Rationalizing the Unrestrained

For those of us who are engaged in what is known as ‘area studies’ both the multiple imaginations that go into the construction of ‘areas’ as well as the clearly political and ideological notions that have framed these imaginations are a given.  These multiple imaginations serve clearly defined purposes that occasionally reflect historical realities but are more often than not the result of short term convenience. Nicholas Spykman once observed that ‘Every Foreign Office, whatever may be the atlas it uses, operates mentally with a different map of the world’. For the modern Indian state, it was recognized from the start that India was geopolitically located at the crossroads of several sub-regions. In Nehru’s words “India is situated geographically in such a way that we just cannot escape anything that happens in Western Asia, in Central Asia, in Eastern Asia or South-East Asia.”.

In a classical sense, geopolitics is the way in which geography affects international politics or the causal relationship between political power and geographical space. In situations where ‘strategic’ geographical spaces overlap, for instance in the Sino-Indian dynamics where the same spatial arena is involved (Pacific Asia, South Asia, the Indian Ocean and Central Asia) it is assumed that the logic of geography creates competition.[i] What runs parallel to this geopolitical narrative, however, is a spate of trade discussions, free trade agreements and regional connectivity projects that have been negotiated within the same space, whether it is the Chinese led Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership and One Belt One Road, the Russian led Eurasian Economic Union or the alternative Indian initiatives in the Sagar Mala project and Project Mausum. And this is the ‘new normal’ of global politics, though it does not essentially negate perceptions of power games altogether and debates around the proposed Maritime Silk Road, projected as an Asian economic corridor is an example. This new ‘geography of logistics’ has prompted analysts like Deborah Cowen to argue that security will be re-imagined in the context of production and trade.[ii]

China has incited what will probably be a decades-long process of constructing new lines of communication to the sub-regions of Asia. For China, it is incidental that India lies on the crossroads of Chinese Silk Routes. For India, however, this dynamic holds the potential to reshape its entire periphery and impact India’s own role in Southern Asia calling for enhanced engagement and expanded presence. And as India becomes a part of a number of multilateral financial institutions the necessity of a closer examination of their role in global financing of infrastructural projects will assume not just geo-economic but strategic importance. As trade flows compete with military power for influence; geo-politics becomes an extension of geo-economics and infrastructural developments and institutions assume increasing significance there emerges the need to examine the interface of geo-economics and geopolitics in Southern Asia.

The proposed one day seminar on BRI BCIM and the Role of Eastern India had been conceived as an attempt to look at this interface of development and connectivity between eastern India and China with the idea that closer economic integration is the key to regional economic benefits. Its postponement is a hitch. But much like the woodpecker that sits outside our window and repeatedly taps on the wooden panels in the hope that a small hole would appear allowing its eventual enhancement into a nest, AGA promises to persist in its endeavor to academically engage with issues of global importance.

Some pertinent issues come to the forefront when one contends with academic engagement in policy matters: why should academics engage, how can they engage, and how can they prevail over impediments to engagement. It is very often contended by policy makers that an academic enquiry can only be of value to the society at large if it takes the onus for transmuting research and infusing into it an element  of ‘public discourse’. In the contemporary epoch, knowledge is commonplace by virtue of the plethora of information available via social media platforms and innovative technology. Exchanges occur in ‘virtual space’ positing infinite complications for formalised political dialogue and public debates. It is therefore imperative to spot the difference between narrative and statistics.  Facts are in abundance while analyses should be the priority. Social media is not a measure of what’s factual or fabricated or distorted or exact, but rather a precise measure of what the public is by and large contemplating. The objective of academic engagement, on the other hand is the enhancement of interaction and exchange among communities to generate specialised knowledge, develop this knowledge and engage the community in interactions regarding societal and political implications of such academic engagements.

Academic engagement in this sense is the construction of an informed consciousness that was until now missing. While it is often contended that academic research is intrinsically political in character as it cannot operate in a political vacuum, it is also imperative for the academic community to acquire distinctive expertise in order to cater to the public at large. Academic enquiry can arrive at conclusions and express a nuanced assessment of complex social and political issues based on a methodical interpretation of facts and figures. Organized academic engagement can enhance the element of logic and rationality in public discourse. This is possible only when research acquires policy relevance through intermingling with political actors and policy makers. One example of interface between the academic and political community is through academic publishing wherein academic knowledge which is policy oriented can be disseminated whereas the other instance of an interface is by way of a conference which offers an opportunity and provides a platform that can enable direct conversations between academics and policy makers. The former is often though by no means always a derivative of the latter.  Academic freedom confers both self-worth and responsibility in equal measure.

Anita Sengupta

Priya Singh

10 August 2017.

[i] See for instance, David Scott, “The Great Power ‘Great Game’ between India and China: The Logic of Geography”, Geopolitics, Vol 13, No 1, 2008, pp 1-26.

[ii] Deborah Cowen, “A Geography of Logistics: Market Authority and the Security of Supply Chains”, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, Vol 100, No 3 July 2010, pp 600-620.