Foreign Influences on Domestic Decision Making

Well, a bit uncomfortable one; regarding this, I will discuss only four examples of what is happening today. All point to the stature India holds in the world.

UNO

Below is a reproduced copy of the letter written by the Permanent Representative of Pakistan to UNO on 08 January 2016.

Note the second point. This was last discussed on 24 May 1949 in the 426^th Meeting of Security Council and came into deletion list regularly from at least 1955. Legally to speak, this means that Security Council can declare India’s occupation of Hyderabad illegal any day and invade India to liberate a free country called Hyderabad. This is practically impossible, but the theoretical possibility exists. Now, the question is this. Are India’s views considered while keeping the issue open? What is India doing to close these sort of non-issues which are kept open, just in case?

Broadly speaking, India has got two issues with the UN and as a corollary, what is India doing to maintain it’s position?

1. It doesn’t respect India’s territorial integrity and sanctity. Kashmir may be an open issue because of the noise made by Pakistan, but Hyderabad? Even in the case of Kashmir, since Pakistan has voluntarily rejected the Simla Pact by executing the signatory, thereby forfeiting the right to PoK, the most recent legally binding document over this issue is the UN Resolution 47 which clearly states that Pakistan should vacate Kashmir so as to facilitate India conducting a plebiscite.
2. Entry of India into UN Security Council. India’s position in the world stands thus –

	Global Rank	Permanent Members behind India	Russia	China	USA	France	Britain
Area	7	2	N	N	N	Y	Y
Population	2	4	Y	N	Y	Y	Y
GDP	7	1	Y	N	N	N	N
GDP-PPP	3	3	Y	N	N	Y	Y
Nuclear Capabilities	Y	0	Equal	Equal	Equal	Equal	Equal
Space Launch	Y	1	Equal	Equal	Equal	Equal	Y
Military Strength Index(Credit Suisse)	5	3	N	N	N	Y	Y

Security Council was created with members who, in their individual capacity, can threaten any country in the world to stop aggression – it goes by the principle offence is the best defence. The countries possess huge areas and population, are economically and militarily powerful and possess cutting edge technology. Seventy years down the line, the picture has completely changed with France and Britain turning derelicts somewhat and India, as seen above, beating the countries in almost all the counts. In this regard, does it make any sense to reject India’s claims to the exclusive club? Either, it should be that the most powerful five should be selected as the veto wielding members or the concept of permanent membership should be completely scrapped off. After all, the right to interference in a country’s internal affairs based on whims is against the Peace of Westphalia.

Everything works on a give and take policy. If, India doesn’t get anything substantial but troubles from UNO and if the Prime Minister of India is treated as none more powerful than the Prince of Monaco even though he represents a million more subjects than the Prince of Monaco or Andorra, what use has India got with the UN? The greater power and responsibility is not recognized, the territorial integrity is not held sanctimonious, why should India be a part of UNO?

The best way to reorganize UN is to scrap off one country one vote and the permanent membership in UNO and replace them with the top ten most powerful countries and weightage based on the country’s stature. It can mean individual countries acting on their own will or a cartel of like minded countries(EU etc) acting as a single group, acting as an individual or as a group based on the situation.

OIC

Next comes the membership of Organization of Islamic Cooperation. Even though India’s Muslim population is higher than that of every country except Indonesia and has a Muslim population almost equal to the combined population of the smallest 39 members of OIC, due to Pakistan, India’s entry is permanently barred. In this regard, India has two options –

1. Declare outright that no country in OIC can profess solidarity with Indian Muslims or provide any funding – because they are not given a voice in the world forum, they become the whole and sole responsibility of India. Religious interactions between Indian Muslims and rest of the world will be confined to pilgrimages and nothing else.
2. India will create it’s own OIC and try to wean off members from the other group.

Global Pollution Debate

India stands in the third position in the world as the largest polluter. This, obviously, is a consequence of India’s huge size and population. Tremendous pressure is put on India to cut down it’s emissions. Being a developing country, India, if it wants to emerge on the world stage as a powerful contender in any field, cutting down the emissions with no country providing a shortcut to development is a clear disservice not just to India, but to any country which is in the path to development. After all, without any technology, every country will try to use whatever is available or will try to develop something – anything new will always have poorer performance. All this is because India is following the definition of biggest polluter defined by someone.

Let’s take the list of top twenty most populous countries and countries with a population of more than 10 million and tonnes of oil equivalent(toe) per capita less than 40. A total of 34 countries fit this bill.

Country	HDI		Population		TOE per capita in tonnes
	HDI(2014)	Rank	Population	Rank	TOE per capita	Rank
Canada	0.902	8	35,181,704	37	7.38	6
United States	0.914	5	320,050,716	3	7.165	8
Saudi Arabia	0.836	34	28,828,870	45	6.168	12
Australia	0.933	2	23,342,553	51	5.593	13
Belgium	0.881	21	11,104,476	79	5.586	14
South Korea	0.891	15	49,262,698	26	5.06	16
Netherlands	0.915	4	16,759,229	63	5.021	17
Russia	0.778	57	142,833,689	9	4.943	18
Kazakhstan	0.757	70	16,440,586	64	4.595	19
Czech Republic	0.861	28	10,702,197	81	4.193	21
France	0.884	20	64,291,280	21	4.031	25
Germany	0.911	6	82,726,626	15	4.003	26
Japan	0.89	17	127,143,577	10	3.898	27
United Kingdom	0.892	14	63,136,265	22	3.254	32
Ukraine	0.734	83	45,238,805	30	2.845	37
Iran	0.749	75	77,447,168	17	2.817	38
Italy	0.872	26	60,990,277	23	2.815	39
Spain	0.869	27	46,926,963	29	2.773	40
World	0.702		7,162,119,434		1.89
China	0.719	91	1,385,566,537	1	1.807	56
Thailand	0.722	89	67,010,502	20	1.699	59
Mexico	0.756	71	122,332,399	11	1.57	61
Turkey	0.759	69	74,932,641	18	1.445	64
Brazil	0.744	79	200,361,925	5	1.363	67
Egypt	0.682	110	82,056,378	16	0.903	81
Indonesia	0.684	108	249,865,631	4	0.867	82
Nigeria	0.504	152	173,615,345	7	0.714	92
Vietnam	0.638	121	91,679,733	14	0.681	97
India	0.586	135	1,252,139,596	2	0.566	103
Pakistan	0.537	146	182,142,594	6	0.487	107
Philippines	0.66	117	98,393,574	12	0.434	114
Ethiopia	0.435	173	94,100,756	13	0.4	116
Democratic Republic of the Congo	0.338	186	67,513,677	19	0.36	121
Bangladesh	0.558	142	156,594,962	8	0.209	129

This data presents some interesting facets. All the countries having less toe emissions than the world average are developing or underdeveloped while those above are mostly developed(HDI). Standing at 103^rd position in the world, should India bother? Even if it says I am going to keep my target as 80% of the world, it still has chance to pollute. The blame can be squarely put on the developed world by changing the discussion from the absolute to per capita.

This raises some interesting questions as to what pollution means –

1. Should I consider absolute?
2. Should I consider per capita?
3. Should I consider the numbers of my country minus exports plus imports? After all, China is manufacturing solar panels for Britain and it becomes reasonable Britain foots the pollution bill as against China.
4. Even after knowing that coal pollutes, Australia exports coal. Does the pollution in India due to Australian coal be tagged against India?
5. Should we calculate the numbers based on what happened today or say, for the last hundred years?

Since I want India to be the one which can dictate the terms, I will prefer the last three combined. Bring in a formula to calculate the toe emission today per capita for a country including everything the country did in the last hundred years. Britain gets India’s pollution before 1947 and USA gets the Vietnam War numbers. Once you add all those and publish the numbers, India will be visible nowhere. Any Indian diplomat talking over the pollution debate should use these numbers, not the ones others decide are true.

Disregard of India’s concerns

The last aspect is the slighting of India in the international arena. Take for example, the London Olympics of 2012. Dow Chemicals was an official sponsor and India objected it citing 1984 Bhopal gas tragedy. David Cameron, the Prime Minister of Britain, replied, What I am saying is the British Prime Minister wants to see the Olympics be successful. I am wanting to see the Olympics not used for industrial or political or other purposes. I cannot see a problem with the IOC being sponsored by Dow. Any successor company has a moral responsibility of course but the London Olympics is about athletes coming to compete. Dow is a reputable company. To conflate these issues is wrong. In this regard, what is the action India took? None whatsoever. What can it do? Boycott the Olympics; Ask all Indians to boycott the Olympics; Contest, win the competitions and reject the medals stating we don’t want blood money; Impose sanctions. Though it’s outrageous to ask to impose sanctions or downgrade diplomatic relationship, the reality is that India invests ten times what Britain invests in India. And if India ramps down the diplomatic levels, it is not India, but Britain which will suffer. Or, a better example is the Italian marines case. Jurisdiction apart, two Indian citizens are killed and we are seeing the ruckus Italy creates in this regard. Though the incident happened in India’s EEZ and the ship blundered into Indian territorial waters again, it is projected as if it happened in international waters and Italy has got the jurisdiction over the trial as against India. What is expected is the sort of pressure India put on Italy by seizing the passport of the Italian Ambassador to India when the government tried to break the promise.

The point which I want to emphasize is simple – India first and the world later. India should get powerful enough to dare the world and get along. After all, India is living for itself, not to satisfy the world.