19 AUGUST 2015

Ø  The former Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s attempt to make a political comeback suffered a huge blow on Tuesday as parliamentary election results showed a surge in support for rival Ranil Wickremesinghe’s United National Party (UNP).

Ø  Uber and Ola, the ride-sharing aggregators that match cabs with passengers through smart phone applications, have become extremely bullish in their bid to outstrip each other. Ola, the home-grown competitor to the global operator Uber, is spread across 100 cities in India and records 700,000 consumer rides a day. Uber counts 200,000 trips in 18 cities. To maintain the lead, Ola is intent on maximising its capital. In June, it attracted an investment of $400 million from the Russian billionaire Yuri Milner. Since then there have been reports of more money coming Ola’s way. This has sent Uber into a tizzy, and it recently pumped in $1 billion into the Indian market. More money means more cars plying, and history shows such growth cannot continue without regulation. But the government is yet to fathom the concept of “aggregation”, which provides an algorithmic advantage that makes app-based taxi services more in the nature of community organisers than contractors. The tech-heavy aspect places them under IT laws, which the companies are happy to comply with. But this also helps them evade motor transport laws. Can a government put a cap on such operations that organise drivers and facilitate business for them, they ask. That’s where the debate stands in other countries. But in India the debate is in its infancy. It’s only after December 2014, when an Uber driver in New Delhi was convicted of raping a passenger, that the government sharpened its focus on ride-sharing apps. Consumer security became the focus of the regulation debate, and it remained so until a ban was recently imposed in New Delhi on app-based taxi aggregators. Since a majority of the Uber and Ola vehicles are diesel-run, the government said they posed an environmental threat. Karnataka is now weighing a similar approach, as is Kolkata.

Ø  Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to the United Arab Emirates (UAE) this week has the potential to be remembered like Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao’s visit to Singapore in September 1994. Through his famous Singapore Lecture, Narasimha Rao unveiled India’s “Look East” Policy. Through the joint statement that he signed with UAE’s leadership, Mr. Modi has unveiled India’s “Look West” Policy. Narasimha Rao’s “Look East” Policy succeeded because South-East Asia began to “look West” to India, seeking a balancer to China. Mr. Modi’s “Look West” Policy will succeed because West Asia is “looking East” worried about the emerging strategic instability in its own neighbourhood and the structural shift in the global energy market. The foundation for Mr. Modi’s successful outreach to West Asia was in fact laid by his predecessor when India invited the King of Saudi Arabia to be the chief guest at the Republic Day Parade, in 2006. This was followed by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s visit to Riyadh and the India-Saudi defence cooperation agreement signed in 2014. Growing India-Saudi cooperation in the field of terrorism may have also contributed to India’s relatively mild response to Saudi aggression in Yemen, but it did set the stage for wider engagement at a strategic level with the other states of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). The foundation for Mr. Modi’s successful outreach to West Asia was in fact laid by his predecessor when India invited the King of Saudi Arabia to be the chief guest at the Republic Day Parade, in 2006. This was followed by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s visit to Riyadh and the India-Saudi defence cooperation agreement signed in 2014. Growing India-Saudi cooperation in the field of terrorism may have also contributed to India’s relatively mild response to Saudi aggression in Yemen, but it did set the stage for wider engagement at a strategic level with the other states of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). Mr. Modi’s visit to the UAE was preceded by significant visits to other GCC states by External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj. That Ms. Swaraj made Bahrain her first stop in the region, last September, was welcomed by Bahrain’s India-friendly leadership and showed growing sophistication in Indian thinking about the region. With a minority Sunni leadership and a majority Shia population, Bahrain has tried hard not to get drawn into the wider sectarian conflicts in West Asia. Moreover, with half of the island kingdom’s working population hailing from India, mostly Kerala, and given the very cordial people-to-people relations between Bahrainis and Indians, the visit showed that India had a special relationship to the region that few other major powers can ever lay claim to. Finally, over the last year, the Modi government has put forward a nuanced view of the region openly declaring friendship with Israel, seeking better relations with Iran and, at the same time, cementing a thriving relationship with the GCC states. It is expected that Mr. Modi may follow up his successful visit to the UAE with a productive visit to Iran and a “historic” one to Israel, being the first Indian Prime Minister to visit Tel Aviv.

Ø  India has asked Myanmar to hand over four top leaders of the National Socialist Council of Nagaland-Khaplang (NSCN-K), including its chief S.S. Khaplang, holding them responsible for ambush on an Army convoy in Manipur in June this year, where 18 Army soldiers were killed. NSCN-K abrogated ceasefire with the government in March this year and has been involved in a series of attacks on security forces in Nagaland, Manipur and Arunachal Pradesh. It was following the Army convoy attack that a special team of the Indian Army launched an attack on the insurgent camps of various militant outfits, 20 km within Myanmar on June 9 and are believed to have killed at least 20 militants.