This week Prime Minister Manmohan
Singh will lead a 150-member Indian delegation to the 16th
Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) Summit, which opens today in Tehran. When Air India
One enters Iranian airspace it will be flying into a perfect storm of
embarrassment for India.
Setting the priorities right
India's embarrassment will come from three sources:
its membership in NAM; the summit's host, Iran; and the spectacle of India's PM
travelling to this summit when he should be spending his time at home reviving
India's economy.
When Jawaharlal Nehru helped
form NAM in 1961, the post-colonial, Cold War world may have looked like an
uncertain place. Perhaps back then membership in a bloc like NAM made sense for
India. But not today, now that India is the world's third largest economy (in
purchasing power parity terms), a responsible nuclear weapons state and an
aspiring global power.
To be sure, India has its problems. And India's
problems are another reason its NAM membership does not make sense: how will
NAM help India reduce poverty, build infrastructure (including
reliable power) and get economic growth back to the
high single digits? Trade deals with other NAM members, including exporting
goods in exchange for Iranian oil, are hardly going to move the needle on
India's economic growth.
In company of rogue states
Furthermore, India's fellow NAM members are not the
company it should want to keep. Apart from a handful of stand-out nations
(including Indonesia, South Africa and Singapore), the NAM membership roster is
a collection of states with precious little near-term power potential, either
economically or militarily. That's the good news in NAM.
The bad news: a line-up of rogue states, starring the likes of North Korea, Venezuela, Belarus and, of course, summit host Iran. Which brings us to the second source of India's embarrassment: how better to highlight the absurdity of what NAM has become than to allow Iran to host its summit and assume its rotating presidency for a three-year term?
The bad news: a line-up of rogue states, starring the likes of North Korea, Venezuela, Belarus and, of course, summit host Iran. Which brings us to the second source of India's embarrassment: how better to highlight the absurdity of what NAM has become than to allow Iran to host its summit and assume its rotating presidency for a three-year term?
India's long-standing commitment to principles of
non-violence has earned it moral standing in the eyes of the world. Even when
India developed a credible nuclear weapon in 1998, then Indian prime minister
Atal Bihari Vajpayee declared, "These tests were not intended for offence,
but for self-defence...we will not be the first to use nuclear weapons."
India cannot have it both ways. It cannot pledge to
cooperate with the nations of the world in "furthering peace, freedom and
democracy" (Nehru's words at India's independence) and then embrace a
nation whose president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad,
stated in 2005 that another nation (Israel) "must be wiped off the page of
time". To make this wiping off possible, Iran has — according to a November
2011 report by the International Atomic Energy Agency — "carried out
activities relevant to the development of a nuclear device".
The US-Iran Angle
The US, for its part, cannot have it both ways either.
US wants India to play a larger role in Afghanistan, and the three nations
recently agreed to hold a trilateral dialogue. But how can the US expect India
simultaneously to shun Iran and embrace Afghanistan when its only viable route
to Afghanistan is through Iran?
Indians understandably resent the US exhorting it to
ostracise Iran by rejecting Iranian oil or by sending only a low-level
delegation to NAM. Of course, India has every right to associate with Iran or
any other nation it wishes. The US has supplied billions in military aid to
Pakistan, even as elements within the Pakistani government have orchestrated
attacks against India and its people; India objects, the US listens politely
and then does as it wishes. Why, Indians may ask, should India not do the same
where its policy toward Iran is concerned?
If India wants to continue associating closely with
Iran it should consider the price of doing so to its own moral authority. That
price is high. When Singh meets Ahmadinejad, the photograph of the simple
handshake or the warm embrace (Ahmadinejad will no doubt go for the latter)
will give Iran legitimacy in the eyes of the world. Iran knows this, of course;
that's why Ahmadinejad personally lobbied Singh to come to Tehran. But
legitimacy is a curious thing: what Iran gains through association with India,
India loses through the same channel.
Setting the priorities right
The third source of embarrassment for India comes from
the economic situation at home. If Nero was fiddling while Rome burned, then
Singh is fiddling while India's economy cools.
Instead of flying to Iran he should stay at home and
work on the priorities he identified in his Independence Day speech:
encouraging new investment in the economy, improving the management of
government finances and establishing energy security.
by
William Avery | THE ECONOMIC
TIMES | 26 AUG 2012