Whither India thy foreign policy?

“It seemed I knew this earth too well to feel its heave and its revulsion
Expel my half ingested being from its twisted guts---

So wrote Dutch Burgher Jean Arasanayagam, married to a Hindu Tamil and left homeless in the 1983 attacks on Tamils in Sri Lanka.

She was prophetic-

"It's all happened before and will happen again

And we the onlookers

But now I'm in it

It's happened to me

At last history has meaning "

Two decades, some years later, over 70,000 had no time to feel the heave and revulsion of the earth they called home. They were completely ingested into a dark abysmal womb, blank eyed wondering why? Over 300,000 look on from behind barbed wires, history taking on meaning for them but the rest of us, onlookers, all flipping on to yet another chapter in history.

Yet brick by brick, year after year, generation after generation, those now dead and those relegated to a fenced destiny for who knows how long, reminded constantly that they are Tamils and must be punished for the sins of their brothers in race not even blood – built on the back of their hard labour, the mainstay of an economy they are now struggling to be again part of.
After Independence, income from plantation products – constituted more than 70 per cent of Sri Lankan export earnings. Many of the Tamils exported from India by their then colonial ruler Britain, to work on tea plantations bore the brunt.

Post independence many steps were taken by the Sri Lankan government that alienated the minority Tamils not least among them being the Ceylon Citizenship Act-1948. Other measures, to name but a few : changing the demographic balance in the east to favour the majority Sinhalese and making Sinhala the sole official language of the country.

This blog is not about evoking sympathy for the violence that some of the Tamils and especially the LTTE used to draw the attention of the world to their plight. India lost Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi to that violence. He was awarded a gruesome death at the hands of the LTTE, for his efforts at brokering – through the Indo –Lanka accord, a power devolution treaty as also official status for Tamil language. However the treaty did not find favour with either the Tamils or the Sinhalese.

This piece is about being able to enter into a dialogue about the two sides of a coin. Excesses of the LTTE are no secret– but there is no smoke without fire. In 1983 when thirteen Sinhalese soldiers were killed, Sinhalese in the south went on a rampage and voter lists were used to systematically locate the homes of Tamils.

Today once again we stand mute, powerless to challenge China or even its satellite state Sri Lanka. The 1997 arms deal between Sri Lanka and China is no secret. That China has played a pivotal role in Sri Lanka's civil war must be acknowledged by those battering the Tamils genuine aspirations. Cessation apart(that is just not permissable) they must be given due recognition and place in Sri Lankan society and economy.

Hapless civilian populations being curtailed in refugee camps encircled by barbed wires -these are not the LTTE but people torn asunder. Fresh from the wounds of witnessing assault by both the LTTE and their own government, they await a tougher journey even as they mourn their dead ones.

And even those that have no sympathy for those that now cry isolated tears - watch out- we – all of us by our mute spectatorship are sowing the seeds of a problem that shall erupt –someday.
Consider the nearly three hundred thousand recently displaced people, mostly Tamils, living in abysmal conditions behind barbed wars. Not far away another nearly five million Afghan refugees biding their time in Pakistan and Iran. Add to these the nearly two million Pakistani refugees within Pakistan fleeing fighting in the SWAT valley.

Add to this the list of people displaced by climate change, floods, earthquakes and even poverty and hunger. Add refugees from conflict torn Africa and put the jigsaw together. It’s indeed a mind boggling man made problem being made more and more complex even as we speak.
My belief that the refugee issue, be it due to war, environmental displacement or bad governance and poverty, is going to be a major international issue is growing. So is the belief that the United Nations institutions looking into human rights and refugee issues need to be given more teeth. To my understanding the very structure of the International organisation acts as a speed –brake to its often lofty intentions. Backing from China and its growing number of satellite allies is more than enough to absolve in fact honour those that stand in the box.

This is reinforced by recent developments in Sri Lanka. Powerful backers of Sri Lanka like China have on Wednesday managed to defeat a resolution calling for investigations that the Tigers prevented civilians from leaving the conflict zone, and that government forces used heavy artillery on the densely populated conflict zone and killed rebels trying to surrender.

In-fact the United Nations Human Rights Council adopted Wednesday a resolution which praised the government of Sri Lanka for its commitment to human rights, while condemning the Tamil Tiger rebels. The resolution, tabled by Sri Lanka itself and other nations, including China.
This, despite the fact that the UN office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reported aid groups are not being given complete access to the displaced persons camps.

Wonder where the United States is on all this. Perhaps it’s standing on loose moral ground, not having been able to bring to task violations of human rights in some parts of the world. In its absence, China has taken the high moral ground. Oh, it has its own backyard to protect --
The writing is loud and clear on the wall.

European countries, along with Canada, Chile and Mexico had backed a probe, and also urged Sri Lanka to fully open up refugee camps to international aid agencies. Even the International Committee of the Red Cross which usually does not criticise publically is complaining that the Sri Lanka government denied it access to the war zone in the final weeks of the conflict. The Red Cross has also been barred from visiting some refugee camps.

The world has no sympathy with the LTTE. However are we getting confused here between the displaced voiceless Tamils and the LTTE? Are we creating the right circumstances to create another LTTE from among the wounded and the pained?
An emboldened Sri Lanka has warned the world not to give shelter to fleeing Tamil refugees.

“War is an internal matter and does not warrant outside interference”, says China
Yet what makes me sad is the attitude of India in all this. India must speak out and let China know that this is no more just a Sri Lanka – China problem. Refugees are filtering into India and she is the country to be most impacted by the influx of the refugees. Not just now- thousands poured from Sri Lanka into its southern state of Tamil Nadu even way back in the 1980’s. Why are these Tamil refugees not being sent back to Sri Lanka?
Sri Lanka says it is going to sort the refugee problem- going to rehabilitate them. How? With a fiscal imbalance and foreign currency reserves just enough to buy a month worth of imports, facing a balance of payment crisis, who in a global recession will give Sri Lanka the money to rebuild not just its own economy but also rebuild the battered northern and eastern provinces . Till then what happens to the refugees?
Perhaps here is where China will extend further support. A stretched IMF and a doubly stretched United States has left the field open for China. In fact China is Sri Lanka’s most important donor. Economic interests aside, strategic interests are playing a vital role here. China already has surveillance vessels in the Indian Ocean.
India wake up! You are hemmed in – flanked on all sides by problem States aligning around a powerful emerging superpower.

Defending Big Bad Oil

Something has been snapping inside of me. Perhaps this state of mind has been coming a year or two. Perhaps it took Canada to purge me of dirty idealism. I think I am getting cured silently but not gently.
One of my idealistic state of mind opinions was being opinionated about Platonic dilemmas such as the ideal "State of a State" and "Ideals of Ideal Corporations". Too bad, too sad it took me so many decades of life to understand the implicit reality of the state of States and Corporations and those that run them or inhabit them, including myself.

"It's the money stupid!"


No wonder - Now (ofcourse its never too late !)I can catch the pulse behind the whining.

As an energy journalist, I have raised many questions about big oil. I think I have reported the truth, based on interviews, research and visits to many oil producing countries. Today, I have added more perspective on my understanding of oil. I feel I have matured as an energy journalist.
I have been objective in my print and television reporting even as in my mind many competing questions have jostled for attention. Why did the oil companies behave the way they did, say in a country like Nigeria?. Why are many oil producing countries still struggling with poverty?
Initially my mind comprehended it all as part of the very nature of these big giant oil companies. Big bad oil!
When I shifted base from the Middle East to Canada I never thought I will have anything to do with energy. As destiny would have it, I got embroiled in the most controversial aspect of energy – environment and energy production.
I fought hard like many others,in making people understand, that environmental inputs need to be given a financial value as these are common resources. I fought hard to talk about a balance between environment and the economy. But the questions kept nagging me. Why do these companies not pay for the environmental resources they use?.
Perhaps the answer lies in concentrating harder on the other side of the coin.
What about governments? After all governments are the negotiators. Oil companies are doing what their mandate is – getting the best terms for their shareholders and squeezing governments for concessions. Are governments honing their negotiation skills?
An important lesson to learn is from neighbouring Alaska where oil tax at Prudhoe Bay is 25 per cent of the net profit of a barrel of oil when prices are at or below $52 and escalates as oil prices go up.
It’s not the oil industries problem if governments do not protect the rights of their people. The Ogoni tribe in Nigeria being one such example. That does not absolve these companies but it’s looking at both sides of an equation. If governments are not responsible for running countries and States to the best advantage of their people, why should corporations take all the blame?
After all it’s not as if they are forcing governments at gun point to give them concessions and put up with anything they do. Governments could have shown equal smartness and savvy in their maths and economics. My being purged of idealism as also understanding that there are more pieces to the puzzle, does not mean that in my mind I have absolved oil companies of all responsibility (not that my thinking matters to them. I’m not so naive). I am only involving the other players who get away - most of the time -scot free from all the criticism. People like me and you and the policy makers.
Yes, me and you dear reader. Some of you, I’m sure are policy makers and understand what I’m saying. We are culprits as well. I know many of you are going to dislike me- (Ill remind you, I have many enemies already - so be kind in judging me), for saying so.
They say that people deserve the government they get – obviously they choose it. I am beginning to understand that people also get the kind of economy they deserve. After all economies are shaped as much by government economic and foreign policy as they are by big business.
Let’s look at bad oil. They have merely taken advantage of a trend which no government – no NGO no think tank has had the power to change- namely the insatiable hunger for oil in this part of the world.
But for the exponential oil demand, that was in part fuelled by the automobile sector and its thrust to change buying patterns to create demand (easy bank credit, instalment payments etc. ironically pioneered by one of the giant US automobile manufacturers), these companies may have had a different history. The symbiotic relationship of these two sectors of our economy cannot be downplayed.
Consider that according to EIA statistics OECD accounts for almost two thirds of the worldwide daily consumption of oil. Within the OECD, U.S and Canada stand out at 3 gallons per day per capita consumption compared to 1.4 gallons for the rest of the OECD countries. For the non OECD countries the figure stands at an incredible low of 0.2. So if the world consumes around 76 million barrels of oil a day, U.S consumes 20 million barrels a day.
The story does not end here. In the United States in contrast to other regions of the world, about two thirds of oil is used for transportation. From around 2 billion barrels of oil per year in the 1980’s, United States oil consumption has increased to 8 billion barrels per year in 2008. Over half of this is imported.
Though transportation fuel accounts for much lesser consumption in Canada, the country’s total energy consumption of 9,540 petajoules in 2005 stood 25 per cent over 1999 levels. Emission growth at 25 per cent over and above 1999 levels matched the energy consumption.
Compare this to what was happening in the automobile industry. The sale of SUVs and big pick up trucks was in full swing in America, fanning the demand for more gasoline. In the 1990’s thanks to cheap Middle East oil the automobile sector thrived. As late as 2007, 16.09 million units were sold by automobile companies. Up until early 2000’s oil was just about $15 until it saw its 2007 six times increase.
My point is that till these companies had stakes in the Middle East, where cost of extraction is a pittance, the automobile industry thrived as consumers could fill up cheap. The oil companies did exactly what the consumers demanded. Spoilt consumers! Besides the automobile industry was the backbone of the economy. Pampered! So pampered that they did not brace up for two major risks that any auto company should- cheaper competition, higher commodity prices. Till foreign markets were not proliferated by the Japanese and Chinese and the Indian car makers, everything was okay.
No one thanked the oil companies then for making it so convenient for the automobile industry to flourish. No one questioned the massive growing imports. After all the automobile industry was thriving at the back of cheap oil. No one asked the oil companies to stop expanding into Middle East and other markets. In fact government foreign policy played an equally powerful role in the expansion of the oil companies, outside of the United States.
The staggering production-consumption deficit has added a major burden on US trade deficits. As oil prices increase the US deficit increases. Oil majors in their own way helped keep the deficit down. Now they have been thrown out by the nationalised oil companies of foreign countries where oil was cheap. Alberta is open but oil is expensive to extract here. Strangely enough, high oil prices helped Alberta to make oil extraction economical for oil companies used to a dollar per barrel oil extraction costs. What is forgotten is that because of these companies American consumers could get cheap oil from the Middle East. An additional advantage was the growth of the car industry in the Middle East.
Now these oil producing countries are going it alone and our majors here do not have much production assets –not much in cheap production areas atleast. Oil has shot up and cheaper car companies are ruling the roost.
It is ironic that expensive oil – of course coupled with cheap cars from Japan, Korea, China, India are tolling the death knell of the American automobile industry.
Expensive oil still has demand but cars that consume too much expensive oil are silently being hastened to their graveyards. Those who did not see it coming were just the automobile sector and the governments of the States where car production once thrived.
I have not even touched the other aspect – The return on equity and the wealth created for shareholders by these companies. Even as oil and gas output was declining in 2005 due to declines in production, return on equity for most of the seven major integrated oil companies was nearly four times. So while Exxon Mobil in 2005 had a 9.7 million dollar return on oil sales, return on equity was 32.5 million dollars. Occidental was an exception. Return on sales was 34.7 and return on equity was 35.1 million dollars. Return on sales despite diminishing production meant higher oil prices were making it possible.

With the drying up of oil revenues in Alberta, people – silent till now and enjoying the fruits of excessive government spending thanks to the oil revenue, have started whining. Everything seems wrong with the oil companies. So why were they silent till now? I still remember distinctly my first job as a senior producer in one of Edmonton’s upstart internet television companies. It lasted short, but the one lesson it taught me- people here loved their oil companies. Oil prices were touching the roof and so was Alberta economy. Journalists at least two years back and at least in that company were unwilling to look at issues like environment. You were a pariah if you spoke of environment. VOW!!!! Those very journalists cringing !! Oh may be they are missing the spoils and till energy prices are way up and they get the darn excessive spending spinning again- they are going to talk.
But now I have changed and I want to say that its not the Big bad oil that they need to bitch about but the fact that because of big bad oil they lived in an era of cheap oil and could buy a plethora of cars and SUV’s – damned be the rest of the world. Big bad oil sweated it out in these Middle Eastern countries and gave them cheap sustained oil for their big SUVs.
Well, why (and this is four fingers pointing at me) why do we always blame these oil companies. Yes, they are what they are polluting sometimes ruthless but these very companies have also provided much else --!!!!!
And so much for our economy being over dependent on oil revenues- have we even started talking of a game plan to encourage other sources of the economy to speed up and take over-big bad oil - albeit slowly?.

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Ah Media!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I can never forget that morning, years back, very early in my journey as a journalist when at an editorial meeting,I found myself defending the then new heir to India's most illustrious business empire - Tata group. It was a room full of twenty odd seasoned journalists, including my now iconic boss at CNBC-India and I was alone in articulating my confidence in Ratan Tata. Despite the odd looks and the sneer that conveyed-"you upstart, you will soon be sorry for this assessment", I stood my ground.


At that time- I think it was 1993, there was very little to back my assessment of the man -in fact to the contrary. Ratan Tata had not been successful at NELCO and had to sit over the liquidation of a struggling textile mill. Fodder enough to bait me to change my opinion by those that were relentless in their allegiance to the then upcoming, upstart extremely successful business house-Reliance Industries. I never regretted my fierce defense of a man who most of the Indian media had at that time, dubbed as the trigger to the downfall of the Tata's. That was then.


I did not have to wait very long to stand vindicated.


I always defended the House of Tata's with the simple explanation- it was founded and continued to do business on ethical grounds.


Reliance despite all its success had its flamboyance to cope with. It was born at a time when red tapism and bureaucracy strangulated free economy and India was still leaning left. Success in building a colossal empire despite such odds, was their justification of their arrogance and belief that money trumps over everything, conquers individual morality.


The nineties was also the decade in Indian journalism, when PR companies and their briefs/press releases and propaganda war downplaying their client's competitors played a tug of war with the minds of journalists. I can never forget the ITC (Imperial Tobacco company of India) story- how two competing PR firms fought their wars in public, going as far as distributing pamphlets to journalists, every day, while a shareholders battle raged on in Calcutta. Since the Indian company was fighting its foreign holding -BAT, the nationalistic card was played to its emotional heights - never mind the Indian CEO of that company was not above board.

Perhaps that was the decade when journalism changed from in depth analysis and investigation to what it is today-"bite rich" (as we call it). Frenzied journalists waiting hours to get a bite of the guys outside Parliament house or any news breaking locale! Perhaps all the angst about authentic journalism loosing its bite can be traced back to the advent of television journalism. Just thrust the mike to the face of the important politician- who also knew the value of television sound bites and made symbolic gestures like running to his car amidst all his security guys, even as journalists ran after him- pausing eventually but only after the on camera dramatic scene, added to his stature and to the reality news breaking story!!. The poor newspaper guys just following suite- thrusting their tape recorders somewhere in the crowd of blaring television lights and mikes. As long as you got that sound bite from the guy who mattered in that day's breaking story!!!. If you did not get the guy - just do stand ups outside the scene of action- saying the meeting is still on etc etc.


It was also the time that India saw the infiltration of media companies- private media and the scramble to get the story first.

My disenchantment with sections of the media - whatever part of the world I have worked in continues. Coverage of issues that are of pertinence are taking the back seat. Often, journalists are up in arms about trivial issues but do not want to talk about issues that really impact the shaping and destiny of our world. Also we are quick to judge- trial by media is a major issue. Combined strength of the media- on issues that they decide to gang up on - has weakened the best of political intentions.

A recent example that comes to mind is the media trial of Liberal MP Ruby Dhalla. It's surprising that what happened last May is being thrown up in the media with such vividness now. The timing is what can be questioned.

Also I think it is common knowledge that tens if not hundreds of foreign temporary workers are unwittingly finding themselves working illegally in not just Canada but many other parts of the world. Talking to charities, as I have been I'm told about the pitiable conditions of these workers who are currently out of jobs- some not even receiving Employment Insurance. What many are asking is:"why is the media not questioning the employers who are forsaking these workers after signing contracts with them, just because they do not need them any more? Why is no one highlighting at least one story - one example of what is happening to these poeple.

I have (perhaps I'm not aware) not seen any story probing this aspect of the plight of temporary foreign workers. I was told that even the contracts of these foreign temporary workers are different depending on the country they are hired from. So, those from Asia may not get the same preferential treatment in their contracts as some one say from Europe.

No body should think that I am propagating that Ms. Ruby Dhalla be absolved for doing precisely what she is supposed to do-protecting the vulnerable from exploitation (if indeed she is guilty of that). Sensationalising a story- even before it's been verified is also not fair.