The Vice President of India, M. Hamid Ansari has said that the link between the citizen and the state through the mechanism of accountability is critical for domestic cohesion and internal security but has not been sufficiently in evidence. He was delivering the keynote address at the 2nd West Asia Conference organized by the Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses, here today. He said that an analysis of the states of West Asia identified among its characteristics the politics of limited association and of an essentially broad urban middle class base in which coercion or co-option into the state structure rather than durable resilience of the system whose legitimacy is based on the full participation of the people in the body politic.The Vice President said that the situation at the end of 2015 was one of total disarray, a situation in which regional and global powers together with empowered local groups are engaged in political and military action in half a dozen different battlefields.
He further said that the immediate concern of each is to prevail upon its adversary; little thought, if any, is being given to longer term consequences for the societies in the region. In the process, the rationale for the Turbulence takes the back seat, he added.The Vice President cautioned that the turbulence in Arab lands was not immune to regional and extra-regional inputs. He added that Bahrain, Libya, Syria and Yemen were subjected to political and or material interventions from across national borders; some of these emanated from within the region, some from immediate or proximate neighbourhood, and some from great or big powers. The objective in each case was and is to prevent, retard or reverse the change sought by a visible majority of the public, he added.