BALADEVA, Jesus and Nityananda-Rama

[Guest guest]

The Jaichand syndrome and business

wargameshttp://www.rediff.com/news/2003/mar/18rajeev.htmMarch 18, 2003I was

astonished at the March 10th news of the arrest and harassment of Indian IT

professionals by Malaysian authorities, especially as the news stories talked

about how they were arrested from posh highrise apartments in an upmarket

location in Kuala Lumpur. Clearly those targeted were not illegal migrants who

had sneaked into the country and melted into some ethnic Indian underclass.

This is unprofessional behaviour on the part of the Malaysians.On my trips to

Malaysia, especially to Penang, I have been amazed that the Indians there seem

to be at the bottom of the pile: the ethnic Malays have their bumiputra

largesse that has allowed them to prosper; the Chinese have become the major

commercial class; but the Indians, descendants of plantation workers imported

in the 19th and 20th centuries mostly from Tamil Nadu, seem to have languished

in poverty.Indeed, this is unusual: the Indian Diaspora has generally performed

well economically wherever they went, due to the cultural reverence for

education and the knack for business, certainly among some traditional

commercial communities including Chettiars, Jains, Gujaratis and Marwaris: see

Joel Kotkin's Tribes comparing the Indian with the Jewish, the Chinese, the

Ango American, the Japanese and other Diasporas.Nevertheless, the Indians who

were bullied, kicked and beaten, were not Indian-origin Malaysians, but Indian

IT professionals employed in the Malayasian Multimedia Supercorridor, an

attempt at cloning Silicon Valley. Interesting message the Malaysians are

sending out to potential employees and investors with these moves.Two questions

arise: one, what does the Indian government intend to do about this; two, what

might have been the root cause?As for the first question, I have championed in

these pages the cause of India as a hard state: a little shouting and screaming

at Malaysia, threats to downgrade diplomatic relations, and dire warnings about

cutting off business relationships may all be good bluster. Malaysia does not

gain much by alienating India, especially with an island-grabbing China lurking

nearby. A pointed exercise in international waters near the Straits of Malacca

by an Indian naval battle group 'to combat piracy' may also be salutary. But

the second question is far more interesting. Why this incident, and why at this

time? I have two theories. First, there is the increasing Islamist penetration

of Malaysia and Indonesia, which have in the past been relatively benign Muslim

societies. Indians, specifically Hindus, are an easy mark for those with Islamic

jihad tendencies. Second, there is the ongoing Chinese competition with India.

Once confined to strategic containment, China is now attempting to subvert

Indian business competitiveness too.Let us look at the religious angle. We have

to thank none other than the Old Left, those dinosaurs of Marxism, whose

continuing purple prose in the Indian English media is picked up by the

international media unthinkingly. I have noticed practically an avalanche of

'analyses' in the world media recently, timed to coincide with the anniversary

of Godhra and Gujarat. There were angry reports in The Financial Times and The

Wall Street Journal, among others. Not surprisingly, they all dismiss the

Godhra incident with a word or two of condemnation, and then go on to beat

their breasts about the ensuing riots. Civilisation is coming to an end in

India because Muslims died, goes the unsaid subtext: clearly the JNU-wallahs

are getting to the foreign correspondents in Delhi. Not surprisingly, again,

none of them noticed either the Kashmiri Pandits dying in refugee camps in

Jammu and Delhi, nor the stream of Hindus and Buddhists arriving daily in India

from Bangladesh with tales of apocalyptic horror and human rights violations.

Par for the course. In the telling and retelling of Gujarat tales, the numbers

get bigger. The official figures are about 800 dead, including 250 Hindus and

policemen. Some publications have deduced (from reading tea leaves no doubt)

that 1,000 to 2,000 died, 'mostly Muslims.' There are a Muslim Indian

association and a Christian Indian association in the US, whose mailing lists

they have generously put me on. Their numbers are: 5,000 Muslims killed, 10,000

raped. These numbers need to be taken with large pinches of salt.But they are

taken at face value by Islamists everywhere. This may be happening in Malaysia,

too. Incensed at these allegations, religion-crazed Malays may be taking matters

into their own hands, 'to teach those Hindus a lesson.' Of course the Marxists

will never utter the truth, that India's Muslims are arguably the freest in the

world, free from domination by mullahs and tyrants; free to hope, free to be

ambitious; the only country in the world where a Muslim woman has been a member

of the Supreme Court. No wonder there are no Muslim Indians in the Guantanamo

Al-Qaeda camp.A skewed picture is presented in the US, too. For example, some

obscure Christian fundamentalist preacher comes to Kerala 14 times in the

recent past on a visitor visa (which expressly disallows anything other than

tourism), participates in vigorous abuse against Hinduism, gets mixed up with

local fundamentalists and gets in the middle of a fight. Result? US newspapers,

ably aided by Old Left Indians in the US, raise alarms about the religious

freedom in India! Is religious freedom the freedom to abuse another's religion

and consort with absconding sex offenders? The preacher should have been jailed

for immigration violations (a la what the US has been doing to its own illegal

immigrants: ask the Pakistanis running away in droves to Canada), but nobody is

grateful that the fellow was allowed to, instead, leave the country. I bet the

next American fundamentalist will end up as a guest of the government in Tihar

jail for propagating hate speech. Cooling his heels there for a year or two

should cure him of some of his zeal.The laughable US Council on Religious

Freedom chooses to fulminate against India based on incidents like this, while

it chooses to not see large scale fascism in Bangladesh! Mote and beam and all

that good stuff. There are tangible results too, I am sure: the incidents of

firebombing of a Hindu temple in Missouri recently are not unrelated to all

this publicity. It is the Jaichand/Mir Jafar syndrome all over again. Indians,

either paid off in cold cash or ideologically addled, tie up with foreigners.

Result: innocent Indians suffer. However, some Old Left Indians in the US will

soon get their just desserts: the erstwhile Immigration and Naturalization

Service holds that no visas will be given to 'affiliated with, or members of,

the Communist or totalitarian party, foreign or domestic.' There are moves

afoot by Homeland Security to identify these people, amply helped by incensed

Indian Americans: two can play at this game. Loss of cushy jobs, incarceration,

loss of green cards, deportation, etc could not happen to more deserving people

than the lovely Old Left: wherever will they go when kicked out of the US?

China? The other possibility in the Malaysian case, the Chinese card, is more

diabolical. Notice that Malaysia and Indonesia, as well as Thailand, are

dominated by ethnic Chinese businessmen, who often have close links back to the

Communist Party of China. Note that the Chinese are now beginning a crash

programme to upgrade their software and IT industry; they realise they are far

behind the Indians, and so what better than to raise barriers to entry, at

least in ASEAN? If Indians keep away from ASEAN markets, so much easier for

Chinese to come in and take the contracts.The attack a month or so ago on Arun

Jain, CEO of Polaris, a large Indian software services firm, fits into this

pattern. Jain, in Indonesia to seek arbitration in a civil dispute with a local

firm, is abruptly arrested. Aren't these subtle signals suggesting, 'Indians

keep off!'? After all, China considers all of Southeast Asia its

territory.China has been containing India ever since 1950, although most

Indians are blithely unaware of this. A powerful report The Dragon in the

Indian Ocean at analyses China's many moves to strategically contain India. Now

it appears they also wish to contain India's businessmen as well.This comes at a

time when there is a renaissance in the manufacturing sector in India. Most

analysts, including me, have been downbeat about India's chances in

manufacturing, and we have advocated a focus on services. While this is still

true, and this is where India's competitive advantage still is, it appears the

obituaries about manufacturing were somewhat premature. A Businessweek article

('India Is Living Up To Its Promise,' March 17, 2003) identifies automobile and

other ancillaries as a major growth area. Bharat Forge, it says, now has 50 per

cent market share in the US in its area of axle components. It identifies Tata

Steel as having vastly improved its competitiveness. A Times of India article

('Wild Geese Chase: India as the Next Asian Tiger,' March 10, 2003), suggests

that $70 billion has been invested in the manufacturing sector in India. A

rediff.com article ('Manufacturing will be Tomorrow's Star,' January 11, 2003)

mentions TVS Motor, Moser Bauer, Bhadrachalam Paperboard, Ballarpur Industries,

Bajaj Auto, Reliance and Larsen & Toubro as examples of the newly competitive

Indian industry's muscle.As a result, China is beginning to sit up and take

notice. As I have never tired of pointing out, India was as big a manufacturing

location as China until European colonialists ruined both. There are no inherent

reasons why India cannot catch up again. The Chinese, of course, want to prevent

that from happening: they want to put some spanners in the works. What better

than to try what amounts to 'non tariff barriers' with easy deniability? Why

not use their proxies to hurt India? This, of course, is what they have done

when arming North Korea and Pakistan and allowing them to trade deadly weapons

technologies: plausible deniability.However, in either case, whether it is the

result of Marxist-fascist propaganda, or a deliberate Chinese ploy, India needs

to come down like a ton of bricks on Malaysia. India has little to lose and a

lot to gain. This whole thing is a fall out from the perception of India as a

gentle giant, a Gulliver tied down by Lilliputians, poked and prodded by them;

India needs to assert its military, industrial and commercial might to put any

illusions to rest. India is, after all, at purchasing power parity, the fourth

largest economy in the world. Malaysia should be looking for a partnership with

India, not being a proxy in China's nasty little business wargames. After all,

the giant sucking sound Malaysians are hearing is the sound of their

manufacturing jobs, and their prosperity, disappearing into the maw of the

Chinese beast. India and Malaysia are far more complementary economies.

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into the enemy camp, SET THE AGENDA, be proactiveIn an argument, no emotions,

be detached, get yr facts right, then attack with the precision of a missile