A Democracy Of Dunces

Of Arafat, it was frequently said, he lost no opportunity to lose an opportunity.

Alas, the same is true of our Indian democracy of dunces.

In this crucial geopolitical moment -- serendipitously pregnant with strategic possibility -- India's democracy is typically missing in action.

Global strategic equations are being re-defined. UN Security Council (which excludes India) has been devalued. G8 (which excludes India) is finally sending warm feelers. EU is in demographic crisis and economic stagnation. The Atlantic alliance is ever less relevant -- particularly to the US. West Asia is at war.

India is -- by sheer accident -- being courted by many major powers. US, Japan, EU, Russia, China, Iran, Israel and now, even Saudi Arabia.

If there's a time to assert ourselves, this is surely it. We finally have diplomatic capital which we should be spending.

Instead, we are allowing our neighborhood, where we can have the most infuence, to burn itself down. Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Burma, Nepal, Maldives and Afghanistan are all in deep trouble. As a great power aspirant, isn't India expected to flex its muscles and enforce its writ in these blighted countries?

We should be enforcing political modernity among our neighbors. Instead, as C. Rajamohan ably chronicles in Indian Express, our failed intervention in Sri Lanka in the late 1980s has sapped India's will to take hard decisions on managing regional crises.

How can we possibly frolic with great powers at day if, at night, we make our bed in a burnt out neighborhood?

Now, it's easy to blame our political leadership. But, as must be done in a democracy, we need to start with the man in the mirror. It's India's people who talk a big game but are unwilling to give our leaders the needed political mandate to really exert India's power.

We consider Pakistan evil for its terrorist ways, still cheer Cricket with them. We've had an ex-PM blown up by LTTE, whose terrorist leader sleeps in his own bed 14 years after the ghastly murder. Would Indians support an all out war against the LTTE? Unlikely. Nepalese Maoists roam around freely in India, and their domestic allies kill and maim our policemen, but Indians are hardly ready to wage war on this pernicious evil, are we?

Nah. We want our shiny malls, internet cafes, credit cards, and ridiculous "peace parks". We seek economic engagement and "people to people" contact. A fat lot of good this naivete has done for us.

So, our democracy of dunces straggles on -- without any firm sense of direction. What a sorry bunch of people we must appear to our rivals in the world?