Thursday, 23 April, 2015
The answer To sTones can never be bulleTs HiNdustaN times
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PreM ShANkAr JhA
ITH Prime Minister Narendra Modi back from his European tour, he will need to consider whether he can afford to continue governing India with a home minister who is capable of derailing his policies while he is, figuratively, looking the other way. For this is what Rajnath Singh has almost managed to do with the notification he issued a fortnight ago that Kashmiri Pandits, who had been driven from their homes during the insurgency of 1989-94, would be resettled in demarcated zones of the Indian-held Kashmir (IHK) Valley in the near future. To understand how much damage he has done it is necessary to examine where IHK was headed before the notification and where it could be headed now. No matter to what one ascribes it, the 70% turnout in the IHK Valley in the December assembly elections showed that Kashmiris were fed up with boycotting elections and wanted to govern themselves instead of letting New Delhi’s local proxies continue to do so. But an equally emphatic vote in Jammu in favour of a national party, as distinct from a statecentred one, made government by a party that represented only half of the state close to impossible. That was the genesis of the BJP-PDP coalition, and it speaks volumes for the statesmanship of their leaders that the two parties persevered in the search to find common ground for almost three months till they finally found it. The coalition has opened up the prospect of an entirely different future for IHK and the Valley. Six years of successful joint rule will not only heal a 100-year-old Kashmir-Jammu divide, but undermine the communal suspicion and preju-
dice that underlies the quest for ‘Hindutva’. But it is attempting nothing less than a marriage of opposites, and so has aroused deep misgivings both in the BJP and civil society in IHK. In the Valley Mirwaiz Umar Farooq’s wing of the Hurriyat, the moderate one, is seriously affected, because its stated goals are closer to those of the PDP. It was therefore inevitable that members of its executive council would ask him to define an agenda for the movement that was appropriate to the changed circumstances. For reasons that are not entirely clear, the Mirwaiz did not immediately do so. This allowed a string of unforeseen events to take the issue out of his hands. Three developments have done this: The release of Masarat Alam from years on end of imprisonment without trial; Indian TV channels’ cynical use of this and every second statement or action of the new government to provoke a hyper-nationalistic reaction from its audiences, and Rajnath Singh’s notification about land for the Pandits. Alam’s release breathed new life into the pro-Pakistan Hurriyat (G) just when it too was facing marginalisation. The Indian media’s jingoistic reaction to it strengthened support for it, and the Union home ministry notification confirmed that the BJP had beat only a tactical retreat from its long-term goal of ‘saffronising’ the Valley. When a public meeting called to welcome Geelani on his return to the Valley after several months turned into an anti-Indian rally, complete with a few Pakistani flags, and the Mirwaiz still did not come out with an agenda for the moderates, the inevitable happened — more than half of his party defected to the Hurriyat (G). Since then political developments in IHK have acquired a momentum of their own. The re-arrest of Geelani and Alam, and the claim of the BJP in Jammu that ‘they got it done’, have gone some way towards discrediting
the PDP in the Valley, and put Ram Madhav and even Modi on the defensive within their own party. The subsequent death of a 25-year-old stone-thrower in Tral at the hands of the IHK Police and the CRPF has further strengthened the Hurriyat (G)’s claim to be the sole fighter for freedom in the Valley. The damage does not end there. The television coverage of Geelani’s reception and the Indian media’s over-reaction to the Pakistani flags raised by some demonstrators have revived the hope in Islamabad that Kashmiris are once again willing to resume their struggle for secession. Hafiz Saeed, the leader of the Jamaat-ud-Dawa and the Lashkar-e-Taiba, has not only issued another call for jihad but, more disturbingly, has claimed that his aims and those of the government are one. IHK chief minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeed has acted promptly to limit the damage, arresting the policemen who fired into the protesters in Tral and ordering an inquiry. But the boy who died cannot be brought back to life, and no amount of rationalisation will convince any Kashmiri, or anyone with an ounce of humanity in him, that the answer to stones is bullets. Knowing this, the Hurriyat (G) will raise more Pakistani flags and do its utmost to get some more stone-throwers killed. The fate of the coalition, and of the PDP in the Valley, will therefore depend largely upon its success in preventing a repeat of the Tral killing and focusing public attention on the issues that brought it to power — flood relief, responsive governance and economic development. It will also depend upon the BJP’s capacity to prevent its hawks from making common cause with TRP-hungry elements in the media to derail the new government before it has found its feet.
Prem Shankar Jha is a senior political commentator.
WORLD VIEW 09 behind beijing’s gifting spree to Pakistan HiNdustaN times Pakistan has, in recent years, felt constantly slighted by the world. The frequency and lethality of terrorist attacks have scared away visitors, including cricket teams — and its political and military leaders are no longer as cultivated by world powers as they used to be. The presence of Osama bin Laden on Pakistani soil was a severe breach with Western governments that is yet to be fully bridged. United States President Barack Obama avoided visiting Pakistan during both his trips to India, de-hyphenising the relationship in ways Islamabad may not have appreciated. But with its gift of geography, it is difficult to keep Pakistan away from the thick of global geopolitics. Sensing the opportunity, China has earnestly set out to compensate for the US’ tilt towards India. Chinese President Xi Jinping arrived in Pakistan this week, likening the trip to visiting the home of his own brother. And like a generous brother, Mr Xi arrived bearing significant gifts. The visit reportedly ‘finalised agreements or broke ground’ on $28 billion worth of infrastructure projects — out of total of $46 billion that Beijing is expected to invest in the country. The projects pertain to developing the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, which will connect the Xinjiang province with the port of Gwadar, which Beijing has built, in the Arabian Sea. Chinese investments will improve Pakistan’s infrastructure by building road and rail networks, dams, pipelines and significantly scale up its power capacity adding 8,400 megawatts in due course. India has plenty of reasons to be concerned of these developments. Mr Xi’s Pakistan initiative points to Beijing’s urgency in pursuing its twin projects of the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road. The former ‘focuses on bringing together China, Central Asia, Russia and Europe; linking China with the Persian Gulf and the Mediterranean through Central Asia and West Asia’ while the latter ‘is designed to go from China’s coast to Europe through the South China Sea and the Indian Ocean in one route, and from China’s coast through the South China Sea to the South Pacific in the other’. These are ambitious projects that are bound to transform global trade flows and extend China’s global influence, notwithstanding the military dominance of the US. India will keenly watch how this surge of Chinese interest will shape Pakistan’s behaviour in the neighbourhood. New Delhi will hope that Beijing consistently prods Islamabad to tackle extremism since that alone can assure durable, secure economic corridors. Indian policymakers have a lot of reflecting to do on the strategic effects of Mr Xi’s benevolence.
THE CLINTONIAN THEORY OF FOREIGN MONEY New Yorker AMY DAVIDSON
The Bill, Hillary & Chelsea Clinton Foundation has a new, shorter list of the foreign governments whose money it will take, the Wall Street Journal reported. This is unsatisfying for anyone who thinks that the number of names on that list should be zero, now that Hillary Clinton is running for President. If she wants to be a champion for ordinary Americans, as she said in a video released last weekend, why let one of the first stories after her announcement be that the foundation with her name on it takes checks from officials in other countries? The answer seems to lie in a certain conception of what corruption is, and isn’t. The choice of countries whose money is good is telling: the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, Germany, the Netherlands, and Norway can all continue to give money, as they have been doing. The countries that, though they’ve given money in the past two years, will have to wrap up their business include Oman, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. Other non-approved past donor countries are Algeria, Brunei, the Dominican Republic, Italy, Kuwait, and Taiwan. The foundation’s statement on the change, on its Web site, does not specify the reasons that some made the cut and others didn’t. Perhaps the rationale is, as many press reports assumed, a guess about each country’s potential for controversy. Voters might not mind a picture of Bill hanging out with Crown Prince Haakon of Norway as much as one with the Sultan of Brunei. And there are particular reasons to avoid taking money from authoritarians, or states that ignore, say, women’s rights, which Clinton is making one of her signature issues. “British funds” in a headline does have a different ring from “Saudi cash.” But either could still be rendered as “foreign cash,” and that remains, at the very least, indecorous when one is running for President. Beyond appearances, the theory seems to be that nice countries, like nice, respectable, well-situated people, are not corrupt. For a transaction to be corrupt, from this perspective, one of the parties
has to be in some way marginal, whether financially, politically, socially, or ideologically. The Dutch are doing fine—they don’t need anything, and it’s inappropriate to question their generosity. The Clintons are doing well, too; Bill has earned more than a hundred million dollars in speaker fees, and the Clinton Foundation has taken in more than two billion dollars from various sources. They don’t need the Dutch. The very surfeit of money is taken as a guarantee of honesty. One could call it a Clintonian view, except that it is, increasingly, an American one. And yet even northern Europeans have policy priorities. So do billionaires who might otherwise be said to have everything; what donors want can be different from what, objectively, they might
need. It is wrong to ignore the way a world view, or simple access, can be bought and sold. This is true of campaign finance across the board, but there is something particularly disorienting about the size and geographic scope of the Clinton operation. And it is strange, going into the 2016 Presidential campaign, that Hillary Clinton isn’t more wary of that. Instead, the Clintons act as though the injustice of the second-guessing about the foundation’s finances—and the family’s own—is manifest. Every time there is a story about the foundation’s money, its spokesmen emphasize that it exceeds legal requirements for transparency. One change, with Hillary Clinton’s Presidential campaign, is that it will now release the names of its donors quarterly, rather
than annually; she is also stepping down from the board. A spokesman told the Journal, “By implementing this new, even stronger and more transparent policy, the Clinton Foundation is reinforcing its commitment to accountability while protecting programs that are improving the lives of millions of people around the world.” Attack the fund-raising, in other words, and you are attacking efforts to help the poor. Presented with a conflict, the Clintons just don’t seem to see why they should have to make a choice. A couple of weeks ago, the Times had a story about how Eaglevale Partners, the hedge fund co-founded by Chelsea Clinton’s husband, Marc Mezvinsky, had investors who were also supporters of the Clintons. The people
the paper spoke to emphasized that the amounts in question were not large, in terms of the fund, which managed four hundred million dollars—one person had put in a million, for example, suggesting, again, that people in the Clintons’ circles have lost track of what is a large or a small amount. And, the Times noted, “Clinton supporters also say there are more direct ways to cultivate favour with the family, such as giving to the foundation, where Chelsea Clinton is vice chairwoman, than by investing with a hedge fund that her husband co-founded.” There has long been a belief in American politics that a wealthy person who runs for office is more likely to be honest because bribes won’t tempt him—this is the Bloomberg model. What is distinct about the Clintons is that their wealth comes from such sources as speaking fees, book advances, and board memberships—that is, from trading in on their political aura and experience, if not simply selling access. That may be what Presidential retirement looks like. But it creates certain conceptual and ethical difficulties, and Hillary Clinton can’t ignore that. When Clinton served as Secretary of State, the foundation had a policy limiting foreign-government money to avoid conflicts, but there were plenty of gaps, and at least one case in which the rules were broken. (It involved Algeria, and the foundation said that it was an oversight.) Those limits were dropped when she left State, which was also when she added her name to the foundation. Because loopholes seem to matter, here are a few: under the new policy, foreign governments can still pay for their ministers to attend the Clinton Global Initiative; that costs twenty thousand dollars a person, and, again, the Clinton defence might be that, though this seems like significant money, it’s not, really, in the context of the CGI. And the rules have to do with government entities, not foreigners per se. Of course, the distinction between public officials and people with influence can be vague in some countries, including this one. Amy Davidson is a New Yorker staff writer. She is a regular Comment contributor for the magazine.