Editorial 1: A re-balancing of India’s great power relations

Context

By attempting to play a meaningful role in resolving the Ukraine conflict, India can hope to reset the terms of its engagement with both the West and Russia

Introduction

Prime Minister’s Narendra Modi’s participation in the sixth Quad Leaders’ Summit in Wilmington, Delaware, U.S. on September 21, 2024 has raised further hopes of consolidating security cooperation among the “four leading maritime democracies in the Indo-Pacific”.

National Security Adviser Ajit Doval’s Trip to Russia

• BRICS Trip: Ajit Doval’s trip to Russia in early September for the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) NSA meeting, which included a high-profile personal meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, that needs greater analysis.
• Meetings with Chinese: Mr. Doval also held one-on-one parleys with the Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, which was equally significant since India is leaving no stone unturned to resolve the four-year-old military standoff with China at the Line of Actual Control (LAC).
• India’s Current Diplomatic Strategies: India is currently busy bargaining with China, and protecting its interests while trying to keep the U.S. engaged in maintaining a rules-based order in the Indo-Pacific.
• The fundamental idea behind the Quad (Australia, Japan, India and the U.S.) is the creation of a strategic consortium of principles, interests and purposes that would not only strengthen each country individually but would also be capable of jointly countering the revisionist challenge to the existing global order.
  • This is where India’s relations with Russia become significant since Moscow is a bitter opponent of the Quad.

 

Role of peace maker 

• Current challenges faced: It is not easy for India’s security managers and diplomats to make this complex game work in New Delhi’s interest.
  • Mr. Doval has a reputation for being imaginative, nimble and persuasive.
  • The Doval-Putin meet, where Mr. Doval conveyed Mr Modi’s Ukraine peace plan, may be interpreted as India’s attempt to cross the psychological Rubicon in great power diplomacy. 
• Initiating peace:  There is little doubt about India’s willingness, as an aspiring global power, to shoulder the responsibility in peace making which may include the meaningful role of a dialogue facilitator or an interlocutor, if not mediator.
• The Doval-Putin meet: was after Mr. Modi’s first-ever visit to Ukraine in August, and to Moscow in July.
  • In particular, the Russia visit had drawn scathing criticism from Ukraine.
• Ukraine’s request: But despite its criticism of Indian policies, Ukraine, on many occasions, has asked New India to help resolve the conflict. 
• Meeting with French President: Mr. Doval subsequently met French President Emmanuel Macron in Paris, on the sidelines of annual India-France Strategic Dialogue, to apprise him of India’s mediatory efforts.

Factors suggesting India’s involvement

• Many factors have prompted India to insert itself into global peace-making initiatives, and India’s Russia dilemma is the most important of them.
• While India’s strategic relationship with the U.S. is relatively new, India-Russia relations have endured for over six decades, and New Delhi has no appetite to relinquish the military advantages that come with this relationship.
• But since the war in Ukraine has triggered Russia’s total break with the West, Moscow’s pivot toward China has become even more pronounced.
• Functioning more or less as the junior partner of China, Russia has been struggling to preserve its partnership with India since its leverage with China has steadily shrunk due to fierce military resistance by Ukraine. 

The need for correction

From an Indian perspective, this needs correction because the Russia-China economic-military ties are getting too close to be ignored by New Delhi. 

• West in agreement with Russian oil: The West may have reconciled itself to India’s purchase of Russian oil at discounted rates as well as New Delhi’s silence on Russian aggression in Ukraine. Nevertheless, India’s demonstration of independent foreign policy comes with a normative cost.
• Issues with India’s indifference: The West has come to view India as being blatantly indifferent on issues which are so consequential for the remaking of the global order after the Ukraine conflict shattered the remnants of the post-Cold War landscape.
• India resetting ties: By attempting to play a meaningful role in resolving an intractable conflict of epic global proportions, India can hope to reset the terms of its engagement with the West and Russia.
• Playing a role of conflict resolution: Even though some voices would treat it as an attempt to please Washington, others would sound equally compelling in arguing that India is merely emphasising its strategic autonomy while buttressing its position as ‘Vishwa Bandhu’, or a friend to the world. 

 

Russia’s China embrace 

• Friendly and Cooperative Relationship with the U.S.: What has been the hallmark of India’s foreign policy under Mr. Modi’s leadership during the last one decade is a friendly, cooperative and sometimes transactional relationship with the U.S., and a non-adversarial, non-ideological and dispassionate relationship with Russia.
• Non-Adversarial Relationship with Russia: However, Russia’s foreign policy under Mr. Putin has been primarily driven by two key objectives:
  • a deepening Moscow-Beijing nexus and
  • the promotion of a multi-polar world order which would counter the hegemonic dominance of the western bloc led by the U.S. Mr. Putin’s anti-western strategy includes both China and India as close allies.
  • But India is unwilling to oblige as its strategic priorities do not fully align with those of Russia or China.
• Russia’s Partnership with India: Russia’s apparent unwillingness to diminish its partnership with India should have been predicated on the preservation of a reasonable balance of power between India and China and the avoidance of any major conflict between them.
• Disproportionate Attention to China: But the Russians have failed to give the same degree of concentrated attention to India which they have given to China.
  • If Moscow’s pursuit of closer ties with Beijing has been driven by a shared geopolitical contest with Washington, Russia’s ties with India have lacked a similar motivation. 

New Delhi’s perspective on Russia

• Exhausted sefulness of Moscow: Consequently, New Delhi is increasingly finding Moscow’s usefulness largely exhausted due to Russia’s deepening China connection.
• Security difficulties with China: China has not only been engineering many of India’s security difficulties on their Himalayan borders but is also trying to profit from them.
  • The most damaging has been the active support to Pakistan in elevating terrorism as a legitimate tool of statecraft.
• Exasperation with Russian diplomacy: In the Indian world view, Russia’s prioritisation of China in its foreign policy has lent Russian diplomacy an exasperating character.

Complications in Russia-India Relations

• Impact of Russia’s break with the U.S.: Russia’s break in its relations with the U.S. has pushed Moscow into a tighter embrace with Beijing, at a moment when relations between India and China are yet to be normalised.
• Unfulfilled ambitions: Russia’s ambitions of posing a serious challenge to American primacy by asserting a leadership role in the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation and BRICS also remain unfulfilled.
• Complications due to the Ukraine War: With the Ukraine war, Russia’s task of managing its relationship with India has become considerably more complicated.
  • This is what makes India concerned about it, leading to the rebalancing of India’s great power relations.

From past to present : Bold Rebalancing

• No need for a full-fledged alliance: This bold rebalancing does not necessarily require anything as far reaching as a full-fledged India-U.S. alliance.
• Turning away from nostalgic images: It requires our collective ability to turn increasingly away from the nostalgic images of Russia protecting India from the machinations of the Pakistan-U.S.-China nexus in the Bangladesh war.
• Concerns over average: There is much scepticism about the merits of India’s peace efforts when the war between Russia and Ukraine is showing no signs of de-escalation.
  • The argument is that New Delhi does not really have the leverage to push either side to the negotiating table.
• Indian leadership’s approach to mediation: Nor has the Indian leadership been accustomed to incur the displeasure of both parties in mediation efforts.
• Justification for Mediation Efforts: But that should not be the justification for not trying to play the game of mediation.
• Mr. Doval’s Diplomatic Interactions: Symbolically as well as practically, Mr. Doval’s publicly advertised and deft diplomatic interactions with Mr. Putin and Mr. Macron herald a new foreign policy dynamic in which conflict resolution efforts are viewed as a vital component of India’s strategic autonomy.

Conclusion

In the end, the U.S.’s desire of seeing a ruined Russia is something India is not able to accept. It is also imperative for New Delhi to preserve the gains of the last two decades by fortifying its strategic partnership with the U.S. While the U.S. is undoubtedly the key player in the Quad, India too understands its underlying agenda, and accepts its fundamental features. New Delhi is aware of the structural impediments that stand in the path of any far-reaching development of India-China relations, and has no emotional commitment to their early improvement at strategically prohibitive cost.

Editorial 2: The complex process of restoring lakes in Bengaluru

Context

Policymakers are setting unrealistic expectations for lake restoration efforts.

Introduction

A recent report by the Karnataka State Pollution Control Board (KSPCB) stated that not one lake of the 110 lakes it studied in Bengaluru meets potable water quality standards.

About portable water

• Potable water is water that is safe for human consumption — i.e., water that can be used for drinking or cooking.
• Safe water means it contains no toxins, carcinogens, pathogenic microorganisms, or other health hazards. 

Achieving Potable Water quality in lakes

• Highest quality standards: achieving potable water quality in lakes means that the water must meet the highest quality standards.

• Purity of rainwater: Rainwater, often considered the purest form of water, becomes contaminated once it contacts the atmosphere.
• Pollutants from surfaces: As it moves across natural and man-made surfaces, especially in urban areas, it picks up minerals, chemicals, and pollutants.
• Runoff and water quality: Even if wastewater is prevented from entering water bodies and only runoff is allowed, the lakes will still not meet potable water quality standards.
• Biochemical processes: the stagnant nature of lake water leads to biochemical processes that further degrade its quality.

Sources of water in Bengaluru lakes

Lakes in Bengaluru receive water from three main sources:

• treated/partially treated wastewater from sewage treatment plants;
• rainwater mixed with sewage, also known as combined sewer overflows (CSOs) via storm water drains; and
• raw sewage from open storm water drains. Given the nature of the inflows, is it reasonable to expect potable water in lakes? 

Cost of reducing pollutants

• High costs of wastewater treatment: Reducing pollutants in wastewater and storm water runoff comes at a significant cost.
  • Treating 1 million litres of wastewater to meet secondary treatment standards costs approximately ₹1 crore with recurring operation and maintenance costs.

• Sewage treatment plants and constructed wetlands: Most restoration projects focus on deploying sewage treatment plants and supplementing treatment by channeling secondary treated effluent into constructed wetlands.
• CSO management during rainy season: During the rainy season, CSOs are managed through diversion channels that allow excess water to flow into the lakes.
• Sedimentation ponds Near CSO outlets: To further improve the water quality, sedimentation ponds are constructed near the CSO outlets.

KSPCB Study Results

• The KSPCB study revealed that all the 110 lakes fall only under:
  • Categories of D (lake water suitable for wildlife propagation and fisheries) and
  • Category E (water suitable for irrigation, industrial cooling, or controlled waste disposal).
• Unfit for human use: In simpler terms, none of them are fit for swimming (B), nor can they be used as a source of potable water, either with treatment (C) or without (A). 

Biological Oxygen Demand (BOD) and Water quality

• BOD levels: ne crucial point to note is that the biological oxygen demand (BOD) level required to move from category E or D to category C is 3mg/l.
• Categorisation of BOD levels: This means that if the water quality falls under categories D or E, any incremental reduction in BOD levels as a result of restoration efforts may not be reflected in the broad ranges used to categorise lake quality.
  • For instance, if the BOD level in a lake is 30 mg/l and restoration efforts reduce it to 15 mg/l, the lake will still be in category D or E, which misleadingly suggests no progress.
• Limitations in evaluating impact:  the lack of ambient standards for nutrients, such as nitrogen, further limits the ability to evaluate the impact of interventions on surface water quality. 

Way forward

The right way to approach restoration is to therefore set the right expectations with stakeholders.

• First, we need to identify the nature of the problem.
• Second, we need to prioritise the issues to be addressed with inputs from stakeholders.
• Third, we need to conduct comprehensive baseline assessments clearly stating the challenges.
• Fourth, based on available funds, we need to estimate the levels of improvement that are achievable.
• Finally, we need to set realistic expectations with the stakeholders and devise an exit strategy to ensure the sustainability of interventions throughout the design period. 

Conclusion

The success of restoration efforts should not be assessed based on lakes meeting the potable water standards but by the tangible improvements in water quality, biodiversity, and the livelihoods of local communities. Lake restoration is a complex process. With proper planning, phased targets, and collaboration, we can make progress in rejuvenating lakes in urban landscapes — not necessarily to the point where they provide drinkable water, but where they become vibrant, healthy ecosystems that benefit the environment and the people.