Category Archives: India

India, United States

US ambassador to India resigns a week before Indian elections

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India starts its massive, nearly five-week, nine-phase general election in just seven days.India Flag IconUSflag

So you figure that US-Indian relations must be on fairly poor terms when the United States ambassador to India, Nancy Powell, stepped down on Monday after less than two years on the job.

According to reports in both the United States and India, Powell had become increasingly ineffectual due to the Khobragade affair.

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RELATED — In Depth: India’s elections

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Her resignation came amid growing reports that her recall was imminent, though US officials strongly denied that yesterday:

And at a Monday briefing, deputy State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf strongly denied that Powell’s resignation was anything but a 37-year career diplomat retiring after serving posts all over the world….. “All the rumors and speculation are, quite frankly, totally false,” Harf said.

Powell’s decision wasn’t really Powell’s fault — she will retire in May after a 37-year career in the foreign service, having served as the US ambassador to Uganda, Ghana, Pakistan and Nepal, as an assistant acting secretary of state three times, director general of the US Foreign Service, and previously as consul general in Kolkata (previously Calcutta) in the early 1990s and political counselor at the US embassy in India in the mid-1990s.

So Powell was already one of the most experienced hands that the US state department could have deployed to India.

The Khobragade incident is essentially a minor diplomacy scandal. US officials arrested deputy consul general Devyani Khobragade in December of last year on suspicion of visa fraud — and then strip-searched and detained Khobragade. The incident initially caused a minor kerfuffle over diplomatic privileges and immunities, but quickly escalated to the point where it’s had an extremely adverse effect on the bilateral relationship. India began stripping US diplomats of certain privileges, and Indian officials made themselves increasingly less accessible to Powell.

Meanwhile, Powell had to deal with the even thornier issue of how the United States ought to handle Narendra Modi, the chief minister of Gujarat and, increasingly the frontrunner to become India’s next prime minister. Modi, who’s leading the parliamentary election campaign of the center-right, Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (the BJP, भारतीय जनता पार्टी) was denied travel visas to both the United Kingdom and to the United States, the latter in 2005, stemming from the controversy over Modi’s role in fomenting — or at least, not stopping — the worst Hindu-Muslim riots of the past two decades in 2002, which left over 1,000 Muslims dead and occurred shortly after Modi took office in Gujarat.

Following the release of a recent report from the US Congress, that policy seems almost certain to change if Modi becomes India’s next prime minister.

Powell met Modi in February, the first ambassador to do so since Modi emerged as a potential prime minister. But the Khobragade affair delayed the meeting (pictured above), and some reports from India claim that Washington faults Powell for being too close to the administration of Mamohan Singh and foreign policy advisers within Singh’s party, the Indian National Congress (Congress, भारतीय राष्ट्रीय कांग्रेस).

Modi hasn’t spoken at length about his foreign policy, but most Indian observers believe he will be relatively more muscular vis-à-vis Pakistan, relatively more aloof with Europe and the United States, and relatively friendlier with China, on the basis of past trade-related cooperation between China and Gujarat.

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With a fresh start, expect US president Barack Obama to appoint a relatively high-profile political ambassador to replace Powell. One option he should consider is Bobby Jindal (pictured above), a two-term governor of Louisiana, former member of the US House of Representatives, a conservative Republican and an Indian American who was raised in a Hindu household, though he later converted to Roman Catholicism.

It wouldn’t be the first time that Obama recruited a sitting Republican governor for such an important post — Utah governor Jon Huntsman served as the Obama administration’s ambassador to China from 2009 to 2011.

Though the India portfolio isn’t always filled by a high-profile political official, there’s a long pedigree of important figures in the role: Continue reading US ambassador to India resigns a week before Indian elections →

Gujarat, India

What exactly is the ‘Gujarat model’? And can Modi export it nationally?

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Narendra Modi’s strongest argument in his quest to become India’s next prime minister is the record of economic growth in Gujarat, where he has served as chief minister since 2001 — and the promise that Modi can unlock the same kind of growth nationally. India Flag Icon

There’s no doubt that Indian GDP growth has slowed — despite bouncing back from the 2008-09 global financial crisis with 10.5% growth in 2010 on the strength of a surge of investment in the developing world, India has struggled with much lower growth over the past three years. That’s one of the reasons that the governing center-left, governing Indian National Congress (Congress, or भारतीय राष्ट्रीय कांग्रेस) is so unpopular as it tries to win a third consecutive term in India’s April/May parliamentary elections.

But what is the ‘Gujarat model’? Can Modi really claim that his government’s policies are responsible for the superior Gujarati economic performance?

What’s more, even if Modi’s claims do hold up, is the Gujarat model so easily replicable that he will be able to implement nationally in the likely event that he becomes India’s next prime minister?

Though Modi and his center-right, Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (the BJP, or भारतीय जनता पार्टी) lead polls in India’s election campaign, the answers to those questions will determine the success — or failure — of any future Modi-led government. Continue reading What exactly is the ‘Gujarat model’? And can Modi export it nationally? →

Bihar, India

What does Nitish Kumar want?

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In a more perfect Indian democracy, the increasingly presidential-style showdown for the April/May Indian general election would not be between Narendra Modi, the chief minister of Gujarat, and Rahul Gandhi, the latest scion of the long-ruling Nehru-Gandhi dynasty.India Flag Icon

Instead, it would pit Modi, a champion of economic liberalism and Hindu nationalism against Nitish Kumar, the chief minister of Bihar state. Kumar, who’s been in power since 2005, can claim to have transformed Bihar from an economic basketcase into one of the fastest-growing states in India. What’s more, Kumar has paired the quest for high economic growth with the values of secularism and a push for greater social welfare spending. Kumar (pictured above) has been mentioned as a potential prime minister, and he certainly will be in the future — even if Modi wins this year’s elections.

But in the odd calculus of Indian domestic politics, Kumar, formerly an ally of Modi’s conservative  Bharatiya Janata Party (the BJP, भारतीय जनता पार्टी), is increasingly marginalized in the current campaign.

At first glance, it’s odd that Kumar and Modi came to be allies in the first place, it’s odd that Kumar would leave the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) last summer just as Modi won the prime ministerial nod from the BJP’s leaders, and it’s odd that Kumar, with the strongest counter-example to Modi’s ‘Gujarat’ model, could now be squeezed out of having any national role in Indian politics.

When the BJP decided last June to anoint Modi, the chief minister of Gujarat, as its prime ministerial candidate, however, Kumar promptly pulled his party, the Janata Dal (United) (JD(U), जनता दल (यूनाइटेड)), out of the NDA, depriving the coalition of its second-largest member.

That decision now looks like a mistake, because JD(U) stands to lose most of its seats in the April/May parliamentary elections. Though it currently holds 20 of the 40 seats allocated to Bihar, projections show that the JD(U) could lose around 15 (or more) of those seats.

So what happened?  Continue reading What does Nitish Kumar want? →

India

Is Priyanka Vadra the secret Gandhi family weapon for Congress?

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All eyes have been on Rahul Gandhi, the somewhat reluctant warrior who’s leading the campaign for the governing Indian National Congress (INC / Congress) that hopes to win a third consecutive term in power in this spring’s parliamentary elections.India Flag Icon

But it’s his sister, Priyanka Gandhi-Vadra, who is getting all the buzz recently with word that Priyanka will step out of the shadows to take a fuller role in the election campaign this year, mostly as an advisor and manager for Rahul’s campaign, but also taking an increasingly visible role as well.

As she steps closer to the heart of Congress’s campaign, it will be the third major Gandhi family member to figure prominently in the 2013 elections.  Their Italian-born mother, Sonia Gandhi, has been Congress’s party leader since 1998, though when Congress won the 2004 national elections, Sonia declined to become prime minister, instead handing the top job to Manmohan Singh, who will step down this spring after a decade in office.

Rahul is not technically the Congress’s prime ministerial candidate in 2013, but his role leading the campaign means that it’s more likely than not that he’ll become India’s next prime minister if the INC wins this spring.

That outcome seems increasingly less certain.  The latest CNN-IBN-Lokniti-CSDS poll shows that Congress and its allies, which together comprise the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) will win between 107 and 127 seats in the 545-member Lok Sabha (लोक सभा), the lower house of the Indian parliament — a loss of over 100 seats.  Instead, the more conservative, Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP, or भारतीय जनता पार्टी) would win, together with its own allies that form the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), between 211 and 231 seats, under the leadership of Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi.

Modi, the BJP’s prime ministerial candidate, has waged an aggressive campaign against Congress, on the basis that he can bring Gujarat’s high-growth economic approach to the rest of India.  Modi, who is 20 years older than Rahul, routinely refers to his opponent as shehzada, or ‘prince,’ and there’s speculation that Congress’s leadership decided not to anoint Rahul as its official prime ministerial candidate to avoid a presidential-style showdown between the two leaders that Modi would almost certainly win, despite his flaws.

Priyanka has campaigned before on behalf of her mother and broher in their constituencies in Uttar Pradesh.  But neither she nor her brother, Rahul, have faced the rigors of leading a national campaign in the world’s largest democracy — especially against perhaps the most talented BJP politician in over a decade.  Modi’s not without flaws, though, especially given doubts over his role in 2002 anti-Muslim riots in Gujarat.

But there’s no disputing that Modi, if the elections were held today, has enough momentum to win.

So who is Priyanka and how can she help turn things around for Congress?  Continue reading Is Priyanka Vadra the secret Gandhi family weapon for Congress? →

India

Meet Arvind Kejriwal, the rising anti-corruption star of Indian politics

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Arvind Kejriwal

Yesterday, the new government of Delhi’s national capital territory launched a new anti-graft hotline that received nearly 4,000 calls on its first day.India Flag Icon

In what was supposed to be the year of Narendra Modi’s easy rise to India’s premiership, it’s another brash new leader who’s making headlines instead — and not just in India, but worldwide.

It’s Arvind Kejriwal, the leader of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP, आम आदमी की पार्टी), literally the ‘Common Man’ Party, which emerged as the key player in Delhi’s December regional elections as  an alternative to Modi’s conservative, Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (the BJP, भारतीय जनता पार्टी) and the governing center-left Indian National Congress (Congress, भारतीय राष्ट्रीय कांग्रेस) of Sonia Gandhi, the party’s leader; Rahul Gandhi, her son; and outgoing prime minister Manmohan Singh. 

Kejriwal, at age 45 one of India’s youngest chief ministers, took office on December 28, leading a minority government that, somewhat ironically, enjoys the outside support of the INC, which controlled Delhi’s government between 1998 and last December’s elections.  Congress, which was running for a fourth consecutive term in power under chief minister Sheila Dikshit, was decimated — it not only lost its majority, but now holds just eight seats, after suffering from widespread corruption allegations.  Kejriwal actually ran in Dikshit’s New Delhi constituency and defeated her by a margin of 53.5% to 22.2% (state BJP leader Vijender Gupta received just 21.7%).

Though the BJP actually won the greatest number of seats (31 to the AAP’s 28), negotiations between the AAP and the BJP failed, and Kejriwal took up Congress’s somewhat surprising offer to back his government, thereby avoiding a new round of elections.  Unlike other regional parties in India, the AAP managed to take power on a broad coalition of supporters, not on the basis of representing certain religious or class-based constituencies — it attracted Muslims and Hindus, rich and poor, Dalit and non-Dalit, and especially India’s educated younger generation.

Kejriwal, a mechanical engineer by training and a former Indian Revenue Service official, started an NGO in 1999 called Parivartan, designed to provide tax assistance and other help to Delhi citizens.  But it was as an anti-corruption official that Kejriwal first caught fire in the national spotlight, and under the mentorship of Anna Hazare, worked to demand what would eventually become the Right to Information Act (RTI) in 2005, which required government bodies to reply to citizen requests for information within 30 days or face penalties, and which relaxes many previous exemptions from disclosure under the Official Secrets Act and other legislation.  RTI replaced the much weaker, toothless and exemption-ridden 2002 Freedom of Information Act.  

In 2011, Anna and Kejriwal succeeded in pushing the government to start the process for drafting a Jan Lokpal bill, an anti-corruption law that would create the Jan Lokpal, an independent citizen’s ombudsman commission that would have the ability to investigate corruption.  Though India’s parliament pushed through a Lokpal Bill in December 2013, it’s much weaker than the proposed Jan Lokpal Bill — for example, it doesn’t protect whistleblowers, it doesn’t provide for any real punitive actions or the ability to prosecute corrupt bureaucrats, and it doesn’t provide investigative independence to India’s Central Bureau of Investigation.  Kejriwal took the final leap into elective politics when he founded the AAP in November 2012 with the intention of contesting Delhi’s local elections.

Having now swept to power in Delhi (literally on the image of a broom ‘sweeping’ corruption away), Kejriwal wasted no time in announcing a 50% cut in power rates and free water to Delhi residents within hours of taking power.  He’s already working to implement the AAP’s anti-corruption agenda with the anti-graft hotline, and he’s pledged to introduce a Jan Lokpal bill specifically for Delhi soon.AAP broom

There’s good reason for Kejriwal to be in a hurry — with the AAP’s momentum spreading from Delhi to other parts of India, it could be in a position to make a splash in national politics with the upcoming elections for the Lok Sabha (लोक सभा), the lower house of India’s parliament, which are due before May 31.  That gives Kejriwal some time to lay the foundation for what the AAP might be able to accomplish on a grander scale, a down payment on what a national anti-corruption party could enact.

After a decade of rule under Singh’s Congress-led governments, Indian voters are weary with Congress .  Its prime minister-in-waiting Rahul Gandhi seems unexciting and disinterested.  Indians are displeased with Congress’s reform record and the state of India’s precarious economy.  Meanwhile, the AAP has highlighted a growing disenchantment over bureaucratic corruption.

Though Modi, the decade-long chief minister of Gujarat state, promises to lead a BJP government that will bring Gujarat’s high economic growth rates to the entire country, there are doubts both about the extent to which Modi’s ‘Gujarati model’ is responsible for his state’s growth and how (and whether) such a ‘Gujarati model’ could even be translated to a much more diverse national economy.  Moreover, the 2002 anti-Muslim riots in Gujarat continue to blemish Modi’s record.  Though he recently spoke out for the first time disclaiming any role in the violence, the riots, which resulted in the death of over 1,000 Muslims, will continue to haunt Modi’s campaign and the notion that he can be a trustworthy prime minister for India’s religious minorities.

So what damage might Kejriwal inflict on the status quo? Plenty.  Continue reading Meet Arvind Kejriwal, the rising anti-corruption star of Indian politics →

14 in 14, India

14 in 2014: India parliamentary elections

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6. India parliamentary elections, expected in May.

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In the spring, the country of 1.24 billion people faces a decision — either award a third term to a listless, relatively corrupt center-left government with uninspiring leadership or take a chance on a controversial center-right government that promises economic transformation, but which could inflame India’s Muslim population.

Before May 31, Indians must choose the entire membership of Lok Sabha (लोक सभा), the lower house of India’s parliament — it currently has 545 members, but can have up to a maximum of 552.

On the left is the familiar Indian National Congress (Congress, or भारतीय राष्ट्रीय कांग्रेस).  This is the party of Jawaharlal Nehru. And Indira Gandhi, his daughter. And Rajiv Gandhi, her son. And Sonia Gandhi, his Italian-born wife. And now Rahul Gandhi, their son.  With 206 seats, Congress is the largest party in the Lok Sabha today, and it leads the United Progressive Alliance, which holds a total of 226 seats.

After a decade in office, India’s first Sikh prime minister, economist Manmohan Singh, will step down no matter who wins the elections — and he’ll do so with an economy in the doldrums and a record of having achieved few of the economic and social reforms that Indians expected when he came to power in 2004.  Though he pushed through   reforms to liberalize India’s retail sector earlier this year and a law strengthening punishment for rape after the brutal gang rape and murder of a woman in Delhi in December 2012, Singh’s record as prime minister has been panned — much in contrast to his record as finance minister between 1991 and 1996.  GDP growth is expected to rise in 2013 to around 5% after falling for three consecutive years — from 10.5% in 2010 to 6.3% in 2011 to just 3.2% in 2012.  But that comes after the Indian rupee fell nearly 25% in value against the dollar throughout 2013 — and still remains around 13% lower than it was in January 2013.

Sonia Gandhi, Congress’s party leader throughout Singh’s administration, is expected to continue in that role, with her and her son Rahul (pictured above) leading Congress’s campaign.  But Rahul’s relatively lackluster performance on the campaign trail has led some commentators to wonder whether he really cares if Congress wins or loses in 2014.  Rahul recently tried to create some distance between himself and Singh, but it remains to be seen whether Rahul has the political skill to become India’s next prime minister.

On the right is the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (the BJP, भारतीय जनता पार्टी), which last held power between 1999 and 2004, when it lost a disastrous ‘India Shining’ campaign that seemed to disregard the majority of Indians who weren’t pocketing the gains of India’s economic boom at the time, despite GDP growth of around 8%.  This time around, the BJP has embraced Narendra Modi, the thrice-elected chief minister of Gujarat, home to one of India’s strongest regional economies.  He’s popular, not least of which because he’s seen as impervious to corruption, but he hasn’t explained yet how he would translate his Gujarati economic model to the entirety of India.  What’s more, he’s plagued by his role in controversial anti-Muslim riots in 2002 that left over 1,000 Muslims dead.  Modi’s role remains murky, but it was enough for the United States to deny Modi a visa in the 2000s.  It’s a handicap for Modi’s national ambitions, in light of a population of 176 million Muslim Indians who largely mistrust Modi, who got his political start in the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), a right-wing, Hindu paramilitary group.

Today, Modi seems like the odds-on favorite to become India’s prime minister, but he and the BJP face challenges.  It’s no secret that former BJP leader and deputy prime minister LK Advani has clashed with Modi in the past, and that Modi’s rise to become the nominal head of the BJP remains controversial.  What’s more, he starts the campaign with just 117 seats in the Lok Sabha.  The second-largest member of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) coalition, the Janata Dal (United) (जनता दल (यूनाइटेड)), a center-left party with 20 seats that controls India’s third-most populous state, Bihar, when that state’s chief minister Nitish Kumar pulled out of the NDA in June 2013 over differences with Modi.

The BJP thrived in a set of state assembly elections in November and December 2013 in a wide swath of north-central India — it retained Madhya Pradesh (India’s sixth-most populous), retained Chhattisgarh and gained Rajasthan (India’s eight-largest).  But it lost its sole foothold in India’s south when it lost control of the government of Karnataka in May 2013.  There’s also no indication that the BJP can make inroads in India’s most populous state, Uttar Pradesh, where it placed third in February 2012 state elections behind two UPA-friendly parties, the Samajwadi Party (समाजवादी पार्टी, Socialist Party), which holds 22 seats, and the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP, बहुजन समाज पार्टी), which holds 21 seats.  In West Bengal, India’s fourth-largest state (and one of its poorest), chief minister Mamata Banerjee has a lock on politics after her center-left All India Trinamool Congress (সর্বভারতীয় তৃণমূল কংগ্রেস) took power in 2011, defeating the even more communist Left Front (বাম ফ্রন্ট), which also has a strong influence in Kerala in India’s southwestern corner.  Both parties belong to neither the UPA nor the NDA after Banerjee pulled her party out of the UPA in 2012.

Yet another worry is the recent rise of the Aam Aadmi Party (आम आदमी की पार्टी), a new party that rose to prominence in Delhi’s state elections in December and that leads Delhi’s new minority government with outside support from Congress.  Whether you think the Aam Aadmi Party marks a cynical brand of populism or an important moment in the fight against corruption in Indian government, its leader (and new Delhi chief minister) Arvind Kejriwal is a suddenly unexpected key player in India’s national elections.

Taken together, it could mean Indians deliver more votes to third parties in 2014 to either Congress or the BJP — but whether they do so in a way that could actually transform Indian governance is less certain.

Photo credit to AFP / Prakash Singh.

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Is there a potential parliamentary path to amending Section 377 in India?

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Sonia Gandhi, the leader of India’s largest party, and a massively influential voice in Indian government, has strongly denounced the Indian Supreme Court’s ruling on Section 377 of the Indian penal code, which effectively re-criminalized same-sex relationships yesterday.India Flag Icon

The Supreme Court rejected the earlier 2009 decision of the Delhi High Court, which had interpreted that Section 377 violated several rights guaranteed under India’s constitution, thereby effectively decriminalizing same-sex conduct.  India’s Supreme Court yesterday instead ruled that it was up to India’s parliament, not its judiciary, to address Section 377.

Gandhi forcefully called on India’s parliament to take up the issue by amending Section 377 in a way that makes it clear that she believes same-sex conduct should not be criminalized:

“The High Court had wisely removed an archaic, repressive and unjust law that infringed on basic human rights enshrine din our Constitution. This Constitution has given us a great legacy, a legacy of liberalism of openness, that enjoin us to combat prejudice and discrimination of any kind. We are proud that our culture has always been an inclusive and tolerant one. The Supreme Court also suggested another course. I hope the Parliament will address this issue and uphold the constitutional guarantee of life and liberty to all citizens of India, including those affected by this judgement.”

As the leader of the governing Indian National Congress (Congress, भारतीय राष्ट्रीय कांग्रेस), her strong condemnation makes it possible that India’s parliament just might enact a legislative fix.

Gandhi’s statement cleared the way for several high-profile members of India’s government to attack the decision.  Finance minister P Chidambaram said he was extremely disappointed with the decision, and he argued that the decision, by upholding a law enacted in 1860, embodies  colonial-era reasoning.  Kapil Sibal, India’s minister for law and justice, after a somewhat non-committal statement yesterday, today issued a call clearly supporting government action to neutralize the Supreme Court’s decision:

“I am disappointed, and, it is unfortunate that the Supreme Court has upheld the legality of Section 377. The High Court was right on this issue. Right now, there are several options before the government, and, we are exploring all of them. This government believes in firm and quick action, and, we will do that. We will adopt a policy that will provide relief at the earliest,” he said.

Congress, which likes to wrap itself in its legacy as the party that delivered Indian to independence in 1947 under Jawaharlal Nehru, a leader of the independence movement and later, India’s first prime minister, would jump at the chance to attack Section 377, above all, as a relic of Victorian-era repression inflicted upon India by its British colonial rulers.

Fresh off its massive political victory in regional elections earlier this month in Delhi, the anti-corruption Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) also announced its disapproval of the decision and its support for repealing or amending Section 377.

In contrast, the center-right Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (the BJP, भारतीय जनता पार्टी) and Narendra Modi, the chief minister of Gujarat state, and the BJP’s prime ministerial candidate in next spring’s parliamentary elections, have been silent since yesterday’s decision.  Sushma Swaraj, the BJP opposition leader in the Lok Sabha (लोक सभा), the lower house of India’s parliament, has called for an all-party meeting to determine whether there’s support to amend Section 377 in the Lok Sabha.

While Muslim and Christian groups have been more active on Section 377 in India than Hindu groups, the conservative BJP doesn’t exactly fit the mould of a party willing to take a progressive stand in favor of LGBT rights.  Baba Ramdev, a top Indian yoga guru, and a leading Modi supporter, has been outspoken in his virulent opposition to homosexuality.

Either way, Gandhi and Congress will find that time is rapidly running out, with the Lok Sabha expected to be dissolved next spring in advance of parliamentary elections that must be held before May 2014.

While Congress could push to amend 377 through legislative action, there’s a chance that the government could also support a ‘curative petition’ that calls on the Supreme Court to reconsider its ruling — such petitions rarely succeed, but such petitions rarely have the full support of Sonia Gandhi behind them.

Both the Congress-led government and the BJP have at least some reason to pull together to support legislation essentially decriminalizing same-sex conduct (once again) in India.  Continue reading Is there a potential parliamentary path to amending Section 377 in India? →

India, South Africa

Photo(s) of the day: Gandhi, Mandela bookend Embassy Row in Washington

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On either side of Washington DC’s ‘Embassy Row,’ the dense line of embassies that line either side of Massachusetts Avenue, you could find two very different tributes to perhaps the two most iconic peacemakers of the 20th century — India’s Mahatma Gandhi and South Africa’s Nelson Mandela.India Flag Iconsouth africa flag

At the Indian embassy, dozens of protestors gathered in opposition to the Indian Supreme Court’s decision earlier today that effectively re-criminalizes same-sex conduct, leaving it up to India’s parliament to decriminalize homosexuality.  The decision reverses the 2009 ruling of the Delhi High Court, which interpreted much of Section 377 of India’s penal code unconstitutional.  Read more about the Supreme Court’s landmark decision here.

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Meanwhile, a mile down the way, flowers and tributes to the late former South African president to Nelson Mandela continue to pile up at the South African embassy.  The Mandela statue is relatively new — it was erected only a few months ago.  Read more about how Mandela’s death poses both a challenge and an opportunity for the future of South Africa here.

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Bonus: I saw (but didn’t snap a photograph) former prime minister Kevin Rudd walking out of the Cosmos Club on Massachusetts Avenue. I’m not sure what he’s doing in Washington, but he’d certainly be a welcome addition in a policy role here.

India

India’s Supreme Court re-criminalizes same-sex conduct in LGBT setback

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indiansupremecourt

In a setback for human rights in the world’s largest democracy, the Supreme Court of India early Wednesday re-criminalized same-sex conduct in a decision that directly affects millions of LGBT individuals.India Flag Icon

The court was considering a 2009 decision by the Delhi High Court, Naz Foundation v. Govt. of NCT of Delhi, that found much of Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code unconstitutional.  Section 377 dates from the British colonial era in India — its origin lies in an 1860 law that prohibits ‘carnal intercourse against the order of nature,’ essentially criminalizing same-sex conduction.  When the Delhi High Court handed down its ruling in 2009, it narrowed its reading of Section 377 to exclude adult consensual same-sex conduct, though the law continued to apply to sex with minors and non-sexual conduct.

Today’s decision by India’s Supreme Court, however, invalidates that interpretation, making same-sex conduct once again a criminal offense — think of it as the reverse of the US Supreme Court’s 2003 landmark decision in Lawrence v. Texas, in so much as the Supreme Court of India had the opportunity to decriminalize same-sex conduct in one fell swoop.  Instead, India’s Supreme Court ruled that it was up to the parliament, not India’s courts, to invalidate Section 377.  The effect is to criminalize same-sex relations at a time when most countries are moving toward greater LGBT rights in both judicial and legislative terms.

The 2009 decision was a landmark moment at the time for LGBT activists in India, who believe that the legacy code violates the guarantees to equality, freedom of expression and personal liberty in the Indian constitution.  The Delhi High Court (think of it as a kind of cross between a state supreme court in the United States and the federal DC Circuit Court of Appeals) itself took seven years to hold hearings in the Naz Foundation case, and the verdict was delivered eight years after the case was originally filed.  Here’s a portion of the Delhi Supreme Court’s ruling from 2009:

If there is one constitutional tenet that can be said to be underlying theme of the Indian Constitution, it is that of ‘inclusiveness’. This Court believes that Indian Constitution reflects this value deeply ingrained in Indian society, nurtured over several generations. The inclusiveness that Indian society traditionally displayed, literally in every aspect of life, is manifest in recognising a role in society for everyone. Those perceived by the majority as “deviants’ or ‘different’ are not on that score excluded or ostracised.  Where society can display inclusiveness and understanding, such persons can be assured of a life of dignity and non-discrimination. This was the ‘spirit behind the Resolution’ of which Nehru spoke so passionately. In our view, Indian Constitutional law does not permit the statutory criminal law to be held captive by the popular misconceptions of who the LGBTs are. It cannot be forgotten that discrimination is antithesis of equality and that it is the recognition of equality which will foster the dignity of every individual.

It’s difficult to categorize the state of LGBT rights in a country as diverse as India with over 1.2 billion people across 1.2 million square miles, but LGBT individuals face myriad challenges in a country where same-sex marriage and adoption are not recognized and no anti-discrimination laws exist.  India’s relatively conservative culture means that there’s a lot of opposition to same-sex attraction, both culturally and religiously.  Religious groups, for example, especially within India’s Muslim and Christian communities, applauded today’s decision.

While Section 377 was never regularly enforced, it was nonetheless widely used to harass LGBT individuals.

As supreme courts often like to do, India’s supreme court lobbed the issue back to the elected branch of government:

However, keeping in mind the importance of separation of powers and out of a sense of deference to the value of democracy that parliamentary acts embody, self restraint has been exercised by the judiciary when dealing with challenges to the constitutionality of laws. This form of restraint has manifested itself in the principle of presumption of constitutionality. Continue reading India’s Supreme Court re-criminalizes same-sex conduct in LGBT setback →

Chattisgarh, Delhi, India, Madhya Pradesh, Mizoram, Rajasthan

Anti-incumbent momentum rises with BJP gains in northern Indian regional elections

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In what has been billed as the last electoral test before India goes to the polls for national elections later in spring 2014, a series of five regional contests in northern India are being cast as a sign of strong momentum for India’s conservative Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (the BJP, भारतीय जनता पार्टी) and for its charismatic leader Narendra Modi.India Flag Icon

Results were released yesterday and today in the five state assembly elections, though regional voting started nearly a month ago on November 11 in Chhattisgarh.

Though commentators are quick to argue that the results are a good sign for the BJP, with the Indian stock market and the Indian rupee surging on news of the BJP victories, it’s important not to confuse an anti-incumbent electorate with an electorate that’s suddenly enthusiastic about a new era of BJP dominance.

Still, the momentum in favor of Modi and the BJP — and against India’s current governing party, the center-left Indian National Congress (Congress, or भारतीय राष्ट्रीय कांग्रेस) — has been growing for quite some time.  Many Indian voters are growing weary of a decade of Congress-led rule under prime minister Manmohan Singh, who has been unable to repeat his success as finance minister in the 1990s, when he enacted a series of liberal economic reforms.  Neither does the Indian electorate seem excited about Rahul Gandhi, who would succeed Singh as prime minister if the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) wins a majority in next spring’s elections.  The Indian economy has slowed significantly over the past three years — GDP growth dived from over 10% in 2010 to under 3% last year (and it’s set to grow just 5% this year).

In that regard, Modi’s massive reelection victory to a third term in December 2012 as Gujarat’s chief minister and Congress’s failure to make a breakthrough in the February 2012 Uttar Pradesh state elections are important goalposts as well.

So what actually happened in the latest round of state assembly elections?

Here’s a map of the five states/territories in play, the three largest of which (Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh) form a wide swath of India’s north-central Hindu heartland.  Unlike in many other Indian states, including Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, West Bengal and Kerala, politics in the three north-central states are about as vanilla as Indian politics gets — the state elections were essentially two-party contests between the BJP and Congress.  That made the contests important bellwethers as national elections approach.

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So how did the parties do?

The BJP will retain its hold on the state of Madhya Pradesh with a moderately larger majority, giving chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan (pictured above) a third consecutive term leading India’s sixth-most populous state.  The BJP will also retain control of Chhattisgarh’s state assembly.  The BJP’s most impressive victory, however, came in Rajasthan, India’s eight-most populous state, where Congress lost 75 seats and the BJP gained 84.

In Delhi, voters also rejected Congress, but not in favor of a majority BJP government.  Instead, voters turned to the newly formed Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), an anti-corruption party, which fell three seats short of becoming the largest party in Delhi’s assembly, and which now holds the key to Delhi’s new government.

Congress remained in government only in the small far-eastern state of Mizoram.

While the result, on average, is better news for Modi and the BJP than for Congress, the results (with the exception of Rajasthan) don’t necessarily mean a huge BJP wave is coming.  Modi still has two major problems — the first is the hubris of mistaking an anti-incumbent mood for BJP support, and the second is geography.

Nothing demonstrates both problems more than the May 2013 elections in Karnataka state in south-central India. Going into those elections, the BJP had presided over one of India’s most powerful regional economies — Karnataka is home to Bangalore and a booming high-tech economy that has drawn massive amounts of global investment.  While Modi campaigned in Karnataka just as vigorously as he did in the most recent elections, it wasn’t enough to save the incumbent BJP government from a spectacular defeat — the BJP lost 70 of its 110 seats in the Karnataka state assembly.  Though the Karnataka election also featured unique internal BJP fractures, it’s a potent example that voters have been equally brutal against the BJP this year, too.

But Karnataka, as the first major southern state to elect a BJP government, was supposed to be a model for the BJP’s growth outside of its traditional northern heartland.  After this weekend’s election results, the four largest states under BJP control will be Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh and Modi’s Gujarat, which lies on the coast south of Rajasthan and west of Madhya Pradesh.  In southern and eastern India, the BJP remains a relatively minor political force and, until that changes, Modi will never be able to win an outright BJP majority.  Instead, the best-case scenario for Modi is to build a coalition with regional and other parties through the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), the BJP-led coalition alternative to the UPA.

Pushing aside national political considerations, here’s a look at the results on a state-by-state basis. Continue reading Anti-incumbent momentum rises with BJP gains in northern Indian regional elections →

India, Pakistan

Sharif, Singh meet in New York, agree to cooperate over terror attacks

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sharifsingh

Pakistani prime minister Nawaz Sharif and Indian prime minister Manmohan Singh met as planned in New York Sunday morning to discuss bilateral relations — even after 12 Indians were killed by suspected Pakistani terrorists in Kashmir last week. Pakistan Flag IconIndia Flag Icon

Accordingly, the resulting understanding between the two was far wider than a mere handshake of the kind rumored last week to be in the works between US president Barack Obama and Iran’s new moderate president Hassan Rowhani:

The leaders agreed that their military chiefs should meet and investigate any attacks in disputed border regions in order to prevent a recurrence, Pakistani Foreign Secretary Jalil Jilani told reporters after their one-hour breakfast meeting, held three days after the latest deadly raid in Kashmir. Jilani didn’t specify when the military officials will meet.

The two also invited each other to their respective countries, Indian National Security Adviser Shivshankar Menon said after yesterday’s meeting.  “We have actually achieved a new stage and now have some understanding of how to improve going forward and I think that is an advance on one and a half years ago,” Menon said.

It’s important to note that both sides downplayed the significance of the meeting, but there’s reason for optimism — if such a strong statement resulted as a formal matter from the meeting, there’s reason to believe that Sharif and Singh could have discussed and agreed on much more.  Sharif, in addition, agreed to ‘movement’ on Pakistan’s role in the 2008 Mumbai terrorist attacks.

Sharif only began his third term as prime minister in June 2013, but he has indicated he wants to strengthen relations that have been strained since Partition in 1947 — primarily over India’s control of the provinces of Jammu and Kashmir along the Pakistani-Indian border, over which the two countries have gone to war twice.  In an address earlier this week to the General Assembly, Sharif said that the nuclear arms race between the two countries was a waste of massive resources.

Singh, who has been hesitant to embrace Sharif’s overtures and claimed earlier this weekend that Pakistan is an epicenter of south Asian terrorism, is in his final months after what will be a decade as prime minister in India, and he’ll be succeeded by May 2014 by either the Indian National Congress (Congress, or भारतीय राष्ट्रीय कांग्रेस) standard-bearer Rahul Gandhi, the fourth-generation scion of the party’s (and perhaps India’s) leading political family or the chief minister of Gujarat state, Narendra Modi, who will lead the conservative, Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (the BJP, or भारतीय जनता पार्टी) into next spring’s elections and whose plucky style could mean a tense period for the bilateral relationship, given his alleged role in anti-Muslim riots in Gujarat in 2002.

So even though the meeting’s potential was always limited, there’s good reason to welcome it — for at least five reasons, as I argued over the weekend in The National Interest:

  • Boosting regional security will be even more important as the United States draws down troops from the Af-Pak theater in 2014.
  • Aside from Pakistan’s election in May, Iran’s election in June and India’s elections next year, Afghanistan will elect a president next spring and Bangladesh will hold elections in January.  That means we could see five new leaders in the span of one year in southwest Asia, in addition to this year’s leadership transition in the People’s Republic of China.
  • Greater ties between India and Pakistan could boost both countries’ underperforming economies.  Freer trade is low-hanging fruit.
  • The meeting can cement Sharif’s credentials as a strong — and democratic — leader as he contemplates who will succeed Ashfaq Parvez Kayani as the next army chief of staff.
  • Finally, while the world cares more about the potential of a nuclear-armed Iran, it’s easy to forget that both Pakistan and India have had nuclear weapons for a decade and a half.  Cooperation between the two countries not only improves regional stability, but global stability.

India, Pakistan

Forget Obama-Rowhani — this weekend’s about the Singh-Sharif meeting

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While we still bask in the glow of tectonic movement between the United States and Iran, as well as an apparent resolution among the Security Council over Syria’s chemical weapons, there’s a third diplomatic front to keep an eye on.Pakistan Flag IconIndia Flag Icon

For all of the hype over the potential meeting between US president Barack Obama and Iranian president Hassan Rowhani earlier this week at the United Nations General Assembly, tomorrow’s meeting between Pakistan’s new prime minister Nawaz Sharif and India’s outgoing prime minister Manmohan Singh comes at a crucial time — in the wake of an attack by Pakistani militants earlier this week in contested Jammu that seemed designed to keep the two south Asian neighbors at odds.

Sharif is just barely 100 days into his third term as prime minister and Singh is a lame-duck who will leave office no later than May 2014 after India’s next elections.  While there’s a limit to what the meeting can accomplish, it’s important for at least five reasons, I argue this morning in The National Interest:

  • Boosting regional security will be even more important as the United States draws down troops from the Af-Pak theater in 2014.
  • Aside from Pakistan’s election in May, Iran’s election in June and India’s elections next year, Afghanistan will elect a president next spring and Bangladesh will hold elections in January.  That means we could see five new leaders in the span of one year in southwest Asia, in addition to this year’s leadership transition in the People’s Republic of China.
  • Greater ties between India and Pakistan could boost both countries’ underperforming economies.  Freer trade is low-hanging fruit.
  • The meeting can cement Sharif’s credentials as a strong — and democratic — leader as he contemplates who will succeed Ashfaq Parvez Kayani as the next army chief of staff.
  • Finally, while the world cares more about the potential of a nuclear-armed Iran, it’s easy to forget that both Pakistan and India have had nuclear weapons for a decade and a half.  Cooperation between the two countries not only improves regional stability, but global stability.

 

Bhutan, India

Do Chinese-Indian relations explain the result of the Bhutanese elections?

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tobgay

Although it’s only the second election in the brief history of Bhutanese democracy, Bhutan’s voters will mark the precedent of its first democratic transfer of power following Saturday’s election, in which the opposition People’s Democratic Party (PDP, མི་སེར་དམངས་གཙོའི་ཚོགས་པ་) scored a major victory, winning 32 seats to just 15 seats for the governing party.bhutan

That’s quite a turnaround from the country’s first-ever election in 2008, when the governing Bhutan Peace and Prosperity Party (Druk Phuensum Tshogpa, DPT, འབྲུག་ཕུན་སུམ་ཚོགས་པ) won 45 out of 47 seats in the country’s Gyelyong Tshogdu (National Assembly), the lower house of the recently promulgated Bhutanese parliament.

The governing DPT is seen as slightly closer to Bhutan’s monarch, the Druk Gyalpo (འབྲུག་རྒྱལ་པོ, its ‘dragon king’), the young Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck who has, like his father before him, smoothed the path toward the gradual development of a constitutional monarchy.  But both parties support the constitutional monarchy and both parties have ties to the governing elite.  The former PDP leader, for example, is Sangay Ngedup, who previously served as prime minister in the pre-parliamentary era from 1999 to 2000 and from 2005 to 2006.  DPT leader and Bhutan’s first elected prime minister, Jigme Thinley, previously served as prime minister from 1998 to 1999 and from 2007 to 2008.

Here’s more background on Bhutan’s idiosyncratic path to democracy at the time of the first round at the end of May, which eliminated two of the four competing political parties, setting the conditions for the July runoff between the DPT and the PDP.  Although the governing DPT won 44.52% of the first-round vote to just 32.53% for the opposition PDP, the DPT picked up virtually no support in the weeks following its initial May victory.

Tshering Tobgay (pictured above),  the PDP’s current leader, will now become Bhutan’s second prime minister, is a former civil servant, and comes from a younger generation of Bhutanese than either Ngedup or Thinley. (You can watch his TEDx talk in English on happiness here).  He’ll come to power on a wave of discontent over many issues, including a rupee shortage last year that brought about a miniature credit crunch in Bhutan caused, in part, by the government’s decision to spend too much of its Indian rupee reserves.

But the outcome may owe much to India’s ham-fisted decision to terminate a kerosene and cooking gas subsidy to its northern neighbor at the end of June, causing prices of the two energy sources to rise, allegedly in retribution for Thinley’s diplomatic overtures to the People’s Republic of China.  In the immediate aftermath of Saturday’s election, Indian prime minister Manmohan Singh made it clear that the subsidy would be restored as soon as possible.  But the clear implication is that India used its special influence with Bhutan, the top recipient of Indian financial aid, to attempt to intervene in an internal election:

New Delhi was alarmed not just by Thinley, who made himself the official ambassador of Bhutan’s Gross National Happiness phenomenon, reaching out to Beijing but also the manner in which he established diplomatic ties with many other countries without bothering to take South Block into confidence.

Tobgay used the crisis as yet another instance to criticize Thinley for jeopardizing Bhutanese-Indian relations and he’s stated that bilateral relations with India will be his top priority.  Though Indian officials now admit the subsidy decision could have been better timed, it’s hard to see how the subsidy dispute could have helped Thinley in the closing days of the Bhutanese campaign.  Given the central economic and geopolitical role that India plays in Bhutan, it wasn’t a good sign for Thinley that he spent the final week of the campaign on the defensive over Indian relations.  There are a lot of reasons for the PDP’s victory on Saturday, including the wholly separate issue of last year’s rupee shortage, wider doubts about the Bhutanese economy, youth unemployment and the still-unsettled treatment of the Nepalese minority in Bhutan.  But it’s not hard to see how the PDP’s success — in southern Bhutan, in particular — came about in large part due to the Indian issue.

To understand why India (and China) are so important to Bhutan is to understand the simple geography of the country:

bhutan

Continue reading Do Chinese-Indian relations explain the result of the Bhutanese elections? →