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Mainstream, VOL LI, No 15, March 30, 2013

Outcome at Durban

Editorial

Sunday 7 April 2013, by SC

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The situation in the Korean Peninsula has suddenly worsened due to a variiety of reasons wherein the US role behind the deterioration of the prevailing political environment cannot be minimised. A nuclear confrontation that could lead to global conflagration and annihilation stares us all in the face. Of course, Washington is unfazed and feels the North Korean posturing may not lead to anything in the ultimate analysis, that is, Pyongyang may eventually back off. Nevertheless, there is no gainsaying that as of now, according to latest reports as we go to press, the world is on the brink of a major catastrophe.

Meanwhile trivalities continue to dominate the domestic scene. At one end, Samajwadi Party supremo Mulayam Singh Yadav flexes his muscles and engages in no-holds-barred attacks on the Congress thus giving jitters to the principal ruling party at the Centre, and yet soon after conveys the message that he has no plans to pull down the Union Government (by withdrawing support to the UPA-II from outside) “for the present”, a point reinforced by his son, UP CM Akhilesh Yadav, who says the party run by the father-son duo was continuing to back the UPA coalition “for now” in order to keep the communal forces at bay. At the other end, Tamil Nadu CM J. Jayalalithaa and his bete noire, DMK patriarch M. Karunanidhi, go on playing competitive politics on the issue of Sinhala atrocities on Sri Lankan Tamils—while Karunanidhi leads his party out of the UPA Government in protest against its indifferent and ineffective Sri Lanka policy in the wake of the Sri Lankan authorities’ genocide of Tamils in that country and declares his firm stand against rendering outside support to the Manmohan Singh administration, Jayalalithaa forces the IPL management not to allow the Sri Lankan players to play any cricket match in Chennai (as a token of solidarity with the Sri Lankan Tamil victims of genocide resorted to by the Sinhalas under the directive of the Mahinda Rajapaksa Government there). Even if one cannot possibly ignore the extraordinary provocation by the Sri Lankan authorities in their brutal assaults on Tamil civilians in the island state, as captured brilliantly by the footage in the Channel 4 presentation on the killing fields of Sri Lanka, there is no denying the fact that the step mooted by Jayalalithaa and followed under compulsion by the IPL management makes a mockery of the general trend worldwide to keep politics out of sports.

It is in such a setting that the just-concluded Durban Conference of the heads of state and government of the BRICS member-states did assume considerable significance. The decisions taken at the Summit meet—the setting up of a BRICS Bank and a BRICS Business Council in particular—were not in the least inconsequential or trivial. As The Times of India has explained at length,
No one’s saying, ‘Move over, Bretton Woods, BRICS is here’. But BRICS nations—Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa—certainly grabbed eyeballs at their Durban Summit by firming up plans for a new Development Bank to fund infrastructure and a $ 100 billion contingency reserve arrangement to provide themselves financial succour in times of trouble. The dressing on the side is a Business Council with great potential to boost trade and investment.
Clearly, the grouping’s come a long way since its Yekaterinburg outing in 2009. BRICS nations account for 21 per cent of the world GDP and have combined foreign exchange reserves of the around $ 4.4 trillion. Though still an informal bloc of emerging economies, they symbolise a global power shift not yet adequately reflected in decision-making structures of international institutions like the World Bank and IMF or multilateral forums like G-20. In that sense, Durban signals their commitment to realising a planetary economic order that both reflects 21st century realities and is geared to the needs of developing countries.

There could be difference of opinion as to how far India should go along the path of institutionalisation of the BRICS grouping but from the Indian standpoint the inestimable value of wide-ranging interactions within the BRICS framework cannot be overlooked under any pretext. Only those with a jaundiced outlook would view this development with dismay and concern. For it is by now more than clear that Durban has signified the genuine efficacy of the efforts to build a multipolar world order in place of the unipolar system that was sought to be imposed and perpetuated following the end of the Cold War.

India cannot but be an active constituent of such a multipolar arrangement for it stands to benefit immensely from this exercise regardless of the diversities and differences among individual partners in the grouping. And this is in full conformity with the non-aligned principles which still form the bedrock of New Delhi’s foreign policy in spite of the concerted attempts to jettison them in the name of realpolitik in a globalised world.

March 29 S.C.

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