Tag: Indian Foreign Policy

India-Singapore Relations: Time to move beyond Infrastructure and Finance?

Prime Minister Narendra Modi visits Singapore on the 23rd November for a State Visit to Singapore in a longer follow up visit to earlier on this year when he visited the island city state to join other world leaders after the founding father of Singapore, Mr. Lee Kuan Yew passed away. The general discourse around India-Singapore relations is a prosperous Singapore as an investor in a booming BRIC country market. This narrative driven by the business media is however under-nourished. The Singapore Model of Development pioneered by the late Mr. Lee Kuan Yew which brought the city state global fame in transforming itself from ‘The Third World to First World’ has undoubtedly inspired the 100 Smart City program of the Modi Government. The new Greenfield capital of Andhra Pradesh: Amravati is being designed by Singaporean Urban Planners and has cemented the relationship of Singapore as a symbol of urban excellence1. Singapore is the largest source of Foreign Direct Investment in India2 and testament to this unique fact is the recent visit of Finance Minister Arun Jaitley and a team of bankers including the Managing Director of the State Bank of India to lure institutional investors in to India.  The commercial relationship is a deeply symbiotic one. State Bank of India and ICICI Bank along with others have retail banking licences in Singapore.

Many Indian Start Ups move to Singapore for easier access to capital and regulatory clarity. In the past Spice Group moved base to Singapore. Singaporean Water Technology Major Hyflux has picked up Desalination Projects in Modi’s Gujarat; Singaporean Banks and Sovereign Wealth Funds are increasing their investment footprint in India. Hyderabad based Environmental Infrastructure group Ramky maintains parking lots as a Facilities Management firm all over Singapore.

These examples are however fleeting reflection of the Singapore-India Relationship which shares a deep historical diasporic bond. Singapore is home to a large minority of people of Indian Decent with Deepawali a public holiday and Tamil an official language. There is a significant presence of minsters of Indian decent in the Singaporean Cabinet including Deputy Prime Minister Tharman Shanamugaratnam. The Indian expatriate community makes its presence felt from blue collared work to the heads of Multinational Corporations including the CEO of DBS Bank, Piyush Gupta, a former Indian National.

The truth is India does not give Singapore the same diplomatic attention as the USA, UK or Canada where there are similar large Indian diaspora communities. Singapore was the first country to embrace enthusiastically India’s ‘Look East Policy’ in the early 1990’s with then Singaporean Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong visiting Narsimha Rao and his ministerial team.

Last week, the Chinese President visited Singapore to mark 25 years of diplomatic relations and signed a range of agreements including the third joint industrial park in western China and macroeconomic agreements3. Singapore is majority ethnic Chinese but its relationship with China is layered. Singapore has been an ally of the USA from the Cold War era and has hosted American Military Ships in the past. Pragmatic Singaporean policy has nurtured a close relationship with China from the 1970’s since Chairman Deng Xiaoping visited Singapore and opened up the economy after visiting it. The writer does not sense the same intensity in the relationship between India and Singapore at the diplomatic level. The gap however is more than adequately filled up by Indian community organizations and people to people contact. The same story is repeated in Oman, where I grew up.

The Narendra Modi visit has generated a lot of buzz among the Indian Community in Singapore, with community organizers taking the lead to arrange for the logistics for his ‘Madison Square Garden’ style address at the Singapore Expo4. However, only Indian Nationals are encouraged to attend the event as per media reports.

The major language in the Indian diaspora here in Singapore is Tamil and with Narendra Modi’s predisposition with Hindi, how much of it cut will ice with the same community that he is attempting to touch base with, is of question at the present juncture. There has also been a contradictory voice in the Singaporean media in the run up to the visit when Indian American Academic at the National University of Singapore Prof Mohan Jyoti Dutta wrote an opinion piece in the Straits Times on the contemporary politics of identity based on beef and the crackdown on activism in India in the present Modi regime5.

 

“The violence on the margins of Indian society is accompanied by the quick spread of a chilling climate, with a number of prominent rationalists being attacked and/or murdered, allegedly by right-wing religious groups.”

Increase the Soft Power Lens

Singapore is a major mercantile port hub in Asia and a few months back an Indian Coast Guard Vessel on a South East Asia goodwill tour docked at Changi Naval Base, with many of the young sailors in white seen shopping in the Little India Area in Singapore. India competes for influence in the South East Asia region with Asia, where China has a natural advantage with influential diaspora communities who are better connected to structures of power. India’s engagement with Singapore and the region is more effective at an informal business and community level. The overseas Indian Intelligentsia is based here in Singapore with plenty of think tanks at the National University of Singapore and the Nanyang Technological University focused on research themes based on India such as Institute of South Asian Studies. Thousands of Indian Students study in Singapore, and some of them will head back to India to work with the knowledge imbibed in Singapore. Indian Films and TV series have been shot in Singapore since the 1960’s including the Hrithik Roshan starrer ‘Krrish’ which had frames shot in the Business District in Singapore. Indian films both Tamil and Hindi are screened in theatres here as soon as they are released in India, and run to packed houses. The extent of cultural inter-weaving is dense, and the key pillar in the Singapore-India relationship.

The writer hopes that this state visit by Prime Minister Narendrabhai Damodardas Modi would take the Singapore-India Relationship deeper by engaging the non-elite diaspora who send back remittances and leveraging common areas of strength such as a shared understanding of culture missing from the realpolitik world of diplomacy.

References:

  1. http://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/business/singapore/singapore-delivers-final/1996572.html
  2. . http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/business/india-business/Singapore-replaces-Mauritius-as-top-source-of-FDI-in-India/articleshow/35590304.cms
  3. http://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/xi-to-visit-spore-to-mark-25-years-of-diplomatic-ties
  4. http://www.tremeritus.com/2015/11/08/singapore-restricts-its-citizens-of-indian-origin-from-attending-modis-event/
  5. http://www.straitstimes.com/opinion/killed-for-eating-beef-lessons-for-the-world

 

Why Indian Foreign Policy needs to grow some balls?

Dear Rome,

 We are not Tripoli.

Thank you.

The Italian Marines case is a watershed moment for stand offish (read weak) doctrine of Indian Foreign Policy. A sovereign nation whose judicial goodwill is abused and folks who murdered our fishermen are let away with impunity as if the Nation would not be concerned about this latest ‘Italian Job’ after the Ottavio Quattrochi scandal. After severe media pressure and some last minute tough talking by our usually quiet Prime Minister has got the Italians rushing back their brethren to India. There were two sides to this crisis: violation of the faith of the Indian Judicial system which was considerate enough to let the Italian criminals out of jail for two occasions including once for Christmas (Sigh!). As if Indians who are jailed overseas are let out for Deepawali and Onam.  The second side to this story was the easy going attitude of the Italian Government, which it can get away with this nonsense. The sheer lack of respect which the Italians showed for the Indian State was jaw dropping. We are not some banana republic in Sub Saharan Africa for Christ’s Sake.

The Italian Marines issue demonstrates that the Indian State is taken lightly in international diplomatic circles. Our envoys like Pavan K Varma and Vikas Swaroop are simply busy writing books and preparing their ground to enter electoral politics post retirement. Dr. Shashi Tharoor is exempted from this charge because he was a career diplomat with the United Nations Ecosystem. He is aware of the shortcomings of the Indian Foreign Policy Establishment and has written extensively about these in his treatise on Indian Foreign Policy ‘Pax Indica’. One of the startling statistics Dr. Tharoor had stated in this book was that the Indian Foreign Service had less staffer than the Singaporean Foreign Service. Prof. Kishore Mahbubani is a fine metaphor for Singaporean Foreign Policy Excellence. The United States Desk at the Indian Foreign Ministry is a two man desk; compare this with the United States where the State Departments India Desk is manned by 30 old specialists.

We project our soft power through our diplomatic strength. Bollywood and Cricket can only go thus far. As a diaspora boy next door, I found Indian Embassies in the Persian Gulf to be lethargic where our diplomats were more interested in attending ‘Mushairahs’ or Urdu Poetry conclaves than furthering Indian Strategic Interest. Anyway Gulf Postings were considered punishment postings for seniors and the youth considered it a shade better than a posting in Africa. The position of an Ambassador to Riyadh is taken to be a political appointment for an Aligarh based Intellectual for minority appeasement purposes.  The Indian State is seen as a labor supplier to the Gulf incapable of taking a tough stand.

The South Asia Desk at South Block is served by a solitary joint secretary. No wonder, we are neither respected nor feared in our neighborhood. The Maldivians can cancel our contracts, the Bhutanese and Nepalese are welcoming Chinese Investment in their Hydel Power sector strategic to energy and water security in the Sub Continent. Even, the Bangladeshis have allowed for a swanky convention center in the heart of Dhaka City to be constructed by the Chinese.

India is being surrounded by a ‘string of pearls strategy’ of the Chinese Government from Gwadar in Pakistan to Hambantota in Sri Lanka. In the contest for natural resources, India is losing it big time in Africa where as in South Asia, the Chinese follow Cheque-Book oriented,  Value Neutral Diplomacy.

Hindus in Malaysia and Bangladesh are persecuted and the Indian State keeps mum in the name pseudo secularism. Let One Israeli be touched overseas and Mossad will hunt the perpetrators down from Buenos Aires to Beirut.  We need a muscular approach to our external affairs paradigm.  For that we need to amend rules for globally minded professionals to enter the Foreign Service laterally without the archaic UPSC exam format where the provision for a compulsory English Language proficiency paper was shot down earlier in the month by our visionary parliamentarians. Yeah, sure we will be a global power sans English knowing diplomats.

How about Arabic and a Malay speaking Indian guy who grew up in Oman interested to serve the nation in the Foreign Service express his interest to Dr. Tharoor on Twitter some months back and What does the answer come:

‘Write the UPSC Exam’

A very Imaginative answer Sir I thought in my head.