Toward a Win-Win Resolution of the Indo-Manipur Armed Conflict (IMAC)
- Part 2 -

Nongdrenkhomba Senjam *

PLA's 30th anniversary celebration at its camp - 2008 :: Pix - TSE

A potential trouble for the GoI that can help the ASGoMs turn the tables on it may be discussed here. Today India is witnessing a low-intensity but widespread socio-political unrest the horizontal and vertical proliferation of Maoists is the dominant symptom of this phenomenon that has the potential to become a full-blown revolutionary uprising in the country in the case of which the present system of India will implode and the country will undergo a disintegration phase. Having given up the socialist path in favour of capitalism, the GoI has not been able to cope with the socio-economic and political maladies that have proceeded from its embrace of capitalism and misgovernment. So the GoI does not have a favourable outlook, let there be no doubt.

India may now be the second-fastest growing economy in the world. But it has emerged as a paradigm of two nations in one country in which case trickle-down theory does not come into play. On the one hand, there is India, whose people are rich, powerful and rising. In India most people eat the best of food, own top-of-the-range cars, helicopters and even jets, holiday an luxury.

But on the other hand, there exists a poor, powerless and economically static Bharat, where most if not all people cannot afford a square meal a day, let alone two, or send their children to any schools worth the name, do not possess enough clothing to wear, do not own proper homes, are quite prone to disease, exploitation, etc. and so forth, thanks primarily to capitalism and its proponents. So what is the guarantee that the palpable disillusionmant and disappointment of the unfortunate people of Bharat will not turn an 'inferno' that can obliterate this country, whose political leadership remain so deeply mesmerised by the economic growth story that they are unable to realize the real state of affairs of Bharat or see the writing on the wall?

It is no exaggeration to say that the myriad socio-economic and political maladies confronting India cannot be successfully dealt with because of various reasons: the sheer size of the country's population; persistent lobbying by capitalist forces; the unholy alliance between the political elite, the corporate leaders and certain black sheep of the media fraternity (remember the infamous Radia scandal); and, above all, capitalism.

Well, capitalism may be successful in countries that are small populationwise and it may still give the impression of being successful even in countries like India, where overall growth is taking place but at the cost of the poor people, who also have as much right to the country's resources as the Ambanis, the Tatas and the Birlas. But India cannot be expected with its billion plus population to achieve equitable economic development or inclusive sustainable growth via the principles and mantras of capitalism and by embracing the Washington consensus of liberalization and privatization.

For India to be able to achieve that, it will have to go for the Chinese economic model which the capitalist West calls 'state capitalism'. No matter what the capitalist camp calls it, China is a socialist market economy, which is a slightly cross-fertilized version of a socialist economy. It is true that China's economic model. based on its bamboo policy of bending with the wind rather than standing straight and eventually snapping, emphasizes some capitalist principles such as the encouragement of profitability for factors of production like capital and technology. But there is not much reason to term the Chinese economy 'state capitalism'.

Well, what India is unable to achieve via capitalism is achieved by China via its socialist market model, despite its higher population. Contrary to the negative predictions of the usual Chin-bashers China's socialist market model has turned out to be quite capable of delivering economic growth that is not only equitably inclusive but also sustainable, notwithstanding the sheer magnitude of its population. Today China is the fastest growing economy in the world. Having toppled Japan, it is now after the US and the whole world is green with envy at the Dragon's economic performance. Well, despite being fully aware of the successful effects of the Chinese economic model, the political establishment of India will never try to adopt the Chinese economic model, because what they are concerned mainly with is not the welfare of the people but power!

Another trouble for the GoI may arise out of the volatile Indo-Pakistan and Sino-Indian relations. India has a long-standing territorial dispute with China, which remains pretty furious with it over the sheltering of the so-called Tibetan government-in-exile in particular. According to the Chinese government, the Tibetan government-in-exile, which is based in Dharmshala (Himachal Pradesh), is a mere instrument of China-phobic countries like the US and India, which have been exploiting it and its cause with the aim of subverting the Chinese government, destabilizing the country's law and order and sabotaging the country's meteoric rise. China also feels, perhaps rightly, that all fan-Hua or anti-China activities that the Tibetab in India and other parts of the world usually engage in are secretly instigated by the US, India and other fan-Hua countries. Given these and other allied circumstances and the warlike nature of China, it can be safely concluded that it is a matter of before the history of 1962 repeats itself and India and China enter into high-intensity military conflicts if not a full-blown nuclear war.

True, trade ties between these two Asian giants are improving, but that does not mean that they are going to settle all their outstanding issues amicably in the Hindi-Chini-Bhai-Bhai manner. Well, it would prove disastrous for India to genuinely trust China, whose strategic culture is governed by the principle of Quan Bian, which stresses absolute flexibility in attitude and awareness of changes in relative military capabilities.

As regards the Indo-Pakistan equation, the Kashmir dispute, terrorism and water disputes form some of the main irritants. The most sensitive of all is, of course, the Kashmir dispute. Though the GoI has always maintained that the Kashmir dispute is a domestic issue in which no third party has the right to interfere, maybe it does internally acknowledge the importance of Pakistan for resolving it. It has to be noted that the country's relations with Pakistan are very complex.

Pakistan, particularly its military, remains pathologically hostile to India for various reasons, historical or otherwise the role of India in dismembering Pakistan in 1971 and the subsequent conversion of East Pakistan into Bangladesh, the supposed involvement of Indian intelligence agencies, particularly the R&AW in the insurgency of Balochistan and, of course, the Kashmir dispute are what mainly feed Pakistan's hatred for India. Moreover, the further Islamization of the Pakistani system and the steady spread of anti-Indian sentiments in Pakistan by deadly jihadi elements are bound to aggranate the Indo-Pakistan equation, which currently seems to be improving on the front of trade at least.

Well, no matter whether or not India allows Pakistanis to enter Dallal Street and invest in India by amending its Foreign Exchange Management Act, no matter whether or not Pakistan grants India MFN status, the trust deficit between these two neighbours can never be eliminated and the real movers and shakers of Pakistan will never hesitate to hurt India at every opportunity. All the more so because a nuclear Pakistan knows that India cannot afford to start a full-scale war with it. Pakistan claims to have adopted a No-First-Use nuclear doctrine like India. But the irony is that apparently Pakistan itself knows that India does not trust in its capacity to stick to the No-First-Use nuclear doctrine should a war ever break out between them. And Pakistan takes full advantage of India's distrust of its doctrine no to strike first.

In the wake 26/11, which was a serious provocation on the part of Pakistan, all India did was just scare and scare Pakistan by repeating the claim that all options were on the table and getting the Northern and Western Commands of the Indian Army to mobilize and increase activity along the Indo-Pakistan border as if it was going to invade Pakistan in a couple of days. There were also reports of the Indian Air Force making preparations to carry out surgical air strikes deep inside Pakistan as though Pakistan did not have any air defence systems and its US-supplied F-16 A/Bs and S/Ds, which are said to be armed with AMRAAMs and Sidewinder AAMs, had all broken down so that a couple of IAF Su-30 MKIs could fly into Pakistani airspace unchallenged, fire a couple of AGMs into the ISI HQ, drop a few bombs over the suspected hideouts of Hafig Saeed, Dawood Ibrahim and the like and fly calmly back to base at a subsonic speed.

All such claims and reports had only one purpose: the concealment of the compromising truth that India can never afford to be the first to invade because it does not really know what Pakistan's actual nuclear policy is, what its nuclear threshold is, who manages its nuclear assets or even whether it has a reliable nuclear chain of command or not. All India can really do is react proportionally and that is exactly what had happened when the Pakistani troops intruded into Kargil under Operation Badr in June 1999. Well, so far Pakistan's so far nuclear deterrents have effectively saved it a couple of times from being crushed by a much bigger and stronger India. So encouraged by the successful effects of its nuclear deterrents, Pakistan is not going to abandon its India-oriented policies, including the death-by-a-thousand-cuts one.

In view of India's hostile and volatile relations with China and Pakistan, it would be very unwise of India to defer the resolution of all the serious outstanding disputes like the IMAC and the Naga problem.

On the other hand, the ASGoMs must not lose sight of the fact that despite its numerous challenges, the GoI continues to be on an upward trajectory. They must neither fail to appreciate the implications of the GoI's growing influence for the IMAC. It may be said that the ASGoMs' chance of coming out victorious in the IMAC is inversely proportional to the GoI's overall power. The more powerful and consolidated the GoI becomes the lower the ASGoMs chance of winning or vice versa. That the needle of the GoI's power meter is fast moving clockwise at a speed corresponding to the country's economic growth rate is not a fiction but a crystal clear fact. It is therefore, very important indeed for the ASGoMs to become flexible enough in their attitude and try to settle the IMAC even through a reconciliatory mode without waiting for external factors or relying on the considerations of external forces.

Now, let me attempt to paraphrase the central message: if the IMAC is resolved through a reciprocal compromise avenue that must not only be rational but also be seen to be so, there will be a win-win situation, wherein both sides of the IMAC get reasonable if not optimum 'pay-offs'. However, if the IMAC is left to persist for long, it is certain to become something of a one-sided, single-outcome zero-sum game, in which both sides risk completely losing what is at stake. Because in the course of time the whole equation, as already noted, will have altered fundamentally, thereby swinging the balance in only one side's favour. The central message, whose another name is ROSBECA, is amply amplified in the following section.

To be continued ....