The problem

LARGE, subcontinental countries, more so those laying claim to a hoary civilizational legacy, are often inward oriented, far too preoccupied with internal developments to evolve a larger regional or global view. Such, at least, has been the case with India. Barring an obsession with Pakistan, and for the elite with the Anglo-Saxon West, Indian political imagination and foreign policy has rarely demonstrated the needed knowledge about our near and extended neighbourhood, far less an ability to influence events in pursuance of national interests.

It should be a matter of concern that sixty years after independence, and even more after the country embarked on a process of globalization, scholarship about our neighbours remains woefully limited. It bears reiteration that our universities have produced few area studies/country experts with extended field research in other countries. No surprise that our public discourse is dominated by either journalists or retired intelligence and foreign service officers, more attuned to current affairs than long term trends. And what is true about our immediate South Asian neighbours is even more apparent as we look further afield, be it Myanmar or Afghanistan, other ASEAN nations or the Central Asian States.

Worse, dominant concerns continue to be cast in terms of conventional frames of national security – ensuring the sanctity of our borders, confronting infiltration and terror, and so on. It is thus not surprising, though disconcerting, that greater energies are invested in aligning with global strategies to confront terror networks or ensure regional dominance than work at policies to enhance regional peace and cooperation.

It does not help that our immediate region, South Asia, is a somewhat artificial construct, sharing a past more than it does the present. Or that barring a shared land or maritime boundary with India, other South Asian states have little in common with each other. The overwhelming presence of India creates an asymmetry that pushes other, smaller countries, into suspecting hegemony in every proposal for greater cooperation, in turn feeding into an incipient irritation within India that its neighbours are united only in their anti-India sentiment.

Even if one discounts the categorization of South Asia as the most dangerous region in the world, there is little doubt that each of the countries are facing difficult challenges of democratic transition. Both Pakistan and Bangladesh have experienced significant periods of direct military rule. In addition, their regimes, whether military or civilian, are having to confront increasingly militant and armed Islamist groups who enjoy considerable support. Nepal is still in the midst of evolving a consensus over a post-Royalist republican constitution. Sri Lanka, the only other country in the region under consistent democratic rule, continues to be wracked by a quarter century of armed civil strife, one that unfortunately shows little signs of withering away. Even Bhutan and Maldives, though rarely in the news, face issues of democratic legitimacy. Internal developments in each of these countries not only impairs the ability of their respective regimes to fulfil the aspirations of their peoples, they inevitably create spill-over effects that reduce the stability of the region.

India too faces similar problems, though our sheer size and recent growth story often blinds us to the dangers. In addition to the fragile situation in our borderlands, particularly of the North East and Jammu and Kashmir, and one that our national leadership has so far failed to handle, is the challenge of Maoist/Naxalite militancy in the central tribal plains and forests affecting as many as a third of the districts in the country. Far more serious and equally unattended, is the disturbing growth of inequalities – both interpersonal and inter-regional – fuelling discontent, if not a tendency to move outside the constitutional framework.

Unfortunately, few of these challenges have merited serious engagement. As the recently published State of Democracy in South Asia (OUP, 2007) points out, a vast majority of the peoples in the region are far more concerned about everyday issues – worsening law and order and insecurity about life and property – than terrorism and the prospects of war. Worse, their trust in the civil institutions of the state – police, bureaucracy, political parties – is alarmingly low. Hardly surprising that as respective regimes try to grapple with the problems of an insecure and restive populace, unsure about the instrumentalities at their command, they take recourse to heavy-handed measures to ensure control. Equally, they fail to build upon and take advantage of the new opportunities thrown up by a rapidly changing and interdependent world.

Fortunately, it is increasingly clear that remaining insular and/or heavy-handed is a dead-end route, that without actively contributing to peace, stability and development in the region, India too will face a troubled future. Simultaneously, it has to construct meaningful relationships with other regional and global powers, in particular China and the US. In so doing, our policy-makers have to both shed the restrictive frameworks of foreign policy evolved during the Cold War years as also reappraise the exclusive reliance on the state apparatus as the principle instrumentality for global action. Hopefully, given the greater cross-border flows of information, capital, goods and people, as also the new role of corporations, NGOs, service providers like hospitals, universities and the media, both India and our neighbours will evolve a more nuanced understanding and policy about each other. This issue of Seminar is a small attempt towards imagining a shared future.