The COVID-19 pandemic has seen some Asian countries employ sophisticated mass-surveillance technologies—normally employed to gather intelligence for domestic security purposes—to contain the spread of infection in their populations. There has also been an intrusion of military and allied national security actors into the traditionally civilian domain of public health, in the form of disease surveillance. These emerging developments in the pandemic response provide a pretext for a limited historical review, beginning from World War II to the present, centred on the intersection between infectious disease surveillance and control, national security, and military in the Western world.
The Absent Dialogue: Politicians, Bureaucrats, and the Military in India edited by Anit Mukherjee, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2020; pp xvii + 313, ₹1,100.
The recent Israeli aggression in Gaza Strip has drawn the world’s attention to the plight of Palestinians once again. The fact that Palestine has remained under occupation for decades, despite the claims of triumph of democracy and human rights, has exposed the nexus between imperialism and global narratives woven with the aid of popular media. The same media is, yet again, trying to twist the facts to vilify the victims of occupation and their resistance against it. Such attempts need to be countered by putting the Palestine–Israel question in a proper historical perspective.
India’s unwillingness to tactically manipulate escalation makes its responses predictable and has led to strategic inertia most evident in the handling of the situation at the Line of Actual Control in Ladakh.
India had the military ability to evict the intrusions in Ladakh or carry out a quick grab action of its own in the early stages of the crisis. Yet, it did not exercise the offensive military options. The explanation for such strategic reticence lies at the political level.
Chinese National Aviation Corporation initiated the diplomatic relations for air connectivity between China and British India in the 1930s. The proposal included extending the CNAC’s service from Chungking in South-west China with Dinjan (in upper Assam). This was the context for the development of an air route between China and India. This commercial venture (which was threatened by World War II) played an active part in the wartime operation, especially after the fall of Rangoon and the consequent capture of the Burma Road by the Japanese forces.
Three decades have passed since the inception of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation. It still is virtually a non-starter and has not addressed any substantive issue. Intra-regional trade is minuscule. India and Pakistan show little interest in the organisation. Without judging their respective foreign policies, it is argued that South Asian regionalism is not on their agenda. Three questions arise: Is South Asia at all a region? How much does the strategic divide between India and Pakistan, with China factored in, come in the way of South Asian regionalism? Why should India bother about regionalism when its policy of bilateralism serves it fine? To probe these, the region's history, global perceptions of the region, India's foreign and educational practices, and interstate relationships are discussed.
Hamza Alavi, in this journal, offered the most pronounced presentation of US-Pakistan relations in terms of a patron-client model. In an attempt to further the understanding, it is noted that Alavi discounted the role of the internal political economy of Pakistan. The canonical patron-client formulation is scrutinised to reformulate the role of Pakistan as an "estranged client." The attempt is to internalise the interplay of the geostrategic and political-economy interests of the Pakistani military in US-Pakistan relations.
Drawing on the news reporting of the army's association with Ramdev's organisation for yoga training, a discussion on the potential and possibility of politicisation of the military with Hindutva philosophy.
While there is no dearth of news of the devastation caused by the ugly war in Iraq, there has been a profusion of absurdities, in the pronouncements, claims and counter-claims of the leaders and war correspondents and the editorial output of the Indian media.
