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From a
hawk to a dove |
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A monsoon miss Fears of poor kharif grow, govt on test The first real challenge for the Modi government may be coming up soon. In April the Met Department had warned of a below-normal monsoon this year. While a revised forecast is expected later this month, we already know that the rain-laden clouds have not reached Kerala on the appointed date of June 1, the first point of entry for the monsoon on Indian mainland. There is also a "23 per cent" likelihood of a drought. The fallout for the economy is well understood, but the matter is compounded by the fact that our growth rate of under-5 per cent is not sufficient to give employment to the rising mass of youth, a hope held out by the NDA government. Agriculture, the first casualty of a poor monsoon, not only contributes significantly to the GDP but also is a trigger for consumer spending, a must to infuse confidence in the economy.
A
positive and constructive visit
My first
professional fee
Military
woes: What Modi govt needs to fix
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A monsoon miss The
first real challenge for the Modi government may be coming up soon. In April the Met Department had warned of a below-normal monsoon this year. While a revised forecast is expected later this month, we already know that the rain-laden clouds have not reached Kerala on the appointed date of June 1, the first point of entry for the monsoon on Indian mainland. There is also a "23 per cent" likelihood of a drought. The fallout for the economy is well understood, but the matter is compounded by the fact that our growth rate of under-5 per cent is not sufficient to give employment to the rising mass of youth, a hope held out by the NDA government. Agriculture, the first casualty of a poor monsoon, not only contributes significantly to the GDP but also is a trigger for consumer spending, a must to infuse confidence in the economy. Basic food, i.e. cereals like wheat and rice, would not be a problem as there are sufficient stocks. But the reduced supply - 60 per cent of the country's food comes from rain-fed lands - will put the Food Security Act to test. The UPA never really got to test its scheme. It is thus up to the NDA government, which plans tweaking it, to use it as a safeguard for people in an adverse year. Apart from ensuring the availability of clean drinking water in even remote areas of Rajasthan and Madhya
Pradesh, the government will also have to arrange fodder for cattle. But there will be certain aspects like general food inflation that will be hard to help. A deficient rainfall will take its toll. The food grain production in Punjab and
Haryana, which feed the Central pool, is not likely to be affected as they are dependent largely on ground water. The two states will nonetheless suffer on account of a setback to the ground water situation and increased production cost. There is still time to switch the crop choice from paddy to maize to cut the losses.
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Thought for the Day
A successful man is one who can lay a firm foundation with the bricks others have thrown at him.
— David Brinkley
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Railway carriages for Europeans
A correspondent writing to the Pioneer complains that there are no separate carriages or compartments provided in all Indian railways for Europeans. He points out that in one railway line - evidently the E.I.R. - separate compartments for Europeans travelling in the second class are provided and they serve a very useful purpose. Evidently he is one of those Europeans in India who cannot possibly tolerate the presence of any one whose manners and methods are different from Europeans. In other words he wants in India conditions for himself and his class, which prevail in Europe and apparently ignores how ridiculous such claims are. He gives an instance of the insufferable conduct of Indian passengers in second class carriages. The worst conduct he attributes to Indians is that they throw about their luggage without arranging them properly; that they talk loudly and laugh.
Preponderance of official element
TRUE it is that the Indian Civil Service is a splendid body, and India also owes a debt of gratitude to its strenuous labours. But the Service has its own place, and it must be assigned its own legitimate functions. It ought not to be permitted to sit in judgement over its own actions. Whatever its merits in other respects it has this failing: it is habituated to work in a certain groove and it revels in its knowledge of details. This is a positive disqualification for the cultivation of that large hearted sympathy which proceeds from a wide knowledge of the forces of progress. Now, in the Council as proposed to be constituted although the maximum number of members has been reduced from 14 to 10 and the minimum from 10 to 7, the civilian element is retained at its original strength of 4. This is not reform but retrogression.
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A positive and constructive visit That Nawaz Sharif's adviser Sartaj Aziz reignited the embers of bitter hostility by his briefing in Pakistan on Kashmir and several other counts is understandable. He had to indulge in rhetoric for domestic consumption. Lobbies of the armed forces and maulvis were assured that Nawaz Sharif vented his annoyance in private while talking to Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Still I wish Sartaj Aziz had not done so because the meeting had changed the climate of opposition in India. Even the rightists in the country had conceded that a new chapter of equation had begun in the history of India and Pakistan relations. Sartaj Aziz, whatever his compulsions, did not have to be a hawk to take us all back to square one. Foreign Secretary Sujatha Singh's statement may have queered the pitch, but Sartaj Aziz is not a bureaucrat and he should have kept India-Pakistan relations at a higher level. Therefore, do not see a breakthrough in the stand that the two sides had taken from the time the two countries had parted company in August 1947. In fact, I have sensed more optimism on earlier meetings between the Prime Ministers on both sides. Nothing concrete has come out because the establishments in India and Pakistan are basically hostile to each other. No passage of time has lessened their influence or attitude. Yet the relationship of love and hate smoulders all the time. People in the two countries yearn for friendship or at least normalcy. The meeting between Prime Ministers Modi and Sharif has once again evoked hope for better days. Once again, the foreign secretaries of the two governments are to pinpoint what keeps the countries apart. If the past is any guide, the goodwill will not fructify into normal relations. The reason why I say so is the enmity which has been fostered in the minds of people. It was to be seen and believed the enthusiasm with which the visit of Nawaz Sharif was awaited in India. The nation should have been engaged in Narendra Modi's resounding victory or the decimation of the Congress, which has ruled India for several decades. Instead, the attention was focused on Islamabad. For four or five days between Modi's unexpected invitation and acceptance by Sharif dominated the discussion that dominated the Indian media and drawing rooms centred on whether the Pakistan Prime Minister would come to Delhi at all. And it was all positive. People wanted him to come and literally prayed that he would. That he had to bring round the armed forces and the extremist elements in his own country was conceded. But it was argued that his arrival would be an apt step to strengthen the democratic ideas in Pakistan. Therefore, when he telephoned to say yes, a wave of relief swept through the country. Most newspapers made his acceptance as the first lead. I recall how at the time of Partition there was so much bloodshed -- nearly 10 lakh people were massacred on both sides. Yet a few weeks later when I bought a few tapes of Noorjehan at Lahore, the shopkeeper refused to take money since I was from India. A similar treatment was meted out to the Pakistanis. The days of killings were only a few, an aberration of sort. It is beyond me to make out why Pakistan has unilaterally ended the agreement to post two journalists from either country to cover the situation. Pakistan did not have its journalists in position for more than a year. I could have understood the reason if the two Indian journalists had violated any law or sent a dispatch which had hurt Pakistan's sentiments. There was nothing like that. Regretfully, news agencies and correspondents from the West are free to report. Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's visit to India took a similar zigzag path. Prime Minister Modi, considered a hawk, surprised even the hardliners in both the countries when he invited all heads of SAARC nations. Nawaz Sharif was inclined to accept it. Yet the India-Pakistan animosity came in the way. The army and the extremists exerted so much pressure that the visit seemed abandoned. Ultimately, Sharif asserted himself to attend the swearing-in ceremony. His was not only a gesture because after meeting Modi, Sharif said that a new chapter had begun in the history of the two countries. The fear that Modi is anti-Muslim was allayed when the two met. Modi realises that he has to take the Muslims along to traverse the path of development, regardless of the slogan which has given him and his Bharatiya Janata Party a majority, 282 seats in a 543-member Lok Sabha. It is churlish on the part of Pakistan to question the credentials of a person whom the people of India have elected in fair and free polls. There are enough voices in India to force Modi not to go away from secularism, part of the basic structure of the Constitution that even Parliament cannot change. True, Modi's party and its mentor, the RSS, are known for their Hindutva approach. Yet they would put the country in a big turmoil if they exerted pressure on Modi to build a temple where the Babri masjid stood or tinker with Article 370, which constitutionally gave special status to Jammu and Kashmir when it acceded to India. What kind of development does Modi want to carry out? The Cabinet he has constituted gives a message that he wants different elements to feel that he will not discriminate against any segment of society, religious or linguistic. The first heartening step of his government to appoint a Special Investigation Team (SIT) to unearth black money is a good omen. We should give him time to fulfil the aspirations of people he has aroused.
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My first professional fee There are certain benefits of having a small-town background as one does not carry the burden of high expectations from others. One's average performance in any field is accepted as good enough by most of the people which reinforces a person's faith in one's limited abilities. I can say this with authority because I have been a beneficiary of this phenomenon in the school days. And even today, my 'Punjab matric English' gets published in reputed national dailies, perhaps because of the same reason. Fortunately, I have now realised that when one doesn't know oneself well enough, one gets surprised at one's achievements, how minor they maybe. That is why many of us turn out to be better than what we think we are capable of. In my student days English was taught in Punjab schools from Class VI and one had the option to study other subjects in Punjabi or Hindi. In the ninth class one had to choose one compulsory subject out of Hindi and Punjabi since Sanskrit was not taught in the school. I opted for Hindi as the compulsory subject because the Hindi teacher told me that I could get better marks in Hindi than in Punjabi. I accepted his view, though I have not understood the logic of his statement till today. English was the most dreaded subject for boys from villages. Because of their handicap, my average abilities in the subject stood out and so I was picked up to participate in the debate, "Who did more for India, Gandhi or Nehru?" to be aired on AIR, Jalandhar. The Punjabi saying "A one-eyed person excels among the blind" perfectly fitted my position. Suddenly, I became the hero of the school as I was going to speak on radio and that too in English. I was told to go to a private school at Batala to rehearse for the debate. Mr Om Prakash 'Aarif' from AIR was there to help us prepare for the big day. He asked all four of us our names, class and name of the school etc in the type of English which none of us had ever heard any one speak. For the next ten days he worked on our 'aal', 's-top', 'ajucation'. 's-koool, 'damocrasy' and many other words we were used to speaking in our own pronunciation and style. We were explained how to pronounce the key words, modulate the voice, hold the breath and many other things which I have yet to master. Mr Aarif was a kind gentleman but that did not stop him from having fun at our cost. On the D-day, the Headmaster of my school made more than 1,200 students sit in rows and a loudspeaker was fixed for everyone to hear me. I was told that when my name and my school's name were announced, the entire school clapped. The next day my school friends hugged me and passed the judgement that my angrazy was excellent. After a couple of months, I received a sum of Rs 16 through a money order. I still keep that receipt as a souvenir.
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Military woes: What Modi govt needs to fix Two
developments on the very first day of the newly sworn in Modi government have come as a surprise if not a disappointment to the country's defence community. First, the BJP-led NDA government has not so far appointed a full-time dedicated defence minister. Second, Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, who has also been allotted the defence portfolio, announced on May 27, the very first day after being sworn in, that he was holding only temporary charge of the Ministry of Defence and that a full-time defence minister would be appointed in about a fortnight. This means that any meaningful work related to this vital ministry that forms part of the apex Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS) will have to wait for now. This is surprising considering that the BJP is known for maintaining a tough line on defence and national security issues. In its 2014 Lok Sabha election manifesto, the BJP has devoted two pages (compared to five-and-a-quarter pages in its 2009 election manifesto) to defence, internal security, nuclear capability and related issues promising to correct almost everything that is wrong with India's defence and the armed forces. The listing, however, is somewhat haphazard and does not read as methodical. Whether it is because it was put together in a hurry or is ominously indicative of the functioning of the Defence Ministry in the days ahead will be known in time.
What the government could
Modi's government will need to take bold and innovative measures. Blacklisting companies has not helped; rather it has delayed if not altogether stopped procurement of some vital defence equipment, adding to the cause for delays in modernising the armed forces. Perhaps a more pragmatic policy of not objecting to agents getting commissions so long as the political executive and government employees, including bureaucrats and the armed forces have not accepted commission would be in order and the equipment selected for induction based solely on merit. Also, it needs to be kept in mind that the cheapest is not always the best while the best is often more expensive. However, at a far more fundamental level, India needs to improve its indigenous capability and diligently works towards self reliance in core areas. Why is it that the Indian Space Research Organisation has been a far better success story? Can the DRDO and key defence public sector units not replicate that model? The DRDO needs to focus on realistic goals rather than spread itself thin. Also, the government needs to devise ways to attract the best talent into the DRDO and vital defence PSUs such as HAL and take a hard look at the factors that have led to a large number of scientists resigning from service. Private participation needs to be increased. The Ministry of Defence needs more bureaucrats with a positive attitude and a better-“educated” top military brass and complete synergy between them. From them, the government must seek and demand excellence. But first India needs a defence minister with leadership qualities who will show involvement and take ownership of this vital ministry. He or she, along with Prime Minister Narendra Damodardas Modi, must get going quickly and make things happen.
Defence matters Woefully inadequate & deficient First, a reality check. India's defence is not in good health. It has not been in good health for many years now despite purchases of some major big-ticket items in recent years. Behind the impressive and ritualistic annual Republic Day parade is a dismal story comprising a mix of awful mismanagement, sordid inadequacies, grave politicisation, terrible corruption and abject neglect of the country's defence and armed forces. The armed forces are almost entirely import-dependent with India's self-reliance capability being severely limited if not entirely negligible reflecting poorly on a country that aspires to be a major power to reckon with. Procurement procedures are long and unwieldy. Private industry participation is severely limited as is foreign direct investment. Obsolescence of the Army in particular is high while the Air Force's fighter aircraft squadron strength has declined as has also the Navy’s submarine fleet. India's conventional arms superiority over Pakistan is on the decline. China is making marked strides while India lags far behind and is yet to even satisfactorily develop, let alone induct, a missile that can reach China's centre of gravity – notably Beijing and Shanghai. Officer shortages in the armed forces, particularly the Army, abound even as scientists and engineers continue to resign from the country’s premier defence research and development institutions and defence public sector units. An antiquated Army remains embroiled in counter-insurgency operations, while intelligence-gathering capability by the country's premier intelligence agencies is far from optimum. The three services, each of which is preparing to fight its own war, remains uncoordinated at the top in the absence of a Chief of Defence Staff. A revolving-door senior civil bureaucracy calls the shots in the Ministry of Defence, with the armed forces being largely kept out of the decision-making process while also being ignorant of the functioning of the civil government… the list is simply endless. In sum, there seems to be more wrong than right with India's defence. Areas for concern India woefully lacks self-reliance capability. Almost six decades after it began its quest for self-reliance by establishing a series of government-owned defence research, development and production units, India has attained only a 30 to 35 per cent self-reliance capability for its defence needs. Even this figure is suspect because much of this capability is based on transfer of imported technology and license production of imported defence equipment. The fact is that India has been unable to develop any core strengths in defence technology. More seriously, as is officially admitted by the government, India lacks competence and capability in developing strategic technologies. Yet, despite this limitation, an unrealistic and overambitious Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO), which spearheads India's defence research and development, has embarked on an ambitious path of developing almost the entire gamut of major weapon systems and platforms, many in which it has no previous experience. The DRDO and its subsidiary units have been unable, for example, to develop an engine for a tank let alone for a fighter aircraft. It has not quite succeeded in even making a rifle. (The 5.56 mm Indian Small Arms System or INSAS rifle that took years to develop has not quite measured up, thus forcing the Army to import rifles from overseas). Several studies and reports have been prepared on how to reform the DRDO, all of which have not quite translated into a discernable change and improvement. Time and cost overruns continue to be a consistent theme in the DRDO. As a result, India is over dependent on imports for its defence needs. India continues to purchase about 70 per cent of its defence hardware making it a ‘Foreign-Made Indian Military’. It is common sense that the Indian defence establishment will be forever susceptible to compromise in the absence of an indigenous military-industrial complex. But even imports are handicapped by delays in defence-procurement procedures which have added to the obsolescence of many sections of India's defence. Blacklisting of firms has further complicated matters. For example, virtually all major firms selling artillery guns currently stand blacklisted, making the Regiment of Artillery among the most antiquated section of the Indian Army. India is the world's only democracy where the services do not play a role in the government's decision-making process. The Army, Navy and Air Force Chiefs function as department heads who are summoned for consultations on an as-and-when basis by the government. There is no established system of institutionalised interaction between the political executive and the service chiefs. Any such interaction is dependent on the individual interest of the prime minister or defence minister of the day. In the absence of a Chief of Defence Staff (CDS), the services are not coordinated at the top and there is no solitary principal military adviser to the government akin to a National Security Adviser. The armed forces too are not unanimous on the appointment of a CDS, with the Indian Air Force opposed to the move and both the Army and Navy in favour of such a post. Such rivalry is not unusual and was also witnessed in the United States until 1986 when President Ronald Reagan took a top down approach and passed the Goldwater-Nichols Act, whereby the powers of the Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff were increased and the chain of command streamlined. There are limited joint commands, some of which are not even truly joint. The operational commands of each service is located in completely different cities thus posing a challenge for inter-services coordination. There is no move for creating theatre commands. The internal health of the armed forces, especially the Army, is another area of concern. Officer and soldier shortages, politicisation in the top hierarchy, moral, professional and financial corruption and declining moral fibre are some of the issues that plague the armed forces. The Army’s secondary task – aid to civil authority – has since long become its primary duty. The Army remains embroiled in counter-insurgency and internal security operations in Jammu and Kashmir and the North-East, thus adversely impacting its operational preparedness and training. India’s land borders with China, Pakistan, Myanmar, Bangladesh, Nepal and Bhutan are managed by a mix of five different forces - Army, Assam Rifles, Indo Tibetan Border Police, Border Security Force and Sashastra Seema Bal, which in turn are divided between the Ministry of Defence and Home Affairs thus creating serious coordination problems. Earlier promises not kept The Modi government's task is well cut out. Perhaps they can take some lessons and make observations from the six-year (1998-2004) BJP-led NDA government headed by Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, which failed to carry out much-needed (and promised) reforms in higher defence management. The Vajpayee government had shied away from appointing a CDS, while otherwise creating its secretariat (Integrated Defence Staff or IDS, headed by a three-star general as a Chief of Integrated Staff or CIS) and annually surrendered a significant portion of the capital budget of the armed forces. The defence budget as a percentage of GDP remained less than 2.5 (as low as 2.18 in 2003-04); average capacity utilisation of defence shipyards ranged between just 23 and 48 per cent and there was no progress on creating an Aerospace Command. As the 19th Parliamentary Standing Committee on Defence Report of the 13th Lok Sabha tabled on April 2003 (fifth year into BJP-led NDA's rule) scathingly stated “the security objectives have been adversely affected by archaic and cumbersome procurement and financial procedures which require drastic overhaul”. The 18th such report tabled in December 2002 termed procurement procedures as being “time consuming”. It castigated the government for remaining indecisive on lateral induction of ex-servicemen into central police organisations and other government departments and for the delays in the indigenous development of weapon platforms (example Light Combat Aircraft and missiles) and import of vital equipment (example AWACS and Advance Jet Trainer). Against a requirement for 3,53,765 bullet-proof jackets for Army soldiers posted in counter-insurgency operations and along the Line of Control, only 1,24,640 such jackets were available during Vajpayee’s tenure. Also, the much promised One Rank One Pension and a national war memorial remained an illusion. Significantly, it was also during this period that the government succumbed to demands from hijackers and released three dreaded terrorists in Kandakhar. The Kargil War, fought between May and July 1999, revealed the Army's lack of preparedness. Two-and-a-half years later, the massive mobilisation of the armed forces along the India-Pakistan border that lasted 10 months from December 2001 to October 2002, following the terror attack on Parliament on December 13, 2001 further exposed serious drawbacks in India's armed forces. Little changed then. Little has changed since.
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I
FOLLOWED the visit of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to India from his arrival to the departure. I did not find any false note either in his observations or meetings. He did not mention Kashmir. Nor did he meet the separatists who are always keen to have talks with the Pakistani leaders, not the Indians. From all angles, it was a positive and constructive visit. 
I
