Today I saw a friend of mine declare in Facebook that he would be joining politics. He seemed to be very troubled by the fact that we are being repeated 'screwed' by our neighboring countries. The worst part of the problem seems to be we simply allow them to.
If one was asked “Geographically which is country has the most troubled neighborhood?”, without doubt the answer seems to be Israel. The country is bordered along Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Egypt and of course Palestine. Each having a long history of animosity with Israel. War and violence has almost become a way of life in this part.
As far troubled neighborhood goes India does come a respectable second (We’ll give South Korea the bronze - thanks to Kim Jong Il ). Within half a decade of independence we lost major portions of Kashmir to our neighbors. The Aksai Chin and POK were lost to China and Pakistan ever before most of our states were formed. Even today we have disputes about Arunachal Pradesh. We seem to hide behind the fact, each of our text books have maps which show that nothing has been lost and take offense when Google Maps show the reality of today's world. Sadly, we have failed to learn from it, as proven but the recent incursion of Chinese forces 19 km beyond the LOC and the repeated terrorist infiltration into the Kashmir valley. Two of Prime Ministers have been assassinated in last 30 years. While one was a result of insurgent movement within our country the other was due to insurgency in Sri Lanka. People still link Naxalite-Maosit operations to have bases in Nepal. Assam and West Bengal have the highest concentrations of illegal immigrants, mainly from Bangladesh. For reasons not known to me their numbers and often correlate to the rather serious crimes within our land.
Our foreign policy often seem to be more idealist than realist and unfortunately more often than not soft. We are experts when it comes to sitting on the fence, chanting the slogans of non alignment. We are almost pathologically indecisive regarding most of the world issues. Internal compulsions keep us from being overt about our support to some of our strategically important allies. The recent dare from the Italian Govt. in the return of the marines for trials gives us a rough idea of how much the world values us. Would they have done it, if it against someone like USA or China? I really doubt that. So if things are to remain the same, being a superpower is a distant dream even our status as a regional power can become a namesake.
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