Editorial 1 : A progressive Indian policy on Myanmar outlined
Context
New Delhi’s stance of defining its ‘interests’ in the Southeast Asian country in narrow strategic terms needs to change.
How India can step out of China’s shadow
- Three years on, the military in Myanmar, which overthrew the elected civilian government in February 2021, continues to kill, maim and displace its own people.
- Indian foreign policy scholars and practitioners have doggedly defended this policy by arguing that India needs to work with the junta if it has to protect its “interests” in Myanmar and not get swayed by an idealistic preoccupation with “values”.
- But, in foreign policy, there is no clear line between “values” and “interests” simply because neither has a standard definition.
- It all depends on how a country defines these terms. This is also the case with India’s Myanmar policy.
- New Delhi has long defined its “interests” in the Southeast Asian country in narrow strategic terms.
- But now, it needs to leverage a unique set of “values” to better defend its interests.
- It is possible for India to put in place a more progressive, values-driven Myanmar policy that works in favour, and not against, its national interests.
- This new policy should have two key pivots, namely, democracy and human security.
The Steps
- First, India needs to use its credentials as the largest federal democracy in the region to sharpen its influence in Myanmar.
- For long, Myanmar’s pro-democracy political elites and civil society have looked up to India as a model of a federal democratic union with a well-oiled power-sharing arrangement between the centre and various subnational units.
- This is even more relevant today as the democratic resistance in Myanmar, which is led by the National Unity Government (NUG), dozens of ethnic revolutionary organisations, civil society organisations, and trade unions, strives to replace the military-drafted 2008 constitution with a federal constitution.
- By helping this vibrant opposition achieve its aim through capacity-building and knowledge exchange programmes, India can distinguish itself from China, its primary regional competitor in Myanmar.
- Both Beijing and New Delhi can sell military hardware to Myanmar, but only India can sell the spirit of federal cooperation.
Weapons sales and humanitarian outreach
- Second, India needs to immediately halt all weapon sales to the Myanmar military.
- Indian state-owned military hardware manufacturers have sold a range of non-lethal and semi-lethal equipment to the junta since the 2021 coup.
- New Delhi needs to immediately put a stop to these, as the Myanmar military continues to use all its three services — the army, air force, and navy — to attack non-combatant civilians using imprecise lethal tactics.
- Third, India needs to immediately open cross-border humanitarian corridors to help civilians affected by the conflict along three border provinces — Sagaing Region, Chin State and northern Rakhine State.
- New Delhi needs to first revoke its plans to fence the India-Myanmar border and reinstate the Free Movement Regime, or the FMR, which the Union Home Ministry suspended in February 2024.
- Then, it should engage existing humanitarian aid networks along the India-Myanmar border to send emergency relief assistance including medicines, food and tarpaulin to the other side.
- Mizoram, where a multi-layered asylum and aid ecosystem is already operational, is a good starting point.
- India should also collaborate with local and international non-governmental organisations with experience in the field.
- Best practices from Thailand, which recently started cross-border aid deliveries into Myanmar, should also be adopted.
- New Delhi should use its clout to ensure that the aid is not distributed by the junta, which not only has a disastrous track record in this field, but is also not even in control of large areas along the India-Myanmar border.
- It is also possible to run cross-border aid corridors without allowing contraband to pass through, with stringent checks and pre-delivery vetting.
Way forward
- Regardless of the fact that India has not ratified the 1951 Refugee Convention, it is incumbent upon the government to treat them as refugees in need of humanitarian assistance and protection rather than as “illegal immigrants”.
- Both the Indian Constitution and international law allow the Indian state to do so.
- In fact, the customary international legal principle of non-refoulement discourages India from deporting refugees back to a home country where they face a threat of persecution or death.
- India, the “Vishwabandhu”, routinely claims to stand with the people of Myanmar. It should now walk the talk.
Editorial 2 : A mandate for a new economic approach
Context
To continue with the ‘winning formula’ — i.e., the economic policy of the past decade — would be to ignore the people’s verdict, which is a reflection of their discontent.
Discontent, its sources
- Dissatisfaction with governance is bound to be high at a time of unemployment and persistent inflation.
- Food-price inflation, in particular, has remained elevated for five years. It is highest for cereals and pulses, which are staples.
- For households at the bottom of the income distribution, food constitutes close to half their household expenditure.
- Past experience suggests that the price of food can be a determinant of how the electorate votes.
- For instance, historically high food-price inflation towards the end of its decade-long tenure had preceded the end of the A.B. Vajpayee-led National Democratic Alliance government in 2004.
- When it comes to jobs, the unemployment rate has mostly been higher since 2014.
- The Periodic Labour Force Survey also shows a decline in the real earnings of regular employees and the self-employed, being substantial in the case of the latter.
- The current government must address the sources of their discontent. This would require a change from the economic approach that has been followed for the last decade.
- The Finance Minister has promised ‘reforms’, and some supportive commentators have spoken of how they are essential for growth.
Reforms
- First, Reforms understood as changes in the policy regime are effective only to the extent that they affect the forces of demand or supply.
- Clearly, this has not happened strongly or widely enough in the economy, whatever the reforms undertaken by the present regime so far.
- Second, the growth that we have seen since 2014 has not brought along with it the things that Indians aspire to.
- The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations estimates that close to 75% of the Indian population cannot afford a healthy diet.
- This is not surprising given the extent of increase in food prices in the past five years and the highly unequal distribution of income in the country.
- Apart from affordable food, Indians aspire to infrastructure, both physical and social. Social infrastructure is constituted mainly by health care and education.
- Physical infrastructure is almost everything that is necessary both for everyday life and engaging in economic activity. Both are crucial for living.
- The economic policy of the past decade has focused on attracting foreign investment, moving to digital payment in all spheres, building a manufacturing sector through subsidy and, in the past three years, unleashing a highway construction spree.
- Combined with this, there have been a host of transfers, cash for farmers and housewives and free rations for the poorest.
- Showcasing macroeconomic stability also will not do. Till the COVID-19 pandemic, the central government had had fair success with fiscal consolidation, though not equally with inflation control, but that could not prevent growth from sliding even before COVID-19 had struck.
- While you certainly do not want macroeconomic instability, we can now see that it does not necessarily bring more growth or deliver the goods citizens aspire to.
- Continued high growth in India would require a rise in the investment rate.
- Private investment is guided by anticipation of demand. The private investment rate in India has not budged for a decade.
Glaring deficits
- The relentless rise in prices of staple foods is the sign of an under-developed economy, and sits uncomfortably with the goal of a ‘Viksit Bharat’.
- While wheat production only experiences shortfalls in certain years, the production of pulses, a major source of protein for workers, has chronically fallen short of demand for decades.
- Making India self-sufficient in pulses must be taken up in mission mode. The supply of fruits and vegetables, the sources of vitamins and minerals, is hobbled by the absence of cold-storage facilities and poor transportation.
- A second pressure point in the country is to be found in the Indian Railways. Its leadership appears to have been caught unawares by the rise in long-distance migration for work.
- Pictures of reserved compartments on long-distance trains swarming with ticketless travellers have sent shock waves across the country.
- In such a situation, to treat high-end ‘Vande Bharat’ trains as a priority, not to mention the bullet train, is a serious failure of judgment when it is not actually irresponsible.
- A third pressure point is the strained water supply situation in our mega cities.
- First Bengaluru and now Delhi have witnessed severe deficits this summer. These are India’s leading agglomerations and water shortage can cripple their economic potential, apart from endangering social harmony. ‘Nal se jal’ must seem a distant dream to many.
The public sector is crucial
- The country needs infrastructure that supports both everyday life and economic activity.
- The first is easily understood, but the second perhaps not. Firms, including the self-employed, need producer services ranging from efficient transportation and steady electricity supply to sewerage and waste disposal facilities.
- When such services are unavailable, production cannot take place, and employment cannot expand.
- The relatively high growth in India over the past quarter century has not delivered these services sufficiently, and they are unlikely to be supplied by the private sector within any time frame.
Conclusion
The government, however, can undertake course correction now. Instead of promising, or even implementing, liberalising reforms, it should move swiftly to address the pressure points that are so obvious. It has set 2047 as the date to make the country a developed economy.
