Navtej Sarna

botswana-s-elephant-dilemma

Fri Apr 12 11:42:48 IST 2024

In 218 BCE, Hannibal, the great Carthaginian general, made his audacious assault on Rome from the north, crossing the Alps with his army of 30,000 men, 15,000 cavalry and most famously, 37 elephants. In the ensuing two millennia, Hannibal would have gone the way of most history, gradually reducing to a footnote. But largely because of the image of his elephants in snowbound Alps, he has reached metaphoric status, immortalised in film and legend.

If a mere 37 elephants could so impress the European psyche, imagine the result if Botswana’s President, Mokgweetsi Masisi, were to deliver on his threat—or promise—of sending 20,000 elephants to Germany and, as he added for good measure, he “won’t take no for an answer.” The thought conjures up delicious images: thousands of pachyderms marching down the Unter den Linden to the tune of Baby Elephant Walk, or shooting the breeze in Potsdamer Platz or heading down to Munich’s beer halls to quench their summer thirst.

Elephants have been gifted by states before. During World War II for instance, zoo animals were ruthlessly slaughtered in Europe, Japan and even India for fear that bombardment may free dangerous predators to roam the streets; the two Indian elephants in Tokyo zoo died of forced starvation. When peace returned, hundreds of Japanese children wrote letters to prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru expressing anguish at the loss of the elephants. Nehru promptly sent an elephant named after his own daughter, Indira, as a peace ambassador to Japan. A similar gift, this time named Shanti, reached Berlin in 1951.

But 20,000? Costly to transport, for one. Even in the case of Indira, the MEA had to explore the funding issue with princely states. But regardless of whether it is sent CIF or FOB, this jumbo gift is likely to remain a rhetorical flourish; the Germans will no doubt put on a thick skin and ignore the offer, given its acrimonious origins. President Masisi’s threat came after Germany, presently one of the largest importers of hunting trophies in the EU, considered a proposal, backed by animal protection groups, to ban such imports. Britain had toyed with a similar proposal earlier only to be told that Botswana would send 10,000 elephants to London’s Hyde Park; the thought of this bunch performing their morning ablutions in the Serpentine lake in the park must have quickly dampened the ardour of British conservationists.

Botswana feels that western countries and conservation purists fail to appreciate the problems of living with its 1.3 lakh elephants, more than twice the ecologically sustainable number. Big-game hunting, with proper permits, is a major revenue earner for local communities—a 12-day hunting package can bring in as much as $50,000—and a zero-threat to the species; indeed, it is argued, it enables better conservation by strengthening local capacity to better manage man-animal conflict and discourages indiscriminate poaching. Uncontrolled elephant population, which doubled during an earlier five-year hunting ban, leads to widespread destruction of property, crops and lives and hampers development in a poor country; keen to keep numbers to sustainable levels, Botswana has already sent 8,000 elephants to neighbouring Angola and offered another 500 to Mozambique.

Even if rhetorical, Botswana’s dramatic offer underlines that wildlife preservation is not always a zero-sum game. When it comes to living with elephants, there is a lot of grey; sustainable and pragmatic conservation rather than moral high-mindedness may be the way to go. As the young musician Dhruv Visvanath says in his well-known song Botswana, “….what you call pain I call my home.” There’s a point to ponder.

The writer is former high commissioner to the UK and former ambassador to the US.

biden-trump-rematch-lacks-punch

Sat Mar 16 11:31:42 IST 2024

In March 1971, I spent several hours in a dentist’s waiting room, dreading the impending torture of the drill. The only compensation were the handy American magazines, full of arguably the most anticipated sporting event in history—the Big Fight between Joe Frazier and Muhammad Ali.

Both were undefeated champions: Ali was returning from the wilderness after four years having being stripped of his heavyweight title for refusing the military draft; in his absence, Frazier had emerged as the greatest boxer around. Beyond the boxing, there was an immense cultural rizz that divided public consciousness: Ali the anti-establishment hero, a conscientious objector; Frazier a war supporter. Not just a packed Madison Square Garden but a closed-circuit and free television audience of 300 million waited for Ali’s famed shuffle and Frazier’s killer left hook. In the event, Frazier won in 15 rounds. Ali would avenge the defeat in a 1974 rematch and in the ‘Thrilla in Manila’ in 1975 but by then the world, as is its wont, had moved on; the Vietnam war was over and the oomph had gone out of the contest.

Fifty years on, Americans are doomed to suffer a different rematch: Joe Biden versus Donald Trump, the latter having emerged as the presumptive Republican nominee on Super Tuesday, or Super Snoozeday as one wag remarked, given its dull predictability. Nobody, but nobody, wants this rematch: twenty per cent of American voters have been classified as “double haters”: they hate both Trump and Biden, only they cannot tell who they hate more. Yet it is a supreme irony that this most powerful and talented of all nations has no better choice on offer.

Biden’s main problem is that he has celebrated too many birthdays: he will be 82 if inaugurated again. His recent state of the union address was celebrated not so much for its content but for the fact that he did not trip on the way to the rostrum. Yet he had no serious contender for the Democratic nomination. Besides the deference to incumbency, there is a broad understanding that Biden has done a steady job in a troubled post-Covid landscape, even if that is rarely communicated. In addition, there is Biden’s claim that he is the only one capable of beating Trump. Yet he is up against the young and the progressive Democrats, besides the Arab Americans, for his overly forgiving attitude towards Israel.

In the other corner is the highly divisive and provocative Trump. Despite his attempted January 6 insurrection, and facing 91 felony charges in four indictments, he has practically pocketed the Republican nomination and polls give him the edge against Biden. The dream boy of the New York elite is also a champion populist appealing to base instincts by espousing racism, white supremacist thought and anti-immigrant rhetoric as it suits him. His loyal MAGA constituency that voted for him in 2020 is still solidly behind him.

Things are expected to go all the way to 15 rounds. Indications are that only about one lakh uncommitted voters in five or six swing states will ultimately decide the presidency. Biden’s best bet might be Trump himself: Americans may baulk at giving him the White House again, especially if by then he is a convicted felon.

Meanwhile, the seatbelt signs are on. Trump’s gibes, not half as witty as Ali’s ditties, are plumbing new depths: he recently mimicked Biden’s stutter. A presidential debate, if it takes place, will have fireworks too, though unlikely to match the thrill of 1974 Frazier-Ali brawl in the ABC studio, when the two champs ended up wrestling on the floor on live television. Still, it’s a thought.

The writer is former ambassador to the US.

mirza-ghalib-dilapidated-haveli-offers-only-heartbreak

Fri Feb 16 14:37:03 IST 2024

Ballimaran, contrary to a minor urban legend, is not the quarter of cat-killers. It is where once lived the makers of ballis, or the long oars used by boatmen. Those boats and boatmen are long gone, as much else in old Delhi: the water channel that once ran through the bazaar, the shimmering pool and square built by Jahanara Begum that gave Chandni Chowk its name, the trams that clanged through the street till the 1960s.

But still, on an early Sunday morning, an evanescent charm hangs over the now pedestrianised zone. Ballimaran is now the domain of shoe-sellers. There are cartloads of baby shoes, sackfuls of ladies’ sandals. Kachoris and pooris are being fried, and quickly sold, for breakfast. A man expertly chops papayas into sharp slices and serves them in newspaper strips. There is the thick smell of milk boiling in a huge kadhai, its surface a sea of pinpricks.

A quick turn to the right and we are in Gali Qasim Jaan, where Mirza Ghalib, the greatest of Urdu poets, spent his late years. Here is the haveli where he lived, the room where he wrote; the pulse quickens when a passer-by tells his daughter–“they’ve come to meet Ghalib”. I have done similar pilgrimages before: to the home of John Keats in London’s Hampstead Heath, Hemingway’s homes in Cuba and Key West, the room in Atlanta where Margaret Mitchell wrote Gone with the Wind, and others. These are treasured journeys of the spirit where readers tread softly in hushed silence and commune with their literary heroes. They search for insights into the alchemy of creation; they validate their long-held impressions of a writer’s inspiration and personal relationships. They enter the inner lives of poets, grasp the light they saw from their windows, the steps they heard as they put pen to paper.

But the dilapidated condition of Ghalib’s haveli offers only heartbreak. True that three decades ago it was all gone, turned into coal store and heater factory. True that a bust of the poet, donated by Gulzar sahib, has been put in the small reclaimed portion. But that is about all on the credit side.

Otherwise, there is dust and grime. A faint light enters from the half-broken, dirt-streaked glass panes of a smudged skylight. A badly damaged chandelier, with several lamps askew, dangles below it. Cheaply produced posters of Ghalib’s couplets, incompetently translated, hang haphazard on the walls. Behind a smudged glass panel sits a mannequin of the poet. Utensils and clothes of his era lie in dishevelled dusty display. A broken tea cup is strangely balanced on a dripping tap. One can barely read the inscriptions below the exhibits. Copies of his ghazals are curling and corroding. There is no guide, no commentary, no music, no proper lighting. This is no way to treat a national treasure, a poet who, according to the great scholar Ralph Russell, would have been the greatest poet of all time had he written in English. A news report of September last claims that the haveli was spruced up for G20; I shudder to think what it looked like before that.

Ghalib would have reacted sardonically. Perhaps he would have composed a verse to say that the haveli should have been better left as a coal store; at least that would have brought warmth to a hearth. Perhaps this is what he meant when he wrote:

hue mar ke ham jo rusvā hue kyuuñ na ˙gharq-e-dariyā

na kabhˉıjanāza uthtā na kahˉıñ mazār hotā

After death I was reviled, I would have rather drowned

No remnant to be defiled, no grave site to be found.

The writer is former high commissioner to the UK and former ambassador to the US.

too-clever-by-half-in-dubai

Sat Dec 23 14:55:34 IST 2023

School athletics taught us that anyone can be good at high jump; the trick is to keep the bar low enough. The same, it appears, is true for climate negotiations.

Take the Dubai COP28 that ended last week in a self-congratulatory frenzy with the sleep-deprived, caffeine-sozzled delegates victoriously clutching a ‘historic’ deal. The reason for their euphoria was that after three decades of wrangling, they had agreed to ‘transition away’ from fossil fuels, the main culprits behind global warming. That’s it. Only transition away, no phasing out, or down; no roadmap, no deadlines, no responsibilities. A bit like if the Alcoholics Anonymous were to agree after 28 meetings that yes, booze was bad for them and then head to the bar to celebrate.

“Big deal,” you might well say. But that is the reality of the COP system, the self-delusionary circus where corporate interests, development imperatives and political posturing are all finessed by clever drafting. Incremental progress is the best the system delivers, never mind that the burning need is progress by leaps and bounds. Meanwhile, the international community can salve its thick-skinned conscience by saying that this consensus-based system best balances all interests.

But for someone like Anne Rasmussen, the doughty lead-negotiator for the Alliance of Small Island States, this was not good enough. In calm, measured tones and with a flower tucked behind her ear—a Polynesian cultural trademark—she underlined the “litany of loopholes” that make the agreement woefully inadequate to achieve the required deep reductions in emissions. The Alliance was however checkmated by Sultan al Jaber, the president of the COP, and ironically the head of the UAE’s national oil and gas company, (real men scoff at old-fashioned ideas like conflict of interest); he gavelled the deal through when the small island delegates were not in the room. Multilateral negotiations often succeed by sleight of hand.

But from Tuvalu to Dominica, from the South Pacific to the Caribbean, climate change is an existential threat for low-lying island states. Though least responsible for global warming, they face the maximum damage: rising sea-levels, coastal erosion, loss of marine biodiversity, cyclones and hurricanes, loss of coastal habitats and so on. Nevertheless, these states have shown remarkable resilience and capacity to adapt: the enhanced sea defences and early warning systems of the Maldives; Fiji’s strengthened buildings and elaborate relocation plans; the restoration of mangrove forests and so on. The Loss and Damage Fund activated at COP28 should theoretically help; however, while the annual global damage is about $400 billion, the contributions amount to only $700 million, with the US giving a paltry $17.5 million.

Meanwhile, the fossil fuel industry, that had over 2,400 lobbyists at Dubai, is splurging. Sultan Al Jaber’s company will invest another $150 billion over seven years. Shell will expand activity in the Gulf of Mexico; ExxonMobil will increase capital spending by $4 billion by 2027. TotalEnergies is all set to drill deep into South Africa’s Orange Basin. Rishi Sunak has vowed to “max out” the UK’s fossil fuel resources through intensive North Sea drilling. Everybody claims they are on target for net-zero except Donald Trump, the leading Republican candidate, who calls global warming a ‘hoax’ and promises to roll out more oil and gas projects. “We’re going to drill, baby, drill,” he recently assured gleeful oil executives.

All this must be very intimidating for Rasmussen when she takes issue with the powerful petro-states and the double F-word lobby. When asked in an interview how she managed, she responded, “I pray a lot.” In 2023, the warmest year in recorded history, we would all be well-advised to join her.

The writer is former high commissioner to the UK and former ambassador to the US.

the-curious-case-of-rwanda

Sat Nov 25 11:35:57 IST 2023

In 2016, just before the Brexit referendum, a South Asian immigrant in the British Midlands was asked for his views. He was fervently in favour of Brexit. Too many bloody foreigners coming in, he said, without a touch of irony. The ingrained reaction of an immigrant: let me in and then shut the door? Or the zeal of a new convert, or simply, internalised racism? Whatever you call it, the same tendencies characterise the anti-immigrant stance of three British politicians with immigrant backgrounds: Rishi Sunak, Suella Braverman and the earlier home secretary, Priti Patel. This zeal came to a frothing head in the Rwanda Plan, which fortunately has been struck down by the UK Supreme Court.

The Plan’s journey makes bizarre reading. Boris Johnson, under pressure to take a hard line on migrants—many from conflict zones—coming across the Channel in small boats in thousands, decided to throw money at the problem: pay another country to accept the unwashed, unwanted masses. This would relieve Britain’s overloaded asylum system and theoretically serve as a deterrent to migrants. Patel rolled up her sleeves and got down to it. Lists of potential partners who were signatories to the UN refugee convention and showed compliance with human rights laws, were drawn up; Rwanda, with its dismal human rights record and repressive governance, was an unlikely candidate. However, in the end, Rwanda it was. Johnson declared, with habitual disregard for facts, that Rwanda was “one of the safest countries in the world, globally recognised for its record on welcoming and integrating migrants.” Besides, the Rwandans were good chaps: they had joined the Commonwealth, hadn’t they, without having been a British colony? Potential deportees were handed fact-sheets that described their new home as “a land of a thousand hills… home to a wide array of wildlife,” a tourist brochure line that sounded utterly cynical in this context.

The facts, as is their habit, spoke for themselves: Rwanda had earlier fouled up a similar deal with Israel under which it had accepted several thousand Eritrean refugees that Israel turned out; many of the refugees were later expelled from Rwanda, some were killed in Libya and others drowned in the Mediterranean in attempts to reach Europe. Besides, Rwanda’s asylum system was untested, insufficiently serviced by lawyers and interpreters, and seen as discriminatory and arbitrary. Much of this ugly reality was ignored, or doctored, as Sunak made stopping the small boats a top priority; Braverman, went further than Patel, making deportation not a possibility, but a duty. She was also given to strange dreams—“…a plane taking off to Rwanda, that’s my dream, it’s my obsession.” All this was to please the Tory right-wing, and the devil take the hindmost.

Last week the Supreme Court called the government’s bluff. It ruled that Rwanda, on the basis of all evidence, was an unsafe country for asylum seekers; they would be in danger of being sent back to their home countries to face persecution. If the Plan were to go ahead, the UK would be in violation of not only the European Convention of Human Rights (which Braverman would rather leave yesterday) but several other international treaties, besides the principles of natural justice. Sunak has not given up: no doubt putting in a 70-hour week, he intends to make Rwanda safe through a treaty and push through legislation that would obviate any legal challenges. All this is right-wing pie-in-the-sky, a desperate populist stance intended to shift the blame for a failed immigration policy from 10 Downing’s doorstep. Meanwhile, 1.75 lakh asylum seekers await an initial decision on their applications. And Rwanda is richer by £140 million.

Navtej Sarna is former high commissioner to the UK and author, most recently, of the novel Crimson Spring.

day-of-judgement-is-already-here-and-verdict-is-guilty

Sat Oct 28 11:23:41 IST 2023

It is early morning in the hills beyond Shimla around Mashobra. The world is fortunately not yet awake; the sun just about is. Its first rays reach out and languorously caress the faraway snow-covered peaks and slopes, wiping away the shadows of the night. They probe the dark green of the deodar, the sharp needles of the pine; the dew on the leaves glistens in gratitude at their touch. A Kalij pheasant tentatively crosses my path, and then takes to sudden flight; the forest welcomes it back.

The only human being I meet on the path is a child of five or six, waiting beside a parked car. Dressed in a woollen hoodie and track pants—he could at that moment belong to any nation, any community, any religion. Instinctively, automatically, we exchange smiles. His is the smile of innocence, an unimpeachable embodiment of trust.

As I walk on, I wonder what kind of men would make that innocence a currency of war. Who are these people who could kill children, take them hostage, deprive them of food and water, or crush them under rubble? No reason, no cause, no vengeance seems to make any sense. Does it really matter whose Book is older, whose prophets wiser, whose temples holier or whose priests more virtuous? Or who the child-killer is, or where his gun was made or his knife sharpened, or in which language does he pray, and how many times a day? Or to what God? Surely, no God would want the sacred innocence of a child’s smile to be strangled in His name. And if indeed He does, then I don’t need that God, for that smile is as wondrous as Creation itself. It is worth more than any line in the sand, all the wisdom of the wizened sages. To crush that innocence is to confess that we learnt nothing from any Book, any sage, any God.

But such thoughts will vanish in the clear light of day. The world in its abhorrent ugliness will land at the doorstep with the sickening thud of the newspaper. The television anchors will grow hoarse as they match point to counterpoint. Analysts and apologists will dredge out every last “But what about…?” Powerful men will take their place at the political chessboard on which grey half-truths compete with white lies. Not one among them is capable of rising above the fray, of admitting that he could be wrong, of looking into his own soul. Their moral compass stops at the next election, their skill lies in dressing up hypocrisy as sincerity, their art is that of personal survival. The dice that they roll is always loaded; the chalice they proffer is tinged with poison. Their truth has many faces but each reflects only their self-interest, their penchant for pelf and power.

That is why children who should be scrambling up verdant slopes, or sailing paper boats in little streams, or struggling with arithmetic are instead staring at the terrorist’s bloodshot eyes, or dodging bullets, or cringing under the scream of the murderous missile. Or getting their names tattooed on their forearms so that they may be identified should they be victims of indiscriminate bombing.

Let us no longer pretend that all is well. Let us admit that the rot has set in deep in the human soul, that we have desecrated our world, betrayed our own children. That we, the smartest humans ever born, are the ultimate hollow men, blind and stuffed with straw. There is no Messiah whose coming can save us from ourselves. The Day of Judgement is already here, and the verdict is: Guilty.

kim-jong-uns-love-for-train

Fri Sep 29 17:07:38 IST 2023

There’s something about Kim—the Jong-un, not the Kardashian. For one, his smiling visage. I do not recall a single picture of him where he is seen as tense, distracted, or scowling. Not even when he met the Donald. There was, I am reliably told, a photographer who once caught him at a bad moment, but then that moment proved to be worse for the photographer.

And secondly, he claps very often. Mostly at his own remarks, or at parades in his honour, or when he has just shot off the latest intercontinental ballistic missile towards Hollywood. That clapping is infectious. Everybody around him starts clapping and they keep clapping well after he has finished. There was a man who just had to stop and itch the back of his neck; the itch was subsequently cured, permanently.

But beyond the winsome smile and the mesmerising clap, it is Kim’s love for trains that’s so charming. It runs in the family, as it were. His revered grandfather, Kim Il-sung, had the railroad bug and made a train his headquarters during the Korean War. He kept up his passion in peacetime; some of the palaces he built could be accessed only by private train. In 1984 he went on a longish journey—one can get tired even of Pyongyang’s charms—by private train through the Soviet Union and to almost every East European country. That, of course, meant changing the entire wheel-sets of the train from the broader Russian gauge to standard gauge and back. That minor inconvenience was overcome by taking along another train, with a full set of different gauge wheels.

Kim Jong-il, the father of the present Kim, had a fear of flying and so took to trains in a big way. He souped them up, fitting in conference halls and reception chambers and then took a 2,000km trip from Pyongyang to Moscow and back over 24 days. He also liked to live it up: a lucky Russian official who travelled with him recorded that multi-cuisine fine dining, including fresh lobsters and pork barbecue, was on offer. All to be washed down with French Bordeaux and Burgundy wines while young women sang to keep you amused. Take a cue, Indian Railways.

Kim Jong-un is keeping up the ‘khandaan ki izzat’. Though he has a private plane—a Russian Ilyushin 62—he prefers the super luxurious Pyongyang Mail, weaving languorously, at sixty kilometres an hour, through the vast Russian and Chinese spaces. It is appropriately nicknamed the Moving Fortress, in recognition of its armour-plated carriages, bullet proof windows and attack weapons, including a helicopter.

Kim’s host during the recent visit to the Russian Far East, Vladimir Putin is not exactly top of the charts in the smiling and clapping department. When he does smile, thinly, it feels like the onset of the Russian winter and when he does clap, strong men quiver in their boots. But he sure matches Kim in the matter of trains. Recently upgraded, Putin’s ‘ghost’ train, more difficult to track than a plane, is dripping with czarist opulence and is fitted with a gym, a Turkish hammam, anti-ageing machines and a cosmetology centre, among other amenities. Though Putin is no Lenin acolyte, literary license—and that alone—allows me to seek his inspiration in Russian history. It was by the famous “sealed train” that Lenin and about 30 fellow revolutionaries returned from exile in Switzerland to Russia in 1917. Boarding the train at Zurich he said, “Either we will be swinging from the gallows in three months or we shall be in power.” We all know what happened.

some-knights-are-forever

Sat Sep 02 16:04:03 IST 2023

The most dramatic and immediate denunciation of the Jallianwala Bagh massacre came from Rabindranath Tagore. He wrote to the viceroy, Lord Chelmsford, on May 31, 1919, barely six weeks after the horrific massacre—renouncing the knighthood conferred on him in 1915. For good measure he simultaneously released the letter to the press and telegraphed it to Edwin Montagu, secretary of state for India.

Tagore’s early reaction was proof, if proof were needed, that the poet’s prescience is sharper than the politician’s; not just the Indian nationalist leaders but even London was not fully aware of the extent of violence that had taken place in Punjab. Martial law was still in place with strict press censorship and travel restrictions. To be sure, in response to spreading demands, Montagu had just decided to set up an inquiry committee; the announcement of the Congress inquiry would come later. Tagore, however, quickly made his judgement based on the accounts that had “trickled through the gagged silence” and decided to give “voice to the protest of the millions of my countrymen, surprised into a dumb anguish of terror”.

The story does not quite end there. Tagore’s announcement, though barely noticed in the London press, sent Whitehall into a tizzy. The slim file in the India Office archives makes interesting reading.

First, of course, there are Knights and knights; Rabindranath Tagore was a Knight Bachelor, a category of knighthood that dates back to Henry III. Without going into its arcane and oh-so-British history, suffice it to say that Knight Bachelorhood, while being the most ancient, was also the lowest ranking; its members missed out on entering into any order of chivalry like the Thistle or Garter. More to the point, a Knight Bachelor got no insignia with the title (only in 1926 was a badge with swords, spurs, pommels and rowels approved for such knights).

Hence there was nothing that Tagore could physically return by way of definitive renunciation unlike the eminent jurist and leading member of the Theosophical Society, Sir Subramania Iyer who had renounced his 1900 honour of Knight Commander of the Indian Empire (KCIE) in 1917. Iyer had been rebuked by the British when he had written to the American president, Woodrow Wilson, excoriating British misrule in India; in response, he sent back his medals of KCIE and Dewan Bahadur.

A Knight Bachelorhood could only be revoked, or “degraded” by a letters patent issued by the king. This had been done in the case of the British diplomat Roger Casement, accused of treason during the 1916 Irish insurrection against British rule. Casement, mentioned earlier in these columns, was hanged in the same Pentonville prison as Udham Singh, and buried in the same patch. Much later, Sir Anthony Blunt, one of the Cambridge Five spies, was similarly degraded.

But in the case of Tagore, a Nobel Prize winner for literature, a degradation would have attracted too much publicity and been seen as an admission of a mistaken policy in Punjab. Chelmsford proposed, and Montagu agreed, that the Viceroy simply reply to Tagore saying that he was in no position to relieve him of his title and nor would he make any recommendation to the king. Nevertheless, it was still thought prudent to run the case by King George V. A reply from Lord Stamfordham, the king’s private secretary (and earlier private secretary to Queen Victoria), on Windsor Castle letterhead confirmed that His Majesty agreed with Whitehall’s suggestion to put the whole thing on ice. Thus, while Tagore gave up his title, the British didn’t quite know how to take it back!

Navtej Sarna is former high commissioner to the UK and author, most recently, of the novel Crimson Spring.

why-the-west-wants-to-de-risk-not-de-couple-from-china

Fri Aug 04 15:31:46 IST 2023

Coupling is a word usually associated with intimate relations or railway wagons and not with international relations: countries don’t like being joined at the hip, nor do they fancy being dragged around like mindless wagons in a train. Which makes it a mystery why the west’s efforts to unshackle its economies from a rising China should be referred to as de-coupling. But mercifully now de-coupling is passe; the new buzzword handed down from the pulpits of Washington DC and Brussels is de-risking. A sort of safe engagement with all due precautions, and I promise not to stretch this metaphor further.

Of course, this goes beyond semantics. By the time Washington woke up from its wishful dream that a generous approach towards China would make that country play ball by established rules and encourage internal reform, it was too late. An unashamedly autocratic China had emerged as America’s top challenger, determined to shape global narratives to its own priorities. Ironically, it was the Trump administration, with all its petulant disruption, that correctly read the Chinese characters on the wall and initiated appropriate responses to China’s predatory economics, its technology-skimming and its buccaneering in the Indo-Pacific. The pandemic exacerbated matters further and Biden’s approach remained the same, sans some of the rhetoric. Concepts such as resilient supply chains, friend-shoring and de-coupling entered the geopolitical lexicon.

But as every schoolboy knows, kutti is easy to declare but difficult to sustain: you soon want a bite from the other guy’s lunchbox. De-coupling seemed too final a goodbye, a costly divorce from a huge market and rich investments. De-risking, first popularised by European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, is less apocalyptic. Relations with China would still be seen through the lens of national security, but engagement would continue in areas where still possible. Conflict is not to be seen as inevitable; China’s growth need not be at America’s cost. How far the Chinese will buy this bifurcated bargain is anybody’s guess.

Beijing seems to be enjoying the fun as the west, particularly Europe, struggles to square its own circles. While von der Leyen closely toes the hawkish American line on de-risking, French President Emmanuel Macron and, to a lesser extent German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, would rather take more risk; both paid court to Xi Jinping with huge business delegations in tow. Hungary, unlike other central and east European countries, remains another Beijing fan.

Washington, too, is making so far unrequited efforts to dial down tensions with China. Ever since a Chinese spy balloon flew over America, several administration officials have made a beeline to Beijing and not too smartly at that. Secretary of State Antony Blinken seemed overawed in Xi’s presence while the latter told him to do a hundred lines, or its diplomatic equivalent; Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen’s low bow indicated that she thought she was in Japan and the Chinese defence minister didn’t give Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin the time of the day in Singapore when asked. America’s brahmastra, Henry Kissinger, has also been trotted out, dressed up as a private visitor—though with all respect to the centenarian, trotted may not be the mot juste. The Chinese laid out a wedding feast befitting a visitor who had arguably created the diplomatic opening that led to China’s rise. The old master of information arbitrage will no doubt dine out the season with corporate clients on the titbits gleaned at Xi’s laden table even as US-China relations struggle to carve out a stable framework. For reasons too obvious, this remains a space that India needs to watch.

Navtej Sarna is former ambassador of India to the US and author, most recently, of the novel Crimson Spring.

wanted-direct-flight-to-paradise

Sat Jul 08 16:00:20 IST 2023

A short-story collection by Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald titled Bits of Paradise came to mind as I took a sea plane from Male to the island resort of Soneva Fushi in western Maldives. Below us, flung generously across the iridescent blue of the Indian Ocean lay several verdant isles, a handful of 1,200 such pearls that make up this close neighbour, each ringed by a penumbra of clear sea-green water. At the resort, the idea of paradise is reinforced: silvery beaches, humming vegetation, waters teeming with parrot fish, and dolphins putting on a show for gaping visitors.

But paradise can also be a troubled place. Maldives, spread over 90,000sq.km, is one of the world’s most widely dispersed countries; it is 99 per cent water, with a land area of only 300sq.km. With average ground levels only a metre-and-a-half above sea level, climate change is an existential threat. At current levels of global warming, Maldives could be uninhabitable by the end of the century; former president Mohamed Nasheed famously held a cabinet meeting underwater to draw attention to the threat. The damage inflicted by the 2004 tsunami, totalling $400 million, was a glimpse of the future.

A fractious domestic polity, social unrest, drug trafficking and dependence, illegal fishing and sea-borne terrorism also muddy the waters, often feeding on what is generally regarded as a great advantage: Maldives’ strategic location. At either end of this island chain—a virtual toll-gate in the ocean—are the two sea lanes of communication (SLOCs) critical for maritime trade between the Gulf of Aden and Strait of Hormuz in west Asia and the Malacca Strait in southeast Asia. 50 per cent of India’s external trade and 80 per cent of her energy imports pass through these westward SLOCs.

China, keen on an increased naval presence in the Indian Ocean, gained a crucial foothold when former president Abdulla Yameen offered it major infrastructural projects including a Male airport upgrade and a bridge linking Male to Hulhule island. Predictably, by 2018, Maldives—with a GDP of $9 billion—owed China $1.5 billion; nevertheless, Maldives is part of China’s Belt and Road Initiative.

Indian equities have largely been restored under the ‘India First’ policy of present president Ibrahim Mohamed Solih. A net-security provider, India is also supporting major infrastructure ventures such as the $500 million Greater Male Connectivity Project. Health tourism is booming. A wide-ranging defence relationship covers training, joint patrols of the vast EEZ, Maritime Domain Awareness, military hardware, setting up a coastal radar system and so on. This partnership is not safe from internal political discord and is likely to be in focus again in the forthcoming September elections, particularly if Yameen, who launched an India-Out campaign, is allowed to run.

Despite all this it took me 12 hours to travel from Male to Delhi—as long as it takes one to fly directly from Delhi to Australia. The reason: there are no direct flights between Male and Delhi at present, never mind that India is the top source market for tourism for Maldives as well as the top tourist destination. Air India has completely halted operations to Maldives; the airline is a private operation now, but a nudge—or even a subsidy—should be possible. A direct flight between Delhi and strategically important Male should be a strategic decision, not a purely commercial one. It is not a good signal if official delegations—of which there are plenty—have to dog-leg it all the way, and in this game signals matter. Besides, it would be nice to have a direct connection to paradise.

Navtej Sarna is former high commissioner to the UK and author, most recently, of the novel Crimson Spring.