Beware the Ends of June

Date: July 11, 2016 Publisher: DPG
By K. Shankar Bajpai

Chairman Emeritus, Delhi Policy  Group  and former Ambassador  to Pakistan, China and USA, and Secretary, Ministry of External Affairs Brexit, NSG,  the Emergency: three unrelated events combining over that last June weekend, in one imperative lesson: put your house in order. Brexit shows the great, sudden ways of change in the world, and their effects on us; Seoul/Tashkent underlines how tough it is to secure our international interests, especially in face of China's power and purposes; above all, the June 25, 1975 Emergency, and how easily it  was imposed, warns  us of  our  internal  vulnera  bilities.  Typifying our refusal  to learn,  it illustrates 2  particularly pernicious defects, since greatly expanded; the primacy of  personal factors  in decision  -  making, and  the  subjection  of  instruments of state  to   those  in  power.