India in the midst of failed states Dr P.C. Alexander* | The Asian Age | November 22, 2006
http://www.asianage.com/ A few months ago the Washington based Foreign Policy published its grading of 146 countries according to the degree of their failure as states. While India is ranked 97 in the list, a distressing feature of this survey for India is that almost all its neighbours are in the category of failed states. Among the top 25 failed states, Pakistan ranks 9, Afghanistan 10, Burma 18, Bangladesh 19, Nepal 20 and Sri Lanka 25. The dangers of having so many failed states as close neighbours are obvious, but equally disturbing is the fact that some of the factors which caused their failure are relevant in India also. A state is not considered a failed one merely because its record in socio-economic development may be poor. The category of failed states would include countries whose institutions of governance have become incapable of discharging the basic duties expected of a state, such as ensuring peace and security, human rights and dignity for all citizens and striving for the development of the full potential of their people. Some of the failed states have been plagued by persistent internecine conflicts based on racial, tribal, religious or linguistic differences, and in some cases, the state machinery itself has been playing a partisan role in such conflicts. The causes for failure of states in India's neighbourhood vary widely, but some common factors can be easily identified. The most important among them is the fact that the institutions of democracy have not been given a fair chance by the machinations of some selfish and unscrupulous leaders to take firm roots in these countries. The overweening ambitions for power on the part of the Army leadership and total lack of commitment of some politicians to democratic ideologies have been the main reasons for the failure of the state in Pakistan and Bangladesh. The military dictators who seized power in these countries tried to acquire democratic credentials through sham elections which only led to the loss of credibility for the institutions of democracy, while some politicians who came to power in the intervals between military regimes were more dictatorial than the military dictators. It should not be forgotten that Zulfikar Ali Bhutto even assumed to himself the powers of the chief martial law administrator of Pakistan while holding the office of Prime Minister. General Zia ul Haq who seized power from Bhutto tried to build a political base for himself by stoking the dangerous fires of religious fundamentalism and publicly encouraging the growth of jihadi and Taliban movements. He cleverly exploited Pakistan's position as a frontline state fighting the ill- conceived incursions of the Soviets into Afghanistan and secured liberal supplies of cash and weapons from the United States to organise the jihadis and mujahideen for the fight. The Soviet Union was defeated in Afghanistan, but in this process the genie of international terrorism was also let loose in Pakistan and Afghanistan. This ultimately led to the creation of the monster of international terrorism which has become the most dangerous threat to peace and security in the whole world today. Democracy was throttled almost at its birth in Bangladesh by the coup staged by the Army and the assassination of Mujibur Rahman, the founder of the state. Here again the military leaders resorted to the game of acquiring democratic legitimacy through forming political parties of their own and themselves becoming political leaders. The animosities created by such violent seizure of power have made political parties in Bangladesh behave more like bitter enemies than as rivals for political power. The casualty obviously has been the credibility of the institution of democracy. A factor common to most states in India's neighbourhood is that the centre has been steadily losing its hold on the periphery at several points. In Pakistan, the frontier areas of Baluchistan and North- West Frontier Province have been slipping out of the control of Islamabad for some years now. In Sri Lanka, a mutually destructive civil war has been raging between the forces of the government and of the LTTE, and certain regions where the Tamil population is in the majority are no longer under the rule of the Sri Lankan state. Most of rural Nepal has been in a similar situation for long years because of the dominance of the Maoist forces enforcing their brand of "people's government" in these places. The writ of the government in Kathmandu hardly ran in areas outside the urban centres and the Maoists have been running an undisguised parallel government in such areas. The recent agreement arrived at between the government and the Maoist groups have opened up new opportunities for peace in the state and we in India can only wish that Nepal will be pulled back from the brink of anarchy. One should also hope that the Naxalites in India will not derive any wrong conclusions from the proposed settlement in Nepal. All pervasive corruption has been a common feature of life in all the failed states in India's neighbourhood. It is important to note that all these countries with the exception of Sri Lanka have also been included in the category of the most corrupt countries of the world in the surveys on corruption conducted by Transparency International in recent years. It will be idle to debate whether corruption contributed to the failure of these states or whether the failure of the states contributed to the corruption. The important fact to be noted is that these states had not even made serious attempts for arresting the steep rise of corruption. It has been stated at the beginning of this article that some of the factors which have caused the failure of the countries in our neighbourhood are relevant to India also. The most important among these are the tolerance to corruption in our society and the rather non-serious attitude of the people in general to the rise of the Naxalite menace in several parts of the country. Corruption in India may not be on the same scale as it is in some of the countries of our neighbourhood according to the assessment of organisations like the Transparency International, but the fact that it has been steadily draining our strength cannot be denied. It may be of some satisfaction to know that the latest assessment of Transparency International ranks India at 70 in a list of 183 countries, as against 88 in 159 countries in 2005. But 70 is certainly not a rank in honesty index to feel comfortable about. We have also to take note of the shameful fact that India has been assessed as the No. 1 bribe payer in a list of 30 countries this year based on the readiness to pay bribes to secure business or to clinch contracts. If the problems of corruption and of Naxalite terror and insurgency in India are not firmly and quickly dealt with, the credibility of the institutions of democracy about which we feel legitimately proud, may get seriously eroded. *Dr P.C. Alexander was the Governor of Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu and is at present a Member of Parliament (RS)
