The best way to know the self is feeling oneself at the moments of reckoning. The feeling of being alone, just with your senses, may lead you to think more consciously. More and more of such moments may sensitize ‘you towards you’, towards others. We become regular with introspection and retrospection. We get ‘the’ gradual connect to the higher self we may name Spirituality or God or just a Humane Conscious. We tend to get a rhythm again in life. We need to learn the art of being lonely in crowd while being part of the crowd. A multitude of loneliness in mosaic of relations! One needs to feel it severally, with conscience, before making it a way of life. One needs to live several such lonely moments. One needs to live severallyalone.

Tuesday 11 October 2016

INDIA AND PAKISTAN IN HILLARY’S LEAKED SPEECHES

The set of Hillary Clinton’s paidspeeches to the Wall Street bankers leaked by WikiLeaks has been categorized underdifferent sections, i.e., Clinton Foundation, reducing emission, pro free trade, Wal-Mart, Egypt, Syria and terrorism, among others.

Since delivered to the bankers, as expected, the content is basically economic in nature but as the US profile is (entwined globally) and has Hillary’s career has been, it has myriad of political themes and geopolitical interests.

And as expected, China has some pretty frequent mention in terms of frequency – 62 times. The next thing to expect naturally would be about India, the next big thing to happen to the global economy after China. And if India has just 12 mentions, we can see why. When Hillary was saying all these things, China was on top of the mind. Bur China has now started stagnating (and slowing down) while India has become the fastest growing economy with ‘boon to market’ dividends like a young demography and a burgeoning middle class that will be soon largest in the world.

India’s 12 mentions are in four categories - Clinton Foundation, reducing emission, pro free trade and Wal-Mart – basically personal, environmental and financial in nature. As expected, it is both, positive and negative. If Hillary lauds India somewhere, she also cautions us on our trade and economic policies. And she also supports India’s stand on tricky issues like emission reductions.

Clinton Foundation: “So a few examples of what we're doing at the Clinton Foundation. First, the Clinton Climate Initiative has a solid waste management program that works with governments and with businesses to reduce their dependency on landfills and develop systems to convert waste into new products or into sources of energy. For example, we are working with the city of Delhi in India to develop that country's first integrated solid waste management system.”

Reducing Emissions: “And at that time you could not get China and India to agree to do anything on their emissions because they, I think understandably, one an authoritarian regime, one a democracy, a raucous democracy, were of the opinion it would interfere with their efforts to continue to grow, a totally rational response if you were the leader of China or India.”

Free Trade: “I thought I was doing pretty well.  I'm making the case, making the argument for openness, fairness, transparency, claiming, look, Malaysia manufacturers want access to markets overseas as much as American manufacturers, Indian firms want fair treatment when they invest abroad, just as we do, Chinese artists want to protect their creations from piracy, every society seeking to develop a strong research and technology sector needs intellectual property protection to make trade fair as well as freer.  Developing countries have to do a better job of improving productivity, raising labor conditions, and protecting the environment, on and on.”

Indian Ocean Nations (Trade): “More than half the world's population lives in the vast region from the Indian Ocean to the Island Nations. Here we find some of our most trusted allies and valuable trading partners, many of the world's most dynamic trade and energy routes. A few years ago, when our country was struggling through the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, American exports to the Asia-Pacific helped spur our recovery. Our future growth will get a real shot in the arm if we reach farther into the burgeoning consumer markets across the region. […] And you are on track here in this state, in this city to take full advantage of a 21st century economy, and to help make sure that the United States remains a strong presence and a power in the Pacific.”

Wal-Mart (Trade): “I think that if India can ever get its regulatory system straightened out, you know, we have gone back and forth on opening up to retailers, large, multinational retailers. Wal-Mart just withdrew and it is a real shame and because one of the things Wal-Mart promised to do was to help set up the supply chain for agricultural products to actually get to the end user consumer.  The harvest in India loses about 40 percent because there is no good storage; there is certainly no good cold storage. So if there is a way to get the politics to open up somewhat in India, you know, the market is just overwhelmingly large.”

But our neighbour Pakistan, our historical enemy who believes that maintaining friction and hostility in ties with India is the only way to look at par with India on global platforms, performs poorly even here. The leaked speeches mention Pakistan five times – and all in disturbed categories like Egypt, Syria and terrorism.

A further look on ‘Pakistan’ mentions clearly tells us that whenever she has quoted Pakistan, it is either for breeding terrorists and promoting terror or for illegally proliferating nuclear weapons. See it to reaffirm what you already know.

“We also were very concerned about the breeding of instability in terrorist havens in the Sinai which could be used just as the FATA between Pakistan and Afghanistan had been used by AlQaeda as launching sites for extremist attacks against Egypt, against Israel, against Jordan and further afield in the Gulf.”

“So the free Syrian Army and a lot of the local rebel militias that were made up of pharmacists and business people and attorneys and teachers—they’re no match for these imported toughened Iraqi, Jordanian, Libyan, Indonesian, Egyptian, Chechen, Uzbek, Pakistani fighters that are now in there and have learned through more than a decade of very firsthand experience what it takes in terms of ruthlessness and military capacity.”

“It depends upon how you define national interest. We certainly do with chemical weapons. We certainly would if Syria became even, in part, like the FATA between Pakistan and Afghanistan, a training ground for extremists, a launching pad for attacks on Turkey, Jordan, the non-tetarian elements in Lebanon and, eventually, even in Israel.

“And you know, it is like these terrible plots in James Bond movies where you have got some really creepy guy sitting around saying, I want to get a hold of some nuclear material, and I can bring the west to their knees and they will have to give me a hundred billion dollars in my private account. Well, unfortunately, there are people like that. And we saw what happened with the Pakistani scientist, Mr. Khan, who basically proliferated nuclear knowledge to as many countries as he could. He thought that was part of his religious mission to give the bomb to as many Muslim countries as he possibly could reach.”

Hillary's words reiterate what we already know yet Pakistan behaves as if it can maintain its equal status with India on global platforms. Yes, it is not about a country’s size but its policies. And Pakistan’s policy of endorsing and promoting terror and proliferating nukes certainly make it one of the most rogue nations on earth.

©SantoshChaubey