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Compulsions of coalition Metro mindset |
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Crime and punishment
Army — the bitter truth
The Kota kids
News analysis HAL targets outsourcing
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Compulsions of coalition AS Congress Legislature Party leader Sonia Gandhi settles down to form a coalition government, she will realise how difficult it is even to constitute one, let alone run it. Take the case of the Left, which squarely defeated the Congress in Kerala, Tripura and West Bengal and notched up an impressive tally. If they decide to join the government, the BJP and its allies will get the entire opposition space in these states almost on a platter. It will be a godsend for the BJP, which is yet to open its account in Kerala, though it registered a lead for the first time in two Assembly segments in Thiruvananthapuram. Similarly, Ms Mamata Banerjee, who is down in the dumps, will have a whale of a time to reestablish herself as the CPM's principal opponent in West Bengal. In the celebratory mood that the Congress is in, it may have difficulty in recalling that the party was given a bare four seats in Bihar by Laloo Prasad Yadav. In other words, for the sake of these seats, the party had surrendered itself to a regional party. Tamil Nadu was the first state where the Congress tied up with a regional party for petty gains. Today it cannot contest on its own in the state, though this time its performance, vote-wise, was better than that of its ally, the DMK. For the DMK, which sees the Tamil Nadu Assembly election two years away as the ultimate test of its popularity, the decision to join the government rests on how it would subserve this singular objective. For the time being, it has decided to support the government from outside. Ms Gandhi would be mighty pleased with the Samajwadi Party's offer of support but by accepting it, the Congress will forfeit the right to oppose it and thereby regain its preeminent position in the largest state. However, both the Congress and the parties supporting it will have to reconcile themselves to these limitations in their bid to provide a stable government. In any case, they have no other option but to join the government as the people have bitter memories of parties extending outside support to governments that never lasted. They would not like either the Left or parties like the BSP, the SP and the DMK to remain outside of the government. They should realise that power comes with responsibility and they cannot shy away from it. |
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Metro mindset ONE of the more assiduous electoral myths was that the “Feel Good” factor favoured the NDA in urban agglomerates. Even after the results have exposed the hollowness of this assumption, there is a reluctance to accept that “Shining India” and “Feel Good” did not work for the BJP-led alliance in the four mega cities. To deny what is experienced — defeat as well as the absence of the “Feel Good” factor — is to persist with illusions. The NDA’s performance in the four biggest cities more than proves that there was no India-Bharat or urban-rural divide in this regard. In the Capital, the BJP, which held all the seven seats, could keep only South Delhi which Mr V K Malhotra retained. The Congress, which had none in the last Lok Sabha, wrested six from the BJP, and among those felled were heavyweights Jagmohan and Sahib Singh Verma. The outcome was not very different in the financial capital, Mumbai. The BJP and the Shiv Sena held five of the six seats, the odd man out being Mr Sunil Dutt of the Congress. Now, the BJP has drawn a blank while the Shiv Sena retained one seat. The Congress has bagged the other five, and among those swept away are Union Minister Ram Naik and Speaker Manohar Joshi. Kolkata city has always prided itself on being anti-Left and in 1999, the NDA's Trinamool Congress had pocketed all the three seats. This time around, the CPM took two and the BJP’s ally, Ms Mamata Banerjee, has to be content with just one. In Chennai, of course, the DMK had three and it kept the three, then in alliance with the BJP and now as a Congress ally. Clearly, there were large sections of the urban population, that are not prisoners of caste and sectarian politics, seething with discontent caused primarily by unemployment and economic hardship. It might be good to develop a feel for the truth — for all parties and not only the BJP. That is also a message of the general election. |
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Crime and punishment THE 160-year sentence handed out last week to Jordanian Zaid Hassan Abd Latif Safarini by an American court for killing Neerja Bhanot and 20 other innocent persons on an ill-fated Pan Am flight 17 years ago is the culmination of a dogged pursuit which went through many twists and turns. This is one of the rare instances where a hijacker has been given his due desserts for waging war against humanity. As the parents of the brave girl who laid down her own life to save scores of others have said, nothing can bring back their daughter but at least the attempt of the hijacker who killed so many innocent people to bargain his way to freedom have been thwarted. He will suffer till the end of his days in a high-security prison. Neerja had displayed humanity, bravery and devotion to duty much beyond her tender age of 23 when she had acted as a human shield while trying to save passengers from the terrorists' bullets. She could have left the plane herself but chose to help others who she believed were under her care. There are few parallels of such selfless service in the annals of aviation history. It was her presence of mind which had helped many passengers to escape to safety from the hijacked plane at Karachi airport. A grateful nation has already honoured her with its highest peacetime gallantry award, Ashok Chakra. Her parents have sagaciously instituted two bravery awards in her name. She will forever live on in the hearts of her admirers and in the deeds of the exceptional people who are ever ready to make any sacrifice for others, just like her. |
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Success is a science; if you have the conditions, you get the result. — Oscar Wilde |
Army — the bitter truth IT is time to highlight some of the realities as far as the Indian Army is concerned. Let us take the budget first. It is important to take stock of what the financial year has in store for the Indian Army. Its well-being and growth, or lack of it, should be a matter of some concern for all citizens of the country. The projected allocations for defence, for the year, amount to only 2.1 per cent of the GDP, an abysmally low figure, indeed. Even the Eleventh Finance Commission (1999) had recommended that the allocations should be brought up to 3 per cent of the GDP by 2004. So, the present arrangement will see no modernisation; it will barely be able to meet the demands of revenue expenditure. The other important aspect is spending even this low allocation. Since 1999 the Ministry of Defence has the dubious distinction of surrendering approximately Rs 7000 crore from its allocations, on an average, every year. One can well imagine how little, if any, modernisation has taken place in the last four years or so! A non-lapsable fund, to the tune of Rs 25,000 crore, has been created this year, but that is only a partial answer. In any case, the need is for modernisation in time, and not channelling money into a non-lapsable fund. It is the opportunity cost that is important, not the shelving of projects for later years. The Navy will get the refitted and modernised aircraft carrier, Admiral Gorshkov. The Air Force is getting the advanced jet trainer — AJT HAWK 115Y. These are two of the biggest deals signed by India in the field of armament acquisitions, amounting to over Rs 15,000 crore. While the Navy and the Air Force are no doubt feeling good about it, what about the Army? The Army has to be satisfied with only an assurance, and a measly one at that — Rs 2,500 crore worth of equipment to modernise the infantry, possibly over the next five years, if there are no glitches! Considering that there are over 400 infantry battalions, including in the Rashtriya Rifles, the amount is laughably meagre, especially as little modernisation has been done in the preceding couple of years. The proxy war in Jammu and Kashmir has entered its 14th year. The recent thaw in India-Pakistan relations and the ceasefire on the Line of Control have not reduced the tasks or the alertness of the Army. The deployment of the Army in J&K has been at a heavy cost. The cost, in terms of casualties, of readiness for war, of equipment degradation, and of the adverse impact on the individual soldier, has been heavy indeed. In addition, the leadership has still not been able to evolve even an effective command structure. Unity of command, so essential in tackling insurgency and terrorism, has unfortunately been sacrificed at the altar of political and administrative expediency. Resultantly, all the gains of the Army soon get largely negated. This is obviously not a situation of “feel good”! The Army is functioning with a shortage of nearly 14,000 officers. This has resulted in gradual over-burdening of the officer cadre at every level, although the maximum impact is at the cutting edge — in combat units. Despite such a high level of shortage, it is nothing short of a miracle that the Army continues to deliver, and in such an efficient manner. On the other hand, our political leadership has failed to do anything to ameliorate this problem, despite numerous recommendations — from restoring the esteem and “izzat” of the soldier, to lateral entry and making a career in the Army an attractive proposition. The part implementation of the Bagga Committee report, from the middle of the year, as announced by the Chief of Army Staff earlier this year, may have only a marginal effect unless other recommendations are implemented in tandem. Even after 55 years of Independence and with five wars and numerous low-intensity conflicts under its belt, the Army awaits for a national war memorial to honour its martyrs, whose numbers continue to increase almost on a daily basis. The Army has been pushing this project for decades, but the files continue to languish in some forgotten cupboard of the Ministry of Defence, with no thought for those brave officers and men who have laid down their lives in the service of the nation. Even the police has a national memorial, nearing completion now, only a few metres away from the prestigious Teen Moorti Bhavan in New Delhi, but a national war memorial is not even on the radar screens of our leadership. Yet the officers and jawans continue to sacrifice themselves for the nation. Our political leadership and its bureaucratic advisers have not been able to come up with a workable system to enable over one million soldiers and their family members to caste their vote. Earlier the system was based on postal ballots, under which barely 2 per cent of the armed forces’ personnel could exercise their right to vote. It was, therefore, changed but the new system of “proxy voting” is equally bad, if not worse. The exercise starts with a soldier filling a long form (Form 13G), which is to be signed by his commanding officer. The soldier then has to authorise a proxy voter through a letter of consent, who signs Form 13G if he agrees. This has to be done before a notary public. Thereafter, the form has to be submitted to the Returning Officer. At the time of polling, the proxy voter has to first prove his identity and then show the authorisation letter to the polling officer. I will not be surprised if less than 2 per cent of soldiers are found to have caste their vote in the current elections. The wives of the soldiers and their eligible children do not have even this facility, because they have been completely ignored A word about the retired community of soldiers. There are about 70 to 80 lakh persons who constitute the retired fraternity of soldiers, and they are an unhappy lot. Their oft-repeated demand for “one rank one pension” has only been met with platitudes, which get an added resonance when elections are near, and which get buried and forgotten as soon as the votes are caste. The writer is a former Vice-Chief of the Army Staff |
The Kota kids KOTA hit the headlines 30 years ago when Post Pokhran I, Uncle Sam stopped supplies to its atomic power station. That it was a blessing in disguise dawned later when Indian scientists developed alternatives to keep the facility fully functional. Earlier, a special stone mined at Kota made it famous. One comes across a beautiful blend of medieval grandeur and modernity in this stone studded, atom powered city. As I came out of the railway station and taxied towards the city 10 km away, a barrage of hoardings of all conceivable colours, shapes and sizes greeted me. A closer scrutiny revealed that they were not put up by political parties busy poll mongering these days. Of course, those types too were visible here and there but were far outnumbered by the ones proclaiming in superlative terms, as to which coaching centre was the “best” and assured sureshot success in competitive examinations leading to admissions to leading engineering and medical institutions across the country. Pictorially presented faculty along with their USPS must be impacting the mindspace of thousands of students and parents who flock to this town every year, with dreams in their eyes and money in their wallet. Curiosity having got the better of me, I discovered to my dismay that Kota is home to about 40,000 non-native students. They live in rooms rented out by all-too-willing house owners who have meticulously met the ballooning demand by expanding vertically. Real estate has appreciated amazingly. The immigrant students are the most sought after category of tenants who make no fuss and shall vacate as soon the session ends. Messes have mushroomed all over the place catering to the teenagers coming from diverse regions of the country. Services of cooks, urchins, milkmen, washermen, ayaahs, et al are in great demand. A veritable windfall for the unskilled unemployed. Bookshop keepers and grocers are doing roaring business. Buoyed by the success stories all around, coaching centres continue to multiply every year promising moon to the students and moolah to the faculty. Since the reputed ones admit students through a screening test, a new breed of pre-coaching centres of coaching has sprung up across the city. Poaching of the fabulously paid faculty by the competing czars has acquired the status of a corporate craft. Cat race rivals the rat race. As a spinoff, the local economy has got a big boost. Both unemployment and crime have been contained, confided the contented citizens. Are these fruits of free market enterprise? Or the multiplier effect of the market economy achieving what the state set out but failed to achieve, or the new economy dominating the old ….. Or the knowledge capital replacing the human capital. Few questions still remain unanswered. Do we have enough top class institutes to accommodate each and every deserving aspirant? Arguably, India needs to produce and promote world class scientists, doctors and engineers to take the country forward. But for them, Kota atomic power station would have quietly closed.
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News analysis
THE Lok Sabha verdict played a cruel joke on Mr Mulayam Singh Yadav. His moment of glory became a period of political despair for the Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh. Who could have imagined that the Samajwadi Party with 36 Lok Sabha seats would not play a significant role in the formation of a secular government in Delhi? Rewind to the period when the Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance government got intoxicated by the triple strike in the assembly elections. The announcement of early Lok Sabha elections caught the demoralised Congress completely off-guard. It started looking for partners to make a fight of what looked like a lost battle. It picked up useful partners in the South and in Bihar and Jharkhand. Nevertheless, without help from UP it still looked an unequal contest. The Bahujan Samaj Party was the first the slam the door on the Congress, perhaps under pressure from the BJP that knew more than was made public about thee Taj corridor fraud. The Congress leaders sought a tie-up with the Samajwadi Party. However, the party’s general secretary Amar Singh sold Mr Mulayam Singh the dream of emerging as a possible candidate for the post of Prime Minister of the Third Front. Why resurrect the Congress that may challenge his position? The Samajwadis ignored even the request of Muslim leaders and organisations for taking the Congress on board to prevent fragmentation of the secular vote. The Congress went through the motion of putting up a fight by going into the contest without an ally in the politically most crucial state. It managed to find only 73 candidates and left the remaining seven seats in UP for “other partners”. On hindsight, it is evident that no political party had inkling about the mood of the voters. As the campaign gained momentum, the voters began sending out strange signals. In constituency after constituency, the Muslim leadership said it wanted to back the Congress to stop the BJP from returning to power. However, where was the Congress? The exit poll predictions after the first round of polling, confined only to eastern UP, made political parties sit up. The Congress campaign came alive. A desperate Mr Amar Singh made a public offer of “seat adjustment” with the Congress. He wanted it to “retire” its candidates in the remaining constituencies in UP in favour of his party. He in turn would direct his candidates to work for the Congress in Madhya Pradesh. There was bad news for the BJP as well. If the Muslim voters returned to the Congress, the upper castes were willing to dump the saffron party. They were unhappy with the choice of Mr Vinay Katiyar, a Kurmi, as the notional leader of the BJP’s campaign in UP. They were also upset with the importance given to Mr Kalayan Singh, a Lodh, for returning to the party. The Muslim voters played more than a routine role in the rout of the saffron party in UP. They ensured the defeat Mr Arif Mohammad Khan in Kaiserganj and Mr Shah Mohammad in Azamgarh as an expression of their rejection of the BJP’s policy of Muslim appeasement. In the remaining constituencies, they voted for the candidates, from among the BSP, the Samajwadi Party and the Congress, who could defeat the BJP. In Allahabad the upper castes, particularly the Brahmins, and the Muslims closed ranks for defeating Dr Murli Manohar Joshi. They had decided to vote en bloc for Mr S.P. Malviya of the Congress. However, Mr Reoti Raman Singh of the Samajwadi Party literally pleaded with them to back him “otherwise the party will throw me out”. They agreed because the basic objective was to ensure the defeat of Dr Joshi. The last-minute decision of the Muslim voters to stay with Mr Mulayam Singh helped the Samajwadi Party to register a stunning victory in UP. The meaning of the whispered words of wisdom of Babu Yadav, manager of the Punjabi Mama Dhaba in Etawah on the highway to Kanpur too became clear. When told about the shift in the Muslim votes away from the Samajwadi Party he said that, “don’t worry. It is our government in UP”. The misuse of the official machinery too helped the Samajwadi Party improve upon its 1999 tally of seats. Three women, all from the Congress, had to withstand the worst of this. Mr Azam Khan faced a similar situation that had made Mr Reoti Raman go begging for votes. He too faced the risk of dismissal as minister if the Samajwadi candidate, Ms Jayaprada, lost to Begum Noor Bano, the sitting Congress member from Rampur. In Farrukhabad at the end of counting of votes, Mrs Louise Khurshid of the Congress had a small lead over her nearest Samajwadi Party rival. The Samajwadis forced a recount and Mr Chandra Bhushan Singh won what appeared to be a close race. A similar fate befell Rajkumari Ratna Singh of the Congress who lost to Mr Akhilesh Pratap Singh of the Samajwadi Party in
Pratapgarh. |
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HAL targets outsourcing
WITH the first flight of the first Nasik-produced Sukhoi-30 MKI expected by the end of this year, the LCA programme proceeding apace with 214 flights to date, export sales of the Advanced Light Helicopter (ALH) and Dornier DO 228, and with several upgrade programmes on hand, Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd (HAL) Chairman N.R. Mohanty feels that HAL’s credibility with the Indian Air Force (IAF) and other global aero-companies is at an all-time high. Excerpts from an interview: Q: What is HAL doing to mitigate the attrition level of the MiG 21? Quite a lot now. As you know, the IAF flies three variants, the FL, the M, and the Bis. The COFAA (Committee on Fighter Aircraft Accidents) report had indicated that 40 per cent of such accidents were due to technical defects, 40 per cent due to pilot error, and 20 per cent bird hits. We concentrated on the technical area. Wherever there has been any dilution of standards, I have been simply ruthless. Two senior managers were actually terminated. Even the IAF has tightened things quite a bit. And now of course, the Advanced Jet Trainer (AJT) deal for the Hawk 100 has been signed. Q: There were reports that HAL had left out some crucial calculations regarding the tooling in the Hawk deal, and consequently, India had to end up paying more? A bogey, coming from the UK. Not true at all. Just like last year’s bogey about us using “spurious” spare parts on the MiGs. Q: What is the status of cooperation with the Russians on building a new “fifth-generation fighter?” The Russians are keen on doing something to rival the Joint Strike Fighter/F-22 Raptor. And we are someone whom they have identified as a primary partner. It involves a lot of money though. It is also a question of evolving something that suits both of us. They have already started making presentations to the Indian Air Force in this regard. Q: The LCA prototypes/technology demonstrators have completed more than 200 flights. The IAF is looking at an interim purchase of a fleet of single-seat fighters. How is the programme holding up? It is actually a pleasure to see the ADA (Aeronautical Development Agency) and HAL teams working as one towards making the LCA a success. Earlier team-work problems were largely due to personality clashes. It is a very homogenous effort now. 214 flights have been completed, and Prototype Vehicle -2 (PV2) should take off soon. We are just waiting for the actuators (devices which move the control surfaces) from Moog, which should come shortly. Work on the Limited Series Production of eight aircraft has already begun. And there is the expectation of a Rs 4000 crore order for 40 LCA, including eight trainer versions. As for the interim purchase, various options are currently being considered. Nothing has been decided. Q: How do you think Indian aviation is positioned to take advantage of the high precision, stand-off range and real time, “sensor-to-shooter-to-commander” links that are revolutionising military technology? The key is to develop a good synergy between DRDO labs, academic institutions, and industry, both public sector and private. We will not be able to take on everything and do it ourselves. We have to explore co-productions, joint ventures, as we are already doing. The ancillary private industry, especially in electronics is coming up very well. We have outsourcing capacity, and as on March 31, we have seen more than 862 firms with orders worth Rs 98 crore just for last year - and that is without material cost included. In the current year, we have targeted Rs 200 crore of outsourcing. Q: The Saras 14-seater Light Transport Aircraft (LTA) being developed by the National Aerospace Laboratories (NAL), with HAL involvement, appears to be getting delayed. Can you give us an update? And is there a market niche for such an aircraft? High speed taxi trials are already going on (at the HAL airport). We should see the first flight by the end of May. And there is definitely a market for the aircraft. But I would like to see more support for it from our civil aviation industry. More than Rs 70 crore is coming from CSIR (Council for Scientific and Industrial Research), and we have pitched in with quite a bit, for the wings, the landing gear, and three other work packages which HAL is responsible for. More support will make a big difference to the programme. Q: There is a plan for a replacement for the HPT-32 basic flight trainer for the IAF… Yes, the project proposal has been finalised, and it should get approved soon. The HPT-32 is a piston-engined trainer, and what we are planning is a turbo-prop, with tandem seating. The IAF training command (headquartered in Bangalore) has already approved it, and we should see clearance from Air Headquarters soon. |
God pervades everywhere and drives all in His will. — Guru Nanak This world is just a gymnasium in which we play; our life is an eternal holiday. — Swami Vivekananda When you are engaged in devotional practices, keep aloof from those who scoff at them, and also from those who ridicule piety and the pious. — Jesus Christ A real teacher is he who is a boundless reservoir of mercy that is ineffable and a friend of all good people that prostrate themselves before him. — Sri Adi Sankaracharya The best hearts are ever the bravest. — Sterne |
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