For some nationalists in Beijing, India is seen as untrustworthy, too close to the West and posing a direct challenge to China’s regional hegemonic intention. The strings of pearls strategy of encircling and entrapping India with strategic economic and military installations and enhancing ties with regional players, has been one of the many options capitalised by Beijing in keeping New Delhi in check. The Indian Ocean, together with the Nicobar island chain remain the next frontier of geostrategic importance to both Beijing and obviously Delhi, primed to maintain its leadership and keen to thwart China’s attempt to alter the regional maritime and security order.

In ensuring the success of China’s BRI, strategic ports and bases are acquired with its vast amount of capital and influence, and in some cases, through coercive presses and economic cards. The counter strategy in facing Beijing’s strings of pearl containment espoused by Delhi, the necklace of diamonds strategy, has seen wise and tactical counter actions by India in ensuring its key holds in the crucial chokeholds are not affected by Beijing’s increasing presence and grip. It remains wise for India to build greater influence on traditional regional players, both militarily and economically in denying Beijing’s advantage. This includes India’s Act East Policy,  launched as an effort to integrate India’s economy with South-East Asian nations and to ramp up military ties in countering China. Key ports and routes are reinforced, heightening relations with key regional players and offering viable alternatives while cementing strategic ties.

Military and strategic agreements with Vietnam, Japan, the Philippines, South Korea, and others are banked upon in ensuring India remains in the game, including a deep-water port in Myanmar and further supporting Bangladesh especially on modernising its Sea Port in Mongla and developing its radar systems. Similar radar development projects are developed in Maldives and Sri Lanka to strengthen defense ties and to deter further Chinese inroad.   Both Sri Lanka and Bangladesh remain crucial in the eyes of Delhi and Washington in denying further incursions by Beijing, underscored by the scramble for reassertion of American influence and ties in both states. Pakistan remains a strategic dilemma for both India and China, with Beijing keen to use it as a useful strategic card against Delhi.

The Himalayan border conflict will conversely be seized upon by Delhi as a critical second front and a timely Achilles’ heel for Beijing in creating a potential two-front conflict should regional tensions in East Asia flare up, thus giving the containment team greater openings and options in squeezing Beijing.

 India is also courted by Beijing, realising that for BRI to succeed and for its regional security assurances to be met, India’s role is indispensable. Its influence and grip on regional players, while not as extensive as Beijing enjoys in its own periphery, will be needed to ensure China’s regional and global interests. Some project India to remain a potential advantage for China’s long term projections, with India’s complex maneuvering for its best path forward remaining ripe for exploitation. 

Delhi is seen by some in Beijing as the weakest link in the Quad, and with complex historical ties with Washington and Moscow, it remains advantageous for India to be courted with different variables. With India’s ‘great power complex’ and the unpredictable future orientation, Beijing realises that the possibilities remain open and is meticulous not to draw too forceful a posture, lest inviting greater costs and backfiring. Beijing needs Delhi in achieving the full spectrum of its Indo-Pacific ambition, but knowing the costs of both underestimation and overly reactionary actions to Delhi’s true policy goals. Beijing is hopeful that Delhi can be wisely moulded by providing the needed economic covers and lowering the nationalistic triggers and conflict tendencies especially on border disputes.

Openings for quid pro quo and mutually beneficial arrangements including support for India’s goals in exchange for reciprocal support are seen as a part of a new strategy in enticing India, while ensuring the threat level remains manageable should ties deteriorate. India’s aspirations in joining the Nuclear Suppliers Group, for instance, would be supported by Beijing in exchange for India’s greater roles and reciprocal contributions to the BRI.

If the intentions to get India into the larger frame of Beijing’s Indo-Pacific ambition fail, Beijing will then be compelled to ensure that Delhi is unable to form a credible and sustained threat to its goals, through a multi-pronged approach. This might include continuing to drive a wedge between India and its key allies including the Quad, and to capitalise on existing systemic threats to India. Beijing will ensure that Delhi remains on the sidelines of regional primacy, further using the upper hand Beijing enjoys in pressuring players in the region to accommodate its needs and squeezing India through a combination of economic and non-military tools.

Other options will include shaping new narratives and for Delhi to be encouraged to maintain its historical uniqueness of foreign policy independence and strategic autonomy. Through this, Beijing hopes that the containment team will be further weakened, and that a direct challenge to its primacy in the region either by India per se or the larger Western containment will be further fragmented.

From predominant indicators, India is poised to be a future superpower, providing a  different alternative and growth model as compared to China. From future labour force advantage to potential dominance in high tech sectors, Delhi provides both knowledge creation capacity and resilient staying power. It also continues to play an integral role, now and in the future, in checking assertive forces and providing stability in the regional and international order.

@ COLLINS CHONG YEW KEAT, UNIVERSITY OF MALAYA

When 20 Indian soldiers were killed in a clash with Chinese troops in the Himalayas this month, a fragile peace on the top of the world that has held for nearly 60 years looked dangerously close to shattering.

While diplomats and army commanders remain locked in talks to resolve the tensions on a military level, many experts fear another type of conflict is looming as ordinary Indians demand economic retribution and punishment of their neighbour.
A traders association in New Delhi has demanded hotels ban Chinese visitors and circulated a list of 3,000 Chinese imports for people to boycott; developers have created a mobile application that detects and removes programs developed in China. Google has since taken it down, but not before it was downloaded more than a million times.

Politicians have been quick to join in the calls, demanding a boycott of everything Chinese, from restaurants to mobile applications. Some have even got physical. Members of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) ransacked a Mumbai store selling toys ostensibly from China, while one of its leaders threatened to “break the legs” of anyone using Chinese goods.

Regional governments, too, have embraced the calls. In Haryana and Uttar Pradesh, BJP governments have cancelled contracts given to Chinese companies while the central government has demanded its suppliers make clear the origin of their products and the percentage of local content. News reports suggest Chinese imports have been disrupted because authorities are delaying clearances.

While the repercussions of these boycotts are not yet being discussed, it is a conversation India must have, and soon. Its economy is expected to contract by as much as 4.5 per cent this year, according to the International Monetary Fund. Can it really afford an economic battle, in addition to the military scuffle, with its single biggest importer?

Chinese capital pervades almost every aspect of daily life in India, from buying groceries to hailing a cab to ordering food online and making digital payments. According to a report by Brookings India released in March this year, the current and planned Chinese investment in India is over US$26 billion. Chinese capital has funded at least 92 Indian start-ups – including 14 of India’s 30 billion-dollar unicorns – by pouring in at least US$4 billion, according to a report by Gateway House in the same month. These start-ups include popular brands like Ola, Flipkart, Byju, Make My Trip, Oyo, Swiggy and Zomato.

The Chinese presence is also marked by imports from China of intermediate and capital goods, both of which are used by Indian manufacturers to produce finished goods.

“Around 60 per cent of India’s imports from China fall in this category. Without these imports, our supply chains will not be able to deliver,” said Joe Thomas K, an assistant professor in Chinese studies at the Indian Institute of Technology Madras (IIT-Madras).

Aside from imports, China has also increased its footprint in India vastly by investing in manufacturing.
Many Chinese companies now manufacture in India. Of the top five mobile phone sellers in India, four are Chinese companies cornering over 66 per cent of the market share, according to the Gateway House report. All four now run multiple manufacturing plants in India.

In many areas like telecoms and pharmaceuticals, the dependence on imports from China is so high that the industries would find it difficult to survive without them.

Telecom Equipment Manufacturers Association officials told This Week in Asia that up to 90 per cent of components required for mobile phones were imported from China.

Critics say that for these reasons a plan floated by Modi to make India “self-reliant” by reducing imports from China may not be a great idea in the short term.

“Such a concept will work in the long term, when we can reorganise our supply chains internally and do so with a great amount of focus and in ‘mission mode’. Being self-reliant will mean that we will have to create the capacities and the right conditions for Indian manufacturers to build products that they currently cannot build due to a lack of expertise or resources,” said Vinod Kumar, president of the India Small Medium Enterprises (India SME) forum, a trade association of 86,000 business owners.

MODI’S FLIP-FLOP

Of course, New Delhi might be all too aware that such boycotts are unfeasible. After all, Modi has been one of the biggest champions of building robust economic ties with China. After he took over as prime minister, India’s trade with China increased from US$65.7 billion in 2013-14 to US$87 billion in 2018-19. What is more, over the same period, India’s reliance on Chinese imports increased from US$51 billion to over US$70 billion and its trade deficit went from US$36 billion to US$53.5 billion.

Modi has repeatedly made a show of encouraging Chinese investment in India. On Chinese President Xi Jinping’s first visit to India after Modi became prime minister, in 2014, the two countries signed agreements for increased Chinese investment.
One of them involved the first China-dedicated industrial plant in Gujarat, Modi’s home state, referred to as a “watershed for China Inc in India” by Brookings India as it was the single-biggest Chinese investment in the country at the time.
Even before Modi became prime minister he had visited China at least three times as Gujarat chief minister to lure Chinese investors to invest in his state.

SWITCHING TRACK

So it is no wonder that Modi’s call for India’s “self-reliance” – perceived by many to be a disguised call to stamp out Chinese capital – has perplexed so many.

However, some see it as a good thing.

Invest India, a government agency set up to promote and facilitate investment, said Modi’s call would ensure the “pandemic becomes an opportunity”.

Deepak Bagla, its chief executive, said global investors were looking to realign their supply chains. “Many want to move away from China, many want to have an alternative to China and many want to move closer to the market. India is perfectly poised to be the destination that fits the bill,” he said.

According to Bagla, at least 578 global manufacturers had committed about US$170 billion worth of investment in India, of which US$20 billion had already flown into India. He said Invest India had been holding regular interactions between investors and state governments across the country to facilitate such investment.

Others highlight the difficulties involved. Kumar, the president of India SME, said one problem India faced in nationalising supply chains was having to coordinate so many government agencies.

“The prime minister has made a push for being self-reliant. However, industry is a state subject and hence regional authorities need to adopt it as a priority for our commodity chains to be nationalised.”

CASTING A SHADOW

Meanwhile, calls for a boycott are unlikely to go unnoticed in Beijing. India has come to be a source of significant economic investment for Chinese companies and any disruption to the arrangement is likely to have political repercussions.

Global Times, the Chinese nationalist daily affiliated with the Communist Party of China’s mouthpiece, People’s Daily, said that the effects of such a boycott would be “potentially devastating … on the already-fragile Indian economy”.
Joe, the assistant professor from IIT-Madras, said deep economic ties developed over the past two decades had helped to keep the peace between the two Asian giants, which fought a border war in 1962.

“Over a period of time, trade between the two countries increased and this correlated to the number of conflicts between the two countries going down. They both focused on building ties,” he said.

According to Joe, stronger trade ties meant that the two countries could keep the border dispute from taking the centre stage in the relationship.

“The two countries could talk about other things.”

However, this unspoken understanding was now starting to fray, he said.

India’s slow but steady moves towards the United States, such as backing Washington’s Indo-Pacific strategy and taking part in the quadrilateral security dialogue with the US, Japan and Australia, might have spooked China, he added.
“Over the last couple of years, strategic security has increased and it has spaced out the importance that we gave to economic ties.

“As a result, economic interdependence has become neglected.”
India and China needed urgently to strengthen both economic and cultural ties, he added. Until then, the peace on the roof of the world would remain uneasy. ■

@ SCMP

It was barely noon on Thursday when the metal doors of the mortuary at a hospital in south New Delhi swung open and staff in white coveralls rolled out a stretcher. Mourning relatives looked on, as a body bag was loaded into an ambulance and taken away to a cemetery.

It was yet another casualty from the coronavirus pandemic that has killed over 4,500 people and infected more than 150,000 across India. While infection rates from the virus have begun to fall in many countries, in India they are still rising sharply, and epidemiologists warn peak is yet to come.

Concerns are rising about how the country of 1.3 billion, with one of the world’s most overburdened healthcare systems, will handle the surge with roughly 6,000 new infections being detected daily this week.

On Thursday, Reuters was given exclusive access inside Max Super Speciality Hospital – currently the largest such private COVID-19 treatment site in New Delhi – where some 200 patients are being treated for the disease caused by the new coronavirus.

While India is easing a more than two-month long nationwide lockdown that was aimed at reining in the spread of the disease, the battle against the virus rages within its strained hospital system.

“We are getting more and more people daily both in numbers and in the severity of disease,” said Arun Dewan, the director of the hospital’s critical care section. “We’re not seeing any end.”

Around him, the eerie calm within the hospital was broken only by the sound of machines beeping and patients coughing – most of whom were separated only by white curtains. Staff in heavy protective gear move around softly, speaking in murmurs.

Until a few months ago the cries of babies would often fill this section of the hospital, which was meant for neonatal care. But with the number of cases surging, Max designated the entire building for COVID-19 patients.

Now, posters of Winnie the Pooh and other cartoon characters meant to soothe children, beam down upon patients struggling to beat a deadly virus.

It is the first time in his 35-year-career that Dewan is battling a pandemic of this scale, he said, and while each day has been as struggle, he fears the worst is yet to come.

“Manpower will be the biggest challenge. We have reached the limit,” he said, adding even as the toll rises, the wait list of patients is growing fast.

But there are small victories that keep the staff going. For Steena, a doctor working in the ICU who only gave her first name, one such moment was when a 70-year-old woman brought in dire condition recovered in recent weeks.

“After seven or eight days, she was taken off a ventilator, and tested negative,” she said, sounding hopeful, before quickly turning to attend to yet another patient.

Reporting by Danish Siddiqui and Zeba Siddiqui; Editing by Euan Rocha and Lisa Shumaker @ Reuters

The country recorded more than 5,600 new cases in its biggest single-day spike during the pandemic.

India to resume domestic flights in “calibrated manner” starting Monday

India’s domestic flight operations will resume next Monday “in a calibrated manner,” the country’s Civil Aviation Minister announced today.

All airports and air carriers are being informed to be ready for operations from May 25, minister Hardeep Singh Puri tweeted on Wednesday.

The operating procedures for passenger movements will be issued separately, he said.

Some context: Domestic flights in India were grounded in late March, when the country went into its first phase of coronavirus lockdown.

Meanwhile, a day after India passed 100,000 coronavirus cases nationwide, it has once again recorded its highest single-day jump with 5,611 positive cases today.

More than 2.5 million tests have so far been carried out in India, according to an announcement by the Indian Council of Medical Research.

Featured image: Air India crew exit Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose International Airport, on May 18, 2020 in Kolkata, India. The first repatriation flight from Bangladesh to West Bengal under the Vande Bharat Mission initiative lalded in Kolkata today. (Photo by Samir Jana/Hindustan Times via Getty Images)

India paid about $14 each to more than 350 million people to ease their financial stress amid a nationwide lockdown enforced to prevent the coronavirus from spreading, the government said.

The assistance totaling more than 370 billion rupees ($4.84 billion) was given under a state program named “PM Garib Kalyan,” K.S. Dhatwalia, a spokesman for the administration said in a statement. That’s on top of distribution of food grains to 52.9 million people and cooking gas bottles to 9.8 million families — both free of cost — he said in an email response to a Bloomberg News report on deepening distress in the nation’s villages.

The cash-and-food support is part of a 1.7 trillion rupee plan announced by the government last month to shield the poor from the impact of the lockdown. Prime Minister Narendra Modi doubled the duration of the initial 21-day lockdown through May 3 to stem the spread of the coronavirus that’s pushing the global economy toward the worst contraction since the Great Depression.

“The beneficiaries include not only the poor in urban and rural areas, migrant workers, but also old age pensioners, widows, building and construction workers,” Dhatwalia said. “The government has been taking all possible steps to mitigate the economic hardships for the vulnerable sections in the Indian villages.”

The government has also increased wages under a rural employment guarantee program to put more money in the hands of the poor, extended concessional loans to farmers, set up community kitchens to distribute meals, and allowed some industries to operate in rural areas, he said.

Reporting by Karthikeyan Sundaram @ Bloomberg

India announced easing of a stringent lockdown for 1.3 billion people by allowing opening of neighborhood and standalone shops with restrictions such as 50% of workers with face masks and social distancing. A home ministry statement issued late Friday says that shops in single and multi-brand malls would not be allowed to open anywhere in the country.

The relaxation also would not be applicable in hundreds of hotspots and containment zones across the country. India has so far reported more than 18,600 positive new coronavirus cases and 775 deaths. 

India imposed a lockdown for its 1.3 billion people on March 25 and it is due to end on May 3. Last week, the government allowed resumption of manufacturing and farming activities in rural areas as millions of daily wage-earners were left without work. — Associated Press.

Japan reports 60 more cases on Italian cruise ship

Japan has confirmed 60 more coronavirus cases among crew members on an Italian cruise ship currently docked in the western Japanese city of Nagasaki for repairs, reported Reuters citing Japanese local news reports.

That brought the total number of cases on the Costa Atlantica to about 150. The ship is carrying 623 crew members and no passengers.

All crew members have been tested, the report said. Japanese authorities had ordered the crew not to venture beyond the quay except for hospital visits, but it discovered this week that some crew members had left without their knowledge. Officials are checking on details of their movements. — Weizhen Tan

@ CNBC

India is adding more resources to tackle its increase in coronavirus cases by announcing that private hospitals may be requisitioned to help treat virus patients, and turning railway cars and a motor racing circuit into makeshift quarantine facilities.

The steps were taken after a nationwide lockdown announced last week by Prime Minister Narendra Modi led to a mass exodus of migrant workers from cities to their villages, often on foot and without food and water, raising fears that the virus may have reached to the countryside, where health care facilities are limited.

Indian health officials have confirmed more than 1,000 cases of the coronavirus, including 29 deaths.

Experts say that local spreading is inevitable in a country where tens of millions of people live in dense urban areas with irregular access to clean water, and that the exodus of the migrants will burden the already strained health system.

As India’s under-resourced health care system prepares to confront a wave of coronavirus cases, some state governments have asked liquor factories and breweries to produce liquid sanitizer after the initial supply failed to match demand. Designers, nonprofit groups and prisoners in various jails have stepped up to help overcome shortages of masks and other personal protective equipment.

India has less than one medical doctor and three nurses per thousand people, the minimum recommended by the World Health Organization. The dominant share of India’s doctors and beds are in the private health care sector, which the country’s poor often cannot afford.

“India’s big city hospitals are well equipped to deal with the surge in virus cases,” said public health expert T. Sundararaman. “But the same can’t be said about district hospitals in rural areas, barring some exceptions in states that fare well when it comes to health care.”

On Monday, the Indian Council of Medical Research, India’s top medical research body, said the country had conducted 38,442 tests for the virus as of March 29. India has a population of 1.3 billion people.

The governments of the states of Uttarakhand, Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh have announced in the past few days that intensive care units, ventilators and staff of private hospitals might be requisitioned to treat virus patients.

Joining the fight against the virus, New Delhi’s top hospital, the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, said it is converting its trauma center into a coronavirus hospital, the Press Trust of India news agency reported. The Buddh International Circuit, India’s first Formula One racing track, was being readied for use as a shelter and quarantine facility, officials said.

Source: CNBC

A nationwide lockdown to contain the spread of COVID-19 has created panic and anger among Indians. Now there are reports of attacks against people from northeastern states that border China. Murali Krishnan reports.

As tension rises in India over the spread of coronavirus, people originally from northeastern states have been facing racially motivated attacks in cities around the country. They are being blamed for bringing COVID-19 to India due to their appearance.

Facial features of people from northeastern India can look similar to a Han Chinese appearance. Victims of attacks say looking Chinese has caused them to be physically attacked, and abused on social media.

“My colleague was recently attacked and verbally abused outside Delhi. We have always faced racism in the past but this time it was taken to a new level,” Thokchom Singhajit, general secretary of Manipur Students Association, told DW.

“I was not allowed to enter a grocery store during the lockdown. The owner turned me and my friends away,” said Rippon Shanglai, a student from Manipur, a state in India’s northeast.

Last week, a post-graduate student from a northeastern state told local police that she was abused in Delhi. She told police that a person called her “corona” and spat on her.

People from northeastern states said they are also being racially harassed on social media with insults like “Chinki.”

India’s northeastern region is home to several tribes, including Nagas, Mizos, Garos, Tripuris, Bodos, Kukis and Meiteis.

Some of these people have been forcibly quarantined, despite showing no COVID-19 symptoms, because of their appearance. There are reports that apartment owners in major Indian cities have even tried to evict them during the ongoing lockdown in the country.

Increasing discrimination

Rinzin Dorjee and his daughter, Tsering Yangzom, were denied entry into their apartment complex on March 16. The building’s administration claimed they had been infected with coronavirus.

“We showed them [medical] documents, but the guards did not listen to us,” Yangzom told DW.

Bibinaz Thokchom, a professor at Ambedkar University, said the coronavirus crisis in India has exposed vulnerable sections of society to discrimination and assault.

The Northeast Support Centre and Helpline, which was established in 2007 to assist people from northeastern Indian states, has been inundated with distress calls from across the country. “I get five to six phone calls about racial abuse almost every day,” Alana Golmei, who manages the helpline, told DW.

Stopping racism not a priority

In 2012, thousands of people from northeastern states were forced to flee the southern city of Bangalore amid violent ethnic attacks. At the time, more than 170,000 people fled their homes as a result of the unrest, which spilled into other parts of the country.

Two years later, northeastern students staged a week-long demonstration in Delhi to voice their anger against racist attacks.

In a recently published report, “Coronavirus Pandemic: India’s Mongoloid Looking People Face Upsurge of Racism,” the New-Delhi based Rights and Risk Analysis Group (RRAG) cited at least 22 cases of racial discrimination or hate crimes against people from northeastern states between February 7 and March 25.

“It is unfortunate that such incidents are happening. The government has not acted against the perpetrators of these attacks,” Suhas Chakma, director of RRAG, told DW.

Rights activists have urged the authorities to protect vulnerable communities amid the coronavirus crisis. But some experts say the government is occupied with enforcing the lockdown and containing the spread of coronavirus, so stopping racist incidents is probably not on its priority list at the moment.

Murali Krishnan @ DW

Prime Minister Narendra Modi declared a three-week nationwide lockdown starting midnight Tuesday, explaining that it was the only way of breaking the Covid-19 infection cycle. This essentially extended the lockdown from most states and Union Territories to the entire country and provided a more definite timeline. “Social distancing is the only way to break the cycle of infection,” he said.

All other lockdown conditions, such as the availability of essential commodities, remain the same, the government clarified.

In his second address to the nation on the Covid-19 outbreak, Modi told people to stay inside their homes for 21 days, warning that if they didn’t do so the country would be set back 21 years and families would be destroyed. His last address was on the outbreak was on March 19.

“This is like a curfew, and far stricter than the ‘Janata Curfew’ (on March 22),” the PM said. “Seeing the present conditions, this lockdown will be for 21 days. This is to save India, save each citizen and save your family. Do not step outside your house. For 21 days, forget what is stepping outside. There is a Lakshman Rekha on your doorstep. Even one step outside your house will bring the coronavirus inside your house.”

India has expanded a travel ban on passengers flying in from the United Kingdom, Turkey and the whole of Europe, announcing that even Indian passport holders would be denied entry from these locations till the end of March.

In addition, passengers from Malaysia, Afghanistan and the Philippines – including Indian passport holders – are to be denied entry.

“Travel of passengers from member countries of the European Union, the European free trade association, Turkey and the United Kingdom to India is prohibited with effect from March 18, 2020. No airline shall board passengers from these nations to India with effect from 1200 GMT on March 18, 2020,” according to a notification from the aviation regulator, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA).

“The airline shall enforce this at the port of initial departure. Both these instructions are temporary measures and shall be in force till March 31, 2020, and will be reviewed subsequently,” the DGCA said, according to a report in The Economic Times.

A separate notification on Tuesday (March 17) said: “Travel of passengers from Afghanistan, Philippines, (and) Malaysia to India is prohibited with immediate effect. No flight shall take off from these countries to India after 1500 hours Indian Standard Time (IST).”

The travel restrictions follows a separate announcement banning entry by foreign passport holders and Overseas Indian Citizen (OIC) cardholders into the country from last Friday. However, till now, Indian passport holders were allowed entry into the country.

Source: NST