India Inside Out Links: Is the West finally realising that its Ukraine narrative has failed to take root?
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India Inside Out Links: Is the West finally realising that its Ukraine narrative has failed to take root?
Plus, Adani meltdown fallout.
G20
The last few weeks of international gatherings – including a dizzying list of external affairs events in New Delhi in the first week of March – appeared to bring about two broad realisations.
First, Western commentators are finally figuring out, or at least acknowledging, that the US-EU narrative about the Ukraine war being an epoch-defining event – at least in terms of morality and having to pick sides – has not permeated the world quite as much as they wish it had.
Here’s Stephen Walt:
“Diehard Atlanticists tend to portray the war in Ukraine as the single most important geopolitical issue in the world today… In this narrative, in short, what is at stake in Ukraine is the future of the entire rules-based order—and even the future of freedom itself…
But states outside the trans-Atlantic coalition (including important powers such as India, Brazil, or Saudi Arabia) have not joined Western-led efforts to sanction Russia and do not see the conflict in the same apocalyptic terms that most officials in the West do…
For starters, people outside the West view the rules-based order and Western insistence that states not violate international law as rank hypocrisy, and they were particularly resentful of Western attempts to claim the moral high ground on this issue…
Furthermore, key states in the global south do not share the Western belief that the future of the 21st century is going to be determined by the outcome of the war. For them, economic development, climate change, migration, civil conflicts, terrorism, the rising power of India and China, and many others will all exert a greater impact on humanity’s future than the fate of the Donbas or Crimea…
The global south’s measured stance does not mean it is “pro-Russian”; it means those states are merely as self-interested as other countries are. It also means the gap between the West and the so-called rest is not likely to go away.”
See also: Mihir Sharma, Leela Jacinto’s report, Lesia Dubenko and this report by the European Council on Foreign Relations.
But second, New Delhi is realising that – as much as it will be happy to take its moment in the international spotlight (as host of the G20 and the SCO, with the G20 logo plastered everywhere including on exam admissions cards in India) – tensions between the West and Russia/China over the Ukraine war are threatening to overshadow all the messages that it had hoped to bring to the fore, from UN Security Council reform to climate justice questions.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi began the G20 Foreign Ministers’ meet in New Delhi saying that “global governance [had] failed in both its mandates of preventing future wars and fostering international cooperation on issues of common interest” and adding that “we should not allow issues that we cannot resolve together to come in the way of those we can.”
Yet, despite this appeal, the headline from the meeting was the lack of consensus, caused by “divergences” over the Ukraine war, which ultimately prevented a collective statement. Russia and China objected to language that they had signed onto in the Bali document from 2022, setting the stage for potentially even more tension when the heads of state are due to meet at the G20 summit later this year.
Suhasini Haider explains what happened at the G20 meet, why it makes India’s task as host harder, even as there are numerous options for more diplomatic negotiating in the months leading up to the summit in September.
Sanjaya Baru blames the G7 for bringing a political agenda to an economic grouping.
DB Venkatesh Verma writes: “During the past year, India’s diplomacy has truly come of age. In not accepting the Western framing of the Ukraine conflict, India took a calculated risk. India stood its ground and that ground raised India’s global stature. Its “extractive diplomacy” — securing pragmatic benefits in the economic, energy and defence sectors from the dying embers of US unipolarity, the contested birth of multipolarity and our traditional strong relations with Russia, set commendable standards of diplomatic success. Multipolarity was pursued in practice, not just advocated in theory.”
Dinakar Peri and Suhasini Haidar report on a conference of global intelligence chiefs that took place alongside the more well-covered meetings.
“In its pursuit for a seat at the high table, New Delhi also knows only too well that falling in line with the U.S./the West (on the Ukraine war for instance) reduces India’s instrumentality (even for them),” writes Happymon Jacob. “So those seeking to enlist India’s support for bringing more stability and order into the international system might want to consider what New Delhi is really after: a seat at the high table of international politics. Indeed, New Delhi’s revisionist language is rooted in its desire to be part of a restructured status quo.”
Adani fallout
The Adani meltdown didn’t mean much for Indian markets attesting, according to the New York Times’ Alex Travelli, “to the size and seeming strength of the country’s broader business landscape.”
Supriya Sharma tries to gauge what the fallout of the Adani meltdown might be for the Indian public, finding general tolerance for crony capitalism and no major hit – so far – to the government, in part because the group never had a big number of small share-holders.
Sri Lankan Foreign Minister Ali Sabry tells Suhasini Haidar that the Adani Group’s involvement in major infrastructure projects in the country are like ‘government-to-government’ arrangements.
Meanwhile, Ajay Shah and Akshay Jaitly address the assumption that India can just pick its national champions – like the Adani Group – concluding that “what is remarkable growth for the Adani Group is not enough to generate growth for India” and that what is needed instead is “the establishment of the rule of law, of sound regulatory mechanisms, of predictability of contracts and policy, that will reassure private persons that they are playing a controlled game.”
Flotsam & Jetsam
Arunabh Saikia explains why India’s crackdown on BBC has left foreign correspondents anxious. Anuradha Bhasin also writes about the attack on India’s press freedom.
Rahul Bhatia tells the story of a Muslim man who was almost killed in the riots in Delhi in 2020, became a witness in the cases that followed – and saw his life turned into a nightmare.
Coomi Kapoor remembers Tony Jesudasan, Anil Ambani’s right-hand man and a legendary operator in the Indian business and media world.
The “proliferation of [state] investor summits raises two issues. First, while the agenda items of almost all state-level investor summits mimic each other, the underlying economies are gulfs apart. Second, and more significantly, these mask the absence of distinct development models for each state, especially for the relatively backward ones,” writes Srijan Shukla. Shankkar Aiyar also touches on the same topic.
Arvind Subramanian and Josh Felman write about how the Indian government’s approach to fiscal consolidation relies heavily on centralisation, which will put “major pressure on state government expenditures.”
“Hinduism as a civil religion is a nationalised religion, one where the territory of India and a “thin” and abstracted notion of Hinduism are merged to create a new common space that can mediate between the localised communities of sects and castes,” writes Suryakant Waghmore on recent comments by RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat.
In a Noema issue on the subject, Shashi Tharoor argues that the “very concept of a civilization state is profoundly illiberal” and Pallavi Aiyar writes that “Modi’s offspring, while ostensibly rooting for a return of the civilizational state, are in fact merely envisioning a narrowly defined, pre-EU, European-style nation-state.”
Beyond the news
Sayan Dey on ‘Dhamaal’, a mix of Sufi and African musical and dance traditions, practiced by the Siddi (Afro-Indian) community of the Deccan.
Alexandra Alter writes about ‘Tomb of Sand’, Geetanjali Shree’s International Booker prize-winning book (translated by Daisy Rockwell), and Indian writing in languages other than English.
Amish Raj Mulmi has a sharp essay on how our view of the Himalaya and the people who live there is still heavily coloured by colonial ideas, and why it is important to break away from these perspectives.
Sohini Chattopadyay tells the story of how Satyajit Ray and 80-year-old Kolkata firm Signet Press changed publishing in India.
Sumana Roy writes about the missing Indian women essayists, from an important recent anthology and beyond.
Can’t Make This Up
You cannot guess where this goes.
Thanks for reading India Inside Out. Send links to interesting articles and funny memes to rohan.venkat@gmail.com.
India Inside Out Links: Is the West finally realising that its Ukraine narrative has failed to take root?
THIS IS AN EXCELLENT AND BALANCED COVERAGE OF VERY IMPORTANT ISSUES.I HAVE ENJOYED THIS AND EARLIER A LOT.GREATLY INFORMATIVE AND WIDE RANGE OF TOPICS.