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Pak crisis
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Sleeping in the cockpit The plane truth about Air India pilots Those of us who, like Winston Churchill, regret that the human race ever learned to fly may feel vindicated by the report that both pilots of an Air India flight from Jaipur to Mumbai fell asleep in the cockpit. As a result, the plane overshot Mumbai instead of descending to land.
Focus on poll timing, not N-deal
The windfall
Militarisation of space
G.M. Banatwala (1933-2008)
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Pak crisis deepens Pervez Musharraf’s
judges at the Lahore High Court have by their verdict on Nawaz Sharif given a new lease of life to the movement against the beleaguered President. These judges had been appointed by an edict by Musharraf when he was facing threat to his political survival. They have chosen to debar Nawaz Sharif from contesting elections. The Supreme Court, which put off the byelection in Lahore after the government filed an appeal against the high court ruling, significantly observed that it could have come out with a verdict quickly had the former Prime Minister appeared in person before the three-judge Bench hearing the case. Interestingly, these judges had been appointed after President Pervez Musharraf, then Chief of Army Staff, imposed an emergency leading to the deposition of a number of judges inconvenient to him. Mr Sharif, who wants these judges to be removed, will obviously put more pressure on the PPP-led coalition government now to get rid of them and reinstate the judges unjustifiably sacked by Musharraf. The political crisis in Pakistan is becoming murkier every day. Musharraf is quietly doing everything possible to widen the rift between the PPP and the PML (N), the two major ruling coalition partners. The differences between the two over the judiciary may get sharper if Sharif is denied entry into the Pakistan National Assembly by the nominated courts. Nearly nine years ago Sharif was granted pardon by the then President Rafique Tarar after his conviction in the hijacking case instituted against him in 1999, when General Musharraf removed him from power through a military coup. But the Lahore High Court ignored the pardon. Musharraf’s judges have created a piquant situation for the PPP, which is otherwise sympathetic towards them. If the PPP keeps on dithering on the demand for restoring the judicial status quo ante, it will be endangering the survival of the coalition ministry. It is clear Musharraf — fighting for political survival as he is — wants to encash the troubled situation. But he is unlikely to succeed.
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Bandh as pastime RAIL and road traffic in Punjab was badly affected on Wednesday when protesters blocked rails and roads with boulders and logs of wood. They were protesting against the killing of a Sikh in Mumbai by a security guard of the chief of the controversial Sirsa-based Dera. The blockade put thousands of commuters to great inconvenience. The plight of those who had to appear for interviews, those who had to catch connecting trains and flights and those who had to go to hospitals for treatment on that day could well be imagined. Neither the Dera chief, who is ensconced in his sanctuary, nor his guards who took the law into their own hands, were inconvenienced. Instead, innocent people were harassed in the name of protesting against the killing. In a democracy, people do have a right to protest. But this right should not be at the cost of the common man’s right to lead a normal life. In this case, they could have protested by wearing black badges, sending memorandums to the Maharashtra police to take every action possible under the law against the culprits or by holding rallies. Instead, they expended their energy in blocking roads and rails and bringing life to a standstill. The loss the state suffered in terms of the man hours lost will never be quantified but it can only be described as huge. Punjab is, of course, not the only culprit. In states like West Bengal and Kerala, political parties compete with one another in organising state-level hartals and bandhs on flimsy grounds. They are little concerned about the difficulties they cause to the people. Even the courts are unable to discipline political parties. Nowhere else in the world are such shutdowns resorted to as regularly as in India. It will continue so long as the common people do not protest against those who cause inconvenience in the name of protests. Whenever the call for a bandh is made, those who give it should be made accountable for the loss they cause to the economy. This is, perhaps, the only way in which the menace can be tackled. |
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Sleeping in the cockpit Those of us who, like Winston Churchill, regret that the human race ever learned to fly may feel vindicated by the report that both pilots of an Air India flight from Jaipur to Mumbai fell asleep in the cockpit. As a result, the plane overshot Mumbai instead of descending to land. It was the alert action of air traffic controllers — who jolted the pilots awake by triggering a special alarm – that saved the situation and made the flight land before it could stray too far before landing in Mumbai. Of course, those in the know of aviation hazards say that there was no risk of an accident, such as hitting another plane. But it is hardly reassuring to know, even in this age when flying machines can function flawlessly on autopilot, that our pilots go to sleep in the sky. While chances of another plane being hit in such circumstances may be remote, the aircraft could have run out of fuel if the pilots had continued to sleep and the plane had kept on cruising. There can be other possibilities. The autopilot is not a substitute for a pilot. In fact, the substitute for one pilot can only be another pilot. That is why the plane had two pilots, which makes it possible for one pilot to occasionally steal 40 winks, though that should not happen. Now that it has happened, people will want that the authorities should not wink at negligence of the pilots. If planes can really fly just as well, and safely, on autopilot, the question is do we need human pilots at all? Obviously, we do. Otherwise, why should airlines employ pilots? And, if they nod off when they should be navigating a plane with its precious human cargo, the pilots are courting danger. The fact that passengers will be sleepless with anxiety is only one risk. There are bigger risks that are better left unsaid lest passengers begin to think of air travel as a pie in the sky and choose to remain more down to earth for going from one place to another. Lalu Prasad Yadav may be happy; he will attract more passengers for his railways to help him show a better balance sheet next year. One man’s sleep is an opportunity for another, after all. |
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The most important thing when ill is to never lose heart. — Vladimir Lenin
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Focus on poll timing, not N-deal IF recent events, preceding yet another ambiguous compromise at the United Progressive Alliance-Left Front Coordination Committee on the India-United States civilian nuclear deal, have any lesson, it is that in political Delhi the focus has firmly been on the timing of the next general election, not on the deal’s merits or demerits. Come to think of it, this has been the position also in the past. The debate and disputation over the deal’s content have been confined primarily to the strategic community. There was, however, an important difference in the situation this time around. The critical phase of the standoff between the Left Front, committed to blocking the deal at all costs, and the government, or more accurately the Prime Minister, equally determined to push the deal through, regardless of consequences, coincided with the soaring of inflation to the frightening double-digit figure of 11.05 per cent. This sent shivers down the spines of politicians of all hues, particularly of Congress MPs. The one thing they did not want was “early elections”. “To go to the polls at this stage would be to unroll the red carpet for the BJP”, said one. Congress allies, even more scared of an early poll, had a different tack. “We are for the deal. But we must also carry the Left with us” was their mantra, a classic case of wanting to eat one’s cake and have it too. No wonder, two heavy-weight allies — Union Minister for Agriculture Sharad Pawar and Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M Karunanidhi — immediately became “mediators” between the two sides, with Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee and sundry other leaders rushing around, like chickens with their heads cut off. From this hectic activity, three points of view emerged. One, very widely shared, was that elections must not be held before the due date of April next year. There was, however, a subtle division within this camp. Some said that the deal wasn’t worth losing the government for. Others contended that the deal was necessary in national interest but it could be taken up after the 2009 general election, whatever its outcome. Sharply opposed to this position, albeit subdivided into two, was the view of the deal’s staunch supporters that failure to clinch it at this juncture would be damaging to Indian interests in the realm of energy security and international credibility. Moreover, the opportunity to get out of the “technology denial trap” would be lost. According the votaries of this view, to advance the elections by a mere four months — from April next to December this year — would do no harm. After all, they asked, repeating the Prime Minister’s argument, what good would it do to jettison the nuclear deal for the sake of a few more months in power? In 2004, they added, the then Prime Minister, Mr Atal Bihari Vajpayee, presumably dazzled by the imagery of “India Shining”, had advanced the elections by several months. No one had minded. Indeed, after the first Congress split in 1969, Indira Gandhi had brought forward the Lok Sabha poll by a whole year without inviting any protest or concern. Margaret Thatcher did so in Britain more than a decade later. The third view, voiced by non-political intellectuals, was that a “premature” election must be avoided by evolving a consensus on the nuclear deal because it would worsen the economic crisis and might threaten political stability. But no one has offered a precise solution of the inflation problem. Nor are any practicable ideas forthcoming on how to reconcile the two irreconcilable positions on the nuclear deal. From the foregoing, two interesting questions emerge. The first is: why did the Prime Minister not adopt his present firm stand last year after he had, in a newspaper interview, declared that if the Left Front wanted to bring down the government because of the nuclear deal, then “so be it”? The political ambience then prevailing was vastly more favourable to the Congress-led UPA than it is or can be today. Leave alone Karnataka, the BJP had not won even Gujarat then. The saffron party was in deep disarray. The CPM was mired in a most embarrassing crisis of its own making at Nandigram and Singur. And inflation was a soothing 3 per cent. The second question is even more important and of lasting relevance. Why, in the world’s largest democracy where every time is election time — because some poll or the other is taking place in one part of the country or the other — are sitting members of Parliament and state assemblies, especially those belonging to the Congress party, so scared of even a short advancement of elections? I got inkling into their thinking last year when, in the wake of the Prime Minister’s “so-be-it” statement, I told some Congress MPs that if they went to the polls right away, they would win. “You are right”, they replied, “Our party would win, no doubt. But where is the guarantee that we would get the ticket, or that even if we get it, we would certainly win? So why should our present tenure be curtailed even by a day”? This is doubtless the heart of the matter. Most people of my generation remember the time when it was believed, absolutely accurately, that the Congress could put up “lamp posts” as candidates and win hands down. Even after that intoxicating era had ended, its hangover and Jawaharlal Nehru’s intense dislike of Congress party bosses in states combined to produce the strange system under which party candidates in all parts of this vast land are chosen by the “high command” in New Delhi. The pattern became indestructible in Indira Gandhi’s heyday when she centralised both political and governmental authority even more than before, and went on to personalise it. Unlike in other democracies, where each party has members traditionally representing their constituencies for as long as they can hold them, there is utter uncertainty about who would get the ticket of not only the Congress but also of most other parties, with the possible exception of two Communist parties. Of course, some members of various parties have won the same constituencies several times consecutively. But arbitrary rotation is the rule. There are times when nearly half the sitting MPs or MLAs are dropped. Dissidence and indiscipline inevitably follow. Under the circumstances, is it any surprise that every legislator wants to cling to his privileged seat until the very last moment?
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The windfall
HE arrived at one of the premier automobile agencies, dusty clothes, dishevelled turban, trundling a bicycle with a huge sack strapped on the carrier. He said he had come to buy a car and though the sales manager had his reservations, he was shown around the showroom and introduced to the various models. He paid scant attention to the sales talk but his eyes lit up on seeing a particular model. He examined it from all angles. “I’ll take that one.” At this stage the manager took over, ushered him into his posh office and offered him a cold drink. It seemed that the farmer had just sold a plot of land for an astronomical amount and wanted his dream car immediately. The manager explained that it would take a few days to complete the paperwork and that there was also the delicate question of the cashing of the cheque — it was a huge amount of money that was involved. “You can keep all the papers,” he said . “I want only the car and I am not paying by cheque, send someone to bring the sack from my bicycle and have your money counted out.” The seventy lakh car was driven home by a driver from the agency who came back eleven thousand rupees and a bottle of Scotch richer, while the farmer, who did not know how to drive, peddled modestly home on his bicycle, his remaining crores still strapped to the carrier of his bicycle. Discreet enquires with all the premier car agencies have revealed that this story is apocryphal, but the fact that these agencies did send their
representative to each farmer’s home, when they received bounteous compensation for their land acquired for the new international airport, shows that the story is not improbable. When I first heard the story the narrator had a tone of contempt in his voice: “a fool and his money are soon parted” kind of tone. But having been plagued by what Dolittle in “Pygmalion” calls “middle class morality,” all my life, where anything over a couple of thousand rupees was meant to
be saved and not spent, I could not help but feel a strong sense of admiration for the farmer. I can think of so many things that my “morality” has made me give up during my life: branded clothes, shoes and watches: the latest electronic gizmos like top of the line TVs, music
systems, meals in fancy restaurants, holidays abroad, etc. But I’ve learnt my lesson from the farmer’s story. Next year when I retire, I am not going to dwell on what I can do with my retirement benefits to secure my future, which in any case, at my age, is very insecure. I am, like the farmer, going out immediately to fulfil a long- standing dream wish: I am going to go out and buy the biggest and most beautiful painting of horses by Sunil Das that I can
find.
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Militarisation of space Inaugurating the Centre for Land Warfare Studies seminar on the “Indian Military in Space” on June 16, 2008, the Army Chief General Deepak Kapoor noted with concern the recent developments in India’s neighbourhood, including China’s ASAT (anti-satellite) test in January 2007, when it successfully shot down an ageing satellite with a ground-launched missile. The Army Chief said, “The Chinese space programme is expanding at an exponentially rapid pace in both offensive and defensive content… There is an imperative requirement to develop joint structures in the Indian armed forces for synergising employment of space assets.” Earlier in June, speaking at the Combined Commanders’ annual conference, Mr. A K Antony, the Defence Minister, had announced the setting up of an Integrated Space Cell at Headquarters Integrated Defence Staff to act as a planning and coordination centre for the military use and security of space resources. The military space cell is also expected to perform the role of providing an interface between the armed forces and the Department of Space and the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO). Clearly, the inescapable requirement of optimising the utilisation of India’s meagre assets in space, the need to synergise civilian and military applications of India’s satellites and the emerging military threats to these assets, have been well understood and necessary steps have now been initiated to overcome earlier shortcomings in this critical field of command and control, communications, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, usually referred to by the acronym C4I2SR. (The missing ‘C’ and ‘I’ stand for computers and information, respectively.) Modern armies, as well as navies and air forces, are heavily dependent on space for their C4I2SR systems. Space-based military applications such as communications, intelligence, surveillance (optical and infra-red photography and electronic eavesdropping), mapping and navigation through GPS-type systems are now commonplace and have played a dominant role in all recent conflicts. The precision guidance of missiles, rockets and, in future, perhaps even artillery shells is another application that is maturing quickly. However, it will become practicable in the Indian context only when the country launches dedicated military satellites in low-earth orbit (LEO) that carry tailor-made military applications suites on board as no foreign country, however friendly it might be, will provide such capabilities unless India is willing to enter into a military alliance - an option that India has rightly abjured so far. The most significant surveillance application is satellite photography. Militarily usable photos are obtained from satellites that provide resolutions of less than one metre. In simple terms this means that objects smaller than one metre across do not appear as mere blips among the background clutter, but can be distinguished clearly as recognisable military objects, for example jeeps, mortars and small bunkers. Tanks and guns being relatively larger in size are more easily picked up. For this, LEO satellites, which are placed in orbit a couple of hundred kilometres above the surface of the earth, are required to cover the areas on the home side as well as across India’s borders. The numbers required are a matter of fine calculation as there are usually large gaps between two ‘passes’ of any one satellite over the same point. These gaps must be covered by other satellites if continuous surveillance is considered necessary by day and night, for example during war or when hostilities are imminent. Also, adequate redundancy must be built in to allow for unforeseen eventualities such as enemy counter measures and technical down time. Similarly, while the armed forces can continue to use civilian communications satellite at present, in about 10 to 15 years their requirement of band width will outstrip the likely availability from the INSAT series of satellites. Also, though communications satellites are normally in geo-stationery orbit about 36,000 km above the earth and are therefore extremely difficult to shoot down, their ability to provide fail safe communications can be disrupted and degraded by other means. Hence, the armed forces will soon require their own communications satellites as well. ISRO’s upcoming Indian Regional Navigation System (IRNSS), based on seven satellites, which will establish an Indian-controlled GPS system will also need to provide military specifications (milspecs) that are more accurate than civilian ones. It emerges quite clearly that the armed forces are moving gradually but inexorably towards establishing their own space-based applications centres including ground control stations to control and, in due course, even manipulate military satellites in orbit. While the DRDO can build these satellite in partnership with the Indian defence industry, ISRO must continue to provide the launch vehicles as well as launch facilities as setting up dedicated launch facilities for military use only would be prohibitively expensive. Military launches will present ISRO with a new challenge as it will come into conflict with many Western governments and agencies that have nuclear proliferation concerns as most space technologies are dual-use technologies. India is a signatory to the Outer Space Treaty of 1967 and has steadfastly opposed the weaponisation of space. However, a distinction must be made between weaponisation that involves the emplacement of weapons, which can attack surface targets from space, and the militarisation of space, which merely enables qualitatively better C4I2SR. Given the breathtaking advances that have taken place in developing military applications of space technology, the Indian armed forces will be severely handicapped if they do not also join the bandwagon and exploit space for enhancing their C4I2SR capabilities. The time has come for the Indian armed forces to move into space – the ultimate high ground.
The writer is Director, Centre for Land Warfare Studies, New Delhi
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G.M. Banatwala (1933-2008)
You may shout, “Impossible”, if you have not heard about Ghulam Mohammed Banatwala, 74, who passed away in Mumbai on Wednesday. A Maharashtrian, who had a term in the Maharashtra Assembly, Banatwala contested for the Ponnani Lok Sabha constituency in Muslim-majority Malappuram district in Kerala in 1977 and won by a huge margin. He represented the constituency continuously till 1989 and, again, from 1996 to 2004. Such was the confidence of the electorate in Banatwala that he just had to file his nomination and address one or two large meetings where he spoke in chaste English to win the seat. In all these elections, his rivals tried to cash in on his inability to speak Malayalam but nobody in Ponnani saw it as a handicap for him. His oratorical skills were legion. He had a cold, clinical approach to any subject and he always spoke with facts and figures on his fingertips. Small wonder that he was rated one of the best parliamentarians who commanded universal respect. Banatwala was the public face of the Indian Union Muslim League, particularly after Ibrahim Sulaiman Sait left the party to form his own outfit. About a decade ago, when the responsibility of organising a seminar on religious pluralism at the Mar Thoma Centre in New Delhi fell on me, I could not think of a better spokesman for the Muslim community than Mr Banatwala, who traced his ancestry to the Prophet and whose knowledge of Islamic history and civilization was second to none. He was so thrilled by the subject that he readily agreed to participate. “You don’t have to come to invite me. I will be there on time”, he said in Mallish, i.e., a mixture of Malayalam and English, to impress me. Banatwala came wearing a shervani with a matching fur cap. Tall and handsome, his trimmed beard matched his countenance. When I inquired whether the alphabetical arrangement in which he would be one of the last speakers as Islam came after Buddhism, Christianity and Hinduism, was acceptable to him, he said laughingly, “Muslims always come last”. “No, Sir” I corrected him. “We have invited a Zoroastrian too”. “In that case, I have only sympathy for the Zoroastrian”, Banatwala continued At the seminar, when Mr B.P. Singhal, a Rajya Sabha MP, and brother of VHP leader Ashok Singhal, mercilessly attacked all “pseudo-secularists” and took repeated potshots at the IUML MP for his stand on the Shah Bano case, he kept his cool. The moment Banatwala rose and began his extempore speech, he had the whole audience in rapt attention. In his stentorian voice, he quoted verse and chapter, not from the Quran but from the Indian Constitution, to argue that the right to convert was the logical culmination of the right to preach and they were complementary, rather than contradictory. Once or twice when Mr Singhal tried to intervene, Banatwala silenced him with these words: “You had your say and I did not interrupt you even once. Now, have the patience to listen to me. And if you still have to say something, seek the Chair’s permission to speak once again”. Then he lowered his voice and said mischievously, “That is, if the audience wants to hear you again”. The gathering was in raptures. Parliamentary etiquettes were as sacred for him as the verses in the Quran. Though he was uncompromising on certain fundamentals, he always believed in debate and discussion to sort out differences. It is this quality that endeared Ghulam Mohammed Banatwala to the Malayali Muslim who saw in him the best spokesman of their community.
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Delhi Durbar Extremely conscious about its publicity, the BJP is very particular about updating its website by putting out its daily press releases on the site. These releases are classified into three categories namely “By Topic”, “By Leadership” and “By Date.” Under the leadership classification the website lists eight leaders: party president Rajnath Singh, L.K. Advani, M. Venkaiah Naidu, vice-president Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi, general secretary Arun Jaitley, and spokespersons Ravi Shankar Prasad, Prakash Jawadekar and Rajiv Pratap Rudy. If you click against each leader’s name, the screen immediately shows the press releases issued on his behalf. Alongside this the smiling face of each leader is also displayed. This is true in the case of Rajnath Singh, Advani. Naidu, Naqvi, Jawadekar and Rudy. In the case of Prasad, the list of his press releases is displayed but minus his photo. But when it comes to Jaitley the site goes blank. No photo, no press release. The rivalry between Jaitely and the BJP president is widely known. There appears to be no other explanation for this mysterious black out. Not appetising The Rashtrapati Bhavan has not taken kindly to criticism about the poor quality of food served at the recent banquet hosted by President Pratibha Patil for the visiting Syrian President. The President’s media department issued a clarification earlier this week denying media reports about the food not being particularly wholesome, going on to add that the meal had actually been well appreciated. On the other hand, if senior Cabinet ministers who attended the banquet are to be believed, the food was quite pedestrian while the menu lacked any creativity. The dessert – some kind of pastry – was apparently quite stale while the sauted vegetables in garlic, normally served as a side dish, were on the main course. Clearly, not very appetising stuff. Fertile ground The department of fertilisers is headed for top-level changes and speculation is that Santha Sheela Nair, 1973 batch Tamil Nadu cadre officer, is ahead in the race for the secretary’s post although there is also some talk that Andhra Pradesh chief minister Y.S Rajasekhar Reddy is batting for V.S. Sampath, an IAS officer from the AP cadre. The incumbent J.S. Sarma is likely to resign from the post on this month-end as he is going to be heading a tribunal, although he is due to retire end-September. The fertiliser industry is apparently quite relieved at this change but they pity the new secretary who, they feel, will have a tough task at hand given the current mess in the sector. Contributed by Faraz Ahmad, Anita Katyal and Bhagyashree Pande
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