{"id":42249,"date":"2015-03-12T19:30:15","date_gmt":"2015-03-13T01:30:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=42249"},"modified":"2015-03-12T12:28:13","modified_gmt":"2015-03-12T19:28:13","slug":"palkss-strait-fishery-dispute-a-beggars-wound","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2015\/03\/12\/palkss-strait-fishery-dispute-a-beggars-wound\/","title":{"rendered":"Palks\u2019s Strait Fishery Dispute a Beggar\u2019s Wound"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><em>R Chandrasoma<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n<p>A begger\u2019s wound is coddled and kept on because it excites sympathy and donations that are mightily useful to the beggar. In politics and international relations there is a curious counterpart to this &#8211; where disputes often of a very serious nature are deliberately kept unresolved in pursuance of higher political goals. The territorial disputes between India and Pakistan are clearly of this kind \u2013where one party will (arguably) lose face if a settlement is reached.<\/p>\n<p>Let us turn to the \u2018affair\u2019 of fishing in the region between the Peninsula tip of India and Northern Sri Lanka (Palk Strait). This shallow sea is ideal for a destructive trawling of the sea-bed and the Indians do it without a care for the long-term damage to the marine ecosystem. The pertinent point is this \u2013 they do not recognize the sovereign right of Sri Lanka to demarcate areas of the seabed that are out of bounds for Indian fisherman. They waffle on this issue but it is clear that they are using this dispute as a beggar\u2019s wound &#8211; a means of unsettling a weak neighbor and sending a message to separatists that their Great Neighbour is eager and willing to joust with their \u2018oppressor\u2019. Is it an intractable problem to draw with great precision the maritime boundary between India and Sri Lanka in the region of Palk Strait? Is the Indian Navy incapable of policing this area \u00a0for would-be law-breakers? Cannot International observers be hired? In this age of GPS and advanced navigation systems can we really believe that ships make elementary navigational errors and fish gaily in the coastal waters of another nation?<\/p>\n<p>The newly elected President of our country went to India recently and it was announced that the \u2018dispute\u2019 between India and Sri Lanka on matters of fishing in the Palk Strait would be a principal theme in the bilateral discussions envisaged. There is no report of discussions or results \u2013 unsurprisingly since the beggar\u2019s wound must be kept open in the strategic interests of our large and powerful neighbor.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>R Chandrasoma A begger\u2019s wound is coddled and kept on because it excites sympathy and donations that are mightily useful to the beggar. In politics and international relations there is a curious counterpart to this &#8211; where disputes often of a very serious nature are deliberately kept unresolved in pursuance of higher political goals. The [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-42249","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-r-chandrasoma"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42249","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42249"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42249\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42249"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42249"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42249"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}