The Asian Independent - January 2019

www.theasianindependent.co.uk ASIA January 2019 9
Announcing Withdrawals : Trump is
doing what he promised at outset
New Delhi, Finance Minister Arun
Jaitley on Monday made it clear that the
government does not need RBI’s
reserves to bridge the widening fiscal
deficit as the Lok Sabha voted the
Supplementary Demands for Grants for
2018-19 to the tune of Rs 85,948.86
crore, including Rs.41,000 crore for
bank recapitalisation.
“This government’s fiscal deficit
track record has been better than any
other government in history. We do not
need RBI’s reserves for (meeting the)
fiscal deficit,” he said, replying to a
brief debate on the demands. India’s fiscal
deficit for the eight months till
November stood at Rs 7.17 lakh crore,
which is 114.8 per cent of the budgeted
Rs 6.24 lakh crore. The Minister’s
assertion comes against the backdrop of
a raging debate over the government’s
reported moves for securing the surplus
reserves with the RBI, estimated to be
around a few lakh crore of rupees, to
fund government’s social welfare
schemes ahead of elections. Jaitley said
the global standard for economic capital
framework for central banks was to
have around 8 per cent of their assets as
With the suddenness of revelation,
withdrawal from Syria and “drawdown”
from Afghanistan have been announced
by Donald Trump. In the past, such
announcements were followed up with a
tidy pattern: Two steps forward, one step
back. But this time debate and hesitation
have been foreclosed. Witness the way
Defence Secretary James Mattis is being
shown the door because he finds himself
not on the same page as the President.
Pundits will have difficulty digesting
the proposition that President Trump is
setting out to do in Syria, Afghanistan, the
Mexican border, Russia, what he had
promised during the election campaign
right up to its closing days in November
2016. He suddenly turned up in Baghdad
to signal his disapproval of the mess his
predecessors made of that expedition.
Some cameos will be forgotten in the rush
of news that must be expected.
I have followed Syria closely since
August 2011 when I found myself in
President Bashar al Assad’s office in
Damascus. His adviser, Bouthaina
Shaaban, knitted her brows when I pointed
out the ease with which US
Ambassador Robert Stephen Ford, along
with his French counterpart, were driving
around Hama, Homs, Daraa, all centres of
agitation, meeting anti-Assad insurgents.
“Just shows how penetrated we were,”
Shaaban said. The past tense is important.
Like colour revolutions elsewhere, the
initial ignition was amplified by the global
media to mobilise opinion in the region
and beyond. An article by James Glanz
and John Markoff in the New York Times
gave graphic descriptions of the technology
designed by the Obama administration
to bypass state communication controls
and to deploy “shadow” Internet and
mobile phone systems that “dissidents can
use to undermine repressive governments”.
Did I hear someone wail that
Russia interferes in other countries?
Against this backdrop, let me fast forward
to Trump’s interview with Jake
Tapper of the CNN just before the elections.
“Where do you think have billions
of dollars’ worth of arms — and cash —
gone in the course of our involvement in
Syria? To the extremists, of course: I
believe so.” Trump was right. Obama’s
Defence Secretary Ashton Carter made
several humiliating Syria-related
announcements. His face in the lower
mould, Carter announced that the $500
million project to train “rebels” in Syria
was discontinued because arms reached
groups the US intended to fight.
That the US intelligence agencies were
mixed up with militant groups became
more or less clear in subsequent leaks. An
admission that Obama made to Thomas
Friedman of the New York Times in
August 2015 when the rise of the ISIS
was the big story is revealing. Friedman
asked Obama why he had not bombed the
ISIS when it first reared its head. The
interview was given in August 2015.
Obama minced no words. “That we did
not just start taking a bunch of air strikes
all across Iraq as soon as the IS came in
was because that would have taken the
pressure off Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al
Maliki.” ISIS was, in other words, an
asset then. Maliki was in bad odour with
Don’t need RBI’s reserves to meet fiscal deficit: Jaitley
reserves with even the most conservative
nations having it at 14 per cent.
“Does India need to have 27-28 per
cent (as risk capital)… The money can
be used for recapitalisation of banks or
for poverty alleviation measures,” he
said, adding the government only wanted
to have a committee to review the
matter. The second Supplementary
Demands for Grants for 2018-19
includes Rs 41,000 crore for recapitalisation
of the public sector banks that
have been hit hard by non-performing
assets. Jaitley said the government’s initiatives
including the Insolvency and
Bankruptcy Code (IBC) were bearing
fruits and money stuck as NPA was now
back into the banking system.
“The balance sheets of public sector
banks are improving due to the IBC as
money is coming back into the system.
Rs 3 lakh crore has already been recovered
through IBC. Banks’ ability to lend
is also increasing,” he said.
Attacking the Congress, the Finance
Minister said the asset quality review by
the RBI initiated after this government
took charge revealed the NPAs during
the UPA regime were as high as Rs 8.5
the Obama establishment because he
refused to sign the Status of Forces
Agreement, “that would have involved
the surrender of Iraqi sovereignty”. In this
stand Maliki had the support of the Shia
establishment at Najaf led by Grand
Ayatullah Sistani. This stance of Sistani’s
placed him on the wrong side of the
American media. There is delicious irony
in this. The media sang paeans of the high
priest in 2005. In fact Friedman had written
a column proposing Sistani for the
Nobel Prize for the constructive role he
played in inviting Iraqi Shias, an overwhelming
majority in the country, to help
stabilise electoral democracy.
True, a structure for the practice of
democracy is in place in Baghdad but the
Two River Civilisation has been ripped
apart and terrorism is endemic. On this too
Trump, in his conversation with Tapper,
pulls no punches: “Saddam Hussain and
Qaddafi may have been bad men but there
was no terrorism in their countries. What
we have created is terrorism.” There have
been many false troop withdrawal alarms
in the past, even during the Trump years.
The Syrian army, aided by the Russians,
appeared to be in control, until the next
lakh crore as opposed to the UPA’s
claim of Rs 2.5 lakh crore.
Countering charges of a slowdown in
the growth rate of the country’s gross
domestic product (GDP), he said: “India
is growing at 7.5 per cent when the
world is growing at 3 per cent. We are
also growing faster than China.”
Jaitley also said that the government
would continue to take all necessary
steps to ensure that farmers get adequate
minimum support price for their produce
– 50 per cent higher than their
eruption, in Aleppo, Del Azour, Idlib, anywhere.
The motivation to keep the pressure
up on Assad came principally from
Riyadh. But a somewhat lame duck post-
Khashoggi, it is winding down in Yemen
and probably lacking in spunk vis-a-vis
Syria. A greater credibility therefore
attends announcement of troop withdrawal
on this occasion. Trump’s announcement
of drawing down troops in Afghanistan has
coincided with the appointment of
Amrullah Saleh as Minister of Interior. He
is a Tajik, former spymaster and close
adviser to the late Ahmad Shah Masood
and a persistent critic of Pakistan’s role in
the Afghan civil war. Let me share with
you a flavour of Saleh’s thinking when I
met him in Kabul a few years ago. “The
enemy is headquartered in Pakistan and he
should be defeated there. For the US, the
‘expendable’ part of the Taleban is in
Afghanistan. Why would we ever collaborate
with NATO who wish to kill Afghans
they consider expendable? NATO has no
strategy in the region because it has no policy
towards Pakistan. They know they cannot
defeat the Afghan Taleban without hitting
hard at their bases in Pakistan.” Much
water has flown down the Kabul river
since Saleh spoke to me. Trump’s newlyappointed
Special Envoy to Afghanistan
Zalmay Khalilzad has also tried to correct
the image attached to him, that of being
anti-Pakistan. During a recent visit to
Islamabad, Secretary of State Mike
Pampeo gave Khalilzad a high profile in
his delegation. Much was made of the fact
that Khalilzad visited Islamabad before
New Delhi. Obviously, Khalilzad would
like to get rid of the perception that he proposes
a higher profile for India in
Afghanistan.
Anyone interested in visually observing
the success of India’s policy of “diplomacy
by default”, a slow tortoise-like
movement, should visit Hauz Rani opposite
Max Hospital in Delhi where a virtual
Afghan colony has sprung up, eateries
et al, harmoniously merging with the
landscape.
input cost as promised. The demands for
grants contain proposals involving a net
cash outgo aggregating to Rs 15,069.49
crore and gross additional expenditure,
matched by savings of the ministries
and departments or by enhanced
receipts and recoveries, aggregating to
Rs 70,882.21 crore. Both treasury
benches and the opposition members
attacked each other during discussion
over the supplementary demand. Taking
part in the debate, most opposition
members raised farmer’s distress issue
and took a dig at the government over
implementation of Goods and Services
Tax (GST) and demonetisation reforms.
Bhartruhari Mahtab of BJD sought to
know from the government the steps
being taken to improve the governance
in the banks. TMC MP Saugata Roy
said the economy was in “doldrums”
and asked the Centre about the resignation
of RBI Governor Urjit Patel.
“The biggest blunder of the Modi
government was to hurriedly implement
GST and demonetisation. These were
the cruel steps of the government. Many
businessmen like Nirav Modi, Mehul
Choksi and Vijay Mallya have fled after
Gas explosion
in Russian
building kills 3
Moscow, At least three people
died and 79 others were
missing after a gas explosion in
an apartment building in southern
Russia, authorities said on
Monday. An entrance hall in
the apartment building in
Magnitogorsk, an industrial
city in Russia’s Chelyabinsk
region, collapsed due to the
explosion. A total of 48 apartments
inhabited by 110 people
were damaged in the blast, said
the Ministry of Emergency
Situations. Emergency services
said that rescue workers managed
to pull out six people
from the rubble. Three people
died and another three, including
a child, were injured,
Russia’s Tass news agency
reported. The gas explosion
was believed to be a key cause
of the accident. The fate of 79
people remained unknown,
said Deputy Governor of the
Chelyabinsk Region Oleg
Klimov. A search and rescue
effort was underway involving
469 emergency workers.
Russian President Vladimir
Putin dispatched Health
Minister Veronika Skvortsova
to the city to take stock of the
situation.
defrauding banks,” Roy said.
He said the government has not come
out with the figures on the number of
people who have lost jobs due to
demonetisation and asked the Finance
Minister to state the number of small
businesses that had closed due to implementation
of the GST.
Opposing the supplementary
demand, Samajwadi Party MP
Dharmendra Yadav said: “I am against it
because the problems are increasing day
by day though five budgets have passed.
Over 60,000 farmers have committed
suicide in NDA regime. Potato is being
thrown on roads and farmers are not
getting proper cost of their sugarcane
crops.” BJP MP Anurag Thakur, however,
supported the draft, saying “the fiscal
deficit is now 3.8 per cent which never
came below 6.8 per cent during UPA
government”. Labelling MGNREGA as
the “mother” of corruption, BJP MP
Nishikant Dubey said that it was due to
MGNREGA that the fiscal management
of the Central government was affected.
After the implementation of Aadhar
and Biometric, around Rs 60,000-
70,000 crore had been saved, he said.