The Q Day

This constellation of conundrums may strike some as a bad omen. It8217;s actually a good thing. The tendency to not ask ourselves or postpone tough questions is, bluntly put, a strong national trait. And if events have conspired to produce a situation in which rarely undertaken self-interrogation trumps routine annual celebration, for a voluble democracy that8217;s an opportunity.

The questions.

Q1. J or K? The old style assumption is that things will 8220;settle down8221; in Jammu and Kashmir after a longish bout of regional/communal violence accompanied by police action. Peace in the sense of fruit trucks trundling down highways and people re-engaging with quotidian reality may return.

But the weeks preceding I Day have probably changed ground realities in J038;K. The state has confounded old politics. The politically correct can8217;t see there8217;s some political correctness in Jammu8217;s agitation. And the proud-to-be-Hindu types, who dream of Akhand Bharat on August 15, can8217;t see that their line on Jammu is a recipe for Bharat losing an important bit of itself.

Even if 8212; a big if 8212; a smart administrative solution is found for the 40-acre-land question, the big question cannot be interred in that plot. Is the Valley8217;s political sense of identity and Jammu8217;s political sense of assertion a zero-sum game? This can8217;t be answered by references to Pakistan, of which more later. It can8217;t be answered by fiscal extravagance; J038;K is India8217;s fiscal favourite already. It can only be answered if the political class is ready to think anew. Ask the Valley8217;s regional politicians whether they care about the costs of keeping 8220;India8221; out as they agitate about the 8220;price8221; of being in India. Ask Jammu8217;s new politicians whether their self-assertion depends on making the Valley suffer. Be prepared for unpleasant answers.

Q2. The third partition? Our western neighbour produces one of the silliest national/popular responses: some satisfaction at their misery. Never has schadenfreude over Pakistan been less apposite or more dangerous for India as now. India has dealt, intelligently or otherwise, with a Pakistan that for decades presented itself as some rough and ready nation-state, having survived after being carved out of India and having survived the loss of what became Bangladesh. Another implosion is not a fantasy question.

If Pakistan knows it doesn8217;t want a dictator, it doesn8217;t know whether the civilians who want to throw out the dictator can offer sufficient quantities of political glue for a nation that, among other things, is now paying for having been the world8217;s best graduate school of jihad. Composite dialogues and bureaucratic textual disputes are no good if India faces a maximally unstable Pakistan. This is more so since India can8217;t influence any outcome. At the minimum therefore India needs to reconfigure its largely reactive South Asian diplomacy and carefully consider policies of countries that have some leverage over Pakistan.

Q3. Q.E.D after I.E.D? Fortunately, Shivraj Patil is a passing phenomenon. But a different home minister or a different government won8217;t change the ridiculous tendency of claiming proof after every bomb and failing to find a perpetrator. The recent change to be dealt with here is that terrorism may have been in part indigenised.

India8217;s security services are trained, in some fashion, to deal with threats from Pakistan. And India8217;s politics is comfortable in its hard on terror/anti-minority and soft on terror/minority appeaser duality. The politics needs to change. That means the Congress and the BJP will have to abandon some easy options. And whoever8217;s in power will have to retool Intelligence so that it can hear radicalised disaffections of some young Indians. Why not ask discomfiting questions like why there are so few Muslim officers in our security services?

Q4. Gross Domestic Pessimism? Economic reforms were the great answer to the big question about India8217;s economic future. That was long ago, though. And in recent months, as our editorial today argues, a real possibility has developed that the national economic tempo may get badly bruised. The hard economic reasons for this are temporary events and some, like high commodity prices, are already self-correcting. The core change is that political ownership of liberal economics is faltering.

Blaming the Left isn8217;t enough. The Congress and the BJP have to understand that reforms in 1991 started because a crisis brought a helping foreign hand that also held a list of prescriptions. India is beyond that kind of crisis now. Plus, the first flush of reforms could be kept below the political radar. That reform by stealth option is almost exhausted. So politics of reforms now must generate resources internally and in the full view of the political market.

The best example is the growth versus inflation debate. If politicians can8217;t take a long view of how critical sustained growth is, and how important it is that they don8217;t fall victim to an inflation scare, technocrats sophisticated enough to disguise the fact they are from the old guard will hijack policy. That8217;s happened in the months leading up to I Day. The big question is: can a new kind of politics emerge to prevent a recurrence?

Q5. Bad teeth versus bad strategy? China takes little girls with supposedly uneven dental features out of the Olympic gala. China has also, as predicted, presented its Olympian ambitions to the world. India does not judge children to better showcase national potential. But it8217;s also confidently marching towards holding an at-best average Commonwealth Games. That, the country can live with. What it can8217;t live with is a wishy-washy assessment of China8217;s future strategy.

China8217;s Olympics will mark a step-up in its global and regional power projection. It8217;s a change India is badly unprepared for. What India must understand is that China only respects and responds to power. A democratic neighbour who shows strategic nerve backed by a bustling economy will engage China. A waffling underachiever will be periodically reminded about giving up Arunachal Pradesh.

Those charged with asking these questions will understandably be busy with official/political ceremonies on I Day. We should spend I Day, hoping they acknowledge it is also India8217;s Q Day.

saubhik.chakrabartiexpressindia.com