The Tribune, Chandigarh, India

A threat to Punjab
Politics must not cloud fiscal crisis

The on-going power struggle in Punjab has diverted attention from the real threat to the state’s finances. The state’s Chief Secretary, by his own admission, was instructed to contradict the state finance minister’s claim that the Centre had offered to waive as much as Rs 35,000 crore of the state’s public debt.

But the issue is not whether the state has received a formal ‘offer’ and ‘in writing’ from the Centre, as the state government seems to expect. Indeed, it should be the other way round and it is the state, as debtor, which is required to pray for the waiver ‘in writing’ and convey to the Centre its willingness to abide by the terms and conditions. The heart of the matter is that no state can afford to pay Rs 8000 crore or more every year by way of interest-payment and the sooner the state’s total debt is reduced, the better off it will be.

Punjab, if it is of any consolation, is not the only state which has a huge debt burden. Indeed, while Punjab’s debt is estimated to be Rs 71,000 crore, several other states like Maharashtra, Gujarat , West Bengal and Uttar Pradesh have debts which are three or four times higher. But then these states have a correspondingly higher population and state GDP as well. The annual report on state finances by the Reserve Bank of India, however, has noted the increasing indebtedness of the states, their rising interest burden, their stagnant tax: GDP ratio, their declining non-tax revenue and rising expenditure on non-development sectors. Virtually all states in the country are caught in the vicious circle of spending most of their revenue on wages and salaries, subsidies and interest payment.

The prescriptions are also provided by the RBI and the state government need not take Manpreet Badal’s words for them. Non-tax revenue of states at 10 per cent of the total is far lower than international norms and hence the states are advised to rationalise user charges for water, health and education services, get rid of public utilities in the red while raising tax revenue with measures like plugging under-valuation of property and withdrawing or tapering sales tax exemptions. Punjab must also address the quality of expenditure being made by the state government. The least Punjab can do as a first step perhaps is to withdraw power and water subsidies from the rich farmers.

A Nobel well deserved
Liu a torchbearer for democracy

The Norwegian Nobel Committee deserves to be commended for its choice of Chinese pro-democracy activist Liu Xiaobo for this year’s Nobel Peace Prize. Sentenced to 11 years in prison last December, a year after being arrested as lead author of Charter 08, a manifesto issued by Chinese intellectuals and activists calling for free speech and multi-party elections, Liu has been an epitome of dignity and non-violent struggle for fundamental human rights in his country.

He is cast in the same mould as the Burmese Nobel Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi who has been under house arrest for 14 of the last 20 years and is continuing to wage a relentless non-violent crusade for her country’s return to democracy. Various world leaders have paid rich tributes to Liu as they have been doing to Aung San Suu Kyi but the Chinese government has been as contemptuous and dismissive of demands for Liu’s release as the Burmese military junta has been of Suu Kyi’s. This is truly reprehensible.

The Chinese government which is reaping the fruits of granting economic freedom to its people will sooner than later realize the inevitability of pushing through political reforms. Liu Xiaobo was exposed to western liberal ideas when he was teaching in the US and while his reformist ideas were throttled, there is doubtlessly a growing section in China that is seething in anger over the suppression of basic freedoms. Significantly, the Chinese made special efforts to black out news of Liu’s Nobel award in China. As the telecast of the news began on BBC, the screen went black for six minutes. Liu Xiaobo’s wife Liu Xio was whisked away to her village so that she may be kept off the international media. Such tactics have delayed a mass movement for political freedom but time will inevitably catch up with the Chinese government.

It is brave fighters like Liu Xiaobo who suffer and thereby ensure that future generations benefit from their crusades. Be it Liu or Suu Kyi, their names will be a source of inspiration for years to come.

Thought for the Day

Men who are unhappy, like men who sleep badly, are always proud of the fact. — Bertrand Russell

ARTICLE

Faith versus facts
A strange verdict on Ayodhya
by Amulya Ganguli

The most famous case of religious belief being given precedence over reality was the Catholic church’s condemnation of Galileo in the early 17th century for saying that the earth moved round the sun and not the other way round, as it was believed in those days. Since this assertion amounted to blasphemy in the medieval period, the evangelists threatened the astronomer with torture and extracted a recantation from him for his “heretical” theory. It took another four centuries for the church to apologise for its mistake.

There are shades of such an error in the Allahabad High Court’s judgment on the Babri Masjid-Ramjanmabhoomi dispute. Even if a Hindu deity has a legal status under Hindu law, it is doubtful whether this criterion is applicable to the Ram Lalla idols which were installed into the Babri Masjid on the night of December 22-23, 1949, by unknown persons, who were obviously of the same mindset as the Sangh Parivar’s.

As is known, the authorities in India generally find it extremely difficult to remove the shrines which suddenly appear on footpaths, forcing pedestrians to walk on the road. In course of time, these entirely illegal structures become bigger and bigger, occupying larger stretches of the pavement and attracting more and more devotees. If it is nearly impossible to remove them despite the traffic problems which they cause, the reason is not only the fear of offending the Almighty, but also that the idols acquire some kind of a property right over the land on which their place of abode has been set up.

What is noteworthy in the case of such small places of worship and, of course, the larger temples is that even if, for argument’s sake, some of them have been established after a forcible occupation of the land - or, at least, in the absence of any serious public objection - they all acquire legitimacy because of the property rights conferred on the deities by custom, law and general acquiescence. The difference, however, between these instances and the Ayodhya dispute is that, in the case of the latter, the Hindu shrine was set up inside a Muslim house of prayer.

The idols were not installed either on a government-owned plot of land, such as a pavement, or in a temple constructed on a piece of property where there was no other place of worship. For all intents and purposes, therefore, the surreptitious installation of the idols in the Babri Masjid was a violation of property rights of the owner of the building. It was also done by the perpetrators with mischief on their minds on two counts. One was an attempt to forcibly occupy a property which wasn’t their own. And the other was to foment communal tension since the idols were placed inside a mosque.

There is little doubt that the troublemakers of 1949 succeeded in their second objective beyond their wildest dreams at least for a decade or so after the masjid gates were unlocked in the mid-1980s. Not only was the mosque destroyed by fanatics, the Parivar’s political arm, the BJP, rode the resultant communal wave to attain power at the Centre, which the party and its predecessor, the Jan Sangh, could not have imagined for the first four decades after 1949. It is another matter that the wave has subsided and the BJP and the RSS have realised that the initial political gains from the whipping up of anti-Muslim sentiments have dissipated as the voters have seen through the cynical game.

What is more to the point, however, is that the dispute would not have arisen at all if the local authorities had taken the obvious step of removing the idols from the mosque on the morning of December 23, 1949, instead of letting them remain and locking the gates. It is unlikely that there would have been a popular upsurge against their removal considering that despite the communal tension generated by Partition, the Hindu Right was a minuscule force at the time.

But despite a written directive from Jawaharlal Nehru to UP Chief Minister G.B. Pant not to allow such a “dangerous example” to be set, Faizabad’s Deputy Commissioner, K.K. Nayar, made no efforts to remove the idols although he acknowledged that their installation was an “illegal act”. It isn’t surprising that Nayar later stood for elections on a Jan Sangh ticket. Since that time “the Hindu community” has been bearing “the cross on its chest for the misdeeds of the miscreants”, as the Supreme Court observed in 1994.

If politics and pusillanimity were responsible for letting the idols stay where they were despite the unease voiced by Nehru, the issue might still have remained dormant if Nehru’s grandson, Rajiv Gandhi, did not make the mistake of ordering the opening of the Babri Masjid gates, apparently at the behest of another Nehru - Arun - who has since joined the BJP. Incidentally, G.B. Pant’s son, K.C. Pant, has also shifted from the Congress to the BJP, pointing to the kind of political currents which have influenced decision-making and created unnecessary complications. Rajiv’s move to unlock the masjid gates was also an attempt to placate Rightist sentiments, which had been upset by his earlier decision to overturn the Supreme Court’s judgment on the Shah Bano case on alimony to Muslim women to please Muslim fundamentalists.

The reason why the Allahabad High Court steered clear of this tortuous history of the dispute was perhaps not to let the political angle supersede the social and religious ones. Hence, its comments on how the Hindus and Muslims used to pray together at the site, and how the Muslim experience in a pluralistic country, where they had once been the rulers and then were ruled and now were sharing power, could guide their co-religionists elsewhere. It is the social factor which evidently led the court to call for a three-way division of the site between Hindus, Muslims and the Nirmohi Akhara, which is one of the litigants.

But it is the religious elucidation, and especially Justice D.V. Sharma’s contention that “the entire disputed site belongs to the Hindus as it is the birthplace of Lord Ram”, which is likely to be seen as controversial. This is all the more so because, if “the disputed structure cannot be treated as a mosque as it came into existence against the tenets of Islam”, as Justice Sharma has added, then the legitimacy of the Ram janmasthan concept can also be questioned considering that a surreptitious attempt was made under the cover of darkness to change the status of a place of worship. As is obvious, a legal justification for such an act of intrusion will set a “dangerous” precedent, as Nehru warned. It will also entail a rewriting of history if Ram is treated as a historical figure, and not a mythological one.

There is little doubt that the saffron brotherhood will link the verdict with the Ram sethu in the Palk Straits, which it believes is a remnant of the bridge which Lord Ram built on his way to Ravan’s kingdom in Sri Lanka. But since the so-called sethu has been estimated to be 1.7 million years old, it turns on their head all the latest findings about mankind having left its birthplace in Africa no more than 100,000 years ago. This is the danger of letting religion intrude, first, into politics and then into jurisprudence as the Galileo episode showed.

MIDDLE

The Prince’s seat-wallah
by Roopinder Singh

How terribly uncharitable of the British media to highlight the seat-wallah incident at the SP Swimming pool complex in Delhi during the recent visit of the heir apparent to the British throne, Prince Charles.

Now, if you are ignorant about the incident which is being referred to here, you are easily forgiven. While the Indian media was busy documenting various official visits of the Prince and his wife, Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, The Telegraph, London, got a picture that showed an official “who is believed to work for the British High Commission” flipping down a seat, like the one we see in movie theatres, while the Prince waited and hitched up his trouser legs before being seated. He was later being joined by The Earl of Wessex, who is the Vice-Patron of the Commonwealth Games Federation.

Why, The Telegraph has even made a list of everyday chores that The Prince of Wales does not perform, like picking up his clothes after changing, squeezing tooth paste onto his brush and some other acts of a somewhat delicate nature, all based on heresy.

At the heart of the matter is a fundamental shift in social mores. The very society that exported the tradition of titles and honours to its colonies has now spawned a culture that is antithetical to them.

We on the other hand, have not only adopted the colonial practices as our own, we have embellished them and shown the world how well democratic practices can work with traditional, read Imperial and feudal, ones.

No one in India even noticed the incident. After Delhi, where we dazzled the world with our spectacular success at the opening ceremony of the Commonwealth Games, the Prince and the Duchess were feted by the Houses of Patiala and Jodhpur, both of whom have a tradition of performing this role for generations. Surely, they know how to take care of such needs, without any intrusive reporters spoiling the fun.

All, however, is not lost for the royalists. The same report mentioned how the royal couple stayed with “the Maharaja and Maharani of Patiala in the Moti Bagh Palace after joining them for a gala dinner. The Duchess wore an ice blue Bruce Oldfield silk dress with a lace overdress, set off by a diamond and aquamarine necklace.” The item does not mention what the Prince and his hosts wore.

The Maharajas had a host of titles given to them by the ancestors of the Prince of Wales, but India abolished the titles in 1971. However, perks and posh quarters are taken for granted by our bureaucracy and the armed forces, as are hierarchies and squadrons of servants. The news that a seat wallah has been engaged for this purpose is surely of their interest, since it sets a wonderful precedent! In fact, there is no doubt that there will be much hand wringing about not having thought of it first.

One of the titles of former Maharajas that I have always found interesting is Farzand-i-Khas-i-Daulat-i-Inglishia or “the chosen son and wealth of the English”. It’s a pity that we can’t hand out titles these days. However, almost four decades of abolishing monarchy we still know what it means. In the interest of improving international relations, in our land of erstwhile monarchies and what were five rivers, we should have a permanent position for a seat wallah for to the real Farzand-i-Khas-i-Daulat-i-Inglishia.

Surely, if the Punjab Public Service Commission were to get cracking, we would have it in place before the next royal visit.n

OPED — DEFENCE

Aspire for high ground in space
As militarisation of space increases, the security of India’s space assets can no longer be taken for granted. Yet the government has fought shy of giving any military direction to its space programme. With the Air Force repeatedly recommending an Aerospace Command, there has to be complete integration of civilian and military efforts to meet national interest
Brig Kiran Krishan (Retd)

GSLV LIFTOFF : ISRO’s space programme offers immense spin-offs for the military

Throughout history, technological breakthroughs, and their innovative application have critically affected the course of wars, and the fate of nations. New weapons, propulsion, communication, and transportation technologies have often given unfamiliar directions to war - the machine gun, tank, the submarine, and the aircraft in the First World War, the Blitzkrieg combining modern communications with tanks and dive bombers, and the atom bomb during the Second World War, are a few of such examples.

In battle, military tacticians always vie to occupy high ground because of the military advantages of area domination and the all-round observation it provides. In the 21st century, space is fast becoming the new high ground. Since the end of the World War II, the race has been on to exploit this new medium for military advantage.

In October 1942, the Germans launched an A-4 rocket that traveled a distance of 190 km and reached an altitude of 80 km. However, it was from the mid 1950s onwards that the space race took off with the sharpening of the Cold War cleavage between the United States and the erstwhile USSR. The Soviet Russia took an early lead by placing an artificial satellite (Sputnik -I) in orbit around the earth in 1957. In the 1960s, the race intensified as both sides realised the potential. While running for the presidency in 1960, the late John F. Kennedy stated: "Control of space will be decided in the next decade. If the Soviets control space they can control Earth, as in the past centuries the seas dominated the continents." It indeed was a cause for concern for America since it also implied a lead in missile capability as advances in rocketry affected both the fields.

So far, the main military use of space has been to field satellite systems to support operations on earth and sea. The two Gulf Wars saw extensive use of space based assets by the US, and indeed gave the western forces a huge edge over the Iraqi forces. For the United States, military operations around the world, and as seen in Afghanistan, are now fully supported by satellite linked systems for surveillance, navigation, guidance, targeting, and command and control. An operator sitting in air conditioned comfort in USA can guide an UAV to its target on Af-Pak border using satellite based communication links.

India has been alive to the potential of space from the very start. The Indian National Committee for Space Research was formed by the Department of Atomic Energy in 1962, and work started on the Thumba Rocket Launching Station in Kerala. India's indigenous space programme began on February 22, 1969 with the launching of a small 10 kg pencil rocket from Thumba. From a small and halting beginning, India has come a long way, and is today considered amongst the world leaders in the field of space.

National economic development has been the guiding mantra of the Indian space programme. The Indian Space Research Organisation has primarily focused its effort on two major fields -- Building of rockets, and launch capabilities and secondly, satellites for remote sensing, meteorology, and communications. The commercial arm of ISRO, Antrix, is also hugely successful and sought after by countries for building and launching their satellites.

Though India's Integrated Guided Missile Programme (IGDMP) has benefited in no small measure from technology spin-offs of the space effort as well as migration of scientists from ISRO to the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO), India has fought shy of giving any military direction to its space programme. The Indian establishment continues to emphasise the peaceful use of space for civilian benefit. The Indian Government has chosen not to form an Aerospace Command despite the Indian Air Force recommending it time and again.

The IAF possibly visualises space and ballistic missile encounters in the future. Many analysts are of the opinion that, "we will surely fight in space someday whether people consider it abhorrent, or not. Instead of aspiring for moral high ground alone, let India aspire for the high ground in space." The United States has advanced programmes for ground based directed and kinetic energy weapons as also space based systems for killing an adversary's satellites. Research is also being carried out for building weapons to engage targets on land, on sea, and in the air from space.

Any worthwhile ballistic missile shield cannot depend on ground and air based sensors and targeting systems alone. In January 2007, China in a demonstration of its anti satellite power, destroyed one of its own old satellites. It prompted the United States to shoot down one of its satellites in February 2008. The cat is finally out of the bag. Security of India's space based assets can no longer be taken for granted.

Internationally, it has been agreed that space should be used for peaceful purposes, and for the benefit of all human kind. The United Nations Outer Peace Treaty, 1967 provides the basic framework on international space law saying that space should be reserved for peaceful purposes. Currently efforts are being made to conclude an international agreement to prohibit development of weapons in space. The United States is unwilling to be a partner to such an agreement. Russia and China, while batting for the agreement, observers say, continue to develop military capabilities. Is it just a dichotomy in thought or double-dealing?

Today, India has no satellites purely dedicated for military use. The Indian Air Force has been pushing for a transit from being just an 'Air Force' to an 'Aerospace Power' since long. India has made impressive strides in the civilian uses of space. However, just the possession of communication, remote sensing, and mapping satellites doesn't confer military ability on the nation. There has to be a complete integration of the civilian and the military effort. Besides, now is the time to garner and test India's anti satellite (ASAT) capability before any treaties tie her down just as it happened in the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) case.

The writer is a defence analyst

Making Cold Start doctrine work
Ali Ahmed

The latest spat between the two South Asian protagonist states, this time at the UN, indicates that their relationship remains under a cloud. The implication is the terror threat has not receded. Another Mumbai 26/11 cannot be ruled out. Should that occur, the government, having last time round promised firm action, would not be able to escape it this time.

The options include surgical strikes at the minimal level to Cold Start. While surgical strikes may help let off steam, they may not bring Pakistan around. This may entail moving up the escalatory ladder eventually. So does Cold Start have some answers?

In this way India would have the advantage on termination of hostilities. The advantage would yet require to be converted into political gains by a change of its proxy war policy on part of Pakistan.

The Cold Start strategy is Pakistan specific. It entails early launch of limited offensives by “integrated battle groups” up to limited depth by pivot corps. Following in the immediate wake. would be the strike corps requiring a little more time to mobilise. This way the integrated battle groups would have served to unlock the defences and the strike corps would be able to keep their powder dry for battle in the enemy’s interior.

Care would be taken to keep the offensives well below Pakistan’s nuclear threshold. Making quick gains, India can thereafter afford to appear responsive to international pressures for war termination. It would instead be the Pakistani escalatory counter moves that would need to be aborted.

The idea has faced much scrutiny since. Its sister service, the Air Force, was the first to take on the Army. The Air Force, viewing itself as the strategic force, prefers inflicting attrition on the military and terrorist assets from the air. The release of the joint land-air doctrine this summer has perhaps laid at rest their disagreement.

The more significant critique revolves around the escalatory nature of Cold Start. Since Pakistan’s nuclear threshold is uncertain, it is not known which action could trigger a nuclear exchange. Pakistan has taken care to project a low threshold to keep India's conventional advantage under check. Launch of strike corps or attrition beyond a point on the Pakistani military by air operations could cumulatively trigger a nuclear situation.

The Army appears to have got round this problem by having two variants of the Cold Start. The first is restricting offensives to integrated battle groups only. This can be dubbed “Cold Start and Stop”. The second, as described earlier, launch strike corps but restrict their employment to only one or two formations. This variant can be termed “Cold Start and Continue”.

Between the two, Cold Start and Stop has the advantage. It can be more easily sold to the political leadership as a viable military option. The question that needs answering, however, is what political purpose is possibly served?

The most likely scenario of contemplation of the military option is another 26/11. Indian military options would range from the minimal level of surgical strikes to Cold Start and Continue. Surgical strikes and, at the next higher level, activation of the Line of Control through border skirmishes etc, help let off steam, but are unlikely to change Pakistan's anti India strategic posture. Avoidably, India may end up like Israel of having to repeat these periodically.

A counter offensive by Pakistan would see it seize the advantage, if India has not got off the blocks first. This implies a race to the opposite side's defences. In effect, since possibility of escalation of lower level options exists, to the military it would be better to preempt this. This makes Cold Start inevitable, even in case of exercise of the minimal option.

This is where Cold Start and Stop makes sense. It not only conveys the message intended through the lower level options unambiguously, but secures India better. India needs to build into the strategy that calls for a “politico-diplomatic” strategy, one arrived at once we stop criticising and instead engage with the idea constructively.

In effect, Cold Start and Stop is an “Operation Parakram Plus”. Op Parakram forced Musharraf's turn around with his January 12, 2002 speech. It, over time, enabled the the Islamabad joint statement of January 2004 in which Pakistan agreed to end terrorism. However, it has not quite done so. It may require being jolted into action as promised.

But first the Army needs to weigh in on the side of “Cold Start and Stop” over its current preference for “Cold Start and Continue”.

The writer is a research fellow at Institute for Defence Studies and Analysis, New Delhi