A crucial verdict ahead
TODAY'S Assembly poll in four states and byelections in Punjab, Himachal Pradesh, West Bengal, Bihar, UP and Gujarat are, in a way, a mini-general election which will, for all practical purposes, decide the shape of politics in the country as a whole.

Insured package, at last
AFTER much huffing and hawing, the government has decided to throw open insurance to the private sector and allow foreign ownership up to 40 per cent, including an NRI share of 16 per cent.

Pakistan’s Karachi problem
THE socio-political unrest in Karachi, Pakistan’s commercial capital, is unlikely to end soon. The latest step the Nawaz Sharif government has taken to bring normalcy to the strifetorn city, it seems, will only complicate the problem.

KILLERS OF MUJIBUR RAHMAN
by Kuldip Nayar
HE could not understand how those who had committed genocide would go scot-free. “What will posterity say? The international community will never forgive us if we let killings, rape and loot go unpunished.”

Counter-insurgency drive:
the roadblock
by Pritam Bhullar
IN his study, “Management of stress in counter-insurgency environment”, carried in a respected journal, Maj-Gen (retd) Samay Ram says that killing or capturing militants and recovering weapons is the sole criterion for measuring the performance of Army units.

Flaws in computerised
war games
By Bimal Bhatia
THE Army is developing computerised wargames to train its officers to tackle battle situations at various levels. While this will result in cutting costs at a time when the services are facing a resource crunch, there are inherent flaws in over-reliance on computerised wargames which do not lend themselves to realistic training in certain areas.

Golden flower
by O.P. Bhagat
THESE are chrysanthemum days. The flower greets you in many a garden. Even in a foyer or lobby or inside an office you may expect its smiling welcome. Chrysanthemum means golden flower. It is from two Greek words — chrysos (gold) and anthos (flower). It is said that the first chrysanthemums that reached Europe from China in the 18th century were yellow.

75 Years Ago

How to work the Congress
WE are in complete sympathy with the spirit of the suggestion made by Mr Asif Ali at Muzaffarnagar that the Congress should be worked departmentally so that the activities of all the three parties in the Congress towards the attainment of the goal, which is the common object of all, might be coordinated.

A crucial verdict ahead

TODAY'S Assembly poll in four states and byelections in Punjab, Himachal Pradesh, West Bengal, Bihar, UP and Gujarat are, in a way, a mini-general election which will, for all practical purposes, decide the shape of politics in the country as a whole. At play are several crucial factors, going beyond the main personalities of the BJP and the Congress. First, the elections are seen as the virtual polarisation of the political discourse between the Congress and the BJP. The political confrontation between Congress leader Sonia Gandhi and BJP stalwarts Atal Behari Vajpayee and L.K. Advani has been both sharp and bitter. In such a surcharged atmosphere, the real issues were often lost in innumerable non-issues having undesirable communal overtones. Second, the verdict will provide a definite pointer to the political wind blowing in the country. Third, linked with the people's choice in the states of Delhi, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Mizoram is the future of the BJP-led government at the Centre. Not that a poor show by the main ruling party will lead to its immediate collapse. But the way the campaign was conducted by Mr Vajpayee and Mr Advani for the BJP and Mrs Sonia Gandhi for the Congress, their personal prestige has got entangled in a post-poll setting. Broadly speaking, the elections are seen as a referendum on the performance of the Vajpayee government at the Centre. In fact, the campaign acquired a wider dimension this time than ever before. The Congress and other opposition parties have taken full advantage of popular discontent to impress upon the people that the BJP-led coalition is inexperienced, incapable of ruling the country. Looking at the popular mood, there will be a definite fallout of the mismanagement of the economy by the Centre on the people's choice not only in Delhi but also in Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh. No wonder, Prime Minister Vajpayee went to the extent of charging the Congress with trying to grab power by riding on the potato and onion crisis, but claimed that it would not succeed in its goal. Apparently, Mr Vajpayee and Mrs Sushma Swaraj put on brave postures, not realising that more than the Hindutva issue the people are genuinely agitated over the unprecedented rise in the prices of essential commodities like onions, potatoes, salt, lentils and cooking oil. Of course, a number of local factors too have been at play at different places, creating mini-waves that seem to be mainly working against the BJP.

The pre-poll survey results seem to favour the Congress, though Delhi Chief Minister Sushma Swaraj has said that she will prove the opinion polls wrong. She hopes to form a government with an absolute majority! One surely admires Mrs Swaraj for putting on a brave face. But what she does not seem to realise is that the people of Delhi are disenchanted because they feel that things have deteriorated on all fronts. In fact, one striking feature of the Assembly elections this time has been the people's anger against the poor performance of the political authorities. It is difficult to say to what extent the anger factor will get translated into an anti-establishment vote. Much will depend on the voters' turnout and individual images of the candidates. Indeed, more than any other election, today's poll has brought the people's issues to the fore. And the message for the possible victors and losers is sharp and clear: the people want good governance and genuine performance and not false promises. If the political parties take this message in the right spirit, India's electoral arithmetic will undergo a radical transformation in the years to come.

Insured package, at last

AFTER much huffing and hawing, the government has decided to throw open insurance to the private sector and allow foreign ownership up to 40 per cent, including an NRI share of 16 per cent. This move will enormously please a few big Indian companies like Birlas which have shown interest in entering this highly lucrative business. At the same time, it will also provoke fierce protest from the employees who oppose the move from an ideological angle as also from their perception that it would lead to heavy job losses. The two monopoly organisations, the LIC and GIC, have been bracing themselves to meet competition and are confident of coming out on top. As General Insurance Corporation chairman D. Dasgupta has said, any new company will need at least five years to merely establish itself and several decades to build a matching network of offices and agents. It will provide enough time for the two corporations to introduce new services and revamp the functioning style. This is what is happening in the banking sector where leading nationalised banks have streamlined their working to stall the feared rapid penetration of foreign institutions. As Dr Sengupta asks rhetorically, if banks could do it, why not the insurance companies?

As for the government, this opening up is purely involuntary, being a key part of the ongoing liberalisation process initiated in 1991 at the behest of the IMF. India’s strange brand of competitive politics has so far blocked it, but its passage through Parliament should be smooth considering that most parties, barring the Left group, have indicated support. The government, therefore, looks at the proposed legislation as one more tentative step on the road to deregulation and nothing more. But it has a task on its hands. The laws governing the LIC and GIC have to be first amended to formally end their Parliament-granted monopoly and the regulatory body has to be expanded to supervise the working, mostly to weed out unfair competition. The two monoliths have long taken out insurance against sudden poaching on their turf by going deep into the rural areas with specially designed insurance cover. The scheme to provide monetary assistance to poor families in the event of the death of the bread-winner is popular and has vast scope for expansion. The half-hearted crop insurance plan is another promising line. The GIC introduced health insurance but did not put its heart into selling it widely, with the result that today there are only 20 lakh subscribers with an annual premium collection of Rs 20 crore. If this is redesigned to serve the urban middle class, it can well be a cash cow what with the rising cost of medical care. Of late, the GIC is offering an all-purpose cover for foreign travellers and, what is more, is aggressively popularising it. It is the success in slowly becoming insured-friendly that explains the new-found confidence.

The LIC and GIC may not lose much after privatisation, thanks also to Indian reluctance to suddenly shift loyalty. But the government will. The LIC alone diverts thousands of crores of rupees to finance the five-year Plans, apart from entering the stock market to steady volatility. A private company will not feel obliged to forge a link with the government; it will seek other avenues to make good and easy profit. That incidentally is the ideological opposition.

Pakistan’s Karachi problem

THE socio-political unrest in Karachi, Pakistan’s commercial capital, is unlikely to end soon. The latest step the Nawaz Sharif government has taken to bring normalcy to the strifetorn city, it seems, will only complicate the problem. The government has invoked Article 245 of the Pakistani Constitution, suspending the fundamental rights of the people in the entire province of Sindh, and called in the army in aid of the civilian administration to tackle the situation with an iron hand. No decision of the government concerning Sindh can be challenged in a court of law, and anyone arrested on the charge of indulging in violence, etc, will be tried in military courts, being set up for the purpose. All this in a country which calls itself a nascent democracy. Opposition groups have rightly called it the imposition of “mini-martial law”. This will lead to “extra-judicial killings and extra-judicial detention”, as described by Pakistan Supreme Court Bar Association chief Abid Hasan Manto. Employing the army under virtual martial law conditions is a remedy worse than the disease. What has been a continuing fight for supremacy between the Muttahida Qaumi Movement headed by Mr Altaf Husain (living in self-imposed exile in London) and its other faction called the MQM (Haqiqi) may acquire a different colour. The groups promoting Sindhi sub-nationalism, which are otherwise deadly against both factions of the MQM — drawing its support from the Urdu-speaking Muhajir community (the people who migrated from India at the time of Partition) — will forget about their old wounds. They have already condemned in the strongest terms the invocation of Article 245, when it was not essential. The use of the Punjabi-dominated army to handle basically a law and order problem (though it has many dimensions) will send the signals of a veiled attempt by one region to dominate another. Sindh has always had this complaint against Punjab, though it was forgotten with the emergence of the Bhutto factor. Not long ago the question of subjugation of different regions by Punjab was hotly debated.

The MQM, which is going to be the main target of the Nawaz Sharif government’s latest move, was an ally of the Prime Minister’s party, the Pakistan Muslim League, which headed the Sindh government till it was dismissed some time ago and central rule imposed. And violence in Karachi, which has claimed over 1000 lives so far this year, is not a new development. The port city has been in the grip of the disease for many years. If Mr Nawaz Sharif was so serious about eliminating what is being called the culture of terrorism in Karachi and certain other cities of Sindh, he should have never forged an alliance with the MQM. But in his estimation then the migrants’ organisation was not the fountainhead of terrorism as he perceives it today. What a strange perception! It varies as it suits him politically. The truth is that Pakistan is receiving the price for its own sins. For quite some time every political establishment in Islamabad has been nurturing terrorism and exporting it to India to sustain its ill-conceived proxy war. Some of the seeds of the crop it has been growing for others have sprouted within Pakistan. Someone has truly said: as you sow so shall you reap.

KILLERS OF MUJIBUR RAHMAN
Opposition stokes fires after verdict
by Kuldip Nayar

HE could not understand how those who had committed genocide would go scot-free. “What will posterity say? The international community will never forgive us if we let killings, rape and loot go unpunished.”

So said Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, founder of Bangladesh, while commenting on those Pakistani soldiers against whom his government had “firm evidence”. He was speaking to me at Dhaka soon after breaking away from Pakistan.

Little did he realise then that his daughter, Sheikh Hasina, would one day repeat the same words, not for the Pakistani soldiers but for her own officers. She could not understand how those who had murdered 22 persons — her father, members of her family and the four national leaders detained in Dhaka Central Jail, — could go scot-free. None of the Sheikh’s successors — Gen Ziaur Rahman, General Ershad or Begum Khalida Zia — ever challenged the culprits — who had come to enjoy the best of diplomatic or other government assignments. If at all, the three rulers took shelter behind the Indemnity Ordinance, 1975, which was issued to restrict any government action against the accused. Sheikh Hasina cried in vain.

But some members of Parliament in the United Kingdom heard her wails. They set up a commission of enquiry in 1980. Its conclusions were: (a) the processes of law and justice had not been permitted to take their course; (b) it would appear that the government had duly been responsible for impending their process; and (c) those impediments should be removed and law and justice should be allowed to take their own course.

Dhaka was still not moved. The culprits continued to enjoy government patronage. Only in 1996, 21 years later when Sheikh Hasina was elected Prime Minister, was the first information report (FIR) filed and the case registered.

The Indemnity Ordinance, 1975, a roadblock in the way of prosecution, was cleared by repealing it through an Act of Bangladesh’s Parliament. It was challenged but the High Court upheld it. This smoothened the way for the District and Sessions Courts, which sentenced 15 of the 19 accused to death by open firing. It may sound a novel punishment, but it is befitting for the guilty, who were all army officers.

After the court’s verdict, Sheikh Hasina was justified in saying that peace could never exist in any country where wrongdoers and killers were given shelter. This is true because the rulers before her cannot escape the charge of compromise, if not connivance. And it is not surprising that neither General Ershad nor Begum Zia has said a word in favour of the judgement. That after hearing the verdict, Sheikh Hasina should break down is understandable. She cried in agony: “I have lost not only my father but my mother, brothers, sisters-in-law and even 10-year-old brother Russell. What wrong Russell committed?”

The judgement should have acted as catharsis, people purging their emotions of loss, helplessness and fear. Instead, former Prime Minister Khalida Zia, a sworn enemy of Prime Minister Hasina, called from November 9, within 24 hours of the judgement, anti-government demonstrations, including a 48-hour countrywide hartal. Why should she be irked by the punishment of Mujibur Rahman’s murderers? She should have used the occasion to emphasise on the speedy trial of those who had assassinated her husband, Ziaur Rahman, especially when Sheikh Hasina has already agreed to trace the culprits.

From the very birth, which itself was a bloody caesarian operation, Bangladesh has waded through conspiracies, destruction and hatred. Coups and counter-coups, assassinations and violence mark its history of 26 years. The nation should have paused to hear the wronged and the suppressed. Instead, it is hopelessly divided. One set of people is at the throat of another. Maybe, Sheikh Hasina will appoint a high-power commission to find out what soured the liberation struggle.

Was it a political vendetta by those who did not want the country’s liberation? Or, was it a violent expression of a society which had been brutalised in the wake of armed resistance to Islamabad’s rule? Sheikh Mujibur Rahman stood for a secular democratic Bangladesh. Did his murderers and fellow conspirators want to defeat that end to create a sectarian society?

Whatever the truth, there must have been something terribly wrong with society when event the father of the nation was ousted through murder. A liberal nation is being held to ransom by some fanatics, who are tarnishing the fair name of Islam.

Bangladesh should have realised by this time the dangerous proportion that the violence in the country has assumed. Two of its leaders — Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and Ziaur Rahman — have been assassinated. The Sheikh’s Awami League and Zia’s Bangladesh National Party (BNP) have been at loggerheads for years. Hundreds of people have died on both sides in a war of attrition of sorts. The property loss runs into crores.

Political confrontation is understandable, but the destruction of the country is not. There is turmoil all the time, and political parties take pride in keeping the work shut through endless hartals. So much so that aid donors are wondering whether they should be helping a country which has all the potential but knows no political peace.

The basic problem of Bangladesh still remains the same: the anti-liberation forces do not want the pro-liberation forces to settle down and build the country. Fundamentalism or anti-India propaganda is a symptom, not the disease. The disease is that the anti-liberation elements have not reconciled to the ethos of the Bangladesh independence struggle: a liberal democratic society based on the Bengali culture.

In 1972 at his residence, the Broadlands in the UK, Lord Mountbatten, the last British Viceroy, recalled in my presence how he had warned Mohammed Ali Jinnah, founder of Pakistan, that it would be very difficult to hold together the two wings with no land connection and 1,000 miles of alien territoryin between. After all, except for religion, there was nothing common between the two. “The Bengalis’ cultural ties are too strong; you know how Curzon tried and failed.” (The reference was to the vain effort that Lord Curzon, as Viceroy, made to partition Bengal).

The problems, which over-stretched Bangladesh faces today, are not so much of resources as of trust. Civil unrest, almost endemic, has sapped people’s confidence. How to retrieve their faith is a challenge to the politicians, right or left, pro-liberation or anti-liberation. The judgement on the murder of Mujibur Rahman should initiate a process of reconciliation. Only then will people gain confidence in the future.

An average Bangladeshi is devoted to hard work. That is the reason why he has done so well in foreign countries. His inherent capacity to grasp what ticks a democratic institution is unquestionable. He has punished dictators and revolted against fundamentalists. It is the leadership that has failed him; it has always exploited him. Even intellectuals have swung between the extremes. He alone has remained steadfast. What is disconcerting is the use of the religious card by anti-Hasina forces to divert his attention or to contaminate his thinking.

The situation that the country faces at present is not that Islam is in danger or that the state has turned its back on it. The murderers of Mujibur Rahman have been spotted and sentenced to death. How does their punishment come into conflict with the dictates of Islam? In fact, if they go scot-free — the present agitators are aiming at that — it would be a travesty of justice and misrepresentation of Islam.

Counter-insurgency drive: the roadblock
by Pritam Bhullar

IN his study, “Management of stress in counter-insurgency environment”, carried in a respected journal, Maj-Gen (retd) Samay Ram says that killing or capturing militants and recovering weapons is the sole criterion for measuring the performance of Army units. Intense competition, he says, has driven officers and jawans in Kashmir to suicide and insanity. While outlining the causes of stress in these operations, General Ram goes to suggest ways to successfully manage counter-insurgency operations.

Most of the suggestions made — such as good leadership, training, motivation, rest and recreation — are the hallmarks of all operations, irrespective of their nature. But his mention about the unseemly trend of the commanders to lay undue emphasis on killing or capturing militants and recovering weapons and making these the sole determinants of success or failure of operations needs examination. Besides, there are some other unhealthy traits (not mentioned by the General) which have made the Army a “tension-ridden” organisation.

No doubt, prolonged stress always takes its toll in the shape of psychological disorders. But in J and K, psychological disorders among officers and men have shown an upward trend over the years. And this has resulted in several suicide and insanity cases occurring in units almost every year. In one case, a non-commissioned officer, (NCO) after running amok, gunned down his CO and three other officers. What is the prime cause of these abnormal happenings?

Admittedly, the counter-insurgency operations in which you do not have a fixed enemy and are searching for a militant are like searching for a needle in a haystack. These are very frustrating for the officers and men. For these operations, therefore, you need senior officers who are patient and can infuse confidence in their subordinates. Unfortunately, the sudden catapulting of officers from the middle to higher ranks after Partition sowed the pernicious seeds of careerism in the Indian Army. This shoddy trend kept on increasing with every passing year so much so that most officers, particularly in senior ranks today, have only one aim: how to stage-manage the next promotion.

To quote only one example, as early as in 1967 when militancy in the Mizo Hills (now Mizoram) was at its peak and many infantry battalions were hurriedly inducted into that state to quell it, higher commanders from Brigade Commanders upwards would visit units almost every third day and ask the COs only one question: how many light machine guns (LMGs) and militants had they captured and how many militants had been killed? They did not think even once that gaining of accurate information about militants was a time-consuming exercise without which an operation could not succeed. The tension generated by these ambitious senior officers so percolated down the line that it did not spare even the last jawan in the unit. This resulted in haphazard and unsuccessful operations.

As for producing captured weapons, some of the unscrupulous COs went to the extent of purchasing cheap NSP weapons from as far as Kanpur and Ambala and produced them as captured weapons to score in the unspeakable game of one-upmanship.

A top Army psychiatrist blames COs in J and K for often acting on raw information. He says: “With nine out of 10 such raids proving futile, this unnecessarily tires out the men, who then tend to become complacent and less alert.” Not only that, many instances have come to light where one finds jawans losing confidence in their leaders. This adversely affects the morale of units.

In the counter-insurgency operations we have lost about 125 officers and over 3,000 men in the North and the North-East in the last seven years. In J and K alone, 122 Army personnel, including officers, were killed and more than 300 wounded in 1997. Despite this, the success achieved in these operations has been minimal.

Two main reasons for our failure are: one, our poor intelligence which, in most cases, is neither timely nor reliable. Two, our nervous higher commanders who are always in a desperate hurry to achieve early success so that they can score over their peers. For quick results, they ignore the time factor and push their juniors into unplanned operations by throwing the basic tactics to the winds. All this can lead to nothing else but stress on rank and file.

What we need for counter-insurgency operations is more matured commanders who are not looking at the carrots dangling before them all the time, but who can act more judiciously in the interest of their units and formations rather than in their own interest. That counter-insurgency operations are tricky because of the undefined and hidden enemy cannot be denied. This uncertainty gives birth to a milieu that tends to get filled with tension. The answer to this problem lies in not committing units to this duty for more than two years at a stretch after which they should be given a break for rest and recuperation.

Golden flower
by O.P. Bhagat

THESE are chrysanthemum days. The flower greets you in many a garden. Even in a foyer or lobby or inside an office you may expect its smiling welcome.

Chrysanthemum means golden flower. It is from two Greek words — chrysos (gold) and anthos (flower). It is said that the first chrysanthemums that reached Europe from China in the 18th century were yellow.

Some of the flowers are beautifully golden indeed. Some others are white and red bronze. Crossing has given the mums many more cute colours. Also varied shapes and sizes.

As rough and shaggy as a lion, says a dictionary of flowers about the chrysanthemum. Shaggy does not sound quite complimentary. But in shagginess lies much of the flower’s charm.

By the way, some girls wear their hair in shag style. Does the inspiration come from the chrysanthemum? Much before, in one of his novels, P.G. Woodhouse linked the flower and shagginess in his own way: “Why don’t you get a hair-cut? You look like a chrysanthemum.”

If some people confuse the mums with dahlias, zinnias and calendulas, there is reason for it. All these flowers belong to the same family — compositae. So some family likeness is there.

The chrysanthemum has its original home in China. It has been cultivated there for centuries. Its first mention is in what are considered Confucius’s writings.

Japan too has grown it for long. It is that country’s national flower. The rising sun on the Japanese flag is actually a stylised chrysanthemum. It shows a disc surrounded by 16 petals.

At first the reception the chrysanthemum got in Europe was cool. But soon it won more hearts and went places. Now the chrysanthemum is a worldwide flower.

In popularity it ranks only next to the rose. Like rose shows and societies, chrysanthemum shows and societies are quite common.

The chrysanthemum blooms all through the autumn. Not many other flowers are there then. Before the rose comes on, it is the reigning beauty.

To Chinese poets it gives much solace when they see it fresh and smiling amidst the withering plants and falling leaves. As a ninth century poet says:

At this sad season why do you bloom alone?

In the Far East the chrysanthemum is a symbol of purity, perfection and long life. It has a similar message for the American poetess, Anna Peyro Dinnies:

Fair gift of Friendship and her ever bright

And faultless image: welcome now thou art

In thy pure loveliness — thy robes of white

Speak a moral to the fleeting heart.

Also on white chrysanthemums is Patience Strong’s poem:

Far into the November when

The fogs are thick and gray,

The lovely white chrysanthemums

Their perfect blooms display.

However, Oscar Wilde means other than the white variety when he says:

Chrysanthemums from gilded argosy

Unload their gaudy scentless merchandise.

The flower has its legends too. In China, they say, there is spring in a bank of chrysanthemums. If you drink its water, you will live a hundred years.

Another story says that a man once happened to offend the emperor. In fear he ran away to the Valley of the Chrysanthemum. There he sipped the dew from the petals. He become immortal.

The Buddhists add their own bit to it. They say the man had got a sacred text. He wrote it on the chrysanthemum petals. The dew was thus endowed with that strange power.

Does it sound too far-fetched? Let us turn to Korea then. Here the chrysanthemum is as lovely or ethereal as anywhere else. Yet it is of the earth earthy.

The Koreans boil its roots to drink as a cure for headache.

Flaws in computerised war games
By Bimal Bhatia

THE Army is developing computerised wargames to train its officers to tackle battle situations at various levels. While this will result in cutting costs at a time when the services are facing a resource crunch, there are inherent flaws in over-reliance on computerised wargames which do not lend themselves to realistic training in certain areas.

Being developed by the Army Training Command are three sets of softwares. The lowest level to benefit is the battalion for which the software Shatranj will help to train various functionaries to fine-tune appropriate drills and procedures in various operations of war.

Sangram is to train officers at the division level, and the ultimate software for exercising various appointments at the corps level is also being given its “bytes”. It is at the division and particularly the corps level that we ought to realise various constraints of developing a software so that we remain constantly reminded of the human and other inter-related battle-winning aspects that are impossible to predict and factorise with precision.

Therein lies the danger of over-reliance on computers that can dull the imagination and dampen creativity, producing mechanical minds in the top hierarchy.

Admittedly the task of creating base-line data in the software is combersome but not impossible to work out within acceptable limits of accuracy. For example, figures of expected casualties for both sides can be arrived at by interlinking the type and intensity of fire, degree of accuracy of the weapon system, type of terrain, nature of defences/field fortifications or the configuration of attacking troops and type of countermeasures relevant to the situation.

Likewise, the results of air strikes can be effectively determined by various parameters of the attack profile and relating these to the air defence and guided missile environment prevailing in the sector.

But how does one factor the fire in the veins of a Nirmaljit Singh Shekhon who scrambled his fighter aircraft from Srinagar airfield in the face of heavy pounding by Pakistani Sabres, to save the situation against all odds.

Also difficult to predict is the act of a sapper or infantryman who storms through a minefield unmindful of losing his limbs and, having lost them, crawls on his belly to get that much-needed breach in the enemy’s obstacle to let the assault continue. Or, to evaluate the outcome of a mortally wounded Albert Ekka who stormed a Pakistani bunker housing the machine gun that continued to mow down assaulting Indian troops, to finally change the outcome of the critical attack.

Fed into a computer, the result would probably be based on simplistic parameters discounting the aspect of bravery and courage which must invariably arise in battle.

Motivation, as an influencing factor, can of course be factored to arrive at the outcome of battle. Motivation and morale are, however, generic and can only be applied to the opposing sides depending upon their state and operating environment. This, however, is no substitute for courage that we saw could critically influence the course of battle.

Put differently, on the basis of computers one could factor the diminished fighting potential of the retreating Pakistani army in erstwhile East Pakistan, or the Iraqi Republican Guards who capitulated during the Gulf war, but the many heroes who spring out of anonymity at the critical moment to tip the scales can never be put on the “monitor”.

Of the other intangibles that remain difficult to co-relate is the formulation of intelligence “assessments” which would obviously vary even between two headquarters which are fed with identical intelligence inputs. Assessments primarily depend on the human mind — of the commander and staff — though they may utilise computers to collate and manage information flow in an attempt to disperse the fog of war. And no two commanders would think alike.

Related and superimposed on many of these intangible factors are the aspects of deception, creativity and, in the ultimate, leadership.

In talking of generalship, what has made successful military commanders is not their swords, their bravery, their trappings or their reputations. It has been, above all, the unique quality of their minds. As Colonel James Mrazek in his The Art of Winning Wars, says, the “quality lurks in the deep recess of the subconscious mind where, somehow, an idea is born. The idea is that product of experience, emotion, education and the immediate environment”.

When we talk of creative ideas or intuition or a “flash of insight” which enables a general to lead his men to victory, we may borrow a thought from David Oglivy, the father of advertising: “...the creative process requires more than reason. Most original thinking isn’t even verbal. It requires a groping experimentation with ideas, governed by intuitive hunches and inspired by the subconscious. The majority of businessmen aren’t capable of original thinking, because they are unable to escape from the tyranny of reason. Their imaginations are blocked”.

To prevent our imaginations getting dulled in the transition to computerised wargaming it may be prudent to let it remain an aid, which it is supposed to be. For logistics planning computers are excellent. Over-reliance on computers for individual training, however, may dilute the aggressive spirit and initiative at lower levels and wreck the creative and imaginative urges at the higher echelons where new ideas should spring to exit from the virtual logjam our services are presently in due to strait-jacketed thinking.

75 YEARS AGO

How to work the Congress

WE are in complete sympathy with the spirit of the suggestion made by Mr Asif Ali at Muzaffarnagar that the Congress should be worked departmentally so that the activities of all the three parties in the Congress towards the attainment of the goal, which is the common object of all, might be coordinated.

Our only doubt is as to its practicability. After all, the work of the Congress is carried on from day to day by Provincial, District and other committees, even more particularly by their Working Committee. How are these bodies to so carry on their work in the present conditions as to coordinate the activities of the three parties?

The three parties are the No-changers, who want to boycott the councils and stand by the Bardoli programmes, the Swarajists who attach supreme importance to entering the councils and non-cooperating with the government from within, and the Compromise Party who, while believing in the Bardoli programme themselves, would not stand in the way of the Swarajists going to the councils.

Now clearly, while the last two can work together on committees, how are they work with the No-changers or the No-changers with them? They can and, as we have said repeatedly, must continue to form parts of the same deliberative organisation, but so far as executive bodies are concerned, the mutually exclusive character of their programmes and policies make it impossible for them to work together, whether departmentally or otherwise.