Bengal on its way to become Kashmir

There are many ways to remain relevant in politics. One way is to make realistic promises before elections and working hard to fulfil them once the electorate handover their trust to you by electing you. But come on, that happens only in Bollywood. So the second way is to make exaggerated promises, offer bribes in form of television sets, laptops, smartphones and so on and win the election. However there is a third way, a time tested one at that. In here you identify the block of voters who can be manipulated, nurture them by offering irrelevant but perceived goodies like a stipend for their religious leaders, land grants for their schools and turning a blind eye to crime emanating from the places they live in. You become so dependent on them for your political relevance that there comes a time when, what seemed like patronising looks more like appeasement but it actually is giving up control.

When fire engulfs your turf.
Picture Courtesy - India Today

This is what has happened in West Bengal. The government of Ms Mamata Banerjee has lost control over a large territory in the state. West Bengal was never a peaceful state. With the first street battles of Naxal bari, culminating into a three decade long stagnation supervised by the Communist Party of India (Marxist), yes the same Marx, whose ideology killed millions in Soviet Russia and Maoist China, the state has always been a den of violence. But that discussion is for another day. To get a sense of the level of anarchy prevailing in the state, Indian Affair conducted a simple Google search for “West Bengal blast 2015”. The search yielded a NDTV link siting at least seven instances of blasts where people have been killed or injured. Read the reports here, here, here, here, here, here and here. To top this all was, the now forgotten, Burdwan blast where two women, members of an Islamist terror organisation, were killed. The house was owned by a Trinamool Congress leader, Hasan Chowdhury.

If these seven instances of blasts were not enough there were at least three instances of the police seizing arms cache, read the reports here, here and here. If bomb blasts and illegal arms turning up like soft serve ice cream every now and then is not losing control over territory then what else is? Perhaps it will take something more drastic for Ms Banarjee to see in, which drain her state is drowning. So here is more. As fresh as today, a report from India Today claims 80,000 bigha (32,000 acres) of farm land is being used for poppy cultivation in the district of Malda. The district administration is scared for their lives and do not venture into these pockets and obviously Ms Banerjee has no problems with this small poppy garden in her backyard.

Not many news shops covered Malda in early days of January when an estimated mob of 2.5 lakh people marched the streets, ran a riot, burnt down a police station, set police vehicles on fire and pelted stones at policemen fleeing the scene. Ms Banerjee was at least swift to take action this time. She ordered immediate refurbishment of the police station and ensured no traces of the arson and riot were left behind. She really is the Maa in “Maa Maati Manush”, saving her kids from harm’s way.

West Bengal shares an international border with Bangladesh, a very porous one at that. Forget flinging rice sacks across the fence, cattle and women are trafficked with ease, sometimes one can’t tell one from the other. Then there is the case of fake currency smuggling. Any sensible person heading a sensitive state like West Bengal will do their best to ensure law and order and reclaiming the lost territory. But Ms Banerjee has a different plan. Perhaps she wants to gift India another Kashmir. A border state with worsening law and order situation, large swathes of territory ceded to criminals, smugglers and terrorists. A bomb blast a month, madarsas doubling up as terrorist hideouts. And a flourishing mini Afghanistan in a poppy garden.

West Bengal is slipping away under the supervision of Ms Banerjee and she is not bothered. The bigger question, however is, who else can stop this?

Falling energy prices the ITER and global terrorism

Energy prices are at their historic low. The benchmark Brent crude took a plunge and stood at USD 49.55 per barrel, lowest since the financial crisis of 2008. Natural gas saw a similar downward trend with its prices. Natural gas prices dropped from a high of USD 6/mmBTU in early 2014 to around USD 3.01/mmBTU today.  Coal prices showed resilience in 2014, but fell down from a high of USD 63/st in early 2014 to USD 46.8/st today. For the past six months the global energy prices have been in secular decline. Sanctions on Iran, conflict in Iraq, civil war in Libya and political instability in South Sudan have all reduced the global oil output. Asian economies, which also happens to be large oil importers (India and China), have slowed but not drastically. The cars on streets of Delhi and Shanghai are still increasing and factories of China and India are demanding more power for their production lines. Yet the energy prices are ebbing.

Energy experts believe that one reason the oil prices are in free fall is the decision of Saudi Arabia (the most powerful member of the oil cartel, OPEC) to not cut oil production. The logic behind this decision is to throttle the energy boom in the US and Canada. Both countries perfected technologies to extract oil from shale and tar sands. Saudi Arabia has taken a similar step in the past to put pressure on Iran. If this is indeed the logic behind low oil prices, the trend is likely to stay for a while. It will take some time for the Americans and Canadians to give up their quest for extracting oil from its sands in response to weakening oil prices.

In south of France scientists are busy shaping up a nuclear fusion reactor. The project called ITER or International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor is an international venture funded and run by seven entities including China, European Union, India, Japan, Russia, South Korea and the US. Aim of the project is to design a reactor capable of generating energy at a commercial scale. Though nuclear energy is common today, it has its negative environmental impact. The Fukushima disaster of 2011 is reminder of the dangers nuclear power poses. The ITER once ready will generate power using Hydrogen isotopes, which are abundant. Another advantage of fusion reaction is its safety. The fusion process leaves behind harmless residual elements, which can be disposed of easily. If successful, the process can make every country in the world self-reliant and can possibly lead to elimination of energy import costs.

Falling energy prices, promising non-conventional sources of energy, increasing fuel efficiency and efficient energy storage (batteries in an electric car) indicate towards a future where oil and gas will play a less important role in shaping a country’s economy. What will such a future mean for us? Cost of living will go down for one. We can push global warming back by a few centuries, perhaps. But the most important change we will see will happen in how people live in oil rich countries today. Though some of the countries like Brazil, Nigeria, the US have democratic setup and power keeps changing hands, most of the oil producing countries are either dictatorships (Venezuela) or medieval kingdoms (Saudi Arabia, UAE).

While countries like Venezuela are in sever financial trouble despite their huge oil reserves, the likes of Saudi Arabia are splurging to buy legitimacy. Other than keeping their subjects happy by providing subsidized fuel, housing, education, overseas education, cheap loans, cheap foreign labour, and so on, the kingdom also runs one of the largest terror financing networks. It is no secret that the Middle East in general and Saudi Arabia in particular have funded the growth of radical Islam by means of funding mosques and training clergy. A recent report in The Tribune talks about Pakistan waking up to Saudi terror funding using its mosques. The Saudis and other Middle Eastern countries have been funding terror and extremist ideologies in the past. Flush with oil money the Kingdoms of the Middle East poured money in the Iran-Iraq war and to fight the Russians in Afghanistan. Books written on the politics of Saudi Arabia note that various charities in the Kingdom funded the “mujahideens” who wanted to fight in Afghanistan. Flight tickets were provided, arms and fleets of pickup trucks were financed and local media was turned into a propaganda machine highlighting the glories of “Jihad” in Afghanistan. The activities continued in the twenty first century. Saudi and Emirati men planned and carried out the 9/11 attacks with people from other countries. Much of this is still going on, despite an attempt to curb down terror funding by countries like Pakistan (itself a terror sponsor).

As long as the oil lasts

All this has happened with the backing of petro dollars. So what will happen when the oil becomes irrelevant? When the cars will get fully charged while you finish your coffee. Or when homes will be lit with cheap and clean energy from wind or nuclear fusion. Or when factories will produce goods using a mix of energy options with oil not being one of them. An oil free world is still a speculation, but a realistic one. In the next decade or so we will see a change in the energy mix, away from coal and oil. If that happens, countries like Russia, Venezuela and the Kingdoms of the Middle East will have nothing to turn to. They will have to feed the population, which has grown up on handouts. The change will be slow but sure. How these countries will tackle that is yet to be seen.

Will plunging oil prices stop the Kingdoms from financing terror activities and use the money to feed their subjects? We do not know yet. The fund crunch might stop terror financing but on the other hand an economy solely dependent on oil money will surely fail. Even the apparently diverse economy of the UAE relies heavily on oil money. How will the subjects react to a changing economic situation? Will they mend their ways and start working as street cleaners and truck drivers? Or will they take to violence? How will the over pampered clergy of the Kingdoms react once the money stops flowing in? Will they go back to living in their Bedouin tents? Or will they resort to propagation of extremist Islam to wrest legitimacy from the rulers? These are some questions for, which we have no answers yet.   

Elections next door

On Saturday the 11^th of May 2013, Pakistan for the first time in its history will vote to transfer power from one civilian government to the other. In the past six decades the country has never had a civilian government, which completed its term. Much of the time was spent by the army to introduce martial law and rule by decree. The army ceased to be looked as defenders of the frontiers; it was now saviour of the Pakistani people. The last popular army dictator was General Parvez Musharraf (he later resigned from the army and assumed the role of a civilian president). Democracy never really got a chance to take roots in Pakistan.

For the first time since Pakistan’s independence, things are looking bright and understandably so. The Pakistani media celebrated the successful completion of the full term of the parliament and hoped that it will now be a regular feature. In fact if this indeed becomes a regular feature, it will be beneficial for both Pakistan and its neighbours. A civilian government has different priorities and is more accommodating to public sentiments. The long rule of Generals has created an environment where Pakistan is projected as a victim of international conspiracy and constantly under existential threat (largely from India). Riding high on such imagined threat, the army managed to take control of almost one fifth (18%) of the total budget expenditure.

A civilian government is accountable to the people who voted it in (unlike a general who usually rules without any accountability and retires in a posh London or Dubai neighbourhood). The civilian government will also try to bring economic prosperity and sense of security to its people. Both are severely lacking in present day Pakistan, having said that it will be a tall order for any party which manages to form the government. Over the past decade or so, since the war on terror arrived in Pakistan, the country has been consumed in violence. Daily terror attacks, sectarian violence and political rivalry (called target killings) are no longer seen as something extraordinary. Billions of dollars of aid money (given by America in return of cooperation in the war on terror) has been siphoned off to secrete bank accounts or put to use in arming the forces. Little has reached the common man.

Over the years during its rule the army has managed to build a massive business empire of its own (The unending battle). The National Logistics Cell (NLC), the army owned trucking company is today the largest of its kind in Pakistan and has crushed private competition. Being a monopoly and a state enterprise the generals controlling the company have made sure that Pakistani railways is turned into an inefficient liability, making NLC more reliable. The various army business interests now work in absolute monopoly. For any civilian government to reverse the trend might mean risking another coup. But there are lessons to learn from. Turkey had a similar problem when the Generals there were powerful and controlled huge businesses. Today they are cut to size. The economic interest of the army is still high but is lower since its peak in pre Erdogan era. Pakistan can borrow a page from Turkey to tackle its own army.

Another challenge facing Pakistan is its political infighting and party rivalries. Target killings have become a routine in Karachi. Political parties formed on ethnic and linguistic basis fight turf wars and have turned pocket of Karachi into “no go” areas. The situation in Baluchistan is no better. A long running separatist insurgency has turned the gas rich province into a backward quarter of Pakistan. People are regularly kidnapped never to be seen again. Headless bodies later appear and identification becomes impossible. The central government seems indifferent to the situation there, though the Awami National Party from Baluchistan is an ally of the ruling Pakistan People’s Party. Amid such challenging environment the various strains of Taliban only add to the grief. The home grown terror organisations carry out suicide attacks on a regular basis, targeting political rallies, army garrisons, minority processions and their places of worship.

Changing all this and providing its people a better Pakistan to live will be a long drawn battle for the civilian government. The mess created in the last six decades cannot be sorted out in the next five years. Things that might accelerate the process of bringing back the country on track may include the following

• Tackling the terrorists in tribal areas before final pull out of NATO forces from Afghanistan
• Making peace with Afghanistan and helping it fight the terrorists on both sides of the Durand line
• Tackling the terrorist modules working against India in the Kashmir region
• Making peace with the Baluch insurgents and share the gas revenue with them

Majority of Pakistan’s problems will get sorted out if it manages to eliminate the terrorists on its soil. The next step will be to claim its share in the regional economy. With two giant economies in its neighbourhood, it will be foolish not to ride on their success. This will not happen overnight. But the election is a right step in that direction.