Dubai: I recently sat down with Indian Minister of State for External Affairs Shashi Tharoor during his visit to Dubai. While the purpose of his visit was to address and interact with Dubai's thriving Indian business community, Tharoor took time out to discuss some aspects of his country's foreign policy. He expressed strong views on Pakistan's current problems and made clear India's stance on Iran's nuclear ambitions. Our conversation also touched on China, as well as the Middle East conflict, an area India has traditionally played a minor role in. On the issue of poverty, Tharoor contended his government has had some measure of success in tackling the problem. Excerpts:
Gulf News: Iran as an aspiring nuclear power is facing major pressure mainly from the West. India has traditionally enjoyed very good relations with Iran. How do you view their nuclear ambitions and do you think the pressure is justified?
SHASHI THAROOR: Iran is a good friend of ours and that is the basic premise from which we proceed; we also believe that Iran has the right to develop a peaceful nuclear programme for energy purposes.
At the same time we feel and we've conveyed to the Iranians that if they've undertaken solemn obligations under the non-proliferation treaty, which they freely and voluntarily signed [India has not], then they have an obligation to keep to their commitments against that. And therefore, we did vote against Iran in the IAEA when they determined Iran concealed important information about their programmes. In other words, peaceful nuclear energy for Iran, we support their right to develop it. Nuclear weapons, especially as a signatory of the NPT, no we don't.
Is the pressure justified?
It is not a question of Western pressure, there is an international community [resolutions of the Security Council] and of the IAEA; so I wouldn't speak in terms of Western and Eastern, there are certain expectations that the international community has and India shares those expectations.
With the Mumbai attacks, there's been a major shift in relations between India and Pakistan and things have got worse between the two countries. How does India see the relationship, and how can it work towards normalisation?
The problem doesn't originate with us because after all, it wasn't a home-grown group of attackers who took the lives of 166 of our citizens and some foreigners on the 26th November last year. There was unfortunately, a regular pattern for the preceding 15 years from certain elements in Pakistan [training, financing, equipping and ordering terrorist elements to conduct attacks on our country]. This is not the first attack but it's an attack which has really captured the attention of the world and therefore enabled the world to see how India has been suffering from Pakistani inspired terrorism. As you know we are strongly committed to peace with Pakistan. We have, as you correctly said, had a comprehensive dialogue with them and we were actually heading towards normalisation with them last year in every respect and of course we applauded a civilian elected government in Pakistan that said it was determined to come to grips with the problems of extremism on its own soil and then we had the attack on our embassy in Kabul in July of last year and then in November this horrendous killing.
Our own public opinion would not permit us to go further with the peace process which is not taken seriously by any other side. If we see indications of determination on the part of Pakistan to tackle this problem, to bring the perpetrators of 26/11 to justice and to dismantle the infrastructure of terror from which attacks have been launched in our country, then as our Prime Minister said in parliament if they take the step we will meet them more than half way because we have a vision of peace in the subcontinent.
By the same token, Pakistan has some concerns which are being discussed in today's news headlines, namely India's close alliance with the Afghan government, with some even saying India is meddling in Afghanistan's internal affairs
Our relations with Afghanistan are not aimed at Pakistan for good or for ill. They are aimed at the well-being of the Afghan people. We spent nearly $2 billion in building hospitals, highways, clinics, assisting with electricity and power transmission. We are doing things for development. They are not there for a military mission. This money is spent to help the Afghan people and frankly, it is none of Pakistan's business.
Another concern for Pakistan is the ‘controversial' US aid bill dubbed the Kerry-Lugar Bill. Some people believe that the US has imposed so many restrictions on granting the bill due partly to Indian pressure.
The Indian government believes strongly that Pakistan deserves all the help it can get from the international community both, to develop its country and to prevent extremism from getting ahead there. We applaud the action by the government of Pakistan against extremists in the Swat valley and this is something we've been happy to say. At the same time if the international community gives assistance, we feel it should be used for the purposes for which it is given. Our unpleasant experience over the last few decades has been that Pakistan gets international assistance from the US in particular and from other Western countries for a declared purpose and then diverts that assistance to be used for military purposes against that. This has been acknowledged by no lesser figure than former president Musharraf himself.
All we are saying to the US is by all means help Pakistan but don't give them money so freely that they can just use it to buy tanks and planes to aim at India, which is what they've been doing so far.
Does India at this point fear the possibility of extremists "getting their hands on the nuclear button" in Pakistan?
This is the ultimate fear but we don't have this fear just yet. We believe that Pakistan has all the capacity to be a responsible and effective state but to do that they will also have to demonstrate to their neighbours [us and Afghanistan] that they are not interested in anyway of permitting people from their soil to attack and destabilise their neighbours. If they take that kind of action then no body will have any reason to worry about Pakistan. Right now, we do worry.
There's been a lot of interest in China's phenomenal rise with many saying it will become a "superpower" in five year's time. For India, the literature points to ten years. Why is that?
We aren't in the game of looking for superpower status.
The impression is, China is pipping India to the post...
We don't see it as a competition for two simple reasons. The first one is both China and India — when we embarked on our respective liberalisation attempts [China in 1976 and us in 1991] — our focus was on bringing our people out of poverty. Both countries essentially were doing their economic transformations to benefit their own people and that remains at this point. We are proud of the fact that we obviously have a certain international standing and we have taken positions on international issues.
Time after time, the Indian government has invested heavily in projects that are aimed at eradicating poverty. However, many would argue with little success. Some attribute it to corruption or mismanagement. What seems to be the main obstacle?
The main obstacle is the sheer scale of the problem. We have 26 per cent of the population below the Indian poverty line which is actually lower than the UN World Bank poverty line. If you take that of 75 rupees a day, I am afraid we are looking at 75 per cent of our population. The scale of this problem is absolutely enormous. Having said that, we have had some success. We pulled about 1 per cent of our population out of poverty in the last ten years. That doesn't sound like a lot but given that one per cent for us means 10 million people [that's 100 million people over the past ten years].
Is the gap widening between the rich and poor?
There is no widening gap. Statistics confirm that while the rich are getting richer in a dramatic way, the poor are getting less poor. In fact, the famous figure called the Gini coefficient which particularly studies inequality within societies shows that India is more equal society than China — despite the fact that China is a People's Republic and we are a liberal democracy.
