Indians can borrow a leaf from Zulfikar Ali Bhutto's dealings with the sheikhs

Diplomacy is the long and short arm of foreign policy. It calls for nimble-footed leaping on opportunities as well as patient plodding after immutable principles.In the highly strategic region of the Persian Gulf, Indian diplomacy filled neither bill until the first days of last month when Prime Minister Indira Gandhi made what pusillanimous scribes obligingly termed a "triumphant" tour of Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). It was far from a triumph. But it was a very good beginning. It needs comprehensive, purposeful, determined follow-up action on the part of several ministries. However, there can be no certainty that this action will be forthcoming.Indian prime ministers have flown to Europe and America hundreds of times over the Persian Gulf. But not before last month was it considered necessary to visit the richly-robed sheikhs of the seven Arab countries that constitute the core of the Gulf community. India's diplomacy was fixed on Iraq and Iran since the early '70s after Sadat took Egypt away to the US camp. The relationship between India and the Shah of Iran acquired a strategic quality in the mid-70s. Then began the decline of the Shah. Since the victory of the Khomeini revolution in 1979, there has been no significant relationship and less bilateral dialogue between New Delhi and Teheran. India's relations with the Gulf were now confined mostly to Iraq where this country bagged its 50th construction contract early this year. Iraq, however, continues to be consumed by its ding-dong war with Iran, pushing economic development down on the list of priorities.Mrs Gandhi with Kuwait's Crown Prince and Prime Minister Shaikh Saad Abduliah: A good beginning Mrs Gandhi has now acted to change years of India's neglect of, and indifference to, the majority of the Gulf countries - UAE, Kuwait, Bahrain, Oman, Qatar, the two Yemens and Saudi Arabia. In Indian perception, these are obscurantist exotic monarchies that found their 'open sesame' in oil power in 1973 and became incredibly rich but remained Islamic fundamentalists - and therefore unfit for and unresponsive to high-yielding diplomatic cultivation. Trade: The wages of neglect are writ large on the pages of current history. At the end of 1979, the accumulated investible surplus of the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), the vast majority of whom reside in the Persian Gulf area, was $236 billion (Rs 188,800 crore!). This was the oil-rich nations' commercial stake in the world economy. Eighty-four per cent of this surplus was tied up in the developed capitalist countries. Just a wee pittance came to India - $135.5 million (Rs 108.4 crore) from the UAE, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Abu Dhabi. The OPEC Special Fund's contribution to the Indian economy was just $27 million (Rs 21.6 crore)till 1978. Gulf investments in India picked up a little in the last two years, but the total at this stage would not add up to Rs 2,000 crore and the bulk of it came from a single sheikhdom: Kuwait.The trade picture is equally dismal. India - UAE trade comes to a mere Rs 140 crore a year, reducing India to the 10th place among countries that are major exporters to that federation. Trade with Kuwait is worth only Rs 80 crore annually. On the other hand, Indians working in UAE remit Rs 600 crore home each year. India's share of the Arab oil boom, then, is the 500,000 Indians who work in the nine Persian Gulf countries, mostly construction workers, engineers and medical staff. These countries need to hire 2 million more foreigners before 1985 to implement their development plans, according to a 1979 survey in The New York Times. The UAE was sending back to India illegal workers at the rate of 100 every day in the early months of 1980!There is now a self-critical, reappraising mood in the Persian Gulf capitals, which makes Mrs Gandhi's visit extraordinarily important.Above all, she has been able to persuade the sheikhs that the security of the Gulf and the security of the subcontinent are indivisible.Though belated, Mrs Gandhi's diplomatic initiative in May was mounted with vigour, comprehension and tact, a combination not often seen in fields ploughed by makers of India's foreign policy. She took with her the minister of state for commerce, and was joined by the minister of external affairs who flew in from Baghdad. The team of officials included the secretary to the Ministry of Economic Affairs and the economic affairs secretary in the Foreign Ministry. The prime minister collected the nine Indian ambassadors in the Gulf region for an in-depth, self-critical assessment of opportunities, stakes and possibilities in that area.Well Timed: Not only did Mrs Gandhi pursue political talks Mrs Gandhi with Kuwait's Crown Prince and Prime Minister Shaikh Saad Abdullah: a good beginning at the highest level, while her aides engaged in nuts-and-bolts conversations, she discussed military and security matters with defence ministers and high military personnel. Thus, Mrs Gandhi demonstrated to the sheikhs that she attached considerable political, economic and security importance to them and their kingdoms, and did not regard them as mere owners of magic-begotten wealth. They were pleased with Mrs Gandhi's graciousness, her demonstrated warmth and her readiness to treat them as equals. Not as cats to be skinned or cows to be milked, which is the way they are treated by their western friends and patrons.She could not have timed her visit better. A deep disenchantment with the West, specially the United States, is building up in the Gulf community, particularly among the younger, highly educated generation that has entered the policy-making process. Even the reigning sheikhs realise that they have been taken for a ride by the advanced capitalist countries. The oil power that frightened the West in 1973-74 has lost its sharp edges; the Arabs are so divided today that they can hardly use it to usher in an independent homeland for the Palestinians. Not only have the OPEC countries locked up 84 per cent of their investible surplus in the advanced capitalist countries, they have negotiated long-term dependencies on these countries for defence and development, dependencies that will drain their resources even when their oil wealth has reduced to a trickle. The oil sheikhs and their younger sons and brothers have begun to realise that the singular failure of OPEC has been to engineer productive forces in the developing world that might strengthen their own economies in the long run and make oil money a powerful factor in structuring a new international economic order.The manner in which the Carter Administration froze Iranian funds in the US and put pressure on the European allies to do the same alerted the oil sheikhs to the danger of putting all or most of their eggs into western baskets. But diversion of large quantities of petrodollars to viable Third World economies is no easy job. When it comes to money, the Arabs are very smart; like moneybags everywhere they look for the most lucrative investment opportunities with the least possible risks. The oil-rich Arab countries have very little expertise on the developing economies; their "experts" are all trained in America or western Europe, and their emotional affiliations are also predominantly western.What these "experts" and their foreign patrons have done to the Arab monarchies in seven-eight years has just begun to become clear to the sheikhs and their ministers. Since 1974, the handful of countries in the Gulf region, whose combined population is smaller than that of the city of Bombay or New York, have spent $300 billion (Rs 240,000 crore) to push their primitive economies into the modern era. All of them have followed the model of the Shah of Iran: dizzily ambitious "modernization" projects that focus on the oil industry and prestige and neglect of agriculture and fishing. How wasteful has been the modernization dream is illustrated by the international airports built by Dubai and Sharjah, two emirates of UAE that are only 20 minutes by car! Equally wasteful has been the massive lopsided expenditure on defence. In 1980 Iraq and Saudi Arabia each signed arms deals with France alone totalling Rs 8,000 crore!The volatile, often convulsive momentum created by extravagant spending on "defence" and "development" is tearing at the social fabric of these conservative Arab societies and distorting their economies. In the last seven years alignments have shifted in the Gulf-Arabia region like clouds in the Indian monsoon skies. Even the Saudis, with their fabulous oil wealth, are most uncertain of their future. A CIA report in 1979, claiming that the royal family had lost its unity and cohesion and princes might set upon princes, chilled the spine of the royalty as well as its international patrons. According to the director of the Exeter University's Centre of Arab Gulf Studies: "Many of these governments are losing control of their countries."Shared Views: There is now a self-critical, reappraising mood in the Persian Gulf capitals, which makes Mrs Gandhi's visit extraordinarily important. The sheikhs have begun to realise that neglect of non-oil resources has mutilated their development and rendered them hostage to the West for decades. Their industrialisation effort lacks the underpinning of regional coordination. In the name of modernization, they have built arrays of white elephants.India and the Persian Gulf countries can mutually benefit from economic cooperation; India has the technology, industrial capability, trained manpower, development experience, and that invaluable intangible called empathy, which can be of great benefit to these societies. With liberal petrodollar investment India can develop its own resources further in a manner that will benefit both parties. Mrs Gandhi has initiated a whole process of cooperation, not only on bilateral but also on a regional basis. Above all, she has been able to persuade the sheikhs that the security of the Gulf and the security of the subcontinent are indivisible. They also got from her a non-American version of the crises building up in the Indian Ocean region. Mrs Gandhi succeeded to a large extent in enabling the sheikhs to see the other side of the scenario which is not often brought to their notice. It is remarkable that they listened to her with serious attention; the result was the large areas of shared views on crucial world andregional issues that were reflected in the communiques..In the follow-up measures that will now have to be taken in India, three points need to be kept in mind. The first is that the Gulf countries, especially Saudi Arabia, UAE and Kuwait, will not come to India in a big way if they are not convinced that India genuinely desires and strives for better relations with Pakistan. This is particularly true in the confidence-building period. Secondly, the sheikhs have their own ego and vanity; they would like to get from India what they cannot get from the West: genuine respect and equality. Thirdly, the sheikhs are still basically feudal monarchs, for whom nothing is more important than personal friendships, person-to-person diplomacy. Indians can borrow a leaf from Zulfikar Ali Bhutto's dealings with the sheikhs, which General Zia-ul-Haq has been following scrupulously. The managing director of a Dubai bank recently in Delhi told India Today: "Once India has made friends with the sheikhs, there is nothing that they will not be ready to do for this country. They can give you all the foreign money you need for your Sixth Plan. But you have to work for it." India has also to work hard to prevent the Gulf from becoming a theatre of experimental wars - cold or hot - between the superpowers.Published By: AtMigration Published On: Nov 20, 2013 12:48 IST--- ENDS ---

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Indians can borrow a leaf from Zulfikar Ali Bhutto's dealings with the sheikhs

Diplomacy is the long and short arm of foreign policy. It calls for nimble-footed leaping on opportunities as well as patient plodding after immutable principles.

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