Had Rahul Gandhi, the choice of the Congress Party for the Prime Ministership, won the 2019 elections, he would most probably have expressed views in detail on June 15 itself about the aggression committed on India by the PLA on June 15. Great-grandfather Jawaharlal Nehru was known across the world for his speeches, which touched upon subjects both mundane as well as cosmic. PM Modi took a few hours to study the situation before coming out with a statement that showed both wisdom and resolve. As India’s first Prime Minister, Nehru regarded only his government as having the qualities needed to occupy the “commanding heights” of the economy, and the private sector in India got restricted in his tenure and in that of Rahul’s grandmother Indira Priyadarshini Gandhi to a considerable extent, with only a few lucky houses of industry managing to ride the storm. Prime Minister Modi has a different view, which is that of “Minimum Government Maximum Governance”, a concept that gives space to the private sector to grow. It has taken some time to clear away the open and hidden opposition to Modi’s effort to unshackle private industry, but success is finally showing its green shoots in measures such as involving private players to formerly restricted fields such as mining and defense. Recent moves to free India’s farmers from the bureaucratic shackles put in place during the UPA years to benefit a few large businesses and commodity traders are part of such a process, as is the de-criminalisation of swathes of company regulations. Under the UPA, it had become hazardous to take up any responsibility, so dense was the welter of regulations and punitive measures. The only way out was to exit business (as many did), or relocate it outside India (which sev eral did) or to be constantly at the mercy of officials threatening raids and prosecutions unless their palms were liberally greased. In the past, India has been notorious across the globe for going only halfway at most in its measures, and usually much less. Prime Minister Modi is a leader who can go all the way, and it is certain that many more reforms will follow the ones already announced. Such determination was clear from his June 16 speech before the Chief Ministers, in which he gave Beijing notice that there would be no business as usual unless and until the aggression committed by Chinese troops was vacated. The lives lost of our brave soldiers demands nothing less than the recovery of all the territory that the PLA treacherously and in a cowardly fashion occupied during last month, and to which they are still adamantly holding on.
India must show China that in PM Modi, the country has a leader who will go all the way to protect the interests of the 1.3 billion people of the world’s largest democracy, which is now facing the world’s biggest authoritarian country and has shed blood at its hands in a fashion that words cannot describe. Not just a few token contracts but all Railway and infrastructure contracts with Chinese entities should be canceled on the WTO-recognized ground of national security. What took place on Indian territory on June 15 and indeed has been taking place for years cannot any longer be tolerated. Money made in India is being used to fund the Pakistan army to attack India, and by the China themselves to change the ground situation in a manner which is contrary to international law and regional stability. At present, more than $ 60 billion a year flows as sheer excess of trade to China, and it is therefore no surprise that much of that is being lavished on the CPEC and on the occupation of Pokiest by China, including through the presence of soldiers and security personnel in considerable numbers. Pakistan is now an occupied country, and China must be held responsible for its actions, the more so in view of Beijing’s brazen defence of terrorists in the UNSC and in other fora. The sooner Chinese entities are sent packing from critical sectors such as telecom the better. Meta data from India is flowing back to strengthen GHQ Rawalpindi and the PLA through mobile apps such as JD (promoted by a well-known film star who is perhaps unaware of the ownership of the entity) and because every cellphone operator in India is dependent on ZTE or Huawei for backend operations. This intolerable breach of security has been tolerated by the security establishment in India for a surprisingly long time. It is time for the Prime Minister to tell agencies that enough is enough. The profits made in India are part of what fuels the arrogance and anger of China, and needs an immediate stoppage. India must go all the way until the Chinese vacate their aggression, and even then, should ensure that they not be allowed to gain advantages from India in a situation where they are the providers of guns, aircraft, cash and nuclear assets to GHQ Rawalpindi, which rather than the elected government controls all such assets and their deployment. It is time to go all the way in a manner that the Lutyens Zone has never allowed the country to do thus far.