Liping, Dean of Politics and International Relations of Tongji University, and Li Jiajun of Tianjin University, signed the documents on the behalf of their respective universities.

    “It is a step towards Manipal University’s long-term plan of opening the first-ever campus of an Indian university in China. Eventually we would like to see free creative flow both ways, as we have between India and the United States. For some reason, we have ignored the potential of China, and that is something we want to tap,” Ramnarayan said.

    The release said that Manipal University is in talks with Chinese officials to open a campus there. Now Manipal University has campuses in Dubai, Nepal, Antigua and Malaysia.

    Ramnarayan said he is keen to bring Chinese students to India, as an increasing number of their students are pursuing higher education overseas. China is beginning to recognise the qualities of Indian universities, he added.
    A delegation from Manipal University had visited these universities in June and last week, the release added.

  • China’s new first lady: A star in her own right

    China’s new first lady: A star in her own right

    BEIJING (tip): She sports Tibetan costume or military uniform and regales Chinese audiences with folk and patriotic songs. Until recently,Peng Liyuan, a star singer, was a lot more popular than her politician husband, Xi Jinping, slated to become China’s next President.

    Peng, 49, who began as an ordinary soldier and occupies a civilian position as major-general, sings folk and Chinese adaptations of western pop. In a country where wives of politicians are rarely seen in public functions, she is a rarity. She easily gets hundreds of military men waving and dancing during her performances of revolutionary and patriotic songs.

    Last year, Peng burst into the international volunteering scenario as the WHO declared her the goodwill ambassador for HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis. She joined Microsoft founder in May to launch a major anti-smoking campaign in China.
    Peng is expected to play an important public role after Xi’s elevation as China’s president is formally approved by the National People’s Congress, the Chinese parliament, in March 2012. China observers think she might use her musical talent to propagate Beijing’s case with Tibetans, and raise people’s sentiments against Japan’s “occupation” of Diaoyu Islands, which is claimed by China.

    An important question is whether China’s next first lady would play the kind of public role that wives of American presidents enact. China has no history of “first wives” playing major roles – with the exception of Mao Zedong’s infamous wife Jiang Qing, who played a key role in the Cultural Revolution.

    Peng is expected to be more active in public life but might initially keep a low profile to avoid unnecessary controversies for her husband, observers said. She did not appear in the China Central Television’s gala event after Xi’s promotion in 2008.

    Adored as a soprano, Peng is also a member of China People’s Political Consultative Conference, one of the two houses of parliament. Their daughter, Xi Mingze, who studies at Harvard, made headlines when she volunteered for relief work after the earthquake in Sichuan in 2008 at age 16.

    Her following in the Chinese military is almost unrivaled by any woman in history. Peng’s famous performances like ‘We Are The Yellow River’ and ‘We Are Mount Taishan’ draw a picture of a harmonious Chinese society.

  • Consul General Invokes the Memory of Swami Vivekananda at the NFIA Convention

    Consul General Invokes the Memory of Swami Vivekananda at the NFIA Convention

    CHICAGO (TIP): Inaugurating the 17th biennial convention of the National Federation of Indian American Associations (NFIA), Consul General of India, Ms. Mukta Dutta Tomar, on Friday October 12, 2012 welcomed the delegates from all over the United States to Chicago and said that this town is a remarkable place where Swami Vivekananda made his extraordinary speech to the 1893 World’s Parliament of Religions. “Almost 120 years later, his words still hold true, promoting tolerance and universal acceptance,” she continued, “I hope you will take a little time to visit the Art Institute and renew your connections to that historic event.” The Consul General then went on to pay a glowing tribute to the Indian American community and said that the people of India origin have proved themselves in a tough global competitive environment through their innovative, dynamic, pioneering qualities, as they continue to produce new generation of talented individuals, good corporate and social citizens and enterprising and creative professionals.

    Studies support that over 3 million immigrants from India living in the US are one of the most remarkable concentration of Indians, she noted. Seventy percent of them over the age of 25 are college graduates, 67% over the age of 16 are professionals and the median income of Indian household is over $90,000, the highest among all ethnic groups in the United States. A joint UC Berkeley-Duke University study revealed that Indian American immigrants have founded more engineering and technology companies from 1995 to 2005 than immigrants from UK, China, Taiwan and Japan combined.

    Tomar also addressed the growing ties between India and the United States. “The partnership between the two countries is based on shared values of democracy, pluralism, and rule of law. The relations have widened in scope and encompass cooperation in areas like economy and trade, defense and security, education, science and technology, civil nuclear energy, space technology, clean energy, environment and health.”

    The inauguration ceremony started with a welcome remarks by Convention Convener Sohan Joshi and NFIA President Lal Motwani. Congressman Joe Walsh (D-8th District of Illinois) also addressed the delegates saying that he was very happy to be there. “I have fallen in love with India and people of Indian origin in my district.” His brief remarks were followed by a colorful cultural program of dances and music. Lal Motwani, president of NFIA and Sohan Joshi, the convener of the gathering also made brief remarks.

    The next day was filled with intellectually stimulating seminars. The day was organized into 10 sessions including two plenary sessions. The first plenary session was titled “Indian American Making an Impact in America” with Dr. Ann Lata Kalayil, an Obama appointee as GSA Administrator for Great Lakes Region as the keynote speaker and Anju Bhargava, a member of White House Office of Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnership as speaker. Dr. Kalayil spoke about her experience growing as a second generation Indian American kid, taking interest in political process and that how she made it to the current position as GSA administrator and called upon the new generation to get involved in public service. Ms. Bhargava spoke on many avenues of involvement for the community in faith-based and neighborhood partnership. In a second plenary session, Dr. Sid Gautam, Professor of Financial Economics; Director, Center for Entrepreneurship, Methodist University, Fayetteville, NC spoke on the Innovative DNA of the Indian Diaspora.

    There were eight other conference sessions which dealt with Honoring the Pioneers – Celebrating 100th Anniversary Gadar Movement (organized by GOPIO International); New Tax Rules in the US and India affecting the Community – Foreign Income Reporting, FBAR, OVDI, Avoid Double Taxation and New NRI Taxes in India; Indian Americans Making Impact in the Society; Taking Care of Our Own – Services to the Community; Indian American Senior Citizens – Mobilizing Services; Community’s Success in Political Involvement; Indian Americans Making Impact in India’s Development; Indian American Youth and Young Professionals Achieving Success. In addition, an Indian delegate Dr. Sudha Gopalakrishnan, Executive Director of SAHAPEDIA made a special presentation on An Open encyclopedia on Indian Culture and Heritage.

    There was a spirited discussion on the political involvement of the community and the success it has achieved in this area. Toby Chaudhary, a political activist from Washington DC, urged the audience to wake up and participate in the mainstream politics.

    “The conference sessions were very well attended and the speakers brought many issues and prospects of the Indian American community including many community groups sharing exchanging their experiences in serving the community,’ said the conference chairman Dr. Thomas Abraham, who is also the founder president of NFIA.

    A gala banquet was held on Saturday evening and Cook County Clerk Dorothy Brown and Secretary of State Jesse White made remarks at the event. The six individual award winners were: Harkrishana Majumdar and Dr. Najma Sultana for their involvement in community service; Nitin Shah in the field of hospitality and financing; Sid Gautam for promoting entrepreneurship; Rathna Kumar for her excellence in performing arts and Dr. Hemant Patel for his service to medicine and organizational leadership.

    Three organizations, Sahara TV, India Abroad, the oldest Indian American weekly, and Indo-American Centre of Chicago, an organization that focuses on assisting South Asian immigrants as they adjust to life in the United States, were also recognized for their exemplary achievements.

    Sunday morning was devoted to the business of the organization, revision of bylaws, and elections were held for the president and the board followed by a lunch.

    .The delegates parted company to take their flights back to their home States, after making new friends, collecting a bunch of business cards, and carrying fond memories of their stay in Chicago.

  • The United States and India: A Vital Partnership in a Changing World

    The United States and India: A Vital Partnership in a Changing World

    The issue that I’ve been asked to address today — India’s rise and the promise of U.S.-Indian partnership — is one of those rarest of Washington species, especially ten days before a Presidential election, a genuinely bipartisan policy priority. I have been fortunate to play a small role in building our relationship with India over the past five years, spanning two U.S. Administrations, including the completion of the historic civil nuclear agreement by then-President Bush and Prime Minister Singh in 2008, and the landmark visits of Prime Minister Singh to the U.S. in 2009 and President Obama to India in 2010. I just returned from another visit to New Delhi, at the end of a fascinating trip across Asia, surely the most consequential region of the world in the new century unfolding before us.

    I remember well all the questions that spun around our relationship four years ago, as the Bush Administration gave way to the Obama Administration. Would we “re-hyphenate” relations with India, and see India mainly through the prism of preoccupations in Afghanistan and Pakistan? Would we be tempted by visions of a “G-2” world, subordinating relations with India to the significance of a rising China? Would India see as clearly as others how important its role in the world was becoming, and see beyond its G-77 past to its G-20 future? Would Indians embrace the rising responsibilities that come with rising influence?

    Debates were held. Papers were written. Hands were wrung. But together we’ve largely moved beyond those honest questions and concerns. Of course some suspicions linger, and some differences persist, which is only natural. Of course we have a great deal more work to do. But there is growing confidence in both our countries about what my longtime colleague and friend, India’s National Security Advisor Shivshankar Menon, has recently described as a steady convergence of interests and values. Indians and Americans, it seems to me, understand that the only “hyphen” we will pursue with respect to our relationship is the one that links the United States and India.

    The essence of the vital partnership that we’re building lies in a simple truth. For the first time, for both of us, our individual success at home and abroad depends significantly on our cooperation.

    Progress between us won’t always be measured in dramatic breakthroughs, like President Bush’s civil-nuclear initiative, or dramatic moments, like President Obama’s declaration of support for India’s permanent membership in a reformed UN Security Council. It won’t be measured in diplomatic honeymoons which never end. It won’t be measured in some special alchemy that magically transforms strategic convergence and powerful aspirations into meaningful cooperation.

    The real measure of progress in our increasingly vital partnership will instead be steady focus, persistence, hard work, systematic habits of collaboration, and methodically widening the arc of common interests and complementary actions. With that in mind, let me highlight quickly three important dimensions of the work — and the promise — that lies ahead of us: strengthening strategic cooperation; building shared prosperity; and deepening people to people ties.

    I. Strategic Cooperation

    First, as India’s recent economic rise has expanded its role and deepened its stake in shaping the international system, we are counting on India’s rise as a truly global power — one that looks east and west, a strategic partner for economic growth, security, and the provision of public goods.

    Last December in Pune, I spoke to Indian international affairs students. I told them that the U.S.-India relationship must be a cornerstone of the Asia-Pacific century ahead. And as the world’s economic and strategic center of gravity shifts east, the United States is not the only nation emphasizing its role as a resident diplomatic, economic and military power in the Asia-Pacific. India’s distinguished former Foreign Secretary, Shyam Saran, has also observed that India’s own engagement in East Asia reflects “the concept of the Asia-Pacific, which hitherto excluded India, expanding westwards to encompass the subcontinent as its integral part.”

    India and the United States have a powerful and shared interest in an Asia-Pacific where economic interdependence drives growth and shared prosperity … where disputes are resolved peacefully… where rules are respected and patterns of political and economic behavior favor openness. So we are working to define a shared agenda to help achieve and assure those goals.

    India has shown increasing signs that it intends to build on its longstanding “Look East” policy. I came away from my recent visits to India and Burma with renewed admiration for the East-West connectivity agenda India’s leadership is advancing across Southeast Asia. India is revitalizing centuries-old commercial ties with countries to its east and making headway on an Indo-Pacific corridor through Bangladesh and Burma that connects South and Southeast Asia.
    India just hosted the Mekong-Ganga ministerial meeting and held 2+2 consultations with Japan, and next week will host the U.S. and Japan for trilateral consultations. The ASEAN-India Summit will come to New Delhi this winter. Some may dismiss India’s efforts to become more embedded in the regional diplomatic architecture of the East Asia Summit, ASEAN Regional Forum and APEC as maybe good for India’s hotel industry, but really just so many talk shops. But consider this: last week, India’s External Affairs Minister was in Brunei celebrating $80 billion in India-ASEAN trade this year — up 37% in the last year alone. We should all find talk shops as profitable as these.

    We all obviously also have to keep a very careful eye on less promising trends across the region, and the revival of old animosities that can quickly undermine the promise of economic interdependence and easy assumptions about shared prosperity. Recent frictions in both the East China Sea and the South China Sea are a sobering reminder of how fast nationalism and maximalism can rear their heads. All that should simply reinforce the interest of the U.S. and India in encouraging dialogue and diplomacy, instead of intimidation and coercion.

    Looking westward, both the United States and India have a strong interest in a peaceful, stable future for Afghanistan. The same week the U.S. and Afghanistan signed the Strategic Partnership Agreement in May, New Delhi hosted the inaugural meeting of the India-Afghanistan Partnership Council and in a few weeks President Karzai will pay a return visit to Delhi. India and the U.S. share a long-term commitment to pursue sustainable economic growth, strong democratic institutions and an Afghan-led process of peace and reconciliation — commitments reflected in the first United States-India-Afghanistan trilateral dialogue in September.

    For our part, the United States will lead a security transition in — not a departure from — Afghanistan. As Secretary Clinton has made clear, none of us can afford to repeat the mistakes that followed the Soviet exit from Afghanistan. With coalition forces drawing down, Afghanistan will need massive private investment and far greater economic linkages to its neighbors.

    India has committed more than $2 billion in development assistance to Afghanistan since 2001, building on ties that go back to the early Indus Valley civilizations. Even without direct access to India’s growing markets, Afghanistan already sends one quarter of its exports to India. Extending trade and transit agreements outward to India and Central Asia will allow Afghan traders to return to the marketplaces of Amritsar and Delhi. In June, when India hosted its own investment conference with Afghanistan, attendance far outstripped expectations, reminding us how organic these connections are. There has also been good progress on the proposed Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) pipeline, though a great deal of work still lies ahead. The vision of a “New Silk Road” is not a single path, it is a long-term vision of economic, transit, infrastructure and human links across Asia. And India is its natural engine.

    Deeper defense and security ties have become another leading indicator of a burgeoning strategic partnership. As India’s military influence grows, our hope is that our partnership can become one of our closest in the region. We are united by our experience of tragedy and terror, shared threats in Afghanistan and a shared vision for a peaceful and open Asia-Pacific. We are proud of our robust counterterrorism cooperation, which simply didn’t exist until a few years ago — and now extends to all levels of policy and law enforcement.

    Since 2008, India has bought over $8 billion in U.S. defense equipment, up from effectively zero less than a decade ago. When we complete delivery of India’s $4 billion in C-17 aircraft, our combined fleet will represent the largest air lift capability in the world. These are indispensable assets for global response to crisis and disaster; last year’s delivery of the C-130J Hercules came just in time for rescue operations after the Sikkim earthquake. Our military services conduct some of their largest joint exercises with India, including over fifty formal engagements in the past year. As our defense relationship evolves from “buyer-seller” to co-production and joint research, we will be ambitious, and we ask India to be equally ambitious in sharing this vision of a new security partnership with the United States.

    As our partnership matures, we will continue to seek India’s help in building what Secretary Clinton has called “a global architecture of cooperation.” While it is true that the international architecture has sometimes struggled to keep up with the emergence of a rising India, it is equally true that India has sometimes bristled at the burdens of global leadership. Both need to change, and both, I would argue, are changing. As President Obama said in his 2010 address to the Indian Parliament, the United States looks forward to “a reformed UN Security Council that includes India as a permanent member.”

    But India is not waiting for a permanent seat to begin exercising leadership. The list of India’s global contributions is long and growing: deep engagement in the Global Counterterrorism Forum … tough votes at the IAEA against Iran’s failure to meet its international obligations, and a lowering of dependence on Iranian crude … election support in Egypt … and peacekeepers around the globe. In the UN Human Rights Council, India made a powerful call for enhanced efforts to achieve reconciliation and accountability in troubled Sri Lanka. While we certainly don’t agree on everything, or see eye-to-eye on every issue, what matters is that India is continuing to use its resources and standing to help others enjoy the peace, prosperity and freedom its own people have worked so hard to achieve for themselves.

    II. Shared Prosperity

    The second critical area of cooperation is economic, consistent with Secretary Clinton’s greater emphasis on economic statecraft in America’s relationships around the world. But in this case, it is also a reflection of India’s vast potential and the realization that America’s and India’s long-term economic interests are essentially congruent and mutually reinforcing.

    Each of us is eager to put to rest questions about our economic staying power. In America, we obviously have to continue to put our own economic house in order. India has seen currency devaluation and high inflation, and its economic growth has slipped. We can and must help each other grow, and prove our doubters wrong.

    India’s modernization and the lifting of hundreds of millions of its own citizens out of poverty rightly remains the focus of the Indian government. In this endeavor, India has no more important partner than the United States. Our total direct investment in India in 2000 was $2.4 billion. By 2010, it was $27 billion. By the way, over roughly the same time period, the stock of Indian direct investment in America grew from a little over $200 million to nearly $5 billion – more than a twenty-fold increase. So we have literally never been so invested in each other’s success.
    Our economic relationship is very much a two-way street. Both of us are focused on attracting growth and investment to our shores. An Indian-owned Tata factory in Ohio puts thousands of Americans to work, part of the over 50,000 jobs Indian firms have created in the United States. And the opportunities for small, medium and large American businesses in India are staggering. While it’s well-known that India is projected to be the world’s third-largest economy by 2025, what is less well-known is that 90% of India is still without broadband; that 80% of the India of 2030 hasn’t yet been built, according to McKinsey; that India plans to invest one trillion dollars on infrastructure in the next five years alone. That is why Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley visited India, and came back with $60 million in two-way business. That is why Kentucky Governor Steve Beshear visited India three times and helped bring about a $7 billion private sector energy deal. That is why Norfolk has a sister-city alliance with Kochi in Kerala that has helped Virginia export nearly $300 million in goods to India each year.

    Of course, for our companies to provide the technology and expertise to help India prosper, India’s government must create an environment that encourages growth. That is why India’s recent easing of some restrictions on Foreign Direct Investment are so promising. Indian multi-brand retail, aviation, power grid and broadcasting companies and markets will be more open to investment, technologies, and best practices from all around the world. It will be easier to bring food to market. India’s Commerce Ministry estimates these changes will create 10 million jobs for its young and growing population. As encouraging as these changes are, we all know there is more to do to bring predictability to the Indian market — for India’s sake and for the sake of our economic relations.

    Greater economic openness is not a concession to the United States. It is one of the most powerful tools India has to maintain and expand its growth. In New Delhi last week, I urged my Indian counterparts to address non-tariff barriers, favoritism for local companies, restrictions on foreign investment and intellectual property protection — because progress and predictability will only shore up India’s economic foundations.

    So will a U.S.-India Bilateral Investment Treaty. We are aiming for a high-quality agreement that expands on recent reforms to provide still greater openness to investment; strong rules to protect investors and guarantee transparency; and effective means for resolving disputes should they arise.

    So will the Infrastructure Debt Fund, a consortium of Indian and American corporations and banks — created by the U.S.-India CEO Forum to finance India’s massive investment in roads, grids, seaports, airports and all the necessary building blocks of a modern economy.

    And so will a steady supply of energy. The Civil-Nuclear Initiative still holds remarkable promise for the people of India and the United States. Without diminishing the very real and often frustrating challenges we have faced, both our governments are now engaged in realizing the practical benefits of the civil-nuclear agreement, especially reliable electricity for India’s homes and businesses. Our companies are making good headway in negotiations with their Indian counterpart to complete pre-early works agreements by the end of this year. In June, Westinghouse and India’s Nuclear Power Corporation took important early steps that will lead to Westinghouse nuclear reactors in Gujarat. We hope General Electric can follow suit. The Indian government has clearly indicated that nuclear energy will remain an important part of India’s energy equation, and we are equally committed to expanding cooperation in other areas, from wind and solar energy to natural gas and biofuels.

    Of course, there is still more we can do. If we do not seize these economic opportunities, others will, and we will fall behind. Japan, Canada and the European Union are all moving to open up trade with India. Our goal should be to think ambitiously about the opportunities we can offer our businesses — including our small business and globalized entrepreneurs — through deepened economic engagement with India.

    III. People-to-People

    As important as economic resources and capital are, India has no greater resource and no richer source of capital than its own people. That brings me to my third area of cooperation: people-to-people ties. Some might think this “soft” or besides the point with hard security issues at stake. Diplomatic and economic dialogues are critical, but they are not enough for a twenty-first century friendship like ours. As Secretary Clinton has said, our greatest friendships have never been confined to the halls of power. They live also in the aspirations and interactions of our people. The phrase “people to people” actually covers tremendous ground in our relationship: science and technology, educational exchange, civil society engagement and innovation. The organic growth of people-to-people ties is what has set the pace in our relationship for many years, and our governments are only now catching up.

    The talents of the Indian diaspora are creating wealth from Calcutta to California. At a time when Indian immigrants comprised less than 1% of America’s population, they founded more than six percent of America’s startups, and over thirteen percent of the startups in Silicon Valley that powered our economy through the 1990s. We can all be proud of the successes of Indian-Americans in the U.S. and their contributions in boardrooms, classrooms, laboratories and now in the governor’s offices of South Carolina and Louisiana.

    We support student exchanges because we know from experience that today’s participants become tomorrow’s constituents for a strong U.S.-India relationship — from business leaders like Ratan Tata, educated at Harvard and Cornell; to statesmen like India’s External Affairs Minister, SM Krishna, a Fulbright Scholar who studied at Southern Methodist University in Dallas and George Washington University just up the street.

    In 2011, we held a U.S.-India Higher Education summit to usher in a new era of government support for people-to-people ties. 100,000 Indian students study in the U.S. every year, and we created a program called “Passport to India” to increase the numbers of young people heading in the other direction to learn and serve. A common determination to educate our children is one more tie that binds America and India together.

    And when tragedy strikes, as it did last August at a Sikh Temple in Oak Creek, Wisconsin, we come together to mourn and to heal. American police officers risked their lives to stop the gunman before he could do any more harm. The President personally reached out to India and to Indian-Americans, calling the Sikh community, “a part of our broader American family” and ordered flags to be flown at half-staff at every U.S. federal building in America and every U.S. mission around the world. The First Lady went to Wisconsin to show her support in person. The powerful response to this tragedy showed the very values of tolerance that the gunman sought to threaten. These, too, are values that Indians and Americans share.

    Conclusion

    While the potential of our bilateral relationship is limitless, I want to assure you that my remarks this morning are not.

    Much is possible as we deepen strategic cooperation and strengthen our economic and people-to-people ties. But we have to tend carefully to our partnership. Further progress is neither automatic nor pre-ordained. Keeping a partnership on track between two proud, noisy democracies takes vision and steady commitment. It’s a little like riding a bike; either you keep peddling ahead, or you tend to fall over.

    I remain an optimist about what’s possible for Indians and Americans. The truth is that there has never been a moment when India and America mattered more to one another. And there has never been a moment when partnership between us mattered more to the rest of the globe. As two of the world’s leading-democracies and most influential powers, we can help build a new international order — in which other democracies can flourish, human dignity is advanced, poverty is reduced, trade is expanded, our environment is preserved, violent extremism is marginalized, the spread of weapons of mass destruction is curbed, and new frontiers in science and technology are explored. That is the moment, and the promise, which lies before us.

    (Speech delivered by US Deputy Secretary of State William J. Burns at Center for American Progress, Washington DC October 26, 2012)