Editorial

The last issue of this year’s India Quarterly brings together articles on some of the leading issues being debated today as well as some on which a degree of reflection could inform future policy.

The UN’s recent Report of the Independent Fact-Finding Mission on Myanmar has come on the heels of a humanitarian disaster in Myanmar. Yet many governments across the world have been slow to condemn the forced migration of almost 700,000 Rohingyas and to question the policies that led to this. For most the issue is lost in the mists of domestic politics. Our first article sheds some light and places the issue in context. It argues that since the transition to democratic politics in 2011, the current regime has built on the colonial antecedents of ethnic identification and classification policies in its struggle for power. The use of ethnic definitions to deny citizenship rights to the Rohingyas has been part of an organised and institutionalised process. The state has created a pattern of violence in the Rakhine province, a pattern in which a large section of its population has been rendered stateless. This is a situation which the regime in Myanmar is not likely to reverse, a situation that has all the seeds of intra- and inter-state conflict and is a potential breeding ground for recruitment to the Islamic State. As nativist concerns increasingly inform political debate across South Asia, the plight of the Rohingyas strikes a cautionary note.

In the past, situations like the one in Myanmar, where international bodies have weighed in against a regime, have led to calls for regime change and military interventions on humanitarian grounds and the Responsibility to Protect (R2P). While the Rohingya exodus has not yet prompted this call, there is place for caution on the use of the R2P, as another article argues in the context of Libya. The author points out that the universalisation of human rights misunderstands and misinterprets international law and thereby rationalises military intervention. Even as the world needs to respond to crimes against civilian populations, the justifications for intervention have not always been clear and the objectives rarely met.

The sense of disorder and impending conflict from the global migration crisis has been compounded by challenges to multilateral institutions, not least by US President Donald Trump. The third article notes that institutions like the WTO, which steered emerging economies to economic globalisation and prosperity, are being weakened, multilateral agreements are being rewritten to cater to Trump’s ‘America First’ agenda and trade wars between the two largest economies of the world have become a reality. It questions whether the current US policy is warranted in terms of America’s economic performance and what Trump hopes to gain by retreating from a position of global leadership.

In India, the global reordering of the last decade has led to debates over its accommodation within the US-led liberal international order. This is reminiscent of the debates around China’s rise two decades ago. An article that looks at which variables will facilitate accommodation concludes that notwithstanding the fact that India is more or less comfortable in the liberal world order and shares its values and threat perceptions, accommodation will finally rest on how it manages pressures from the US to balance China and manages China’s anxiety over its developing relations with the US.

Two further articles look at India’s relations with its neighbours through the prism of the Ganges River negotiations and the development of its space programme and the initiative of a SAARC satellite. The Ganges River negotiations with Bangladesh, a bilateral exercise over a protracted period, indicate that domestic politics, international law and leadership play an equal part in coming to agreements on water sharing. As the author argues, the ‘solution of a river dispute depends on the comparative bargaining capabilities of riparians on their other contentious matters’. Consequently, agreements or disagreements on river water sharing often involve, although separately, complex negotiations on other issues as well, which has been evident from the experience with Bangladesh with each state playing to its strengths.

This issue includes seven book reviews which reflect, in large part, the debates and issues which are likely to have a continuing impact on policy making in India.