Thailand's “Roving Buakeaw" Project

Thailand initiated an innovative project called the – “Roving Buakeaw Project” - that allows the government to take account of public opinion when formulating foreign policy. The project is led by the Foreign Minister who along with senior officials from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs goes to the people to listen on various issues with potential impact on Thai foreign policy. This is an attempt to engage and include Thai citizens from all walks of life, especially in the border provinces in shaping Thai foreign policy. Town halls, local temples, provincial schools etc serve as meeting sites and “information collected is taken into consideration in formulating foreign policy if and when appropriate.”

The Thai ministry of foreign affairs describe that the main activities of the project include, “informal discussion on issues of international affairs affecting the life such as trading and consular service as well as roving passport services.” People from the selected provinces also have the opportunity to participate through local radio stations via live broadcasts. Issues discussed include trading along the border, labor issues, tourism etc.

Apart from top echelons of the ministry, participants include Members of Parliament, businessmen, member of the local Chambers of Commerce, local media, local government officials, non-profits and civil society etc. In Southeast Asia, Thailand remains a dynamic state when it comes to foreign policy. It was one of the first states to accept the reality of a rising China and engage the Chinese aggressively despite US being the preeminent power in East Asian affairs. Historically too, Thailand was the only country in the whole of Asia to have never been colonized despite never being a great power. The “Roving Buakew Project” along with other such projects like “Young Ambassador of Virtue,” are wonderful initiatives to give ‘common people’ a direct say in formulating foreign policy. See this link for a presentation by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Thailand.

Suggestions/Critiques welcome.

- Madhur

Public Diplomacy: The potential for India in East Asia

Beginning of 2010 saw India aggressively engaging major East Asian countries. Apart from state visits by leaders of South Korea, Japan and Malaysia; Indian navy led 13 navies from the region in the ’Milan 2010’ anti terror, humanitarian assistance and disaster relief exercise in the Indian Ocean. India seems to be gradually figuring in geopolitical East Asian scheme of things even though geographically it’s not a part of it.

In a symbolic gesture that signifies the importance India attaches to East Asia, the South Korean President Lee Myung-bak, was the chief guest at this year’s Republic Day celebrations in New Delhi on January 26^th. While talks with Japan and South Korea centered around trade, economic and nuclear cooperation, talks with the Malaysian Prime Minister Sri Mohammad Najib Tun Abdul Razak also focused on reaching a bilateral agreement on culture and tourism apart from means to an early conclusion of CECA (Comprehensive Economic Cooperation Agreement).

While bilateral ties seem to be strengthening with East Asia, people to people connect seems to be minimal between both regions. The Malaysian prime minister did in fact admit this when he said, “for ties to be binding and meaningful, it is imperative to have the strongest people-to-people relationship.” Mr Najib said that Malaysia intended to improve its visa regime to facilitate travel of business persons and tourist to his country. He also called for improving connectivity through additional flights to either country and to elsewhere around the world and to establish a bilateral CEO forum for business leaders from both countries to discuss common issues. During his stay, Chennai also signed a “sister city” pact with Kuala Lumpur. Unlike Japan and Korea, Malaysia also has a strong Indian diaspora.

While the Look East policy is bearing fruit for India, people to people contact/exchanges need to be strongly cultivated given the geographical proximity and factors like shared history and demographics. The potential of India’s North East, which is culturally & geographically closer to Southeast Asia than rest of India, should also be tapped for better ‘people to people connect’. India’s domestic politics, dominated by the northern states is also partly responsible, which for reasons historic and cultural is obsessed with India’s western border and people to people ties with Pakistan. Joseph Nye, in his British Council Parliamentary Lecture on 20 January 2010, “Soft Power and Public Diplomacy in the 21st Century,” argued that “in an information age when power is more broadly distributed and less hierarchical than in earlier ages” there is some merit in a two way communication between societies to complement state policy. It’s a good time for India to take stock of its soft power reserves in East Asia and leverage it for the preeminent role it is destined to play in Asia in the 21^st century.

Suggestions/Critiques welcome.

--Madhur

Encouraging signs from Australia

Last week, two prominent Australians talked openly about their views on allegedly racist attacks on Indians in Australia. In my last post, I mentioned how the Australians are getting their communication wrong and defensive in failing to acknowledge a pattern in the violence against Indians. However, recently Victoria’s Police Commissioner, Simon Overland said that his department was aware of a trend in violence against Indians for two years now and were drawing up plans to tackle the same. He said to ABC radio that Indians were “over represented when it came to robberies” and not so much in assaults. He said that 50% of assaults against Indians were at the workplace and some of them possibly racist.

Similarly, Australia’s former army chief, Peter Cosgrove, categorized the attacks as racist, rejecting the official line and indicated that there were some kind of a “profiling approach to attacks on South Asians,” implying that it is indeed racism. Rather than dismissing them as routine crime, Cosgrove called for some introspection on the part of Australian society. Incidentally Cosgrove was the Australian of the year in 2001.

Coming from two prominent Australians, this line of communication projects a mature approach to dealing with the issue. It portrays a resilient and confident society capable to face the demons within and deal with it. As I said earlier, the debate is not about whether Australia is racist or not; rather the Australians should attempt to confine the debate to whether Australia can deal with such issues or not.

Diaspora’s role

In this entire episode, the potential of the Indian diaspora has not been adequately leveraged by the Indian and Australian governments. Australians should make more efforts in portraying the Indian diaspora as an integral part of multicultural Australia while India could have leveraged the same diaspora for influencing Canberra, and, also for seeking their assistance in mentoring ‘new’ Indians in Australia. It will be good to see something happening on this front.

Suggestions/Critiques welcome.

--Madhur

Australia: Needed proactive, sensible and sensitized communication

The Australian High Commission in New Delhi is doing a United Colors of Benetton. The walls of the embassy building and the visa office look like giant billboards with happy and colorful pictures of “Australians” - of different races, national origins, skin color - being displayed. Huge billboard size pictures all, happy and together, with the words “Multicultural Australia” in bold. There were pictures of Asians, Africans, Arabs, Anglo Saxons and also Indians. This did not exist earlier, definitely a first in the capital, as the Aussies try to look coherent in their denial of racist attacks on Indians in Australia.

The straight talking Aussies suddenly are defensive and fumbling for answers in the face of a relentless campaign by Indian media. Australia’s image has never been so badly dented in India. In all their official communication, the Australians have denied that these attacks are racist, and, an attempt is being made to club them with regular street crimes. Then, they announce a person of Indian origin (Peter Varghese) to be the next High Commissioner to India, also announce that they are sending the largest contingent to Commonwealth Games in India and put up billboards on embassy walls to counter the negative publicity. Despite all this, there was a 46% drop in student applications to Australian campuses from India this year. India contributes the most to Australia’s $ 15 billion education industry.

Where the Australians are going wrong is in their failure to acknowledge the possibility of a ‘pattern’ in the violence. This acknowledgment is lacking in all their communication (which has been very few) to Indian media. It is not a question of whether the country is safe or not. Rather than denying the possibility of racism altogether what should be communicated is that the Australian system is sophisticated and sensitized enough to grasp the nature of the problem and then deal with it. The comments by the Victorian Police Commissioner on safety statistics do not help and one wonders why is he speaking to the media at all? Discrimation/racism exists in every society and all claims to the contrary is total B******* … everybody knows that, especially Indians who live amidst diversity and conflicts all their lives. Anybody who has ever lived in a different culture also understands that some form of Aversive racism exists in every society. It’s human.

There is a convergence of strategic interests between both the countries. The bilateral relationships, trade, people to people contacts have never been so good. Both have an interest in the stability of Asia and preventing Chinese dominance of Asia. Besides, Australia too wants to be seen as a part of the Asia Pacific Community rather than being seen with the western bloc. However, the Australians need to be proactive and communicate better and LOOK SENSITIZED in the media. Their communication now seems more like defensive posturing or just plain gimmickry.

(Source: Mail Today)

Suggestions/Critiques welcome.

--Madhur

Potential of text messaging for Public Diplomacy in India

Of all the different mediums that are available for practitioners of Public Diplomacy to engage India, mobile phones remain underutilized. Mobile phone penetration in India is huge. It is the fastest growing mobile phone market in the world with companies adding over 15 million users every month. As of March 2009, India has 392 million mobile phone users. This figure is expected to reach 500 million beginning of 2010, and by 2015 the country is expected to have a billion plus users.

With the high penetration of mobile phones, text messaging has become an important tool to educate, inform, mobilize, engage Indians. India’s recent elections saw political parties using text messaging for campaigns. Civil society groups too have made innovative use of text messaging. A campaign that comes to mind is Sachche ko Chune, Achche ko Chune (Vote for the Honest, Vote for Good People), by the Association for Democratic Reforms, or ADR, a non-governmental organization (NGO). This was a SMS campaign that lets you send a text with your zip code, and, ADR sends the latest information about one’s constituency and the candidates contesting elections. NDTV’s campaign seeking text message signatures from the public to build pressure on government’s prosecution machinery, in the high profile Jessica Lal murder case, is also well known. Corporate groups already are making good use of text messaging in customer servicing from placing requests, generating feedbacks to paying bills etc.

Recently, Google launched its SMS text message service in India, www.google.co.in/sms, (already available in US) for mobile phone users who wish to find out information from Google about business listings, movie showtimes and other local or web information by sending queries to a specified number from their phones. Apparently, mobile phone users who do not have web browser or Internet access via their phones can still ping Google for information via SMS.

Mobile phone, especially text messaging, is growing as a preferred mode of communication in India. Cellular operators, too have been really enterprising with their tariff plans and handset prices and in India it is very normal to see a petty shopkeeper or a rickshaw puller flaunting a cellular phone. The potential for engagement is tremendous through this medium for creative minds.

Suggestions/Critiques welcome

-- Madhur

Two important books on Diplomacy in Southeast Asia

Joshua Kurlantzick’s “Charm Offensive” and Sunanda K Datta-Ray’s “Looking East to Look West” are two books which provide great insights into the diplomacy in Southeast Asia. Kurlantzick describes in detail Chinese public diplomacy and how it is (now) central to Chinese foreign policy with a mission to reassure the world about “China’s peaceful rise.” Datta-Ray, on the other hand, examines India-Singapore relations and, in the process, also looks at India’s engagement with Southeast Asia since 1947.

Kurlantzick’s “Charm Offensive” describes Chinese public diplomacy in various regions of the world, examines it as a strategic foreign policy tool and also goes into the values and theories driving China’s ‘charm’ campaign. It has detailed chapters on China’s engagement of Southeast Asia and Africa and also compares China’s public diplomacy with other ‘sophisticated players’ in the arena like United States. It’s an informative read and with great foot notes, ‘Notes to Pages’ and ‘Indexes’ is invaluable for a research scholar. While Kurlantzick does a good job of chronicling Chinese public diplomacy, he failed to examine Southeast Asia as a competitive space for ‘influence’ between India and China.

In international relations, 21^st century is touted to be an Asian century. This combined with other recent developments like, economic growth of India and China, debates around Climate change, the Af-Pak War, maritime security of trade traffic in Indian Ocean region, non-proliferation, Myanmar, Kashmir etc., dominating public discourses in diplomacy, India remains, and, will be a critical player in the years to come. India and China share borders with Southeast Asia and the region is important for both, economically as well as from a security perspective. Both the countries have been active in this region.(Though I must admit, Chinese are more aggressive). A rising Asia includes both India and China, and, so I thought Kurlantzick’s book would have been complete if it had also examined India as an important player in Southeast Asian diplomacy. It is indeed curious that most writings tend to ignore India’s relevance to Southeast Asia and the transformative potential of this relationship for the world.

Indian scholars, traditionally, are more focused on security and trade issues in international relations. Books on public diplomacy are rare (almost non-existent). While Datta-Ray’s book is not explicitly on India’s public diplomacy efforts, it does provide a context to India’s ‘Look East’ policy and the need for greater engagement with Southeast Asia. Focusing on Indo-Singapore relations since 1947 the book calls for a restoration of civilizational ties between Singapore and India. The book provides important insights into India’s importance and relevance to Singapore and Southeast Asia over different periods in history (also vis-à-vis the ‘China factor.’) and how Singapore under Lee Kuan Yew had often looked to India for leadership of Asia.

Suggestions/Critiques welcome.

-- Madhur

Engaging Southeast Asia through Public Diplomacy - Seventh Indo-ASEAN summit

The seventh India-ASEAN summit was held in October, 2009, at Hua Hin in Thailand. At the summit Prime Minister Manmohan Singh reiterated India’s commitment to engage ASEAN nations and also outlined India’s vision of an Asian economic community based on an “open and inclusive” architecture.

Keeping with India’s “Look East policy,” public diplomacy initiatives are high on the agenda to connect India with Southeast Asia; rather emphasize the fact that India had always been connected closely with Southeast Asia through its people, culture and also geography and shared history (See me previous post on Northeast India in this blog). Prime Minister Singh suggested something interesting at the summit along the lines of the theme of ASEAN summit this year – “Enhancing Connectivity, Empowering Peoples."

The year 2012 will see the commemoration the 10th anniversary of India's participation as a summit level partner of ASEAN, and 20 years as a sectoral dialogue partner. These are significant milestones that need to be feted and also publicized. Prime Minister Singh suggested that India and ASEAN could jointly consider organizing a commemorative ship expedition in 2011-12 on the sea routes developed during the 10th to 12th centuries linking India with Southeast Asia and East Asia. He said that the sea route could cover modern and ancient ports in ASEAN countries, and other East Asian countries as well. This proposal was one of the five initiatives (economic and political) that the Prime Minister suggested to further strengthen links between India and ASEAN.

China too, as part of its public diplomacy efforts, had done something similar. It organized exhibitions in museums of Malaysia and Singapore to celebrate the anniversary of the voyages of Zheng He, a Chinese admiral who took his fleet across Asia and Africa, exploring cultures, establishing linkages between Chinese and Southeast Asia cultures in the 14^th or 15^th centuries. Zheng He's expeditions, the Chinese claim, were peaceful exploratory voyages not aimed at conquest.

While these attempts to establish a cultural and historical connect is significant by the Asian giants, what can tilt the balance in India's favor is its impeccable democratic credentials, respect for diversity and resilient political framework in an otherwise unstable region and also vis-à-vis China.

Suggestions/Critiques welcome.

-- Madhur