THE HINDU EDITORIAL- MARCH, 16, 2022

 

THE HINDU EDITORIAL- MARCH 16, 2022

 

Growing price pressures Policy makers need to tame inflation o risk it undermining the growth they seek to support Inflation in India continues on a worrying uptrend with the consumer price index-based reading accelerating to an eight-month high of 6.07% last month, while wholesale prices logged a double-digit increase for the eleventh straight month. February’s headline WPI inflation spurted to 13.11%. Retail inflation remained stuck above the RBI’s upper tolerance threshold of 6% for the second month, as food price inflation quickened to 5.85%. Households in the hinterland bore a bigger brunt of the burden as price gains measured by the consumer food price index for rural areas surged by 69 basis points from January’s level, to 5.87%. Price gains in the key protein source of meat and fish jumped by almost 200 basis points from the preceding month to 7.45%, while nutrient-rich vegetables also logged inflation of 6.13% in February, belying the central bank’s prognostication last month of an “expected easing of vegetable prices on fresh winter crop arrivals”. And even though inflation in oils and fats eased by more than 220 basis points to 16.44%, there is little room for cheer, given that one can expect a spike again this month in the wake of the abrupt disruption in the supply of edible oils from war-torn Ukraine, which is the largest source of sunflower oil imported into India. With price gains in clothing and footwear, fuel and light and transport and communication all running well above 8% levels, the overall trend in retail inflation is now clearly broad-based across consumption categories and disconcertingly way above tolerance levels. Also, with the pump prices of fuels yet to reflect the recent upsurge in international oil prices in the wake of Russia’s invasion of its south-western neighbor, transport and communication inflation is certain to climb sharply once state-run refiners reset prices to reflect crude costs. The price of India’s crude basket had already risen by over $20 a barrel since December to $94.07 last month and with global crude prices currently in uncharted territory on account of the war, and the rupee having weakened by about 2.5% against the dollar since the start of the conflict, it is hard to see any near-term relief on the fuel price front. A glance at last month’s producer prices of the energy basket shows inflation in the fuel and power category of the wholesale price index was at 31.5%. And in a sign that manufacturers are no longer able to keep absorbing cost pressures, inflation in manufactured products accelerated to 9.84% presaging more pain for consumers. RBI Deputy Governor Michael D. patra had last week cited the headroom available for the Government to cut taxes on the fuels as a source of comfort on the inflation front. With the RBI’s latest consumer confidence survey showing most households reporting further increases in overall spending on essentials and remaining far from sanguine on the prices outlook, policymakers need to act expeditiously to tame inflation or risk it undermining the very growth they are currently focused on supporting.   White sheen India can breathe easy on moving to fourth place in the ICC Test Championship table India’s staggering dominance in cricketing jousts at home was further reiterated at the conclusion of the Test series against Sri Lanka. If the earlier T20Is were swept 3-0, the longer format proved no different as the host won at 2-0 with the triumphs in both Tests being registered in three days each. These emphatic victories emphasised the vast gulf in quality between the rivals split by the Bay of Bengal and the Indian Ocean. India last failed in a home Test series during 2012 when Alastair Cook’s England prevailed at 2-1. Subsequently for nearly a decade, India proved to be a tough opponent in its backyard, maximising home advantage and thriving on an array of diverse stars that could bat, spin and bowl reverse-swing on dry pitches under a harsh sun. That template was evident through the last fortnight. The positive results may hint at a smooth leadership transition from Virat Kohli to Rohit Sharma but prior to the series, the incumbent had his share of headaches. The middle order was recast with cheteshwar Pujara and Ajinkya Rahane making way for Hanuma Vihari and Shreyas lyer while an injured opener K.L. Rahul was ruled out. The batting needed reassurance while the losses in South Africa continued to haunt. Those worries were gradually erased as despite Rohit and Kohli’s lukewarm yield, Vihari and Shreyas revealed their mettle. Shreyas was brilliant at Bangalore’s M. Chinnaswamy Stadium, leaving his imprint on an abrasive surface. The pitch may not have been a minefield like the one on which Sunil Gavaskar scored a masterly 96 in his last Test innings during the game against Pakistan in 1987, and yet it was a strip that never allowed batters to settle. The 92 and 67 from Shreyas were straight from the top-drawer while Ravindra Jadeja’s star turn in the first Test at Mohali, as reflected in his unbeaten 175 and match haul of nine wickets, kick-started India’s campaign. The cameos by Rishabh Pant and the wickets from Jasprit Bumrah and R. Ashwin together deflated Sri Lanka even if its skipper Demuth Karunaratne struck a ton at Bangalore. Importantly, India gained valuable points and moved to the fourth place in the ICC Test Championship table for the 2021-23 cycles. Having lost in the final to New Zealand during the previous edition, Rohit is fully aware of the challenges even if India can breathe easy this year, especially with a major chunk of its Tests being at home before its tour of Bangladesh. There is also a lone Test to tackle in England, a remnant of last year’s tour. While the players will soon blend into the imminent Indian Premier League, their Test whites seem to have gained a fresh sheen.

A misfiring and its trail of poor strategic stability India’s missile incident has underlined the sorry state of bilateral mechanisms it has with Pakistan for crisis management HAPPYMON JACOB The accidental firing of an Indian missile into Pakistan on March 9 calls for serious introspection by the two nuclear-armed adversaries about the perils of living under the shadow of nuclear weapons. The unfortunate incident also casts a shadow of nuclear weapons. The unfortunate incident also casts a shadow on the standards of the storage, maintenance, the handling and even the engineering of high-technology weapon systems in India. But, more pertinently, the incident highlights the sorry state of bilateral mechanisms for crisis management between the two nuclear adversaries where there is a missile flight time of barely a few minutes. Mature responses The Pakistani response to the accidental firing of the missile was a balanced one especially when handled by the Pakistan Army on March 11. While New Delhi maintained a silence over the issue until it was brought up on March 11, the Indian response was also far from denial. Pakistan did not allege that it was done intentionally by India, and the India side owned up the mistake and ordered an inquiry.     In that sense then, the Indian and Pakistani responses to the missile (mis) firing were the best possible out come under the circumstances given that there is little bilateral mechanism for crisis management. The two sides do not have high commissioners on the other side, there is no structured bilateral dialogue, and, most importantly, the two sides have not held ‘Expert Level Talks on Nuclear Confidence Building Measures’ or ‘Expert Level Talks on Conventional Confidence Building Measures’ for several years now.     The missile incident had all the makings of a crisis that could have escalated quickly, but, fortunately, good sense prevailed on both sides. Perhaps India was also very lucky. There are a number of imponderables that could have steered the incident in a different direction. What if this had happened during trouble between the two sides such as the Balakot crisis of 2019? What if this missile had hit a target of strategic value inside Pakistan to retaliate which may or may not have led to an Indian response? What if such a Pakistani response had come when the Utter Pradesh Assembly elections were still going on? One could think of a number of scenarios wherein the accidental firing could have spiraled into a major crisis between India and Pakistan.     This is not to say that accidents do not take place. As a matter of fact they do. There have been several ‘broken arrows’ (“accident that involves nuclear weapons or nuclear weapons components, but does not create the risk of nuclear war”), acknowledged and otherwise, that took place during the Cold War, even though those accidents did not involve the two rivals. To be fair, the accident on March 9 did not involve a nuclear tipped missile or a nuclear war-head – there is speculation though that the missile in question is the BrahMos, a nuclear capable missile. More so, the nuclear deterrence operating in the India-Pakistan context is a relaxed one, unlike the one we had between the superpowers during the Cold War when the two rivals often kept their nuclear forces on hair-trigger alert.     In the subcontinent, neither side keeps its nuclear forces on high alert. As far as India is concerned, its warheads are de-mated from the delivery vehicles, and its nuclear forces – under the command of the Strategic Forces Command (SFC), the tri-service functional command of the Indian armed forces – are de-alerted. India does not have tactical nuclear weapons. Nor has there been any consideration of pre-delegating nuclear launch authority to local commanders, even during a crisis. Pakistan’s story is somewhat different, though not radically so. While its nuclear forces are not on high alert, there is no certainty that its warheads are de-mated from their launch vehicles. Perhaps, more importantly, Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal boasts of tactical nuclear weapons, and one often comes across reports from inside Pakistan of the country’s tactical nuclear weapons pre-delegated to forward commanders during crisis periods. In  feeble form                                What is deeply worrying, however, is the delicate state of strategic stability between India and Pakistan. There are at least four reasons why the strategic stability regime in South Asia is hardly prepared for dealing with accidents such as the one that just happened, or enhancing effective crisis management and deterrence stability. For one, although India and Pakistan signed a ‘Pre-Notification of Flight Testing of Ballistic Missiles’ agreement in October 2005, it does not include cruise missiles. Notably, the missile that was misfire by the India side earlier this month, suspected to be the BrahMos, was a cruise missile (even thought it was a misfire, and not a fight test). Given the many sophisticated cruise missiles that are now a part of each side’s arsenal, it is important to include them in the pre-notification regime.     Second, as pointed out above, the two sides have not held their structured meetings on nuclear confidence building measures (CBMs) and conventional CBMs for several years now. Given the nature of the India-Pakistan relationship – adversarial, nuclear-armed, crisis prone, and suffering from trust deficit – there is an urgent need, especially in the wake of the recent incident, to revive these two dialogue mechanisms. After all, even the ideologically-adversarial Cold War rivals had such mechanisms in operation especially in the wake of the Cuban missile crisis of 1962. A perspective Third, what makes the regional strategic stability regime more unstable is the fact that the third state with nuclear weapons in the region, China, has so far refused to engage in strategic stability discussions with India even though China today is involved in the India-Pakistan conflict more than ever before, apart from being in a military standoff with India. These three elements, and now with the possibility of accidental firing of missiles, make the region particularly weak from a strategic stability point of view.    India and Pakistan urgently require faster mechanisms for communicating sensitive information during crisis periods and peacetime given how quickly the two sides are capable of transitioning from peacetime to a crisis. Therefore, India and Pakistan should consider setting up mechanisms such as nuclear risk reduction centres (NRRCs), established between the U.S. and the Soviet Union during the Cold War.     The primary objective of NRRCs, or similar structures that can be set up on either side, is risk reduction by providing a structured mechanism for timely communication of messages and proper implementation of already agreed upon confidence building measures. In a sense, such a mechanism could act like the ‘Permanent Indus Commission’ which has resolved several disputes arising out of the Indus Water Treaty.     Some of the misperceptions and ambiguities in the strategic domain could be taken up by the risk reduction centres for resolution or clarification. Such a body could routinely exchange messages, provide timely clarifications, and review compliance to agreements among others. In an age of social media and 24-hour news, honest mistakes or unforeseen accidents could spiral into a military standoff especially in the absence of timely clarifications.     Having said that, it is deeply concerning that the Indian Director General of Military Operations did not use the existing, and well-functioning, hotline to inform the Pakistani side of the missile misfiring. If indeed the hotline was not activated, it is a cause for concern for, after all, risk reduction mechanisms are useless if there is little political will to use them.     New Delhi should, therefore, provide assurances to Pakistan that efforts will be made to avoid such mistakes in the future; Pakistan should desist from the silly temptation of linking the accident to “a state apparatus run by a fascist ideology”; and senior officials from the India and Pakistan should device ways of improving strategic stability between the two nuclear adversaries.                                          ‘Bharat Natyam’ in Indian diplomacy India’s stand in the United Nations on the Ukraine war is an apt moment to reflect on the much needed Dixit principle RAKESH SOOD The late Jyotindra Nath Dixit (Mani Dixit to his many friends and admirers) took over as Foreign Secretary on December 1, 1991. He retired 26 months later, on January 31, 1994 – 58 years was then the retirement age. Republics and Moscow Those were times of change. On December 25, 1991, Soviet Union’s General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev resigned, the flag of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) was lowered for the last time at the Kremlin and the following day, the USSR was formally dissolved. In its place, 15 republics emerged. India accepted the challenge and set about opening new embassies to build new relationships with these countries in Central Asia, the South Caucasus and Central Europe while maintaining its traditional ties with Moscow. In January 1992, India and Israel established full diplomatic relations, announcing the opening of embassies and exchanging Ambassadors for and first time, opening the door to a relationship that has blossomed into one of India’s most significant strategic partnerships in the last three decades. Path to the nuclear deal On January 31, 1992, Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao participated in the first-ever meeting of the United Nations Security Council at the summit level (India was a member in 1991-92), presided by the British Prime Minister, John Major. On the sidelines, Mr. Rao had a bilateral meeting with the United States President, George H.W. Bush, where the two leaders decided that in the changing world, Indian and the U.S. needed to have frank exchanges on issues that had divided them during the Cold War; the issue identified was ‘nuclear proliferation and disarmament’; the first meeting took place during Mr. Dixit’s visit to Washington two months later, sowing the seeds of the dialogue that continued through ups and downs, leading to the path-breaking India-U.S. Civil Nuclear Cooperation Agreement in 2008.     At the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) summit on January 27, 1992, Prime Minister Rao’s ‘Look East’ policy began to take shape as India and ASEAN embarked on a secotoral-dialogue partnership. By the end of 1995, this had matured into a full-dialogue partnership and in 1996; India joined the security dialogue platform, the ASEAN Regional Forum. Since 2002, the relationship has strengthened further with the annual India-ASEAN summit. On China and Taiwan Following intense negotiations, during Mr. Rao’s visit to China in September 1993, the two sides initiated the first of many confidence-building-measures, notably the Agreement on the Maintenance of Peace and Tranquility Along the Line of Actual Control in the India-China Border Areas. It laid the foundation of the relationship for two decades. Simultaneously, India and Taiwan negotiated to open economic and cultural centres; Taiwan opened its office first in Mumbai in 1992 before shifting to Delhi while India established the India-Taipei Association office in 1995.     The instances above give an idea of how India was responding to the changes taking place around us and in the wider world. As a junior colleague who had the privilege of working closely with Mr. Dixit during these years, I often heard him engage patiently with foreign diplomats and respond to questions from inquisitive journalists seeking to make sense of the about-turns in Indian foreign policy.     Relaxing as he puffed on his pipe, in a private aside to his friends, he would tell us, “In Indian diplomacy, sometimes, you need to do a bit of Bharat Natyam.” The point was simple – you may appear in different forms to others but after you have first secured your interests. UN vote dynamics In recent weeks, the debates and discussions in the Indian media and TV talk-shows about India’s stand on the Ukraine conflict and its votes in the UN Security Council and General Assembly are an appropriate moment to reflect on the Dixit principle.     Evidently, the Indian government has chosen to ‘abstain’, based on an assessment of its core interests. However, there is a cardinal principle associated with Security Council votes on issues in such charged times. A ‘for’ or ‘against’ vote is intended to convey a blunt message of ‘support’ or ‘opposition’. It is a black or white choice, and once exercised, the messaging is clear.    On the other hand, ‘abstention’ takes us into a grey zone because it is the middle path. It can either be seen as fence-sitting (which is a sign of helplessness) or create space for diplomatic manoeuvre (which is a successful outcome). In the Ukraine instance – the West should feel satisfied that India ‘abstained’ because it perhaps expected India to oppose the West’s draft proposals given New Delhi’s traditional ties with Russia while Russia should also feel satisfied at India’s ‘abstention’ because it perhaps expected New Delhi to give in to western persuasion.     The second outcome is a positive one but to appear in different forms at the same time, we need to revive the kind of Bharatnatyam that Mr. Dixit used so effectively to navigate those turbulent times, even as he helped set the course for Indian foreign policy three decades ago.