Week 16: Indian Autumn
Week 16: Indian Autumn
Launching a new paper on Australia's Indian Ocean engagement, as India's General Election kicks off
This forthcoming Wednesday afternoon (Australian Eastern Standard Time), we at Asia-Pacific Development, Diplomacy and Defence Dialogue (AP4D) are launching on new paper on Strengthening Australia’s Indian Ocean Engagement.
You can register for the webinar here
Until now our focus has been primarily on the Pacific and Southeast Asia, this is our first paper that casts our eyes westward towards South Asia. Following the Australian government’s designation of our “immediate region” as being the Pacific, Southeast Asia and the Northeast Indian Ocean. Which is an enormous region for a country of Australia’s population and resources. But I’m happy that there’s some ambition in Australia’s foreign policy, and it makes my work all the more interesting as Canberra reaches out into the world.
Given my love for India, this has been a very interesting and enjoyable project to work on. The launch of our paper coincides with the start of the Indian election, which began this week, and is always an event of great interest to me. Due to the massive scope of the election, and the need to move election staff and security personnel around, the election is conducted in 7 phases. Making it a six week election process, with vote due to be counted and results released on 4 June.
It is most likely that the Bharatyia Janata Party (BJP), led be Narendra Modi, will be returned for a third consecutive term. However, the margin of victory in terms of seats may be deceiving. As I noted in a previous article comparing the UK and Australia’s voting systems, India’s use of First-Past-The-Post means there is often a discrepancy between votes received and seats won. At the last election the BJP won 55.8% of the seats in the Lok Sabha (lower house) with only 37.36% of the vote.
Due to this, there is an experiment taken place between many of the other parties contesting the election. An alliance has been formed called the Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA). It’s aim is to agree on a single best placed candidate to run against the BJP in designated electorates in the hope of negating the vote-splitting that occurs within FPTP systems (especially when there are a large number of parties.)
Forming such an alliance is incredibly difficult in India. The range of parties with ideologies, regional interests, and personalities means that just a collective desire to defeat the BJP may not be a strong enough glue to hold the alliance together. Most parties are also concerned primarily with their own states, rather than national politics.
Some of the bigger regional parties like the Trinamool Congress in West Bengal and Biju Janata Dal in Odisha have opted out of the alliance (or the Trinamool seem to have one foot in and one foot out). And the Janata Dal (United) in Bihar switched its allegiance to the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance. Given the weakness of the BJP in the southern states (with the exception of Karnataka), several major political parties in the south have felt no need to join INDIA (but will be watching how it fares closely for future opportunities).
There is also the matter of whether the alliance can have a serious impact. At the 2019 election, the BJP won 74% of its 303 seats by over 50%, indicating that vote-splitting would have been inconsequential in these seats. However, the alliance is not without purpose. As an experiment it is mostly about testing the waters – to see whether the vote-share for a non-BJP candidate can increase and create tighter contests, with an aim at advancing these results for 2029.
This is because it is generally acknowledged that Modi himself is more popular than the BJP in general. Come 2029, Modi will be 79, and although a look to America may indicate that politicians never think they are too old, a third three-year term at prime minister may be enough for him. It is possible that a Modi-less BJP will make Indian politics far more competitive, and preparations for these conditions need to begin now.
This Week’s Reading
The Case for Progressive Realism
David Lammy – Foreign Affairs
“A progressive realism worth its name begins by being honest about assumptions the West made in the past that turned out to be wrong. The broad consensus that economic globalization would inevitably breed liberal democratic values proved false. Instead, democracies have become more economically dependent on authoritarian states, with the share of world trade between democracies declining from 74 percent in 1998 to 47 percent in 2022. China provides a particularly stark case in point. The country was admitted into the World Trade Organization in 2001 under the hope that political reforms would follow economic ones. But the state became more repressive as the economy opened up.
The rise of China—which now has the world’s largest economy by purchasing power parity—has ended the era of U.S. hegemony. The world is shaped by competition between Beijing and Washington. Beijing challenges the U.S.-led order in nearly every domain, from developing the technologies and green supply chains of the future to sourcing and processing critical raw materials. But the competition is especially fierce when it comes to security. The Chinese navy has the greatest number of warships in the world. According to a report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, China’s shipbuilding capacity is approximately 230 times as large as that of the United States. Beijing’s growing military power has, in turn, helped Russia’s challenge in Europe. To compete with China, the United States will inevitably have to pay more attention to the Indo-Pacific. This shift will come even though Europe is worryingly dependent on U.S. support to stop Moscow’s war against Ukraine.”
From Gaza to Iran, the Netanyahu Government Is Endangering Israel's Survival
Yuval Noah Harari - Haaretz
“The Netanyahu government, which has failed in so much, must finally take responsibility. It is the Netanyahu government that adopted the disastrous agenda that brought us here, and it is the government that adopted the Samson-like policy of revenge and suicide. Woe to us if the same Samsons are now permitted to make the most important strategic and political decisions in Israel's history.
This government has reached the point at which it must endure the unendurable, admit failure, and immediately resign so that someone else can open a new page. It is vital to establish a new government, one that will be guided by a different moral compass, will end the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, and will begin to rebuild our international standing. If we don't change our policy toward the Palestinians, we will be left to face Iran alone, and our end will be like that of Samson, who in impotent rage brought down the house on the heads of everyone.”
The Atmosphere of the ‘Manosphere’ Is Toxic
David French – New York Times
[This headline does the article a disservice. Turning away those who most need to read the piece. As well as limiting its scope]
“Too much of our education establishment and too many of our nation’s parents are focused on success ethics, not virtue ethics. Our schools train students for careers, and parents push their children toward success, hovering over them to monitor their progress or snowplowing to clear their way. In the success ethic, virtues are often a means to an end. Prudence, temperance and industry can contribute to your success, but that is not their ultimate purpose.
Yet success ethics are ultimately empty, and our children feel that emptiness. If they fall behind, they feel panic and dread. But even when they succeed, their success doesn’t fill that hole in their hearts, at least not for long. Virtue, however, is different. Perfection is impossible, but virtue is a purpose all its own. And it’s that pursuit of virtue, not mere achievement (and certainly not resentment), that ultimately defines who we are.
I fall back to these universal values not because I reject the idea that young men have a distinct masculine experience, but rather because the argument about ideal masculinity is diverting our attention from the more urgent quest, to fill the hole in the hearts of our children, to provide them with a purpose that is infinitely more satisfying than the ambition and rebellion that define the ethos of the gurus who are leading so many young men astray.”
Jess Hill and Michael Salter – How Do You Smash A Ghost?
“When it comes to the prevention of violence against women, what do we have to say about children watching X-rated pornography? What do we have to say about alcohol regulation? What do we have to say about problem gambling? Other public health models will seek to regulate or prevent the sale of goods that contribute to or cause disease. Violence prevention frameworks around gender-based violence in Australia have been reluctant to tackle wealthy industries that are profiting from violence against women, such as pornography and the technology sector, and the multi-billion dollar alcohol and gambling industries.
We know that young people feel that pornography is normalising sexual practices that girls and women describe as painful or unpleasant (Marston & Lewis, 2014). We know that the majority of alcohol sales are going to people who are drinking at harmful levels (Foundation for Alcohol Research Education, 2016). We know that the number of liquor shops in your local suburb is causally related to the prevalence of domestic violence independent of any other demographic factor, including class (Livingston, 2010). We know that problem gambling is an accelerant to family violence (and a form of financial abuse) (Dowling et al., 2016). Even if we don’t consider alcohol or substance misuse to be the cause of family violence/coercive control, and simply see it as an exacerbating factor – isn’t it incumbent on us to tackle the factors that exacerbate violence, and lead to more severe physical injuries?”
A Reckoning Is Coming for the Democrats
Sam Kahn – Persuasion
“Trump may have been deeply flawed in very many ways, but the more time I spent in the middle of the country the less clear it was to me what the Democrats were offering. The messaging was really off. Democratic leadership may have come across as more polished and professional than their Republican adversaries but, at the national level, they seemed to have lost all ability to communicate simply and clearly to hinterland voters. I know what Donald Trump’s promise was to voters in 2016—build a wall, deal with illegal immigration, cut taxes. I can’t even begin to tell you what the Hillary Clinton campaign promised the average voter about how their life would meaningfully improve, nor can I tell you what Biden’s campaign promises right now.
Democrats have cast themselves for at least a half-century as custodians of a crumbling New Deal without a new, concrete vision. They allow themselves to go into election after election with a losing hand as the party of taxes and regulation (if not also of progressive radicalism).”
Why the World Still Needs Immanuel Kant
Susan Neiman – New York Times
“Kant was driven by a question that still plagues us: Are ideas like freedom and justice utopian daydreams, or are they more substantial? Their reality can’t be proven like that of material objects, for those ideas make entirely different claims on us — and some people are completely impervious to their claims. Could philosophy show that acting morally, if not particularly common, is at least possible?
At a time when the advice to “be realistic” is best translated as the advice to decrease your expectations, Kant’s work asks deep questions about what reality is. He insisted that when we think morally, we should abstract from the cultural differences that divide us and recognize the potential human dignity in every human being. This requires the use of our reason. Contrary to trendy views that see reason as an instrument of domination, Kant saw reason’s potential as a tool for liberation.”
The last few weeks I’ve been listening to the new Cindy Lee album. It’s perfect listening as Melbourne moves into Autumn, as days become shorter, nights colder, and the competition between grey and blue skies intensifies.
The album is sound of nostalgia that you can’t quite pinpoint. Kind of like 60s Girl Groups in vocal delivery, but darker and rougher, mixed up with the wrong gang. It’s also the nostalgia for a mode of music listening that no longer exists. The off-kilter guitar, the intentional bum notes, the purposeful audio peaking. It’s the grasping at faded memories – the sound of a detuned or slightly out of range radio station, or of songs degrading in quality as they are dubbed from cassette tape to cassette tape.