P A G E
Monday, August 2, 1999
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E D I T O R I A L P A G E |
Monday, August 2, 1999 |
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A
half-house solution
India’s
reaction on Kargil |
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SC
stress on the spirit of law
Let
specialists conduct Kargil probe
Man
of mini miracles
Bombay
elections |
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A half-house solution AN uneasy truce has been declared between the reborn Janata Dal and the BJP, the captain of the National Democratic Alliance. Both sides will cease exchange of accusations and threats and wait for the Election Commission to decide the symbol issue between the two unevenly split Janata Dal factions. Ironically, it is the BJP that is keenly interested in the outcome and hopes that its potential ally in the Dal loses the case for the time being. That way the J.H.Patel faction in Karnataka will have to fight the coming poll on the Lok Shakthi symbol and that will provide a fig leaf to the Hindutva parivar to claim that it has nothing to do with the discredited group. This will not insulate the BJP unit in Karnataka from the adverse fallout of embracing a ruling party and the inevitable incumbency factor. But a fig leaf has its own uses; it creates an illusion for the badly bruised to believe in. Leaders of the state unit of the BJP are visibly seething in anger and accuse the central leadership, particularly Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, of cheating them of what at one time appeared a certain victory. And they are not far wrong. The ruling Janata Dal was going through a self-induced death rattle every alternate month. The Congress was moribund and the half-hearted attempts to prop up a credible caste alliance had collapsed. The controversy about Mrs Sonia Gandhi’s foreign origin had demoralised the workers and leaders alike who did not know how to meet the opposition challenge. It was at this moment, when things seemed propitious for the BJP, that Mr George Fernandes thought of strengthening the NDA by dragging in a section of the Janata Dal, the party he once belonged to, but actually to increase his own clout within the ruling alliance at the Centre. The August 7 rally at Bangalore and the keeping out of the BJP are clear pointers The solo flight by the Defence Minister with some assistance from Mr Ramakrishna Hegde was welcome to the Prime Minister who is keen to counter the hawks in the party top hierarchy and increase the influence of non-party men like Mr Fernandes or new party men like Mr Rangarajan Kumaramangalam. Mr Vajpayee continues with this policy despite his not-so-happy memory with Mr Jagmohan, another new entrant to the BJP. The bitter protest and
well-grounded misgivings of the Karnataka BJP will be
quelled and it will be made to embrace the Patel group;
maybe the voters too will overlook the brief quarrelling
interlude but some permanent damage seems to have been
caused to the party. The BJP leadership appears eager to
buy peace at any cost, mostly at the cost of its policies
and reputation as a principled political entity. This is
the pattern that emerges from its dealings with the
AIADMK, Shiv Sena, Trinamool Congress, INLD of Haryana
and now the Samata-Lok Shakthi combine. For a party that
hopes to come to power on its own steam, perpetual
vacillation and readiness to accommodate even whimsical
demands are a negative virtue. This proclivity extends to
core issues. The plank it wants to fight the elections
— past and present — keeps changing: Sonia is
an issue one day only to be replaced by Kargil today.
Granted Kargil promises to be a mascot but what happened
to all the froth over the Rome Rajya? The electorate may
not ask this question, but the party itself should. |
AIDS emergency THE developed world clearly lacks the political will to do what it should, with surplus resources at its disposal, for reducing the scale of poverty-related problems like starvation and disease to acceptable levels in the Third World. The prosperous nations evidently do not have a conscience to respond to the findings of the UNICEF, one of the few international organisations doing useful work by highlighting the problems of the global under-class through well researched and documented annual reports. Like a helpless Samaritan the organisation in its 1998 report on “The Progress of Nations” once again appealed to the rich countries to reduce the poor countries’ debt burden and help them face the AIDS emergency, which if ignored may prove more devastating than all the destructive wars the twentieth century has witnessed. The next millennium may see the global community helplessly grappling with AIDS-induced deaths unless the rich nations decide to change their priorities and follow the road map prepared painstakingly by UNICEF for banishing hunger and disease from the world. The G-8 nations need not be told over and over again about their collectively responsibility in recognising that over half the world’s poor are children. Most of them are likely to be remembered as the ‘‘AIDS orphans” who could have been spared the agony of a slow, painful and early death had the rich spared even a fraction of the amount of money they spend on arming themselves for protection against conflicts which they themselves create. According to the UNICEF report AIDS is taking a terrible toll of women and children, specially in Africa. Out of nearly 6,00,000 infected children in 1998, well over 5,00,000 were African and out of 14 million people who have already died of AIDS, 11 million lived in Africa, one-quarter of them children. More than 7,000 young men and women around the world are infected every day, as are an additional 1,600 children under the age of 15. What should cause more
disquiet is the fact that in most African countries nine
out of 10 people do not even know that they are infected.
Children who survive their parents swell the ranks of
AIDS orphans who number eight million around the world,
90 per cent of them in sub-Saharan Africa. Between 1994
and 1997 the number of AIDS orphans rose by 400 per cent
in Namibia, South Africa, Cambodia and India. With little
or no resources for meeting their basic needs most of the
“infected” countries have no option but to
ignore the implementation of the AIDS prevention
programmes. It is doubtful whether the rich nations would
even bother to read the UNICEF report in which it has
been pointed out that the poor countries have not been
able to give their people the benefits of basic social
services like health, nutrition, cleanliness and
education. Their situation is that of the village poor
who cannot raise enough money to repay even a part of the
instalments of the ever-mounting debt of the
“sahukar”. Sub-Saharan Africa alone owes a
whopping amount of $200 billion to the global
moneylenders. The debt works out to more than 300 per
cent of the GDP of Somalia and Nicaragua, over 200 per
cent that of Angola or Mauritania. Unless the rich
countries realise their moral obligation of helping them
get out of the debt trap there is no chance of the
under-developed countries being able to cope with the
AIDS emergency knocking at their door. The report says
that out of seven million infected patients in Asia more
than four million are from India alone. However, as far
as India is concerned the disease is spreading at an
alarming rate not because of want of resources but
because of collective indifference to the seriousness of
the problem and ignorance about how it is transmitted to
healthy individuals. When trained medical doctors refuse
to “touch” AIDS patient there is little that
can be done to provide relief to the sufferers. |
India’s
reaction
on Kargil LONG after the Pakistanis have gone home and the peaks of Kargil have again started basking in the glory of an Indian sun, our country will remember the war with a kind of satisfaction that had not touched its experience for a long time. Forget about victory or defeat, the story is over the unity it displayed in meeting the challenge. Pakistan in contrast was disunited, discomfited and acrimonious within itself. For India’s united stand, the people should get full marks. India has always shown great unity in the face of external danger but this time it achieved great heights. The fine young men who died, the courage their families showed, the hundreds and thousands who thronged to pay tribute to the martyrs and the sacrifices the others happily made to contribute their mite is something for the nation to remember — and for its enemies and critics to treat India with respect. Of course, there has come about a distraction. Without being deliberately timed and just by accident, the elections have followed the war. This, to the credit of all parties, was not designed to be so. These just came about like that. Maybe Pakistan had thought that it might get away with it because India was in the throes of internal political strife. Elections always bring about a loud airing of internal disputes, and it has to be so this time too. This is natural. It set political parties talking about the way the war was handled. This too is natural. There is a debate on whether the war should become an issue in the elections but this is only of academic interest. The way the war was fought and the ignorance about the intrusion are bound to be talked about. No one should feel sorry about it. This is bound to happen in any circumstance and more so in the elections. It is futile for the parties to demand that the war should not become an election issue. You cannot stop men and women at the hustings debating it. If, for instance, the leaders do not talk about it, the people will. They will ask questions, give out points of criticism as well as shower praise. There is no doubt that the war is going to be a major issue in the elections. Those who want it to be an issue and those who don’t may show a sign of divergence in the country during electioneering but it has to be so. We should not feel disheartened about it. What, alas, is not at present so dominant in the public view is the unity the country has shown during the war. This needs to be specially stressed because it would otherwise get taken for granted. For the country’s unity is going to be the great story of this year’s conflict, as important as the war itself. India has put forth its best face in showing total unity during the war. The story of this achievement deserves to be written in bold letters. Kargil is a small, tiny part of India, far removed from the hustle and bustle of cities and villages. But it is of vital importance. When India heard that the Pakistanis, first being paraded as freedom fighters and later grudgingly accepted as regulars of its army, a wave of concern spread over the country. At first the news came in driblets and the official agencies did not appear to be telling everything. It was only a matter of days when the flood of the hitherto unknown intrusions spread. A country which was proud of the fact that no external agency had known about India’s nuclear explosion now sat glum wondering why it did not know what had happened for weeks after the intrusion had taken place, the bunkers built by Indian forces had been occupied by the Pakistanis and the peaks conquered so that the Indian soldiers found it difficult to march forward. The country was alarmed and questions started being asked how was it that the Pakistanis had spread deep across the Line of Control. The news came as a shock because only a few months earlier the country had witnessed the greatest show so far of friendship between India and Pakistan when Mr Atal Behari Vajpayee drove in a bus across Wagah to Lahore. Most Indians then felt that the long bad night of conflicts with Pakistan was over — only to learn later that at that very time the intruders were being slipped across the LoC to occupy positions that might cut off Srinagar from Leh and make it impossible for India to go to that part of the country. This is the time when Indian unity showed its best face. This was seen not only in the crowds at the recruiting offices of the Army where thousands of young men collected to become future jawans. When they were turned away because India did not need so many soldiers some of them exploded in anger. Side by side came the grim news of the Pakistanis inflicting heavy damage on our forces. In the first few days we lost three of our aircraft near the LoC. It had to happen because we couldn’t cross the line. Television brought the war into the sitting rooms of every family. The Pakistanis shot at the Indian soldiers manfully going up the mountain inclines. Many young Indians, most of them in their late teens and early twenties, fell across the rocks. In a manner well handled by the Army machinery each slain soldier was taken to his native place often thousands of miles away. This too was a job well done. It was not easy to carry each body to every native village and town. How did the people react? Families, neighbours, townspeople turned up at the airports, along the procession routes and at the final resting places. The mourning numbers, at places numbering lakhs, wrote the history of national unity. Everyone in every city or village where the funerals were held felt a kinship with the slain hero, be he an ordinary soldier or an officer. The next of kin had little to do. Towns and villages took up the work along with the men of the army. The localities thronged with the shouts hailing the motherland and the slain heroes. Religious divisions were forgotten. Everyone became one. The men who had given their lives for our tomorrow became the sons of the country. India gloried through them. The question now is whether this will continue to be so. Everyone hopes that this will be so. In the tragedy of each family the cities and towns and villages illustrated the rare glory of India. It was a clarion call to the world that in times of danger nothing can subdue India. The religious faith of each martyr did not matter. What mattered was that each of them had died for India. This is the story of the glory to the motherland. Everyone thought that the men who had given their lives belonged to the larger family. Someone to inspire and to be proud of. Mostly the men who had given their all were often poor people from ordinary households. They are to be looked after. A wave of help spread. A bride gave her wedding jewellery. There were those who gave large sums of money, much of which they could ill afford. Some sent truck-loads of supplies. India was at its best in
reacting to the war. In beating back the enemy it showed
a strength that would be written in letters of gold. This
kind of unity was as important as the victory. Kargil has
shown that despite differences India is one whatever the
political victories the people will fight for. The
elections may show many political divisions in the
country, but the war proved that India is one. |
Hysteria over Taiwan BEIJING is fuming. It is very angry because President Lee Teng-hui of Taiwan recently told a German radio station that since the beginning of this decade “we have redefined cross-strait (across Taiwan Strait on both sides) relations as nation-to-nation, or at least special nation-to-nation relations.” He added: “Under such special nation-to-nation relations, there is no longer any need to declare Taiwanese independence.” In other words, Taiwan is effectively a sovereign state. The choice of a German media outlet for the interview is instructive, perhaps to underline the German situation during the Cold War when Germany was divided into two sovereign states. The German analogy was probably in Lee’s mind, when he talked of Taiwan’s “nation-to-nation... relations” with China. Beijing, though, insists that Taiwan is China’s “renegade” province. And has been warning that it will use force to unify the island with mainland if Taipei were to declare independence. Apparently, Taiwan has no intention of declaring independence. Indeed, as Lee reportedly told Darryl Johnson, US representative in Taiwan, “Our mainland policy has not changed. He maintained that he had only redefined Taipei-Beijing relationship to bring it in line with reality. If so, it might be a case of much ado about nothing. At the same time, the USA has reiterated its one-China policy. In other words, there is no real change in Taiwan’s situation. But Beijing is talking tough and threatening to unify Taiwan by force. According to Gen Chi Haotian, China’s Defence Minister, its armed forces are “ready at any time to safeguard the territorial integrity of China and smash any attempt to separate the country.” In a similar vein, the official media has warned, “The army will never tolerate separatist conspiracies or sit idly by and watch even an inch of territory being cut off without taking action.” It has vilified President Lee of Taiwan as a “traitor” and “a criminal... who will leave a stink for a thousand years... (and) will certainly be spat on by all Chinese, including Taiwan compatriots.” President Lee must by now be used to such coarse “epithets” from China. Such intemperate language is likely to further strengthen his popular base at home. The point is what led President Lee to redefine Taiwan’s ties with China in accordance with the existing political reality. One can only speculate. There are some powerful elements in business and politics in Taiwan keen to work out an acceptable (to China) modus vivendi with Beijing. And they have the support of some similarly inclined elements in American establishment. Within Taiwan, for instance, James Soong, former Taiwan provincial governor, looks like making a grab for the President’s post in next year’s elections as an independent candidate. According to Hong Kong-based Far Eastern Economic Review, “Soong has widened his rift with President Lee Teng-hui by distancing himself from government policies that have infuriated Beijing and indirectly created trouble for Washington.” He has advocated rapprochement with China by accommodating its political sensitivities and opening direct trade and investment links. In an interview with The Washington Post, he proposed some specific initiatives to improve relations with the mainland. And earned the influential US newspaper’s praise as an “architect of Taiwan’s democratic reforms.” Such characterisation of Soong, according to the Review, has been widely disputed on the island. But it has “the advantage of winning friends in Washington and tacit approval from Beijing.” In other words, Soong and his political and business friends are emerging as Beijing’s tacit pressure groups to influence Taipei’s China-policy. They hope this will win them popular support at home, as people do not want to provoke China. Particularly when such “moderation” has support and encouragement of some elements in the American establishment. But by redefining and refocusing on the reality of Taipei-Beijing relationship as political equals, President Lee is forcing their hand. Most people in Taiwan, while they do not want trouble with China, appear to favour maintaining their political identity. While in the USA, China is not terribly popular either. Beijing’s announcement that it has the neutron bomb will simply confirm American suspicions about their stolen nuclear secrets. Therefore, Lee seems to have outmanoeuvred his political opponents. Of course, he has taken
a calculated risk by refocusing on the Beijing-Taipei
political equation. Predictably, China has threatened
Taiwan with all sorts of consequences. The question now
is: will China launch a military invasion of Taiwan? Most
unlikely, considering that the USA will not sit idly by.
According to Mr James Rubin, the US State Department
spokesman, “We would determine and consider any
effort to undermine the future of Taiwan by other than
peaceful means as a threat to the peace and security of
the Western Pacific area, and of grave concern to the
United States.” Indeed, under the Taiwan Relations
Act of 1979 the USA is obliged to take
“appropriate” “steps in the event of a
mainland invasion of the island. |
Man
of mini miracles AN uncommonly common man who splashes colour onto your life is the auto-rickshaw driver in the city beautiful. He is an interesting and colourful character, though a bit quaint and shrewd. He is law unto himself. Flamboyant and articulate, he poses as a suffering replica of Anil Kapoor and sincerely thinks that one day he will make it big in films. He will then drive imported cars rather than ply an auto-rickshaw “in the city of miserly Babus.” He does not possess a degree from a college or university but he has learnt a lot from the high school of life. He is an astute psychologist. He sizes up his customer in the twinkling of an eye. It seems that he is endowed with a sixth sense which tells him whether the customer is a newcomer to the city or an old hat. The customer is free to choose his destination but our dear driver is free to charge the fare he fancies. The reason is simple: he drives on the left side of the road, but he knows how to be on the right side of the police! Once he agrees to “oblige” you by taking you to your destination, he kicks “Guddu and Pappu” that is the name he has given to his vehicle. If it refuses to start, he expresses his anger thus, “Thandi ho gai hai.” He kicks it furiously again, utters some picturesque phrases and swears revenge. The “gaddi” gets going and it coughs out of the “adda”. When a pedestrian comes in the way, he cranes his neck out and showers abuse on him in chaste and practised language. He lets out a volley, “Bloke. If you want to die, first get yourself insured!” When in a high mood, he smells of bidi and raw onions. Then, he bursts into a “filmi” song of his choice. In between snatches of the song, he lewdly comments on women walking on the roadside. He is well-informed about the city lights! Talk to him on anything regarding it, and he has the information on his fingertips. He has inside knowledge up his sleeve about houses of entertainment. He lets skeletons tumble down the cupboards. He is an ace driver. He can drive you through the thickest traffic at a speed which makes you apply imaginary brakes from the back seat. He thinks your body has no bones in it. He can take you to your destination through the longest route without your realising that you are being taken for a ride! This man of mini
miracles can accomplish anything while on the wheel
except one thing: he cannot run his meter. Is any police
official reading? |
SC stress on the spirit of law
“CONDUCTING a fair trial for those who are accused of a criminal offence is the cornerstone of our democratic society. A conviction resulting from an unfair trial is contrary to our concept of justice. Conducting a fair trial is both for the benefit of the society as well as for an accused and cannot be abandoned”. Thus spake a five-Judge Bench of the Supreme Court headed by the Chief Justice of India on July 21, shifting the spotlight back again from the populism of criminal prosecution to the level-headedness of criminal justice. “Indeed, in every case,” says the Chief Justice of India, speaking on behalf of the Bench, “the end result is important but the means to enforce it must remain above board. The remedy cannot be worse than the disease itself.” The observation addresses, I am apt to believe, much more than the specific issue directly before the court — the breach of Section 50 of the NDPS Act, which requires that a suspect be searched for illicit drugs in the presence of a magistrate or a notified gazetted officer, if he so desires, in order to ensure the authenticity of the recovery and rule out planting of contraband by the police. But even as regards drug law enforcement, it represents a distinctly anti-populist approach. “The argument that keeping in view the growing drug menace, an insistence on compliance with all the safeguards contained in Section 50 may result in more acquittals,” says the CJI, “does not appeal to us”. While interpreting various provisions of a statute, the object of the legislation has to be kept in mind but “at the same time the interpretation has to be reasonable and fair.” We hold (he says) that the provisions of Section 50 “implicitly make it imperative and obligatory” for the investigating officer to inform the suspect that he has the right to have his personal search conducted before a gazetted officer or a magistrate, if he so desires. The protection thus provided to the accused is “sacrosanct and indefeasible and cannot be disregarded by the prosecution except at its own peril.” The use of evidence collected in breach of the safeguards provided in Section 50 would (he continues) render the trial unfair. Even if the trial be not vitiated, holds the CJI (drawing a subtle distinction between the trial per se and the outcome of the trial), it would definitely render the conviction and sentence of an accused invalid. That is because contraband seized from his person during a search conducted illegally in violation of Section 50 cannot be used as evidence of unlawful possession of the contraband. And with that, the last-mentioned point the Bench takes a big stride forward in criminal and evidentiary jurisprudence, leaving many other common law nations behind. From mother England to the USA, from Ireland to Australia, from Canada to Scotland and from Kenya to Jamaica, few rules have provoked a greater controversy in the world of law than the “exclusionary rule”. The rule that evidence obtained illegally, or from illegal searches, should be excluded from the trial for it is no better than the “fruit of a poisoned tree”. “In their Lordships’ opinion,” declared the Privy Council in 1955 in Kuruma’s case from Kenya, followed by the Supreme Court of India in 1974, “the test to be applied in considering whether evidence is admissible, is whether it is relevant to the matters in issue. If it is, it is admissible and the court is not concerned with how the evidence was obtained.... (As the Court of Queen’s Bench put it in 1861) It matters not how you get it; if you steal it even, it would be admissible.” This “ignoble shortcut to conviction,” retorted the American Supreme Court in Mapp versus Ohio six years later, “tends to destroy the entire system of constitutional restraints on which the liberties of the people rest.” Holding that all evidence obtained by illegal searches and seizures is inadmissible, the court explained: “Our decision, founded on reason and truth, gives to the individual no more than that which the Constitution guarantees him, to the police officer no less than that to which honest law enforcement is entitled, and, to the court, that judicial integrity so necessary in the true administration of justice.” Neither the first nor the second approach is sustainable, said the Irish Supreme Court in O’Brien’s case in 1965. Evidence obtained by methods of gross personal violence or other methods offending against the essential dignity of the human person should not be received. An absolute exclusionary rule also opens up equal difficulties, it held. It prevents the admission of relevant and vital facts where “unintentional or trivial illegalities” have been committed in the course of ascertaining the facts. “Fairness does not require such an (absolute) rule and common sense rejects it.” Some intermediate solution, it said, must be found. The July 21 judgement of our own Supreme Court echoes the American approach. It appears nonetheless to have heeded the caution administered by the Irish and resisted the temptation of expressing itself in extreme terms. Rather than overrule, therefore, its own earlier opinion in Pooran Mal’s case of 1974, taking a contrary view of the exclusionary rule, it has “distinguished” it to an extent that it survives only in name. This is the way the
court is steering law reform nowadays: moderately and
unobtrusively, remaining within its jurisdiction and not
treading on anyone’s toes. |
Let specialists conduct
Kargil probe IT was the best of times. It was the worst of times. It was a time when a grateful nation was celebrating the sacrifice of 500 young Indians, all soldiers, who fought man, machine and nature, as few have done before. At altitudes where such battles have rarely ever been fought. Another gallant 500 lost a limb or both and the only favour they sought from their hospital beds: “I want to get back to the frontline”, perhaps unaware that they may never be able to walk again. There were mothers barely able to hide their grief, wishing they have another son to sacrifice at the altar of the motherland. There was that memorable photograph of a serving uniformed Army wife saluting the wooden box holding the mortal remains of her husband, an officer, like her, who too had paid with his life for our sake. It was the worst of times. The guns were still booming, days after the Pakistani troops supposedly withdrew, across our frontiers in Kargil and elsewhere along the Line of Control, taking fresh toll of our soldiers. And amidst the dust and din of the battlefront, finding an echo in the fartherest corners of the land, we had mealy-mouthed politicians trying to make political capital out of the military saga that has been Kargil. There was this politician, who ostensibly has donned an officer’s uniform once, making the profound observation on one of the TV channels that “the Army has done good (sic) but has the government done”. As if the Army was fighting on its own, with neither the government nor the people backing it up. The man wouldn’t stop at that. He want on and on: What was the point in dropping bombs on our own territory; what was the point in letting our soldiers die on our own land. The man obviously had no idea that Kargil was about regaining the land occupied stealthily by Pakistani intruders. He didn’t say it in so many words, but what he was suggesting could only mean that we should have forgotten Kargil and opened another front elsewhere. That did make military sense, as any Indian soldier knew, but Kargil, for all the savage battles fought on high mountain ridges, was but a limited operation where the objective was to throw out the intruders and to establish the sanctity of the LoC. But our man, like his eminent leader, would have none of it. He, like her, had to extract maximum political mileage out of Kargil and to achieve the objective he/she would go to any length, even to pooh pooh the military significance of the operation. Post-mortems there must be and there, indeed will be. But such exercises should not be carried out in the midst of an electoral campaign. More so, when we know the mettle of our political class. If there have been intelligence lapses we must by all means go thoroughly into these but not in an atmosphere of recrimination. Mind you, these inquiries have to be carried out by thorough professionals not by Supreme Court judges and not even via the “review committee” headed by K. Subrahmaniam which the government has already appointed. One trust our Commanders, from the three Services, are competent men, imbued with the qualities that mark out leaders from the mob. The three Service chiefs should be given a free hand to conduct a joint inquiry into the alleged security lapses. Since the Research and Analysis Wing, Intelligence Bureau and intelligence gathering wings of the Border Security Force and Central Reserve Police Force are also said to be involved in the “lapses” their top nominees could also be involved in such an in-house probe. One cannot see the government’s review committee on the right forum for such a probe, particularly when the head of the team has already expressed his views, at least in part, in the numerous columns he writes. Had we had the kind of National Security Council some other countries have, it would have been much easier to ask the joint intelligence cell of the NSC to review the issue but, unfortunately, the NSC continues to be a council in name only, with no teeth whatsoever. The National Security Adviser, as pointed out on an earlier occasion, continues to be the Principal Secretary to the Prime Minister which happens to be his principal job. With only a part-time National Security Adviser as head of the NSC it is not a surprise that the organisation has yet to take off. And, again, the NSC must depend on all kinds of government departments for its secretarial back-up. Thus you might have bureaucrats with entirely non-security backgrounds providing the back-up to the NSC. In this scheme of things a former bureaucrat from the Ministry on Non-Conventional Energy Sources or Human Resources Development or even Family Planning might be right there in the Council. The Council should develop its own specialist cadre from the Defence Services. One must refrain from including the Defence Ministry because that would once again mean a non specialist (IAS official) deciding on a highly specialised sphere of activity. We could also involve some of our better universities or even have special endowments created to facilitate specialist studies. You will say some such organisations are already in existence. The problem with them is that, as in other walks of our life, these institutions have also become a refuge for superannuated academics, journalists, with the odd policeman or service man thrown in. The inquiry into alleged
Kargil security lapses must be made by professionals
within the armed forces. Not that you can be sure that
its report, once submitted, will see the light of the
day. The Henderson Brookes report on the 1962 debacle
continues to gather dust in some Babu’s almirah in
South Block, that is if it has not already been
destroyed. The politicians would never allow an honest
appraisal to see the light of the day. Because, it
finally compromises them. And that’s why one does
not want us Indians to be taken in by the clamour for an
inquiry into the Kargil affair. — ADNI |
Bombay elections AS the election of Mr Jafferbhoy Alalji to the Bombay Legislative Council has been declared void, a fresh election has been ordered and will take place soon. Mr F.F. Sykes,
Consulting Engineer, was the only candidate nominated to
the Legislative Assembly for the seat rendered vacant by
the resignation of Mr R.H. Dunk. As there is no other
candidate, he will be declared elected unopposed. |
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