The Tribune, Chandigarh, India

Points-based sports awards
There is a room for further improvement

Every year the sportspersons of India join in an intense, off-the-field competition. They lobby officials of sports associations and politicians, they lobby through their friends in the media, their coaches and themselves. It’s hard work, but it’s worth the effort for the winners of the national sports awards, which are presented every August. Apart from the honour and certain privileges, the winner of the Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna gets Rs 7,50,000, and each recipient of the Arjuna Award and the Dronacharya Award gets Rs 500,000. Intense competition begets intense disappointment. Last year boxer Paramjeet Samota moved court after being ignored for the Arjuna Award. Shooter Anjali Bhagwat, a selection panel member, last year said that discus thrower Krishna Poonia had called her to lobby for the Khel Ratna for herself. Poonia reacted in anger, and wondered if Bhagwat too had lobbied for the award when she got it in 2003.

In this context, the attempt of the Sports Ministry to lay down guidelines to select sportspersons for the sports awards is a very welcome step. According to the guidelines, medals won in international championships and sports events that are part of Olympics, Asian Games and Commonwealth Games carry a 90 per cent weightage for the awards. A points-based formula has been devised with different medals won in different events carrying different number of points. Ten per cent weightage will be given in view of factors like profile and standard of the sports events, and qualities like leadership, sportsmanship, team spirit, fair play and sense of discipline of the athlete.

However, the guidelines have not ironed out all the flaws in the awards system. For instance, the guidelines note that if a “very deserving sportsperson” misses out on the Arjuna Award, he/she could be recommended for it by the selection committee - this one line introduces an element of subjectivity to the process. There is also lack of clarity on what would be the course of action if, say, 20 sportspersons achieve the same number of points for a given year (the maximum number of Arjunas that can be awarded in a year is 15). As a Sports Ministry official noted, this system is not foolproof. But it must be welcomed with the hope for further improvement.

Thought for the Day

Don't talk about yourself; it will be done when you leave.
— Wilson Mizner

On this day...100 years ago

Lahore, Wednesday, January 7, 1914

Punjab Public Library

THE Punjab Public Library at Lahore is a Provincial Institution. It is serving highly useful purposes but has outgrown its present premises which are in most essential respects quite unsuitable for a Library. The necessity of providing the Library with a well-designed building has been admitted, and the matter has been under the consideration of the local Government now for some months. The selection of a site has, we understand, presented some difficulties. During the past ten years there has been a good deal of activity in building operations in Lahore, and a large number of eligible sites have already have been taken up. There are not many Nazul plots available and the few that can be had have already been bespoken for other purposes. In any case the site selected for the Library should be central one. It should not be far from the city and should, if possible, be easily accessible from the hostels and boarding houses attached to the various educational institutions in Lahore. The largest numbers of those who frequent the Library are students of the various colleges in Lahore, and a site which is not easily accessible to them will, we fear, greatly curtail the usefulness of the Library.

Date-Palm growing in the Punjab

ACCORDING to the latest report of the Economic Botonist the crop of date fruits grown in the Punjab is worth not more than Rs. 12 lakhs per annum. By substituting moderately good trees for the inferior male and female trees, the price per lb. may, he says, be raised to one anna and thus the value of the crop will be raised to Rs. 60 lakhs. There are, however, defects in packing and exposing for sale which ought to be removed to command better prices. Of the Arabian trees planted in 1910 in Multan, Muzaffargarh and Lyallpur, some are bearing fruits. The trees cost Re. 1 each in Multan. Date palm cultivation is to be further encouraged among Punjab farmers in all desirable localities. A pamphlet has been written containing instructions for those who wish to take up date improvement.

ARTICLE

Ringing in a New Year
AAP turns populist, PM speaks up & Musharraf has ‘chest pain’
B.G. Verghese

The assumption of office by the AAP government in Delhi, after some avoidable play-acting, was more important than its winning a vote of confidence which had been guaranteed by the Congress. This marks a historic milestone in India’s parliamentary evolution but the experiment could turn sour sooner than otherwise if Arvind Kejriwal and his colleagues play populist rather than practical politics and indulge in giving away free water and electricity which are in short supply and being sold below cost. Jubilation could turn to grief as there are limits to cross-subsidies, and flagging maintenance for lack of funds could lead to system collapse, aggravated by wastage. The people do not seek subsidies but service and freedom from corruption.

For the BJP to cry foul on account of Congress support to AAP is absurd as that was the very basis of the promised issue-based support from outside. For the moment, two cheers, no more, for AAP.

PM’s press conference

Dr Manmohan Singh has squandered an enormous amount of goodwill and caused avoidable misunderstanding of his own position and that of his government through silence

The other event has been the ushering in of the New Year with a prime ministerial press conference, his third — a tally that speaks of a terrible failure of communication in an era when citizens want to know and cannot be denied without all manner of weird and wrong conclusions being drawn. Dr Manmohan Singh has squandered an enormous amount of goodwill and caused avoidable misunderstanding of his own position and that of his government through silence. The babble of tongues from his colleagues, far from compensating, has only further queered the pitch.

The media speculation, silly as more often than not, was that a “weak” prime minister would use his press conference to announce his resignation and the coronation of Rahul Gandhi. That this did not happen was not "news" as it was simply not going to happen. On the contrary, the PM, who appears weaker than he actually is and has shown that he can be “strong”, was content that history be the judge. He asserted he would remain in office but not seek a third term though he made bold to forecast that the next prime minister would assuredly be from the UPA.

There is much work to do that can be well done within the remaining parliamentary term to complement the anti-corruption architecture of which the newly-enacted Lokpal law is the first step. Temporising on the Mumbai Adarsh Housing Society scandal will not do. Breaking the investment paralysis caused by an overzealous environmental and Luddite no-no-ism would help stimulate the economy, given quick, sensible project clearances, critical de-bottlenecking, more FDI, liberalising more extensive BT research and field trials under rigorous controls. That should be the PM's agenda and some of it is happening.

A ‘national disaster’

Dr Manmohan Singh’s punch line was that “strength” did not lie in presiding over a holocaust (Gujarat 2002) and that should Narendra Modi ever become prime minister, it would be a “national disaster”. The remark has got the BJP squealing. After a magistrate’s court in Ahmedabad exonerated him in the Zakhia Jafri case hearing last month, Modi had expressed relief over a terrible weight being lifted from his shoulders and went on to share with the world his immense pain and personal agony at the bestiality of the Gujarat carnage (presumably including the burning of the Sabarmati Express). What remains unanswered is why there was not the meanest sign or whisper of grief or remorse over the past 12 years either personally or officially. All one heard was about “action-reaction” and venomous vengeance against innocent Muslim victims of genocide.

The Modi government, the VHP and Sangh Parivar did all they could to prevent or delay justice, humanitarian assistance and the restoration of trust, confidence and harmony. The pogrom happened under Modi's direction as both Chief Minister and Home Minister. There was planned administrative paralysis. Every case of significance had virtually to be transferred out of Gujarat or taken out of the hands of his terrified and compromised administration. An Editor's Guild fact-finding team grilled Modi and a panoply of senior officials. There was not a trace of agony or remorse in his words, only incoherent excuses. The government's official press statements and broadcasts, all of which are on record, were more triumphalist than informative.

The Nanavati Commission, appointed in March 2002, has been given a 21st “final” extension and will now report, if ever it concludes the farce, by the end of June 2014 by when Modi expects to be prime minister and, hopefully, able to effect a judicial closure. Does the BJP-Hindutva lobby recall Vajpayee’s plaintive plea to Modi to remember his “raj dharma”. And recall too how Vajpayee's bid to remove him as Gujarat's Chief Minister at the party’s Goa conclave was scuttled.

The farce in Pakistan

The Gujarat drama is akin to what appears to be the farce unfolding in Pakistan. Last week Musharraf developed chest pain while being driven to court to be tried for treason for ousting a democratically elected government through a post-Kargil military coup. He had evaded two previous summonses and was now swiftly diverted to a military hospital where he is incommunicado, undergoing treatment for a severe “heart attack”. The government and/or THE Army obviously believe that the trial of a former Army Chief could be politically destabilising and is best avoided. It would therefore be convenient if Musharraf could be sent abroad for quiet treatment and undisturbed recovery, possibly in Saudi Arabia, a staunch friend at any time of trouble. How things shape remains to be seen; but after the staged Abbottabad-Osama saga anything is possible.

Manmohan Singh confirmed at his press conference that India and Pakistan had come very close to signing an agreement on Kashmir in 2007 when Musharraf found himself hoist with his own petard. The Manmohan-Musharraf formula envisaged the LOC metamorphosing into a sovereign soft frontier with internal autonomy on both sides and joint management of trade, exchange and even waters, developing into a loose J&K Confederation. Something on these lines remains the only way forward.

Pakistan faces an existential crisis. It has to find the courage and wisdom to accept that reconciliation with India is the pathway to its salvation. The political and ideological lie it has lived with hatred of India its sole identity marker as some kind of Islamist champion has been its nemesis. It has no need to self-destruct.

www.bgverghese.com

MIDDLE

When it starts to go all wrong
Rashmi Oberoi

There are days when it is imperative that things move in precision as everything is planned out accordingly. But it can all go wrong. And when it starts to go wrong...there are panic attacks, blood pressure rising and plunging pretty fast and a mad dash to control the crisis.

It started with an ‘always-on-time’ train, but ended up being delayed by just not minutes but three hours on that fateful day. Annoying, but worse when one has to catch a connecting flight. The leeway in between to reach home, freshen up, grab some breakfast, repack suitcases and leave for the airport well in time to stroll through the shops at T3 seemed like a distant dream now.

A mad dash out of the station, literally charging through people and grabbing the first available taxi and telling the cab driver to shut up, stop haggling and move pronto. But of course, there is nowhere to go; there is a beautiful jam. Squirming in your seat and sighing does not help. Finally we move as fast as we possibly can in Delhi traffic.

Once home, clothes are thrown around, a haphazard re-packing, a quick shower and breakfast stuffed in while a mental check-list is ticked off. My local cab guy is nowhere in sight even though we are fast approaching the departure time. Five minutes, he says. Ominous as it stretches to 20. Pacing up and down offers no solace.

The driver is greeted by scowling faces. The bags are thrown in and we are on our way. Jams in every corner of Gurgaon are common. Finally on the expressway, the driver steps on the pedal and zooms while I close my eyes and pray for a miracle. I resist smacking the driver when he gleefully tells us that he had brought us in the nick of time.

It takes us ages just to enter the airport because the security guys are annoyingly slow. The check-in counter has snaking long queues and bored attendants in no rush to check in passengers. Another waiting game. Finally, armed with our boarding passes, we are greeted by another queue at the security gate. The guards are chit-chatting, a scratch here, a scratch there, a yawn, some stretching too. Jeez! I lose my patience and crisply tell the guard that we are getting late. A couple behind me voices its anxiety as well. Ha! What do they care?

The hand luggage moves at a snail’s pace and I go in for my security check. The ‘titanium’ in me sets off the bells. I explain my ‘condition’ as fast as possible...am a pro at it but the police woman wants to chat some more and is quite sympathetic to my lethal arm. Bidding her a hasty goodbye, I move to retrieve my handbag. That is still on the belt as the security guys have discovered a huge pair of scissors in a foreigner’s laptop bag. Excitement! I give him the ‘once-over’ as a potential hijacker though I am saddened by the fancy pair being discarded in a bin. Tch! What a waste!

Minutes left and we are on the run. Huffing and puffing we make it through the last call and the pasted smiles on the air-hostesses' faces are not welcoming at all but we take our seats with a sigh of relief.

OPED — Defence

Jointness is no substitute for the CDS system
Centralised operational control and conduct of war by the Chief of Defence Staff is projected as an impingement on political control. Operations are invariably conducted within the framework of political direction and policy. Fears of relegation of political authority if the CDS system is adopted are ill founded and mischievously raised to scare the ignorant
Lt Gen Harwant Singh (Retd)

Consequent to the Kargil conflict in 1999, Arun Singh and K Subhramanyam committees were constituted. The latter was required to essentially look into the Kargil conflict in its varied aspects. This committee at one point in its lengthy report, made a preposterous observation that the Prime Minister and the Raksha Mantri did not have the benefit of getting the advice of army commanders and their equivalent in the navy and air force, meaning thereby that they must seek advise from them. The number of such commanders in the three services is more than a dozen. Obviously our expert on national security was oblivious of the imperatives of the chain of command in the military!

Arun Singh had asked this writer to give his committee a presentation on the future shape of the army, etc. Besides recommending the raising of a mountain corps for operations along the border with Tibet, the inescapable requirement of adoption of the Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) system was projected. To start with, two theater commands were suggested by the committee -- one for the Andaman and Nicobar Islands and the other for Jammu and Kashmir (J&K). To alley misgivings of the air force, the first commander of the proposed J&K theater command (the most active command) could be an air force officer.

Disjointed Command
Creation of the post of CDS was recommended by the Kargil Review Committee in 2000
A cabinet committee on national security under LK Advani approved the recommendation. However this was later pushed under the carpet
The Naresh Chandra Committee moots a permanent Chairman, Chiefs of Staff Committee as a single point of advice to the government, but is no better than the present arrangement as the operational control of each service still rests with the respective service chief
More recently the Integrated Defence Staff was created as an adjunct to the MoD. Such cosmetic dressing up of the defence operational systems is of little avail
The possibility of a two front war haunts military planners. While there have been efforts to work out systems and organisations to attend to larger issues of national security, the conduct of operations is being glossed over

Under the CDS system there is a single point of military advice to the government and the overall operational command rests with the CDS as well. Operational command of various theaters rest with theater commanders whose forces may be from two or all three services, depending on the geographical details of their theater. The theater commander could be from any service. The CDS would exercise overall operational command over various theater commands, as well as over intelligence directorates of the three services through the Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA). In this system the staff functions would rest with the service chiefs in regard to their respective service.

Later a cabinet committee on national security under former Home Minister LK Advani approved the recommendations of the Arun Singh committee with special emphasis on adopting the CDS system. However these recommendations were pushed under the carpet and later the Naresh Chandra committee was constituted. One of the recommendations of Naresh Chandra Committee is that the post of Chairman, Chiefs of Staff Committee should be permanent and function as a single point of advice to the Prime Minister and the Raksha Mantri. This proposal is neither here nor there and is no better than the present arrangement because the operational control of each service still rests with the respective service chief and this permanent chairman will be stumped when confronted with conflicting views from the other service chiefs.

The main opposition to the CDS system has been from the air force over the imaginary fear of being overwhelmed by its larger sister service, the army. The bureaucracy too has been against adopting this system on the ill founded fears that the CDS will become too powerful and the present position, where the defence secretary is designated as the person responsible for the defence of India, will be eroded. At some point of time even army chiefs have not favoured this system on fear of losing operational control over the army. It all boils down to narrow parochial interests and of turf tending.

Antiquated defence apparatus

No major democracy in the world has as antiquated and obsolete operational defence apparatus as that of India. The present system was bequeathed to us at the time of Independence by Lord Hastings Ismay, a British general who was Winston Churchill's chief military assistant during the Second World War and later Lord Mountbatten’s Chief of Staff in India, and has remained more or less unchanged. Subsequently defence services headquarters were designated as departments of the Ministry of Defence (MoD rather than part of it. A dysfunctional Chiefs of Staff Committee (COSC) was created with the senior most amongst the the three service chiefs being its chairman. The difference between “jointness” and unity of operational command has never been fully grasped or may have be purposefully ignored. More recently, the Integrated Defence Staff (IDS) was created as an adjunct to the MoD. Such cosmetic dressing up of the defence operational systems is of little avail. While there have been efforts to work out systems and organisations to attend to larger issues of national security, the conduct of operations as such is being glossed over.

The dysfunctional character of Indian defence apparatus first surfaced during the 1962 war against China, where due to lack of any central control in the conduct of operations, the air force stayed out when it could have played a decisive role in that conflict. In the 1965 war against Pakistan, the IAF aircraft came in to halt the enemy advance in the Chhamb Sector of J&K and instead destroyed our own vehicles carrying artillery ammunition and supplies. During the Kargil conflict, the air force’s procrastination in joining the battle is all too well known, as also its lack of training in high altitude warfare. Even so advocacy of “jointness” rather than unity of command continues to this day!

Unity of command

A battle is so much like an orchestra, where a hundred instruments of varying tone and tenor may strike their own notes and yet have to play the same tune. To coordinate and mesh the sound of varied musical instruments there is only one conductor. So also, in battle there has to be only one overall commander who must work out and coordinate the application of various instruments of fighting in all their varied forms, scale and timing to achieve the right outcome. Unity of command is an important principle of war and as such all successful battles have had only one commander who employed and controlled various components of his force. In modern times some more instruments of war have been added such as aircraft, missiles, etc.

In the military, unity of command has been an important principle of war and a historical determinant. It is with the advent of the air force that this concept of unified command saw a discordant note, more so in India. Often two and sometimes all the three services may be grouped to achieve a common goal of defeating the enemy in a particular theatre. Command of such a grouping has to devolve on a single commander, who may be from any of the three services. At higher levels advisers are available from the other service(s) to provide inputs to the overall theatre commander on technical and tactical aspects of employment of the components of their respective service.

To have large defence forces at enormous expense and not be able to optimise the potential of their combined capabilities is inexplicable and inexcusable. Modern warfare demands not only unified command but an organisation fully responsible for operational control, which should determine the range of equipping of the forces, the type of weaponry, be these of navy, army or air force and the same being in consonance with the nature of threats, type and scale of operations envisaged, tactics to be employed and future developments in weapons and equipment etc. The full potential of a unified command and collective application of forces otherwise cannot achieve the desired results.

Blame for Defence Research and Development Organisation’s (DRDO) failure to deliver squarely rests with the MoD under whose control it operates, with no interaction with the army at the stage of developing equipment. This isolation from the army at this stage also leads to absence of essential inputs from the user. If the navy has done better, it is because it exercises control over that component of DRDO which works for the development of weapons and equipment for that service. Of the three DRDO laboratories dedicated to the navy, one to two of them are invariably headed by senior naval officers. In the case of the army, DRDO brings in the user only at the final stage of trials. Similarly Defence Public Sector Undertakings and the Ordinance Factories are controlled by the MoD. They regularly overcharge for the items supplied to the forces (BEML’s TATRA vehicles being one such recent example) and deliver shoddy equipment.

The possibility of a two front war haunts military planners. Such a situation will require a well thought out strategy and careful and judicious distribution of resources for each front. It is near impossible to adequately meet such a national security challenge with the existing arrangement of the Chiefs of Staff Committee system, even with “jointness” and a permanent chairman of this Committee. Centralised operational control and conduct of war by the CDS is projected as an impingement on political control and policy. Operations are invariably conducted within the framework of political direction and policy. Fears of relegation of political authority if the CDS system is adopted are ill founded and mischievously raised to scare the ignorant. “Jointness” does not work under periods of great stress and war does produce some very stressful moments. Finally “jointness” is an India innovation and one may rightly term it as a “Jugard.”

The writer is a former Deputy Chief of Army Staff