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Is India a soft state ? |
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The image of India at the end of the hijacking incident is that a nuclear power has been brought down to its knees. The sight of the Foreign Minister escorting three terrorists has lowered the prestige of the Government. There were a series of blunders : the first was allowing the hijackers to take off from Amritsar; the second was the failure to persuade authorities at Dubai to try to stall the aircraft’s departure by rushing a negotiating team there. The third and fatal flaw in the Government’s strategic response manifested in the approach to the negotiations in Kandahar. The connection between the Taliban and the Islamic fundamentalists within Afghanistan and Pakistan were under-estimated. When negotiations actually started, it was already too late. Also the Government did not seem to have a credible strategy either to deal with the situation, or during negotiations. Too much faith was placed in the Taliban.
All this brings us to debate the point whether India is a soft state. In another context, Swedish economist, Gunnar Myrdal had termed India a soft state. Myrdal’s thesis was that while dictatorships like China and the Soviet Union could take hard decisions, democracies like India were unable to do so because they lack the will.
Indian statute books have the most just, humanitarian and progressive legislations. But one knows that in reality, nothing works. India is simply a state that is unable to implement policies and decisions that it has itself taken. Actually, in the Indian context, the Indian state is unable to execute any decisions whatsoever.
Another opinion is that India is neither a soft state, nor a hard state. It is like a banana, soft inside with a hard exterior that is useless. The Indian state neglects its national borders and calls the process of retrieving its own territory in Kargil as a victory. critics of the Government say that a state that has recently gone nuclear and which has a large army and a certain measure of scientific majority, has managed to make a mess of a hijacking episode.
Notwithstanding the criticism of the Government, there were genuine difficulties, the most important of which was that the aircraft was outside the country where the Government had little room for manoeuvre.
Whatever the apparent and hidden costs of the Kandahar deal, the main fact that has emerged, according to defence analysts, is that India is under siege from fundamentalist and terrorist forces.
For more than a week, India was held to ransom with the crisis, a horrific reminder of the manner the nation is being targeted by the narco-fundamental-terrorist coalition whose base over the past decade has shifted from the Middle East to the Pak-Afghan region. The unparalleled spectacle of the Foreign Minister delivering terrorists (hijackers) to terrorists (ruling Taliban militia which is recognised only by Pakistan, UAE and Saudi Arabia), can only damage India’s credentials as a frontline state in the war against international terrorism.
While New Delhi could have tried to prolong the negotiations further to focus greater international attention on the terror at Kandahar and to expose the hijackers’ backers, the cave-in culminated several slip-ups starting at Kathmandu.
As India shares a long border with Nepal, its security perimeter should naturally extend up to the northern Nepalese frontier. If India cannot fight terrorism in Nepal, the battle, according to experts, is lost.
The hijack crisis also bared the naivete of the diplomatic assessments from Indian missions in Riyadh and Kathmandu questioning Home Ministry and intelligence appraisals about Saudi funding activities and the use of Nepal as a terrorist launch paid.
The only way, according to experts, is that Government can redeem itself now by launching an all out war against terrorism that demonstrates that what happened at Kandahar was only a tactical retreat.
India has to contend with a disadvantaged regional security environment and fears concerning a hostile nuclear environment. The long-term strategic threats from China can also not be discounted, but the near-term threat from Pakistan is far more significant.
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