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Air India pilots’ strike
Selecting a fighter
Infamous and unflattering
Interior decoration
National security strategy is fundamental
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2G, two groups
The storm caused by the leaked draft report of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) looking into the controversial 2G spectrum allocation has led to a major political upheaval. That the Congress would seek the help of the lone Samajwadi Party and BSP members in the PAC to get the report rejected was quite expected, but things went way beyond that. These two, coupled with seven representatives from the Congress and two from the DMK “elected” a new chief, Congress MP Saifuddin Soz, after committee chairman Murli Manohar Joshi walked out. They also rejected Joshi’s report. The question as to how tenable the change is would lead to another fierce debate but for the time being, the tables have been turned. There are two reasons for this precipitate action. One, the way the draft report was leaked helped the Congress make Mr Joshi the fall guy, accusing him of trying to destabilise the government. Two, the party knew very well that at a time when it was reeling under a spate of graft charges, an indictment of the Prime Minister and senior ministers by PAC would be a grievous blow. That is exactly what the draft report had done, besides indicting former Telecommunications Minister A. Raja. It castigated Dr Manmohan Singh and the PMO for giving an “indirect green signal” to Raja for going ahead with his policies and also attacked the then Finance Minister P. Chidambaram for recommending to the Prime Minister to “treat the matter as closed” instead of taking action against those responsible for loss to the exchequer. The 21-member committee has seven representatives from the Congress, four from the BJP, two each from the AIADMK and the DMK and one each from the Shiv Sena, the BJD, the JD(U), the SP, the BSP and the CPM. With such delicate balance, the support of the SP and the BSP had become crucial for the Congress to scrape through. With a majority of one on its side (11-10), the Congress managed to stage a coup of sorts, although the damage has already been done with the leakage of the draft report.
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Air India pilots’ strike
Sudden flight cancellations have inconvenienced travellers and further dented Air India’s not-too-flyer-friendly image. The trouble — as also the consequent loss — was avoidable had the government-owned airline management and the agitating pilots been a little flexible. There won’t be any public sympathy for the pilots who struck work without reasonable notice. They even defied the Delhi High Court order asking them to go back to work in the larger public interest. Pilots are paid fabulous salaries but the strike is against pay disparities. Post-merger, Indian Airlines pilots are at a disadvantage viz-à-viz their Air India counterparts. Civil Aviation Minister Vayalar Ravi and Air India CMD Arvind Jadhav have mishandled a simple issue. Over-reacting, they have derecognised the pilots’ association and sacked six activist pilots. “Nobody can dictate terms to the government… I don not think there is scope for negotiation”, declared Ravi. The immediate sufferers of the management’s stubbornness are the passengers who had booked their tickets in advance. The gainers are the private airlines, which lost no time in raising fares. The high court also came down heavily on the management for ignoring wage issues of a section of the pilots for so long. Indian Airlines and Air India merged in 2007 with the blessings of Praful Patel, the then minister in charge. A parliamentary committee has called the merger “ill-conceived, whimsical and a marriage of two incompatible individuals”. The protesting pilots are unfortunate children of this unhappy marriage. The global recession in 2008 bedevilled airlines globally. In India, the government carrier too suffered, but more than others. Air India has lost its number one position in market share. It suffered a loss of Rs 7,200 crore in 2009-10. That should have been reason enough to sack the management, which has no clear blueprint for effecting a turnaround. It has needlessly angered 800 of the 1,200 pilots by following discriminatory wage policies. The government is under pressure to offer the beleaguered airline a bailout. A more mature leadership should be put at the helm before committing more public money to the airline.
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Selecting a fighter
The Ministry of Defence has shortlisted two out of a total six types of medium range multi-role combat aircraft evaluated for induction into the Indian Air Force (IAF). The IAF has projected a need for 126 such aircraft to make up for shortfall in its fighter strength and also to modernise its fleet in keeping with rapid changes in military aviation technology and the country’s security requirements. By shortlisting the Typhoon Eurofighter and the French Dassault Rafale after evaluating on 643 parameters listed under the IAF’s Qualitative Requirements, India has effectively ruled out two formidable and strategic players in a deal estimated at a staggering $ 10 billion – Russia, which has been the country’s traditional weapon supplier starting from the Cold war period, and the United States, which, in recent years, has emerged as a major supplier of defence armament. Instead, by shortlisting two aircraft types, both of them from Europe, the IAF is set to add a variant to its already uniquely diverse fleet comprising over a score different aircraft types bought from half-a-dozen countries ranging from Russia, the US, Poland, France, UK and Brazil. Quite expectedly, the evaluation and shortlisting was preceded by intensive lobbying by companies and governments through their politicians and officials. Irrespective of which aircraft is eventually selected, the government must ensure that the final decision is taken with due propriety and in keeping with national interest. The government must not succumb to external pressures while ensuring that the deal goes through without complications. This is important considering that in the recent past, agreements for purchase of critical weapon systems have either had to be scrapped following allegations of kickbacks or are facing inquiries resulting in excessive caution in decision making. Consequently, this has resulted in not only a setback to the armed forces modernisation programme, but, more seriously, caused a setback to its capabilities vis-a-vis adversaries in the neighbourhood. This is a situation that a country of the size and importance of India can ill-afford.
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Good advice is always certain to be ignored, but that’s no reason not to give it. — Agatha Christie
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Infamous and unflattering The so-called Guantanamo File of 700 diplomatic papers dated between 2002 and 2009 published by WikiLeaks makes grim reading. The other leaked papers relate to American political and diplomatic assessments of men, nations, opportunities. The Guantanamo File, however, is a record of shame: of torture, illegal detention, violation of the Geneva Conventions and the Human Rights Charter that the US has practised and condoned on foreign soil where such infractions do not attract American domestic law which would not tolerate such vicious processes. Hence, also the wretched story of “renditions” when those suspected to be inimical to US interests were sent to countries where un-American practices would not attract legal consequences or which were prepared to assist for a consideration. A dragnet was used to trawl suspects with al Qaeda or other terrorist links post-9/11. Once in, there was no simple way out. Proven innocence itself sometimes became a problem as there was often no easy way to return these “suspects” to liberty. There were protests at home and abroad but these were muffled by the louder and more insistent refrain that such measures were required for US homeland security. Many of those incarcerated suffered mental and psychological breakdowns and others later became terrorists in search of vengeance against the US. Despite internal “reviews” and international protests, the Guantanamo “facility” survives. Some 600 prisoners have been transferred to other countries and still others released after so-called rehabilitation and supervision. Yet, despite Obama’s pledge to shut down the place, 172 detainees remain incarcerated in that hell-hole. Among those released are a Sudanese al Jazeera cameraman who was interrogated about this network’s training programme, equipment and news gathering operations in Chechnya, Kosovo and Afghanistan. According to a Guardian of London analyst, the argument seemed to be “that it was necessary for democratic states to excuse themselves from the rule of law in order to save it”! This sounds like the infamous US response in Vietnam that a certain village had to be destroyed in order to save it! In officially protesting the publication of documents “illegally obtained” by WikiLeaks, the US administration blandly seeks to hide the very illegality and inhumanity of the entire Guntanamo prison operation. Nor is this the first time. We heard the same story of macho illegality in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia (napalm bombs against civilians, massive defoliation and unexploded ordnance that continue to take a grim toll of life and limb). In Iraq, the lying, deception and brazenness were singularly blatant. Then Afghanistan, where the US encouraged the mujahadeen, the “good Muslim”, to wage jihad against the atheist Evil Empire and financed Pakistan to officer, train, direct, mentor and protect the Taliban – a monster that is now devouring that country, which is being bombed by American drones with considerable “collateral damage” as are Afghan civilians in a messy war that is unlikely to be won. And what about little Diego Garcia in the British Indian Ocean Territories (BIOT), where the US, in partnership with the imperial overlord, the UK, expelled several thousand native islanders from their homeland decades back to vest the UF Air Force with the untrammelled right to operate strategic missions from out of there? The latest argument is that these Islands, minus the Islanders, have gradually retuned to their pristine state and constitute an ecological treasure trove that it would be a pity to lose! The sheer inhumanity of it all! And now Libya, where an ex-Guantanamo prisoner is among the “rebels” fighting Gaddafi with NATO assistance. The Security Council resolved, with India, China. Russia and Brazil abstaining, to permit UN intervention to declare no-fly zones and impose sanctions to compel Gaddafi to desist from targeting civilians demonstrating against his regime. Britain and France are in the lead here with US support in what has become a NATO operation that seems scarcely, if at all, accountable to the UN. Here is another case of the UN mantle being spread over a largely Western operation to serve what increasingly look like Western interests in which oil, located in the eastern provinces now largely controlled by the Libyan rebels, is no doubt a factor. The Libyan war is not going the intended way. Gaddafi has shown that he is no push over, given the limitations of air and sea power. Now efforts are under way to eliminate him and secure a regime change. Hence, the bombing of one of his palaces in central Tripoli is a repeat action that has evoked strong backing from the US Senate. There were 45 civilian casualties reported on this occasion. And so it goes. The goal posts are shifting under the cover, as always, of mounting humbug. Even as this drama unfolds, Saudi forces have quietly entered Bahrain to prop up the minority Sunni monarchy against his restive Shia subjects, who feel they are second class citizens. Pakistani Sunni mercenaries and military are reinforcing all the threatened Arab monarchies. Iran is disturbed and a new Sunni-Shia confrontation could be in the making. And now — no secret this — comes a WikiLeak paper that shows that the US officially categorises Pakistan’s ISI as a terrorist outfit and that Guantanamo Bay officials were so notified for the purposes of interrogation. And this is America’s close frontline ally whom they denounce periodically – Robert Gates, Hillary Clinton, Mike Mullen – and immediately thereafter offer yet another generous dollop of military aid. What is one to make of this bizarre love-hate tango that has gone on for decades, with “collateral damage” to India, which has been the prime target of much of the military aid and fight-the-Taliban charade. The Americans need to do much better. The US is not inappropriately called a Great Society but a Dangerous
State.
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Interior decoration Walking along a dingy bylane of the old city of Bangalore, I ran smack into a push-cart vendor peddling a medley of objets d’art, which is the blue-stocking word we Francophiles use for worthless junk. A little papier mache figurine which looked like nothing on earth caught my fancy. Brisk bargaining (or rather haggling) ensued. A tenner changed hands and the weird what-not was mine. Returning home I was faced with the familiar problem of finding a suitable ‘niche’ for the latest addition to my art collection consisting mostly of gaudy and garish prints of assorted gods and goddesses snipped out of calendars put out by beedi companies. I gingerly hammered a rusty nail into the peeling mud wall, taking care to see that the thatched roof didn’t cave in on me. I hung the grotesque figurine and stepped backwards to view it critically from an acute tangential angle of 45 degrees like visitors to the Louvre Museum in Paris do to view Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa painting. I wasn’t quite satisfied. The folding rattan chair — my version of 18th century Chippendale — didn’t quite fit in with the new scheme. I moved it near the corner stand which, in any case, was an upturned deadwood box that was a haven for nifty mice. Even as I moved the box, a large well-fed cockroach scampered up the wall and with an alacrity and dexterity remarkable in one of my age, I whipped out my Kolhapuri slippers and gave the ‘roach a resounding thwack causing a large spreading stain on the crumbling wall. I could have framed the stain and passed it off as a late 18th century post-Moghul Kangra miniature without which no interior decoration scheme is complete. I was dissatisfied with the position of the occasional table made of valuable jungle wood. I dragged it along the mud floor into the alcove which, in any case, had been formed by the wall sagging under the weight of the lintel stone. I decided that the room needed a velvety Persian carpet into which one’s feet sank. I got hold of a jute sack and went to work with a tailor’s scissors and my luxurious Persian carpet was ready. Draperies? No problem. I took out my Kerala ‘lungi’ with its weird violet, magenta and orange check patterns and went snip snip. My draperies were ready. I pushed the sofa set consisting of a wicker basket chair and a low wooden stool into the nor’-nor’east corner and the lamp stand with its handkerchief shade more to the left. My handiwork was complete and haven’t I been telling you all along? Am a High Society Interior
Decorator! |
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National security strategy is fundamental South Asia is the second most unstable region in the world and is closely following West Asia in the race for the number one spot. Among the world’s major democracies, India faces the most complex threats and challenges spanning the full spectrum of conflict from nuclear to sub-conventional. Unresolved territorial disputes with China and Pakistan, insurgencies in Jammu and Kashmir and the northeastern states, rising tide of left wing extremism and the growing spectre of urban terrorism have vitiated India’s security environment. Despite the prolonged exposure that the security establishment has had in dealing with multifarious challenges, India’s national security is poorly managed. The first and foremost requirement for improving national security management is for the government to formulate a comprehensive National Security Strategy (NSS), that also covers internal security. The NSS should be formulated after carrying out an inter-departmental, inter-agency, multi-disciplinary strategic defence review. Such a review must take the public into confidence and not be conducted behind closed doors. Like in most other democracies, the NSS should be signed by prime minister, who is the head of government, and it must be placed before Parliament and be released as a public document. Only then will various stakeholders be compelled to take ownership of the strategy and work unitedly to achieve its aims and objectives. It has clearly emerged that China poses the most potent military threat to India and, given the nuclear, missile and military hardware nexus between China and Pakistan, future conventional conflict in Southern Asia could be a two-front war. Therefore, India’s military strategy of dissuasion against China must be gradually upgraded to deterrence. Genuine deterrence comes only from the capability to launch and sustain major offensive operations into the adversary’s territory. India needs to raise new divisions to carry the next war deep into Tibet. Since maneuvers are not possible due to the restrictions imposed by the difficult mountainous terrain, firepower capabilities need to be enhanced by an order of magnitude, especially in terms of precision-guided munitions. This will involve substantial upgradation of ground-based (artillery guns, rockets and missiles) and aerially-delivered (fighter-bomber aircraft and attack helicopters) firepower. Only then will it be possible to achieve future military objectives. The armed forces are now at the cusp of the fifth and final year of the 11th Defence Plan (2007-12) and it has not yet been formally approved by the government. The government has also not approved the long-term integrated perspective plan (LTIPP 2007-22) formulated by HQ Integrated Defence Staff. Without these essential approvals, defence procurement is being undertaken through ad hoc annual procurement plans, rather than being based on carefully prioritised long-term plans that are designed to systematically enhance India’s combat potential. These are serious lacunae, as effective defence planning cannot be undertaken in a policy void. The government must commit itself to supporting long-term defence plans or else defence modernisation will continue to lag and the present quantitative military gap with China’s People’s Liberation Army will become a qualitative gap as well in 10 to 15 years. This can be done only by making the dormant National Security Council a pro-active policy formulation body for long term national security planning. The Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS) only deals with current and near term threats and challenges and reacts to emergent situations. The defence procurement decision-making process must be speeded up. The army is still without towed and self-propelled 155mm howitzers for the plains and the mountains and urgently needs to acquire weapons and equipment for counter-insurgency and counter-terrorism operations. The navy has been waiting long for INS Vikramaditya (Admiral Gorshkov) aircraft carrier, which is being refurbished in a Russian shipyard at exorbitant cost. Construction of the indigenous air defence ship is lagging behind schedule. The plans of the air force to acquire 126 multi-mission, medium-range combat aircraft in order to maintain its edge over the regional air forces are also stuck in the procurement quagmire. All three services need a large number of light helicopters. India’s nuclear forces require the Agni-III missile and nuclear powered submarines with suitable ballistic missiles to acquire genuine deterrent capability. The armed forces do not have a truly integrated C4I2SR system suitable for modern network-centric warfare, which will allow them to optimise their individual capabilities. All of these high-priority acquisitions will require extensive budgetary support. With the defence budget languishing at less than two per cent of India’s GDP – compared with China’s 3.5 per cent and Pakistan’s 4.5 per cent plus US military aid – it will not be possible for the armed forces to undertake any meaningful modernisation in the foreseeable future. Leave aside genuine military modernisation that will substantially enhance combat capabilities, the funds available on the capital account at present are inadequate to suffice even for the replacement of obsolete weapons systems and equipment that are still in service well beyond their useful life cycles. The central police and para-military forces also need to be modernised as they are facing increasingly more potent threats while being equipped with obsolescent weapons. The government must also immediately appoint a Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) or a permanent Chairman of the Chiefs of Staff Committee to provide single-point advice to the CCS on military matters. Any further delay in this key structural reform in higher defence management on the grounds of the lack of political consensus and the inability of the armed forces to agree on the issue will be extremely detrimental to India’s interests in the light of the dangerous developments taking place in India’s neighbourhood. The logical next step would be to constitute tri-service integrated theatre commands to synergise the capabilities and the combat potential of individual services. It is time to set up tri-service aerospace and cyber commands to meet emerging challenges in these fields. International experience shows that such reform has to be imposed from the top down and can never work if the government keeps waiting for it to come about from the bottom up. The softer issues that do not impinge immediately on planning and preparation for meeting national security challenges must never be ignored as these can have adverse repercussions on the morale of the officers and men in uniform in the long term. The numerous anomalies created by the implementation of the Sixth Pay Commission report must be speedily resolved. In fact, the ham-handed handling of this issue has led to a dangerous “them versus us” civil-military divide and the government must make it a priority to bridge this gap quickly. The ex-servicemen too have had a raw deal and have been surrendering their medals and holding fasts for justice to get justice for their legitimate demand of “one rank-one pension”. One rank-one pension is an idea whose time has come and it must be implemented without further delay and without appointing any more committees of bureaucrats to look into the issue. While a Department of Ex-servicemen’s Welfare has been created in the Ministry of Defence (MoD) in keeping with the UPA’s Common Minimum Programme, till recently there wasn’t a single ex-Serviceman in it. Such measures do not generate confidence among serving soldiers and retired veterans in the civilian leadership. Finally, rather unbelievably, India is still without a National War Memorial. The writer is Director, Centre for Land Warfare Studies, New Delhi.
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Corrections and clarifications
Despite our earnest endeavour to keep The Tribune error-free, some errors do creep in at times. We are always eager to correct them. This column appears twice a week — every Tuesday and Friday. We request our readers to write or e-mail to us whenever they find any error. Readers in such cases can write to Mr Kamlendra Kanwar, Senior Associate Editor, The Tribune, Chandigarh, with the word “Corrections” on the envelope. His e-mail ID is kanwar@tribunemail.com. Raj Chengappa |
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South Asia is the second most unstable region in the world and is closely following West Asia in the race for the number one spot. Among the world’s major democracies, India faces the most complex threats and challenges spanning the full spectrum of conflict from nuclear to sub-conventional. Unresolved territorial disputes with China and Pakistan, insurgencies in Jammu and Kashmir and the northeastern states, rising tide of left wing extremism.
