Dam easy flood barrier
Flood solution Australia
Tuesday, June 30, 2020
Super Waterproof Tape with Butyl rubber
https://buenadeal.com/products/super-waterproof-tape?_pos=1&_sid=4787a0f94&_ss=r
$12.99 · The Super Waterproof Tape is commonly known as foil tape. These tapes come with Butyl rubber that is extruded, ever-tacky and pressure-sensitive sealant with good adhesion strength. They can form an instant seal against water, air or dust, and remain permanently soft. They are ideal for filling gaps and sealing joints such as those on bolt-on duct flanges and circular ducts in HVAC systems, air-conditioner casings, roofing and cladding systems
Monday, June 29, 2020
World Preview overview
What's going on between Russia, US and Afghanistan?
What are we to make of the reports that have surfaced in the past few days that Russian military intelligence agents were offering money to Taliban fighters to kill US and possibly other Western service personnel? How true are these reports? Can they be substantiated? And what is their real significance?
For a start, we have a triple denial from all of the main parties involved. The Russian government has dismissed the story out of hand. So too have the Taliban.
And US President Donald Trump has vehemently denied any knowledge of the matter - with White House sources telling the US press that the subject never reached as high as the president or vice-president because there was no consensus in the intelligence community about the veracity of the reports.
Vehemently Passionate, strong feeling
Veracity- Accuracy
Source: BBC
Eu to allow visitors from 10 countries
The EU has named 14 countries whose citizens are deemed "safe" to be let in from 1 July, despite the pandemic - but the US, Brazil and China are excluded.
Those named include Australia, Canada, Japan, Morocco and South Korea.
The EU is ready to add China if the Chinese government offers a reciprocal deal for EU travellers, diplomats say.
EU border controls have been lifted for EU citizens travelling inside the bloc. Rules for UK travellers are covered separately in the Brexit negotiations.
UK nationals are still to be treated in the same way as EU citizens until the end of the Brexit transition period on 31 December. Therefore, during that time UK nationals and their family members are exempt from the temporary travel restriction.
On the current "safe" list, still likely to be amended, are Algeria, Australia, Canada, Georgia, Japan, Montenegro, Morocco, New Zealand, Rwanda, Serbia, South Korea, Thailand, Tunisia and Uruguay.
Wednesday, June 24, 2020
Galwan a Great Blow to our Prestige in the Neighbourhood, I grieve for India: Nirupama Rao
Transcript Karan Thapar and Nirupama Rao
Hello and Welcome to a special interview for the wire
how should india respond to the galwan killings and what impact will they have on india-china relations those are two key issues i should explore today with india's former ambassador to china
and former foreign secretary nirupama rao
mrs Rao let's start with the galwan killings which led to 20 indian soldiers losing their lives
and now it's reported in many papers today that perhaps as many as 10 more soldiers
including an officer or two are missing in one instance it's even assumed they could have been captured by the chinese in these circumstances do you feel the government will feel a need to retaliate
Mrs Rao
"well karen thank you for having me on your show as far as the galvan valley killings are concerned
this is definitely a turning point in india-china relations as we have defined these relations over the last 30 to 32 years since rajeev gandhi made his epic visit to china in december of 1988. "
Mr Karan
"The fact that the casualty figures from galvan are so high and as you say they could go up even higher and some of our men and officers are missing raises the alarm even more and adds a further toxicity to the situation now on the question of whether the government is going to retaliate
Mrs Rao
I am of course not privy to the inner workings of government .i've heard some of the bjp members and spokesman speaking about the fact that you know this cannot go unanswered although they leave it to the government to take whatever action is deemed fit but the point is that we have to go into the reasons as to why the situation escalated to this level what went so terribly wrong on monday night so that now you see really a bad moon rising in the india china relationship the situation had kind of
been bubbling over uh since early May not only in the galwan area but you'd seen uh incursions
across other points of the line of actual control including pangolong so in the western sector of the line of actual control but somehow in galvan things went out of hand and the numbers of people uh our men and officers who lost their lives is really really too much to contemplate
Karan
i will definitely go into the reasons why this happened because in a sense that explains what china is doing but first let me ask you one more question about the need to retaliate unconfirmed reports suggest that the chinese were exceptionally brutal in their treatment of indian soldiers there are accounts which suggest that soldiers were pushed off the cliff certainly their bodies had to be salvaged from the galwan river in one instance it's even suggested that this is how color babu lost his life given that prime minister modi has this 56 inch strong man image and given that he's very proud of the speed with which he responded to when he carried out the bada code strike would he not be under pressure both personal and political to react similarly this time round otherwise it would look as if his response has been weak if not supine
Mrs Rao
well karen i think galvan cannot be equated with balakot and china is not pakistan i mean facts are facts that we have to embracethat reality but yes it is a direct message that the chinese are sending to
prime minister modi personally i mean a kind of a taunt i would say and you know they've thrown the gauntlet as it were and they're looking to see what our response will be but i believe that a response need not just be that pavlovian desire to retaliate hit back that they will have to pay for the lives lost all that is very well and that's the gut reaction and one can quite understand that but we have to take the long view i mean as was said by prime minister nehru after the 1962 conflict when the matter was being discussed with great anger and passion in government in parliament he said we cannot march to
peaking now is our intention to march to to peking or beijing as it's called now or is it our intention to see take a long view of this relationship with china our neighbor there's no need for a piecement engagement with china has definitely to be redefined in the months and years to come because this is a watershed event in many senses i think the paradigm of relations that we had put in place after the rajiv gandhi visit was also thrown off the precipice in galvan so here we are back to the drawing board the situation along the line of actual control has to be managed in a way that we don't
confront us a scenario where it becomes increasingly difficult given the asymmetry of power that we have with china it becomes a challenge that kind of envelops us and prevents us from the internal
balancing that we need within the country to handle all the issues that we face at this moment especially during ronavales
let's at this point then come to try and understand what china was doing and why so that we can on that basis make some sense of where the relationship is heading the bizarre part is all of this happened at the time when the two countries were supposedly disengaging in fact colonel babu and the soldiers who were attacked had actually gone to check on whether china had retreated as it said it would only to be ambushed by some 250 or 300 chinese soldiers so the first question is where does this leave the disengagement talks we're having and doesn't it in fact suggest that when our army chief said and i'm quoting his exact words that china has done a lot of disengagement that really wasn't true not that he was lying but china was deceiving us they had given us an indication they were disengaged and did not well the chinese have a behavioral trait which you can only define as sly mockery i think that was the definition applied to their stance also during the 1960 officials talks
when we discussed the boundary so um i what you see is not what you get as
far as the chinese are concerned
so there's every reason for us not to
read too much between the lines as far
as
you know the statements they make are
concerned so that they conform to the
to the conclusions that we would like to
make
but in this case it's true that on sixth
on the sixth of june
the core commanders met and a regime or
protocol for disengagement was
ostensibly agreed to and there had been
subsequent meetings at the junior level
also
to take this forward so what happened on
monday night
i mean it's it's a little there is a fog
that surrounds it there's a kind of a
haze
that surrounds the whole sequence of
events our
to our patrol goes there she
you know sees some structures still in
the area of disengagement and they
proceed
what did they proceed to do and that's
where the big you know the haze gets
even
deeper what really happened we we need
to dissect this
i'm not talking of post moderns but i'm
talking of a need to dissect this
under a microscope to see how we could
have avoided this
in that spirit of dissecting under a
microscope let me raise one question
about
what in fact was happening newspaper
reports
both yesterday and today suggest that
carnal babu went there at 7 30 in the
evening
now that is dark in the mountains and
this is dangerous terrain
why did he go to check if the chinese
were retreating at 7 30 in the evening
particularly
when he had no reason to doubt them
he was simply verifying that they were
doing what they promised
isn't it strange this should have
happened at 7 30 isn't that one of the
questions that needs to be answered
i think that is definitely a question
that needs to be answered
now uh whether he went there on the
basis of a decision
he himself took as the battalion
uh in charge of the battalion commander
or
whether there were instructions from the
higher levels of leadership
within the army that he should have go
there and verify the situation
so you know it was a kind of a trust but
verify situation i think i don't know to
what extent we
obviously did not trust the chinese
enough which is why
we went there to verify but i it beats
me also why they should have gone there
at 7
30 in the um at a time
when you know the terrain i mean when
they knew that the terrain
uh is difficult and darkness
uh complicates the situation further so
we really don't know
why that decision was taken but the
consequences
are there for all of us to see something
that's even more important about gun one
is that the chinese people global
private which is often thought of as a
mouthpiece of the chinese government has
quoted the pla's western theater command
spokesperson to say
that the gangwan valley is chinese and
he insists he's always been chinese
now the indian position has been that
the galwan valley
is one area where there's no dispute
over the lac
and suddenly now if the chinese claim
that it's always been this
isn't this a sign that their intent is
deliberate expansion of territory
they're coming into indian territory
claiming it has their own and pushing us
back
that looks like the intent in galwan
i definitely think that is the intent in
galvan and the chinese are
pushing their so-called claim into an
area that had not
seen any such upheaval more for the last
four to five decades i mean they've
obviously being at some point minor
transgressions here and there
but nothing of this sort and this is
very much
uh a part of chinese behavior today if
you look at their behavior patterns
across the region
look at what they do in the east china
sea in the south china sea what they've
done with the artificial islands what
they do
in terms of buzzing ships and and kind
of uh
going after fishermen uh they they are
you know engaged in a very aggressive
uh push forward and you saw that in
ladakh
also absolutely there's no doubt that
what we've seen in terms of
chinese assertiveness aggressiveness is
part of a pattern that we're seeing in
chinese behavior
in other parts of the world as well but
let me stick for a moment
to examples of china's intent to expand
into indian territory
the same can be discerned from what
happened in pangong lake
where the chinese have erected defensive
structures that
deny india access to patrolling in 50
square kilometers where previously
we were patrolling and ajay shukla who's
very well informed now says
that in fact since the galwan incident
the chinese have also intruded into
indian territory in depth some
so once again what's happening in
pangolin what seems to be happening in
depthsang suggests once again that the
chinese
are deliberately intruding into indian
territory and
pushing the loc as hard as we are
concerned backwards but forwards for
themselves
yeah it's very ironic that they accuse
us of
disturbing the status quo if you look at
you know the statements that they've
made
when they are doing that themselves i
mean really the fingers should point at
them
and this is i think you know although
the
line of actual control has been
relatively quiet in the last few decades
and we've never seen any loss of life or
exchange of fire if you look at what
happened
in the early years of the conflict after
the discovery of the aksai chin highway
which they constructed
through the aksai in the mid 50s
the chinese line advanced westward and
westward and westward it was like a
moving finger writing and writing
moving on uh joe and i talked about a
1956
claim line which was which when we had
the talks in 1960 we
found that they had advanced in their
claim far ahead of that
so this is a line that keeps moving and
it started moving again
we don't know what the chinese end game
is on this absolutely but at the moment
as we look at the situation whether you
view it from the galwan end or the
pangong lake and or even the new devsung
doesn't it seem that this amounts to a
massive escalation by china
deliberately intended to fundamentally
change the status quo
on the line of actual control occupy
indian territory
and push us back absolutely it is
they are attempting to change their
status quo
and the whole question of
uh you know how we settled these issues
with china
we had established a certain protocol
we had pushed we put in place mechanisms
to maintain peace and tranquility
uh we had the special representatives
talks between the two sides in
order to attempt to see how we could
arrive at a border settlement
all that has been kind of thrown
into a state of disarray and
in many senses a death knell sounded to
all those protocols and mechanisms for
establishment
of peace and tranquility along in the
border areas
so in a sense where do the two sides go
from now
but i think in the forum in our foreign
ministry statement
yesterday in the concluding paragraph
after foreign minister jaishankar spoke
to
chinese minister wang yi uh it was said
that you know both sides agreed that
you know they would move forward with
responsibility to see how the process of
de-escalation
decided upon on the 6th june meeting
would go forward
and obviously the diplomatic channels
are operating
i mean these are perhaps uh certain um
uh areas where the light is being
uh you know focused at the moment and we
have that
how much hope can we draw from that last
paragraph
because the mantra that the two sides
used to
express don't let differences become
disputes
has been literally turned on its head by
the chinese
in pangong they actually escalated a
difference to a dispute
in galwan they created a dispute where
none existed
so that mantra which guided the
relationship
for 20 years has been literally torn up
and thrown out of the window
absolutely it's been destroyed in many
ways and i think in galvan
not only did the difference become a
dispute the dispute turned into a
conflagration
i yeah i don't have a d word for it but
certainly it turned into a conflagration
and you know what are they what are the
conclusions that we draw from this i
mean what are the outcomes
for the relationship with china
can i put one conclusion to you doesn't
it seem
as if china looks at the situation in
india and sees this is a country that is
suffering on major health crisis and a
lot of the reports suggest that we're
not in control of kovid
it could rip through our population and
then china says
this is a country that also has an
economic crisis
its gdp could collapse by something like
12 this year and china says to itself
clearly india is not just on the back
foot it's as weak as it's been
this is our moment to take advantage of
the
adverse situation in their faces which
is why they've chosen this specific
moment
to suddenly push us back on the border
extend
their territory and change the ndc isn't
that a sort of natural conclusion of
what china is doing
well that would be i suppose an
immediate
kind of thought that comes to mind
as to why the chinese should have done
this uh
you know in order to expose our
our you know weak spots as it were
i don't deny that i mean the chinese
have always felt
uncomfortable with india being defined
as a peer
as a country that you know is equal to
china has the potential
to be the second big power
in the asia-pacific pacific region or
the indo-pacific region
so they've been uncomfortable with that
thought because they benchmarked
themselves with
the superpower the united states or
perhaps to some extent
with japan so they've been uncomfortable
with that
they see uh you know you saw the
statements that were issued after
the revocation of article 370
particularly the publication of the new
maps
of the union territory of ladakh and the
union territory of jammu and kashmir and
the kind of vitriolic statements that
came out of there
and they are walking a very fine line on
the india pakistan
question also it's not the same china
which kind of took
a rather distanced approach when it came
to india pakistan issues
not neutral perhaps but at least you
know
kind of the same bromides about how
india and pakistan should solve this sit
down
talk about it but today i think it's a
very different narrative that's coming
out of there
so uh in a sense the whole
uh all these questions seem to come
together
to create a you know a new scenario
which we have
reason to be concerned about absolutely
and that is why i want to ask
how likely is it that the two foreign
ministers who began talking yesterday
can actually resolve this matter
yesterday the statements the both
foreign offices issued basically pointed
the finger at each other and blamed each
other
how likely is it that this process can
actually
result in china reversing
to status quo empty
in my view i think that is going to be
a long journey the you know take
sundaram
for instance you know how the two sides
faced off
from 1986 87 onwards it took
close to seven years to resolve that
problem
and even today i mean when nobody is
dissecting
again i'm using that word as to how that
happened but it took
a long seven-year biblical span as it
were
to to resolve that despite the visit of
rajiv gandhi to
china in 1988 which essentially stemmed
from the situation uh
which was
in fact you're absolutely right because
the one thing that's apparent this time
around
and it's very similar in a sense to from
troop is that the chinese have not just
occupied substantial bits of indian
territory they've erected tents
reports suggest they've brought up heavy
vehicles and even artillery
there's even nearby military and air
force activity
this is a sign that china intends to
stay
now convincing them to go back to status
quantity
will take years but more than that it
will take
india applying pressure itself do we
have pressure points
where we can make the chinese to use a
colloquialism
squeal well that's for the government to
decide
i think the government has to take a
call on whether they
are comfortable or they are prepared
to allow the situation to escalate
further
that you see more pressure points being
exerted by india which obviously would
elicit
some degree of japanese reaction
given you know the way the chinese are
all rolled up at the moment
uh so i think we need to
as they're saying goes across the river
feeling the stones
uh what are the outcomes you know how is
india
best prepared uh to deal with
any eventuality it's all very well to
you know you talked about the the uh the
uh
measurement chest measurements and i'm
not going into that but
you know we have to go beyond rhetoric
on this issue it's all very well to feed
the public rhetoric
and to speak to the galleries on this
but you know our army has to confront
the chinese and they're well prepared to
do that
but we have to take that hard decision
a well-considered calculated decision
and let me also add that
calendar you're sort of suggesting
although you haven't said it so
explicitly
that if we are going to ensure status
quo ante
we have to be prepared for conflict
we're going to have to push them back
we may not succeed in negotiating their
return
we may have to literally push them back
militarily and that is conflict
well i think the pathway of negotiation
should not be abandoned
obviously i mean if you can sort this
out through a negotiated
interaction with china it's the best way
forward i think it would
redound to the credit of both countries
if they're
able to do that especially after the
gruesome events
of monday the 15th of june but if
negotiation
fails and you know the policy and i'm
saying it can't be determined at the
level of the army alone that's what i
wanted to say
you can't say we're leaving it to the
army they will do what is
best national security strategy has to
be decided at the highest levels of
government
under the direction of the prime
minister absolutely
making it very clear that there's a very
good likelihood i won't put it more
strongly than that that negotiation at a
political level may not be sufficient
to get the chinese who've entrenched
themselves to now go back
we may have to be prepared for military
action and that means
that we cannot rule out the possibility
that this could become a conflict when i
think the situation
being so volatile looking at the
chemistry
at this moment i think we cannot rule
out
further attention uh further uh
altercation
further confrontation that we cannot
rule out
entirely this is rob
let's take a break at that point when i
come back i want to turn to that second
critical question
what impact will this have on india's
relationship with china we'll be back in
a moment's time but first
a little break
welcome back to a special interview for
the wire my guest is india's former
ambassador to china former foreign
secretary
nirupavara mrs rao right at the very
start of this
interview you said what's happened in
ghana is a turning point in india china
relation
i want to pick up on that to begin with
does this not mean
that hereafter it will be very difficult
if not impossible to trust the chinese
in upholding and implementing all the
agreements signed since 1993
to maintain peace and tranquility on the
border that element of trust
has now literally been thrown out of the
window
well yes uh you know the in the u.s
china context recently
there was a there was a piece that
attracted a great deal of attention
called the death of engagement
by orville shell now would you apply the
same term
to the india china situation perhaps not
i cannot be the depth of engagement with
china
because you know we have this 3488
kilometer long border with that country
it is our neighbor and next door
neighbor and
you know you don't get to choose your
neighbors
but you have to learn uh to
coexist with them because a regime of
conflict and confrontation
taken beyond the point is not
sustainable despite
the levels of power but that's trust me
that was so essential to the tranquility
we maintained on the border
surely that trust now is badly damaged
we trusted
that they would live up to their
commitments they've now shown they won't
yes i agree that if you take the
factor of trust it is suffering from
hypothermia just like you know
you see the cold temperatures of garland
definitely so and i'm not
saying it in a lighter vein it will take
some time
for the relationship to even uh
approximate to some degree
of the kind of you know interaction that
we've had
over the last three three and a half
decades so it's not going to happen
actually
it's not going to be business as usual i
think the focus will be
essentially on how do we you know
diffuse
can i interrupt people against you if
trust is one commodity that is badly
damaged
surely a second is the belief
that there was a special rapper or
relationship between the two heads of
government
our prime minister has met president xi
jinping
18 times since mr modi came to pa in
2014. apparently he's visited
china five times as prime minister and
on his last visit as prime minister he
actually spoke
very innocently about the bond between
the two leaders
today it seems as if xi jinping simply
does not reciprocate that sentiment
and we in india may have been misled by
all this talk of the wuhan spirit
no i think of all this talk of chemistry
and mutual affection
between chinese and indian leaders and
i'm not just talking of the
she mori equation i'm looking at the
relationship
between our top leaders from the time of
chennai
and nehru you know it i think it's a bit
of a chimera
to suggest and to assume that there is
mutual
trust and affection
we know that hindi genie bye bye
suffered terror but did we make the
mistake of following it to another
belief
that with modi and xi jinping somehow
hindi genie was back on track
i think we indians tend to be
very emotional and uh you know rather
subjective
in our judgments of the chinese you know
when the going's good
uh you know we we we are
suffused with exhilaration and when the
going is bad we lapse into deep
despondency but that's
the way we are we tend also to i mean
looking at the
public reaction to what has happened
also there's an element of hysteria
about china and you know you're going a
lot of that
so i'm what i'm saying is it is a it is
a fallacy
i think it is a mistake to assume that
all is going well just because you've
had a couple of informal summits
and uh you had to again analyze what
kind of
leader xi jinping is i mean
this with that smile but but
really what goes on behind that
countenance what kind of a leader
is he uh he's obviously hardlined he has
enunciated this china dream which
essentially means making china number
one
does india have any place for it you
recall when rajiv gandhi met
tangshaya pring in beijing and tang said
that
the asian century will be incomplete
without india and china
where are the chinese leaders speaking
about it i mean
i mean i you may argue that that was
also a bromide by
being and you know what happened after
that so what i'm saying is
uh be very realistic be very hard-nosed
and be very cool-headed when it comes to
dealing with china
let me then take up a couple of broader
foreign policy implications of what's
happened in galwan
begin with do you think this will have
an impact on india china trade they have
a 57 billion dollar surplus
are we going to see definite moves being
made by the indian government
leave aside the indian people to ensure
that the trade balance changes and that
our dependence on chinese imports
diminishes dramatically
well i'm sure that's the instinctive
approach at this moment
we'll have to see what the government
decides this will obviously have to
involve consultations with the commerce
ministry and the trade organizations
yes it's bound to cast some shadows
on the india china trade or all already
there's so much concern about the
adverse imbalance
adverse balance of trade and the public
mood is that
you know don't buy chinese goats don't
buy
china chinese things so um
you know politically it may be uh
opportune
at this moment to kind of respond to
those calls
and impose greater controls but i don't
see you know
trade absolutely being cut off between
the two countries as a result of
this absolutely because china produces
that we don't and it makes it so much
cheaper than we could
that we would actually be denying our
people
things that otherwise they could not get
but let me move to another aspect
this whole problem in ghana happened at
the time
uh your voice is breaking up i don't
have something
i said your voice is breaking up let me
let me put this to you
everything that's happened in galwan has
sort of coincided with problems that we
have with nepal over the kalapana buddha
and it's happening at a time when we
believe that chinese are upset with
steps that we've taken in jammu and
kashmir the steps that india has taken
vis-a-vis pakistan do you see somewhere
the emergence
i won't put it more strongly than that
of a nepal
china pakistan linkage
well i hope that doesn't happen but
i am
concerned about the already uh the
chinese
presence and involvement and investment
in pakistan
is beyond any limits that we've seen
before
so you see the extent to which pakistan
has been drawn
into the chinese orbit or the way china
has sucked in
is that going to happen with nepal so
these are the two countries i think that
will be of the utmost concern to us
when we talk of our neighborhood and we
talk
about how india's position
is in a sense being challenged
now china as you pointed out in part one
is showing similar assertiveness in its
relationship with america with australia
with taiwan
in hong kong in the south china sea
where one of the countries that it's
been buzzing
the fishing fleets office japan is this
a moment when
india should reach out to them or would
that be a mistake
i think we should definitely reach out
to them and i think
many of these countries want to want to
see
an india that is a little less subtle
if i may put it that way about how it
visualizes its developing relationships
with these countries
you know obviously our body language
would suggest that we would like to draw
closer
we would like to align our interests
more i think we'll have to be a little
more outspoken
on these issues because i think our
friends in the united states
and japan and australia for that matter
are looking to see a more vocal and more
assertive india assertiveness need not
just be on the border
it can be assertive in our diplom
diplomacy
we want to be a leading power let's
inject
a degree of assertiveness into that also
and i think
it does us no harm to align our
interests
much more closely with these countries
and to be a little more vocal about it i
don't think we need to look over our
shoulders at how the chinese would react
now there are three important
multinational groups
that we are a part of where china plays
a major role as well i'm talking about
bricks i'm talking about the shanghai
cooperation organization
i'm talking about russia india china and
if i'm not mistaken
there is a russia-india-china meeting
that is scheduled for just a couple of
days time
in the light of what china has done
should we
opt out of that distance ourselves keep
a certain aloofness or would that be a
mistake
i really don't know if we are we will be
ready to attend the russia india china
meeting as you say which is upcoming so
soon
after the gala tragedy
so i'm sure that we will be taking a
deep breath
on that at the moment but i don't
believe we abandoned the russia india
china
interaction because it's not a bad thing
for us
and i think we need to pay atten much
more attention
to our relations with russia today
russia has been
drawn as literally into the chinese cap
if you look at the eurasian
landmass as it were and the bri
activities of the chinese and russia has
kind of stepped back although it is
for years for generations for a century
and a half it's been
numero uno in central asia but today it
has kind of decided to
seed space to china why because it's
essentially isolated in the world
you know the whole western attitude to
russia
so i think we need to make some
calculations and some
kind of uh you know balancing on that
front also
but as far as bricks is concerned to
what extent it's been effective
and to what extent it's made a
difference i i
i don't really know you know india has
i think it has time to weigh uh its
involvement with brics
uh as we go forward as far as the
shanghai cooperation
organization is concerned i think these
events really should make us reconsider
uh the level of our involvement and to
my mind even our disengagement from the
shanghai cooperation organization we're
coming to the end of this interview i'll
ask you two quick questions
what's your assessment of the way the
modi government
and i mean both mr modi and mr
jayashakar have handled this crisis
there are sections of the indian press
that believe
there should have been more strategic
communication from the modi government
in comparison china has done a lot of
talking a lot of explaining
we haven't done anywhere near as much do
you share that criticism or do you
actually think
that a measure of silence is perhaps
wise
well it is a strategic communication
can also include restraint uh can
include deliberation can avoid attempts
to whip up hysteria and sentiments
but to what degree was that strategic
communication
evident in place uh in the lead up to
galwan that's the question
and i think the government could have
done much better on that front
in other words we could be dignifying
the government's silence by
claiming that there was a certain
strategy behind it that's very beautiful
i don't belie i don't think there was a
strategy behind it i think the
government was not communicative
enough and i think the government
spokesman should have been able
to guide the narrative on this and to
introduce a degree of sobriety into
you know the debate in the public space
i don't believe that was done
sufficiently
my last question many people say that
since 1962
india has developed a complex about
china
that shadow continues to overhang not
just the country
but our politicians perhaps even our
diplomats and so when there's a problem
we become cautious we become defensive
is 1962 a shadow that we have failed to
push aside
i think there's a great degree of
activism
when it comes to our dealings with china
i think the
uh images of 1962 the memories of that
conflict
are embedded in the psychology of india
of indians and our opinion makers our
politicians our media
so that's the way uh the cookie crumbles
at the moment and we have
to understand that it's a very complex
uh attitude that we possess to china and
also to some extent it's not very well
informed
uh to what extent and have uh
cognochenti as it were studied the
history of this dispute
and understood the steps and mistakes
we made and we took in the run-up to
that conflict
and how do we understand chinese
behavior better you know you talk of the
events in galvan
i mean there's so many parables in that
lead up to 1962
that we need to ingest as a country and
that hasn't happened
that's very beautifully put we've given
ourselves a complex without actually
understanding the situation without
actually
understanding what happened and what lay
behind 1962
perhaps we need to at this point come to
terms with our history
better if we are going to be in control
of our future this is raf
thank you very much for this interview
take care and stay safe
to receive instant updates on all videos
from the wire
click the subscribe button and hit the
bell icon
pay to support independent journalism
click the link in the description and
choose the amount you want to pay
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)