 Welcome to the Center for Strategic and International Studies, my name is Andrew Schwartz and I work here at CSIS in External Relations. Thanks for joining us for what promises to be a fascinating discussion with a very dear friend of mine, Simon Denier, who is now the Beijing bureau chief in China for the post. And we met years ago when he was running Reuters here and all kinds of things. And he's one of the greatest, really greatest journalists in the world. Very lucky to have him here. Of course, before he was in China, he was in India. And I'm just, we're lucky to get him here too because the book has just come out in the United States. It's been out in India, but it's just out and we're selling them back there. And I think Simon can stay for a few minutes to autograph them for you guys. And so, listen, I know Christmas is a while away, but buy two or three because they're great gifts. And for people who like to read electronically, forget about that. The hard copies are the best and it's got a beautiful cover. The book is called Rogue Elephant, Hardesting the Power of India's Unruly Democracy. Like I said, Simon's career spanned the world. He served as Reuters bureau chief in Washington and New Delhi as well as Washington Post bureau chief in India and China, Beijing where he remains today. Simon's achieved a great deal in his career and this book reflects well on his ability to internalize the nuances and realities of everyday life in the countries that he's worked in and reported from. In writing Rogue Elephant, Simon's chronicled a hugely important time in Indian democratization. He is deft in his ability to humanize the political climate in India, which as many of you know, not many people can do. He doesn't try to make you comfortable while reading this book. He paints a picture of social cleavages and societal changes that are at times messy and forlorn. But he also shows us that these apparent stark events are perhaps symptoms of a nation struggling towards a more accountable democracy. So without further ado, I would like to introduce my colleague, Rick Rossau, our Wadwani chair in U.S. India Policy Studies. Thank you very much. Thanks, Andrew. Well, I'll just get out of the way for the hearing the speaker here. It really is a treat. I got to spend a little time, went through the book myself and I think, you know, for a lot of us that especially the last 10 years where maybe India over that period was slowly declining in our level of interest versus other parts of the world, you know, it occasionally flares up with a rape in Delhi or some other incident that catches our attention briefly. And I'd say that's the real interesting part about this book is, you know, he takes a look at the things that most Americans would have heard a bit about and really dives into that. So it's topics, I think, that most of us would be familiar with with India, but he gives us that deeper view that I think we would all appreciate, especially as we head towards a new government and I think a new level of interest and awareness about India. So let me hand the floor over to our featured speaker. Thanks, Simon. Thanks very much, Rick. Thanks, Andrew, as well. Do you want me to speak from there? Whichever you're... Actually, probably better stay since you got the... Okay, okay. Great. Well, thanks everybody for coming. Nice to see a nice big crowd here. So a few familiar faces as well. So I arrived in India in 2004 from Pakistan and I arrived just as an election campaign was getting underway and this is really what really sparked my interest in Indian democracy. I started off, the first thing I did was follow Indian politicians on the campaign trail. I followed Advani, who was the BJP leader at the time, Prime Ministerial candidate, as he toured around Southern India in his bus and he used to appear on a platform that would elevate him to the top of his bus and then speak to the crowds as he drove around Southern India and tried to tell the farmers of Southern India about the great peace process that he was undergoing, that his government was undergoing with Pakistan and nobody really understood what hell he was talking about because nobody in Southern India was at all interested in a peace process with Pakistan. And I followed the Gandhis. I followed Sonia Gandhi around UP, around Amethi and Rai Birelli, their constituencies in Northern India. I followed Priyanka Gandhi and I followed Rahul Gandhi and I saw them campaigning in these great sprawling Indian constituencies. I mean, until you see Indian democracy up close, you really can't understand the scale of it. Some constituencies, nine million voters strong. You know, the average is at one and a half million voters. Some are thousand villages. So you literally drive through these villages. You address a few people in a crowd, a couple of hundred people there, a few thousand people there. You go and shake hands and you do this campaigning through these villages. So you get a sense of this huge, complicated democracy, people voting for so many different reasons. So that kind of, that first of all just started to fascinate me. And then of course, what happened in 2004 was a huge shock. The BJP was riding a huge economic boom and they thought they were going to win. Everybody thought they were going to win. And to everybody's surprise, they lost and Congress, the Congress party came into power. So first of all, we saw this great shock of Indian democracy. And so I started to get interested. And then we saw, and that was an incredible time to arrive in India. It was a time of huge optimism about India. It was a time when India really felt like it was on top of the world. People were talking about Chindia, China and India together, that India was the new superpower. If you read the Indian press, you would believe that India had arrived. The Times of India wrote a piece saying, it's official. India is no longer a poor country. We have four of the top 10 richest people in the Forbes Rich List. And as journalists, we weren't supposed really to go and write about widows and sob stories in Indian villages. We were supposed to write about shopping malls and IT and Bangalore and India's growth and the great change that was sweeping India. But of course, the complacency was overdone. India hadn't solved all of its problems. It wasn't about to become a superpower. And what happened, of course, over the next 10 years, was that dream really, that dream of India shining really came crashing down to earth, crashing down really dramatically. And we saw it break over huge corruption scandals. A government that seemed really unable to govern in any way. We saw the Commonwealth Games was a notable event. Beijing had staged the Olympics, this great Olympics, this great advertisement for the strong one-party rule in China. And then India staged the Commonwealth Games. And it seemed to reinforce all the negative stereotypes of India, dirty, disorganized, corrupt. Everybody came to condemn India and say that India could never be spoken of in the same breath as China. And then, of course, we had the greatest, the largest electricity blackout in global history in the summer of 2012. And then we had the Delhi gang rate, which really shot to the headlines and really damaged the image of India very, very seriously on the world. So this great mood of optimism gave way to this incredible movement of pessimism. And Indians would come up to me and say, I've never felt in my life, I've never felt so pessimistic about the future of this country. These problems are insurmountable. How are we ever going to get over the problems that India faces? So just as I felt that the complacency was overdone, I really felt the pessimism was overdone as well. And I'll explain why. I'm not going to talk for too long, because I want to have an interactive discussion. But I wanted to just frame it a little bit with this. What you saw in that 10 years, in that 10 years of really atrociously bad governance by the Congress-led coalition, a really weak government. But what you saw, I believe, was Indians standing up and saying that enough was enough. And you saw that through a number of ways. You saw it through anti-corruption protests, people organizing on social media around the time of the Arab Spring, actually, people in India coming out on the streets and saying they'd had enough of corruption and saying this had to stop. One man came up to me at one of the protests and said the first thing that I did for my newborn son was to bribe somebody to get a birth certificate for him. Can you imagine how demeaning that is for me that I have to do this? I'm going to have to bribe to get him a place in primary school. I'm going to have to bribe to get him a place in his next school. And I have to bribe to get him a job. And I think people were fed up. People really had had enough of that. And they stood up and said it. When the Delhi gang rape happened, people took to the streets and they said enough is enough. The position of women in Indian society has to improve. But we saw it in lots of other ways as well. We saw a Right to Information Act, which was really, really fundamentally important in India's democratic development. I mean, it's similar to the Freedom of Information Act that we have here in the United States. But it's created a really different concept in India. And that is that bureaucrats actually should be accountable to the people. I might sound obvious here, perhaps, or somewhere else. But it's absolutely not obvious in India. In India, bureaucrats are accountable to their immediate boss. And that's it. If they do the job that their boss asks them to do, then end of story. But the Right to Information Act changed that. It gave people the right to ask questions of their superiors, to lift their heads and ask questions of bureaucrats and officials. And that was a fundamental change, I believe, in demanding accountability from the Indian state. And I think that was a really fundamental change. And we saw the birth of a 24-hour TV news culture, which was an incredibly exciting thing to watch and to experience in the last 10 years. And it's as bad and as good as 24-hour news culture here in the US. It's very Indian. It's exuberant. It's sensationalist. It's overexcited. But it's also vital. It's also full of life. And it, too, encouraged Indians to question their politicians, to call people to account. So, you know, of course, the quality of debate isn't always that great. There's a soundbake culture. But politicians were hauled up in front of TV cameras and made to answer questions. It helped to galvanize the anti-corruption movement. It helped to galvanize the movement against rape. So you saw people really having different tools that they could use to bring politicians to account. But I think, and even more fundamentally than that, I think you've seen a change in the way that Indian voters, what they're asking of their politicians. The cliche in India is that you don't so much cast your vote as vote for your cast. You vote for a politician who's going to protect your community because there's no law and order. So you have to vote for someone who's going to look after your interests. Well, I think that's changing. And I'm in China now. There aren't many similarities between India and China, to be honest with you, apart from the fact that there's an awful lot of people there. But there's one similarity. And that is aspiration. An incredible aspiration of people for better lives. And it's fed by information and it's fed by people understanding that they have the right to a better life. And they want a better life. They want the life that they see other people having. And in a society where the caste system had a very strong hold over people in the villages, that aspiration is a fundamental change, I think, in India. So people now, I believe, want more than just a politician who looks out for their interests. They want a politician who's going to satisfy their aspirations for a better life. And that means that somebody who can deliver power to their village so their children can study. Somebody who can deliver roads. Those are important things. But somebody who can deliver jobs, not just handouts. So that creates a different dynamic in Indian politician. The old dynamic is you rule for five years. You know you're going to do a bad job. You know you're going to get thrown out. So you just fill your pockets. You fill your pockets. You don't bother to govern particularly because the voters are going to throw you out after five years. A change is happening now in India. I believe that politicians are realising that if they govern well, if they satisfy to some extent those aspirations of the people, they might get voted back in. They might get a second term. They might get a third term. And you've seen that happen in some states. And that too is, I believe, a fundamental change in the relationship that people have with their politicians and the relationship that Indians have with democracy. So in this time of huge pessimism in 2013, I actually see real signs of optimism and signs that democracy is demanding more from Indian politicians. But just a final word on that, with everything in India, if one thing is true, the opposite is almost always also true. So it's very easy to look at democracy in India and just see a complete mess. If you look at democracy on one level, you look at corrupt politicians who can't govern. You look at a parliament which scarcely sits, the opposition disrupts parliament. There's very little debate. Very few bills get passed. You have criminals in parliament. 30% of the people who are elected to parliament have criminal cases against them. You have corruption, which is deeply embedded in politics and campaign finance. You have parties where you don't rise to the top through meritocracy. You rise to the top because you're the son or the daughter of another politician. You have dynastic politics. And you have a fragmentation of politics so that you have India divided into many, many, many parties. And you had in the last 10 years coalition government, which didn't really do very much at all. So there's a lot that doesn't function about Indian democracy. But I think what I'm trying to argue in the book and what I believe is that there are ways in which Indian democracy gives me hope for the future. Well, that's great. And I think in particular, one of the points you brought up, which we've written a little bit about in the past about state elections, it really is one of the changes that not many people look at. But over the last 25 years, if you break up those into five-year blocks, the reelection percentage of a state government was about 25% at the beginning of that. And now it's about 65%. So no state government, as you point out, could dream of coming up with a six-year plan for development. It was all five years or less. And now that they actually have a higher than average chance of being reelected, now it really does provide. And I also think, too, something that you touched on, which is the stories that people wanted to see written for the United States. When things were going great, they wanted positive stories and writing something anti. And I see that. And I wonder how quickly that's going to change right now. Because I'd seen that working in a corporation at the time, a lot of our executives, most that they knew about India was when you had a quarterly board meeting, and they had to read the report about how the business was doing. And then all the other stuff that they read in the couple of newspapers that crosses their desk. What was the post and the journal and other things saying about India? And if it was a negative story, as the guy that was working on India from Washington, a board member of the company would send it down and say, did you see the story about a girl that married a tree in Uttar Pradesh? What's this about? That's not really relevant to our business, but you can find these kind of things. So I take your point on that, that the narrative sometimes changes, and everybody moves in a particular direction. I think when we look at U.S.-India relations, probably when we talk about the threats to the Modi administration, things that kind of derail his ability to govern the country, probably the one that I hear brought up most frequently is a terrorist attack a la Mumbai, which you touch a little bit on the user response to that. And the idea that Modi will feel that it has to have a more robust, a stronger response, whether it's what we saw in 2002 with troops at the border or even back in 99, although that was obviously a very different situation, with India's measured response post-Mumbai, was that due to the Prime Minister's will, Sonya's will, or something in the system that would potentially provide a break as well for Modi on crossing the border, on taking the fight to Pakistan or something like that. How in, yeah, go ahead. I mean, clearly Manmohan and Sonya had a role in that. But I think that the real answer to that is that India realised, it realised in 2002 when there was the attack on parliament December 2001, and it realised in 2002 that war with Pakistan, conflict with Pakistan was extraordinarily dangerous and counterproductive, and it really couldn't go down that road. We had the famous eyeball to eyeball confrontation across Kashmir in 2002 with the BJP facing off against Musharraf. And the same calculation, I think, informed the decision in 2008 with the Mumbai attacks that really there was nothing to be gained by limited strikes in Pakistan because it would lead to limited strikes in India and then potentially unlimited strikes and unlimited war between the two countries. So I think India has realised that in the days of two nuclear powers, conflict with Pakistan and declaring war on Pakistan and trying to have some kind of clinical strike is a very, very dangerous road. So I think that gives me some optimism that under Narendra Modi, if something happens, that he will have the same calculations will come into play, that he will realise that he can't just send the tanks in or send the aeroplanes in more to the point. Having said that, the danger, I think, with Modi is that he is very much a lone figure. He's a man who relies on his own instincts, doesn't have a team that he relies on. He's very much his own man. And so when you have somebody who doesn't have advisers around him who listens only to himself, then a person like that can be more unpredictable. So the checks and balances of the system perhaps come into play a little bit less. But in general I still think that India has the same calculations. You know, with your role in being resident in India and trying to explain what's happening there to the rest of the world, I wonder if you can kind of turn the mirror around a little bit. What is the level of discourse would you say as a journalist in India on India looking at the rest of the world? Modi taking the world stage, inviting regional leaders, travelling the world, it's surprising he's spending this much time on foreign affairs I think considering the domestic mandate that he won. How is it that that kind of plays locally? How do they look at the world with the level of discourse? So the first part of that question is the level of discourse in India on foreign affairs I think is still very poor actually. I think that you get international affairs seen very much through an Indian prism. So Gaza will be used as an opposition parties who have Muslim constituents will use Gaza to bash Modi because Modi is seen as being too pro-Israel. Libya was seen as let's bash NATO because that's the US and the West and it's not actually bothered to understand what's happening in Libya when NATO was bombing Libya. So I think the level of discourse on global events that doesn't affect India directly is actually pretty poor. In terms of Modi and his desire to build, to devote time to foreign policy, you know I'm still in contact with people in India and what I'm hearing is that he's got his national mandate. He's got his national majority in Parliament and after that huge landslide but he also wants to build a global mandate. He also wants to build his global image. He really wants to, he has ambitions to be a great Indian leader and an Indian leader on the world stage. So part of it of course is he knows he needs money. He needs investment. He needs investment from China. He needs investment from Japan. He needs investment from the United States. So part of it is about money and the economy but I also think that he sees himself as somebody who wants to take a place on the world stage and I think that's, you know, Narendra Modi is still the Narendra Modi who in many ways who presided over the Gujarat riots. That part of him still exists but his desire to be a great world leader I think is also a check and balance on what he's gonna do in India. It limits what you know perhaps the more xenophobic or extreme positions that he might want to take or he might end up taking. Will that go over well? I mean if he becomes that figurehead on the world stage you know the epitome of a rising India that's spending time palling around with President Obama off to Japan etc. Is that something that voters across the board are going to care about? Is it kind of like the Steve Jobs model where they may not be there but he can pull them there or do you think it'll remain irrelevant for the next? I think it's largely about his desire and about he wants the money rather than something that's going to be particularly important to voters to be honest with you. But I do think that he wants, one other thing that he wants and this is very important as well as an international place on the world stage and the national place which he's got. He also needs control around the country and I think this is also a very important aspect. Indian politics, the central government as everybody knows doesn't have ultimate power over a lot of things and the states have a lot of power. The BJP doesn't run that many states at the moment. There's a number of state elections coming up and I think the one reason that you're seeing quite a cautious Narendra Modi right now is that he knows he's got, the BJP wants the BJP to have more states, to win more states, to surf that mode before he does anything too radical in terms of economic policy. He wants to consolidate his power and win power in more states and I think we'll see a little bit of a cautious Modi for a while until he feels he has that more control nationally through more friendly state governments. Rolling the data banks back to a time that most of us barely remember when the Congress Party was in power, that was two months ago, three months ago, you also spend a little bit of time breaking down some of the dynamics of the dynasty. Now there's some, already people are saying death of the Congress Party, change of the dynasty, things like that. It's incredible what our initial and you hold people to account later on once they once they rise again but generally it seems the Gandhi image was probably damaged to some extent. Priyanka. Yeah. Now what do you think about, I know you and there's a big debate about whether or not, and I remember 15 years ago she was the expected heir and then you know went back to family and such but you know did everybody get damaged did Priyanka, can she escape from that if she's strong enough? First of all I watched Priyanka on the campaign trail in 2004 and she really does have a natural charisma which her brother completely lacks. I mean she has, she's just spontaneous in the way that she deals with people so she'll go into a village and there'll be a microphone set up for her and she'll just avoid the microphone and she'll just start mingling with people or there'll be a stage set up for her and there'll be a microphone and she won't give a speech she'll just say look I've come here I want to listen to you, you talk to me and then I'll talk to you. She has a genuine charisma and way of interacting so she is a you know she can be still an important political actor that's the first thing and her brother I mean clearly does not have that political charisma. He I think is a is a spent force politically. Ultimately what the Congress party needs is to wean itself off dynastic politics. It needs to become a meritocratic political system and needs, it hasn't even got any chief ministers ruling any states that can point to good governance in those states. I mean there's really nothing there except its sycophantic kind of worship of the of the narrow Gandhi family. So outside Congress everybody realizes that this idea of dynastic politics has to change but inside Congress I don't see that realization yet. I think that inside Congress people are still hoping that Priyanka is going to save the Congress party. So in answer to your question I mean one thing that Priyanka was interacting with some Indian editors recently and she said you can't imagine how awful my childhood was. I mean her father obviously was assassinated. Her and Rahul were prisoners inside their own homes they couldn't interact they had no friends they couldn't get out their security was you know their father was killed when they were still young you know. So they were imprisoned their grandmother was assassinated too. She didn't want that life for her children. So she was determined that her children would not have that life. She wouldn't inflict that on them. Now her children are I don't know the exact early teens I would say very early teens. So when they grow up when they grow up and go to college I think that Priyanka could well consider politics and what I'm hearing is that she's she's now very involved. She's talking a lot to her mother and to her brother. She's getting weekly reports on Modi on what he's doing and you know from within the system that she's actually taking a very active role in politics. So I think she will I mean predicting anything in India is a mug's game but but my instinct tells me that eventually she will obey the family calling and will enter politics. Whether that's 2019 or whether that's 2024 I don't know. I mean I think that it could well take 10 years for Congress to recover from the absolute disaster that has befallen it. So you know she might be better to wait. Changing the question Ron a little bit on whether any of the Gandhi's survive with the reputation intact or stronger. Congress party itself I mean clearly you don't think that there's a chance right now or at least not a sign of an internal insurrection you know to change the dynamics in the party but are there leaders of the Congress party you know particularly those that are under the age of 70 that you think you know if and when the worm turns. Yeah you know like we saw in 2004 when the BJP was out and we sort of forgot but now suddenly some of the old faces are back who are some of the folks too that you think are in that you know that creamy layer that that even if they won't challenge the dynasty are likely to hold those critical positions who represented themselves well throughout. The only person and the person who springs to mind who did a reasonably good job in the portfolios that were entrusted to him was was Chidambaram as home minister and finance minister. But I have to say as a person I can scarcely find someone who has a good word to say about him so he's not you know he's seen as an arrogant man who's very difficult to get along with so he gets stuff done and I think that had Rahul been a different figure and been able to keep Congress together and inspire people you could have seen Rahul with Chidambaram at his side as an effective and as an effective team but I don't think that Chidambaram has the sort of political charisma again to carry things on on his own. The only other person Jairam Ramesh who who did a you know not particularly good job in the environment ministry I mean he's a smart man and he has some political now so he would you know he'll be a senior figure in Congress and someone to deal with but really I mean that's the problem that's the problem with dynastic politics it's stifled good people coming up through the through the Congress party you know I think I think environmentalists would say Jairam Ramesh did a great job since no project's got off the ground. Right, absolutely. It depends on your perspective. Mission accomplished. A little bit more crystal ball gazing realizing there's always a threat to doing so but Modi clearly consolidating power getting his people in the right positions I'm at Shaw as party president now and in fact even circumventing you know a lot of the ministers in his own cabinet and working directly with bureaucrats things like that you know as you think about threats to the Modi government politically you know it may be sometime before Congress can challenge no regional party has ever had much luck in breaking beyond you know whichever state the resident in but the one thing that I've seen time and again is when there's no alternatives parties sometimes have fissures and even crack and splinter a little bit can Modi keep control do you think is there something about the BJP something about his style that will keep the BJP together or if everybody realizes it's going to be 15 years though we have any more leadership changes I want to have my own little space as we've seen with many splinter parties over the years I know it's a lot of crystal ball gazing but do you think that's a threat over the next five or ten years or do you think that he'll be able to keep the ship together based on at least early returns my sense is that without Modi the BJP were nowhere that they were floundering so badly as an opposition party and with Modi they've transformed themselves in such a dramatic way the landslide was so dramatic that I think that everybody will fall into line I think that it'd be very very risky to go against that I mean obviously the honeymoon the Modi honeymoon such as it is you know he's already complaining he hasn't had enough of the honeymoon but um but you know it's not going to last forever but my but my sense is actually that the BJP um how I mean congress has no no I'm not sorry I'm not going to say congress has no ideology because it does have a secular or pro-poor ideology but there was sort of you know when you when when one of your big planks of ideology is sycophancy towards the part towards the family when you're not getting anywhere then it encourages breakaways and and I think that's caused some of the fragmentation I see less of a risk within the BJP because of that because Modi has that Hindu nationalist card so sort of so tightly clasped to his chest to break away from that so to break away from that how could you break away from that you know become more nationalistic than Modi or you know it's hard it's hard to imagine it's a great point that's a great point I really hadn't heard that I've asked this question a lot I haven't heard that take on it before last question before I'm going to open it up to the audience but sitting in your new perch in China clearly those of us that look at a future for the strategic relationship between the United States and India it all rests on China right if if India views China as a threat and partnership with the United States is something that would help then partnership between the United States and India is a natural natural allies how has China been taking the Modi election so far and also India's growing relationship I think particularly with Japan since I don't think we know yet what US India relations are going to look like we'll know pretty soon if we did this again three months we'll have a better idea but you know the election of Modi and and the growing ties with Japan how is that taken in China you know before the elections and when it was obvious that Modi was coming up the reaction that I was getting from Chinese officials and from people close to the officialdom was actually a smile was actually a welcome to Modi I think I think it's fair to say that you know it wasn't just America who got sick of the inability of the up a government the Manmohan Singh government to make decisions so when you're dealing with a government and you you deal with a leader who can't who doesn't have the power to deliver anything you know it's natural to want I mean that's what Indians wanted they wanted a leader that's why they voted Modi in they wanted a leader who could actually make decisions that's what China's used to dealing with so China's used to dealing with that and and and Modi you know Modi was seen as a friend of China he he's been to China several times he wants to learn from China he wants to learn the Chinese economic model he kind of likes the Chinese authoritarian model too you know keep dissenting check keep civil society down keep the media down just get on and make decisions right so he models a lot of you know on he's taking a lot of lessons from the Chinese from the Chinese model so I think the Chinese see that and think that's good that's somebody who can be in our orbit to some extent who's going to want and welcome our investment you know but as you say Modi's also somebody who has a relationship with the Japanese Prime Minister and a friendship and a rapport with the Japanese Prime Minister and and it's hard to underestimate quite how much China hates Japan right now so that's a complicating factor you know he is he has an international honeymoon period because at the moment he's he's strong he's new he's decisive everybody wants to be his friend and so for the moment China can put up with the fact that that Modi's also reaching out to Japan you know China wants to wants to form its own links with Modi that that may be more complicated further down the line the US dynamic I mean yeah I don't know Modi is going to be tougher and more plain speaking with China I mean you were saying to me and we were talking about this before you know Modi in his first meetings with with the Chinese talking about you can't you can't do on the border what you were doing with with the up a government you can't have the border incursions because I you know I I can't sit there and take that kind of stuff right so he will he will be firmer with the Chinese but you know a lot of people think that the Chinese respect strength more than they respect weakness so so so maybe you know maybe that the other thing the other thing just to say that in the last days of the upa government it really felt like 24-hour news tv was running indian foreign policy at times and that's apologies to any foreign policy you know diplomats who might be here but you know Arnab Goswami was really calling the shots in terms of Indian foreign policy and policy towards Pakistan and policy towards China too and the Chinese were incredibly frustrated with that I mean because because they don't understand they have a media that does what it's told to do so when they see the Indian media rounding on China they look at that and they get angry with the Indian government and why can't you stop these people why can't you you know you're causing this you're you're encouraging and the reality was you know Arnab Goswami was was was filling a space filling a vacuum that the government had left open in terms of setting the agenda on foreign policy Modi won't do that he'll he'll lead on foreign policy and I think you won't see that you know it will be run by him not by Arnab Goswami and I think China will again will prefer that coherence well with that let me open it up to the to the audience here we got a little bit of time and hopefully a good number of questions here and an incredible incredible expert on the topic I see in the the back row there we got a couple of wireless microphones if you could let us know where you are where you're from and hopefully keep the questions relatively short relatively short right Britt Menchel Brennan Zantz Institute Baltimore I just have a question about I hate to return to the rape thing but not just the gang rape but the two weeks later when there was an ordered rape by a local government I've done a lot of studying in history and I think I must have missed something I always had an idea that with the worldwide thing against females obviously that in Indian society was a little above it and I want to know is that a new thing or did I miss it or where did it come from it's a very good question there's no doubt that rape in India was drastically drastically under reported if you were a lower caste woman in an Indian village and you went to a police station and reported a rape you were as likely not being raped by the policeman that you reported it to unfortunately you certainly wouldn't find if you were so lower caste woman is raped by a higher caste man in a village you certainly wouldn't find any sympathy within the village for prosecuting the case I mean I've sat there with the father of a young woman who was raped and the father was making excuses for the rapists you know the idea boys will be boys we can't ruin their lives by imprisoning them for some one mistake that they've made that's the father of a young woman who was raped and saying that so the attitude that you know the the women actually who are raped become the victims so if you report a rape the stigma attaches to you as the woman not to the rapist and that unfortunately you know and the policemen who sit in those villages are policemen who come from the same social milieu as as the as the villagers so they too don't have sympathy for the woman so so rape was was was was there and under reported the second thing I think there is a change is that women in villages are becoming slightly more empowered they're getting mobile phones for one thing now if you're an Indian woman in a village and you marry into another family you go and live with that other family you become the lowest rung person in that new family that you live in you do the housework you're ordered around by the mother-in-law and and you're you're you're almost the possession of the of the family but when a woman has a mobile phone she can she can contact her friends right she can contact her old family she has she has some power and some access and some voice of her own she might want to wear jeans if you have a mobile phone you can also you know as a young as a young girl you also have access to television you have access to Bollywood you can you fall in you can fall in love with a boy you know not necessarily the person who you've been told by your family by your parents you have to marry so you see women starting to make choices or to to want choices to demand a certain amount of choice that threatens the conservative social order and women like that you know will get punished right they will be raped and everyone will go well she deserved it you know look she used to wander around on her own or you know so so I think there's an element of a reaction against the slight empowerment of women that was happening in the Indian villages as well so now we're seeing we're seeing more reporting of things but I think we're also seeing more more gang rapes and and more incidences of this happening as well yeah up front I got the microphone coming right here it's all on tape so uh got to make sure everybody can hear for the cameras and back home yeah Bill Tucker my work my firm has done a lot of work in India and taken some insurance companies and defense companies into the country and as you know in the past India restricted the ownership of insurance foreign insurance companies and defense companies and now there's been press reports that that's changing yeah is that is that you know it's been on the table and talked about for as you know for many many years so now again the government has committed to doing it my sense is that um Modi Modi's kind of shtick is that he's going to deliver on what he says and therefore if the government announces something in the budget it is more likely to happen than it would have happened under the previous government where it might be sitting in the budget you know for 10 years as an attention and never and never happened so I think I think the answer is these things will happen but but Modi for reasons that we were talking about before I think Modi's he's not it wasn't a radical budget he's not radically reforming the economy just now and I think that's partly because there's a lot of state elections coming up the same dynamics that that every Indian politician faces there are always elections in India you know there's there's elections at every is local there's district there's you know there's there's there's state elections all the time so there's always a reason to postpone a tough decision you know um so a decision that might bring long-term benefits but short-term but short-term pain or short-term protests so Modi faces those pressures just like any other Indian politician um now Modi will be more decisive he will do more but you know he's not he's not a miracle worker and and and I think that's that's important to to remember that there was an there was a time during the campaign when I was when I was there when Rahul Gandhi I mean I'm going off the subject but but but Rahul Gandhi made a speech at the confederation of Indian industry and he said don't expect a man on a white horse to come and magically solve all of India's problems and he was referring to obviously to Modi and then I went to a rally in Bangalore when Modi was speaking and Modi stood up in front of thousands of people and said Rahul Gandhi is wrong a man on a white horse can come and rescue India Sardar Patel did it before I'm going to do it I mean he you know he's really setting himself up as one man who can personally transform India now you know that's great if you're a foreign leader and you're dealing with him because he's going to make decisions you're going to the US is going to deal with him he's going to say yes I'm going to do this no I'm not going to do that and you know that his government's going to fall into line but you know it ain't that easy in India to get things done so so so there's a lot of optimism there's a lot of exuberance around around Modi and I think that you have to temper that a little bit with the fact that you know a man on a white horse really can't solve all of India's problems you know so that was a long answer to a specific question well and so for insurance there's a separate bill that has to be passed to amend the insurance act and by the way the insurance amendments would also trigger similar amendments to the pension bill those in only two sectors in India were FDI caps are set in legislation so that was announced in the budget speech but there's a separate bill that has to go for the other sectors that were mentioned defense construction those the press note by the department of industrial policy promotion so that could happen tomorrow possibly yeah defense is just a note issued by the government so you know in terms of what can be done even without parliament's approval defense can go up actually right now I mean technically defense is allowed up to 100% it says 26 but on a case by case it can be above that so the question is how much more explicit are they going to be on the other cases there so yeah as Simon mentioned it was part of the speech insurance in particular was mentioned in Sham's first budget speech in 2004 I remember it very vividly and so it's all about implementation for some of these things yeah right on the side there yeah yeah thank you I'm Leon Weintraub from the University of Wisconsin I'd like to ask you a question about Indian foreign policy perhaps it's a little bit of a sideshow for India but it might be very important to this other country and that's Israel I've seen in recent in the press that Israel has become a major supplier of arms to India I saw that within the last week I think the Indian Parliament has refused now to take up a draft resolution against Israel about events in Gaza Israel seems to have some hope of a more positive relationship for an Indian role in the NAMM and then on a line movement against the influence of the AeroBlock and the OIC do you think there's any kind of long range options for a significantly improved relations with Israel perhaps in the NAMM and in the United Nations as well I mean I think that in that that security cooperation between India and Israel has been growing for quite a long time actually and Modi's very keen to continue that because you know security is a big a big thing for Narendra Modi for a variety of reasons and the battle against Muslim Islamic extremism in India you know he'll see Israel as someone who can help him in terms of technology and so on in that in that way and certainly he can help in terms of defense so so that that cooperation between between India and Israel is only set to grow but it's politically it's difficult for India to be too explicit about it the UPA the previous government tended to be do it do it quietly because it depended so much on on Muslim votes you know 15 or whatever it is percentage of the electorate who are Muslims it's very hard to be publicly supportive of Israel so what you're seeing now perhaps is India being a little bit more honest about the cooperation that's been going on with Israel for for quite some time and Modi has enough power right now to be able to do that but I mean India's policy towards Israel is not going to undergo some sort of radical transformation because I think you know it's just they're just it's too easy for politicians in India to exploit friendship with Israel to turn Muslims against against the government yeah Susan. Susan Finston I'm an independent consultant and for my sins I actually have a small biotech company in Gujarat okay so I had not been to Gujarat the entire time that I was working for the State Department or pharma going back and forth to India on international pharmaceutical issues which were really I think at a high point in 2005 when they passed first in ordinance and then before 2005 and then and then the the law under the congress party but it was a BJP drafted ordinance and I'm optimistic about what will happen internationally on economic policies like pharma intellectual property partly because of what BJP's policies had been and they are a more right-center policy partly because the government had already established in terms of rule of law that for multinational commitments they may disagree about what is meant in the WTO or the Convention on Biological Diversity but they take them seriously and that was something that was consistent across party lines and then in terms of my experience in Gujarat I think that the international exposure through vibrant Gujarat which I attended in 2009 and met then Chief Minister Modi who had to sign off personally on seed money for the company and the huge pause of international reception to the business-friendly policies the lower levels of corruption which was really visible in Gujarat compared to other states and then even policies towards women it's a teetotaling state and sometimes people joke you know never a sober night in a dry state but it makes a difference in terms of livelihood in terms of women's welfare children's welfare in terms of general quality of life and the state of of the culture so I think all of those are very positive is as you pointed out Modi was re-elected several times on the basis of his performance and bringing prosperity and stability the 2002 riots clearly a horrible negative event that I think had receded in the electorate's mind because of that ongoing positive performance and where Muslims have a higher quality of life also as a result in Gujarat sure I mean on the economic side absolutely I mean no argument I mean he's he his governance record in Gujarat was was very good you know Gujarat he started from a from a richer base a more business friendly environment a more functioning bureaucracy inherited a bureaucracy that functioned better in Gujarat than in other than in other states but there's no doubt that he did a good job of governing Gujarat and he did a very good job of attracting foreign investment and making foreign investors and domestic investors feel welcome so expect expect more of that he you know he did a great job of bringing electric power to villages electricity to villages which is which is really important in Indian villages girls dropouts rates in schools fell because there's electricity in villages people can go to school they can study I mean it just brings you know the villages into into the rest of India it's really really important drinking water you deliver to villages so there were there were social policies you know not it wasn't just getting industry in there was stuff that worked in rural Gujarat as well I what I what I I do have a cautionary thing about the the Hindu Muslim aspect of Gujarat because it's not just what happened in those three days in 2002 and in the you know the butchering of of men women and children that happened in 2002 while while the police stood and watched or in some cases actively actively abetted the the killers it was the way that Modi made that a cornerstone of his political ideology Gujarati Asmita Gujarati pride was a cornerstone of his attraction and the discrimination the cowing of Muslims and the discrimination that continued in Gujarat that continues in Gujarat to this day is is important is important context so it's not you know he hasn't been convicted of anything on those three days but he his power also rests on the lesson that he taught the Muslims in Gujarat and that's why if you go into Gujarat and talk to you know talk to people they feel that the Muslims were taught a lesson that they should have been taught and and the riots were were not necessarily a bad thing so you know a question a question is then does that matter you know does it matter that that Modi had a dark past for many young Indians it doesn't matter I mean if you're a 20 year old Indian you don't remember the Gujarat it's ancient history you want someone who can deliver your aspirations you can get you a job you come out of college there's no jobs Modi is the best person they're putting their hopes in this guy to get them a job and get them a future so ancient history but but but does it matter his right hand man now is the same right hand man he had in Gujarat Amit Shah and and I just take a moment to to to you know to talk about Amit Shah I mean Amit Shah is on trial should be on trial is on trial CBI has a charge sheet against him and he should be he will be facing trial for three murders for running an extortion racket in Gujarat extorting money off businessmen and and women with a with a gangster called Sir Aberdeen shake he fell out with that gangster this is the the the case against him he ordered the gangster to be murdered he set it up so that it was portrayed as what's called an Indian encounter killing in other words arrested by the police you try and run away you get shot in you get shot in the back Sir Aberdeen shake was then portrayed as a Muslim fundamentalist terrorist his wife was murdered another witness was subsequently murdered those those charges are still in play against Amit Shah and he is Modi's absolute right hand man who Modi depends upon so while we can we can all applaud and look hopefully towards the Narendra Modi the economic the governance man the the development man as he likes to be called I think we can't forget the other side of Narendra Modi we have to keep that in mind we have to keep that in our in our minds because it does matter to India that that a man like this is running the country now it may be that the grander forces of democracy his desire to be a great leader will keep that side of Narendra Modi in check and that he won't be you know he won't fan those flames but but we're already seeing Hindu the Hindu right wing making some quite incendiary remarks telling Muslims the tables have turned now telling women's remember good you're at remember them as Afanagra riots which happened last year so know your place don't you dare step out of line and what worries me about that is that when you get the Hindu extreme motivated to say things like that that's also a recruiting cause for the Muslim extremists too so Modi's Modi's election and those kind of things may well may well recruit some Indian Muslims in a in a rather negative direction as well so again I'm not I'm not you know I'm not saying that we shouldn't give Modi the prime minister the chance to be Modi the prime minister you know many politicians in India have got have got dark pasts and and there's a lot of hope you know depriving people of their future by bad governance and corruption is also a crime so Modi may deliver aspirations to people but I think we have to remember also that other side of Modi's character and I think it is something to to watch out for great also go right next to you there yeah thanks hi I'm Ritika Katyal I'm a student at Princeton University thank you for your speech and I think this is a good time for a follow-up question on so we we are seeing kind of a huge change like almost a huge shift from our leader that was undecisive indecisive multiple centers of power to a leader who's authoritative and kind of so do you see and as far as Modi's political acumen is concerned he's left nobody in any doubt he's quite a shrewd political operator he's been the chief minister for Gujarat for 12 consecutive years and so it might be while you can't predict anything in Indian politics you might just say he might come in for successive terms even though it might be too might seem too far-fetched to say that for now but given his political acumen so do you see India as a society like almost poised on the brink of some social change as well in terms of the rights of like given that you have a party in power that has no coalition allies to keep it in check in a way in terms of democratic checks and balances it has a leader who's authoritarian and wants to center power itself and so how does that bode for social change like rights women minorities maybe even freedom of the press yeah it's a very good question i mean i do think you're right that the smart money congress has been so badly damaged that the smart money is probably modi modi will could well be in power for for 10 years and you're already seeing the media somewhat neutered both through corporate control and also through direct kind of intimidation the attack dog the modi attack dogs on twitter absolutely savage anybody who dares to question him you're seeing some intimidation of civil society rules in the budget which make it easier for the tax authorities to close down NGOs so modi's not a man who's comfortable with dissent or alternative centers of power that's for sure i'll come on to to women in a second but in terms of you know is modi going to and one of the questions i ask in the book is at the end of my chapter on the render modi is does he threaten everything that makes india great and by that i mean everything that i like about india secularism and freedom of the press and all all those you know the democracy that that's really i think in india the indian psyche embedded in indian psyche that made me enjoy living there for such a long time and i leave the question unanswered um and we'll see i think that um he's not going to destroy indian democracy because it is so deeply embedded in india he could damage it though ten years of modi could could damage those things i think that it will probably come back but but but he's not going to destroy it i mean india i think i'm right in saying india is the only post-colonial culture country to have peaceful transfers of power at every single every single election um and and and abouring the two years of the emergency which obviously as you know india got smashed at the polls afterwards india's got a very you know very proud record of democracy so yeah he could damage it but he won't but he won't destroy those institutions in terms of women you know we haven't seen much yet from narendra modi on women there have been some very high profile rape cases that have happened you know we all we all i think saw the case of the the two women who were raped and then hung from a tree in in at a pradesh and modi said nothing about that and in fact i don't have the exact words i'm speaking from memory he said something like why do we have to talk about this all the time in when he was asked about this so you know we um and and uh yeah i meant to i meant to actually look up the exact word but it really was why do we have to go on about this so i think there is a and he made some other um he's other made some other comments which suggest that women's rights are not top of his not top of his agenda so i do have some questions about about you know we've seen some limited progress since the deli gang rape at least the issue of of empowerment of women and protection of women is on the agenda but quite what modi is going to do about about that really remains to be seen and and someone pointed out that there's more money allocated in the budget to building a giant statue of sardar patel than there is towards protection of women programs so i think that's something where you know i hope that the media and civil society and the indian people keep up the pressure on this government to to to protect women better and i think that is something that the indian people i hope will continue to to demand and so much about law in order to is a state subject right and it includes you know limitations on on press freedoms as well you know some states where the the state government is the only sponsor of advertising in newspapers right so journalists in some of these states and very difficult to print a story that's somewhat critical and even critical on social issues in the state sometimes when your one advertiser may look at that and frown absolutely i mean that's and that's that's not just you know modi modi used that in good right but many other states used that too absolutely yeah right on the side over here stanley cobra on india and china recently there was the summit of the bricks and they announced the new bricks bank including the hundred billion dollar potential stability fund now the way that's structured is very interesting china will provide more money than any of the other participants but we'll be able to withdraw only half its capital india will be able to withdraw all of its capital when the um when the tapering started it was the indian rupee that got hit very hard and they were nervous about this they're nervous now so what this looks like to me if you remove the fluff is a chinese um promise to india to support its rupee when we start tapering which will happen this suggests a much closer relationship between china and india than is commonly supposed and i would just invite your comments on that yeah i mean i i'm gonna ask rick to kind of deal with it to talk about the details of that a little bit but i mean you know there's no doubt that uh there's no doubt that modi and china are looking looking for ways to get closer um they do see there is some sense of seeing a kindred spirit so i hadn't followed that i mean maybe rick can well and i haven't spent a lot of time in the details of the bricks bank and the stability fund but i will say at this point like i was extremely skeptical at every stage and suddenly no matter how skeptical i become it gets closer to reality here um you know what ties these five countries together other than somebody coined an acronym that did it not very much and yet now they actually have a plan for creating these things um on the on the tapering thing though you know tapering is almost over tapering started earlier not so much in the united states yet um that you know what india what they faced last year in the massive withdrawal of institutional investment over three months may june july i think it was was on the hint of tapering and with the uh you know with raga and rajin taking over the reserve bank of india his first announcement when industry was crying and the government was crying to bring interest rates down he increased them flew in the face of what everybody had hoped for and expected uh and he said that i'm going to build a bulletproof balance sheet that was his line great line to protect them against when tapering actually happens and it has the federal reserve is drawing down buying what is it ten billion less a month or something like that every month and in october of this year uh then uh the bond buying program by the fed will be over so tapering is already far down and india has not suffered the same kind of reaction that they did in the past so irrespective of the bricks bank and the fund there i think that what india has done since then whether it was the initial shock and everybody realized you know the sky is not going to fall truly um they've actually managed to survive the actual process of tapering so far and hopefully over the next few months they'll continue to do so so the banks is the bricks bank has surprised me closer to reality than i thought would would actually happen there and tapering i think india has managed to protect itself sufficiently so that probably won't be the thing that will cause them to to actually use a stability fund so that's my quick reactions to it right behind you there's another yeah peter foster with a london deli telegraph um like you said i've covered both those countries we good you're out of sight we hear a lot about modi's record in good you're at and you mentioned that you know he was an authoritarian by instinct and as you'll see in china you know one of china's great advantages is it can you know get things like you know power stations roads etc they get done in a way that they never get done in india they never you know mumbai is constantly crippled by its development plans that never happened um modi's gone from being a state leader to being a national leader given the disappointment of the last 10 years how much of what he achieved in good you're at do you think is replicable and when he fails to achieve what he achieved in good you're at or anything like that that is how quickly do people become disillusioned with him or do you think he can avoid that in in that very yeah it's a very good question i mean clearly it's not going to be anything like as easy for him to achieve what he achieved in good you're at for so many reasons i mean he came as i said he came for business-friendly state with a reasonably well functioning bureaucracy and all the cards in terms of power in his hands he's now got a huge sprawling dysfunctional bureaucracy not all the power in his hands and much deeper deep-rooted problems across india so there will be disappointment as i sort of referenced earlier he's already complaining that his honeymoon period is over there was a um uh i forget the exact words but there was one of the election phrases was the good times are coming and already indians are you know the indians are kind of uh the phrase has been turned around asking asking all the bj supporters so where are the good times where you know where have they come because they haven't arrived yet you know um there's price rises and and he's already had some problems putting trying to put up electricity rail fares and had to roll it back so there will be disappointment absolutely um he's not he's not going to get he has not going to end everything his own way the thing is though i think you know we saw we saw bjp absolutely unable to mount a constructive opposition to congress over 10 years um you know they they they couldn't get their act together after their election defeat congress is in absolute shambles rahul ghandi is finally attending parliament which he hadn't done previously but then he gets he gets caught on camera cleaning his phone or falling asleep i mean he's he's it's hard to sort of just imagine quite how badly he's doing and quite how his image has has fallen and then disastrously so so modi will modi is the only guy in the only show in town i really think he'll he'll continue to to and he's you know someone said earlier he's he's shrewd uh and he's he's he's in touch with with popular opinion he'll do enough to to keep things going um but the the china the china meant you know when you're mentioning china brings me to sort of um something that everybody in china says to me um all the time you know they look at india and they look at china and they and they they go oh isn't democracy it's how isn't that holding india back you know isn't democracy such a disaster for india look at our you know i mean ordinary chinese people think really think that you know our system is better because we get things done and look at china's economic development um i'd say i i i take issue with that every time anybody brings that up and and and for several reasons i mean one is that the democracy really has built the indian nation and given people in a voice in a way which is absolutely unimaginable and would have been unimaginable 70 years ago land a land of so many languages and castes and religions um it's it's incredible that that's india has in many ways it's incredible that india has stayed together as a nation and that's down to democracy we've had a we've had a woman a dalit woman elected chief minister of uta pradesh a state of 200 million people four times i mean you know this is formally known as the untouchables you know this is unimaginable a century ago that this could happen in india and that's that's incredible actually so so democracy has delivered an indian nation in in an incredible way what it hasn't delivered is economic governance and development and now that's what indian people are demanding of their leaders without democracy india would make pakistan look like the most peaceful well developed place in the world it would have ripped itself apart so you know there's the line from the day uh so so you know i i think it's important to put india in the context of india rather than context of china and the second point that i always make when when people say this um is that to look at china now and to say isn't one party rule doing a great job in china is to adopt the same collective amnesia that the chinese government is asking its people to adopt it's to forget the history of the last 70 years it's to forget the great leap forward and the famine that killed 30 or 40 or more million people in china it's to forget the horrors of the cultural revolution it's to forget the fact that people are deprived of their political rights and the ability to to even to organize in any way in communities so so you know i'm not i don't know what the future holds for chinese one party rule and i don't think don't think anybody does but you know let's not denigrate indian democracy it's it's delivered in one aspect a miracle which is india it now has to deliver something else it has to to rid india of the the poverty and the exclusion and the and the social deprivation and stratification and and so on that battle has started i think the battle between the force for change and the vested interests in india has been joined and i think it'll take a long time for that to play out and i don't know it's not going to be in a straight line but at least i feel that battle has begun well i think uh that is such a terrific comment i would hate to follow up with additional questions on the stage here because that's a great place to leave us the battle is being fought right now and we just saw a a historic election a new leader with a new outlook um you know it's pretty pretty exciting times i think to see what's going to transpire both in india and in us india relations so simon i can't thank you enough um the book is fantastic it's right outside a lot of the issues that were brought up here he he touches on in a lot deeper detail through the book so i definitely urge you to pick it up um and also uh i also like to mention that unlike gujarat i am not a t-totaler so if you feel like sticking around we're going to have some beer and some wine a short reception here as well so feel free to join us and to spend a little time for the questions that we weren't able to ask you can ask simon directly and to pick up a copy of his books so join me in thanking simon for spending time just couldn't bear the thought of following up on that right right that's the capstone right there