A chance for power projection

By Praful Bidwai The colossal human misery wrought by the Indian Ocean tsunami has shocked the world.

But for many agencies, the tidal wave has created an opportunity to pursue narrow, parochial agendas.

For religious fundamentalists-whether Christian, Hindu, Muslim, Jewish or Buddhist-the calamity poses not social but theological questions.

How can 150,000 innocent people be killed in a world ruled by a merciful, all-powerful, omniscient, just God? Is it His punishment for wrong-doing? Several Christian fundamentalist-Right websites invoke Apocalyptic visions while describing the disaster.

Asserts one (Watch.org): "The Biblical proportions of this disaster become clearly apparent upon reports of miraculous Christian survival.

Christian persecution in these countries is some of the worst in the world".

The site claims that eight of the 12 affected countries-Malaysia, Burma, Bangladesh, Somalia, Maldives, Sri Lanka, India and Indonesia-are among the top 50 nations who "persecute Christians".

Yet, "Christians, supernaturally, have been able to escape from harm's way".

Some Hindu fanatics hold that the tsunami is God's retribution for the "wrongful arrest" and persecution of the Kanchi Sankaracharya.

But the holy man was charged with murder on the basis of evidence, which the Madras High Court has ruled, is so strong as to justifiably deny him bail.

Other dogmatists cite the present epoch, the kali-yuga, itself as the tragedy's general cause.

An Israeli rabbi says: "This is an expression of God's great ire with the world.

The world is being punished for wrongdoing-be it people's needless hatred of each other, lack of charity, moral turpitude." And a Belgium-based questioner asks an Islamist website: "Is there any religious meaning that we can take from a country being affected by tidal waves? Is this a punishment from Allah to these people? Or is it a test? How do we know when a form of natural disaster or phenomenon is a test or a form of punishment.?" Within days, powerful governments seized upon the disaster to project their "leadership" while bypassing the United Nations.

The United States set up a "core group", led, naturally, by itself, and including Japan, Australia and India, to "coordinate" relief provision.

While religious fundamentalists can be faulted for their naivet‚ and crude dogma, governments like that of President Bush are guided by well-thought-out, cynical, calculations, undiluted by concern for human suffering.

Indeed, the US has militarised the whole concept of relief.

To organise relief, it has deployed 13,000 military personnel, 21 naval ships, and 75 airplanes.

The whole thing looks less like a humanitarian operation than a military one.

The US's claim to selfless philanthropy is suspect.

On foreign aid, America ranks last among the world's 30 wealthiest countries.

It only allocates 0.14 percent of GDP to aid and an even more insignificant proportion to humanitarian assistance.

(UN-recommended target: 0.7 percent).

The average American spends four times more on soft drinks than on aid! Washington bristled at UN official Jan Egeland's remarks that its tsunami aid offer is "stingy".

But as an US Agency for International Development official puts it: "The US is not a charitable organisation where we provide assistance without regard to (its) purpose.

It's part of our foreign policy.

expects us to take care of the rest of the world." Washington, mired in Iraq, and politically isolated worldwide because of its Middle East policy, has found a chance to assert its global "leadership".

Yale historian John Lewis Gaddis says Mr Bush's initiative "represents an opportunity to try to move beyond the frustration of Iraq and pre-emption and his tensions with the Islamic world.

It is an example of an area where the US.

can work in a cause that no one can argue with." Washington tried to win goodwill on the cheap by first pledging a mere $4 million-just a fraction of the $500 million Japan offered, and less than the $25 million which India, with 10,000 dead of its own, pledged to Sri Lanka.

Embarrassed at criticism, it raised this to a measly $15 million and then to $35 million-much less than what France, Sweden, Britain or Spain pledged.

Now, Washington has pledged $350 million.

This is still lower than the contributions of Japan, Germany, even tiny Australia.

The US-sponsored "core group" has been disbanded largely because it raised eyebrows the world over and drew criticism in Europe.

The French press denounced it as an effort to sideline the UN.

The US in turn accused France of not having a "big" enough aid programme.

In Britain, former International Development Secretary Clare Short said: "I think this initiative from America .

sounds like yet another attempt to undermine the UN when it is the best system we have got and the one that needs building up." The UN is arguably best-suited to coordinate relief at the international level while national governments handle the micro part.

The tsunami crisis affects 12 countries in the Asian and African continents.

It is, logically, handled by a global body.

India made a big mistake in joining the US-sponsored "core group".

This was a major departure from New Delhi's traditional advocacy of multilateralism and working through the UN system.

It breached the Manmohan Singh government's promise to work for a multi-polar globe.

Three considerations guided India's decision.

They continue to influence official thinking in some measure.

All three are parochial.

First, India wants a "strategic partnership" with the US even in its neighbourhood.

This means accepting US primacy or hegemony in the Indian Ocean and jettisoning not just the old-and valid-notion of the "Indian Ocean as a Zone of Peace", but also an independent role for India itself.

The policy favours the US over regional st-ates, including Indonesia and Malaysia, with whom India enjoys good relations.

The Indo-US "partnership" is as unequal as unequal can be.

The US will send two huge aircraft carrier-groups to the Indian Ocean.

India will only send two small hospital ships.

Second, India would like to counter the possibility of China acquiring a larger role between the Straits of Malacca and the Persian Gulf-which India sees as its zone of influence.

This would entail collaborating with Western powers, including loyal US ally, Australia, and Japan, which has 134 US bases on its soil.

Such collaboration will influence the shape of Indian Ocean strategic arrangements in the near future.

Third, India is keen to project itself as an aid-donor, not aid-recipient.

This is part of the attempt to invent a new image for itself as a Great Power.

The attempt is inseparable from New Delhi's bid for a permanent seat on the UN Security Council.

The new buzz in South Block is: How can we claim a Council seat with a begging bowl in hand? This was part of the rationale for the National Democratic Alliance declaring in 2003 that India won't accept aid from any sources other than six major states.

This rationale is profoundly misguided.

Until the Indian government provides basic amenities of survival and minimal public services to its people, it has no business to deny them such help as the international community might offer.

So long as 47 percent of Indian children grow up malnourished, and enormous disparities exist between the elite and the people, New Delhi must not indulge in such sanctimonious posturing.

The Manmohan Singh government rightly revised the NDA's no-aid-but-from-six-sources policy (which was a peevish response to the European Union's criticism of the Gujarat pogrom).

It must not return to that same perverse logic.

The Indian government hasn't yet fulfilled its own primary obligations to the tsunami-affected.

Relief is still inadequate and poorly designed.

For instance, mountains of clothes are piling up in Nagapattinam because people don't need clothing so much as drinking water, medicine and food.

In the Nicobar Islands, starving survivors got so enraged at the inadequacy of relief that they kidnapped civil and police officials.

This does not argue against providing relief to India's neighbours, particularly Sri Lanka, where the death-toll is a gruesome 30,000.

It raises questions, however, about intentions.

If the operation's primary purpose is not humanitarian but to assert India's pre-eminence and overwhelming military presence, that will be resented by the neighbours.

Indeed, reports from Sri Lanka say the media there is highlighting Pakistan's Rs 10-crore aid, rather than India's Rs 100-crore grant.

Indian policy-makers should know better.

In the mid-1980s, India intervened militarily in Sri Lanka (remember, the "humanitarian" food drop?) and the Maldives.

The result was a disaster.

The Indian Peace-Keeping Force took hundreds of casualties and produced all-round resentment against India.

India first backed, trained and armed the LTTE, then took up arms against it, but couldn't disarm or defeat it.

Then, it foolishly backed the EPRLF vis-…-vis the LTTE in the North and East and R.

Premadasa against Ms Chandrika Kumaratunga.

These cynically Machiavellian and arrogant manoeuvres cost India its credibility and goodwill.

The death of J.N.

Dixit, an architect and the main executor of that policy, should occasion some sober rethinking.

New Delhi must not repeat the 1980s' blunder-this time, under US tutelage.