India Today Conclave - Change Or Be Damned

Change or Be Damned The finest minds from politics, business, media and diplomacy gathered to make sense of India tomorrow. Their verdict: India has the potential to be an Asian power, what is required is political vision. By S. Prasannarajan with Rohit Saran and Shishir Gupta A nation is an idea that continues to be renewed by the passage of time. History adds adjectives to it, the present provides new anxieties and the future is invariably captured in that all-time favourite four letter word-hope. The idea of India is in permanent evolution, like any other living democracy with a rich civilisational identity, and making sense of it is a challenging intellectual enterprise. That is what India Today continues to do. Its first international conclave-India Tomorrow 2002: Opportunities and Threats-was an ambitious extension of that enterprise beyond the pages of the magazine. For three days (January 20-22), some of the finest minds in politics, economics, diplomacy, business and media converged on Delhi to comprehend the idea that is India, its power and possibilities, its sweep and scope, its vulnerabilities and vitality, its fears and, most significantly, its future. Its place in the world. This is what has emerged: even if the future is not burning bright, it is not bleak either, despite the darkness of the backdrop against which the conclave was held-post-9/11, more intimately for India post-12/13. As Editor-in-Chief Aroon Purie said in his welcome speech, "The irony is that after 100 years the world is free from any conflict of the great powers. Today's conflicts are local and regional. Unfortunately, we (India) happen to be one of them." It is for India to seize the moment and make the best use of it-politically, economically, strategically. The key word, as stressed by former US vice-president Al Gore, is "change". A conclave can't change the world, or India. But it can give enough ideas for change. The India Today Conclave saw the confluence as well as combat of ideas, with 243 participants, 16 speakers and 11 sessions on various aspects of security and terror: political management, diplomatic challenges, strategic perceptions and economic opportunities. At the end of it, the mood was not one of hope abandoned. The recurring theme was: change or be damned. For, the force of history and the laws of the market have shifted old paradigms, and thrown up brand new challenges for nations like India. Good governance, political vision and the courage to defy the burden of the past ... suggestions for a redeeming Indian dawn were many at the conclave, a word which, as Purie said the first day, was originally used to describe the meeting of cardinals to elect a new pope. Well, there was no divine election, but, metaphorically at least, white smoke emerged from the India Today Conclave on the third day. Hope is not elsewhere, it is here and now, in today's India, if it has the will and the vision, India tomorrow will be a power worthy of bigger celebrations. Al Gore Former Vice-President, United States of America

Al Gore, in his own introductory words at the conclave, was supposed to be the next president. "This is a time of transformation." Though Gore was talking about his life after power, his statement could very well have been about the geopolitical situation. Despite the endearing anecdotes of selfmockery, the former vice-president's keynote address was quite presidential and the style was that of a reborn communicator.

THE REBORN COMMUNICATION: Gore address the gala The relationship between India and Pakistan may be one of dinner hyphenated tension, but that didn't stop Gore from celebrating the "biggest change" in the Indo-US engagement: "Here is a fantastic opportunity for both the countries to put the past behind. We are the largest democracies in the world." Time to get past the Cold War mindset of "triangular relationship"-India, the US and the former Soviet Union-and move on with the common task of "managing change". There is a new opening for "we are both leading it powers in the world". In Gore's view, biotechnology is the area where India may shine in the coming years. The former vicepresident-all the more distinctive nowadays because of the new gravitas provided by a post-election beard-has turned his first Indian visit into an occasion for appreciation and admiration: a big thank you for the Indian diaspora in America, the highest earning ethnic group; thank you again for the post-9/11 emotional counselling to troubled Americans over telephone ... for him, it was an India stretching from Mahatma Gandhi to Narayana Murthy, a land of possibilities, "a rising world power" destined to play a major role in the affairs of the world. All the more decisive at the moment because India has become a frontline state against terrorism. "We both are experiencing terror." And Gore, who has a knack for moving from the humorous to the cerebral with ease, gave a psycho-sociological interpretation to the terror of radical Islam. "We as nations too feel rejected if our offering to the world is not accepted. It is a primal feeling"-a geopolitical extension of the biblical story of Cain and Abel. Radical Islam is steeped in that sense of rejection. Also at work is "memory as present reality". It is a civilisational problem, and in radical Islam, the remembrance of the glorious past has become a current tragedy. In India tomorrow, Gore sees only triumph, which can, of course, be made greater by political morality and leadership vision, by learning to change. L.K. Advani Home Minister of India

India is a rising power destined to play a major role in world affairs.

What President Musharraf has said with regard to terrorism originating from Pakistan and aimed at Jammu and Kashmir seems tactical. It does not indicate any strategic shift of approach. The subject was "My India: the vision for the We have, therefore, made it clear future". The speaker was worthy of the subject. Though L.K. Advani, the strongman among Indian that we shall judge Pakistan's nationalists, was characteristically modest ("I am sincerity and commitment to fight not a philosopher or visionary but a man of day-to- terrorism only after we have seen day political activity"), it was the vision thing that its corresponding action on the dominated his India of tomorrow. Long ago, on the ground. eve of the Independence, he found an inspiring idea of India in the radio broadcast of Sri Aurobindo: "... Our cynicism and scepticism about Pakistan runs so deep that India was arising, not to serve her own material nice-sounding words are no longer interests only, to achieve expansion, greatness, enough. India has been bled by power and prosperity ... and certainly not like others to acquire domination of other peoples, but cross-border terrorism for far too to live also for God and the world as a helper and long. We have also been betrayed far too often. On top of this leader of the whole human race." It may sound experience has come the terrorist Utopian, but then what is a vision "if it does not attack of December 13 on our have the power of a dream?" Terror continues to Parliament by organisations puncture that dream. sheltered and patronised by Pakistan's ISI. It was an attack on It didn't need a remote reminder the day Advani the temple of our democracy ... as spoke. That morning's attack on the USIS in Kolkata provided an eerie immediacy to the vision far as India is concerned, and cold realism of Advani's words. "We in India Pakistan-sponsored cross-border terrorism crossed the Laxman have accepted the reality of Pakistan. However, I Rekha on that day. often wonder whether successive ruling establishments in Pakistan have accepted the reality of a secular, democratic and united India." Doesn't We resolved on that day to put a decisive end to cross-border look like it. For, throughout the last two decades terrorism. We also decided that Pakistan has been sponsoring terrorism against our response to the challenge of India. In 1977, when he visited Pakistan as a minister, he could walk around in Karachi without cross-border terrorism was going any security, he could go to his ancestral home, his to be different from what it has been so far. We took many school, and to the shop where he used to eat his diplomatic, political and other favourite palak pakora. initiatives in the wake of December 13 to convey our A war has "Everything has changed. Today the difference is due to the new evil called resolve to Pakistan. been terrorism." It is not about Jammu and L.K.ADVANI inflicted on us for Kashmir, sorry. "Jammu and Kashmir is a part of India. That is my constitutional oath. Also, PoK is a part of India." Pakistan doesn't accept this two decades. difference in perception. And he told General Pervez Musharraf in Agra that Should our peace should not be held hostage to this perception. Still, people continue to response ask him, "Is there going to be an Indo-Pak war?" His answer is: "A war has been inflicted on us for two decades. Should our response change or not? change? After December 13, the Cabinet has decided enough is enough." Still, "we

accept Pakistan as a sovereign country". And the Advani vision: "A confederation of India and Pakistan." Fareed Zakaria Editor of Newsweek's international editions There are two paths to great powerdom in modern history: the political path and the economic path. India has by and large chosen to attempt the political path ... It is, I believe a treacherous, fragile and ultimately unenduring path.

Fareed Zakaria, the brainy editor of Newsweek's international editions and the former managing editor of Foreign Affairs, the prevailing bible of policy mavens, has already established himself as a formidable conservative intellectual in the American ideas market. At the session on "Security and terror: How can India and its neighbours cope with it?", he was not kind to India, still steeped in The old stereotypes and new illusions. greatest "During the 1990s, the world we had cultures come to understand was a world are the described by globalisation ... and ones that politically there was a sense that the were able 1990s represented the end of history." to blend The paradigm has shifted. Is India with the aware? He doesn't think so. "Stop world. going alone. The world community is extending an offer. Work with the rest of the world," he said. Zakaria said that Pakistan after President Musharraf's landmark January 12 speech had made India's Kashmir policy that much easier. It was time Delhi responded to political extremism and violence. "The Kashmiris have been denied political and economic opportunities for too long." His formula: modernise the society. His co-panelist, Naresh Chandra, argued for a stronger legal framework to deal with terrorism.

The much more difficult path is to modernise one's economy, to modernise one's politics, one's society and this path has always seemed much less attractive, I would not say this to India but to the foreign policy elites of India ... that has been to my mind one of the great tragedies of India's role in the world over the last half century. This is a new opportunity. You have the attention of the world, you have the attention of the US. The point is to do something with it. And that requires diplomacy, balancing acts ... seizing this opportunity and not being held back by phobias and encrusted Jaswant Singh ideologies of the past. External Affairs Minister of India FAREED ZAKARIA

As usual, Jaswant Singh was more professorial than pragmatic while elaborating on the "new frontiers of diplomacy", his historical reference points varying from Lord Curzon to Napoleon the Great to Ibn Khaldum to the Mughal decay to the Battle of Plassey. Take this: "What are we witnessing? Not certainly the end of history, but without doubt the beginning of the end of a phase of political geography of the earth. Physical frontiers are not by any means irrelevant, they are, in any event, now largely inviolate. Map-making has come to an end, well, almost ... A certain fixity has arrived in the frontier geography of the globe. But change

Mapmaking has come to an end, almost. But change persists, in other spheres.

persists, in other spheres, though. And that is where our new frontiers lie." So goodbye Mr Cartographer, and welcome the diplomatist of change. Singh was less abstract during the interactive session. He even disagreed with Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Farooq Abdullah, who advocated that both India and Pakistan accept the Line of Control as the boundary to settle the Kashmir issue. "I am a servant of Parliament, whose resolution on the issue is explicit. Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir is a part of India. This has to be recognised by Pakistan." On the General's speech, he was more sarcastic than enthusiastic: "Most of what the good General said related to reforms within Pakistan ... a step long overdue ... well, good luck to him ... It is not for me to judge how a military dictator reforms his society and how fast ... He remains a military dictator although some of you refer to him as a president, which creates an illusion." The reality is: "A constantly new frontier of diplomacy is the territory of change ... that is what our diplomacy has to conquer". Maybe the soldier can relax, the diplomatist is at his idealistic best. Ashraf Jehangir Qazi and J.N. Dixit Pakistani High Commissioner to India and Former Indian Foreign Secretary It was a kind of Indo-Pak face off with two diplomats in combat positionsMusharraf's Ashraf Jehangir Qazi and J.N. Dixit. Though they had the most difficult speech was question to answer-"Can India and Pakistan be friends?"-both were eager momentous to play down the antagonist's role. For Qazi, the grammar of friendship but it has to was there in Musharraf's "historic speech" of January 12. He said it was be now India's turn to respond to Musharraf's "pronouncement" by entering translated into a self-sustained, negotiated settlement on all bilateral issues. The two on the nuclear neighbours could not afford to remain foes as the "survival ground. imperative will get us going". "We hope that India takes note of actions on the ground ... Take your time. Do not question our sincerity. Do not move the goal posts." Qazi's offering was an abridged version of Musharraf's. Dixit was not all that optimistic. He agreed with Qazi that Kashmir was "central to the existence of India". The General's speech was "momentous", he agreed there too. But it was for Pakistan to get it translated speedily on to the ground. Difficult, for Pakistan still suffers from a "crisis of collective identity" as it is yet to come to terms with its identity as an Islamic republic. He had some advice for the Indian leadership too: stop being preachy towards Pakistan, accept it for what it is. And he reminded Qazi's boss: "Kashmir can't run in your veins, it is not historically or biologically correct."

India's political process is the biggest hurdle to attaining a high rate of economic growth. All political parties oppose whenever or wherever they are in opposition what they do when they are in the government. Populism has become endemic because there are elections round the yearpanchayat, municipal, assembly or parliamentary. The time has come for all political parties to put an end to competitive populism. People should expose politicians and parties indulging in populism ... We also have to learn to rise above vested interests. Every interest group wants its concerns to be addressed first, even at the expense of others. India will be a changed nation if we learn to stand in queue. YASHWANT SINHA

Yashwant Sinha & Stanley Fischer Finance Minister of India and Senior Advisor to Managing Director, International Monetary Fund How can India break out of the Third World? That was the poser put to Yashwant Sinha and Stanley Fischer. Sinha was candid and circumspect. He warned that poor governance is a great danger looming ahead-both at the Centre and state levels. Unless the quality of governance is improved, the people would suffer. He suggested an all-party initiative to improve governance. He counted two more imperatives to India's advancement: improved efficiency in resource use, and a faster and better adaptation to globalisation. Ideas drive economic growth and India should be able to adopt a good idea generated anywhere in the world. He asked the industry not to persist with the demand for protection and get ready for tougher global competition.

The Indophile Fischer, who delivered his last speech as an International Monetary Fund official at the conclave and will join CitiBank soon, delved on five key areas of action for Indiaembracing globalisation, structural reforms in product and labour markets, education, strengthening of the financial sector and fiscal consolidation. The measures he suggested would tax any policymaker. But he was sure that it can be done, and it must be done. His warning: be ready for tomorrow, for tomorrow will come. Farooq Abdullah Chief Minister, Jammu and Kashmir Farooq Abdullah was emotionally bold in his keynote dinner speech on the inaugural day: the Line of Control (loc) should be converted into the international border between India and Pakistan. But the Indian leadership didn't take the initiative, he complained. Former foreign secretary J.N. Dixit corrected him: the government had proposed the conversion twicefirst during the V.P. Singh regime and the second time when P.V. Narasimha Rao was the prime minister. Abdullah then wondered why India didn't cross the loc during Kargil. Again, he was corrected, this time by former army chief General V.P. Malik: India was prepared, but the decision against crossing was a political decision, and was perhaps justified.

The LoC should be converted into the international border.

Poor governance is a great danger looming ahead.

Laurence Brahm and C. Dasgupta China Specialist and Former Indian Ambassador to China The reforms programme undertaken in the wake of the balance of payments crisis in the early 1990s reawakened what Keynes called the 'animal spirits' of India's entrepreneurs and gave a sharp boost to growth. But that economic momentum has not been maintained ... I have seen what happens to too many countries in the phase in which India is now-in which the government is borrowing heavily and few adverse macroeconomic consequences are visible to take any comfort from the present fiscal situation ... India doesn't need somebody from Washington D.C. to come and tell what to do. Indian policymakers know fully well about the important impediments to stronger growth. As to how to do what India has to do, I would say what I had said a decade: 'Just do it.' STANLEY FISCHER

Speaking for China is one of the easiest of jobs. Its spectacular economic performance speaks for itself. But Laurence Brahm made good of his job by highlighting how political pragmatism has underpinned China's economic miracle. At a session on "How will Indian and China stack up?" he clarified that the driving force behind the economic revolution is political foresight. Political Exploding the myth that China is a pragmatism communist nation, he said as far has back as 1987 China had officially underpinned renounced communism for socialism China's and in 1992 Deng Xiaoping had economic converted China into a "socialist miracle. market economy". These changes were not just cosmetic, but were associated with basic changes in economic policies. One of Deng's lessons to present Chinese premier Zhu Rongji was that planning and market were two tools of resource allocation, not of ideology. It's such pragmatism that transformed China from a country where people lined up for food, had to get a licence for bicycles and did not own TV sets to a country that is today the world's largest producer of TV sets and many other goods.

Still does China pose a threat to India? No, for a threat is defined by hostile intentions plus military capability, says Chandrashekhar Dasgupta. But there are still considerable strategic risks involved in the Indo-Chinese relationship. Contingency plans will be required in the eventuality of political instability, he said. A bigger Tiananmen Square maybe. Bimal Jalan & Anil Ambani Governor, Reserve Bank of India and Managing Director, Reliance Industries A virtual death of geographic distances with the collapse in transport and WTO is an communication costs, a phenomenal rise of the role of services and opportunity speedier capital movement are three global changes of the last decade that and India Bimal Jalan thinks have enhanced India's growth potential immensely. has to turn India's destiny is now truly in its own hands, he said during the session on it to its India and the World Trade Organization (WTO). He was of the view that advantage. strategic issues must be distinguished from tactical ones in India's dealing in WTO. Anil Ambani categorically said WTO is an opportunity, not a threat. But to turn

WTO agreements to our benefit, the government has to do a lot-from improving the quality and reducing the cost of infrastructure to cutting interest rates. Ambani wondered why those who rightly demand competitiveness and efficiency from the industry, don't demand the same from the government. Arun Jaitley and Digvijay Singh Law and Company Affairs Minister of India Chief Minister, Madhya Pradesh From the time when an MP's letter was needed to get an out-of-turn allotment of HMT watches to the profusion of choices for most consumer products, the Indian economy has come far enough not to be apologetic about the reforms. Starting on that note, Arun Jaitley wondered if democracy is a roadblock to reforms and whether Indians are pro-reform. At a session on "Doing business in India: The political dimension", he said politicians are the ones who market reforms and the way to create a larger constituency for reforms is by marketing success stories like the telecom reforms. He advised politicians to choose between their legacy or longevity. Digvijay Singh was equally pragmatic. He suggested the prime minister should call an all-party meeting to end populism, which is stifling reforms.

The way to create a larger constituency for reforms is to market success stories.

MODEL MUSE: Laxmi (left) with Jon (centre) After so many hours of brainstorming, everyone needed a festive night of the senses. The gala fusion evening at Ashok Hotel was exactly that-from the fusion of ideas to the fusion of arts. The extravaganza of sight and sound could not have been more extravagant, stretching from Anand Jon's haute couture display to the music concert of Ganesh, Kumaresh and Taufiq. Anand Jon, the name itself is a fusion, and the boy from Thiruvananthapuram who has made it big in New York, was having fun on the ramp, and one of the models was Padma Laxmi, Salman Rushdie's newest muse, apart from being other things. The fun was all about the western made exotic by the Oriental. For the musical trio, the tune of the night was wonder, bliss and peace, and the wonder was there in the appreciation of the chief guest, Al Gore. Even the hotel shed its sarkari image that night to party in great style. Fusion of the Senses