I found my place in Tihar Jail

Thirty years ago, in May 1983, I spent nearly 10 days at Delhi’s Tihar jail for the first and, till now, the only time in my life. With me were several hundred young men and women, many of whom are today leaders across the globe: including diplomats, professors, Members of Parliament, scientists, and editors. The Tihar experience was transformational. My daughter’s school in Melbourne advertises itself to current and potential students with a pithy slogan: “I found my place in Methodist Ladies College.” Thirty years later, I can rightfully say: I found my place in Tihar jail!

I was 20, at New Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University studying for a Masters in International Studies. Like hundreds of others, JNU was our first exposure to the “real” India. JNU had a comprehensive policy of affirmative action that allowed students from all over India to be admitted, especially those who came from socially or economically challenged backgrounds. Deprivation Points, they were called, in an age of less politically correct vocabulary. Even those like me, who came from relatively affluent backgrounds, had a better chance of getting in because I came from Srinagar, cocooned in the Kashmir valley, and not from a public school in an urban metropolis.

Imagine then a university campus in the early 1980s, almost in the centre of New Delhi, inhabiting thousands of acres of land within the folds of the oldest mountain ranges in India: the Aravallis (and its beautifully wild flora and fauna), with just a few thousand students drawn from virtually the length and breadth of India, and with very little in common except a thirst for knowledge and for change. And almost completely isolated from the city and the world outside. A recipe for disaster, you might say, a Lord of the Flies in-the-making. And yet the outcome was anything but dysfunctional.

As Pushpesh Pant, one of our most inspiring teachers, was to later write:

“Excitement was palpable and infectious in the air. The milieu was open, hierarchies were abhorred and the team at the helm was a perfect one. Handpicked bright youngsters were invited to join interdisciplinary departments and the semester system adopted was refreshingly different from the end of the term all-important exams guaranteed to stifle originality and cripple the spirit.”

And much of the idealism of the faculty — the quest for excellence blended with social relevance — was transmitted to the students, who believed that they could change the world: democratically, non-violently and together. This was post-Emergency India, and even though Indira Gandhi had returned as Prime Minister, the power of ideas and the power of the people seemed unstoppable. The nights were long: as General Body Meetings flowed into informal discussions over endless cups of chai at Ganga or Nilgiri dhabha on issues that really mattered: Was there really an “epistemological rupture” in Marx’s thought? Did Utsa Patnaik get the “mode of production” debate right or was it Jairus Banaji, and, in any case, wasn’t he the only Indian who really understood Marxism? Wasn’t John Rawls just a liberal reactionary thinker? And could anyone really understand Gayatri Spivak, and did Deconstruction really matter?

Everyone who had a heart fell in love, and out of it, over readings of the romantic-revolutionary poet Pablo Neruda at Parthasarthy Rock, or singing Sahir’s songs from Pyasa.Student violence was unknown, gender sensitivity was an absolute axiom with women confident to walk alone at any time of the day or night.

The Soviet Union had intervened in Afghanistan but the walls mostly said “Down with American Imperialism”. The National Students Union of India (the student wing of the Congress) and the Akhil Bharitya Vidyarthi Parishad (affiliated to the RSS) had barely a presence, although the Students Federation of India (SFI) and the All India Students Federation (AISF) — student wings of the CPI (M) and the CPI — had suffered a major jolt with the Lohiaite Samata Yuvajan Sabha (SYS) and the Free Thinkers winning the 1982 elections. “Study and Struggle”, was the guiding mantra even for non-Marxists, with everyone being reminding constantly: “If politics decides your future, you must decide what your politics should be.”

But the days were too short! Almost everything changed in 1983. The journey to Tihar began as a protest by students at a perceived injustice, but transformed into an aggressive movement which led to an unprecedented divide between the faculty and the student body. Everyone has his or her version of 1983, much like Kurosowa’s Rashomon. And you can trivialise it or philosophise it, but you cannot easily forget those days in Delhi’s scorching summer. A student had been suspended from the hostel without a proper inquiry; the students’ union restored the room to him, after breaking the “official” lock. Two of the office bearers were rusticated, as a consequence. The “inhumane” gherao of the Vice Chancellor and the Rector that followed was difficult to justify. But when the police entered campus on that fateful night, the ceremony of innocence, as they say, was truly drowned. JNU was no longer the sanctuary where every idea, every thought, every identity could find a place.

We thought we were voluntarily “courting arrest” as a symbol of protest, and believed totally in the righteousness of our cause, only to wake up next morning in the jail to the news that we were charged for “attempt to murder” and “rioting” by a Delhi government wanting to “clean up” the campus of “romantic revolutionaries”.

The experience of Tihar was itself life-changing. It was as much about recognising the virtues of idealism, as well as its limits. About recognising the importance of freedom, as well as its limits. About recognising the power of the Indian state, and the limits of resistance. And, above all, about how confinement can, initially, cripple you psychologically, but once the initial distress has been overcome, it can be truly liberating and can help you to come to terms with your inner self. We were all bailed out, the charges dropped in a few years, and most of us went on to return to our petit bourgeois world of careers, and families and ambition. But who could ever forget May 1983? You can take me out of Tihar, but not the Tihar out of me.

(Source: The Hindu)

New poll finds Australia well liked in India - Prof. Mattoo's take on the poll in this ABC Radio National interview

The spate of violent attacks on Indian students in 2009 and 2010 greatly affected Australia's reputation in India at the time.

Since then, efforts have been made by government, tourist and cultural bodies to repair the damage, and some new research appears to show it's having an effect.

The India-Australia Poll, a collaboration between the Lowy Institute and the Australia-India Institute, surveyed over 1200 Indian adults and found that despite bad press over student issues, Australia is well liked in India.

Prof. Mattoo speaks to ABC Radio National's Fran Kelly about the crucial findings of this ground breaking poll. To listen in, click on the link below:

http://mpegmedia.abc.net.au/rn/podcast/2013/04/bst_20130417_0837.mp3

It’s not that complicated, mate

What do Indians think of the world outside their borders? How safe do they feel? How seriously do they take the challenges from the neighbourhood and beyond, especially from China and Pakistan?

Late last year, The Lowy Institute for International Policy and the Australia-India Institute commissioned one of the most comprehensive surveys of Indian public opinion on key foreign policy issues and critical challenges of governance. Face-to-face interviews were conducted with 1,233 adults, and questions asked in seven languages in cities, towns and villages throughout most of India and at all levels of society.

Today we are releasing, in Sydney, the first part of those findings, relating to how Indians view Australia. On May 20, we will release, in New Delhi, the rest of the startling findings of this ground-breaking poll.

Getting over past

The most important message from today’s initial poll results is that the Australia-India relationship is an idea whose time has arrived. That there was strong convergence of values and interests between the two countries had been intuitively obvious, but the bad press that Australia received over student safety and Canberra’s refusal to export uranium to India (a decision now overturned) had strained ties.

That chapter seems almost over, but there is no room for complacency. Findings of the poll suggest that Canberra and New Delhi need to continue investing in the relationship, especially in correcting popular perceptions amongst Indians about how they are treated in Australia.

Overall, the survey reveals strongly positive perceptions of Australia in India. Indians ranked Australia in the top four nations towards which they feel most warmly. Only the United States, Japan and Singapore ranked more highly. Today, Indians feel warmer towards Australia than towards countries in Europe, including Britain or India’s fellow so-called BRICS.

No less importantly, Australia is seen as a country that functions well and is worth emulating. Sixty per cent of Indians think it would be better if India’s government and society worked more like Australia’s. Japan and Singapore rank roughly equal to Australia. Only the United States ranks better at 78 per cent. Other countries, including Britain, China and Germany, do not fare as well as governance models for India.

A majority of Indians also see many good qualities in Australia and appreciate Australian values. This suggests some reassuring resilience to Australia’s reputation based on its core strengths as a developed, democratic, multicultural and egalitarian nation.

Irritants

But it would be a grave mistake for the Australian and indeed the Indian Government to interpret these results as reason to relax about the bilateral relationship. For the poll also shows lingering concerns about the kind of welcome Indians receive Down Under.

Most disturbingly, 61 per cent of Indians still think the attacks against their countrymen here in 2009 and 2010 were driven mainly by racism — even though it’s likely this was an element in only a small proportion of those crimes. Sixty-two per cent still consider Australia a dangerous place for Indian students, although 53 per cent say it is safer than it was a few years ago, and 49 per cent regard Australia as generally a safe country.

Trade links

Of course, there is much to celebrate. Relations between India and Australia have deepened dramatically over the past decade. India’s economic growth and its burgeoning demand for energy, resources and education have propelled India to become Australia’s fourth-largest export market.

People of Indian origin have become one of its largest migrant communities. Both governments have stressed common security interests and now recognise a shared Indo-Pacific destiny.

And Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard’s hard-fought victory in December 2011 reversing Labour’s uranium ban has removed a barrier of mistrust. Incidentally, 70 per cent Indians think selling uranium is important to Australia’s relations with India, while only five per cent think it is not important.

There is bipartisan Australian support for engaging India. The Liberal Party, under Tony Abbott, is committed to pursuing an even more robust relationship.

The poll data suggests a healthy pragmatism among Indians, as well as respect for a fellow democracy, which Australia and India ought to harness. More than half of Indians believe Australia is a good place to live and to get work. About the same proportion see Australia as a country well-disposed to India; while 59 per cent agree that the two countries have similar national security interests and 56 per cent go a step further to agree we could be good security partners in the Indian Ocean.

And ordinary Indians seem to understand that Australia is becoming indispensable for their country’s development: 60 per cent see Australia as a good supplier of energy and other resources, 57 per cent think it supplies good agricultural produce, and 61 per cent agree it is a country known for excellence in science.

But there remains work to be done is in correcting Indian perceptions about what Australians think of them. Indians are divided on this front: 51 per cent agree that Australia is a country with welcoming people, while 26 per cent disagree. Indians from large cities are more positive, with 71 per cent agreeing that Australia is a country with welcoming people.

One promising discovery is that young and urban Indians tend to be more positive about Australia, and in a nation with more than 600 million people under the age of 25, that remains an enormous opportunity.

With this poll, there is now a measurable scorecard to help political leaders and diplomats in New Delhi and Canberra, along with universities, business and civil society keep lifting their game in a crucial bilateral relationship.

 - Co authored with Rory Medcalf

(Source: The Hindu)

India beyond the clichés: we've got some catching up to do

As Canberra begins to translate its vision of “Australia in the Asian Century” into reality, it is reassuring that a renewed focus on the continent has bipartisan support. Last week, the government announced its implementation plan to act on the recommendations of the White Paper released by Prime Minister Julia Gillard in October 2012.

While the Significant Investor Visa Scheme has attracted some controversy, the plan is – for the most part – thoughtful. For instance, the AsiaBound grants program and the proposal to further assist university students wanting to study in Asia, as well as the Asian Century Business Engagement Plan to assist businesses to “harness the opportunities emerging in the region” are commendable initiatives.

Earlier, on March 22, the Menzies Research Centre hosted a policy roundtable at Parliament House, Canberra, on the Coalition's proposed New Colombo Plan. This plan is, inter alia, an ambitious initiative to encourage Australian students to undertake study in universities in the Asia-Pacific region.

On the occasion of the round-table  the federal Opposition Leader, Tony Abbott, signalled an unusual consensus on the new engagement with Asia, even in these otherwise Manichean political times: “[S]o much that happens in this building is fierce and partisan. So much that happens in this building is all about the large egos of the people who strut and fret their hour upon the stage but hopefully what we do today is about the 'better angels of our nature', it is about things that will make a lasting difference to our country and our world.”

These initiatives are undoubtedly encouraging and do suggest that no matter who is in government in September, Asia will firmly remain at the centre of the policy radar screen. What is critical, however, is to recognise that the real promise of the Asian Century will be realised only if Australia shows patience and a readiness to provide the substantial budgetary support necessary to build the capability to engage with the main protagonists of the Asian century.

This is particularly true of India: the world's largest democracy and federation; the third largest global economy (by gross domestic product in purchasing power parity terms) with a growing and almost insatiable appetite for natural resources; home to over a billion people with the largest pool of young human capital needing to be trained, skilled and educated; one of the biggest markets across segments and a hub of research and “frugal” innovation; and yet continuing to be the land of the starkest contradictions and diversity on the planet.

Doing business with India, political or economic, eludes any quick fix or magic mantra (as Australian governments and businesses know only too well from present and past experience) and it requires, at the very least, a sustained and long-term commitment to creating a cadre of India specialists – in the public services, universities, in business and the workforce – who can interpret the country, work as a bridge to what should be one of the most important objectives for Australia in the Asian Century.

For make no mistake, Commonwealth, curry, cricket and the English language are red herrings. These commonalities will do little to help businesses, political leaders or even academics engage meaningfully with India.

Australia's understanding of India today, with all its complexities, is severely limited. Until about three decades ago, Australia could claim to be one of the principal centres in the world for the study of India, in various disciplines, and some of the most exciting work on India came from Australian universities. Australia would have already been India-capable if that had been sustained. That, however, did not happen as departments were closed and academics retrenched.

There are signs of a renaissance in Indian studies, particularly in Victoria. The Australia India Institute, funded by both Canberra and the state government and based at the University of Melbourne, is a concrete expression of this trend, with its teaching, research, public policy and outreach programs. Building an India-capable Australia requires more states, territories, businesses and universities to come together to forge new partnerships on India.

There are already some good examples. Victoria has developed a well thought out and nuanced strategy of long-term engagement with India; it has provided doctoral scholarships to the best and brightest of Indian students; its annual trade missions expose Victorian businesses to the opportunities India offers; it convenes an annual roundtable of vice-chancellors from India and the state to promote research collaboration; it has partnered the University of Melbourne in sponsoring a professorial chair in contemporary Indian studies; and, together with the federal government, it has provided significant support to the Australia India Institute. This model of partnership must cut across states and territories if we are to create an India-capable Australia.

In a recent interaction with the Confederation of Indian Industry, the vice- president of the ruling Congress party, and a likely candidate for the prime ministership, Rahul Gandhi, described India as resembling a “beehive”; complex, decentralised, noisy but bustling with energy and determination. The world – he suggested – expects simple answers from India, which will never happen.

But India, he argued, is a training ground of tomorrow's complex networked world. Anyone who succeeds there will acquire a competitive advantage because the business practices that emerge from the complexities of India will have a global robustness.

This is the Indian reality that Australia has to cope with in the Asian century, and it demands a systematic, long-term investment. “India”, one of Australia's most formidable diplomats once said, “tests your patience”. But as he wisely concluded, “it always rewards the patient”.

(Source: The Canberra Times)

No real business plan

The nationwide outrage at the beheading of Lance Naik Hemraj and the mutilation of the body of Lance Naik Sudhakar Singh is symptomatic of a collective and deep sense of angst across the country. The brutal streets of the national capital region (NCR) and the treacherous heights of the LoC are increasingly becoming a metaphor for a State that is unable to provide security to its citizens. Security, in its fundamental sense, is freedom from fear. Today, large sections of both urban and rural India are terrified at the prospect of what the future may unfold. And because emotions are running high, it is important for the prime minister to build a national consensus on critical issues before another incident overwhelms us all. What is needed, above all, is clarity of mind and sobriety of action based on distilling the lessons of our contemporary experience and past history. Nowhere is this clearer than in our Pakistan policy, steeped today in national confusion.

Consider this. At the height of the Kargil war, on June 3, 1999, the Pakistan International Airlines flight from Delhi to Lahore and then to Islamabad carried two unusual emissaries of Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee. On board were joint secretary of the Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran division of the ministry of external affairs, Vivek Katju, and chairman of the Observer Research Foundation, Rishi Kumar Mishra. Katju, a brilliant Kashmiri Pandit diplomat and a known hardliner on Pakistan, was later blamed by Pervez Musharraf for sabotaging the Agra Summit of 2001. Mishra — a fountainhead of Brahmanical wisdom, a confidante of Vajpayee and his ace principal secretary, Brajesh Mishra, as well as many former PMs — had been part of the back-channel established by Vajpayee and Nawaz Sharif at the Lahore Summit; his Pakistani counterpart was the experienced but rather fragile former Pakistani foreign secretary Niaz Niak.

This unusual Mishra-Katju couple delivered to a shocked Nawaz Sharif, a tape intercepted by the Research and Analysis Wing of a conversation between General Musharraf and his chief-of-staff, Lt-Gen Aziz Khan: incontrovertible evidence of the Pakistani army’s involvement in Kargil. Subsequently, Mishra remained in continuous dialogue with Naik to explore ways to find an amicable resolution to the war through bilateral means, and Katju would get a sense of the conversation as he escorted Naik from Delhi airport, on at least one occasion, to the Imperial Hotel. Kargil would have been settled bilaterally, as it almost was (the Mishra-Naik plan had Nawaz Sharif stopping briefly in New Delhi on his return from China towards the end of June, meeting Vajpayee and issuing a joint communiqué leading to a Pakistani withdrawal) if Nawaz Sharif had shown greater sagacity and foresight. Instead, Sharif had to travel to Washington on July 4, to be arm-twisted by US President Bill Clinton to declare  a unilateral withdrawal of Pakistani forces from the LoC as well as call for a ceasefire and a restoration of the Lahore Summit peace process — precisely the terms that Mishra had communicated to Naik in a non-paper partially drafted by Vajpayee himself.

This episode, buried in the saga of lost opportunities, is important, however, for at least one reason. It illustrates how even at a moment of Pakistan’s greatest perfidy, there was a range of options, instruments, out-of-the box thinking and creativity that were brought into play by the Indian political leadership. Not since the Bangladesh war had the Indian military force, intelligence and diplomacy worked in such flawless synergy in the pursuit of a clear objective. Contrast this with today and the manner in which television, rather than South Block, seems to be setting the national agenda on Pakistan and tapping the palpable anger on the streets of India. Foreign policy, it is said, is too important to be left to diplomats. And India’s Pakistan policy is far too important to be left to TV anchors, with their wars over TRPs  and their penchant to appeal, often, to the lowest common denominator of public opinion. Indeed strident debates in the Indian media — frightening in their Manichaean simplicity — reflect a total lack of appreciation of the intricacies of the Gordian knot of bilateral relations.

The reality is, as our TV anchors must understand and appreciate, that Pakistan is not as much a foreign policy issue as it is part of a larger sub-continental tragedy of unsettled communal relations. That’s why the conflict between India and Pakistan may be easy to describe in terms of events and episodes, but it is painfully difficult to understand. When a street mechanic outside Agra describes a nearby Muslim colony as ‘chhota’ Pakistan, you know that this relationship is about more than just borders and border skirmishes. In reality,  the India-Pakistan relationship  is — and has been — about everything that matters: history, memory, prejudice, territory, identity, religion, sovereignty, ideology, insecurity, trust, betrayal and much more, in a very desi way.

The tragedy is that while Prime Minister Manmohan Singh understands Pakistan perhaps better than most scholars in the country, he has been unable to sell his goal of a grand reconciliation with Pakistan to a nation simmering with anger over multiple issues. And Pakistan, unfortunately, destroys its own case by instigating outrageous acts that seem to be almost designed to alienate Indian public opinion.

Today, there is no Indian strategic policy towards our most troublesome neighbour, only tactics. No long-term goals, only endless ‘debates’ over short-term gains and losses. No national consensus over Pakistan, only national confusion. We, as a nation, are not even clear about the kind of Pakistan that we want in the future: a stable and prosperous country; or a fragile and failing State; or disintegrated multiple Pakistans. While it may not be possible, as Singh stated, to have “business as usual” with Pakistan, can we at least have a long-term ‘business’ plan?

With the Americans marching out of Afghanistan next year, it is important to evoke the Pakistani academic Pervez Hoodbhoy’s wise words: “Pakistan’s State is already fractured by multiple violent ethnic and religious conflicts. Disintegration into molecular civil war with fiefdoms and warlords is a terrible possibility. India will find, too late, that it has created a South Asian nuclear Somalia for a neighbour.”

 (Source: Hindustan Times)

An Indian grammar for International Studies

A little over three years ago I wrote in The Hindu that at a time when interest in India and India’s interest in the world are arguably at their highest, Indian scholarship on global issues is showing few signs of responding to this challenge and that this could well stunt India’s ability to influence the international system.

As we meet here now, at the first real convention of scholars (and practitioners) of International Studies from throughout India, we can take some comfort. A quick, albeit anecdotal, audit of the study of International Studies would suggest that the last three years have been unusually productive. So much so, that we are now, I believe, at a veritable “tipping point” in our emergence as an intellectual power in the discipline.

Stanley Hoffman, Professor of International Relations (IR) at Harvard, once famously remarked that IR was an American social science. The blinding nexus between knowledge and power (particularly stark in the case of IR in the United States) perhaps made him forget that while the first modern IR departments were created in Aberystwyth and in Geneva, thinking on international relations went back, in the case of the Indian, Chinese and other great civilizations, to well before the West even began to think of the world outside their living space.

Having absorbed the grammar of Western international relations, and transited to a phase of greater self-confidence, it is now opportune for us to also use the vocabulary of our past as a guide to the future.

2011 survey

Recovery of these Indian ideas should not be seen as part of a revivalist project or as an exercise that seeks to reify so-called Indian exceptionalism. Rather, interrogating our rich past with its deeply argumentative tradition is, as Amartya Sen put it, “partly a celebration, partly an invitation to criticality, partly a reason for further exploration, and partly also an incitement to get more people into the argument.” In the context of international relations it offers the intellectual promise of going beyond the Manichean opposition between power and principle; and between the world of ideas and norms on the one hand, and that of statecraft and even machtpolitik, on the other.

In doing so we are not being particularly subversive. A 2011 survey of American IR scholars by Foreign Policy found that 22 per cent adopted a Constructivist approach (with its privileging of ideas and identity in shaping state preferences and international outcomes), 21 per cent adopted a Liberal approach, only 16 per cent a Realist approach, and a tiny two per cent a Marxist approach. When academics were asked to “list their peers who have had the greatest influence on them and the discipline,” the most influential was Alexander Wendt, the Constructivist, and neither the Liberal, Robert Koehane, nor the Realists, Kenneth Waltz or John Mearsheimer.

Mohandas Gandhi once said that “if all the Upanishads and all the other scriptures happened all of a sudden to be reduced to ashes, and if only the first verse in the Ishopanishad were left in the memory of the Hindus, Hinduism would live forever.” Let me make what may seem like another astounding claim, and which I hope, in the best argumentative tradition, will be heavily contested. If all the books on war and peace were to suddenly disappear from the world, and only the Mahabharata remained, it would be good enough to capture almost all the possible debates on order, justice, force and the moral dilemmas associated with choices that are made on these issues within the realm of international politics.

Uncertainty in the region

Beyond theory, we are faced with a period of extraordinary uncertainty in the international system and in our region. Multilateralism is in serious crisis. While the U.N. Security Council remains deadlocked on key issues, there is little progress on most other issues of global concern, be it trade, sustainable development or climate change. As academics, we cannot remain unconcerned about these critical failures.

Our continent is being defined and redefined over time. Regions are, after all, as much shaped by the powerful whose interests they seek to advance as by any objective reality. Whatever nomenclature we adopt, and whatever definition we accept, we are faced with, what Evan Feigenbaum and Robert Manning described as two Asias: the ‘Economic Asia’ whose $19 trillion regional economy drives global growth; the “Security Asia,” a “dysfunctional region of mistrustful powers, prone to nationalism and irredentism, escalating their territorial disputes over tiny rocks and shoals, and arming for conflict.”

The Asian Development Bank says that by nearly doubling its share of global GDP to 52 per cent by 2050, Asia could regain the dominant economic position it held 300 years ago. Yet, as several academics have pointed out “it is beset by interstate rivalries that resemble 19th century Europe,” as well the new challenges of the 21st century: environmental catastrophes, natural disasters, climate change, terrorism, cyber security and maritime issues. An increasingly assertive China that has abandoned Deng Xiaoping’s 24-character strategy of hiding its light and keeping its head low, adds to the uncertainty of the prevailing strategic environment.

India’s military and economic prowess are greater than ever before, yet its ability to influence South Asian countries is less than what it was, say, 30 years ago. An unstable Nepal with widespread anti-India sentiment, a triumphalist Sri Lanka where Sinhalese chauvinism shows no signs of accommodating legitimate Tamil aspirations, a chaotic Pakistan unwilling to even reassure New Delhi on future terrorist strikes, are symptomatic of a region being pulled in different directions.

Can our thinking from the past help us navigate through this troubled present? Pankaj Mishra, in his brilliant book, From the Ruins of Empire: the Revolt Against the West and the Remaking of Asia, describes how three 19th century thinkers, the Persian Jamal-al Din al-Afghani, Liang Qichao from China and India’s Rabindranath Tagore, navigated through Eastern tradition and the Western onslaught to think of creative ways to strike a balance and find harmony. In many ways, these ideas remain relevant today as well. For if Asia merely mimics the West in its quest for economic growth and conspicuous consumption, and the attendant conflict over economic resources and military prowess, the “revenge of the East” in the Asian century and “all its victories” will remain “truly Pyrrhic.”

(This is an edited version of Prof. Mattoo's presidential address to the Annual Convention of the Indian Association of International Studies in New Delhi on December 10, 2012.)

(Source: The Hindu)

Prof. Mattoo's take on the Asian Century

Prof. Mattoo in this conversation with ABC Radio National talks about India-Australia Relations in the  Asian Century, the upcoming conference- The Argumentative Indian to be recently hosted in Melbourne and India's larger role in global geo-politics.. To listen to the interview, click on the link below...

http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/sundayextra/newsmaker/4337466