Coonoor conundrum

When Chinese Special Representative Dai Bingguo arrives for yet another round of border talks at Coonoor over the weekend, he might be forgiven for wishing, if only for a fleeting moment, that it were Brajesh Mishra of the NDA Government sitting across the table rather than the UPA’s M.K. Narayanan. Thereby hangs the tragic tale of India’s current diplomacy towards China.

After seven rounds of talks with the UPA government, it is rather disconcerting to recognise that China might be losing faith in the capacity of the current dispensation in New Delhi to negotiate purposefully on a border settlement. After the first two rounds held between Dai and Mishra that followed then prime minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s visit to China in June 2003 had raised hopes for an early resolution of the boundary dispute.

The Congress Party’s lack of political courage and the Left’s inability to intervene imaginatively on the foreign policy front have meant that Communist China today misses negotiating with the right-wing BJP. Neither the Congress-led government’s posturing on “Asian solidarity” nor the Left rhetoric against imperialism have much value for China, as it finds the UPA government unable to fast-track the boundary talks. The pragmatic Chinese would rather have a hardball negotiation aimed at a win-win solution that Vajpayee seemed so capable of engineering.

The aimless drift which is beginning to grip the Congress Party on domestic policy has also begun to envelop its diplomacy towards the US, Pakistan and China. On all the three fronts, the UPA government had inherited an unprecedented legacy of historic openings. The Vajpayee government had done much of the heavy lifting and had the political spunk to move beyond the sterile posturing that the previous governments had trapped themselves into with the three most important accounts of Indian foreign policy. Whether it was the innovative nuclear diplomacy towards the US, the construction of a new peace process with Pakistan, or a breakthrough in thinking in the border talks with China, it was Vajpayee who let India loose from the burdens of the past.

The UPA government is now dithering on the nuclear deal with the US, missing the big moment on Pakistan, and dropping the ball on the border talks with China. If political hand wringing is a familiar trademark of the Congress, the Left’s political stupor on Pakistan and China takes one’s breath away. The Indian communists were quick to join the bandwagon against the nuclear deal with the US and threaten the government with dire consequences. But they have had no time to exert pressure on the government to consolidate the prospects for peace with either Pakistan or China. The Left’s interest in foreign policy does not seem to stretch beyond castigating India’s ties with the US and Israel. On both Pakistan and China, the government could have benefited from a communist intervention against the entrenched establishment conservatism that is blocking meaningful action.

... contd.

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