*Disclaimer – This is an editorial written by Mohandas Pai, he was the CFO and then the head of HR at Infosys. He is now Chairman, Aarin Capital Partners. He usually writes for many newspapers including thehindu, Indian express etc.
Please also note that, we are publishing this as-is without any editorial oversight and have NO SAY or bias as far as this editorial is concerned. The editorial shows how media shapes our perception and how perception is stronger than reality. Media and bad Politics are hurting “Brand India” just for the sake of “power”.
There has been a worrisome tendency over the last two years of Delhi-based media using highly local events, mostly in Delhi, to broad-brush the entire country as religiously intolerant; increasingly intolerant; as Freedom of Expression (FOE) and our rights being under attack; becoming increasingly communal; becoming fascist, etc. The good citizens of India are perplexed, hurt and angry at being so branded. The same media also brands citizens who do not agree with their India view as communal, intolerant, Bhakts, internet Hindus and the like, reducing the space for a genuine debate on multiple issues. Local incidents are blown up as All-India issues. Known and unknown political leaders who hold strong extreme views have often had mics thrust into their faces and their views blown out of all proportion as indications of an All-India view. To buttress their arguments they pick on abusive extreme views from Twitter, of which there are plenty.
Delhi is not India, and what happens in localised areas of Delhi is far distant from what India thinks and what India is all about.
West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Kerala, Andhra, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra …all states in the Union of India think very differently and have their own view, but none of them step out to brand India in their view except the Delhi Media. They are least concerned with localised Delhi events. To them, Delhi even looks like an alien, distant land and yet they get branded. This continued biased tirade by the Delhi Media on purely local issues is tarnishing the image of India globally and hurting the rest of us who are 99.99% of the population and have nothing to do with this. We are 130 crore across India, and the Delhi where this happens is a small part of India.
At the time of the Delhi election, the media there took 7-8 incidents of vandalism on churches and blew it up as acts of growing religious intolerance in India. Bishops and Archbishops came on TV, driven by the media, to express concern. Candle-lit marches were held, led by the clergy, and the whole country stood accused of religious intolerance. The police later gave details of the vandalism and sheepishly the media outcry was buried as the elections got over. Around the same time, an elderly nun was sadly raped in rural West Bengal by criminals. This was again blown up as indicative of growing intolerance, marches were held, the papal representative criticised the government and spoke of increasing communalism. The police soon arrested the culprits, reportedly from a neighbouring country, but India’s reputation was again tarnished globally, and India was branded as religiously intolerant. Of course, many NGOs overseas and in India used these incidents to cover up their activities. Global business was questioned about the impact on investments and Delhi Media expressed deep concern about impact on inward investments.
Citizens are free in our democratic polity to raise their concerns, march in protest, criticise at any time the government of their choice l, but should the whole country and its citizens be wrongly branded? No country has 200 million people of a faith qualified as a minority and given special protection and privileges in the Constitution. Yet, India was branded as religiously intolerant. Lest I am attacked by the same folks, I need to state that I too am a minority under Article 29/30 of our Constitution, and enjoy this protection! Of course if I am attacked, I expect the Delhi Media to denounce those who attacked me as Minority Bashers!
Soon the Bihar election took place and the orchestra started again. There was the sad criminal lynching of a citizen, in a town in UP, which most had never heard of. A crime blown up as evidence of growing intolerance. A “philosopher” said India should be ashamed of this lynching. A crime became a handle to beat us up.
Around the same time, similar crimes took place in a few places across India, but they did not fit the theory espoused by the Delhi Media. There was also the sad criminal killing of three rationalists in Karnataka and Maharashtra. Again, the Delhi Media blew it up as proof of increasing intolerance and attacks on FOE! Many literary award-winners returned their awards in protest, some artists said their freedom was under attack, and the Media ran riot. A forgotten elderly writer was resurrected out of retirement from the hills to lead the charge, expressing deep concern about FOE and openly expressing a personal dislike for a national leader who occupied the chair formerly held by a relative! Again, India was branded as a country where FOE was under attack, with increasing intolerance. The Bihar election got over and the orchestra shut down! India became tolerant again and our FOE remained.
During the entire media campaign, anchors and critics lambasted the government, accused it of many issues, branded India wrongly, all in a free, open manner. Some political leaders in Delhi abused the PM in terms which were shocking with no impact on them. The rest of the country watched the drama, perplexed as to what right of theirs was diminished. India has an over-active high strung media, a huge number of news channels, an activist judiciary, many political parties freely voicing their opinions as before, but still the Delhi Media branded India and all of us wrongly.
Then came the events in JNU, the bastion of Leftist ideology, with closed minds and extreme views. JNU is intolerant of alternative views, captured by the extreme Left, with Leftist activists of the CPI ML who stand for violence and openly display admiration and support for the Maoists, being showcased as champions of freedom and human rights! The fight for power between two student unions for domination of the university was suddenly blown up by the Delhi Media as another example of an assault on FOE and academic freedom in India. A student leader who was studying for his Phd forever at public cost suddenly was catapulted as a champion of freedom and later dumped. The sad suicide of a student elsewhere became another example of the oppression of students for expressing their ideological views! In a Delhi studio in the debates following this, I was told by a JNU student that students all over India were protesting the lack of FOE. I reminded the student that there were nearly 800 universities, 50,000+ colleges and 3.4 crore students, and this ideological fight was essentially in three Leftist universities for political reasons, and not a student issue! Yet, it was blown up as if all students were protesting.
Then came the issue of hoisting the Indian flag in universities. Then the debate about patriotism and nationalism, etc. All being used to brand India and Indians as intolerant because the Delhi Media thought it fit to do so damaging India’s brand and image globally.
Now the latest incident about two student unions of differing ideology, fighting it out for power and domination in a few colleges of Delhi. A small local fight taking prime time for no reason, save it is in Delhi. Again, attempts being made to blow it up as evidence of assaults on FOE and academic freedom. A Nobel Laureate who makes occasional visits expressing deep concern at the lack of academic freedom and “fear” in campuses. An activist idealist ideological student being made the centre of this fight just because she fits the narrative sought to be made. Students of opposing groups who were assaulted being ignored and condemned as goondas. Physical assault by Leftist students forgiven, and a national newspaper publishing a photograph of Leftists assaulting students as evidence of the opposing camp assaulting the Leftists! Big evidence of fake manufactured news.
Again, anchors writing blogs to buttress their views, forgetting anchors need to be objective and not take sides. Again, the UP election going on at the same time. Sadly the great Media Seer and Champion of the Truth from Mumbai absent from the furore, letting down the Nation Which Needs To Know.
It is obvious that India is in the midst of a deep ideological fight between the Left and left of centre activists and the Delhi Media against the right of centre government. The right again fighting back, branding everybody opposed to them as unpatriotic and anti-national. So, charges of communalism, fascism, intolerance against charges of anti-nationalism and lack of patriotism. All fine for the course except why brand India and Indians with the same charges for a fight between two small groups with 99.99% of Indians – and in all this, India getting a bad name.
I could have, as a citizen, ignored all this as a normal event, except that I witnessed its impact on Indians and the India brand overseas. At a business event, an elderly 80 years + titled peer told me she had signed a petition with 200 others protesting the visit of the Indian PM to London because India was becoming religiously intolerant, saw growing intolerance and there was a big assault on FOE. I said everything was fine, our rights were intact just 24 hours earlier when I had left India. She said she was an Indophile and concerned. I replied that if she was so concerned, she should visit India and find out for herself before she signed the letter and not defame india and Indians.
Sadly, the Delhi Media has damaged the India brand and the fair name of Indians globally by their exaggeration and ideological campaigns to force their ideology on others, forgetting their duty to be more objective. No citizen objects to the vibrant, loud, violent ideological debates on TV, but please, please, please stop pretending that you represent India and what happens in Delhi is an All India issue. Stop branding the rest of us in your India view!
Delhi is not India, what happens in Delhi is not representative of India, nor Indians outside Delhi.
Source- NDTV
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The United Nations has shaped so much of global co-operation and regulation that we wouldn’t recognise our world today without the UN’s pervasive role in it. So many small details of our lives – such as postage and copyright laws – are subject to international co-operation nurtured by the UN.
In its 75th year, however, the UN is in a difficult moment as the world faces climate crisis, a global pandemic, great power competition, trade wars, economic depression and a wider breakdown in international co-operation.
Still, the UN has faced tough times before – over many decades during the Cold War, the Security Council was crippled by deep tensions between the US and the Soviet Union. The UN is not as sidelined or divided today as it was then. However, as the relationship between China and the US sours, the achievements of global co-operation are being eroded.
The way in which people speak about the UN often implies a level of coherence and bureaucratic independence that the UN rarely possesses. A failure of the UN is normally better understood as a failure of international co-operation.
We see this recently in the UN’s inability to deal with crises from the ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar, to civil conflict in Syria, and the failure of the Security Council to adopt a COVID-19 resolution calling for ceasefires in conflict zones and a co-operative international response to the pandemic.
The UN administration is not primarily to blame for these failures; rather, the problem is the great powers – in the case of COVID-19, China and the US – refusing to co-operate.
Where states fail to agree, the UN is powerless to act.
Marking the 75th anniversary of the official formation of the UN, when 50 founding nations signed the UN Charter on June 26, 1945, we look at some of its key triumphs and resounding failures.
Five successes
1. Peacekeeping
The United Nations was created with the goal of being a collective security organisation. The UN Charter establishes that the use of force is only lawful either in self-defence or if authorised by the UN Security Council. The Security Council’s five permanent members, being China, US, UK, Russia and France, can veto any such resolution.
The UN’s consistent role in seeking to manage conflict is one of its greatest successes.
A key component of this role is peacekeeping. The UN under its second secretary-general, the Swedish statesman Dag Hammarskjöld – who was posthumously awarded the Nobel Peace prize after he died in a suspicious plane crash – created the concept of peacekeeping. Hammarskjöld was responding to the 1956 Suez Crisis, in which the US opposed the invasion of Egypt by its allies Israel, France and the UK.
UN peacekeeping missions involve the use of impartial and armed UN forces, drawn from member states, to stabilise fragile situations. “The essence of peacekeeping is the use of soldiers as a catalyst for peace rather than as the instruments of war,” said then UN Secretary-General Javier Pérez de Cuéllar, when the forces won the 1988 Nobel Peace Prize following missions in conflict zones in the Middle East, Africa, Asia, Central America and Europe.
However, peacekeeping also counts among the UN’s major failures.
2. Law of the Sea
Negotiated between 1973 and 1982, the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) set up the current international law of the seas. It defines states’ rights and creates concepts such as exclusive economic zones, as well as procedures for the settling of disputes, new arrangements for governing deep sea bed mining, and importantly, new provisions for the protection of marine resources and ocean conservation.
Mostly, countries have abided by the convention. There are various disputes that China has over the East and South China Seas which present a conflict between power and law, in that although UNCLOS creates mechanisms for resolving disputes, a powerful state isn’t necessarily going to submit to those mechanisms.
Secondly, on the conservation front, although UNCLOS is a huge step forward, it has failed to adequately protect oceans that are outside any state’s control. Ocean ecosystems have been dramatically transformed through overfishing. This is an ecological catastrophe that UNCLOS has slowed, but failed to address comprehensively.
3. Decolonisation
The idea of racial equality and of a people’s right to self-determination was discussed in the wake of World War I and rejected. After World War II, however, those principles were endorsed within the UN system, and the Trusteeship Council, which monitored the process of decolonisation, was one of the initial bodies of the UN.
Although many national independence movements only won liberation through bloody conflicts, the UN has overseen a process of decolonisation that has transformed international politics. In 1945, around one third of the world’s population lived under colonial rule. Today, there are less than 2 million people living in colonies.
When it comes to the world’s First Nations, however, the UN generally has done little to address their concerns, aside from the non-binding UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples of 2007.
4. Human rights
The Human Rights Declaration of 1948 for the first time set out fundamental human rights to be universally protected, recognising that the “inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world”.
Since 1948, 10 human rights treaties have been adopted – including conventions on the rights of children and migrant workers, and against torture and discrimination based on gender and race – each monitored by its own committee of independent experts.
The language of human rights has created a new framework for thinking about the relationship between the individual, the state and the international system. Although some people would prefer that political movements focus on ‘liberation’ rather than ‘rights’, the idea of human rights has made the individual person a focus of national and international attention.
5. Free trade
Depending on your politics, you might view the World Trade Organisation as a huge success, or a huge failure.
The WTO creates a near-binding system of international trade law with a clear and efficient dispute resolution process.
The majority Australian consensus is that the WTO is a success because it has been good for Australian famers especially, through its winding back of subsidies and tariffs.
However, the WTO enabled an era of globalisation which is now politically controversial.
Recently, the US has sought to disrupt the system. In addition to the trade war with China, the Trump Administration has also refused to appoint tribunal members to the WTO’s Appellate Body, so it has crippled the dispute resolution process. Of course, the Trump Administration is not the first to take issue with China’s trade strategies, which include subsidises for ‘State Owned Enterprises’ and demands that foreign firms transfer intellectual property in exchange for market access.
The existence of the UN has created a forum where nations can discuss new problems, and climate change is one of them. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was set up in 1988 to assess climate science and provide policymakers with assessments and options. In 1992, the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change created a permanent forum for negotiations.
However, despite an international scientific body in the IPCC, and 165 signatory nations to the climate treaty, global greenhouse gas emissions have continued to increase.
Under the Paris Agreement, even if every country meets its greenhouse gas emission targets we are still on track for ‘dangerous warming’. Yet, no major country is even on track to meet its targets; while emissions will probably decline this year as a result of COVID-19, atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases will still increase.
This illustrates a core conundrum of the UN in that it opens the possibility of global cooperation, but is unable to constrain states from pursuing their narrowly conceived self-interests. Deep co-operation remains challenging.
Five failures of the UN
1. Peacekeeping
During the Bosnian War, Dutch peacekeeping forces stationed in the town of Srebrenica, declared a ‘safe area’ by the UN in 1993, failed in 1995 to stop the massacre of more than 8000 Muslim men and boys by Bosnian Serb forces. This is one of the most widely discussed examples of the failures of international peacekeeping operations.
On the massacre’s 10th anniversary, then UN Secretary General Kofi Annan wrote that the UN had “made serious errors of judgement, rooted in a philosophy of impartiality”, contributing to a mass murder that would “haunt our history forever”.
If you look at some of the other infamous failures of peacekeeping missions – in places such as Rwanda, Somalia and Angola – it is the limited powers given to peacekeeping operations that have resulted in those failures.
2. The invasion of Iraq
The invasion of Iraq by the US in 2003, which was unlawful and without Security Council authorisation, reflects the fact that the UN is has very limited capacity to constrain the actions of great powers.
The Security Council designers created the veto power so that any of the five permanent members could reject a Council resolution, so in that way it is programmed to fail when a great power really wants to do something that the international community generally condemns.
In the case of the Iraq invasion, the US didn’t veto a resolution, but rather sought authorisation that it did not get. The UN, if you go by the idea of collective security, should have responded by defending Iraq against this unlawful use of force.
The invasion proved a humanitarian disaster with the loss of more than 400,000 lives, and many believe that it led to the emergence of the terrorist Islamic State.
3. Refugee crises
The UN brokered the 1951 Refugee Convention to address the plight of people displaced in Europe due to World War II; years later, the 1967 Protocol removed time and geographical restrictions so that the Convention can now apply universally (although many countries in Asia have refused to sign it, owing in part to its Eurocentric origins).
Despite these treaties, and the work of the UN High Commission for Refugees, there is somewhere between 30 and 40 million refugees, many of them, such as many Palestinians, living for decades outside their homelands. This is in addition to more than 40 million people displaced within their own countries.
While for a long time refugee numbers were reducing, in recent years, particularly driven by the Syrian conflict, there have been increases in the number of people being displaced.
During the COVID-19 crisis, boatloads of Rohingya refugees were turned away by port after port. This tragedy has echoes of pre-World War II when ships of Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi Germany were refused entry by multiple countries.
And as a catastrophe of a different kind looms, there is no international framework in place for responding to people who will be displaced by rising seas and other effects of climate change.
4. Conflicts without end
Across the world, there is a shopping list of unresolved civil conflicts and disputed territories.
Palestine and Kashmir are two of the longest-running failures of the UN to resolve disputed lands. More recent, ongoing conflicts include the civil wars in Syria and Yemen.
The common denominator of unresolved conflicts is either division among the great powers, or a lack of international interest due to the geopolitical stakes not being sufficiently high. For instance, the inaction during the Rwandan civil war in the 1990s was not due to a division among great powers, but rather a lack of political will to engage.
In Syria, by contrast, Russia and the US have opposing interests and back opposing sides: Russia backs the government of the Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, whereas the US does not.
5. Acting like it’s 1945
The UN is increasingly out of step with the reality of geopolitics today.
The permanent members of the Security Council reflect the division of power internationally at the end of World War II. The continuing exclusion of Germany, Japan, and rising powers such as India and Indonesia, reflects the failure to reflect the changing balance of power.
Also, bodies such as the IMF and the World Bank, which are part of the UN system, continue to be dominated by the West. In response, China has created potential rival institutions such as the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank.
Western domination of UN institutions undermines their credibility. However, a more fundamental problem is that institutions designed in 1945 are a poor fit with the systemic global challenges – of which climate change is foremost – that we face today.