Staggering Forward: Narendra Modi and India’s Global Ambition

481 Pages·2018·2.74 MB·English

by  Bharat Karnad

BHARAT KARNAD
STAGGERING FORWARD
Narendra Modi and India’s Global Ambition
PENGUIN BOOKS
CONTENTS
Introduction
1. ‘Alpha Male’ Leaders and ‘Country First’ Power Politics
2. Impact of Modi’s Persona on Government
3. Creeper-vine Foreign Policy
4. Adversarial Geopolitics: BRIS and Mod Quad
5. Affirmative Inaction
6. Perennial Security Muddle
Conclusion
Notes
Follow Penguin
Copyright
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
Why India Is Not a Great Power (Yet)
Strategic Sell-out: Indian–US Nuclear Deal (co-author)
India’s Nuclear Policy
Nuclear Weapons and Indian Security: The Realist Foundations of Strategy
(Second Edition)
Future Imperilled: India’s Security in the 1990s and Beyond (editor and main
contributor)
For Ranju and Raj Ketkar, Ravi and Savita Karnad, Nima and Kayo Noble and
Nikhil Singhal, a lover of books
‘Scepticism is a virtue in history as well as in philosophy’
Napoleon Bonaparte
Introduction
INFLECTION POINTS IN national and international affairs are routinely heralded,
and each decade is perceived as more dangerous than the previous one.
Invariably, there’s a person, a country, an event or a series of incidents or an
emerging situation that is identified as the trigger for things going askew. The
second decade of the new millennium has been marked, in this respect, by the
rise of political strongmen in major countries across the globe—Vladimir Putin
in Russia, Xi Jinping in China, Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Turkey, Shinzo Abe in
Japan, Donald J. Trump in the United States and Narendra Modi in India. These
are highly motivated leaders who by the force of their personalities and
ambitions and sometimes quirky policy agendas have changed the international
relations dynamic. Their similarity means they are each alive to what drives the
others, and this makes for wariness all round, as well as, perhaps, a strained sort
of regional and international peace. But it is peace all the same.
In the two vital democracies, India and the US, moreover, there are the
walrus-moustachioed individuals coming into their own as influence-wielders. If
Mohan Bhagwat, the head of the powerful right-wing social service organization
Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), represents Hindu triumphalism and is the
acknowledged éminence grise of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)
government headed by Narendra Modi, John Bolton, no friend of India, the new
US national security advisor (NSA) who replaced the steady General H.R.
McMaster, will likely put teeth into President Trump’s truculent ‘America First’
policy and increase the dilemma for Delhi.1 Inclined to wage wars of
denuclearization and regime change against Iran and North Korea, Bolton will
encourage Trump’s worst tendencies and set the world up for a hair-raising ride
to the nuclear abyss, because it is unlikely Putin and Xi will sit idly by and see
Washington take out these states that are potentially levers to stall America’s
regional designs.2 India will have to negotiate this international milieu, already
rendered unpredictable and difficult by Trump’s ‘rash’ foreign policy ‘instincts’,
and face the hazards of US policy fuelled by his pet peeves.3 That Modi has
developed a rapport with Trump augurs well. But it also means that the White
House will expect New Delhi to fall in with its policies without demurring and
contribute to furthering US objectives, which expectation if belied can lead to
Trump turning on India. Meanwhile, at home, Bhagwat and the RSS have
hurrahed Modi along as he seeks recognition for India as the ‘jagat guru’ (world
guru) and pushes the Indian state towards a palpably Hindu identity, heightening
tensions in society along caste and religious lines and affecting the Indian polity
—a problem Modi has publicly avoided addressing.4
Global power politics is a serious game requiring countries that matter to think
and act big. Given its many attributes, India belongs in this group but has not
been in the running for want of an inspiring leader with a clear national vision,
the ability to get things done and the will to put India on the path to accelerated
economic growth and prosperity and to great power. But the pursuit of great
power requires a lean and effective apparatus of state that is able to efficiently
implement policies and deliver on programmes in double-quick time and enable
the ease of doing business. It also needs talent for conceiving and implementing
agile realpolitik-minded foreign and military policies and obtaining an
appropriate mix of war-fighting and credible strategic deterrent capabilities for
the purpose, along with the knack for using hard power effectively as a tool of
diplomacy.5
Narendra Damodardas Modi was elected with a thumping majority in 2014 in
part because the people believed he would make the country progress on all
these fronts. But he was sidetracked; his government got mired in the Hindu
fringe politics of cow worship, beef-eating, ‘love jihad’ and the Ayodhya Ram
Temple instead, and failed to initiate any kind of system transformation.
Contrary to expectations, Modi also retained the rickety administrative structure
—centred on generalist civil servants working in silos, immersed in the minutiae
of cross-cutting laws, rules, regulations and procedures—that has hindered the
nation’s progress. It is no wonder that so little was achieved during Modi’s first
term, moving the stalwart diplomat K.S. Bajpai to lament the fact that ‘the
country [seems] unaware of the deficiencies of mechanisms it has devised to
serve its needs’.6
What is particularly surprising considering his big talk is how, in the external
realm, Modi has stayed with the small stakes game anchored in short policy
horizons that the previous governments had locked the country into. Continuing
to lean overmuch on the United States, and keying on Pakistan and Pakistan-
sponsored terrorism in Jammu and Kashmir rather than on the primary threat
from China, is the sort of foreign policy a lesser state would follow for marginal
gains. As a result, India has belied hopes, piled on disappointments, messed up
on economic and strategic opportunities and underperformed in every sphere of
national and international activity.7 The world, therefore, while not having given
up on India just yet, has moved on from the ‘India story’ which, along with the
‘China story’, was all the rage on either side of the new millennium.8 While
China has advanced by leaps under the strategically driven Xi and an enabling
system, with its economy generating wealth at a rate that sees it racing to replace
the US at the top of the heap, India has meandered, its global impact far less than
the sum of its small successes.
This trend was expected to slow down, if not actually reverse, with Modi’s
advent. His qualities as a self-made man, a showman and a strongman all rolled
into one inspired confidence that he would get things done. India, it was widely
believed, would be taken by the scruff of its neck as it were and frog-marched
into economic plenty and the great power club. Too long victimized by a tardy
nanny state spawned by pseudo-socialist ideology and politics and a diffident
foreign policy, the Indian people desperately desired change. With his clean
reputation, proven track record as chief minister of Gujarat and his formidable
leadership qualities on display, Modi seemed the right fit for the prime
minister’s job, and just the man to turn the country around after the decade-long
rule by the meek and mumbling Manmohan Singh.
In the Modi era, there is drive and bustle all right—corruption is at a lower
ebb, at least in the higher reaches of government (counterpointed, however, by
stories of ‘crony Gujarati capitalists’), some structural changes have been
engineered in the economic sphere, new ideas to improve the lot of the people
are being tried out and the focus on technology to provide development solutions
is a departure from the norm. The government seems more responsive and the
mechanisms to deliver public services and benefits to the masses have improved.
Coupled with the high hopes he held out for a new India, this part is what
initially created the sizzle. But in the context of his many slogans heralding a
new dawn for the country—‘Minimum government, maximum governance’,
‘Government has no business to be in business’—the radical makeover of the