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Professor, strategic thinker, author and commentator

Cyberwar: A New Asymmetrical Frontier

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China’s Cyber-Warriors

(c) Project Syndicate, 2010

The world now accepts that protecting our atmosphere, hydrosphere, lithosphere, and biosphere – the “global commons” – is the responsibility of all countries. The same norm must apply to cyberspace, which is critical to our everyday life, economic well-being, and security.

At a time when cyber attacks are increasing worldwide, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was right to declare that an attack on one nation’s computer networks “can be an attack on all.” Indeed, the attacks are a reminder that, as a new part of the global commons, cyberspace already has come under threat.

Cyberspace must be treated, along with outer space, international waters, and international airspace, as property held in common for the good of all. And, like ocean piracy and airplane hijacking, cyber-crime cannot be allowed to go unpunished if we are to safeguard our common assets and collective interests.

Naming China among a handful of countries that have stepped up Internet censorship, Clinton warned that “a new information curtain is descending across much of the world.” Her statement, with its allusion to the Cold War-era Iron Curtain, amounted to an implicit admission that the central assumption guiding US policy on China since the 1990’s – that assisting China’s economic rise would usher in greater political openness there – has gone awry.

The strategy of using market forces and the Internet to open up a closed political system simply is not working. Indeed, the more economic power China has accumulated, the more adept it has become in extending censorship to cyberspace.

If anything, China has proven that a country can blend control, coercion, and patronage to stymie the Internet’s politically liberalizing elements. Through discreet but tough controls, Beijing pursues a policy of wai song, nei jin – relaxed on the outside, vigilant internally.

Google is now crying foul over “ a highly sophisticated and targeted attack on our corporate infrastructure originating from China.” But, despite itscorporate motto – “Don’t be evil” – Google itself was instrumental in aiding online censorship in China, having custom-built a search engine that purges all references and Web sites that the Chinese government considers inappropriate. Now Google itself has become a victim of China’s growing cyber prowess, in the same way that appeasement of Hitler boomeranged onto France and Britain.

China deploys tens of thousands of “ cyber police” to block Web sites, patrol cyber-cafes, monitor the use of cellular telephones, and track down Internet activists. But the threat to the new global commons comes not from what China does domestically. Rather, it comes from the way in which the know-how that China has gained in fashioning domestic cyber oversight is proving invaluable to it in its efforts to engage in cyber intrusion across its frontiers.

Canadian researchers have discovered a vast Chinese surveillance system called “GhostNet,” which can compromise computers in organizations abroad through booby-trapped e-mail messages that automatically scan and transfer documents to a digital storage facility in China. This is what happened when computers of the Tibetan government-in-exile in Dharamsala, India, were attacked last year.

India’s national security adviser recently complained that his office was targeted yet again by hackers. “People seem to be fairly sure it was the Chinese,” he said. Officials in Germany, Britain, and the US have acknowledged that hackers believed to be from China also have broken into their government and military networks.

The state-sponsored transnational cyber threat is at two levels. The first is national, with the hackers largely interested in two objectives. One is to steal secrets and gain an asymmetrical advantage over another country. Cyber intrusion in peacetime allows the prowler to read the content and understand the relative importance of different computer networks so that it knows what to disable in a conflict situation. The other objective is commercial: to pilfer intellectual property.

The second level of cyber threat is against chosen individuals. The most common type of intrusion is an attempt to hack into e-mail accounts. The targets also can face Trojan-horse attacks by e-mail intended to breach their computers and allow the infiltrators to corrupt or transfer files remotely.

To be sure, if a cyber attack is camouflaged, it is not easy to identify the country from which it originated. Through the use of so-called “false-flag espionage” and other methods, attacks can be routed through the computers of a third country. Just as some Chinese pharmaceutical firms exported to Africa spurious medicines with “Made in India” labels – a fact admitted by the Chinese government – some Chinese hackers are known to have routed their cyber intrusion through computers in Russia, Iran, Cuba, and other countries.

But, like their comrades in the pharmaceutical industry, such hackers tend to leave telltale signs. Then there are many cases in which the attacks have originated directly from China.

It seems unlikely that these hackers, especially those engaged in cyber espionage, pilferage, and intimidation, are private individuals with no links to the Chinese government. It is more likely that they are tied to the People’s Liberation Army. In war, this irregular contingent of hackers would become the vanguard behind which the PLA takes on the enemy. Systematic cyber attacks constitute a new frontier of asymmetrical warfare at a time when the world already confronts other unconventional threats, including transnational terrorism.

With national security and prosperity now dependent on the safekeeping of cyberspace, cybercrime must be effectively countered as an international priority. If not, cyberspace will become the new global-commons battlefield.

Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2010.
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Cyber-terrorism: War by other means

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A new war, a new frontier

India’s abilities to ward off attacks on its computer networks and other infrastructure are basic at best

Brahma Chellaney Mint, January 22, 2010

 

 

Even though India showcases its world-class information-technology and knowledge skills and civilian space assets, it lags far behind China’s cyberspace capabilities. Worse, it has developed no effective means to shield its rapidly expanding cyber infrastructure from the pervasive attacks that are now being carried out both in search of competitive intelligence and to unnerve the Indian establishment.

In peacetime, China is intimidating India through intermittent cyber warfare, even as it steps up military pressure along the Himalayan frontier. In a conflict, China could cripple major Indian systems through a wave of cyber attacks. With cyber intrusions against Indian government, defence and commercial targets ramping up since 2007, the protection of sensitive computer networks must become a national-security priority.

The cyber threat is at two levels. The first is national, as manifest from the attacks already carried out against India’s National Infomatics Centre (NIC) systems, the office of the national security adviser and the ministry of external affairs. By scanning and mapping some of India’s major official computer systems, China has demonstrated a capacity to steal secrets and gain an asymmetrical advantage. Cyber intrusion in peacetime allows China to read the content and understand the relative importance of different Indian networks so that it knows what to disable in a war situation.

The second level of cyber threat is against chosen individuals. Such targets in India range from functionaries of the Tibetan government-in-exile and Tibetan activists to Indian writers and others critical of China. The most-common type of intrusion is an attempt to hack into the e-mail accounts. The targets also can face the so-called Trojan horse attacks by e-mail that are intended to breach their computers and allow the infiltrators to remotely remove, corrupt or transfer files.

To be sure, it is not easy to identify the country from where a particular cyber attack originated if it is camouflaged. Through the use of so-called false flag espionage and other methods, attacks can be routed through the computers of a third country. Just as some Chinese pharmaceutical firms have exported to Africa spurious medicines with Made-in-India label — a fact admitted by Beijing — some Chinese hackers are known to have rerouted their cyber intrusion through computers in Russia, Iran, Cuba and other countries. But like their comrades in the pharmaceutical industry, such hackers tend to leave telltale signs that allow investigators in the victim countries to trace the origin of the disguised attacks to China. Then there are many cases where the attacks have directly originated in China.

So the reasonable supposition at the highest levels of the Indian government is that most cyber attacks have been carried out from China. That is also the conclusion Google reached when it reported “a highly sophisticated and targeted attack on our corporate infrastructure originating from China” and threatened to end “our business operations in China.” Cyber strikes are just the latest example of how China’s actions — from manipulation of the renminbi’s value to the large-scale dumping of artificially cheap goods — are beginning to rankle other nations, undercutting its claims of a “peaceful rise.”   

Let’s be clear: If China can carry out sophisticated cyber attacks on at least 34 U.S. companies, including Google, as part of a concerted effort to pilfer valuable intellectual property, it certainly has the capability to outwit the elementary safeguards found in most Indian computer systems. Google today is crying foul but it was instrumental is aiding online censorship controls in a country that is most fearful of the free flow of information. It custom-built for China a search engine that expurgates the search results of references and Web sites that Beijing considers inappropriate. Now, Google itself has become a victim of China’s growing cyber prowess, in the way the appeasement of Hitler had recoiled on France and Britain.

Hackers in China have been carefully studying different software programmes to exploit their flaws. For example, hackers have found openings that allow them to infect victims’ computers through booby-trapped documents stored in the Acrobat Reader format. Opening such a document allows the hackers to automatically scan and transfer computer-stored files to a digital storage facility in China as part of a vast surveillance system dubbed “Ghostnet” by Canadian researchers. This is what happened when computers of the Tibetan government-in-exile in Dharamsala were methodically attacked last year. Officials in Germany, Britain and the U.S. have acknowledged that their government and military networks also have been broken into by Chinese hackers.

It seems unlikely that the hackers, especially those engaged in systematic cyber espionage and intimidation, are private individuals with no links to the Chinese government. It is more likely that the hackers are tied to the People’s Liberation Army. In war, this irregular contingent of hackers would become the vanguard behind which the regular PLA divisions take on the enemy.

India already is on the frontlines of one mode of asymmetrical warfare: Terrorism. That type of warfare has traumatized and bled India for long, with the country exposing itself as a soft state through the absence of an effective response. Now a new frontier of asymmetrical warfare is being opened against India, not by state-sponsored non-state actors but by state actors. It cannot fight two asymmetrical wars simultaneously, one against terrorists and extremists and the other against a state flouting international norms and wedded to cybercrime. The two asymmetrical wars indeed are a reminder that unconventional threats cannot be defeated through conventional forces alone. That is why India should treat the growing cyber attacks as a wake-up call to plug its vulnerabilities by developing appropriate countermeasures on a priority basis.

Brahma Chellaney is professor of strategic studies at the Centre for Policy Research in New Delhi. Comments are welcome at theirview@livemint.com

Sinhalese war idols cross political swords

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Sri Lanka’s warhorses fail at peace

Neither presidential candidate shows signs of addressing the country’s dangerously mono-ethnic national identity


Two celebrated heroes who, as president and army chief, helped end Sri Lanka’s long and brutal civil war against the Tamil Tigers are now crossing political swords. Whichever candidate wins Sri Lanka’spresidential election on January 26 will have to lead that small but strategically located island-nation in a fundamentally different direction – from making war, as it has done for more than a quarter-century, to making peace through ethnic reconciliation and power sharing.

Sri Lanka, almost since independence in 1948, has been racked by acrimonious rivalry between the majority Sinhalese and the minority Tamils, who make up 12% of today’s 21.3 million population. Now the country is being divided by the political rivalry between two Sinhalese war idols, each of whom wants to be remembered as the true leader who crushed the Tamil Tiger guerrillas.

The antagonism between President Mahinda Rajapaksa and the now-retired General Sarath Fonseka has been in the making for months. No sooner had Sri Lanka’s military crushed the Tamil Tigers – who ran a de facto state for more than two decades in the north and east – than Rajapaksa removed Fonseka as army chief to appoint him to the new, largely ceremonial post of chief of defence staff.

Once the four-star general was moved to the new position, his relationship with the president began to sour. After rumours swirled of an army coup last fall, the president, seeking military assistance should the need arise, alerted India.

When Rajapaksa decided last November to call an early election to help cash in on his war-hero status with the Sinhalese, he had a surprise waiting for him: anticipating the move, Fonseka submitted his resignation so that he could stand against the incumbent as the common opposition candidate. In his bitter resignation letter, the general accused Rajapaksa of "unnecessarily placing Indian troops on high alert" and failing to "win the peace in spite of the fact that the army under my leadership won the war".

Now the political clash between the two men – both playing the Sinhalese nationalist card while wooing the Tamil minority – has overshadowed the serious economic and political challenges confronting Sri Lanka.

Years of war have left Sri Lanka’s economy strapped for cash. Despite a $2.8bn International Monetary Fund bailout package, the economy continues to totter, with inflation soaring and public-sector salary disputes flaring. The government, desperate to earn foreign exchange, has launched a major campaign to attract international tourists.

But a vulnerable economy dependent on external credit has only helped increase pressure on Sri Lanka to investigate allegations of war crimes and crimes against humanity. This was a war with no witnesses, as the government barred independent journalists and observers from the war zone. Yet the UN estimates that more than 7,000 noncombatants were killed in the final months of the war as government forces overran Tamil Tiger bases.

How elusive the peace dividend remains can be seen from the government’s decision to press ahead with the expansion of an already-large military. The Sri Lankan military is bigger in troop strength than the British and Israeli militaries, having expanded fivefold since the late 1980’s to more than 200,000 troops today. In victory, that strength is being raised further, in the name of "eternal vigilance".

With an ever-larger military machine backed by village-level militias, civil society has been the main loser. Sweeping emergency regulations remain in place, arming the security forces with expansive powers of search, arrest, and seizure of property. Individuals can still be held in unacknowledged detention for up to 18 months.

Now calls are growing for the government to surrender the special powers that it acquired during the war and end the control of information as an instrument of state policy. Fonseka has promised to curtail the almost unchecked powers that the president now enjoys and free thousands of young Tamil men suspected of rebel links. Rajapaksa, for his part, has eased some of the travel restrictions in the Tamil-dominated north after opening up sealed camps where more than 270,000 Tamils were interned for months. More than 100,000 still remain in those camps.

Neither of the two main candidates, though, has promised to tackle the country’s key challenge: transforming Sri Lanka from a unitary state into a federation that grants provincial and local autonomy. After all, the issues that triggered the civil war were rooted in the country’s post-independence moves to fashion a mono-ethnic national identity, best illustrated by the 1956 "Sinhalese only" language policy and the 1972 constitution’s elimination of a ban on discrimination against minorities. Sri Lanka is the only country, apart from Malaysia, with affirmative action for the majority ethnic community.

As the incumbent with control over the state machinery and media support, Rajapaksa has the edge in the election. But, with the fractured opposition rallying behind Fonseka and a moderate Tamil party also coming out in support of him, this election may produce a surprise result.

Whichever "hero" wins, however, building enduring peace and stability in war-scarred Sri Lanka requires a genuine process of national reconciliation and healing. The country’s future hinges on it.

• Brahma Chellaney, a former member of India’s National Security Council, is professor of strategic studies at the Centre for Policy Research in New Delhi and the author of Asian Juggernaut: The Rise of China, India and Japan.

• Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2010.

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media Limited 2010

A rising power hides behind the poor

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A Smoking Dragon in Sheep’s Clothing

By BRAHMA CHELLANEY

International Herald Tribune, January 14, 2010

NEW DELHI — China presents itself as a schizophrenic power: a developing country on select international issues, but in other matters a rising superpower with new muscular confidence that supposedly is in the same league as the United States.

At the recent Copenhagen climate-change summit, China was the former: It loudly emphasized its membership in the developing world and quietly used poor countries, especially from Africa, to raise procedural obstacles in the negotiations.

Make no mistake: China, the world’s largest polluter whose carbon emissions are growing at the fastest rate, was the principal target at Copenhagen. But China cleverly deflected pressure by hiding behind small, poor countries and forging a negotiating alliance with India and two other major developing countries, Brazil and South Africa, who together are known as the BASIC bloc.

China escaped without making a binding commitment on carbon-emissions cuts, at least for now. But carbon-light India, with per-capita emissions just 26 percent of the world average, undercut its interest by getting bracketed with the world’s largest polluter.

Let’s be clear: On climate change, trade liberalization, currency and related issues, China — despite its emergence as a financial and trade Goliath — defines itself as a developing country and expediently seeks to join hands with poor nations so it can shield practices like manipulating the value of its currency, the renminbi, maintaining an abnormally high trade surplus, restricting goods manufactured by foreign companies in China from entering its markets, and continuing to bring on line two new coal-fired power plants every week.

But on political and security issues, it sees itself as without a peer in Asia, and is greatly enthused by the idea of a U.S-China “Group of Two.”

If a U.S.-China global diarchy were needed on any issue, it is on countering accelerated global warming. But on that issue, as Copenhagen revealed, China is not the self-touted rising superpower but a scheming power that uses poor states as a front to obstruct progress through procedural wrangling.

To impede decision-making, it sent only a vice foreign minister to meetings set for the level of heads of state. And even though it hid behind the developing nations, Western leaders did blow its cover after the summit, with the British prime minister, Gordon Brown, taking the lead to call it the principal wrecker at Copenhagen.

With climate talks set to resume this year, India has to learn the lesson from its folly at Copenhagen in joining hands with the wrong power. With its carbon-intensive, manufacturing-based economy, China’s per-capita carbon emissions are four times higher than India’s. China now is responsible for 24 percent of global carbon emissions with 19.8 percent of the world population, but India’s current contribution does not match even half its population size.

China also rejects India’s approach that per-capita emission levels and historic contributions to the build-up of greenhouse gases should form the objective criteria for carbon mitigation. China, as the world’s back factory, wants a different formula that marks down carbon intensity linked to export industries.

How much it suits China to be seen in the same class as India on carbon issues than with its real polluting peer, the United States, was made clear by the hurried post-Copenhagen telephone call the Chinese foreign minister made to his Indian counterpart to emphasize continuing Sino-Indian collaboration. But when it comes to global or Asian geopolitics, China insists India (like Japan) is in a junior league.

New Delhi can be sure that when criteria for mitigation action is defined in renewed negotiations, China will work to unduly burden India by insisting that weight should be given to elements other than per-capita emission levels and historic contributions. Having unwittingly aided the Chinese game-plan in Copenhagen, India needs to embark on a correction course.

More broadly, the post-Copenhagen Western attacks on China suggest that Beijing is likely to find it increasingly hard in the future to blunt criticism of its policies and practices by jumping on the developing world’s bandwagon or by claiming to be entitled to a bit of slack as a developing country. After all, China’s practices are hurting poor and rich countries alike.

By keeping its currency ridiculously undervalued and flooding the world markets with artificially cheap goods, China has emerged as a global economic power, with its foreign-exchange coffers overflowing. But its large-scale dumping of goods has throttled competition from other developing countries and added to the economic woes in the developed world by undercutting fiscal stimulus efforts.

Worse, as the chairman of India’s largest engineering company recently complained, China is “systematically killing” manufacturing in India and other developing countries.

The serious global recession has made such unfair or assertive practices less acceptable.

Copenhagen thus was a turning point in that respect. China, the world’s largest and longest-surviving autocracy that still flouts international norms on trade, human rights and currency, is likely to come under greater pressure to fall in line or be seen as a self-serving power whose interests are at odds with the rest of the world — both developed and developing.

Brahma Chellaney is professor of strategic studies at the Center for Policy Research in New Delhi and the author of “On the Frontline of Climate Change: International Security Implications.”

(c) International Herald Tribune and New York Times.

India: The costs of aligning with China

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The India Climate-Change Calculus

Aligning with China only undermines New Delhi’s negotiating position and costs its people dearly

By BRAHMA CHELLANEY

Wall Street Journal, December 31, 2009-January 3, 2010

China has been publicly excoriated by U.S. officials and others for opposing a binding climate-change deal at this month’s United Nations summit in Copenhagen. But the real loser was India.

By aligning itself with China’s negotiating position, India bracketed itself with the world’s largest polluting nation. This tack has been months in the works; back in October, New Delhi signed a five-year memo of understanding with Beijing and agreed, among other things, to present a united front in Copenhagen. Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh went so far as to declare there "is no difference" between the two countries’ negotiating positions.

Yet there is a huge difference in actual emissions. China is the world’s largest polluter, responsible for 24% of global carbon emissions. Most of these emissions are due to China’s economic development path, which has relied heavily on carbon-intensive, manufacturing industries. China’s per-capita carbon emissions are four times higher than India’s, which boasts the lowest per-capita emissions among all-important developing countries, at 26% of the world’s average.

China also doesn’t share India’s basic approach to curbing global warming. New Delhi wants per-capita emission levels and historic contributions to the build-up of greenhouse gases to form the objective criteria for any global carbon mitigation plan. China, as the world’s factory, wants a different formula that discounts carbon intensity linked to export industries.

Nor does India have much in common with other major developing nations, either in its carbon profile or industrial-development levels. For example, in 2007 (the latest figures available) India’s per-capita emissions totalled 1.2 tons; South Africa, 9.4; China, 4.8; and Brazil, 2.1, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

These facts argue for India to align itself with the least developed nations, which have lower emissions profiles. Yet the government of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh entered the Copenhagen negotiations joined at the hip with China, first by agreeing to put up a united front and then by following in Beijing’s footsteps to unveil a voluntary plan to slash its carbon intensity by 2020.

The move forced the U.S. to strike a watered-down deal with the developing-world bloc of Brazil, India, South Africa and China—rather than deal directly with the world’s largest polluter, China. The deal also committed India to "implement mitigation actions" open to "international consultations and analysis." Rather than focus on providing basic services—like electricity and safe drinking water—to the hundreds of millions of poor Indians who desperately need them, Mr. Singh also pledged to slash India’s emissions intensity by 20% "regardless of the outcome" in Copenhagen.

Past experience should have taught India that whenever it has joined hands with China on environmental issues, it has been let down by Beijing’s proclivity to jettison principles in the ruthless pursuit of self-interest. Take the 1989 Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer: China teamed up with India in the negotiations, only to reverse its stance and agree to abide by the protocol if it were compensated for the compliance costs. India was forced to follow suit.

In Copenhagen, India would have done better to delink itself from China and the other two leading developing nations and to encourage the world’s largest polluters—the U.S. and China—to do a deal.

India not only aligned itself with the wrong group, but also it presented itself inadvertently as a major global polluter by making common cause with China, whose developmental path threatens to unleash a carbon tsunami on the world. After all, had the situation in Copenhagen been reversed—with India’s per-capita emissions four times higher than China’s, and with India in the line of international fire—would Beijing have helped provide New Delhi diplomatic cover?

Mr. Chellaney, professor of strategic studies at the Centre for Policy Research in New Delhi, is the author of "On the Frontline of Climate Change: International Security Implications" (Konrad Adenauer Foundation, 2007).

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Strategic landscape in Asia

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THE ASIAN CENTURY

Asia’s Changing Power Dynamics

Brahma Chellaney

Project Syndicate

NEW DELHI – At a time when Asia is in transition, with the specter of a power imbalance looming large, it has become imperative to invest in institutionalized cooperation to reinforce the region’s strategic stability. After all, not only is Asia becoming the pivot of global geopolitical change, but Asian challenges are also playing into international strategic challenges.

Asia’s changing power dynamics are reflected in China’s increasingly assertive foreign policy, the new Japanese government’s demand for an “equal” relationship with the United States, and the sharpening Sino-Indian rivalry, which has led to renewed Himalayan border tensions.

All of this is highlighting America’s own challenges, which are being exacerbated by its eroding global economic preeminence and involvement in two overseas wars. Such challenges dictate greater US-China cooperation to ensure continued large capital inflows from China, as well as Chinese political support on difficult issues ranging from North Korea and Burma to Pakistan and Iran.

But, just when America’s Sino-centric Asia policy became noticeable, Japan put the US on notice that it cannot indefinitely remain a faithful servant of American policies. Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama’s government is seeking to realign foreign policy and rework a 2006 deal for the basing of US military personnel on Okinawa. It also announced an end to its eight-year-old Indian Ocean refueling mission in support of the US-led war in Afghanistan.

Meanwhile, China’s resurrection of its long-dormant claim to the northeastern Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh, and its needling of India over Kashmir (one-fifth of which is under Chinese control), is testing the new US-India global strategic partnership.

The US has chartered a course of tacit neutrality on the Arunachal Pradesh issue — to the delight of China, which aims to leave an international question mark hanging over the legitimacy of India’s control of the Himalayan territory, which is almost three times as large as Taiwan. Indeed, the Obama administration has signaled its intent to abandon elements in its ties with India that could rile China, including a joint military exercise in Arunachal and any further joint naval maneuvers involving Japan or other parties, like Australia.

Yet, the recent Australia-India security agreement, signed during Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s visit to New Delhi, symbolizes the role of common political values in helping to forge an expanding strategic constellation of Asian-Pacific countries. The Indo-Australian agreement received little attention, but such is its significance that it mirrors key elements of Australia’s security accord with Japan – and that between India and Japan. All three of these accords, plus the 2005 US-India defense framework agreement, recognize a common commitment to democracy, freedom, human rights, and the rule of law, and obligate their signatories to work together to build security in Asia.

An Asian geopolitical divide centered on political values would, of course, carry significant implications. And, while Asia – with the world’s fastest-growing markets, fastest-rising military expenditures, and most-volatile hot spots – holds the key to the future global order, its major powers remain at loggerheads.

Central to Asia’s future is the strategic triangle made up of China, India, and Japan. Not since Japan rose to world-power status during the Meiji emperor’s reign in the second half of the nineteenth century has another non-Western power emerged with such potential to alter the world order as China today. Indeed, as the US intelligence community’s 2009 assessment predicted, China stands to affect global geopolitics more profoundly than any other country.

China’s ascent, however, is dividing Asia, and its future trajectory will depend on how its neighbors and other players, like the US, manage its rapidly accumulating power. At present, China’s rising power helps validate American forward military deployments in East Asia. The China factor also is coming handy in America’s efforts to win new allies in Asia.

But, as the US-China relationship deepens in the coming years, the strains in some of America’s existing partnerships could become pronounced. For example, building a stronger cooperative relationship with China is now taking precedence in US policy over the sale of advanced weaponry to Asian allies, lest the transfer of offensive arms provoke Chinese retaliation in another area.

While the European community was built among democracies, the political systems in Asia are so varied – and some so opaque – that building inter-state trust is not easy. In Europe, the bloody wars of the past century have made armed conflict unthinkable today. But in Asia, the wars since 1950 failed to resolve disputes. And, while Europe has built institutions to underpin peace, Asia has yet to begin such a process in earnest.

Never before have China, Japan, and India all been strong at the same time. Today, they need to find ways to reconcile their interests in Asia so that they can coexist peacefully and prosper.

But there can be no denying that these three leading Asian powers and the US have different playbooks: America wants a uni-polar world but a multi-polar Asia; China seeks a multi-polar world but a uni-polar Asia; and Japan and India desire a multi-polar Asia and a multi-polar world.

Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2010.
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India’s strategic partners

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A system of Asian partnerships

India must pursue multiple relationships that can build on each other, as the region’s balance of power changes

Brahma Chellaney

Mint newspaper, January 13, 2010

Asia today is the pivot of global geopolitical change, but its myriad challenges are playing into international strategic challenges. With the world’s fastest growing economies, fastest rising military expenditures, most volatile hot spots and the fiercest resource competition, a resurgent Asia actually holds the key to the future global order.

The reordering of power under way in Asia is apparent from several developments: China’s increasing assertiveness, underscored by a new muscular confidence and penchant for regional brinkmanship; the new Japanese government’s demand for a more equal alliance with the US and its interest in creating an East Asian community extending up to India and Australia; the sharpening China-India rivalry that has led to renewed Himalayan frontier tensions, but which New Delhi has sought to publicly muffle by cutting off all information on the border situation since last September; and the constraints in the US’ Asia policy arising from a growing interdependence with Beijing, with the Barack Obama administration’s catchphrase “strategic reassurance” signalling a US intent to be more accommodative of China’s ambitions.

Illustration: Jayachandran / Mint

Such developments are a reminder of the need for like-minded countries to help underpin the power equilibrium in Asia by forming a web of bilateral or triangular strategic partnerships that feed into each other. After all, China’s own trajectory will depend on how its neighbours and other players such as the US manage its growing power. Such management—independently and in partnership—will determine if China stays on the positive side of the ledger, without its power sliding into authoritarian arrogance.

A multi-aligned India pursuing omnidirectional cooperation for mutual benefit with key countries is best positioned to advance its interests in a fluid Asia. Advancing strategic partnerships indeed was a key issue in the summit meetings of the past two months: with Australia on 12 November; the US on 24 November; Russia on 7 December; and with Japan on 29 December.

The Indo-Australian summit resulted in a decision to elevate the relationship to a formal strategic partnership, with a new security agreement being unveiled. A close India-Australia strategic relationship is a critical link in the larger Asia-Pacific picture, given the common security interests that bind the two democracies in several spheres.

To help underline the significance of their new accord, India and Australia have agreed to “policy coordination” on Asian affairs and long-term international issues, and to work together in initiatives such as the East Asia Summit and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) Regional Forum. They are instituting regular defence policy talks, including consultations between their national security advisers, and setting up a joint working group on counterterrorism. They also have agreed to cooperate on maritime and aviation security and participate in military exercises and other service-to-service exchanges.

In New Delhi, Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd contended disingenuously, though, that his refusal to sell India uranium is “not targeted at any individual country”—though India is the only country affected by his policy. Worse still, he proffered a specious justification—India’s non-membership in the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT). That treaty has no explicit or implicit injunction against civil nuclear cooperation with a non-signatory. Rather, it enjoins its parties to positively facilitate “the fullest possible exchange of equipment, materials and scientific and technological information for the peaceful uses of nuclear energy”, so long as safeguards are in place.

Any restriction is not in NPT but in the revised 1992 rules of the 45-nation Nuclear Suppliers Group that, paradoxically, were changed with Australian support in 2008 to exempt India. So, Canberra is likely to come round eventually to selling India uranium.

The Indo-US summit, highlighted by the first state dinner of Obama’s presidency, received intense media attention—but yielded little, partly because the US-India strategic partnership already is on a firm footing. That partnership, founded on the June 2005 defence framework accord and the July 2005 civil nuclear deal, has resulted in growing cooperation in various spheres. However, differences in some areas persist, and New Delhi is dissatisfied with US counterterrorism assistance and its tacit neutrality on the Arunachal Pradesh border issue with China.

With little room for any dramatic breakthrough, the Indo-US summit received attention either for the wrong reason (the manner three persons managed to “crash” into the White House dinner), or for being light on substance but heavy on symbolism. The state dinner, clearly, was intended to pander to India’s collective ego, which had sensed a Sino-centric tilt to US policy ever since Obama became President. But the summit’s lack of tangible result left an unwelcome impression that, while China gets respect from the US and Pakistan gets billions of dollars in annual US assistance, India gets just a sumptuous dinner.

That impression needs to be dispelled through greater cooperation on common areas of interest. The apparent crisis facing the US-Japan alliance, with some in Washington seeking to play hardball with Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama’s government, has made further progress in the US-India partnership vital for Asian strategic stability and to hedge against the danger that a more-powerful China might turn aggressive.

The third recent summit centred on Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s visit to Russia, which he had once called a “tried and tested friend” of India. Russia, with its vantage location in Eurasia and matching strategic concerns, is a natural ally of India. A robust relationship with Moscow will help New Delhi to leverage its ties with both Beijing and Washington.

In their summit declaration, Russia and India pledged to “raise their strategic partnership to the next level”. But this won’t be easy, given the three problems that plague that partnership. The first is that Indo-Russian trade, like the Indo-Japanese trade, is low, even as Sino-Russian, Sino-Indian and Sino-Japanese trade continues to gallop.

This, of course, shows that booming trade in today’s market-driven world does not necessarily connote political cosiness, and that close strategic bonds can go hand-in-hand with low trade levels. Still, the new target to boost Indo-Russian trade from $7.5 billion to $20 billion by 2015 is unlikely to be met, partly because of Russia’s own economic woes.

The second problem is the lopsided nature of the partnership, with military hardware sales and co-production constituting the dominant element. A robust partnership demands multifaceted collaboration and interdependence that can help underpin a mutual stake. The broadening of the Indo-Russian partnership also is being necessitated by India’s increasing purchases of US and Israeli arms. In 2008 alone, according to the Indian ambassador to the US, India placed orders worth a staggering $3.5 billion to buy American arms.

The third problem the partnership faces is that, for Russia, India principally is a client, even if a privileged one. A true strategic partnership has to break free from the patron-client framework—a challenge also confronting the US-India partnership. After all, the US values India more as a market for its goods and services than as a collaborator on pressing strategic issues.

As China’s immediate neighbours, India and Russia do share common concerns about that country’s rapidly accumulating power. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin famously described the Soviet collapse as the “greatest geopolitical catastrophe” of the 20th century. But by eliminating a menacing empire and opening the way for Beijing to rapidly increase strategic space globally, that event left China as the biggest beneficiary. Furthermore, Russia’s decline in the 1990s became China’s gain. Today, the Sino-Russian dissonance may not be as eye-catching as the India-China rivalry. But the Sino-Russian honeymoon has given way to suspicion and competition.

The fourth summit at the year end was like a toast to the New Year, with India and Japan unveiling an “action plan” with specific measures to implement their 2008 security agreement. Hatoyama’s visit, intended to fulfil a 2006 bilateral commitment to hold an annual summit meeting, indicated that Japan will maintain its priority on closer engagement with India, despite the sea change in Japanese politics. Hatoyama’s election was even more historic than Obama’s because his Democratic Party of Japan ousted the Liberal Democratic Party that had held power almost without interruption for more than five decades.

India’s security relationship with Japan is one of the fastest growing, with the two countries holding an annual strategic dialogue between their foreign ministers, an annual defence ministerial meeting and other service-to-service dialogues. Now under their otherwise modest “action plan”, they have agreed to an annual senior-level 2+2 dialogue involving foreign and defence ministry officials together on both sides.

Economic ties also are taking off, with India overtaking China as the magnet for the largest Japanese foreign direct investment since 2008. The highlight of the Indian Prime Minister’s Tokyo visit this year could be the signing of a free trade agreement, if the remaining differences are sorted out in the ongoing negotiations.

The Indo-Japanese security agreement actually was modelled on the 2007 Australia-Japan defence accord. Now, the new India-Australia security accord mirrors the structure and large parts of the content of the Indo-Japanese and Australian-Japanese agreements. All three are in the form of a joint declaration on security cooperation and obligate their signatories to work together on security in Asia, while recognizing a common commitment to democracy, freedom, human rights and the rule of law.

These bilateral accords open the possibility of strategic triangles working in concert with each other—India-Japan-US, India-Australia-US, India-Japan-Australia and Australia-Japan-US. An India-Russia-Japan strategic triangle also can greatly contribute to Asian stability, but so long as Japanese-Russian ties remain hostage to history there is little hope of such a configuration. Last year’s Russia-Japan nuclear deal, though, offered a glimmer of hope.

The changing Asian balance of power underscores the imperative for India to forge closer strategic partnerships with varied countries to pursue a variety of interests in different settings and equations. A strategic partnership, however, cannot mean an exclusive relationship. The US, for example, is not allowing its new partnership with India or its long-standing alliance with Japan to come in the way of its growing strategic cooperation with China. Pragmatism in foreign policy demands multiple partnerships with interlocking interests, thereby guaranteeing mutual benefit and one’s own strategic autonomy.

Strategic partnerships are an aid, not a substitute to a nation discharging its primary duty to secure its frontiers and economic interests. Inadequate capabilities to deter an armed attack or an undue security dependency on a third party can easily negate the value of multiple strategic partnerships. Thus, to pre-empt aggression, a nation must have its own requisite strength and clout.

Brahma Chellaney is professor of strategic studies at the Centre for Policy Research in New Delhi. Comments are welcome at theirview@livemint.com

India must break out of Nehruvian straitjacket

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From nonalignment to a pragmatic foreign policy

 

COMMENTARY

Brahma Chellaney

Mail Today, January 12, 2010

 

The world has changed fundamentally in the past quarter-century since the advent of the Information Age and the fall of the Berlin Wall. Yet there are some in India who still want the country to hew to the half-century-old traditions of the Nehruvian foreign policy. Fortunately, India has progressed from doctrinaire nonalignment to geopolitical pragmatism, with its foreign, economic and others policies reflecting growing realism.

 

The very essence of a forward-thinking, effective foreign policy is dynamism. A static foreign policy attached to an old school of thought — even if that school was associated with a great personality — can hardly advance a country’s interests.

 

Actually, the struggle between realism and idealism has been a constant phenomenon in independent India, starting from the contrasting approaches of the first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, and his deputy prime minister, Sardar Patel. That struggle still manifests itself in policymaking.

 

While important countries have pursued strategies of “balance of power”, “balance of threat” or “balance of interest”, Indian foreign policy has not been organized around a distinct strategic doctrine, except for a period under Indira Gandhi.  It is not uncommon for Indian policymakers to feed to the nation dreams sold to them by others. Nor are flip-flops uncommon in Indian foreign policy. Despite imbibing greater realism, India has yet to strategically pursue its wider interests with the requisite unflinching resolve.

 

In the absence of goal-oriented statecraft, the propensity to act in haste and repent at leisure still runs deep in Indian foreign policy.  It has ignored the sound advice of Talleyrand: “By no means show too much zeal”.

 

The blunt fact is that India is still in transition from the practices of Nehruvian diplomacy to a post-Nehruvian approach to world affairs. India, for example, has given up the Nehruvian didactic approach, or at least tried to. But it hasn’t as yet fully embraced realpolitik. Nor is it an assertive pursuer of self-interest, in the way China is.

 

Indeed, India — home to more than one-sixth of the human race — continues to punch far below its weight. Internationally, it is a rule-taker, not a rule-maker. Yet, in the past decade, India’s growing geopolitical importance, high GDP growth rate and abundant market opportunities have helped increase its international profile. As a “swing” geopolitical factor, India has the potential to play a constructive role by promoting collaborative international approaches.  

 

Its foreign policy seems headed in the right direction. Through dynamic diplomacy, India — the world’s most-assimilative civilization — can truly play the role of a bridge between the East and the West, including a link between the competing demands of the developed and developing worlds.

 

In the coming years, India will increasingly be aligned with the West economically. But, strategically, it can avail of multiple options, even as it moves from the Nehruvian mindset and attitudes to a contemporary, globalized practicality.

 

In keeping with its long-standing preference for policy independence, India is correctly pursuing the option to forge different partnerships with varied players to pursue a variety of interests in diverse settings. That course means that from being non-aligned, it is likely to become multialigned, while tilting more towards Washington, even as it preserves the core element of nonalignment — strategic autonomy. Put simply, India is likely to continue to chart its own destiny and make its own major decisions.

 

A multialigned India pursuing omnidirectional cooperation for mutual benefit with key players will be best positioned to advance its interests in the changed world.

 

Brahma Chellaney is professor of strategic studies at the Centre for Policy Research in New Delhi.

Japan and India are natural allies

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The Japan-India partnership to power a multipolar Asia

Japan Times

By BRAHMA CHELLANEY

Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama’s India visit is part of Japan’s growing economic and strategic engagement with that country. Given that the balance of power in Asia will be determined by events as much in the Indian Ocean rim as in East Asia, Tokyo is keen to work with New Delhi to promote peace and stability and help safeguard vital sea lanes.

Japan and India indeed are natural allies because they have no conflict of strategic interest and share common goals to build institutionalized cooperation and stability in Asia. There is neither a negative historical legacy nor any outstanding political issue between them. If anything, each country enjoys a high positive rating with the public in the other state.

Hatoyama’s yearend visit, designed to fulfill a 2006 bilateral commitment to hold an annual summit meeting, shows he is keen to maintain the priority on closer engagement with India that started under his four predecessors — Junichiro Koizumi, Shinzo Abe, Yasuo Fukuda and Taro Aso of the Liberal Democratic Party. Hatoyama came to office vowing to reorient Japanese foreign policy and seek an "equal" relationship with the United States. But he and his Democratic Party of Japan had said little on India.

Today, Hatoyama’s government has put Washington on notice that Japan cannot indefinitely remain a faithful servant of U.S. policies. With Tokyo seeking to rework a 2006 basing deal with the U.S., besides announcing an end to the eight-year-old Indian Ocean refueling mission in support of the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan, Japan no longer can be regarded as a constant in America’s Asia policy.

This has been further highlighted by Hatoyama’s re-examination of a secret agreement between the LDP and the U.S. over a subject that is highly sensitive in the only country to fall victim to nuclear attack — the storage or transshipment of U.S. nuclear weapons in Japan.

Against this background, New Delhi must be pleased that Hatoyama’s visit signals continuity in Tokyo’s India policy. It also shows that at a time when Asia is in transition, with the specter of power disequilibrium looming large, Tokyo wishes to invest in closer economic and strategic bonds with India.

As Asia’s first modern economic success story, Japan has always inspired other Asian states. Now, with the emergence of new economic tigers and the ascent of China and India, Asia collectively is bouncing back from nearly two centuries of historical decline.

The most far-reaching but least-noticed development in Asia in the new century has been Japan’s political resurgence — a trend set in motion by Koizumi and expected to be accelerated by Hatoyama’s efforts to realign the relationship with the U.S. With Japanese pride and assertiveness rising, the nationalist impulse has become conspicuous at a time when China is headed to overtake Japan as the world’s second largest economy by the end of 2010.

Long used to practicing passive, checkbook diplomacy, Tokyo now seems intent on influencing Asia’s power balance. A series of subtle moves has signaled Japan’s aim to break out of its postwar pacifist cocoon. One sign is the growing emphasis on defense modernization.

China’s rise may have prompted Japan to strengthen its military alliance with the U.S. But in the long run, Japan is likely to move to a more independent security posture.

Although the two demographic titans, China and India, loom large in popular perceptions on where Asia is headed economically, the much-smaller Japan is likely to remain a global economic powerhouse for the foreseeable future. Given the size of Japan’s economy — its GDP was just under $5 trillion in 2008 — annual Japanese growth of just 2 percent translates into about $100 billion a year in additional output, or nearly the entire annual GDP of small economies like Singapore and the Philippines.

Still, given China’s rapid economic strides, Japan has been readying itself for the day when it is eclipsed economically by its neighbor. Leading-edge technologies and a commitment to craftsmanship, however, are expected to power Japan’s future prosperity, just as they did its past growth.

India and Japan, although dissimilar economically, have a lot in common politically. They are Asia’s largest democracies, but with messy politics and endemic scandals. Hatoyama, in office for just three months, already has come under pressure following the indictment of two former secretaries over a funding scandal.

In both Japan and India, the prime minister is not the most powerful politician in his own party. Fractured politics in both countries crimps their ability to think and act long term. Yet, just as India has progressed from doctrinaire nonalignment to geopolitical pragmatism, Japan is moving toward greater realism in its economic and foreign policies.

Their growing congruence of strategic interests led to the 2008 Japan-India security agreement, a significant milestone in building Asian power stability. A constellation of Asian states linked by strategic cooperation and sharing common interests is becoming critical to ensuring equilibrium at a time when major shifts in economic and political power are accentuating Asia’s security challenges.

The Indo-Japanese security agreement, signed when Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh visited Tokyo in October 2008, was modeled on the March 2007 Australia-Japan defense accord. Now the Indo-Japanese security agreement has spawned a similar Indo-Australian accord, signed when Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd traveled to New Delhi last month.

The path has been opened to adding strategic content to the Indo-Japanese relationship, underscored by the growing number of bilateral visits by top defense and military officials. As part of their "strategic and global partnership," which was unveiled in 2006, India and Japan are working on joint initiatives on maritime security, counterterrorism, counter-proliferation, disaster management and energy security. But they need to go much further.

India and Japan, for example, must co-develop defense systems. India and Japan have missile-defense cooperation with Israel and the U.S., respectively. There is no reason why they should not work together on missile defense and on other technologies for mutual defense. There is no ban on weapon exports in the Japanese Constitution, only a long-standing Cabinet decision. That ban has been loosened, with Tokyo in recent years inserting elasticity to export weapons for peacekeeping operations, counterterrorism and anti-piracy. The original Cabinet decision, in any event, relates to weapons, not technologies.

As two legitimate aspirants to new permanent seats in the U.N. Security Council, India and Japan should work together to persuade existing veto holders to allow the Council’s long-pending reform. They must try to convince China in particular that Asian peace and stability would be better served if all the three major powers in Asia are in the Council as permanent members.

Never before have China, Japan and India all been strong at the same time. Today, they need to find ways to reconcile their interests in Asia so that they can coexist peacefully and prosper.

Brahma Chellaney is professor of strategic studies at the Center for Policy Research in New Delhi.
The Japan Times: Wednesday, Dec. 30, 2009
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Why India Lost Out in Copenhagen

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India unwisely provided China cover

India, far from gaining anything by aligning itself with China at Copenhagen, only undercut its interest by getting bracketed with the world’s largest polluter and being made to accept mitigation obligations, writes Brahma Chellaney

Make no mistake: China, the world’s largest net polluter whose carbon emissions are growing at the fastest rate, was the principal target at Copenhagen, which has given its imprimatur to revising the climate-change regime. But China cleverly deflected pressure by hiding behind India and other developing countries. 

China, however, has little in common with India. With its carbon-intensive, manufacturing-based economy, China’s per-capita carbon emissions are four times higher than India’s. India, with its white-collar, services-driven economy, has the lowest per-capita emissions among all important developing countries. Although both countries seem to have similar competitive advantages, China’s rise has been on the back of an increasing export surge that has made it the world’s back factory for cheap goods, while India’s imports-dependent economy is carbon light, reflected in the fact that its per-capita emissions are just 26 per cent of the world average.

Yet, in the run-up to the Copenhagen summit, India signed a five-year understanding with China to present a united front in international climate-change negotiations, with the Indian minister of state for environment, in a hallucinatory loop of delusion, going to the extent of saying that there “is no difference between the Indian and Chinese negotiating positions.” What is the commonality between the two countries when China openly rejects India’s approach that per-capita emission levels and historic contributions to the build-up of greenhouse gases should form the objective criteria for carbon mitigation? China, as the world’s back factory, wants a different formula that marks down carbon intensity linked to exports.

Had the situation been the opposite — with India’s per-capita emissions four times higher than China’s, and with India in the line of international fire — would Beijing helped provide New Delhi diplomatic cover? India gained little by aligning itself with China at Copenhagen. Indeed, it ended up undercutting its interest by getting bracketed with the world’s largest net polluter and being made to accept mitigation action under international monitoring under undefined international monitoring. In the process, it has helped formulate, even if unintentionally, the broad terms for revising what admirably suits Indian interests — the existing climate-change regime.

The price for providing political cover to China at Copenhagen is that carbon-thin India got roped in to commit itself to mitigation when hundreds of millions of Indians have no access to most-basic rights: Electricity and safe water. Instead of a deal being struck between the world’s two largest polluters, the U.S. and China, the U.S. was forced to cut a deal with the BASIC bloc comprising Brazil, India, South Africa and China, because China expediently hid behind that banner. In fact, India has little in common even with South Africa and Brazil either in carbon or industrial-development level. While India’s per-capita emission was 1.2 tons in 2007, it was 9.4 in South Africa, 2.1 in Brazil and 4.8 in China, according to U.S. Energy Information Administration data.

India not only aligned itself with the wrong group, but also it presented itself inadvertently as a major global polluter by making common cause with China, whose developmental path threatens to unleash a carbon tsunami on the world. As China and India gain economic heft, it has become fashionable to internationally pair them. But these two demographic titans are a study in contrast on carbon intensity, with China now responsible for 24 per cent of global carbon emissions with 19.8 percent of the world population, but India’s current contribution not matching even half its population size. India indeed has more in common with the poor countries that cried foul over the U.S.-BASIC deal.

India would have done better at Copenhagen had it not associated itself so closely with China. It should have gone into the negotiations by consciously seeking to de-hyphenate itself from China, including by pointing out that China has more in common with the U.S. than with India. After all, the U.S. (currently responsible for 22 per cent of global emissions) and China, as the top polluters, have emerged as the key “problem states” in combating climate change.

But instead of de-hyphenating itself, India went into the negotiations as if it were joined at the hip with China, first by agreeing to put up a united stance and then by following in Beijing’s footsteps to unveil a plan to slash its carbon intensity by 2020. Not only was the target of 20 to 25 per cent reductions disproportionate to the level of Indian emissions, but it also made India ripe in Copenhagen for acceptance of mitigation action. In any case, it was poor negotiating strategy to announce such a major voluntary concession beforehand.

Past experience should have taught India that whenever it has joined hands with China on environmental issues, it has been let down by the Chinese proclivity to jettison principles and play power politics to serve its narrow interests. Take the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer. In the negotiations, it teamed up India, only to reverse its stance and leave India in the lurch. It agreed to abide by the protocol if it were compensated for the compliance costs. That forced India eventually to take that very position, lest it stood out as a loner. Under the Kyoto Protocol, China — through international manoeuvring — has captured the bulk of the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) funding.

How much it suits China to be seen in the same class as India on carbon issues than with its real polluting peer, the U.S., was made clear by the post-Copenhagen telephone call the Chinese foreign minister made to his Indian counterpart to emphasize continuing Sino-Indian collaboration. But when it comes to global or Asian geopolitics, China insists India is in a junior league.

New Delhi can be sure that when criteria for mitigation action is defined in future negotiations, China will work to unduly burden India by insisting that weight be given to elements other than per-capita emission levels and historic contributions. Having unwittingly aided the Chinese game-plan in Copenhagen, India is set to come out a loser. Isn’t that precisely what India did on UN Security Council permanent membership? When the U.S. and Soviet Union offered India a permanent seat in 1955, Jawaharlal Nehru demurred, according to his own collected works, saying the seat rightfully belonged to China. Now, China is the main obstacle to India’s UNSC aspirations.

Brahma Chellaney, professor of strategic studies at the Centre for Policy Research, is the author of “On the Frontline of Climate Change: International Security Implications”.

(c) The Economic Times, January 7, 2009.