India wants to be a developed nation and one of the super power by 2020. It is excellent ambition and every Indians should work towards it. It should be recognized, we are growing our economy which will help us to get there but not without any risks. Indians should recognize we cannot achieve leadership position just with the help of economy. We should develop our diplomatic influence and power. Unfortunately we are lacking in that.
We are having border issues with China such as giving stapled Chinese visas for Kashmir and Arunachal Pradesh residents. Recent Chinese incursion into Kashmir played down by our military and Government. I am not suggesting we should go for a war but we need to make our position clear. If needed, we should issue similar visas to Tibetans for the same reason. We need not say about Pakistan. Sri Lanka is being added to this list.
It became very common for Sri Lankan Navy to shoot at Indian fishermen particularly Tamil fisherman. They arrest and torture them for months before deporting them. Indian Government has responsibility to protect its citizens. Our Ministers both in Central and State made comments such that putting onus on the fishermen (One such comment was fishermen entering Sri Lankan waters to catch large amount of fish and paying their price). These fishermen are not sophesticated carrying high tech gadgets to know the borders. It is International law that these fishermen should be treated with dignity and returned to their mother land. Instead they shoot at fisherman for threating eventually killing some. They used LTTE name (In my view LTTE should go but Tamil interest must be protected) in the past for this. We cannot accept those excuses anymore. It must be firmly dealt with.
It is widely known that we provided arms and funds to eliminate LTTE. Later we promised crores of rupees for Tamil Rehabilitation. No progress so far. Sri Lankan Governments is not keeping its promises on rehabiltation. China and Pakistan now has larger interest in Sri Lanka which is not good for India. It is time for India to use its diplomatic power to achieve our goals. Indian Government should make it clear that it is not acceptable to kill or torture Indian citizens. We need to protect the fishermen livelihood by providing proper protection through our coast guard and navy. This is mechanism used by China in South China sea and other developed nations elsewhere.
Tamil Leader Karunanidhi sent a telegram to PM for his intervention. In his world, this is very urgent otherwise he would have written a letter. In this electronic world, email and Fax is much faster. I hope some one around him will explain about these technology (He has foremer IT/Communications minister around him for that). For Karunanidhi, this is not as imporatnt as getting a Cabinet position or threat to his family bussiness empire. In that case he would have deputed DMK ministers or leaders to meet Sonia Gandhi or Dr. Manmohan Singh.
Jayalalitha should not stop just issuing a statement. She should fight for people rights. I do not believe retaking "Katcha Theevu" is the solution. Rather we should come up with safe zone for fishermen. In cases they sail out of the zone, we should have proper mechanism to deal with this. It is time to unite (across political spectrum) and protect our interest.
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