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Implications of PM-Zardari talks
Focus shifts to official-level meeting
by T.V. Rajeswar
Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and Pakistan President Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto met in Shimla on July 3, 1972, after the war between the two nations in 1971 led to the emergence of Bangladesh as an independent country. At the end of the war, as many as 90,368 Pakistani prisoners of war were in Indian custody and their fate was to be resolved by the two Heads of the State at Shimla. Bhutto had brought along with him his young daughter, Benazir, who was still studying at Oxford. Bhutto clearly wanted his favourite daughter to become the destiny's child in Pakistan history. At Shimla, the Kashmir dispute was the main topic of discussion between India and Pakistan, and it was decided to recognise the 1949 UN ceasefire line as the new boundary, termed as the Line of Actual Control (LAC). It was agreed by both sides that either side would not seek to alter the LAC unilaterally, irrespective of mutual differences. The Indian side was keen to get Pakistan accept the LAC as a permanent border between India and Pakistan, thereby recognising Kashmir an integral part of India. The defeated country, Pakistan, with over 90,000 prisoners of war in Indian custody would have had no choice if India had persisted. Wily Bhutto, however, managed to convince Indira Gandhi and her advisers that he would prepare Pakistan's public opinion in favour of recognising the LAC as permanent border and India should not impose a solution on a defeated country. Eventually, however, nothing happened, and Kashmir remains a disputed territory. The meeting on April 8 between President Zardari of Pakistan and Dr Manmohan Singh of India in Delhi is equally historic, coming as it did after 40 years. After three wars between India and Pakistan — in 1948, 1965 and 1971 — there had not been any full-fledged armed conflict between the two countries. Both countries are now nuclear powers and a major war between them is unthinkable. However, their relations have been anything but normal. Since Pakistan has treated terrorism as an instrument of state policy in its relations with India, there have been planned attacks in various parts of India at the instance of the ISI. The most serious of these incidents were the 26/11 attacks in Mumbai in 2008 by jihadi terrorists of the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) with Hafiz Muhammad Saeed as the prime mover. Dossiers containing all the details of the role played by the LeT and Saeed have been given at various levels by India, but Pakistan has done nothing concrete to bring them to justice. President Asif Zardari's wish to visit the dargah of Hazrat Moinuddin Chishty in Ajmer on April 8 was announced all of a sudden, but Manmohan Singh promptly rose to the occasion and invited Zardari to a meeting in Delhi for one-on-one talks between the two, followed by lunch prior to the President's visit to Ajmer. Zardari came with a delegation of 40, the most important member being his son Bilawal, who is the President of the Pakistan People's Party. He was designated as such after the assassination of his mother Benazir Bhutto. Bilawal is still a student at Oxford. His inclusion in the entourage of President Zardari and the fact that he was the only other member who was present during the one-on-one discussion between Zardari and Manmohan Singh on April 8 clearly shows President Zardari's plan to educate his son in the affairs of state, the most important part being relations between India and Pakistan. The meeting between Zardari and Manmohan Singh lasted only 30 to 40 minutes. Nevertheless, Manmohan Singh brought up the topic of Hafiz Saeed and the need to bring the perpetrators of the Mumbai terrorist attacks of 2008 to justice without further delay. President Zardari was evasive and stated that the topic of Saeed had to be further gone into by the two sides, and the matter would be discussed by official delegations expected to meet in Pakistan in the coming weeks. It does not require extraordinary analysis to conclude that Pakistan has no intention of taking any concrete action against the LeT perpetrators of terror in Mumbai. While External Affairs Minister S.M. Krishna had said that India had given to Pakistan every detail of Saeed's involvement in the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks, a Foreign Office spokesperson of Pakistan said that there was no concrete and maintainable evidence in the material given by India, and New Delhi had not provided any hard evidence which could withstand judicial scrutiny. Needless to say, nothing came out of the discussions with President Zardari on the need to control terrorism. And what would be the outcome of the forthcoming official talks between India and Pakistan remains to be seen. A US spokesman recently explained that in spite of patient diplomacy with Pakistan that India did not pose any threat to Pakistan's security, Islamabad was not ready to look at India as a friendly country and that Pakistan had no intention of giving up terrorism as an instrument of state policy. However, it is now clear that focus has shifted to official discussions in the coming months and the eventual visit of Dr Manmohan Singh to Pakistan. Even as Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto had brought his daughter Benazir for the discussions at Shimla, President Asif Zardari had brought his son Bilawal for his Delhi-Ajmer visit. Rahul Gandhi, General Secretary of the Congress, was at the Prime Minister's lunch and he had one-on-one interaction with Bilawal, who also invited him to Pakistan. It was as well that representatives of the next generation leadership should develop good rapport between themselves. Nothing came out of the Delhi meeting on April 8 even as nothing was finalised for the Simla Summit in 1972. India should be prepared to face Pakistan's policy of using its ISI and terrorist outfits for terrorist attacks in Kashmir and elsewhere in the country. In its annual report for 2011-2012, the Ministry of Defence (MoD) has stated that Chinese footprints in India's neighbourhood and Pakistan terror camps were a matter of concern. On the Pakistan front, the existence of terrorist camps across the India-Pakistan border and continued infiltration attempts continue to pose a threat to security and stability. The MoD report claimed that India had also started building its capabilities to meet these security challenges. The nation has to be prepared to face Pakistan terror challenges without any let-up. India should also get its National Centre for Counter-Terrorism (NCTC) organised at the earliest possible
time. The writer is a former Governor of West Bengal and UP.
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In Her Majesty’s service
by Ashok Kumar Yadav
WHILE I was busy giving final touches to my write-up, honey-soaked words started pouring in my ears. “Are you still busy like a bee? I need you.” Since the invite was so sensual, I could not resist rolling into the honey-trap. Headway I crashed into the kitchen from where the syrupy words were flying. Soon I was lured into performing errands after our cook had eloped with our neighbour’s maid.After faithful indulgence in the service of Her Majesty, as I returned to my desk, I kept wondering how majestically the wives carry themselves like queens, extracting obedience from males who just slog like meek sentinels. This art of charming males and disarming their valour comes so natural to them. Not only Homo sapiens, there were several species of insects, too, where queens were revered by their fraternity. It reminded me when I was invited to chair a state-level beekeepers’ function in my home-town Bawal. I happily confirmed since I did not want any legitimate opportunity to meet my mother slip. There I was offered tutorials on the life cycle of honey bees. Like humans, the bees too have different personality traits on the basis of which they select their job profile so cryptically described by Shakespeare. Some bees are “like magistrates, correct at home”; others are “like merchants, venture trade abroad” whereas a few are “like soldiers, armed in their stings”. John Keats, too, was appreciative of the typical “bee-haviour” as “…the little almsmen of spring bowers, know there is richest juice in poison-flowers”. Interestingly, a poor porter bee produces just one half teaspoon of honey in its lifetime. Some bees are described as typical thrill-seekers whereas a few opt for risk-averse vocation. Less than 5 per cent of a colony is the fearless nest scouts — who venture to discover new flower patches while the remaining are non-scouts. An industrious scout can survey about 2,000 sites a day; lives just three weeks while queen thrives three to four years. The scouts transmit this information using the “waggle dance” —an incredibly complex language which was cracked by an Austrian scientist, Karl Frisch, winning him the Nobel Prize. Of about 290,000 flowering plants, three quarters require pollination by a bee, bumblebee, wasp, bird, bat or other insects in order to bear fruits. But, alas, as 7,000-plus species of bees start dwindling because of pesticides, the consequential ripples tend to outgrow into tsunamis ruffling the global ecosystem. Without them, food would become scarce; and fruits, nuts and vegetables perish. Even Einstein is credited to have remarked that the disappearance of bees would lead, within four years, to the disappearance of humanity. However, without women the world shall collapse in just four days. While making a beeline for Chandigarh on return, I kept wondering at the similarities between the Queen Bee and the Home Queen. Indisputably, both are sovereign in their domain and wear regal attitude in their demeanour. Both are possessive and exhibit zero tolerance towards an intruder in their territory. Queen Bee goes to the extent of even killing all fellow-queens in their infancy to preserve her autonomy. Both are the merchants of nectar, sharing the sweetness with their loved ones. Beware, however; never take them for granted; both can sting to disaster if their “queendom” is
invaded.?
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The controversy over the Army’s Czech-origin Tatra trucks is not just about quality of the equipment, but also raises the larger issue of indigenous defence production. The need is to pragmatically promote defence self-sufficiency by harnessing the military-industry interface using government subsidy-cum-support
TRUCK WITH CONTROVERSY
Maj Gen Raj Mehta (Retd)
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SMERCH Multi-Barrel Rocket Launchers based upon the Tatra truck during Army Day Parade 2012. Tatra trucks form the backbone of the military’s specialist vehicle fleet.
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With Parliament in session and a truculent opposition looking to embarrass the ruling coalition, the explosive interview by Army Chief Gen VK Singh to The Hindu datelined March 26, 2012 provided them with just that opportunity. Alleging that he had been offered a bribe of Rs 14 crores ($2.73 million) by an ex-Army officer lobbyist to clear purchase of 600 sub-standard Tatra vehicles, the General claimed that the 7,000 Tatra vehicles already in Army service "had been sold over the years at exorbitant prices with no questions asked." He added that he had informed the Defence Minister about the incident. By late afternoon, Mr Antony had ordered a CBI probe into the bribing allegation. Contradicting the Army Chief a few days later, the DRDO chief and scientific adviser to Raksha Mantri, Dr VK Saraswat said that the BEML-Tatra trucks were outstanding, adding that the Prithvi and Agni missile launchers were Tatra based and functioning optimally. BEML Chairman VRS Natarajan has said that and there is no issue with either serviceability or availability of spares of Tatra trucks. With the BEML-Tatra vehicle being awarded such extreme grades by top hierarchy, the lay reader needs to understand where the truth lies.The All Terrain Tatra Military Vehicle Tatra a.s. (named after the Tatra Mountains in Slovakia) is a reputed truck manufacturer based in Koprivnice, Czech Republic. It is the world's third oldest car maker after Daimler and Peugeot. The company produces a range of all-wheel-drive trucks from 4×4 to 12×12. In 1967, Tatra brought out the Kolos (Colossus) Tatra-813 model. This vehicle incorporated innovative design features like wide tyres, modular engine, central tyre inflation/deflation system, stunning towing capability and multi-fuel adaptability. Tatra-815, its successor has repeatedly won international off-road rallies. Some current models are tailor-made for the desert (Tatra-815-6) and C-130 Hercules air transportability (Tatra-815-7). Tatra-815/variants are exported to USA, Brazil, Australia, the Czech Republic, Romania, Slovakia, Saudi Arabia, Israel and India. The BEML-Tatra Connection Tatra a.s. entered Indian Army service in 1986 through a contract signed with Defence PSU, Bharat Earth Movers Limited (BEML) using completely-knocked-down (CKD) truck kits. BEML has business divisions in mining, construction, defence, aerospace and rail/metro coaches. In 1997, the contract for supply was reportedly signed with an intermediary and not with Tatra a.s., the original equipment manufacturer (OEM). This issue and its connected threads of the alleged bribe offer and connivance of other players is under CBI investigation and is outside the pale of this article. What is germane here is that BEML currently assembles nine variants of the Tatra-813 and Tatra-815 ranging from 6x6 to 12x12 vehicles for the Army. These have all-wheel-drive and very impressive cross-country capability. The ruggedised-for-Indian-conditions vehicle is 29 feet long, 8 feet wide and 9 feet high, weighs 16,000 kg and has a maximum speed of 80kmph. The Tatra vehicle has, since induction been the Army's workhorse. Besides ferrying mechanised vehicles, it carries assault bridges and operational loads, following tanks with ease cross-country. Tatra variants are used as command posts, communication links, for recovery, as weapon platforms for multi-barrel-rocket-systems such as Pinaka, for the Prithvi/Agni missile systems and for the state-of-the-art Indo-Russian collaboration BrahMos missile system whose land version is carried on the 12x12 Tatra-815. A Reality Check: Tatra is both Outstanding and Substandard Exercise Brass Tacks was the first major exploitation of the Tatra vehicle, passing its rigorous desert induction with flying colours. The author had occasion to personally drive the vehicle both on and off-road when the vehicle was employed in the "follow-the-tanks-logistics-support" mode in both day and night conditions. The vehicle was quite simply outstanding. Years later, the author saw its utilization as missile-cum-communication-and-logistics carrier and found its performance high grade. If the left hand drive was a start-up problem, Army drivers quickly overcame it, driving the Tatra loaded with 50-tonne tanks on highways or off-road with logistics/containerised loads with ease, without any noticeable enhancement in accident rates. Once past their prime, however, the Tatra-813/815 has started having problems of spares, maintenance and repairs because of grossly inadequate logistics support. These problems demand substantial attention from the field Army as tyres, batteries; critical engine spares are not only inadequately stocked but have also not been indigenously produced to the original, exacting standards of the OEM. The indigenisation figures being touted make for hair-raising reading. The Army Chief claims that 70 percent of the Tatra is imported. Rashmi Verma, MoD Joint Secretary (Land Systems) puts the figure at 45 percent and Chairman BEML at 40 percent -- figures that speak for the sordid, ham-handed way in which we look at defence procurement and indigenisation. We must bluntly accept that a Tatra-815 without batteries, tyres or fitted with expensive though inefficient commercial-off-the-shelf substitutes, a vehicle reportedly with its nuclear, biological and chemical (NBC) filters stripped, is operationally unserviceable. The blatant violation of the Governments Defence Procurement Procedure which prohibits intermediaries between user and OEM adds to the irony that an outstanding vehicle has been rendered hors de combat by bureaucratic obfuscation, inadequate political oversight, blighted indigenisation, and possibly, lack of financial probity. The military's sluggishness in following up on its whistle blowing is equally distressing. The Indigenisation Conundrum MoD in 2011, belatedly ordered trials for a 'Made-in-India' all-terrain vehicle, with Tata Motors, Ashok Leyland, Ural (India) Ltd and BEML participating. Though a significant development, we must accept that our indigenisation work ethic is poor. India has 39 ordnance factories, 51 defence laboratories and eight Defence PSUs under the MoD, with many performing sub-optimally, notwithstanding occasional successes like the BrahMos, Prithvi/Agni and radar projects. Defence self-reliance is urgently needed as profit driven foreign vendors will always let you down when the chips are down. Some analysts have suggested that the conundrum can be solved by allowing defence foreign players bulk entry, hoping that they will replicate the effect foreign players had on indigenising India's automotive industry. Such analysis is a chimera as it misses the point that the defence sector worldwide is government and diplomacy controlled, and has deep ramifications far beyond just profit. What we do need to do is to tackle two broad issues. Firstly, the need to reform the Defence Ministry per se through a constitutionally appointed National Defence Commission. The other is to pragmatically promote defence self-sufficiency through foreign collaboration using the BrahMos model and by harnessing the military-industry interface, using Government subsidy-cum-support. An example from Israeli civil industry-R&D support scheme shows that it raised Israeli exports from $422 million when the program started in 1969 to $3316 million in 1987. Funding for firms meeting the subsidy criteria ranged from 50 - 66 percent of their R&D budget. In 1993, Israel started a "Magnet" research scheme for consortia in which innovative people, firms and academia received huge R&D budgetary support and 18 consortia are currently working on projects such as digital wireless communications and multimedia-on-line-services. In all, Israel is funding over 800 firms engaged in involving 1162 R&D projects. Finally, does the BEML-Tatra potpourri have a silver lining currently concealed by the ugliness of the confrontation and exposures thereto? Indeed, there is. The much needed Military Reform Process has finally fallen into place and India may finally come out a winner from this fracas. The writer has served with the Armoured Corps which uses Tatra variants
The Stake Holders
TATRA Tatra is a Czech vehicle manufacturer founded in 1850 as Schustala & Company and in 1897 produced the first motor car in central Europe, and one of the first cars in world, the Präsident. In 1919, it started to use the Tatra a.s. badge named after the nearby Tatra mountains in Slovakia. Tatra is the third oldest car maker in the world after Daimler and Peugeot. During World War II Tatra was instrumental in the production of trucks, and tank engines for Germany. Production of passenger cars ceased in 1999 but the company still produces a range of primarily all-wheel-drive 4×4, 6×6, 8×8, 10×10, and 12×12 trucks. VECTRA Vectra Group consists of diverse companies operating in various business domains across the world. The core businesses of the Vectra Group, according to its website, are aviation, engineering, material handling and construction equipment, automotive, real estate, information technology, and the services sector. Its operations are primarily in India and Eastern Europe, spanning more than 18 companies, with eight manufacturing facilities in four countries (India, the UK, Czech Republic, and Slovakia). In addition, Vectra Group has offices or investments in France, Russia, Singapore and Sri-Lanka. Vectra is the largest shareholder of the consortium Tatra Holding s.r.o. that owns Tatra a.s. Formerly known as Tatra Trucks India Limited, Tatra Vectra Motors Limited was the Vectra Group's first manufacturing plant in India. It. manufactures Tatra trucks in India and is located in Hosur in Tamil Nadu. BEML Bharat Earth Movers Limited is a public sector undertaking that manufactures a variety of heavy equipment for earth moving, transport and mining. BEML commenced operations in January 1965 and was wholly owned and operated by the Ministry of Defence until 1992, when the government divested 25% of its holdings in the company. BEML is Asia's second-largest manufacturer of earth moving equipment, and it controls 70% of India's market in that sector.
BEML-TATRA VEHICLES IN SERVICE WITH THE INDIAN ARMED FORCES The backbone of Indian Armed Forces’ fleet of heavy logistics and specialist vehicles is based upon Tatra variants, ranging from load carriers to missile launch vehicles. These include: 
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