31 December 2004: The focus is on the United States for stingy contribution to tsunami victims, but another aid war is in the making, between India and several countries in Europe, but mainly, the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany, after Prime Minister Manmohan Singh refused assistance from them. Diplomats have been seeking reasons from the government, calling one another in ire, and even helplessly buttonholed journalists to check what is going on. But through all this, the PM has remained firm not to take aid, and with good reason.
India has had bad experience of taking foreign aid in the past, but it became almost grotesque during both the Gujarat earthquake and the Orissa super cyclone. In Orissa, European aid agencies instead of primarily focusing on giving relief meandered into criticizing the state’s poor infrastructure, and wrote bitingly about the lack of development in the fifty years since Independence.
The lack of development is not exactly a state secret, but the government did not permit the aid agencies in to present a drain inspector’s report. And a cost-benefit analysis showed it was just not worth inviting foreign aid. In the Gujarat earthquake, the Japanese were busily testing the water standards in affected areas and pronouncing it undrinkable, instead of concentrating on the primary task at hand, providing relief.
These two experiences, say officials, put off the government. It was terrible to be faced with natural disasters, but it was worse to be attacked thereafter, bringing down even the good work done, in exchange for aid, which in any case turned put inadequate. There was a third experience, a little different from the first two, but revealing the colonial/ imperial mindset of Europe.
In the Gujarat riots, some Dutch monuments were vandalized. There was no particular anger against the Dutch, but Indians are generally careless about heritage, and in any case, in the mad violence of the riots, protecting colonial monuments is the last thing on any government’s mind. In this case, Narendra Modi could not even secure the life of Gujaratis.
Anyhow, the Dutch wrote in protest to Modi, who replied to the effect that the government had more pressing responsibilities. In Europe, the Netherlands and Belgium, small powerless countries among mighty neighbours, have for one or another reason always sided against India. Several European countries wrote their findings on the Gujarat riots, and the British report was particularly scathing against Modi.
The British report got leaked first in Europe and then in the Indian media. The NDA government was furious, but the British said they had no hand in the leak. Indian agencies then traced the leak to the Dutch, rather to a Dutch public-affairs officer, who was returning Modi the favour of not protecting Dutch colonial history.
Subsequently, on the basis of the British report, the European Union decided to suspend aid to India, and stung, the then PM, A.B.Vajpayee, ordered to refuse assistance from eighteen countries, most of them in Europe, but also including Australia, New Zealand and Japan. These donations were small, the PM said, and India did not need them any longer. The diplomatic community could not stomach this stinging rebuff.
Soon after the UPA came to power, the government did reverse this decision, but the PM has returned to the old position. Manmohan Singh has always reflected strong national pride, as when he took determined steps as finance minister to buy back the gold pledged by the Chandrasekhar government in 1991, or when, on his own, he rebuffed Natwar Singh’s criticism of India’s weaponisation programme in South Korea, saying in Parliament that India was a nuclear weapons’ power and would remain one.
But besides national pride, there are also logistical and security considerations behind his decision to say no. Officials say that the bother commences after fast-tracking visas for aid workers, because they have to be secured, they have to be provided living environments like back home, which comes at huge cost in disaster-struck areas, and the government has to place at their disposal huge logistical facilities, that hamper other, more profitable local assistance. After all this follows the routine of savaging India’s image in the Western media.
But there is also a pressing security consideration. The tsunamis have hit India’s strategic assets in the Andamans, partly Orissa, and the government wants to contain any negativity following the flooding of the Kalpakkam nuclear complex. “The British are particularly notorious about carrying out espionage activities in such times of vulnerability, setting up devices, moles and sleeper teams, and fresh demands could be made to sign CTBT, NPT, etc, based on eyewitness accounts from Kalpakkam, for example,” explained an official. “You can never tell.” A new spat has broken out over India mulling over giving overflight rights over the Andamans for France, Britain and the Netherlands to evacuate their tourists. Diplomats say India is standing on false pride by refusing even emergency aid, but at the same time, these countries refuse to make cash contributions to the prime minister’s relief fund. They want to come with material relief and personnel, and India has had more than enough of them. The second spin diplomats put is that India is keen to portray an image of self-sufficiency to strengthen its claim for veto power in the UN Security Council. No one in the government carries that mindset, and certainly not the PM, who has acted alone and taken a bold step to refuse aid. In the midst of this huge spiraling tragedy, India is ironically gaining in image as no longer a Third-World country.
