POPULATION CENSUS 2011

Rural Urban Distribution of Population of the Census 2011 unveiled

The Rural Urban Distribution of Population of the Census 2011 was released by Union Home Secretary R.K. Singh on July 15, 2011. The first figures of Census 2011, released on March 31, 2011, had shown that India’s overall population had increased from 1.02 billion to 1.21 billion, but for the first time, the growth during the past decade had been actually lower than the preceding 10 years. On March 31, the government had also released Census data related to sex ratio and literacy. On July 15, 2011, it gave the rural-urban break-up for these figures. “There has been a spurt in growth of population in urban areas in the country, which could be due to migration, natural increase and inclusion of new areas which are defined as urban,” according to a presentation released by the Census Commissioner of India on July 15.

The Census 2011 Dashboard was also launched on the occasion. It gives rural-urban break-up of population, its growth rate in rural and urban areas. It will also provide rural-urban sex ratio and child sex ratio. Besides this, literacy rates for rural-urban areas will also be provided. Data on rural-urban distribution of population provides level and trend of urbanisation. This would be useful for framing planning and policies of rural-urban population particularly it would provide basic frame for ensuing Twelfth Plan Period.

The Registrar General and Census Commissioner of India, C. Chandramouli presented the data highlights.

Population

For the first time since Independence, the absolute increase in population of the country is more in urban areas than in rural areas, said the registrar-general of India and Census commissioner, C. Chandramouli on July 15, 2011. The total population of India is 121 crore with 83.3 crore living in rural areas and 37.7 crore in urban areas. Significantly, the level of urbanisation increased from 27.81 per cent in the 2001 Census to 31.16 per cent in the 2011 Census, while the proportion of rural population declined from 72.19 per cent to 68.84 per cent.

Highest rural-urban populations: Uttar Pradesh has the highest rural population of 15.5 crore (18.62 per cent of the country’s rural population) followed by Bihar and West Bengal while Maharashtra has the highest urban population. Mumbai tops the list having the maximum number of people in urban areas at five crore.

Rural-Urban habitations: A total of 2,774 additional habitations were classified as urban units for the 2011 Census while the rise in the number of rural units was 2,279. India now has 6.4 lakh villages as compared to 6.38 lakh earlier.

Most urban states: Goa and Mizoram are the first states to be more urban than rural.

Most rural states: Himachal Pradesh, 90% rural, is India’s most rural state, followed by Bihar (89%) and Assam (86%).

Highest urban population growth: Sikkim more than doubled its urban population, showing a 153 per cent rise, while Kerala showed an increase of 93 per cent. Tripura increased its urban population by 76 per cent.

Highest rural population growth: Bihar and Meghalaya showed the biggest growth in rural populations, registering a rise of 24 per cent and 27 per cent respectively. However, the growth of the country’s rural population is steadily declining since 1991, the report said. Four states that recorded a decline in the rural population during 2001-11 are Kerala (by 26 per cent), Goa (19 per cent), Nagaland (15 per cent) and Sikkim (five per cent).

Sex Ratio

Rural areas have maintained their lead over the urban areas. The sex ratio has remained almost constant in rural areas in the past 10 years, changing only from 946 females per 1,000 males to 947. In urban areas, this rose from 900 females per 1,000 males to 926, but it is still behind the rural areas.

Child sex ratio

Fears on the rampant use of pre-natal sex determination technology in rural areas have been confirmed with census data indicating that child sex ratio (CSR) fell far more sharply in villages than in urban areas in the last decade.

Rural and urban CSRs: The Census 2011 says that child sex ratio (ratio of girls to boys under the age of six years) in the country is the lowest recorded since the 1961 Census. It stands at 914 in the latest Census report. “Though the urban child sex ratio is far worse than in the rural areas, the fall in child sex ratio in rural areas is around four times of that in urban areas. In fact the decline is more gradual in urban areas,” says the Census of India’s 2011 Provisional Population Totals of Rural-Urban Distribution. Rural India still has a better CSR (ratio of girls to boys under the age of six years) of 919 than urban India’s 902. However, between 2001 and 2011, rural India’s CSR fell by 15 points as opposed to urban India’s four point decline, and the gap between the two has narrowed.

States/UTs with best and worst CSRs: Haryana has both the worst urban and rural CSRs. Nagaland has the best urban CSR, while in rural areas, the Andaman and Nicobar has the best, indicating yet again that tribal communities have a more egalitarian attitude to girls than other communities.

Literacy

There has been an increase of 217.8 million literates since the last Census in 2001. Out of this, 131.1 million were in rural areas and 86.6 million in urban areas.

The Census 2011 was carried out in two phases – the Houselisting and Housing Census followed by the Population Enumeration. The Houselisting and Housing Census wherein all the structures, houses and households were listed and information on housing stock, household amenities and assets were collected was conducted in different States and Union Territories during April – September, 2010. The Population Enumeration was undertaken between February 9 and 28, 2011. The revision round was conducted from March 1 to 5, 2011. The Provisional Population Totals of Census 2011 were released on March 31, 2

By

Prof. Chaithanya and Dr.Vaishnav

Perils and prospects of the Jaitapur Nuclear Power Project in India
The protest against the 9900-MWe Jaitapur Nuclear Power Project, the largest engineering project ever conceived in Maharashtra, India, is gathering momentum. But the Rs.1 lakh-crore project is likely to be implemented as it has already received environmental clearance and the Union government is determined to double nuclear energy generating capacity by 2020. As part of the commitment to climate change, the government plans to change the proportion of energy mix. At present, nuclear energy accounts for nearly three per cent of our electricity generating capacity.
Today, 38 per cent of India’s greenhouse gas emission comes from the power sector and the government feels a pressing need for cleaner energy options.
Even though nuclear energy option reduces greenhouse gas emissions, the protest is mainly on account of other concerns.
The Jaitapur project will come up in collaboration with French giant Areva, which will supply uranium and reactor units, according to the Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited.
On 26.11.2010, the Ministry of Environment & Forests accorded environmental clearance for the 6×1650 MWe nuclear power project in Jaitapur, Maharashtra. Union Minister of State for Environment and Forests Jairam Ramesh announced the environmental clearance with 35 conditions and safeguards.
Extensive opposition to the project, particularly from the Konkan Bachao Samiti (KBS), was overruled by the government in granting this clearance.
The Environment minister however clarified that it could take on board only the ecological objections raised by the protesters. It has asked the Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited and its partner Areva to address the other economic, commercial, safety and technological issues. Areva is a predominantly state-owned nuclear power company in France, which has developed the 1650 MWe European Pressurised Reactor (EPR), based on the French N4 and the German Konvoi reactor types.
But concerns have been raised on the maturity of the EPR technology as no EPR has been constructed and commissioned for operation anywhere in the world. Four EPRs are in different stages of construction and two of them are facing serious problems. The construction of the first EPR to Finland started in 2005 and construction and design problems have delayed the start-up of this plant to the second half of 2013 which is a delay of 3.5 years and a cost escalation of 50 per cent.
The second EPR construction in France was in December 2007. Similar construction and safety issues have led to a 50 per cent cost increase and a delay of commissioning to 2014.
China bought two EPRs for which the completion dates are 2013 and 2014.
As the EPR is allegedly in trouble, the French government asked Francois Roussely, a former chairman of the Electricite de France (EDF), in October 2009 to evaluate the status of the EPR and the French nuclear industry. The Roussely Report of July 2010 has concluded that the credibility of the EPR has been seriously damaged by the problems of the two reactors under construction.
According to the report, the complexity of the EPR comes from (questionable) design choices, notably of the power level, containment, core-catcher, and redundancy of systems.
The first of the six units of 1650 MWe capacity each is expected to be commissioned by 2017-18. It will help Maharashtra reduce its energy deficit. Nearly 1000 hectares of land has already been acquired for the project.
To address the grievances of the local community, the State government had formed an Empowered Group of Ministers to enhance the compensation.
The process of environmental clearance by the union ministry of environment has tried to balance four objectives: the amount of energy required to sustain a growth rate of nine per cent; the proportion of fuel mix; strategic diplomacy, especially after the Civilian Nuclear Deal; and the environmental concerns raised by a large number of groups.

By GLOBAL IAS TEAM

UN Climate Summit in Cancun, 2010
The United Nations Climate Change Conference held at Cancun, Mexico, from 29 November to 10 December 2010. The opening day of the conference laid great emphasis on achieving a package of decisions at the end of the 10-day deliberations. Currently, there are 194 Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and 193 Parties to its Kyoto Protocol.
COP (Conference of the Parties), is the supreme body of the UNFCCC (United National Framework Convention on Climate Change). COP currently meets once a year to review the Convention’s progress. The word ‘conference’ is not used here in the sense of ‘meeting’ but rather of ‘association.’
CMP is the Conference of the Parties serving as the Meeting of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol.
The sessions of the COP and the CMP are held during the same period to reduce costs and improve coordination between the Convention and the Protocol. The major distinction between the Protocol and the Convention is that while the Convention encouraged industrialized countries to stabilize GHG emissions, the Protocol commits them to do so.
The UNFCCC was one of three conventions adopted at the 1992 ‘Rio Earth Summit.’
The Kyoto Protocol is an international agreement linked to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. The most important aspect of the Kyoto Protocol is that it sets binding targets for 37 industrialized countries and the European community for reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions .These amount to an average of five per cent against 1990 levels over the five-year period 2008-2012.
SBI is the Subsidiary Body for Implementation. It makes recommendations on policy and implementation issues to the COP and, if requested, to other bodies.
SBSTA is the Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological Advice. The SBSTA serves as a link between information and assessments provided by expert sources (such as the IPCC) and the COP, which focuses on setting policy.
Under the Treaty, countries must meet their targets primarily through national measures. However, the Kyoto Protocol offers them an additional means of meeting their targets by way of three market-based mechanisms.
The Kyoto mechanisms are: Emissions trading (carbon market), Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) and Joint Implementation (JI).
By the end of the first commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol in 2012, a new international framework needs to have been negotiated and ratified that can deliver the stringent emission reductions indicated by the intergovernmental panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
Cancun Agreements signed by 193 Nations
Delegates from 193 nations agreed 11.12.2010 on a new global framework to help developing countries curb their carbon output and cope with the effects of climate change, but they postponed the harder question of precisely how industrialized and major emerging economies will share the task of making deeper greenhouse-gas emission cuts in the coming decade.
Members of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC) agreed to create a “Green Climate Fund” that will transfer money from rich countries to poor ones; research centers that will ease the transfer of clean-energy technology; and a system in which developing nations can be compensated for keeping rain forests intact. Signatories such as Japan and Russia oppose an extension because the United States, China and India are not bound to mandatory emission reductions under Kyoto.
The new framework encapsulates the current commitments that both industrialized and developing nations have made to cut their carbon emissions over the next decade, though it notes that these will not meet the agreed-upon goal of keeping the rise in global temperatures from exceeding 2 degrees Celsius, or 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit, above preindustrial levels. To achieve that, industrialized countries would have cut their emissions between 25 and 40 percent compared with 1990 levels in the next decade, as opposed to the 16 percent they have promised.
Still, the agreement cemented and fleshed out key elements of the Copenhagen Accord, that major developing countries would subject voluntary emissions cuts to international scrutiny while the industrialized world would mobilize $100 billion in climate aid for poor nations by 2020.
Some elements of the deal, including one known as Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation, could have an immediate impact on curbing carbon emissions. The new language establishes rules for calculating how much carbon is stored in forest stocks vulnerable to logging or burning, along with safeguards for rain-forest dwellers and biodiversity.
Cancun ends with a comma
The UN climate conference in Cancun (COP16) concluded on December 11, 2010.
The decisions reached included those on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD), technology transfer, a climate fund and adaptation. Bolivia refused to endorse any document without binding emission cuts. COP president Patricia Espinosa called the agreements a landmark outcome. The agreements will enable the UNFCCC negotiations to continue working towards a binding climate deal in South Africa next year. Many groups described the outcome as progress but underlined the need for a speed-up of global climate diplomacy. The agreement is clearly better than what had seemed possible earlier during the conference but clearly falls far short of what is necessary to prevent climate change. The decisions acknowledge some of the measures to be taken to prevent an increase of global temperature of 2°C or more. However, there remains a major gap between the pledged climate action of UNFCCC parties and the 2°C goal. The slow pace at which the UN climate talks are progressing is a matter of concern.
India’s role and view on Cancun summit
Union Environment minister Jairam Ramesh has been appreciated for his role as a bridge-builder on contentious issues at the UN climate conference in cancun. AOSIS means Alliance of Small Island States, are most vulnerable to climate change and want developed countries as well as emerging economies, especially China and India, to take on hefty legally binding emission cuts.The major emerging economies — Brazil, South Africa, India and China (BASIC) — had welcomed the decision.
Agreements reached on Cancun summit
UN climate conference on Dec 11, 2010 reached a package titled “Cancun Agreements” to set up a $100 billion ‘Green Fund’ to fight global warming, a decision India described as a “crucial step forward”, but there was no agreement on extending the landmark Kyoto Protocol on emissions cuts beyond 2012.
A new beginning
The United Nations Climate Conference at Cancun has done well to strengthen the multilateral process and restore much-needed momentum to negotiations on one of the biggest challenges faced by all countries. The preceding summit at Copenhagen dealt a severe blow to consensus-building by allowing rich countries to dominate the proceedings but Mexico has commendably steered the discussions at Cancun, providing an opportunity to the developing world to articulate its concerns.
No major breakthrough was expected but the outcome of the conference is forward-looking. Two important decisions set the stage for measures to be taken beyond 2012, when the first commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol ends. Under the Cancun Agreements, the targets set by industrialised countries for reduction of greenhouse gas emissions are recognised as part of the multilateral process. They must now draw up low-carbon development plans and strategies and also report their inventories annually. In the case of developing countries, actions for emissions reduction will be recognised officially; a registry will record and match their mitigation actions to finance and technology support from rich countries; and they will report their progress every two years. These form a good preamble for target-setting for all member-countries under an agreed framework at Durban next year.
India’s Environment and Forests Minister Jairam Ramesh has suggested at the Cancun conference, apparently taking the long view, that some form of binding cuts on carbon emissions would have to be accepted by all countries in legal form. It would be wrong to read too much into this statement, since India has not acceded to any agreement. Both India and China have responsibly recognised their absolute carbon emissions and pledged voluntarily to transit to a green development path. India wants to cut its intensity of emissions relative to GDP. There is a grand national solar power generation plan for 2022 and a goal to double the share of nuclear power in a decade. That is positive — but much more has to be done in policy terms to raise efficiency and reduce emissions in, say, building and transport. China backs up climate goals with active support for low carbon technology development. Beijing recognises quite rightly that carbon cannot be cheap and that the bar for efficiency must rise constantly.
For perspective, it needs to be borne in mind that by one measure, the United States is responsible for 27 per cent of historical emissions and China for 9.5 per cent. This underscores the point that the U.S. must lead the developed world in technology transfer and funding through the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change. Only then will big players such as Japan and Russia, which have misgivings about a future role for the Kyoto Protocol, remain in the fold.

By GLOBAL IAS TEAM

AUNG SAN SUU KYI- CAPTIVITY to FREEDOM

Aung San Suu Kyi of Myanmar – From captivity to Freedom
Like the South African leader Nelson Mandela, Aung San Suu Kyi has become an international symbol of heroic and peaceful resistance in the face of oppression.
Aung San Suu Kyi was the recipient of the Rafto Prize and the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought in 1990 and the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991. In 1992 she was awarded the Jawaharlal Nehru Award for International Understanding by the Government of India.
Family
Aung San Suu Kyi (now 65), was born on June 19, 1945, Rangoon, Burma [now Yangon, Myanmar]), Myanmar, is the opposition leader and daughter of Aung San (a martyred national hero of independent Burma) and Khin Kyi (a prominent Burmese diplomat).
Aung San Suu Kyi is the third child and only daughter of Aung San, considered to be the father of modern-day Burma.
In 1960 she went to India with her mother Daw Khin Kyi, who had been appointed Burma’s ambassador to Delhi.
Four years later she went to Oxford University in the UK, where she studied philosophy, politics and economics. There she met her future husband.
After stints of living and working in Japan and Bhutan, she settled down to be an English don’s housewife and raise their two children, Alexander and Kim.
Her husband, the British academic Michael Aris, died in 1999 of cancer. She could not visit him while he was dying without risking being exiled from her country forever, and the junta refused him an entry visa to Myanmar.
She has not seen her two sons in more than 10 years. She has never met her grandchildren. Every year her sons apply for visas, every year they are rejected without explanation. In Bangkok on November 10, her youngest son, Kim Aris, got permission to enter Myanmar; it is not known when he will get to the country.
Aung San Suu Kyi’s final appeal against her sentence was rejected by the Supreme Court and her legal team has been assessing what it means for her liberty. The court’s decision is a moot point though; she has almost completed this last sentence.
Political Beginnings
Aung San Suu Kyi returned to Burma in 1988 to take care of her ailing mother. By coincidence, in the same year, the long-time leader of the Socialist ruling party, General Ne Win, stepped down, leading to mass demonstrations for democracy on 8 August 1988 (8-8-88, a day seen as auspicious), which were violently suppressed in what came to be known as the 8888 Uprising. On 26 August 1988, she addressed half a million people at a mass rally in front of the Shwedagon Pagoda in the capital, calling for a democratic government. However in September, a new military junta took power. Later the same month, the National League for Democracy (NLD) was formed, with Suu Kyi as general secretary.
Influenced by both Mahatma Gandhi’s philosophy of non-violence and by more specifically Buddhist concepts, Aung San Suu Kyi entered politics to work for democratization, helped found the National League for Democracy on 27 September 1988, and was put under house arrest on 20 July 1989. She was offered freedom if she left the country, but she refused.
One of her most famous speeches is the “Freedom from Fear” speech, which begins: “It is not power that corrupts but fear. Fear of losing power corrupts those who wield it and fear of the scourge of power corrupts those who are subject to it.”
She also believes fear spurs many world leaders to lose sight of their purpose. “Government leaders are amazing”, she once said. “So often it seems they are the last to know what the people want.”
The Struggle
Aung San Suu Kyi was two years old when her father, then the de facto prime minister of what would shortly become independent Burma, was assassinated. She attended schools in Burma until 1960, when her mother was appointed ambassador to India. After further study in India, she attended the University of Oxford, where she met her future husband. She had two children and lived a rather quiet life until 1988, when she returned to Burma to nurse her dying mother. There the mass slaughter of protesters against the brutal and unresponsive rule of the military strongman U Ne Win led her to speak out against him and to begin a nonviolent struggle for democracy and human rights. In July 1989 the military government of the newly named Union of Myanmar placed Aung San Suu Kyi under house arrest and held her incommunicado. The military offered to free her if she agreed to leave Myanmar, but she refused to do so until the country was returned to civilian government and political prisoners were freed. The newly formed group with which she became affiliated, the National League for Democracy (NLD), won more than 80 percent of the parliamentary seats that were contested in 1990, but the results of that election were ignored by the military government (in 2010 the military government formally annulled the results of the 1990 election).
Aung San Suu Kyi was freed from house arrest in July 1995. The following year she attended the NLD party congress, but the military government continued to harass both her and her party. In 1998 she announced the formation of a representative committee that she declared was the country’s legitimate ruling parliament. The military junta once again placed her under house arrest from September 2000 to May 2002. Following clashes between the NLD and pro-government demonstrators in 2003, the government returned her to house arrest. Calls for her release continued throughout the international community in the face of her sentence’s annual renewal, and in 2009 a United Nations body declared her detention illegal under Myanmar’s own law. In 2008 the conditions of her house arrest were somewhat loosened, allowing her to receive some magazines as well as letters from her children.
In May 2009, shortly before her most recent sentence was to be completed, Aung San Suu Kyi was arrested and charged with breaching the terms of her house arrest after an intruder (a U.S. citizen) entered her house compound and spent two nights there. In August she was convicted and sentenced to three years in prison, though the sentence immediately was reduced to 18 months, and she was allowed to serve it while remaining under house arrest. At the time of her conviction, the belief was widespread both within and outside of Myanmar that this latest ruling was designed to prevent Aung from participating in multiparty elections scheduled for 2010. This suspicion became reality through a series of new election laws enacted in March 2010: one prohibited individuals from any participation in elections if they had been convicted of a crime (as she had been in 2009), and another disqualified anyone who was married to a foreign national from running for office (her husband was British).
Periods under detention
• 20 July 1989: Placed under house arrest in Rangoon under martial law that allows for detention without charge or trial for three years.
• 10 July 1995: Released from house arrest.
• 23 September 2000: Placed under house arrest.
• 6 May 2002: Released after 19 months.
• 30 May 2003: Arrested following the Depayin massacre, she was held in secret detention for more than three months before being returned to house arrest.
• 25 May 2007: House arrest extended by one year despite a direct appeal from U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan to General Than Shwe.
• 24 October 2007: Reached 12 years under house arrest, solidarity protests held at 12 cities around the world.
• 27 May 2008: House arrest extended for another year, which is illegal under both international law and Burma’s own law.
• 11 August 2009: House arrest extended for 18 more months because of “violation” arising from the May 2009 trespass incident.
• 13 November 2010: Released from house arrest.
Release from House Arrest
Aung San Suu Kyi, Myanmar’s celebrated pro-democracy leader and a political prisoner of global stature, was set free from house arrest in Yangon on 13.11.2010.
The 65-year-old Ms. Suu Kyi’s release was greeted by cheering supporters who gathered outside her house in a show of defiance against Myanmar’s military government. Hundreds of other supporters waited for her at the Yangon headquarters of the recently-de recognized National League for Democracy (NLD), which she still leads.
Several world leaders hailed her in comments on the release, which was ordered before the junta, the State Peace and Development Council could transfer power to an ostensibly “civilian” government in the wake of the November 7, 2010 general election.
Myanmar’s military establishments have subjected Ms. Suu Kyi to several terms of house arrest and a few spells in prison, for about 15 years in all since 1989. She led the NLD to a landslide victory in the country’s free elections in 1990 but was not allowed to lead a civilian government.
Walking free for the first time since 2003, Ms. Suu Kyi covered the distance from her old lakeside bungalow to the gate to acknowledge the greetings of her supporters. As she smiled and waved at them from across the gate, an enthusiast tossed up a bunch of flowers for her. The video-footage of her first public appearance in several years showed her accepting the flowers in a typical oriental style. She appeared to be in good spirit.

By GLOBAL IAS TEAM.

IAS/CSAT SYLLABUS-2011

New pattern for civil services preliminary exam

NEW DELHI: The Union Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions Ministry has
announced changes in the pattern of the Civil Services Preliminary Examination 2011.
A statement issued on Monday said the examination will consist of two papers. Paper I and
II are each worth 100 marks and have been allotted two hours each.

In Paper I, candidates will be tested on their knowledge of current events of national and international importance, Indian history, the Indian national movement, Indian and world geography, including the physical, social and economic geography of India and the world. Questions will also be asked on the Indian polity and governance as well as the Constitution, the political system, panchayati raj, public policy and rights. Candidates will have to be prepared for questions on economic and social development, sustainable development, poverty, inclusion, demographics and social sector initiatives. Questions related to general issues on environmental ecology, bio-diversity, climate change and general science will also be posed.

Paper II will consist of English language comprehension skills of the Class X level,
interpersonal skills, including communication skills, logical reasoning and analytical ability,
decision making and problem solving as well as general mental ability.
Candidates will be tested on basic numeric skills of the Class X level such as numbers and
their relations, orders of magnitude and data interpretation.

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INDO-AFGHAN RELATION-Historical&Current Perspective

India - Afghanistan relations:

Historic and Cultural ties:

India has strong historic and cultural ties with Afghanistan that go back to the earliest periods of recorded history. They can be traced to the Harappan civilization, one of the earliest urban civilizations of the world. These Indo-Iranian tribes settled in Afghanistan and spread south. It was here that “The Rig Veda” an ancient Indian sacred book and one of the oldest extant texts of any Indo-European language, was composed. The literature gives us clues to trace the process of acculturation in the region. Various Afghanistan tribes can trace their ancestral ties to people in Pakistan and India.
The three countries share a great deal of history; Alexander the Great conquered Afghanistan in (329–327 B.C.) on his way to India. After Alexander's death (323 B.C.) the region became part of the Seleucid empire. In the north, Bactria became independent, and the south was acquired by the Maurya dynasty - a very powerful Indian empire. Indian influence in the region was further cemented with the spread of Buddhism, introduced from the east by the Yüechi, who founded the Kushan dynasty in early 2nd B.C. The Kushan Dynasty spread over present day Afghanistan, Pakistan and North India. The great Mughal Empire which developed a highly sophisticated mixed Indo-Persian culture further strengthened these links.

These historic ties have had a part to play in India’s policy towards Afghanistan in the present day as well. Furthermore, the country has remained in the focus of India’s regional policy because of its geo-strategic location; neighboring Iran, Pakistan, and the Central Asian States (after the disintegration of the Soviet Union). India has enjoyed cordial relations with Afghanistan since 1947; these were strengthened by the signing of the “Friendship Treaty” in 1950. India signed various agreements and protocols with pro-Soviet regimes in Afghanistan to promote co-operation and to enhance Indian influence. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 provided another opportunity for India to further strengthen its relations with Afghanistan. During that period, India increased its investments in developmental activities in Afghanistan by co-operating in industrial, irrigation, and hydro-electric projects.

But the events in Afghanistan during 1979-89 saw the beginning of the present epoch of violent militancy and the birth of the Taliban. To defeat the Soviet-backed government of Afghanistan, massive western resources were channeled to mujahedeen groups through Pakistan. General Zia ul-Haq, the military dictator of Pakistan at the time, promoted a jihad against the Soviet presence in the Afghan motherland, reinforcing the link between events in Pakistan and those in Afghanistan. The rise of the Afghan Mujahideen against the Soviet invasion, the withdrawal of Soviet troops; the disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991; and the formation of a government by the Mujahideen after overthrowing the pro-Soviet regime of Najibullah in Afghanistan in April 1992: these were the events that led to the first instance of diplomatic isolation and lessening of Indian influence in Afghanistan India, however, had cordial relations with the ousted pro-Soviet government of Najibullah. Later in 1992, when Burhanuddin Rabbani established a pre-dominantly non-Pashtun government, India again became active in Afghanistan and provided humanitarian and technical assistance to the Afghan government.

The rise of Taliban in Afghanistan and the removal of the Rabbani government in September 1996 again marginalized Indian influence in Afghanistan. India did not recognize the Taliban government, and closed its embassy in September 1996. During this period, the non-Pashtun groups opposing the Taliban regime formed the Northern Alliance and controlled areas in the north of Afghanistan, bordering the Central Asian States of Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.

Thanks to these strong historic links, India has a keen interest in bringing stability to this turbulent region. It also wants to see that the Taliban is defeated, as extremist ideology is seen to be seeping into the fringe elements in India as well, endangering the stability of the Nation. But given the history, India is compelled to formulate its own strategy vis-à-vis its complicated ties in the region with both Pakistan and Afghanistan and not based on extraneous expectations. Ethnic factors also play a role in the strategic decisions in the region.

The Ethnic Factor

It is for this very reason that Pakistan has had a kind of “estranged family” relationship with Afghanistan. Pushtuns are the largest group in Afghanistan. They have a tribal structure, these same Pashtun clans lived on both sides of the border of Afghanistan and Pakistan, and are the second largest ethnic group after the Punjabis in Pakistan. Pashtuns have been demanding for a “Pashtunistan”, separate from Pakistan, as Afghanistan never recognized the border with Pakistan (The Durand Line). The Pashtuns have considerable influence in the politics, military and government, and have aligned themselves with the Taliban forces. However, the political leanings of these Pushtuns striding the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan are complicated and have evolved over centuries.
Pushtuns in Kandahar area are involved in different trades while Pushtun settlers in northern areas are sedentary farmers. The two Pushtuns tribal confederacies, Durrani and Ghilzai have mutual hostility going back centuries. The ruling Durrani elite residing in Kabul are more urbanized and educated. In the power structure in Kabul, the newly educated Pushtun youth were influenced by Communist ideology and were the nucleus of the nascent socialist minority. Pushtuns dominated the two factions of the communist party, Khalq and Parcham. After the Soviet invasion in 1979, the tribal Pushtuns fought to protect their autonomy against an expanding central government influenced by an alien ideology and became staunch antagonists of their ethnic kin who were ruling from Kabul. There was an exodus of people during the Soviet invasion and an overwhelming majority of the refugees were Pushtun. In addition, in the civil war in 1990s and ethnic massacres resulted in migration of large number of Pushtuns from northern Afghanistan to east and south.
There is a large number of Pashto speaking Pakhtoons living in the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir. But politically India has not had cordial relations with the Pushtuns of Afghanistan and has supported the Northern Alliance whose support base is mainly the minority Tajik, Uzbek and Hazara. A good majority of Tajiks speak Dari and most of them are Sunni Muslims. The educated elite was concentrated in Kabul, therefore a large number of them were working in different government departments. The Hazaras live in the inhospitable central mountainous area of Afghanistan, where they are involved in herding and some agriculture. Some Hazaras moved to Kabul and were performing menial jobs with lower socio-economic status. Most of them are Shia (mostly Imami but some Ismaili) and speak a dialect of Dari. Hazara have been sufficiently alienated from the Pushtun dominated central government due to widespread discrimination and were one of the first groups to fight the central government in 1978-79. They liberated their area in early part of the struggle and later used their success in negotiating a better deal with governments in Kabul. The Turkic group consists of Uzbeks, Turkeman and Kirghiz. Uzbeks are concentrated in areas north of Hindu Kush mountains.

Current scenario:

India remained at the forefront of international efforts to assist Afghanistan in building a stable democratic and pluralistic society. Following the 9/11 attacks and the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan that resulted, ties between India and Afghanistan grew strong once again. India has restored full diplomatic relations, and has provided hundreds of millions of dollars in aid for Afghanistan's reconstruction and development. India seeks peace and tranquillity across the Durand Line. India’s interests are three-fold: trade, transit, and security.

Since 2001, India has offered $1.2 billion for Afghanistan's reconstruction, making it the largest regional donor to the country. According to Indian officials, there are currently about four thousand Indian workers and security personnel working on different relief and reconstruction projects in Afghanistan. Since 2006, following increased incidents of kidnappings and attacks, India has sent the country's mountain-trained paramilitary force to guard its workers; there are about five hundred police deployed in Afghanistan currently. India is involved in a wide array of development projects in Afghanistan: In January 2009, India completed construction of the Zaranj-Delaram highway in southwest Afghanistan near the Iranian border (The Zaranz-Delaram road giving Afghanistan access to the sea was formally inaugurated on 22nd January, 2009. It is a new highway that was built between Zaranj and Delaram by the Indian Government's Border Roads Organization at a cost of about US $136 million to open up a link between the deep sea port at Chabahar in Iran to Afghanistan's main ring road highway system) ; it is building Afghanistan's new parliament building set for completion by 2011; it is constructing the Salma Dam power project in Herat Province; it has trained Afghan police officers, diplomats and civil servants; and it has provided support in the areas of health, education, transportation, power, and telecommunications .The scheme of ICCR Scholarships and ITEC training programmes for Afghan nationals and the execution of community based, small development projects in the fields of agriculture, rural development, sanitation, vocational training, etc. is progressing. India continued to contribute for the Afghan Reconstruction Trust Fund and pledged a sum of US $ 1 million to the UNDP election fund. India has also pledged an additional US $ 450 million (over the US$ 750 million earlier committed) to effectively meet the requirements of our ongoing and future projects.

Bilateral trade between India and Afghanistan has been on the rise, reaching $358 million for the fiscal year April 2007 to March 2008. The Preferential Trade Agreement where India and Afghanistan signed on March 6, 2003 in New Delhi remains in force. But soft power is "India's greatest asset" in Afghanistan, Indian television soaps and Indian films are very popular in Afghanistan.

From a security point of view, while supporting the U.S.-led military intervention in Afghanistan, India has always held that the only force capable of stabilising the situation and maintaining peace and stability over the long haul is the Afghan National Army (ANA) and police. The Indian government is one of the largest providers of civilian assistance to Afghanistan and is also involved in training the Afghan police.
Therefore India and Afghanistan have a long history that invariably includes Pakistan as well. It has been said that it is the trilateral relationship between these nations that shall define the future of South Asia.

Article By: Ms.Lavanya Suresh

Editorial Team: Dr.Mani, Prof.Vaishnav.& Ms.Lavanya Suresh