Islamabadsaid Saturday it had sought details from Indiaon the perceived terrorist threat to its general elections.
'We have made a request to the Indian government for intelligence sharing so that all necessary steps could be taken,' Interior Minister Rehman Malik said at a press conference, noting that Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had spoken of the threat.
He sharp out that it was for the Indian administration to provide information about the threat. 'We are facing a common enemy,' Geo TV quoted Malik as saying.
'If you give us an opportunity at the centre, I will prove that the 21st century belongs to India just as the 20th century was dominated by western countries,' the veteran leader told the well-attended rally.
'We don't want recurrence of incidents like the Mumbai attacks,' Malik added. Dr.Manmohan Singh's remarks had come during an interaction with women journalists in New Delhi Friday.
Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh said Friday USA President Barack Obama had told him that he was keen to visit India early with his family, his wife Michelle Obama and tow daughters and build on the improving relationship with this country.
In his communication with women journalists Friday, Dr. Manmohan Singh spoke about his meeting with the US president on the sidelines of the G-20 summit in Londonlast week.
'From my 45 minutes with Obama, my impression was that he was very clearly interested in India. He wants to improve relations with India and build on the strong ties between the two countries for the last several years,' he said.
The prime minister Dr. Singh said that Obama wished to come to India'very early' with his wife, Michelle Obama. 'In fact, he said that he wants wants to bring his two daughters with him,' he said.
'Judging by my conversation I look forward to a very fruitful relation with him,' Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh said.
US has made it clear that it would turn clear of the Kashmir issue as it seeks to engage India and other key stakeholders in the region in its new policy for Afghanistan and Pakistan.
'We don't intend to get mixed up in that issue,' President Barack Obama's National Security Adviser, Gen James Jones, told reporters Friday when asked if the US expected to address issues between India and Pakistan, particularly Kashmir, as part of its new regional come up to.
'But we do intend to help both India and Pakistan build more trust and confidence so that Pakistan can address the issues that it confronts on the western side of the nation,' he said referring to Pakistan's tribal areas which Obama and other US officials have described as terrorist safe havens.
'But no, Kashmir is a unconnected issue,' Jones said. 'But we think that the times are so serious that we need to build the trust and confidence in the region, so that nations can do what they need to do in order to defeat the threat' posed by Al Qaeda and Taliban terrorist groups.
'As America does more, we will ask others to join us in doing their part,' he said referring to Obama Administration's plans to 'forge a new contact group for Afghanistan and Pakistan that brings together all who should have a stake in the security of the region.'
The proposed group will include America's NATO allies and other partners, the Central Asian states, Gulf nations, Iran, Russia, India, and China, Jones said noting, 'All have a stake in the promise of lasting peace and security and development in the reign.
India is ringed by turbulent states Like Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh and Myanmar. Turbulence has percolated through India's porous borders in the form of arms and narcotics to finance insurgents, militants, terrorists and religious fundamentalists.
India remains Pakistan's primary target and operating ground for Islamic fundamentalists and terrorist groups who infiltrate through Jammu&Kashmir, Nepal and Bangladesh and carry out anti-Indian activities with impunity.
Nepal is vulnerable to China's influence. Its extremists have linkages with the People's War Group in India. In its bid to expand its influence, the PWG has carved a corridor ringing the states of Andhra Pradesh-Madhya Pradesh-Chhattisgarh-Orissa-West Bengal-Jharkhand-Bihar.
This endless internal turbulence in India is also inter-linked with external factors. To the north, India shares a 3,440-km long border with China, which can pose the entire spectrum of conventional, nuclear and missile threats. It can also influence and use as proxy India’s neighbors to weigh India down in every possible way.
In short, India's 14,058-km long land frontier is impacted by a perpetually hostile or semi-hostile environment. Indian security stands threatened by demographic assault, arms and drug smuggling, and the safe havens that the insurgents have in India.
Obama administration important member United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s first overseas trip to Asia has elicited diametrically opposite views from two South Asia experts.
Stephen P Cohen, who heads the South Asia Program at the Brookings Institution, told "I think this administration is not quite sure about their map of Asia and India doesn't seem to be part of it."
"There are a lot of signs, which are quite, I won't say alarming, but, interesting," he said, and added, "The way in which they have put India in the National Security Council under China. The same guy who is in charge of matters concerning China also looks at Indian issues, even though he is from East Asia, not South Asia."
Jeff Baden, a specialist on China, heads the Asia Division in the NSC. So far, no one has been appointed as the director for South Asian affairs in the White House.
Cohen acknowledged that including India on Clinton's trip to Asia would have had a significant symbolic value. "It is really impressive that India doesn't seem to figure at all in the American foreign policy," he said.
"They certainly don't seem to have taken any special interest in India, as compared with the Bush administration," he added.
Cohen pointed out that so far, "Nobody has raised the issue of the Indo-US nuclear deal with India. It sort of has simply vanished from the screen. So we'll see what happens. But I am not encouraged by the first couple of weeks."
Within the enormous caverns of the Barack Obama's $787 billion stimulus plan is a nugget for US companies to spend a few billions to construct roads and bridges, mass transit rails and national parks. The US president is right in expecting a massive spin off for his economy from the measure that will improve the top lines of construction companies, if not their profits and lead to a surge in job creation. In more or less the same period the European governments too plan a similar push to their infrastructure investments.
This is one part of the plan that should be of most concern to India, probably even more than the proposal to cut tax breaks for firms which ship jobs overseas. Because, in the same time frame ie within the next two years or 2012, we also plan to spend about $500 billion to develop our infrastructure in a massive way. The dampener on outsourcing will be moderated as Indian and US companies will be on the same wave length on this—cut costs. But that benefit will not work in the race to capture the global infra funds.
Put simply, after a nice lull of several years, companies planning to invest in Indian infra sectors will now face steep competition in attracting the attention of global infra fund managers. They will have to sound convincing that India offers a better deal than the US or Europe in the infrastructure business, in the next few years. This will include the rules for doing business and the rules for raising finance. All this has to be done, in the midst of the ripples that have already begun in the global financial markets about the Obama plan. At least one global fund house has already begun mobilising finance at Libor plus 500 bps to invest in US infrastructure.
We also have to remember that even for domestic infra funds, the rules for investment abroad have been simplified. Few fund managers at this stage will be able to say that given a chance they will prefer to invest in a special purpose vehicle to develop a road project in India than one in the US. These are not academic exercises but real bread and butter choices that companies in very harsh financial markets will be making very soon.
If that sounds challenging there is no doubt it is and talking to the Indian companies has made me sure that they too think the Obama plan will impact them big. So it is very urgent that we get our act right on the stuff that crimp infra investment in India.
And here, instead of moaning about the problems, I feel there is cause for cheer if one looks at some things we have recently got right. Of these, the one that needs a big round of applause is a government proposal to allow single bidders for projects, especially for roads and highways. This might seem like playing with government money but it is not. Of the 34 projects that the NHAI had advertised, only 16 have received any bids. Of these, six stretches have got only one bid.
Before readers begin to draw pictures of cartels playing cahoots with rules, it is worth recounting that the railways face the same problem. Its flagship project to construct a locomotive factory at Madhepura in Bihar has received only one financial bid out of the three companies that had put in technical bids. The phase II of the Mumbai metro project has done worse. It has got no bidders from among the seven companies that put in technical bids.
The central government is plainly waking up to the sudden drying of funds in infrastructure sector. But what is most needed at this juncture is similar realisation among state governments too. Indian infra projects with the glorious exception of the Delhi Metro have consistently been delayed in completion, largely due to state level bottlenecks. The latest flash report of the ministry of programme implementation shows that 47% of the 523 biggest projects involving the government are running delayed. The more important piece of statistic is that this has raised the cumulative cost of these projects by over 11%. The implications are obvious. Since infra project developers rarely get funding at less than 14-16% rate of interest in normal circumstances, an 11% cost over run means adding one more per cent to the project cost.
So, it is quite pleasing that governments, both at the centre and states, have revised their take on land acquisition. On February 23, for the first time in nearly two years states and the Centre publicly acknowledged that they need to go for the jugular to get land for projects. Infra projects were almost paralysed as a fall out of the problems in acquiring land from 2007 onwards. But at a meeting of the state chief secretaries with the cabinet secretary to work out ways to make the government stimuluspackage work, ministry officials, to quote the government release, told states to give "special attention to land acquisition wherever projects are stalled on account of this reason". In Indian government speak that could mean a big step forward.
Would these be enough? I doubt it. In the next few months, several Indian entities will approach the international markets to raise debt to finance their projects. To ensure they have any reasonable chance to compete, the entire infra project approval and delivery mechanism needs to be redrawn very fast.
