Riding the Elephant

Farmers defeat the Government after a year occupying highways

Protests to continue till laws repealed and prices guaranteed

India’s prime minister Narendra Modi likes to spring surprises, and he’s produced three in the past three weeks. The first two were at the COP26 climate conference when he reversed policy with a 2070 target for zero emissions and then scuppered a resolution on cutting coal usage.

Today (Nov 19), in the third, he has announced that he is cancelling controversial agricultural laws that have led to 12 months of mass protests by farmers on highways around Delhi with violent police confrontations.

The farm decision is an uncharacteristic capitulation ahead of key state elections early next year, following poor results for Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party in various recent by-elections. It undermines his political strong man image, but presumably he is confident that his national appeal will enable him to rid out the reversal.

Palaniappan Chidambaram, a former Congress government finance minister, made the primary political point when he tweeted, “PM’s announcement on the withdrawal of the three farm laws is not inspired by a change of policy or a change of heart. It is impelled by fear of elections!”

It was Modi’s personal arrogance that allowed the crisis to develop. He could have compromised after protests began to build up in November last year against the laws that had been suddenly rushed through parliament during the pandemic.

The laws were intended to enable farmers to sell their produce on the open market and also to become part of private sector contract farming. These arrangements operate in many parts of India, but had been resisted in the north where there are fears of contracts pushing down prices and of losing a government-backed minimum reserve price system.

Farmers’ leaders have welcomed Modi’s move, but say they will not be ending their protests till the laws have been repealed and the government has agreed to maintain the reserve prices. A rally is planned for November 26 to mark the first anniversary of the protests.

Modi showed over the past year that he did not understand the distinctive unity and determination of the Sikh community, which has been at the heart of the protests. Sikhs do not naturally subscribe to his Bharatiya Janata Party’s aim of recreating India as a Hindu nation, and the events have sharpened a sense of Sikh identity that was dramatically evident in the 1980s when there was a rebel call for an independent state of Khalistan.

Modi chose the primary Sikh festival of Guru Nanak Jayanti to announce in a television broadcast that the laws would be repealed – and to apologise for introducing them.

“Today, while apologising to the countrymen, I want to say with a sincere and pure heart that perhaps there must have been some deficiency in our efforts, due to which we could not explain the truth like the light of the lamp to some farmers,” was how he worded it, speaking in Hindi.

State assembly elections are due to take place by March next year in Punjab, the Sikhs’ main state, and, more crucially, in the large state of Uttar Pradesh (UP) which has a population of over 230m. Along with neighbouring Haryana, both states have had mass protests on highways leading into Delhi.

A poor result in UP would be seen as a serious setback for Modi and his home minister Amit Shah, and for Yogi Adityanath, the state’s tough chief minister and a controversial Hindu priest-turned politician who is seen by some as a future national party leader.

In Punjab, the BJP is weak but could now build a new base with Captain Amarinder Singh, the state’s veteran Congress chief minister, who was recently sacked from his post by the Gandhi family that dominates the Congress party. Singh is looking for a new political base and has been urging BJP leaders to abandon the laws.

Rushed laws

The laws were rushed into force last year without any parliamentary debate. Ordinances were passed in June and confirmed as legislation in September as part of a Covid-19 economic recovery package. Modi and Shah ignored calls for the usual detailed consideration and debate, assuming that they would not face significant opposition.

Sporadic protests grew into mass sit-ins on highways approaching Delhi in November and eventually led to several hundred deaths. Eleven rounds of talks between farmers’ leaders and the government led to deadlock because the farmers demanded that the laws should be repealed but the government was only prepared to amend them.

On Republic Day in late January, farmers staged mass tractor rallies into Delhi that led to violence and the invasion of the city’s Mughal era Red Fort. According to widespread reports, the violence was at least partly escalated by government loyalists planted in the crowds, which opened the way for the police to attempt to close down the protests on the highways that had grown into small townships in many areas with canteens and even schools.  

The supreme court suspended the laws in January but still has outstanding cases calling for their repeal. There have been demonstrations and criticism of the government’s tactics in the US, UK and elsewhere abroad.

Agricultural reforms are urgently needed and have been proposed by successive governments for some 20 years – the Congress Party, which has been supporting protests, included the current measures in its last general election manifesto.

The measures have been partially implemented in southern states, but there has been repeated opposition in the north because of the sensitivities of hundreds of millions of farmers, many with tiny holdings, and because of vested interests ranging from large farmers to government market agents that benefit from the current trading systems for produce.

More than half India’s 1.4bn people live in rural areas and are linked to agriculture, which needs far wider reforms than the government’s proposed new laws. Once renowned as the grain and food bowl of India, the plains of Punjab and Haryana have been over-farmed for decades, depleting water supplies and the quality of the soil. That is fuelling the farmers’ frustrations and needs to be addressed along with other measures to boost productivity, develop farm-to-shop supply chains and curb widespread wastage

Modi has today tried to regain the initiative two or three months before the state assembly polls, But, while there were widespread celebrations on the highways today, his problems are far from over and the unity against the government does not look like reducing.

This article is on the Asia Sentinel news website https://www.asiasentinel.com

US defence secretary said Britain more useful “nearer home”

British foreign secretary tries to re-state a UK role in the region

It was to have been a triumphal demonstration of Brexit Britain’s continuing global reach into Asia and the Pacific, with the proud new aircraft carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth showing that the UK can play an international role in challenging China’s widening power.

Heavily guarded by a US destroyer and a Dutch frigate and equipped with American F-35 air fighters, the £3bn QE has however just sailed through the contested South China Sea, where Beijing claims extended territorial waters around newly developed islands that have become fully-fledged military and air bases.

There was apparently no major incident, despite high profile hype dating back three years about Britain establishing “freedom of navigation” rights. The Ministry of Defence and Royal Navy websites have had little update information and even Boris Johnson, the hubristic prime minister, has avoided hailing “Rule Britannia”.

The QE is of course doing worthy work “showing the flag” at a time when Boris Johnson has announced Britain’s post-Brexit “Asia Tilt”, which basically means negotiating trade deals to replace what has been lost from the European Union.

But the Royal Navy is much diminished after years of budget cuts. Ignominiously, one of its destroyers charged with protecting the QE on its 16,000 nautical mile voyage had engine problems early on and had to retreat to an Italian port for repairs (leaving only one of the navy’s six ships in its class actively afloat).

Then, just as the QE was approaching waters claimed by China, US defence secretary Lloyd Austin punctured Britain’s Asian ambitions, implying they were misplaced. He applauded the “historic” voyage but added, “Are there areas that the UK can be more helpful in other parts of the world?” With scarce resources the US and its allies should “work out the best way to share military burdens”, hinting that Britain’s best way was nearer home. 

The Financial Times was the only media outlet to spot and highlight those words in the speech that was made by Austin in Singapore at an event sponsored by the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies. The FT report brought tweets of protest from the IISS moderator, a former British staffer on the newspaper, who claimed this was not Austin’s main message and that no one else had spotted the remarks. 

The line however looks sound and could well have been a warning to Johnson not to allow his Global Britain hype to lead to a clash that could not be won in an area virtually controlled by China.

The report has gained credibility with repeated mentions in The Times, The Guardian, the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post and elsewhere, that would not have appeared without prior checking with US sources,. 

Dominic Raab, Britain’s foreign secretary, tried on August 4 to re-set Britain’s case, saying that Austin’s remarks had been “over interpreted”. Raab talked about the UK’s diplomatic and other Asia Pacific roles working, for example, with Indonesia on counter-terrorism and Vietnam on anti-trafficking – bypassing the point that that such laudable work does not need an aircraft carrier protected by other nations’ ships. 

The Observer newspaper, the Sunday version of the rabidly anti-Boris Johnson Guardian, ran an article of August 1st saying that “Sailing into imperial delusions is no way to run foreign policy”. It mocked defence secretary Ben Wallace for declaring the aim was to “fly the flag for Global Britain”.

China reacted angrily warning (in its aggressive Global Times mouthpiece) that the QE flotilla should “remain restrained and obey the rules”, adding that it was “likely to escalate attempts to expel the warships at any time.” 

In August 2018, another British warship sparked a diplomatic row when it sailed intentionally too close to the Paracels and was tracked at close range by Chinese ships and aircraft. That was ordered by the then defence secretary, gaffe-prone Gavin Williamson (a Boris Johnson favourite and now a disastrous education secretary), who referred in a 2019 speech to the QE’s future freedom of navigation voyage. Britain, he said, would boost its post-Brexit global military standing and “enhance our lethality” in response to the threats posed by Russia and China.

Germany also seems to have had second thoughts about provoking China with a frigate that set out this week on a seven-month voyage that will include the South China Sea. Beijing asked Germany to define the ship’s purpose, exposing splits on the issue in Angela Merkel’s government, and withheld permission for it to call in at Shanghai. 

Quad exercises

India – which did exercises with the QE strike group in the Indian Ocean – is joining the throng. It has four ships, two armed with missiles, setting out for a two-month deployment in southeast Asia that will include exercises with the US, Japan and Australia, its partners in what is called the Quad security alliance.

India will no doubt be careful not to challenge China’s South China Sea claims – it has enough problems dealing with the two countries’ 15-month long confrontation in the Himalayas where China is steadily encroaching on what India regards as its share of disputed territory.

At the heart of all this naval activity – which includes American and Chinese ships – lies the world’s dichotomy about how to deal with an aggressive China under its president Xi Jinping. Britain has failed to affect China’s brutal clampdown on freedoms in its former territory of Hong Kong, and its complaints about treatment of the Uighurs in Xinxiang province are ignored along with protests from other countries.

As has been shown over the QE, China will issue threats to those who sail too close to the heavily armed islands that it has expanded in recent years, despite international protests, to the point where they control the area.

It will not however be worried by the deployment of one ship from Germany, a few from the UK and its allies, and a few more from India. These countries are underlining international determination not to let China block key shipping lanes but no nation – maybe apart from the US – can muster the force that would be needed to deter Beijing.

Britain however is not giving up. It has announced that it will permanently assign two offshore patrol vessels to work with other countries in the region – just a token gesture from the country that once “ruled the waves”. 

This article is on the Asia Sentinel news website https://www.asiasentinel.com