BREAKDOWN

The VK Singh age issue is an extraordinary saga of victimhood. Army Chief General VK Singh says that he is a victim, though, since he reached the highest rank he could, it is not easy to discover just what he has lost. The government feels that it is the victim in a case which seems to be an outcome of internal politics in the Army. Actually the big losers are the people of the country who had, at last, got an Army chief who was willing to crack down on the rising instances of corruption in the organisation and provide it much needed leadership. Instead, he seems to have gone astray in a quest for personal vindication. In the process he has taken a step that has been unprecedented in the democratic world — challenged the government of the day through a law suit, even while continuing in office.

System
General Singh has repeatedly said that the issue is a personal one and relates to his honour and integrity. There is something puzzling here. In the public sphere, at least, virtually no one has questioned the general’s honour and integrity, claimed that he had forged his dates of birth, is a “liar”, or done anything improper. There have been whispers that in 2006 and again in 2008, faced with the prospect of losing out his promotion, the general was coerced to live with the incorrect May 31, 1950 date of birth, and he agreed in the interests of the organisation, whatever that may be.
Thereafter, though he did reach the top of the pyramid, he seems to have retained a deep sense of bitterness that injustice was done to him. Things indeed had come to a sorry pass if one chief, howsoever, wrongly or rightly, believes that two former chiefs have victimised him. As a citizen of the country, therefore, he has all the right to seek  redressal of  a wrong done to him. But the question lingers: as the Chief of Army Staff (COAS) what should have been the right course for him to adopt? And, perhaps more important: Has the Ministry of Defence mishandled the case beyond repair?
Actually Singh’s case is a system related problem. The government has so far never had someone who heads a major department file a suit against it, even while continuing in office. This is because there is an expectation that once appointed to such a post you do not “rock the boat”. This is a lesson that is well ingrained in the IAS bureaucracy where you will never hear of any complaint of victimisation or supersession being taken to court. Everyone is accommodated in the system.
In return, the government also ensures that it does not upset things by accepting the widest latitude—ranging from incompetence to moral turpitude and corruption—in the conduct of its department heads. In the past there have been at least three chiefs, two of the air force and one of the army, who have escaped being sacked for corruption, only because the government did not want to rock the systemic boat. In 1972, the government quietly sent two generals into retirement because it did not want to pursue a case relating to their involvement in looting in Bangladesh. Indeed, there has been no dearth of similar instances in the government. 
There is a major problem here relating to the Army and the armed forces. They have been considered outside the system as it were. Though in recent years the Ministry of Defence has claimed to have become the Integrated Headquarters of the Ministry of Defence, this is a Potemkin construction which has not fooled anyone. The Army continues to be administered by the civilians in the same rough-shod and incompetent manner that it was in the past.
Had the Ministry of Defence been a truly integrated organisation, with the uniformed and civilian personnel serving side by side, it is possible that the present episode may have taken another, more positive, turn. Unfortunately, the age episode will only persuade the civilians in the MOD to dig in their heels and perpetuate the present archaic system through which the armed forces are controlled.
The rocking the boat issue is significant in another way as well, as evidenced by the Attorney General’s claim that to accept May 31,1951 as the right date of birth for Singh would lead to disaffection in the army as it would alter the chain of succession.
This is a specious argument. There is no set chain of succession. Every chief is selected by the Cabinet Committee on Security from a panel of seven army commanders and the vice chief of army staff. The government is well within its right to appoint any of them and has, twice in the past, overlooked the claims of the senior most among these generals. The reason why they  choose the senior-most  is that it ensures that the system functions smoothly and that there is no unseemly lobbying or judicial challenge relating to the appointment. So, three chiefs ago, a certain injustice was done to ensure the succession after Singh’s retirement.

Transformation
In many ways Singh’s action marks the emergence of the new Army. For long it has claimed special honour as being comprised of people who lay down their lives for the country. The reality, of course, is that in a volunteer army today, most people sign up because it is a good career move. As for integrity, the spate of corruption and ketchup charges in the last decade reveal that the Army is like any other institution in the country. Regimental nepotism, corruption, victimising or “fixing” inconvenient officers, have been part of the Army since independence. But in the past the officers affected saw it as their karma and accepted it as part of their misplaced culture of honour and integrity. The rising instances of legal challenges finally compelled the government to set up the armed forces tribunal which has just about gotten underway a year or so ago. But no one could have foreseen that the Chief of the Army Staff himself would have a grievance that required redressal. And why not?

Citizens
The Army is like any other institution and it is not fair to expect an individual there to make an individual sacrifice “for the organisation”. The government needed to address V.K. Singh’s complaint, not that of the COAS.
Yes, the system matters, but then violence was done to the system by two previous chiefs, and needed to be redressed in some way or the other. Perhaps the correction could have been made along with a Cabinet Committee on Security decision that there would be no change in the superannuation date of General Singh. There may have been a legal challenge to that, but then again there may not.
A positive consequence of the present seemingly sordid episode could be the shift of the Army from a culture of faux patriotism and honour, into one that emphasises duty and professionalism.
Such a culture is not based on expectations that the men in uniform will display a stiff upper lip at any slight or order, but will question them and insist on transparency. This can change the Indian Army from a colonial relict that it is, into a citizen army where everyone is equal, in the eyes of the Constitution and its law, and there are no super-patriots with some special claim on honour and integrity.
Like any citizen, army personnel would be seen as people who are doing their job, and who deserve to be treated with respect and fairness.
Mail Today January 18, 2012

Don't talk up Chinese enmity

At first sight, we should not expect much on the Sino-Indian front in 2012. This is, after all, the year in which the Chinese leadership will have its decennial turnover. The highly successful team of Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao will give way to the untested and relatively unknown Xi Jinping and Le Keqiang. In the Hu-Wen period we  came tantalisingly close to a border settlement in the 2003-2005 period, only to suffer setbacks in 2008-2009. The future with Xi and Le is, therefore, an unknown quantity.
But can some qualitative shift occur in the coming months, which can set a favourable course for the future? Early next week, Chinese Special Representative, Dai Bingguo, will arrive in Delhi to hold the 15th round of talks on the border issues with his Indian counterpart, Shivshankar Menon. Both the officials are, of course, senior officials of their respective governments. Dai has many titles, but he is effectively the National Security Adviser to the Chinese President, and, Menon, of course, is the Indian  National Security Advisor.

Shift
Following Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s visit in 2003, the two countries were able to fast track their border negotiations by appointing Special Representatives to take the process forward. The immediate gain was the 2005 agreement on the “Political Parameters and Guiding Principles for the settlement of the India-China border question.” The idea was that the two countries would next decide on a framework agreement that would incorporate their mutual concessions, and thereafter an agreement would be signed to delineate the border.
That there would be give and take was clear. So was the idea that the agreement would require concessions on the part of both sides. However, the second phase has got stuck and the talks have been going round and round since 2009 when the two sides actually expanded the scope of the SR’s talks, signaling that they had come to a roadblock on their primary mandate to resolve the border dispute. It appeared that not only did the Chinese want India to concede its demands in the West i.e. Aksai Chin, but also concede their claims in the East—if not all of Arunachal Pradesh, its key town Tawang with its important monastery. A negotiation where what’s yours is negotiable, and what’s mine is mine, is not acceptable to India.




At first, it appeared that the Chinese shift was occasioned by the Indo-US nuclear deal—with the Chinese recognising that this represented a major geopolitical gambit on the part of the United States whose aim was to contain China. But over the years it would appear that the situation is more complicated. It is linked to internal debates with the Chinese system where the PLA calls the shots when it comes to dealing with the border dispute with India.
More important it is linked to China’s Tibet policy. The demonstrations that hit Tibet in 2008— not just the Tibet Autonomous Region, but parts of Tibet which have been incorporated into various Chinese provinces— clearly shook the Chinese. Despite a huge investment for the development of the region, the Tibetans seemed unreconciled to the Chinese domination. Since then, the situation has not changed and protests by Tibetans have become a regular feature. An outcome of Chinese defensiveness was that they began to describe Arunachal Pradesh as “southern Tibet.” 
Another element of the changed situation is the Chinese perception that the 2008 economic crisis has enhanced their standing on the world stage. The Chinese have continued to grow at a fast pace, even while the rest of the world, especially the US and Europe, have seen depressed growth, unemployment and economic turmoil.
There is a clearly growing asymmetry in Sino-Indian relations. This is a consequence of China’s massive economic growth and its huge defence expenditures. While the latter do not specifically target India—they are aimed at Taiwan and the US—they do constitute capabilities that the Indian military cannot ignore. With the systematic  growth of the transportation infrastructure in Tibet, especially the railroads, India needs to keep up its guard in view of the fact that the entire Sino-Indian border remains disputed.

False
Unfortunately, some forces in India seem determined to push Sino-Indian relations over the brink. This comes from inspired reports of Chinese intrusions into Indian territory. Now there are parts of the Line of Actual Control that both sides claim.
They also patrol to the extent they consider their border. There is nothing unusual about this and there are protocols that have been established to deal with the situation though it is rare that the two sides actually meet up face to face at a place both sides claim.
On Christmas eve last year, for example, a few regional TV channels in Arunachal Pradesh started flashing “news” that the Chinese had intruded into the Tawang sector and damaged a wall made by the Indian army on its side of the border. The “news” gained such currency that the commander of the 190 Mountain Brigade formally clarified that no such thing had happened and that the news footage being aired with the news item was “false.” A leading channel in New Delhi, too, had done a detailed story on the presence of Chinese troops in Pakistan Occupied Kashmir and the news gained such currency that the number two man in the PLA, General Ma Xiaotian, personally told Prime Minister Singh, during a visit to New Delhi last month, that there was not a single Chinese soldier in Pakistan, leave alone POK. What has probably happened is that Chinese construction troops in POK, much like our Border Roads Organisation, are being conflated with the PLA.
Indian officials say that the Chinese do not seem to take India too seriously. While India meticulously follows the dialogue schedules on bilateral and multilateral issues between the two countries, the Chinese are wont to skip meetings. They put greater store by leadership summits which, though, are going well.
Indeed, one of the outcomes of Dai’s visit next week could be the establishment of a mechanism for consultation and coordination as an additional measure to ensure what the two sides call “peace and tranquility” on the border. This had been proposed by Chinese premier Wen Jiabao in 2010 during his visit to Delhi and in the April meeting between Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Hu Jintao, the two leaders reached an agreement in principle to implement it.
This could well be Dai’s last meeting with his Indian counterpart. He started with Brajesh Mishra, went through J.N. (Mani) Dixit, M.K. Narayanan and will conclude with Menon.  The 70 year old Dai has publicly stated his intention of stepping down with Hu and Wen. While the Chinese do think in the long term, they are also human, and there are expectations that he would like to leave some legacy of the talks he has been holding since 2003.

Ghosts
In a recent speech at a Chinese Embassy function Menon noted that there was nothing pre-determined about the Sino-Indian rivalry. He said the two countries had erected a fairly robust framework for managing differences and building on commonalities. The issue he said was whether the two could manage their competition “within an agreed strategic framework” that allowed them to pursue their core interests.
History can never be a true guide to future foreign policy. Were it so,  Germany and France,or the US and Japan  could never have had good relations. Enmities would be permanent and the world would be a rather bleak place to live in.
 Sino-Indian relations have undergone such dramatic change, especially in the last two and a half decades, that dwelling on the past is to invoke ghosts which should now be exorcised. 
Mail Today January 12, 2012

My take on the Pakistani developments

Pakistan is not your average democracy. Its military wields uncommon power, though formally it claims that it functions under the constitution of Pakistan. There are times when this fiction comes apart, and this is one of them.
Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani may have erred in pulling up the Army brass — Army Chief Pervez Ashfaq Kayani and ISI Chief Ahmed Shuja Pasha — for bypassing the civilian government, and been a bit over the top in sacking his Defence Secretary Lt Gen Khalid Nayeem Lodhi for “gross misconduct”. But no one can question his authority in taking those steps.
The Pakistan Army’s reaction however, is something else. On Wednesday the Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) directorate issued a press release observing that the PM’s actions  have “very serious ramifications with potentially grievous consequences for the country”. This is something that would never be countenanced by a truly democratic polity.
And this is just the beginning of the game. On Thursday Kayani has summoned a meeting of his Corps Commanders, who arguably have more authority than that possessed by the Pakistan government’s Cabinet.  On Wednesday we have also had the announcement that 111th  Brigade, based in Rawalpindi, the General Headquarters of the Pakistan Army, has a new commander, Brigadier Sarfaraz Ali. This could be  a coincidence, but so could the fact that the formation has led all the coups that have taken place in Pakistan.
Tensions have been rising between the People’s Party of Pakistan (PPP) government and the Army in the past couple of months. But the issue that has brought things to a head seems to be submissions made by Kayani and ISI chief Ahmed Shuja Pasha to the Supreme Court of Pakistan on the Memogate case. This refers to a memo given by  Pakistani Ambassador to the US Hussain Haqqani, to the US Joint Chiefs of Staff  through Pakistani-American Mansur Ijaz, requesting US support to cut the Pakistan Army to size in the wake of the Bin Laden killing. The request was curiously revealed to the media by Ijaz, and the fallout was that Haqqani lost his job and is currently hiding out in Gilani’s official residence in Islamabad.
Curiously, as the ISPR release notes, Kayani and Pasha had been submitting their papers to the Supreme Court through the Attorney General’s office since the last week of December when the Memogate panel of the court began its inquiries. Curiously, Gilani chose to use People’s Daily Online of China to declare that the responses of the two were “unconstitutional and illegal” and that, too, on January 9 when Kayani was on a visit to Beijing.  Clearly he wanted the Pakistan Army chief to get the message, or he was waving a red rag in front of the bull.

This is a confrontation that Gilani cannot win. Both he and his boss, President Asif Zardari are not the most popular men in Pakistan. At the same time, the Army cannot easily contemplate a coup. On paper, at least, Zardari is the Supreme Commander of the Army and any coup against him could lead to the charge of treason against its perpetrators.
The Army also has to be careful because in the past the Pakistani judiciary has rubber-stamped the illegal actions of the Army under the Doctrine of Necessity. But the feisty Chief Justice Ifthikar Muhammad Chaudhry has made it clear that those days are over. On Tuesday, while hearing some  matter, he once again  reiterated that the judiciary will not follow the doctrine of necessity and will uphold the constitution regardless of the consequences. Of course  coups being coups, if the situation is untenable and its corporate interests threatened, the Army will go ahead and do the needful.
The way out could be a replacement of Gilani by another PPP man, or the replacement of both the PM and President Zardari. The PPP may be strong, but neither of these two individuals count for much. Early elections, too, are an option, but the Pakistan Army would still have to worry about that because the result could see the return of Nawaz Sharif whose estrangement from the Army are arguably deeper because of his 1999 experience. And if Zardari and Gilani come back, the Army would have more egg on its face. 
Many observers place great faith in the Pakistani civil society emerging as a bulwark against the Army. That faith is probably misplaced since the size of that group is minuscule. When it comes to the Army, Pakistanis have been trained to salute and that is what is likely to happen in the event of a coup, if indeed it takes place. As of now, the aam Pakistani is unlikely to support his civilian government against the Army.

Mail Today January 12, 2012

In 2012, fight fear and win

Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the 32nd president of the United States, said it just right. Taking over the presidency at the depth of the Great Depression of the 1930s, he declared, in his inaugural address, that “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” In many ways that statement sums up the outlook of  the world in the coming year.
More than anything, fear seems to have paralysed governments, investors, bankers and businessmen across the world. Things are not as bad as they were in the 1930s, but few will disagree with the proposition that the world—say in Europe or the Arab world— feels that it is standing on the edge of a precipice.
 In India, the fear has been of a different kind. It was triggered by the succession of scams that were unearthed in 2010 and by the high-profile arrests— Suresh Kalmadi, A Raja, Kanimozhi and others—of 2011.

India
This fear has led to a policy paralysis in government which in turn has led to a decline in the sentiment favouring India. No doubt there are several factors involved in the free fall of the rupee or the decline in foreign direct and institutional investment in India, but in considerable measure it has also to do with India’s lack of confidence in itself, an irrational doubt or fear of the future.
There are many ways at which we can look at the year 2012. This is the year when many countries in the world will mark time as they go through the process of changing their leaders. The United States, Russia, France, China, Venezuela, and South Korea will be among the nations which are likely to see a change of leadership, either through election, or design. Another angle of approach to the year would be to gainsay the manner in which the economic crisis in Europe plays itself out. You could also say that 2012 will be another year, just like the ones before it with the passing away of some old things and the birth of some things new.
Howsoever unified the trends appear when looked at on a global scale, India will, as usual, be different. Its defining general elections are slated for only 2014. Yet there will be a number of state assembly elections which begin to reveal the contours of that battleground. Economically, too, India could find a sweet spot despite its horrendous fiscal situation. Any growth above 6 or 7 per cent will still be growth, and if by summer the monster of food inflation is decisively defeated, we could have some easing of the interest rate regime which gives a needed push to the economy. And if the government can come through with some version of FDI in retail, it could get foreign investment in India moving again.
But all this presupposes certain things. The Congress has not been very good at running things in the last two years and change can come only if it is able to overcome its funk of the anti-corruption movement. The almost sequential revelations relating to the Commonwealth Games, 2G and other scams followed by the series of high-profile arrests unnerved the government. But we still do not have a clear explanation of why the government dealt with Anna Hazare and Baba Ramdev the way they did, or why they mishandled the whole FDI in retail issue.
 This certainly gives ground for the fear that in 2012, neither the party, nor the government will be able to get its act together. But Congress scion Rahul Gandhi’s decision to increase his stake in the politics of the country dramatically is portentous. His Uttar Pradesh venture is no longer a set of guerrilla raids to irritate Mayawati, but a full-fledged campaign which is bound to play a decisive role in the fortunes of the Congress party in particular and Indian politics in general.

China
In contrast to India, the developments in China will be more dramatic, but only in the longer run. They will involve an entire turnover of its leadership. Xi Jinping and Li Keqiang, as president and prime minister respectively, are unknown quantities for most of the world. Yet their actions and perspectives will play a vital role in shaping the world’s economic and political profile in the years to come. But 2012, will be a relatively eventless year in China because this is the year of transition and that event will occur only through the party congress which takes place in October or November.
In India, the year will see a great deal of reflection on its relationship with China. This is not only because of the huge trade ties that the two countries have established, but also because this happens to be the 50th anniversary of the 1962 border war. While in China the event is almost forgotten, in India it is a national trauma and it definitely colours the lenses through which we view China. 2012 is not 1962. That was the time when we did not even know what was on the other side of the Thag La ridge. Today, not only would we have enough foreknowledge of any Chinese plan to attack us, but we also have nuclear weapons and the Chinese are, if anything, rational actors.
War is not a likely scenario in South Asia for that reason, not with China, nor with Pakistan. But that does not rule out proxy war of the kind Islamabad is fighting against us. But even there, 2012 is not likely to be a problem year, because that is the year when, officially at least, the US begins to pull out its troops from Afghanistan.

Options
This has concentrated the minds of the GHQ in Rawalpindi on the AfPak region, to the relief of the Indians. But, the situation in Pakistan, like that in India, is unfolding at its own pace, rather than that of the rest of the world. And in many ways it looks more portentous. For the first time, civil society, politicians and the judiciary are ranged against the Army, albeit for their own respective motives. But, and this is the curious way things happen in Islamabad, without a pliant judiciary to endorse its act, the Army is going to think twice before overthrowing a civilian government.
Even so, there are enough wild cards that can make 2012 a memorable year for the wrong reasons. Principal among these is the prospect of conflict in the Persian Gulf region which affects our oil supply. The clock has begun ticking with Barack Obama signing the US sanctions law and there are enough irrational actors in Israel and Iran who can precipitate the situation. This is one fear which has a rational basis. The other wild card is a dramatically vicious terrorist act, perhaps with the use of a “dirty” bomb.
There is a certain duality in our leadership system upon which we will depend to make 2012 a shining year. At its worst it is the fumbling gang that can’t shoot straight, evidenced by the manner in which the government handled the Baba Ramdev episode.
On the other hand, the debates over the Lokpal Bill in the Lok Sabha showed that our Parliament still has the spark that is needed to give us a political system that works.
Perhaps, we too, should follow the counsel that Krishna gave to Arjuna, who was beset by fear of the future at the field of Kurukshetra—  you really have no choice but to go forward.
Mail Today January 3, 2012

2012 brings hope for Congresss Party's future

Who will deny that 2011 has been the Congress party’s annus horribilis? From a party that actually enhanced its position in the 2009 general elections, it was, by 2011,   a shambolic collection of politicians trying to play politics. Remarkably, however, 2012 offers hope, not because the economy will suddenly recover, but because of a possible conjunction of events that could be triggered by a good showing in the Uttar Pradesh assembly elections, as well as a victory that would wrest power in the assembly elections in Punjab, Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand.
When you look back at the year you may wonder what the party was up to. It was true that the chronicle of this tragedy had been foretold in 2010. It began with the IPL controversy that cost Shashi Tharoor his job. In April, reports of possible corruption in the 2G scam deal took on life with the Radia tapes going public. The key point in these tapes was the shenanigans that accompanied the reappointment of A Raja as telecom minister in 2009.

2010
In June 2010 when the auction price of the 3G spectrum went over Rs 60,000 crore there was a dawning realisation as to how the country had been had in the allocation of 2G spectrum by Raja in 2008. The CAG report on the allotment of the 2G licences was tabled in the Lok Sabha in November 2010. It held Raja responsible for violating guidelines and indulging in favouritism leading to a loss of an astonishing Rs 1.76 lakh crore by mishandling the allocation of the 2G spectrum. The rest is of course easily remembered—the arrest of Raja, his associates and the DMK’s Kanimozhi.
The spectrum allocation scam may have been huge, but it was given a run for its money by the Commonwealth Games scams which also played out through the year with investigations yielding evidence that a great deal of corruption took place in the organisation and conduct of the games.
The cavalier manner in which the government viewed these issues was apparent from the episode relating to the appointment of PJ Thomas as the Central Vigilance Commissioner. The selection of the CVC is done by a panel of three, including the leader of the Opposition. At the meeting to discuss the appointment, the leader of the Opposition, Sushma Swaraj, cited a pending chargesheet against him for a scam in Kerala. But she was overruled by the Prime Minister and the Union Home Minister. The spirit of the three-member panel is that the decision should be unanimous, but by ramming through the appointment, the government was displaying its couldn’t-care-less attitude. The tawdry outcome of the story was that the Supreme Court quashed Thomas’ appointment, leaving a lot of egg on the UPA’s face.
But can 2010 explain the extraordinary events of 2011? It is a measure of the reluctance of the Congress-led government to check such activities that A Raja, Kanimozhi and Suresh Kalmadi were only arrested early this year after the corruption issue had fissioned. It began in April 2011 with Anna Hazare’s fast that compelled the government to negotiate with his team on a Lokpal Bill. The civil society uprising so addled the government that it decided to treat another wannabe anti-corruption crusader, Baba Ramdev as a VIP, perhaps with the hope of using him against Hazare. Then, in an equally addled decision, it decided to crack down on his protest.

Hazare
The charges of corruption were a body blow for the party. It is no secret that Raja was reappointed to the telecom ministry over the objections of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, and at the insistence of party chief Sonia Gandhi. The Congress party chief is also responsible for the whole Lokpal fiasco whose origins can be traced to her decision to revive the National Advisory Council (NAC) which acts as a civil society interface of the government.
It is the decision of the NAC to take up the Lokpal Bill that probably triggered Arvind Kejriwal, Prashant Bhushan and Co to get Anna Hazare into the picture. The NAC’s latest is the Food Security Bill whose consequences will only be known in the years to come. But if the past is any measure, it will only increase the scale of corruption hugely since money is to be made in procurement, storage and distribution of foodgrain. More foodgrain procurement, means more money to divert into dirty pockets.
The denouement of the Lokpal issue is still playing itself out. The UPA is not covering itself with glory by mindlessly surrendering all to the Hazare activists. Take for example the issue of SC&ST reservations. Some minor parties put up the demand in the all-party meet and the Congress tamely accepted this. Clearly, the Lokpal monster is something we will have to slay sometime. The powers that are being accumulated into one entity will unbalance the constitutional scheme and sooner, rather than later, a corrective will have to be applied.
The issue has poisoned the entire system. Parliament has virtually stopped functioning and Anna Hazare seems to have become an oracle who has views, firm views, on any and every thing. Far from being apolitical, Hazare is displaying a robust political appetite. Who knows we may have a future president-dictator in waiting!

2012
The UP assembly election offers a point of inflection for the fortunes of the Congress and the UPA. It has had the virtue of getting young Rahul Gandhi off the fence and into the hurly burly of the political process. Till now he was content with guerrilla strikes where he would land up spending a night in some Dalit home or communing with some rural folks somewhere. Now, the Congress scion has clearly put down his own stake in the coming UP elections. This means that he, personally, stands to lose or win, not some party functionary.
This is a good thing, and it should be said at the outset that defeat, too, will serve him well in terms of experience and maturity. The more interesting issue, however, is just what would constitute “victory” in the UP context. Most observers say that if the Congress can get 100 seats, the broad number of assembly segments that it won in the 2009 Lok Sabha elections, it would be a spectacular showing. Indeed, some 50-75 seats  would definitely constitute victory.
Besides UP, Punjab and Uttarakhand, elections are expected in Goa, Gujarat, Himachal Pradesh and Manipur. The Congress would have to try hard to lose in Punjab, Himachal and Uttarakhand. In Gujarat, Modi remains strong, but he has been around for a decade and has enemies within and without his party. Wresting three states from the Opposition and doing well in the strategically important state of UP will give the party a huge psychological boost.
 More important, it will establish Rahul Gandhi’s political credentials and put him firmly in track to assume larger responsibilities. So, far from the end of the world of Mayan prophecy, 2012 could well mark a renaissance for the Congress party.
Mail Today December 21, 2011

Our Cinderella, the LCA, must step out

It has been called the "Last Chance Aircraft", and worse. Its designers and developers have been excoriated for endless delays. But the time has come to say it: In the Light Combat Aircraft (LCA), India may finally have a winner.

We say "may" because the "last mile" is often the most difficult one to cross. This requires first, an emphatic ownership of the step-child by its primary operator, the Indian Air Force(IAF), its chosen manufacturer, the Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd (HAL) and its parent, the Ministry of Defence. Second, and most importantly, it needs a serious managerial boost so that the production of the aircraft- whose significant bugs have already been worked out-can be undertaken on a modern industrial scale.

Winner

But the payoffs are tremendous. The country gets a highly capable multi-role fighter which it can acquire in significant numbers at a reasonable cost. It also gets a potential weapons system which it can export, for commercial gain, as well as to push its military diplomacy. It would be fair to say that the LCA is the only significant weapons system created by the country's vast defence research and production base which can compete with contemporary products -including the Chinese JF-17- and win.




Though the IAF says that it is committed to bringing the aircraft into squadron service, its current plans cater for just two squadrons of the aircraft, where they ought to be really talking of several. But that is not entirely the IAF's fault; the process of productionising the aircraft has been excruciatingly slow and past delays have made the IAF leery of putting their eggs in the LCA basket.

Till now, the ADA and HAL have built eight prototypes and six limited series aircraft and it has undertaken some 1800 takeoff and landing cycles without (touch wood) a single accident. Pilots swear by its ease of handling and maneuverability. However, according to reports, the true initial operational clearance (IOC) of the LCA has been delayed yet again. The IOC, which means the aircraft can be flown by any military pilot-not just test pilots- was technically available since January 2011, but there are a range of issues that have yet to be sorted out to the air force's satisfaction.

Now, say reports, the final operational clearance will only be available by the end of 2014. This provides an invaluable opportunity to set in train steps that will ensure that the LCA emerges as the first class product that it intrinsically is.

Simultaneously, the efforts to come up with a Mark 2 version of the aircraft with a more powerful GE F414 turbofan engine, have been completed, with the prototype slated to fly by 2014 as well. And, the naval version of the aircraft which is expected to be used by the country's indigenous aircraft carrier is also in its last stages with two prototypes to take to the air soon.

It is important to see the aircraft in comparison with the others that are flying, both as potential adversaries, as well as competitors for the export market. The aircraft under 10 tons of operational empty weight are the American F-16, the Chinese JF-17, the Swedish Gripen. Of these the LCA is the lightest at just 5.9 tons.

In part this is because of its use of carbon fibre composites. The US and the Chinese aircraft have a carbon composites content of near zero, while the more modern Gripen has 30 per cent content by weight. The LCA has 45 per cent, but as much as 90 per cent of the surface of the LCA is made of carbon fibres. This makes it light, strong and rugged, since the carbon fibre composites neither age nor corrode.

Stealth

But its most important quality is that it does not reflect radar beams, unlike the metallic components of aircraft. In other words, this gives the LCA a naturally low radar signature or 'stealth' characteristics. Given its small size anyway, it is, in the words of a former fighter pilot, "virtually invisible" to adversary fighters.

The use of carbon fibre gives the LCA another advantage: with its low operational empty weight, and compared to an aircraft with similar engines, the LCA has greater thrust to weight ratio. The LCA Mk 2 is likely to have 1.53, compared to the other agile fighter, the F-16's 1.64. The Gripen has 1.44 and the JF-17 has 1.28. Indeed, the LCA's rate of acceleration compares favourably with heavy two-engined fighters like the Eurofighter, which has a thrust to weight ratio of 1.64.

Carbon fibre parts do not deteriorate with age or corrode and hence the navalised version of the LCA will prove a big advantage. But it is true that carbon fibre parts are expensive to make and ideally, the process should be automated and procured in large numbers to keep their prices low. India has already invested a great deal in this technology beginning with the Dhruva programme in the mid-1980s and it is one of the world leaders in such technology.

Clearly, its natural stealth characteristics, low operating costs, maneuverability and its sensor and weapons suite make the LCA a real player in the global market. Indeed, according to an air force officer, the performance of the LCA as a fighter exceeds that of the Mirage 2000, even when the latter is upgraded.

Although the IAF has committed itself to inducting two squadrons of 40 LCAs, its actual needs are much greater. As of now the air force puts "close air support" or missions in support to the army in a low priority. But there is great need for the IAF to take up that mission seriously, especially in the mountain areas, and for that the LCA is the ideal machine. Further, the IAF's reliance on heavy and expensive fighters would make its reaction time to emergencies-cruise missile or UAV ingress at the country's periphery-rather slow because they cannot afford to base their expensive assets too close to the border. Here, the LCA provides a quick reaction option as it can be forward based.

Export

The most interesting aspect of the LCA is in relation to exports. This is clearly the one worldclass product which can be used to woo friends and allies, especially in the neighbourhood. The LCA gives India the option to compete with the Chinese JF-17 in a score of countries including Egypt, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Sri Lanka.

Indeed, there is a wider market, too, if HAL is willing to dream big and do something about it. There is a market for some 3,000 fighters to replace the MiG-21s, F-5s, early model F-16s which will retire in the coming 10-15 years in countries of Eastern Europe, Asia-Pacific and elsewhere. Getting even ten per cent of that market would be a stunning achievement for India.

But to reach that goal, India needs to think big. HAL, is still making its current limited series aircraft by hand, as it were, and it has no experience in sales and marketing abroad. As it is, there will be a need to transform HAL's work culture to make a product to the highest world standards. Equally important would be product support, again an area in which the HAL has not done too well in the past.

But all this cannot be done by the HAL itself. The LCA programme was a national endeavour to lay the foundations for India's aerospace industry. If it is to meet that mandate- and it is on the threshold of doing that- it needs attention right now from the topmost levels of government and the Ministry of Defence.
Mail Today December 15, 2011

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