BRICS - 2016 GOA, INDIA (News and Discussion)

ezsasa

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MTCR benefit: India, Russia to develop 600-km range cruise missiles that can cover entire Pakistan


NEW DELHI: India's offensive capacity, especially against Pakistan, is set to take a huge step forward with New Delhi and Moscow deciding to jointly develop a new generation of Brahmos missiles with 600 km-plus range and an ability to hit protected targets with pinpoint accuracy.

This range enables these missiles to strike anywhere within Pakistan. That Russia can work with India to produce these missiles is thanks to New Delhi joining the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR) in June this year.

MTCR guidelines prohibit its members from transfer, sale or joint production of missiles beyond 300-km range with countries outside the club.

Brahmos' current range is 300 km, which makes it difficult to hit targets deep inside Pakistan. India has ballistic missiles with longer range than the next generation Brahmos. But Brahmos' ability to take down specific targets, even well-protected ones, makes it a potential game changer in any conflict with Pakistan. Ballistic missiles are powered for the initial half of their flight path and they use gravity to complete their trajectory. But cruise missiles are powered throughout.


This makes a cruise missile like Brahmos similar to a pilot-less fighter jet that can be maneuvered in flight, programmed to attack targets from any angle and evade enemy missile defence systems. Brahmos can, for example, take down terror camps or hideouts even in mountain areas, where natural protection makes any other offensive action, bar crossing the border, ineffective.

The Indo-Russian agreement, signed during the bilateral summit at Goa, also includes development of missiles with smaller range that can be fired from submarines and aircraft. The deal was not made public at the summit — where other projects like sale of frigates and the S-400 air defence system purchase — were announced. Vladimir Putin told journalists from his country that the missile deal has also been signed. "We have also agreed to improve the Brahmos missile, which will be land, air and se ..

ET spoke with several senior Indian officials involved in negotiations. They confirmed that a pact to double the range of the Brahmos missile was finalised. These officials spoke on the condition they not be identified. They also said producing longer-range Brahmos will not be tough because no fundamental reworking is involved in increasing the range. India, post its MTCR membership, is also pursuing export options for its 300-km range Brahmos. Vietnam has expressed interest in the missile syste ..

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http://economictimes.indiatimes.com...ofinterest&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=cppst
 

Nicky G

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'India-China differences and their discord over Pakistan could capsize BRICS'

Beijing: India-China differences and their discord over Pakistan are among differences in the BRICS that could "capsize" the grouping if the member nations fail to address competition and disagreements among them, Chinese media said on Friday.

ICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) nations, "while achieving substantial benefits through their joint efforts, must also face up to the divergence in their interests, which has given rise to concerns that the group is losing its shine", an article in state-run Global Times on the Goa BRICS summit said.

"Territorial disputes between China and India have been an obstinate disease between the two sides. Additionally, some Indians believe that China supports Pakistan, which is viewed as tantamount to supporting terrorism," it said.

"It has been argued that the BRICS members face three key issues: the lack of a solid foundation for shared interests, a weak cooperation mechanism and external pressures. If the member countries aren't careful enough, they might capsize while sailing around the world," the article said.

In regards to shared interests, "competition and disagreement between the BRICS nations have been an impediment", said the article titled 'BRICS need to address challenges to strengthen ties' written by a think-tank from Renmin University.

"The five emerging countries all value exports and foreign investment, resulting in inevitable collisions and friction as they compete for resources, market footholds and foreign investment inflows," it said.

Accusing India, Brazil and South of Africa "sending signals of trade protectionism", it said the three "often seek to launch anti-dumping probes against China".

"India and Brazil have been among the countries that have implemented the biggest number of protectionist measures against China," it said.

Yet another impeding factor is the divergent political and economic pursuits among BRICS states, it said.

Brazil and South Africa hope that cooperation within BRICS will boost their regional influence both politically and economically, while Russia cares more about the BRICS' political and strategic importance, it said.

"The second risk that BRICS faces is an insufficient cooperation mechanism. In addition to the recently concluded eighth annual BRICS summit in Goa, many ministerial meetings are held annually.

"However, the grouping of BRICS remains a loose union lacking stability. There is yet to be any institutions such as a secretariat or any guidelines and procedures designed for BRICS cooperation," it said.

"Ever since the launch of BRICS, Western countries have never ceased courting or alienating individual BRICS countries or elbowing them out from participating in the global governance.

"India has always been a target for the US to contain BRICS members within the club of emerging powers. By launching the Trans-Pacific Partnership, Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership and Trade in Services Agreement, the US aims to isolate BRICS countries, putting more pressure on developing countries," it said.
 

sorcerer

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BRICS do not lack mortar: What detractors should know



A lot of people want to see the BRICS fail. Western nations, in particular the United States and Britain, are prime suspects. However, there are plenty of unwitting commentators in the emerging world who are playing into the West’s hands. Each year, as the BRICS summit draws near, the cacophony from these haters grows louder. Questions about the viability and relevance of the BRICS are raised in the media.

During the build-up to the Goa summit this year, the refrain was similar but with the background buzz that the India-China rift over Pakistan-backed terrorism would derail the summit. However, the predicted outcome of an implosion didn’t materialise and, on the contrary, with India and Russia inking the S-400 missile deal, Goa 2016 turned out to be a memorable event.

Since many innocent readers may have been misinformed by the compromised commentators – who will certainly be back like a bounced cheque next year – here’s a ready reckoner on the BRICS group. So the next time you hear remarks that the BRICS are collapsing, don’t lose sleep over the issue.

World needs BRICS
Most of the global multilateral institutions that exist today are no longer relevant. The IMF and the World Bank, for instance, were founded during the closing years of World War II. In geopolitical time, that’s ancient history. Similarly, the G-7 appears to be on life support and the OECD (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development) is no longer a leading organisation.



With the western economies perched on monetary and budgetary cliffs, the five BRICS members provide a stable alternate force that offsets the West’s decline. Both China and India continue to experience high economic growth and are on course to become mega economies that will completely dwarf the West in the coming decades. Beijing’s growth may have fallen under 7 per cent but that’s enough to add the equivalent of Holland’s national income to the Chinese GDP.

Bottom line: without the BRICS, the world economy will experience 1929 all over again.

BRICS slowdown, not a meltdown
Uday Kotak, executive vice-president of Kotak Mahindra Bank, feels India should quit the BRICS coalition because of the slowdown in four of the five economies. His view has been echoed by several so-called experts. But curiously, have you ever heard any economist or banker say the OECD must disband because it has basket cases such as Greece or terror exporters such as Turkey?

According to the US-based Centre on Global Interests, “You can look at the BRICS from the financial market's point of view, or from a geopolitical point of view. But whichever lens you view it through, what you see is the same: despite economic slowdowns and even economic hardship in some nations, these are far and away the most powerful countries outside of the developed core. Their economies have scale. Their decisions can move financial markets. They have intellectual capital and clout within their regions. And in terms of foreign policy, they are the counterweight to a unipolar world run largely by Washington and its friends in London and Brussels.”

It adds: “In both of these regards – economics and foreign policy – the BRICS are alive and kicking. In fact, they are more relevant today than they were in November 2001, when Jim O'Neill grouped them into the strange bedfellows that they have become.”

Bilaterals can’t bring down the BRICS
If the UN fails to discuss relevant political issues, the international body is considered a failure. But BRICS is not a platform that was created for discussing politics. The primary role of the five-member group is to remove the West’s grip from the levers that control the world economy. By establishing their own New Development Bank, the BRICS have ensured that the IMF is no longer the world’s lender-of-last-resort.

In this backdrop, fears that bilateral issues involving India and China will wreck summits have consistently proved to be baseless.



Take Goa 2016. While the Goa Declaration mentions terror, the focus of the summit was not terrorism at all. Sure, Prime Minister Narendra Modi took a shot at Pakistan, describing it as the “mothership of terrorism”, and China defended its ally by saying it had made “great sacrifices”. But both New Delhi and Beijing were merely playing to their respective galleries even as the real summitry was happening behind closed doors.

To be sure, politics can be tabled if it’s a side dish – like Syria was a couple of years ago – but issues with the potential to derail the summit simply have no place in BRICS.

Critics of the BRICS often point to the India-China border issue as evidence of serious problems. But this misses the point. There always will be different opinions and views among the BRICS countries – just like there are differences among NATO or European Union members.

BRICS are not united but it doesn’t matter
Unlike NATO or the European Union, where the member countries have more or less the same goals and are also of the same racial stock, each of the BRICS countries is different. However, their membership of BRICS gives them a common goal – development. As emerging countries, they are focussed on raising their standards of living.

The fact that they are united as a group, despite such stark differences in national goals, opinions and geopolitical rivalries and even outright hostilities, points to the viability of the BRICS.

https://in.rbth.com/blogs/stranger_...ack-mortar-what-detractors-should-know_642295
 

sorcerer

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Network of BRICS Press Clubs launched


A Network of BRICS Press Clubs was inaugurated in New Delhi earlier this month, weeks after the BRICS summit ended in Goa, with representatives from the five countries getting together to review the outcome of the leaders’ meeting and chart a course for the future.




The latest among the BRICS initiatives to foster improved people to people contacts and increase awareness about other partners is the BRICS Network of Press Clubs, which aims to facilitate improved access to news about each other’s countries and create a real-time news-sharing arrangement among the five countries.

Ambassadors and senior officials from the five BRICS countries, Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa launched the BRICS Press Clubs Network on November 3 at the Press Club of India which, along with other leading media organisations in India, jointly organised the event. They also reviewed the outcome of the recently concluded eighth BRICS summit in a seminar on ‘Post 8th BRICS Summit,’ organised for the occasion.

Denying media criticism that the Goa summit was a “unifocal” summit, only concentrating on counter-terrorism issues, Amar Sinha, Secretary, Economic Relations in the Indian Ministry of External Affairs, said the summit agenda was “forward-looking” and “wide-ranging,” reflected in the 93-paragraph long Summit declaration and Action Plan.

Source: twitter.com/PCI

Sinha said a great deal of the discussion among BRICS leaders was about enhancing economic ties within BRICS, where trade is lagging. The leading Indian negotiator and “sherpa” at the BRICS summit, Sinha said the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on Customs Cooperation was an important outcome. The MoU would lead to a trade facilitation agreement to promote trade between the five countries.

“We see BRICS as providing a new perspective to global challenges, a major one of which is countering terrorism,” Sinha said. “We succeeded in bringing a focus on terrorism, which is important from India’s perspective, because it hampers our development. At the summit, the leaders also focused on democratisation of the global architecture, and on reforms in global taxation and on issues of tackling corruption.”

“Clearly, contrary to predictions of doom, we are doing well as a group, because the (BRICS web) site has been hacked,” he said wryly.


Lauding the launch of the Network of BRICS Press Clubs as “enabling improved relations,” Sinha said the governments would do whatever they could to facilitate the easy movement of media personnel between the five countries for “objective and improved dissemination of news and information” about each other.

A similar network of lawyers was being discussed, Sinha disclosed, to facilitate arbitration and legal issues among the five nations of the group. This would help harmonise legislation within the group and give a boost to trade ties. Another issue under discussion was a BRICS mechanism to provide Marine Insurance. At the moment, only a couple of western companies control the global marine insurance market.

“BRICS countries have a huge volume of shipping and maritime trade, so it is an area of interest for all of us,” Sinha said.

Tovar de Nunes, Brazilian Ambassador to India, said the Goa summit had taken “concrete steps” toward consolidation of the group. “We do everything politically, as governments, to foster sustainable development,” Nunes said. Brazil, he said, would work to facilitate closer relations among media personnel, by making it easier for journalists to get visas.

Francis Morule, South Africa’s High Commissioner to India, said he would urge media organisations in his country to actively participate in the Network of Press Clubs. His government would also take up the visa issue.


Speaking at the launch of the Network of BRICS Press Clubs, which has received strong expressions of support from Russia’s National Union of Journalists, Sergei Karmalito, Senior Counsellor in the Russian Embassy in India, recalled how a similar effort was made in the 1980s, bilaterally between India and the Soviet Union.

“At the Goa summit, we felt the need for closer relations between our journalists,” Karmalito said. “Organising a BRICS Press Clubs network will allow us better news exchange and exchange of views,” he said. “Usually we only see Western agencies reports on our countries. This will give us unbiased and multi-faceted perspectives about each other’s countries,” he said, adding that Moscow would help facilitate the movement of media persons for news exchanges.

Reviewing the Goa BRICS summit, the Counsellor said, “just a strong anti-terrorist agenda would have been enough, but there was so much more” in the outcome.

“Russia,” he said, “supports all Indian efforts to combat terrorism. Each country has the right to counter-terrorism against it,” Karmalito said.
https://in.rbth.com/world/2016/11/09/network-of-brics-press-clubs-launched_646341
 

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