*Huh. I expect to hear a lot more out of this guy.
http://in.news.yahoo.com/columnist/nitin_pai/8/your-own-private-foreign-policy
(...)
"A few years ago, after France passed laws restricting the wearing of turbans, people lobbied the Indian government to intervene on behalf of French Sikhs. The Indian prime minister sent a special envoy to Paris, to "impress upon President Chirac the significance of the turban to the Sikh faith." The irony of one famously secular state taking up a religious cause with another famously secular state apart, this was an unwarranted interference into the domestic affairs of another democratic republic.
"And again, when Malaysia's Tamil minority was out on the streets protesting against discrimination, Dr Singh's government gave in to public pressure, gratuitously expressed concern over that country's domestic politics, and received a rebuff.
"Now, the Indian government is obliged to protect the lives and interests of its citizens anywhere their blue passports takes them. It has little business taking up cudgels of behalf of people who might be of Indian origin, but are nevertheless citizens of another country. You could say that everyone has a responsibility to protect human rights in authoritarian regimes, but if the other country happens to be a democratic republic with rule of law, what grounds does the government of India have to interfere?
"Does this mean Indians should stop caring about what happens around the world? Not quite. It only means that Indians should stop seeing the government has having a monopoly on foreign affairs.
"There is nothing to stop individuals, NGOs and media from taking an active interest in the world outside India's borders. There is nothing to stop us from standing up for whatever cause we like. There is nothing to stop us from drawing attention to the plight of the world's oppressed people, collect funds, mobilise volunteers, build institutions, lobby foreign governments and deliver social services beyond India's shores. (((I'm trying to think of a cause that would make me rush to meet Indian offshore NGOs with open arms. Maybe if they were publicly screening Kajol movies and handing out free mango-lassi cocktails.)))
(...)
"In fact, it is in India's national interest for civil society to become a foreign policy player in its own right. Governments are constrained by realpolitik. They follow the grammar of power. Civil society does not have the same constraints. It is free to speak the language of values. (((Sorta like the symbiotic values relationship of Yemen and Al Qaeda, in other words.)))
"The Tibetan struggle, for instance, is one area where India's overall policy has benefited from citizen activism. (((Yeah, and I can hear 'em snapping countersurveillance orders in those Chinese offshored cyberespionage units, right now.)))
"Similarly, after the 2005 earthquake, Infosys announced that it would provide Rs 10 million in aid to Pakistan. Many of us donated money for Haiti's earthquake victim through the Red Cross and through religious institutions. These are, however, isolated and sporadic instances.
"We should ask ourselves why India's civil society is not a significant international player? The primary reason, I would say, might be the mindset that sees the government as the Grand Solver of Problems. As long as this mindset is dominant, lesser hurdles like lack of financial resources, organisational capabilities and channels of action will appear insurmountable.
"Another reason is our tendency to contemplate our collective navels, for there are innumerable, seemingly intractable problems at home that deserve our attention. '[So] far as areas outside the physical boundaries of India were concerned," the historian K M Panikkar noted, "we were content to live with the attitude of complacent ignorance.' This has been the weakness of India in the past, this sense of isolation and refusal to see itself in relation to the states outside the geographical limits of the subcontinent.
"This, though, is changing, as economic growth increases disposable incomes and as we come to be better informed by the world's media. That begs the question: why is it that we are only informed by the world's media? Isn't it a grand lack of imagination that hundreds of our TV news channels fight for ratings by covering essentially the same domestic stories, only differentiating themselves using ever higher decibel levels?
"Isn't it ironic that it is the likes of Qatar's Al Jazeera and China's CCTV-4 that challenge the Western media's hold on the grand narrative? As Indian civil society takes a greater interest in the world, one or more Indian international TV news channels will be invaluable...."
Via @ShashiTharoor, who would appear to be a private Indian foreign policy all by himself
(((This just in: the first electronic keyboard with the brand-new Rupee sign pre-installed.)))
