Greece: a culprit or victim of Euro Dream?

On 5^th July, the people of Greece, in a historic referendum, spoke laude and clear against the austerity program proposed by the Euro club. The gloves are off on both sides. On one side, Greece, the quasi bankrupt nation, stands; and, the other side of the fence is being represented by the Euro club headed by Germany.  On July 8^th the Greek prime minister made an emotional but audacious statement: “his country has become a laboratory for austerity experiments”.

But later the Greek government, seeing no option in hand, went on to negotiate for the third bailout plan. For the moment, the probability of Grexit from Euro appears to have slightly diminished but it’s still on the table. Needless to say that if Grexit happens then its aftermath will bring a chilling effect on the global economy, and more importantly that would shake the foundation of belief that if globalization can really be an engine of growth and prosperity for a longer period of time.

Greece was escorted to enter the Euro club in 2001; and in almost one and half decades the country’s financial mess brought it at the threshold of exiting the common currency zone. Can Greece alone be held responsible for its economic mess or at larger canvas is it the nature of the operation of Euro that merits more critical examination?

Greek tale of quasi divorce from Euro

EU (European Union) was first a political union which wanted to bind the competing European nations with a single thread of common market. To get this project done, they conceived a single currency, Euro, to make business easier for all.

In order to be eligible to join the Euro club, the aspiring country had to satisfy the Maastricht criteria    based upon economic indicators; ex: interest rate, the ratio of debt vis-à-vis their GDP rates etc. Those rules were framed to keep a comfortable balance in fiscal and monetary policies amongst all the Euro members. In 2001, just to secure an entry into the Euro zone, Greece manipulated the fiscal record since it was a mandatory requirement to have the ratio of debt versus GDP as 60%.

In the early phase of its circulation, the Euro went on swiftly with certain negligible hiccups. With having a common currency in floating, countries like Germany, France became natural and primary beneficiary of booming economy. Because for these already developed countries, entire Europe had become a single market for their export goods. Secondly, they’d a highly efficient taxation system in place which allowed them to keep a safe balance between public expenditure and public purse. That helped countries like Germany and France to keep their debt within a limit.

Relatively moderately developed nations of Euro group (ex: Ireland, Portugal, Greece etc.) could not milk out much out of common market; on the contrary,  as their manufacturing industry is not as robust as Germany and France. Thus, the latter became the natural exporter to the former.  So, the level of earning for public exchequer didn’t get pumped up for countries like Ireland, Portugal and Greece; on the other hand, their welfare state expenditure remained flying high with the same vigor. To finance those welfare programs they never felt any dearth of credit as German, French banks were ready to lend them without any hesitation.

In 2009 with the credit crunch crisis hitting the European continent, the entire business of fiscal and monetary affair got measurably disturbed. European banks themselves experienced a massive credit dearth. For countries like Greece, Ireland, Portugal, borrowing became tougher; though their public expenditure remained high, but lending refused to slacken. Such credit poor countries did not have any option left but to knock at the door of ECB (European Central Bank) and IMF. The request turned into bailout package with the imposition of tough austerity measures which includes heavy cut in public expenditure and radical reforms in taxation policy.

We can’t deny the fact that Greeks do not have an efficient system for taxation; nor, do have they a robust financial system either. So, it was a pre-established fact that underperforming Greece would not be able to pay back its debt. But still the bailout package was offered to them from EU. People say that it was given just because it allowed them to pay back to German and French banks. So, the first and second bailouts were delivered not to ease the problem of poor Greeks but to re-pay the debts to the German and French financial firms. And, ultimately the burden of that payment falls over the Greek, German and French taxpayers.

The debt is a necessary evil of capitalism. But letting public debt go beyond an uncontrollable limit squarely depends upon the fiscal infrastructure of a country where Greece has lost the game. But, let’s not feel so squeamish because if today it’s Greece, tomorrow it’d for Ireland, Portugal and day after tomorrow Italy and Spain might be found floating in the same troubles waters. Not even that, the economists fear that if this trend of insurmountable debt (vis-à-vis their respective GDP) continues then even France might fall in that lap. If all these countries will slip in the darkness of austerity then who will buy German goods?

The nub of the story is not that Germany, through Euro, wants to become more powerful in compare to its eternal competitor France or other European neighbors; but the crux of the Greek crisis lies in asking an economically literate question which is: does the Euro itself have a flawed structure?  

Euro, an enigmatic experiment of single monetary union floating with multiple fiscal policies:

Euro circulates in seventeen countries. Most of these countries have got a very different culture of economic management. Well, the fundamental mistake that the planners of Euro made was that they could not anticipate the future. They thought that if all the seventeen countries have democracy and free-market economics; it means they all share the same culture which is Europeanism. Founding fathers of Euro overestimated the power of Adam Smith’s invisible hands (the efficiency of market) and underestimated the weakness of human nature (which is greed to have more). As the classical liberals believe that market solves all problems itself; and the state should not at all come in the way of market. So, the failure of Euro exposes the limit of free-market. Today, Adam Smith’s invisible hands could not be found to be visible in Euro zone.

It’s, seemingly, an impractical politico-economic project that seventeen sovereign nations could surrender themselves to a single currency which means a single monetary tool with seventeen different fiscal policies. The fact of the matter is that the nations in Euro zone are not homogenous in nature of development and prosperity. A few countries from western part are highly advanced economies will continue to prosper; their banking institutions will continue to dominate other parts of Europe. Thus, the level playing field will never surface. And, the game of rules will always be dictated by a few mightier ones (primarily Germany then France).  

If European leaders wish Euro to continue as their common currency then they’d have to consider adopting a common fiscal policy. That means it requires a complete federal structure: the idea of United States of Europe has to evolve not merely in nomenclature but in operational terms as well. What it means is that every Euro nation has to cede its complete sovereignty to Brussels. But, that innovative technology of power will, technically, alter the concept of nation-state.  It’ll trigger a new philosophical question that if any nation would ever like to be ruled by a state whose sovereignty would not stay in its capital but far away in Brussels. And, if this solution does not appear doable then the survival of Euro remains, beyond doubt, questionable.    

Indian Society: an interesting interplay of Religion with Culture!

Alain de Botton, one of the best known intellectuals of Britain, suggests that in modern world, culture should have upper hand over religion. Ultimately, he prescribes that the former should replace the latter in the longer run of the evolution of post-modern society. It’s fascinating to see how far Alain’s ideas can go in an oriental society like India. Recently, I visited my native district, Deoghar, situated in Jharkhand to celebrate Durga-puja. What surprised me was not the scale with which the festivity was celebrated there, but with the degree of strictness that people still follow the religious rituals. Hardly one can identify any change in the methodology of worship over these years. Even, the animal sacrifices within the premise of goddess’ temple still happen uninterruptedly. It made me think how strongly religion governs culture in our society. In other words, I saw Alain de Botton’s thesis failing in that small district of Jharkhand.  

Has too much of dependence on religion made India a stiff and non-reformist society? Or rather have we as a society missed to apply religion in a wiser way so that it could guide us to lead a progressive life?

Religion is not about engaging in any philosophical pondering over the existence or non-existence of a divine agency which people commonly refer as ‘God’; but, it’s about an extremely powerful institution that has been shaping up the society through its manifestation in culture for ages and ages.

A structured religion is generally composed of three components: teaching, symbol and rituals. Through these three elements it encompasses the entire psyche of human mind. Teaching guides rational; symbol influences physicality of a concept without which a human being can’t remain committed to a belief for a longer time; and, the daily repetitive rituals discipline our activities thus our behavior. It means religion provides a complete recipe to influence life. It, therefore, is a staunch creator and manager of society.

Socio-political events that unfold in a country decide as to which one of those three elements will surpass others in course of time. In far eastern society, especially in Japan, South Korea, the Buddhist teachings have been remain central than the rituals that led them to become a society that is not unevenly guided by greed. In India, rituals and symbols remained vital in lighting the notion of religion (especially Brahmanism), and its teaching portion received very less attention. A possible reason can be that for masses it’s always easy to get attracted towards a less complicated option that can entertain them, and also provide them an identifying mark with psychological cushion. Symbols and rituals supplied them both entertainment, identification (vis-à-vis another religious community).

For instance, it’s easy for a Hindu to go to a temple, and to empty a jug of holy water of Ganges over ‘Shiva Linga’ (iconography of Lord Shiva) than bothering to understand the essence of ‘Karma-yoga’ of ‘Bhagwat-Geeta’. Majority of masses look for instant entertainment. It’s simple to understand Chetan Bhagat’s pulp fiction than political fiction of Rushdie or Hilary Mantel.

People are neither farsighted, nor well-informed enough to decide as to what way they’ve to go. They need to be guided by the leaders of that era be it head of state, public intellectuals or spiritual gurus. Unfortunately, during the British era, the entire intellectual energy was exhausted in attaining political freedom than thinking about cultural renaissance which was equally important. Since the post-independence time, the Nehruvian socialist thought encouraged us to drop religion as an important analytical tool while considering the much needed reform in society. One can observe easily that the Indian thought culture remained subservient to western intellectual tradition.

This’s also true that for certain socio-political adjustments, Indian religion must be applauded.  India practices democracy since the inception of its republic and pursuits the free market economy as well since 1991. Both ideas are solely based on individualism. How surprising that these value systems coming from the land of individualism find a solid base in India that has hardly ever been an individualistic society. It, indeed, suggests that tolerant nature of Indian religion, especially Hinduism (the religion of the majority of population) must have prepared the ground for an acceptance of foreign grown ideas like democracy and neo-liberal economics.

For a complicated society like India, it’s important to direct the masses towards the core teaching than letting them carried away with the external embellishment of worship methodology. Spiritual gurus need to play a more pro-active role in educating the masses on how to humanize religion; how to integrate the real essence of all the Indian religions for our societal progress.

In absence of such spiritual awakening, today mostly Indians are blindly following the western mode of consumerism which is not sustainable for a long term. As it invites you to spend beyond your means, and seduces you to succumb to instant gratification. Hence, a rational regulation of market is required for a sustainable growth in a society like India.  

(The article was originally published on the news portal, “The Indian Republic”: http://www.theindianrepublic.com/author/ajitabh-das )

Marriage of inconvenience in Democracy: Politics with Principle!

Gandhi said, ‘politics without principle is prostitution’. The former is the play of power, whereas the latter is a set of rules based upon morality. It’s said that power has uncorrectable habit of breaching the law and principle to assert its authority; at the same time, only power has the potential to deliver justice in society. Both are complimentary to each other’s existence. Therefore, power is the necessary evil of society. Democracy is perhaps the only method of governing a society which promises to present a nuanced view of use of power by checks and balances.  But man’s Machiavellian mind has managed to invent the ways to exercise power by subverting principle even in democracy. And, that act of abusing power by undermining principle is called ‘corruption’. 

In a democracy absence of a strong opposition and continuation of a single party ruling the country for a longer term without any break is indeed a sign of farce democracy; in undiplomatic term it can be called a corrupt democracy. Such political system is prone to use corrupt means of functioning and preserving power. In 1950 India coming out of British colonialism became a democracy but could not develop a real essence of it which means a multiparty platform of politics. Without multiparty or a strong bi-party politics, a nation cannot claim to be a true democracy. Sadly for India, its politics has been, apart from a short period of Janata regime (1975-77), dominated by a single party, the Indian National Congress till 1989. Though it’s a pure coincidence that as the year 1989 offered a new era in the European liberal democracy with the Berlin Wall coming down in Germany; similarly, in India with the concept of “Mandal and Kamandal” taking centre stage in Indian politics, this year brought a new freshness to the democratic politics of the country as since then the non-Congress governments, for whatsoever little time, started making its presence felt in the national political consciousness. Though political analysts did think that a politics based on ideas like caste and religion would not bring any constructive outcome to the Indian society.  But we should also recognize a fact that a political issue is fermented upon the real social problems that it grapples with at a given time; and the caste was, and is, up to an extent, a reality of Indian society. So far as the topic of religion is concerned, it has always been used by leaders which include Pundit Nehru to take political mileage; but, it was quite naively used by Rajeev Gandhi by allowing unlocking the door of the Ayodhya Ram temple and undoing the Supreme Court judgment of “Shah-Bano case”. All these political events prepared a stage for a new “centre right” politics that was grabbed by the chariot man, Lal Krishna Advani of the Bharatiya Janata Party who made the Ram janam bhumi mandir an issue of national sentiment.  That contributed immensely in bringing the BJP laid alliance NDA in power at centre in 1998. Under Vajpayee’s leadership, the country saw since 1947 its first non-Congress government completing its full five year term in 2004. It introduced a new era of bi-polar politics which led India to become a rather stronger democracy.  Recent surprising victory of the Aam Admi Party in the Delhi assembly elections brought new winds of change into Indian politics; it appears to have made a new addition on the path of making Indian political party system more democratic and probably more transparent. The immergence of AAP generates high degree of hope which only time will tell if they’re able to meet the expectations of people or get reduced to just another de facto party with extreme Left ideology.

How has corruption as election issue evolved over the years in the Indian political discourse? How has that topic struck a chord with the people of Delhi that caused the victory of a barely twelve month old party in 2013 assembly elections? Will a party floated on the plank of fighting corruption sustain the rigorous tests of time in Indian politics where emotional issue matters more than the serious one?

For the first time corruption in public office came under light when the ‘jeep scandal’ case became a political issue in Nehru’s cabinet in 1948. Since then, the cases related to scam and misuse of power surfaced quite a few times in public space but people continued to reelect the same party, Congress in power again and again. Partly, because the opposition parties like the Swatantra party by Raja ji or the Jan Sanga by Dr. Mookerjee had had very less influence in pressurizing the government of the day in subjecting to a hard scrutiny; partly, the people of India were blinded by the aura of Nehru and Indira, and they did not put any question to their style of governance. The myth that Indira can never be wrong was challenged by the Allahabad High Court’s verdict in 1975; in which Justice Sinha’s famous verdict declared the election of Indira Gandhi null and void for using fraud means. In order to remain in power, Mrs. Gandhi imposed ‘emergency’ by subverting the constitution which is called the darkest hour of democracy in free India.

Nehru weakened the Congress by not nurturing a credible leader to replace him in his life-time. He could have taken the decision of taking retirement from active politics in late 1950s by transferring the leadership to a younger generation leader. But it did not happen; secondly, the immature death of Shashtri made India leaderless for some time. In that time of vacuum, reticent Indira became Prime Minister thanks to Kamaraj, but she took some time to make a leader out of herself. As Narashimha Rao puts rightly in his book, The Insider, that she in course of time developed incessable thirst for power. Her intense desire to remain in power brought dynastic politics that killed the inner party democracy in Congress, and as a by-product of the latter, it introduced the culture of fear, sycophancy and nepotism. Congress’ dynastic culture encouraged other political parties to indulge into the same practice. The dynastic culture is the largest contributor in making a party corrupt. As it’s said that fish starts to rot from the head; similarly, the seed of corruption was sown in the functioning of the political party that advanced to government, then this poison dwindled down into higher and lower bureaucracy. The principal reason of India being corrupt primarily lies in the fact that the political party system is corrupt. Another reason in making Indian corrupt is the free run of ‘License Raj’ from 1947 to 1991 that created bureaucracy a super powerful institution. The people working under the shield of bureaucracy considered taking bribe as their birth right. So, the centralized government controlled by socialist economy is indeed one of the major contributors in polluting the governance structure.

It happened quite a few times that corruption became an election issue, ex: in 1977 by the Janata party and by V. P Singh in 1989 after Bofors scandal. But, then after successive non-Congress governments did not do much in catching the culprits; instead, they simply buried them, and exhumed them time to time to gain electoral advantage in their favour. People realized that all political parties are equally corrupt so none of them would take any serious action against others because ultimately it’s going to harm each one of them.

In 2011 after the notorious 2-G scam broke, the stubborn government remained adamant in not taking any appropriate action against the guilty ministers. The BJP, being the main opposition party, did not let the parliament function for two weeks which drew the attention of the entire media towards the magnitude of the scams that the Congress and its alliance parties were involved into. The Prime minister and Congress president instead of making a statement in front of media, tried to put a carpet over the entire episode of scam. The more they tried to hide, the more curiosity and anger it generated in people’s mind. During the same passage of time, momentous gross scam of commonwealth games also hit the floor. All these events brought a perfect time for a nation-wide agitation; only a leader with non-political background was required. That gap was filled by an old Gandhian activist, Anna Hajare, from Maharashtra came to Delhi to sit on Dharna for ‘Jan Lokpal Bill, a strong law to curb rampant corruption in public office. Nervous government instead of letting Anna exercise his democratic right of staging a Dharna, sent him to Tihar Jail. This foolish decision of government backfired, and generated tremendous amount of anger in people’s mind. As a consequence of that, the Anna movement ended up becoming one of the most important political events so much so that media compared that with JP movement of 1975-77. It made Anna a hero of modern times, placing him near leaders like Gandhi and Jay Prakash Narayan.  People around Anna, Arvind Kejrival, a Ramon Magsaysay awarded activist and Prashant Bhushan, senior advocate of Supreme Court became a household name as they appeared multiple times in front of media to brief about the outcome of a failed negotiation process that went in between them and the Congress leaders.

Finally, after a few backstabbing from government, the team Anna understood that the government is deaf, and democracy is dead as it refuses to hear the voice of people in street.  So it provided a reason to Arvind kejriwal and Prashant Bhushan to take that fight to a next level; thus, they decided to take a plunge in electoral politics by floating a political faction called Aam Adami Party. That was politically a wise decision to conclude the entire movement by forming a political party that could enjoy the support of all those middle-class people who stood by Anna team.   

Then, it was required to take first bold step which was to test the waters by fighting Delhi legislative elections. They all sensed correctly the mood of people which was direly against the Congress. So, the next correct step that they took was to challenge a very tall leader in the electoral battle. In politics to achieve big, one needs to uplift the height of a leader; one of the secure ways of doing that is to pit him against a tall leader of adversary party in elections. If the underdog leader loses, he wins people’ sympathy; if luckily he comes out as a victorious then the whole world belongs to him. Risk in politic yields a mightier outcome. Kejriwal due to his activist background has always been at ease in taking risks. He decided to take on political heavy weight, three time Chief minister of Delhi, Sheila Dixit. Congress and BJP both the parties took him quite lightly calling them a party with an ambition of collecting funds only. But when the election result stunned everyone even the Kejriwal team as well. The AAP ended up winning 28 seats out of 70, which is a historic maiden performance for a less than a year old party. Had the Congress party managed to present, and pass a bill almost like ‘Jan Lokpal’ then today there would not have been any Aam Admi Party. Power brings arrogance that eats up the ability of a man to think rationally, and to distinguish just from unjust.  That’s the reason due to deep arrogance Congress could not perceive the direction of wind, and paid the price in Delhi assembly elections for their lack of political wisdom.

Skeptics say that today’s 24x7 media channel era needs political theatre which can be fed to viewers continuously. No one will disagree that Kejriwal and his team are quite good at sitting on dharna, and at attracting a large crowd of young people which can provide instant topic for interesting TV debate; but, they need to understand a fact that after forming government the time of activism is over, and the time of delivering on the promises they made pre-election has arrived. People seem to be apprehensive about the future of the AAP. Can a party floated on the plank of fighting corruption sustain the rigorous tests of time in Indian politics where emotional issues prevail over the serious ones?

This is true that topic of corruption has popped up time to time in public discourse but it has not yielded much political dividend to leaders in elections. The issues that most likely appeal to people are found to be related to identity politics. It’s a debatable fact that Indians do crib about bad road, poor transport facility but when it comes to electing a leader for one’s own locality then they’d like to choose someone who belongs to their own faith, cast or region. Though this picture is not always true but for a larger part of northern rural India, people do vote on the basis of caste and religion. One needs to analyze it meticulously which says that India is a collectivist society (tribalism). Collectivism is a value system opposite to individualism which encourages a man to identify as a member of a community but not as an individual. His decisions, even personal ones, are deeply influenced by his family and community.  Collectivist people believe largely in belonging to a group based on linguistic, religious, territorial sub-national identifying factors. A voter, therefore, from collectivist society would want to see a man in power that belongs to his cast, faith or region. This gives a sense of empowerment to the voter. Poltical pundits explain through such theories the ascendance to power of leaders like Mayawati, Mulayam Singh and Lalu Prasad. They all are known for their corruption charges and poor track record in governance but still they got re-elected to office of power.

Since 1989, this genre of politics took a forefront thanks to leaders like V P Singh, Kanshi Ram, L K Advani and a few others. The caste based politics seems to have lost its charm in early 1990s. Since 1991, entire political narrative of the nation got encircled around two ideological poles, secular versus non-secular or communal. This divide got sharpened aftermath of the Gujarat riot of 2002. In that dual completion of secular vs. communal, the issue of corruption remained suppressed.  It’s an irony that till a few years ago Indian politicians were convinced that on the basis of either good governance or corruption, they cannot win elections. The paradigm shift took place with the chief minister of Gujarat Narendra Modi’s win in his second consequent assembly elections which proved that if a government delivers good governance then it can get re-elected on that plank. This trend remained maintained in the BJP ruled states where good governance was, and is given importance. It’s worthy to note that this trend has not received the same degree of reciprocity from the Congress ruled states. It’s because Congress has always maintained in keeping state leadership very weak and central high command in Delhi highly strong which gives a free hand to the lady sitting in 10-Janpath to pick the Chief Ministerial candidates as per the interest of the central leadership, especially the one family. In the play of power distribution in between centre and state, people of India got the raw deal of bad governance in Congress ruled states; Maharashtra is one such example.  

  

The need of the hour hints that political parties ought to work upon making governance an election issue but not corruption because the latter is a by-product of the former. If a country is governed well, then it will create an atmosphere that would dissuade corruption. Under good governance, it includes moralizing public office, judiciary and police.  By focusing merely on corruption, it will not solve the problem but it will only show a dreamy land to people for a certain time, and then after it will leave them completely disillusioned and angry again. Therefore, the Indian electorate has to get mature then only the narrative of its polity can move from secular versus communal divide to performing versus non-performing political party. 

Film review: Dhoom3, an Indian Circus with ‘not so’ Great performance

Money is currency to power, and bank that stores this power is supposedly the powerhouse. The people, therefore, who run a bank are exceedingly powerful. To them, the job of lending and borrowing is entirely guided by sole interest of obtaining profit. That inherent nature of banker allows him to chase un-apologetically the sheer financial profit giving no importance to issues like social justice. Hence, bank as institution holds the monopoly of violence of various nature to subject especially on its borrower to extract the payment of any unpaid loan; which is why certain sections of the western middle class call bank an “empire of vampire”.

The theme of Dhoom3 is inspired by the above expressed perception about the bankers. The story starts with a sordid event where the Western Bank of Chicago decides to shut down a circus house (The Great Indian Circus House) owned by Iqbal Khan, played by Jackie Shroff  because the latter fails to repay the loan. That leads to the suicide of the owner of the circus house leaving his two young sons, Shahir and Shamar, orphan. The plot revolves around these two twin brothers played by Amir Khan, whose sole mission in life becomes to rob, and then destroy all Chicago based banks to take vengeance for his innocent father’s death. In their self-proclaimed crusade against the banking system, they turn out to be surprisingly victorious so much so that the rich bankers of Chicago end up developing cold feet against them. It appears highly unrealistic and droll to see that Chicago police have been shown being helpless in nabbing the super thief of Indian origin leading to a situation where they sought help from Indian police. That allowed the entrance of the Indian super cop, Jay Dixit played by Abhishek Bachan and his no-good, girl chasing, tapori colleague, Ali played by Uday Chopra into the plot. Both of them are called to Chicago to play a key role in tracing the super-smart thief. Though not so essential but it’s required to add that the story accommodated a female protagonist too, played by Katrina Kaif whose only business in the story was to perform acrobatic dance on the stage of magic, and finally to create a quite repairable rupture between the twin brothers. In the end, the twin brothers get caught by Jay Dixit et al; but instead of surrendering to police they choose to commit suicide like their father.

The film starts, and ends with Amir Khan. Vijay Krishna Acharya, director and writer of the film, has left very less scope for other characters to play any influential role. Abhishek and Uday are made to play their usual characters but this time with less charm and dynamism vis-à-vis previous sequels of the film. Katrina Kaif seems to be forcibly inducted into the script just to fill the vacuum of an unavoidable ingredient of Bollywood films which is glamour. That won’t be wrong to say that in Dhoom3 there’re three characters, one main actor which is Amir Khan; and two supporting characters are his high-tech motorbike and the Chicago city itself.

  So far as the script is concerned, the primary job of a story-teller is to polarize the emotional orientation of viewer in at least two directions, good and bad or rather less good. It helps a narrator to navigate the story effectively, and to take it to its logical conclusion. In case of Dhoom3, the story lacks nuanced approach of character bifurcation in between the negative and positive pole. In such a story, the role of a script writer becomes tough to justify any act or event performed by a particular character that leads to ambivalence in viewer’s mind. Nevertheless in Dhoom3, that ambivalence was watered down thanks to the presence of popular stars. In general, Indian cine-goers do not look for a constructive character pay but they rather wish to see their favorite stars on screen doing usual stuffs. Secondly, the story does not show much scope for a sequential narrative content either; because apart from the central character, no other protagonists need any especial explanation of their personage as the audience is very much familiar with them considering the fact it’s a sequel film.  That probably may be the reason Acharya neglected the story narration, and entirely focused upon cliff-hanging stunts and ungracious display of car crashing events that drag the movie to its end. 

 The film showed a nice piece of cinematography. As the theme permitted the cinematographer and director to use bright coulour and acute light which was done very magnificently. The challenge for the choreographer was supposedly to make Amir Khan do the tap and ballet dance with dozens of tall limbed dancers  on an immensely, spacious stage. The director has used camera quite faultlessly by keeping a safe distance between the actor and his fellow dancers, and by showing the spectacle from much above the ground. In a nutshell, Acharya as director may have succeeded in stretching a short story up to three hours but for that credit goes to cinematographer, stunt director and above all the star-power of Amir Khan.   

To sum up, Dhoom3 is a quasi-entertaining film that can be seen once by siting with the entire family as unlike other movies of these days, it does not have any shoddy, double meaning songs accompanied with indecent, smutty scene; nor does it offer any unpalatable display of bullet and blood. It’s a one-time watch that may garner the commercial success by cashing in-on the brand of being sequel of ‘Dhoom’ and thanks to the aggressive marketing style of Yash-Raj films. The audience should go to theatre to watch an expansive film with full of adventurous tour de force but he should not expect thrill and excitement of the same degree which he may have had while watching the previous sequels of Dhoom otherwise he’d have more disappointment and less pleasure.    

How to rethink India’s Foreign Policy!

We’re living through one of the most exiting periods of human history, and that fascinating time is called globalization, a continuous process of to and fro movement of money, goods, ideas and people. This on-going process of globalization throws opportunities and challenges both for today’s Nation-State’s political structure. It can be considered as opportunities when it comes to analyzing the structure of power in global scenario. It’s worthy to recognize that power is no more concentrated within uni or bi-polar world but it’s seen to be distributed among many countries coming from northern and southern hemisphere which, in a way, suggests that power is being democratized through globalization. Growing influence of multi-lateral institutions like G20 validates this observation. Secondly, when it comes to challenges posed by globalization then today’s Nation-State can no more act as a sole carrier of power at international stage; in other terms, they can no more pursue its foreign-policy in traditional fashion as they used to do pre-1989-91 era. In this changing global scenario India, a 66 year old nation-state with growing multi-dimensional influence in today’s world, has to rethink its foreign policy reflecting the reality of the world she lives in.

How do we deconstruct the idea of foreign-policy of a sovereign republic? How is it challenged by today’s globalization? What should be India’s approach in promoting its national interests at international level?

Foreign policy and its fundamentals

Foreign policy is, in general sense, the political project of a country to influence another country or over-all international environment in the context of promoting its national interests. The distinction between inside, the domestic policy and the outside, international environment is the raison d’être of foreign policy. In other words, foreign policy is the reflection of one’s domestic policy. It’s because everything that a country does outside its political frontier is either to satisfy the needs and wants of domestic situation or to present a specific image at the comity of nations. The reason for any political intervention taken or not taken by a specific nation lies broadly under these two reasons. For example, the US entered into Kuwait to drive out Iraqi army in 1992 during the first gulf war. The first objective, as it was projected, was to liberate a weaker state, Kuwait, from the clutches of a relatively stronger state, Iraq which is supposedly the moral responsibility of a super power nation like America to play key role in establishing peace and justice in the international community. But let’s not feel so squeamish about a veiled fact that US went into that region in search of oil to bring business for its domestic oil companies. Thus, America’s intervention responds to both its objectives; first, it’s to project its image of a leader nation championing the cause of democracy and human rights which a super power (even a medium sized power) should always do; and secondly, it was to gain material wealth of petrol to appease its domestic constituency. Any foreign policy decision, therefore, is made by keeping both angles in mind; first, it’s overall gain of power in the form of wealth, natural resources, market or even territory (which is very rare in our post-cold war world); second, it’s equally important to present a justification for that decision in front of the international community as a tool to establish peace, justice, prosperity in the concerned region. Because without providing enough justification of achieving any one or all those three virtuous objectives, even if you’re a super power, your decision or action will not find a legitimate ground at international stage. We’ve plenty of examples since Second World War where any such intervention made by western powers; and, they were justified in the name of establishing peace, justice or self-defense which includes US and western allies’ intervention in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya.  

What are the elements that guide a nation, be it US or any medium size power, to formulate its foreign policy in a particular fashion? What are the analytical underpinnings of foreign policy?

According to the traditional form of foreign policy, there’re three arcs around what foreign policy gets unfolded.

Ø  Actors (leader, the political ideology followed by the party in power, and to an extent the opposition party in a parliamentary democracy only);

Ø  Capacity (Instruments of implementing a decision or influencing a country) ex: hard power and soft power;

Ø  Interest and objective (short and long term goal) establishing oneself as a powerful actor in the world order, projecting oneself as an influential nation with an image of championing just cause

Under the very first arc, we keep the actors who make foreign policy decision. It includes temperament and intellectual depth of a head of state; the political party that is in power as to how it perceives national interests; its political party ideology brings different perspective to foreign policy. All these three can be seen clearly in the American foreign policy. As Obama’s approach to foreign relations is completely different from Bush’s one. As the former is completely different person from the latter; secondly, it’s important to underline that Democratic party has always had distinctive approach to achieve any goal in international affairs as compared to its Republican counterpart. The reason for this distinctive approach between them is that Democratic Party relies primarily on liberal and constructivist theory of international relations for formulating its policy whereas the Republicans guided by “neo-cons” are known for laying emphasis on realist perspective of IR which is dependent upon “balance of power” strategy. 

Let’s move on to the second arc of analysis which is the capacity of a nation-state to put in place a decision. It’s mainly constituted by hard and soft powers. Though former secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, has been heard using a Joseph Nye’s term “smart power” but that did not attract much attention among the international relation theorists. Hard power is basically represented by all the tangible elements of exercising power which includes the size of an army, its capacity of sophisticated arms, carrier aircrafts, sub-marines etc. We need to understand that in the post-cold war era, this form of power has almost become irrelevant. In present time, actually, soft power is ruling the world. That is represented by the size of a national economy, its capacity to trade, its culture power.  United States exerts exceedingly high degree of influence by its culture power over the entire planet through its Hollywood films, its multi-national companies (like Google and Microsoft), universities and junk food restaurants like Mac-D.

So far as the third arc is concerned, it’s always in the first place to secure its territory, its people, then promoting its national interests on foreign soil, and ultimately to pose herself as a nation championing the cause of democracy and free society (these are the causes that todays’ large number of countries stand for in the democratic word; needless to say this category does not include the Islamic world). Every country desires to be seen as a model land fighting for the cause of the values, ethos its nation hood stands upon.  Basing upon that, a nation drafts its objective of foreign policy. By and large, the objective of a nation is always to belong to an elite club like G7, G20 and permanent member of Security Council of the United Nations, and to influence the  political, economic temperature of the globe.

All these three arcs namely actor, capacity and objective, are to be accommodated according to the international political scenario. This is also true that the latter is created by all these three elements of a super power or a group of powerful nations however public opinion of a powerful democracy like United States matters too up to an extent in molding any critical foreign policy decision. The result of that collective public policy initiated by western block is globalization. It is basically unification of international financial market which took its full momentum since almost two decades ago after the EU came into its full bloom along with India and other developing nations opening up its market for foreign players. Globalization, based on the theory of free market economics, has made the political frontier porous for a free movement of capital and labour. Therefore, state is no more the only actor in international relations. There’re various non-state actors coming in-front for manipulating power; ex: multi-national companies, international NGOs, inter-governmental organizations like IMF, World Bank and many other influential public intellectuals and corporate personalities. In the light of the present scenario where the state losing its sovereign capacity of influencing power in international environment, it can no more exercise foreign policy on its own in traditional form. Hence, how should the policy makers in India put in place its foreign relations to promote her interests?

India’s foreign relations in a globalized world

We observe that in the 21st century foreign policy appears to be driven by neo-liberalism and quite less by realism. In todays’ world guided by implacable force of globalization, India’s biggest export is, and will continue to be its vibrant and dynamic economy. So in India’s case too, it will be very much decided by the degree of robustness that the Indian economy would show to the world. On one hand, India has to continuously grow, and to attract the foreign direct investment towards her land and on the other hand she has to further deepen the network of trade with US, EU and East Asian countries. Market dependency of these countries on India will make the South-Asian region more stable because the peace and tranquility of this region will be in the interest of the western powers. 

That’s true that world is increasingly becoming a market place, and India is very much a part of this game. However, she’s to put a fine balance between market friendly reforms and protectionism. It should always keep in mind the interests of a vast labour pool which lives in this country. 

India’s relations with US: United States is undoubtedly the strongest nation, and will remain one till many decades to come. Economically, it may lose in a few years its first position to China as many financial institutions believe, but it will continue to play the most important role in the political and economic development in world affairs. India needs to strengthen its relations further with the US not just to become only a market for US retail giants like Wall-Mart but should also be able to convince Washington not to consider the anti-outsourcing policy either.

Both political parties, democrats and republicans, follow a different foreign policy approach in asserting US leadership. So, India figures quite differently in their strategy chart. For the Republicans, who base their foreign policy on the Morgenthau theory of “balance of power”, see India as a potential country which is fit to be pit against their economic rival China. Be it economy or defense and security, India figures as an important country with whom they would like to do business in their own national interest. 

For Democrats, India is a unique country with liberalized economy sharing the common value of democracy and pluralism. To them, India represents a romantic experiment of federal democracy where more than one billion people of extreme diverse nature in language, religion, race and more importantly extreme economic inequality live under the umbrella of parliamentary democracy. So, India can, and should play bigger role, as they believe, in the region in promoting the ideals of democracy with a blend of capitalism especially to the third world countries. India has to work strategically to win equal consideration and cooperation from democrats’ side as well to get all her concern better addressed at international forum especially when it comes to dealing with Pakistan and China.

India’s relations with China: amongst neighboring countries, China is a real challenge to deal with not so much because of its jumbo size, dynamic economy but because of its closed political system which does not give any chance to peep into their mind to anticipate as to which way they may go on a particular development. If China were a functioning democracy, then it could have been much easier to deal with the dragon nation but its’ being one party communist system and unfading obsession with territory generate more fear not just for India but also for other neighboring nations which include Taiwan, Japan, South-Korea. Direct dissuasion policy with this giant will neither work nor does India have the capability to do so. So the wise way will be to develop and deepen the trade and economic relation with mutual interdependence that it should create an atmosphere of trust and cooperation than confrontation.  History tells us that the market economy based on free choice and rational leads mind to liberty. Similarly, if it happens then the Chinese would ask for open system of multi-party democratic governance; in that case, it will be one of the most interesting events of 21st century to see as to whether the communist party choses to surrender itself to seemingly rosy but messy land of democracy or it chooses to crush the heads of its own people as they did in 1989 at the Trainmen square. 

  

India’s relations with Pakistan: Indian leaders often show their fake desire to improve the relations with a country which is abnormal in nature because it houses various power centers, ex: army, intelligence agency, religious leaders and lastly, civilian government. Needless to say that army and ISI, these two institutions do not want any friendship with India because any such positive atmosphere of peace with India will ultimately lead to a time where not only their army will get reduced to just a regular defense organization with no political power in hand but even one day the idea of Pakistan itself will be put to question by their own citizens. Although a nation which is so fragile politically, economically should not merit much attention; nevertheless, because of security issues India has to deal with Pakistan, and it  should be done with firmness and arm twisting approach. The central problématique is that the Indians should work upon that how to pressurize that country to close the entire sector of jihadi terrorism. It’s undoubtedly an up-hill task for India that can’t be done without United States’ help. There is no copy-past solution to this migraine like problem. It can only be done in various sub stages, and will take years to complete. The question of concern is that if India has a political will and grand strategy to put that project in place which will solve the entire problem of terrorism. Will US provide its logistic support in dealing with those terror leaders because we know that they’ve very selective approach in dealing with terror network affecting other countries? Will China like to see a Pakistan devoid of terror schools? There’re many questions which will be answered only by time and circumstance that the US and China will go through in coming times. No one has ever thought that US drone attacks will happen in the North Waziristan region to kill jihadi leaders in Pakistan but it’s been going on despite all protests happening in the country itself. Similarly, China too has been witnessing the Islamic terrorism in their Xinjiang region; so, the Chinese have to draw a larger picture of dealing with the root problem of this problem. So far as the Kashmir issue is concerned, Pakistan knows it well that there is only one solution for the Indian Kashmir which is in the interests of Kashmiri people and the entire Indian sub-continent; and, that’s to convert the Line of Control into international border. Seeking friendship unilaterally with a nation like Pakistan who’s no vision for its people, and who runs its foreign policy using tools like cross-border terrorism is not wise but even a kind of political foolishness, and can be equated with an idea of milking a bull. 

    

India’s relations with EU countries: It’s interesting to see that despite having a turbulent political historical past India always shared cordial relations with Great Britain with a degree of mutual trust. In fact, in recent years, in the words of David Cameroon, prime minister of UK both the countries share “special relationship”. One should recollect that earlier the term “special relationship” used to be applied only for US-UK relations. India with other important western European countries namely, France and Germany share pretty friendly relations primarily because liberal economy of India offers new horizon of economic ties for both sides’ benefits; secondly, we share the same value system which is democracy, rule of law and composite culture. There is always a possibility to deepen the relation further, and to take it to a new level which is needed especially in the field of trade, finance, science-technology know-how and cultural cooperation.

India, asserting leadership at world stage

India recognizes the fact that time of Nehruvian moralistic vision of foreign policy is over because since then the world has changed a lot; and, in today’s multi-polar, globalization driven world, India requires to adopt “realpolitik” based pragmatic approach to assert herself at world stage. The relationship with United States is indeed the pivot point for India’s interests in coming decades; but, old allies like UK, EU countries and importantly old friend, Russia, should be kept in equal prominence so far as the mutual cooperation in various fields especially defense, sciences and technology is concerned.  

India does not need to attach much importance to her candidacy for the permanent membership of the UN Security Council. This institution has almost become a “tiger paper” which acts as a subservient to the interests of United States. In order to become part of real centre of global power India should play key role at the forum of G20. This is the platform which anchors the interests of the most industrialized nations of the globe.

India should actively work along with other BRIC partners upon the idea of setting up a development bank for the four nation club. The institution would allow investing massively in infrastructure project in all these four countries which is the need of the hour for them to accelerate the economy and put it on sustainable path for a longer period.

On security front, it’s in India’s interest to develop closer relation with Israel because merely remaining sympathetic with the Palestinian cause, it did not earn her anything concrete. A close cooperation with Mossad, the intelligence agency of Israel, will bring great advantage to RAW in dealing with both kinds of terrorism, home grown and emanating from our neighborhood as well.   

  

The policy of decentralized cooperation in between different federal states of India and with various regions of countries like US, UK, France, Canada and Mauritius should be encouraged to strengthen the ties at regional level. There is a huge number of non-resident Indians living in the western countries can play constructive role in such decentralized cooperation. Thus, foreign policy should not remain restricted to only New Delhi but regional state capitals should also participate so that regional interests could be taken into account as well. Once diplomacy used to be a business amongst heads of state only; but now thanks to decentralization, regional power pole needs to be involved in foreign policy as well. Ultimately, it’ll give a new platform of progress and emancipation to federal structure in India.

It’s in the Indian interest to work upon the cultural aspect of soft power. India being one of the oldest civilizations with a rich culture and history did not place herself strategically to create a window in people’s heart internationally as the Alliance Française for France, the Goethe Institute for Germany, Confucius Institute for China have been doing successfully in spreading the culture of their respective countries in the foreign land. On that model, the cultural cell of Indian embassy should also promote officially the Indian art, music and especially yoga and different schools of meditation. India is perceived in the western hemisphere as one of the fountain heads of eastern wisdom and knowledge. India needs to consolidate that perception not only amongst the foreign public intellectual class but to ordinary citizen as well.  Diplomacy is no longer about winning war and conquering territory but it’s rather getting triumph over hearts and minds of the people of even those countries who’ve not been so friendly with your country.

The author is a graduate from the prestigious institute of “Sciences-Po” of France

Film Review: D-Day, a Saga of Revenge

Fear is the strongest emotion which runs through human mind. This emotion has the ability to make someone do what he’d probably not do under a normal circumstance. Fear gets generated against  a place, situation, community or a particular person.  If fear is embodied into a mortal human character then it’s certain that people hate that individual deeply. And, if the situation turns in favour of people then they’d like to take revenge to that particular person.  History is full of such characters who, through their ability of generating terror, have ruled on human mind. Ex: Hitler in Nazi Germany, Mussolini in Fascist Italy, Stalin in Communist Russia or recent face of terror, Al Qaida leader Osama Bin-laden. What is interesting to observe that no matter how much we hate those frightening characters but we remain irresistibly curious to get a glimpse of their guarded life.  That’s the reason even today Man Camp ( Hitler’s biography ) or a book with Osama Bin-Laden’s picture on its cover do not stay for a longer time at book-stall,  because such books find their buyers very quickly. The same observation can be made about the celluloid world too where film makers most of the times successfully manage to captivate their audience for three hours in theatre by telling story of a modern day mafia baron.   

D-Day is one such artistic attempt made by the director, Nikhil Advani. It’s judicious to note that the story may revolve around the character, Goldman (character inspired by Dawood Abraham) but overall objective of storytelling is not at all the depiction of Dawood’s character but it’s to show the never ending struggle between RAW and ISI, the two national intelligence agencies of India and Pakistan. And, the denouement of the film highlights the triumph of the former on the latter by showing the killing of Goldman by Indian agents within the Indian territory.  Like any other film director, Nikhil Advani has tried to exploit the popular Indian nationalist sentiment to its fullest. 

  

The entire drama of blood and bullet gets unfolded in the Pakistani city of Kranchi where Wali Khan (played by Irfaan Khan), an Indian agent is on a secret mission under the direction of Ashwini Rao, Chief of RAW.  The objective of the mission is to trap the most wanted man of India, Goldman (played by Rishi Kapoor).  Goldman lives under close security and supervision of the ISI. In the eyes of the world, Wali Khan leads life of an ordinary married man who by his little earning of barber shop provides happiness to his lovely wife and his little son. Another main character is an ex-army officer, Rudra Pratap (played by Arjun Rampal) who keeps mysterious quietness on his face with eagle like vigilant eyes . The story has a female protagonist in lead role as well, Zoya, a London based explosive expert, played by Huma Qureshi. All these three characters, a little different from each other in their personal life, but are commonly linked by their ultimate mission which was to catch Goldman. Apart from these three main characters, there’re a few secondary characters. One of them who merits our attention is Suraiya, a prostitute ( played by Shruti Hassan) whom Rudra Pratap visits very often.  In that frequent interaction of satisfying each others’ needs they discover a common human side which binds both of them  together till the end of the story. In the end, she has to pay a very heavy price for that brief camaraderie with Rudra Pratap, and gets brutal death at the hands of the nephew of Goldman. 

In the end after all action packed thriller episode, three agents escaping death at every moment, manage to capture Goldman through their joint mission. Though in making the mission successful  Wali Khan has to lose his family and  scarify his life.  The story ends at a very exuberant note where Goldman is very cleverly brought into the Indian side of territory through border area. After being captured, Goldman mocks the Indian judiciary system which kept Azmal Kasab, a militant involved in Mumbai terror attack, for four years in jail before awarding him the capital punishment, then he goes on to say that he would find a way out through the loopholes of lengthy legal procedure of India. Immediately after this, Goldman gets killed after receiving a bullet in his head from Rudra Pratap.  

 The film showcases a true versatile, directorial talent of Nikhil Advani. It is surprising to believe that this genre of film in its realistic covering is coming from Advani who made “Kal Ho Na Ho”, a fascinating, regular, colourful film dealing with triangular love story in 2003. In D-Day, songs and music have not been allowed to do any tampering either with the nature of the characters or with the plot of the film which is very rare to find in a Bollywood movie. The film rests on strong script, powerful cinematography and crafty use of light treatment. Characters have been treated very gently by remaining within the parameter of the script.

One scene that seemed unnecessary was the brutal physical torture, and subsequently killing of Suraiya. Not even that, after slaughtering the girl, the killer, nephew of Goldman, tried to wipe off the blood with the shirt which Rudra Pratap was wearing that time.  And thus, the beloved’s shirt gets stain of blood of his old flame. It seemed Advani wanted Rudra pratap’s character to win extra sympathy from audience. No one could see any demand of the script for inserting that scene. Whatever be the reason in embedding that utterly violent scene, a director should take caution in adding such sequence which offers such sexist display of bloodshed subjected on the body of a woman.

A curious question which may arise in the mind of audience which is that what made Nikhil Advani to pick Rishi Kapoor for the role of Goldman. Many times, it showed that Kapoor did not fit into the character. As we perceive that a devil like character of Dawood’s  stature required a ruthless face, eyes with devoid of sentiments, and accompanied by a robust voice; Kapoor lacked all these components in his personality.  Only by walking with his arms distancing from his waist as a person with great authority supposedly walk in underworld and by putting extra weight to his voice do not make him a cult figure of fear on screen which was desired from a character that he was playing.

Rishi Kapoor should recollect that he’s basically known as “Bobby, Sagar, Chandani and Deewana” boy. Throughout his carrier he played mostly Romeo sort of character who danced with heroin in exotic location of Western Europe. It was not that he only got such kind of roles but it was because he could do only such roles considering his face, voice and acting style.

Advani probably did not want to cast any Tier-1 popular star to play those characters in the film, and to highjack the overall plot of it. That may be the reason he chose to cast actors of secondary commercial value so that the director could have complete grip over the script and liberty to make or mold his film the way he’d like to. This grip is very much evident throughout the film.

Above all, D-Day is a nicely narrated story with considerable amount of gun-play and a tinge of nationalistic sentiment which gets underlined forcefully in the end after Rudra Pratap shoots Goldman in the head, and claims that he’s the face of “new India”.

Sharif, though fortunate but how to move on bumpy road ahead?

We all know that politics is called “the art of the possible” but we rarely witness that unthinkable, dramatic change happening in the political landscape of any country in today’s post cold war world. Let’s wait a moment there is a country in the Indian sub-continent which sometimes does provide such unthinkable political narrative which can be remotely considered as turning impossible thing into possible one. Be it a democratically elected government being ousted by a military man in 1999; or a tragic assassination of a  woman leader in 2007, after what her greedy business man husband goes on to grab the chair of president of the country; or be the case of untraceable terror leader, Bin laden, being found and killed by Americans in a military town of the country in 2011. All these stories come from our neighboring country, Pakistan. The recent news floating from there is rather positive and testifies the triumph of electoral democracy.  

    

The result of the recently conducted general elections in Pakistan threw a decisive mandate to Nawaz Sharif’s party, a man whom the people of Pakistan hated deeply in 1998-99 following the Kargil debacle with India. Due to that growing hatred and unpopularity in people’s mind, the then army General Musharraf succeeded in imposing the military coup, and dethroning the democratically elected government of Sharif without any bloodshed. In 2013, the table of political landscape in Pakistan has turned in Sharif’s favour so much that the man who was once to be awarded death sentence by the Pakistani military court in 2000, but fortunately got a safe escape from the country only thanks to the blessings of Saudi King; fourteen years down the line “that” ousted man, Sharif, is newly elected prime minister of Pakistan; and Musharraf, ‘that crowned military dictator’ is under quasi arrest facing the charges of assassination of political figures like Benazir Bhutto and the old Baloch  leader, Akbar Bugti. Not many leaders meet such a welcome turn in one’s political carrier like Sharif; it’s hard to believe that it is a real story of politics of a sovereign nation but not a plot of a thriller Hindi film.

On being sworn-in, Sharif spoke in very emotional tone using Punjabi expressions of reviving the relationship of his country with India during an interview with Karan Thapar, an Indian journalist. That gave a wishful reason to policy makers and journalists sitting in New Delhi to believe that Pakistan is really changing this time. His party has got a clear-cut mandate which allows his newly formed government to take important decisions; but does that mean that Sharif will be able to deliver or rather will he be allowed to deliver when it comes to improving the ties between the two countries?

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To answer this question, we need to delve slightly deeper into the troubled past of the Indian sub-continent, the time when this region was trying hard to get rid of British colonialism. Pakistan came out of Jinnah’s political genius, as an experiment of a nation-state formed on the basis of religion, Islam. As Jinnah himself termed it as “home of south- Asian Muslims”, and called the “Quran” the constitution of the Islamic state of Pakistan. On the other hand, Indian leaders sensed it very well that if India had to survive and flourish as a united, civilized, modern society then it should opt only for secular democracy. Because in their view that was the only solution available to administer a society like India  being so diverse on basis of region, religion, language, caste and economic well being.

Over sixty five years of its existence Pakistan did survive as an independent state but could not become a nation. And even in its statehood, there are many holes; first and foremost it has developed an incurable disease of various centers of power which means that power is hardly ever fully concentrated in one hand which is under the control of civilian leadership, in fact power in Pakistan dances amongst many hands from army, ISI, parliament to religious Mullahs where the military establishment has the largest stake to claim. The people of Pakistan are very much comfortable with this fact that if a civilian leader fails to deliver, which happen quite often, and then they have no problem in being ruled by the men in uniform. It is worthy to note that with the help of ISI, army has successfully created a secure space in people’s mind that if any institution which exists in the country that can save them from India and the West then it is only army. It is necessary to add here that ‘false’ fear and hatred for ‘no-reason’ against ‘Hindu’ India was manufactured deliberately by those institutions so that the latter can remain relevant in the eyes of the people, can enjoy the unconditional support from their side. Army has cleverly attached that fear with the idea of the very survival of Pakistan; thus in orders to save the country, people have to restore their faith in one institution which is army.

All these ground realities help us understand that if a civilian government wishes to rule, then it should act in accordance with their military masters but never against them. Sharif has been probably the most senior leader in the country after Benazir’s exit, it is his third time at the helm of affairs so he would show more wisdom and will not repeat any earlier mistakes which include his turbulent relation with army during his second tenure and the Indo-Pak ties under Lahore declaration. It is true that his government, as he stated, would take measures to improve the relations under the same treaty but what methods, what degree and up to what extent his government would move will not be decided by Mr. Sharif’s office but  by General Ashfaq Kayani’s office. In addition to that, Sharif and his well-wishers have to keep a very vigilant eye over military sector, and to ensure that “no Musharraf” is in waiting for a coup d’Etat.