Security and intelligence Archives

This post is likely to be a little discursive: the snow has gone, the days are stretching longer and spring is on the way, so I’m feeling a little looser.

Do bear with me.

First of all, after addressing in my previous post all the doom and gloom (not mine) surrounding Modi’s and the BJP’s prospects in the upcoming 2019 general election, it is amusing to have to report on the the state election in Meghalaya last week (27 Feb) which led to the crushing of the Congress party and the installation of an NDA government—led by 40-year-old Conrad Sangma, chief of the National People’s Party (NPP)—in which the BJP has just two seats but effective strategic control.

The plain fact is that in mountainous and jungly northeast India, where the party of the plains is traditionally weak, the BJP is now the biggest player, even if that’s as part of local coalitions. The major takeaway is that Megalhaya is yet another state to have been snatched from Congress in a part of the nation that it always assumed was its to command. The frustration for Congress is that this was despite winning the most seats of any single party (21)—but that’s democracy, folks!

Continue reading “And another thing …”

Bangladesh is slowly beginning to emerge from its rear-facing progress and is preparing itself to welcome a measure of development and prosperity. Despite having to live next door to Mamata Banerjee’s West Bengal, the government of Sheik Hasina – who might not be perfect but is better than anybody else her benighted country has to offer – is proving herself amenable to change and development. The railway between India and Bangladesh is now freely open; cross-border trade and diplomacy, with the investment and economic expansion that will flow from it as part of Modi’s evolving South Asia free-trade area, will eventually transform the fortunes of former East Pakistan (West Pakistan take note). That is why Hasina is playing ball with India. But not everyone in Bangladesh is happy about it.

The problem with development and change is that it disrupts an existing system. Cybernetics and family therapy made the point decades ago that if just one element of a system, such as a member of a family, decides to alter their role or act differently it radically changes the positions and outlooks of everybody else (for example, an insecure teenage girl turns anorexic and instantly becomes the star of the family). Systems are organisms where each part is interrelated to the others and has an interest in maintaining not only its current state, but that of every other one. So change provokes resistance.

Continue reading “Pain and progress in Bangladesh”