Death demands a uniform penalty

The last week has been a busy one for the death penalty. On Monday, India joined the US, China and 39 other countries to oppose a UN General Assembly resolution calling for the end of death penalty.
On Tuesday, the Supreme Court declared that there was need to revisit the death penalty issue because of the lack of "uniformity in the application" of the "rarest of rare" principle formulated in 1980.
On Wednesday, the sole surviving gunman involved in the Mumbai attack, Ajmal Qasab was executed in Pune.
And on Thursday, two persons who had been sentenced to death in the Lajpat Nagar bomb blast of 1996 were acquitted by the Delhi High Court.

Mohammed Ajmal Kasab, the lone surviving member of the 10-man group which attacked several Mumbai landmarks, was hanged last Friday

Law

Qasab's case was unique.Photographs and eyewitness accounts ensured that there was hardly any doubt that he had been one of the perpetrators of the massacre in Mumbai.
So, whether in terms of retribution, or deterrent, his penalty was just and most of the citizens of the country felt it to be so.
But the Lajpat Nagar case has brought out disturbing aspects of the issue, as has the Supreme Court in its observations.
More than 32 years after it devised the "rarest of rare" criterion to restrict imposition of death penalty to exceptionally heinous and cold-blooded murder cases, the Supreme Court on Tuesday said the standard was being applied differently by different judges and needed to be looked at afresh.
Justices KS Radhakrishnan and Madan B Lokur said that there was a problem in categorising or ranking the crimes and trying to establish a uniform standard for the "rarest of rare" standard.
Perhaps their most penetrating observation was that the country was not taking the issue of sentencing seriously and the result was that it had become, in the words of Justice Lokur, "judge centric rather than principled sentencing". The Lajpat Nagar case is more troubling.
Two people were on death row for the past two years and in jail since 1996, then suddenly one fine day, a higher court, which weighs the evidence against them, not merely commutes their sentence, but actually acquits them entirely.
We know, of course, that the court has based its case on the casual manner with which the police carried out the investigation.
It can be argued that the two are, in fact, guilty but have got away because of the shoddy work of the police.
But, the law is the law. It demands proof "beyond reasonable doubt" to convict, and it could equally be argued that there was never any case against the now acquitted persons.
But the appalling corollary of this is that two people who may be innocent could have had to forfeit their lives had not the higher court trashed the evidence against them.
While they have both lost more than a decade of their lives, they can at least say they are alive and free.
Had they been executed, there could have been no restitution and the state would have been guilty of taking innocent lives.

Standards

In this, advocates of the abolition of the death penalty have a powerful argument. But where the argument goes awry is that they have not thought through the issue as Justices Lokur and Radhakrishnan have.
The two learned justices are spot on in arguing for a systematic and standardised approach to sentencing.
It is not enough to say that the death penalty should be abolished, what is also needed is an understanding that heinous crimes must be punished, and that there are guidelines that will ensure that those guilty of capital crimes suffer condign punishment. That has not been in the case in India.

Power

There have been instances where murderers have been pardoned by state governors at the instance of the government of the day.
In 1999, the Bansi Lal government effected a pardon for Sriyans Kumar Jain, a BJP party activist whose life sentence for murder had been upheld by the Supreme Court.
In July the same year, the successor Chautala government had pardoned ten convicted criminals, amongst them people convicted of murder. In Punjab, the son of an Akali minister who later joined the Congress and who was under a life sentence for murder was pardoned by the governor.
In 2007, the same governor, SF Rodrigues, had granted pardon to three convicts accused of murder, who were awarded life sentence by a trial court.
Before demitting office this year, the President of India Pratibha Patil commuted the sentences of as many as 35 death row occupants to life imprisonment.
Among these were people who have been involved in mass murder, rape and killing of children. Taken in tandem with the pardoning power of the Governor, you could actually have these death row criminals back in the streets once again.
The Supreme Court has been trying to fix the problem by insisting that "life imprisonment" means imprisonment for the natural life of the convict.
But as we have shown, many state governments have used their powers to release these murderers and heinous criminals.
Justices Radhakrishnan and Lokur have now also taken the important step of barring governments from granting mass remission to convicts on national days.
They have mandated that the governments consult the concerned judge before granting remission of sentence and release of a convict from prison.
In India, discretionary power has been the root of corruption and what can be more corrupt than to let off criminals who have committed heinous crimes?
Such powers available to the governors and the President need to be ended immediately.
Mandatory sentencing guidelines need to be established in consultation with the higher judiciary so that they are followed in a uniform manner by all the judges and in all courts.
The country owes that much to the victims of the various crimes who are no longer there to speak for themselves.

Mail Today November 25, 2012

A new red star over China

 On Thursday morning, the new chief of the Communist Party of China, Xi Jinping marched to the stage along with six other men who will steer the world's number two economic power and, some will say, military power, for the next decade.

They take charge at a time when unprecedented challenges confront the world economy, while China itself has to confront the consequences of its unprecedented economic growth-corruption and growing inequalities.

But the smooth transition to the sixth generation of Communist Chinese leadership, as well as the achievements of the last three decades, give the "young" team, which constitutes the Standing Committee of the 20-member Politburo of the party, uncommon confidence. 

Mandate

The strong mandate given to the 59 year old Xi has been underscored by his predecessor Hu Jintao's decision to transfer the leadership of the top party military body to him as well. 

The leadership lineup includes Li Keqiang, tipped to take over as Prime Minister in March, at the same time when Xi will take over as the country's president.

Along with him is the economic specialist Wang Qishan who has been given charge of a department whose tasks include the fight against the rising tide of corruption.

Underlining the conservative outlook of the top decisionmaking body is the fact that at least three of its members are known to be close to Jiang Zemin,

Hu's predecessor as the supremo of the Middle Kingdom. Jiang, 86, has been a very visible presence in the party congress to go by the photographic record of the event.

A Xinhua commentary on the party congress notes that in the party's amended constitution, reform and opening up have been highlighted as "the path to a stronger China" and the "salient feature" of the new period in China."

Introducing his new colleagues, Xi said that the party "was devoted to serving the people".

This sentiment also formed the core of his remarks at a press briefing subsequently.

What this means is the need to remove the angularities from the Chinese experiment-cutting back the influence of the inefficient but privileged state-owned companies, making it easier for people to migrate from the countryside to the cities, discouraging land acquisitions that trigger rural unrest and providing some sort of a process that ensures that the party remains sensitive to the needs of the people who have, given the strict censorship, no way of ventilating their grievances.

The party needs most urgently to address the issue of corruption which led to the massive Bo Xilai scandal. Bo was one of the people expecting to be promoted to the seven member Standing Committee in this party Congress.

Instead, he is in jail and could face trial soon for corruption and abuse of power.But all this must be done with the party firmly in command.

Deng

The consensus is for opening up of the economy and making the present political system more efficient, not for wholesale change.

At some point or the other, the political system must become more competitive.

There is talk of shifting the country to the Singapore model. But it is the journey there, rather than the model which is the issue. But that is clearly not a task that will be undertaken by the new sixth generation leadership.

The enrichment of China and the growth of its national power has set off trends which may not bode too well for the party and the country.

In the 1980s, Deng Xiaoping, the father of today's China, gave the party leadership a model.

This is called the 24-character strategy which called for China to "Observe calmly; secure our position; cope with affairs calmly; hide our capabilities and bide our time; be good at maintaining a low profile; and never claim leadership."

Circumstances are thrusting Beijing to assume leadership on a range of issues from North Korea's wayward ways to China's claims in South China Sea.

Observers are struck by the fact that Xi Jinping & Co will be the first of a generation of leaders who have not been handpicked by Deng himself, who passed away in 1997.

They also note the tendency of many in China to ignore the 24-character strategy because they think that the time has come for China to assume its rightful position as one of the leading nations of the world.

The Chinese elites are in a hurry to exercise the power that has accrued to them, whether it is in the area of finance and economy, or the military and diplomacy.

What does this leadership change bode for India and Sino-Indian relations? It is difficult to make a simple forecast because of the opaque manner in which China conducts its business.

The newness of the leaders makes it further difficult to determine the nature of their future policies.

India

While many of them Xi, Li, propaganda chief Liu Yunshan, Zhang Gaoli, Zhang Dejiang and Yu Zhensheng and economic specialist Wang Qishan are known from their work as provincial party chiefs or past official positions, there is no saying where they stand on larger strategic and international issues.

To top it all, the key official dealing with India, especially on the border issue, Dai Bingguo is also scheduled to retire over the next couple of months.

India's engagement with China is also shaped by the increasing distance that China is putting between itself and us on matters of economic growth and military power.

Expectations that India would move into the realm of double digit growth have been belied; while Chinese growth has decelerated, it remains at least two percentage points higher than India's.

In terms of military power, the distance is even greater. The Chinese have, by hook or by crook, established themselves as a major military power which sees the US as a rival, not India.

As far as its relations with Beijing are concerned, New Delhi needs to be careful in feeling its way into the future.

Mail Today November 16, 2012 

It is by no means a mandate

There are many ways to parse Barack Obama's victory in the United States general elections.
He won handsomely in terms of what matters-the number of electoral votes in his favour as compared to those for Mitt Romney. But if you look at the popular vote, the victory is tight.
Another measure, the outcome in counties (like India's districts) will show that the bulk of them have gone in favour of Romney. If there is one central message from the outcome of the elections, it is that the country remains divided down the middle. 

 

 

A deep, and some would say bitter, faultline divides the centre right and the centre left in the US, and now we have the situation where a largely centre-right country, will be headed by a president who is centre-left.

A manifestation of this will be the US Congress where the Democrats will control the Senate and the Republicans the House of Representatives.
It is a famous victory for Mr Obama. According to a CNN exit poll, in a country where whites constitute 72 per cent of the population, he had 59 per cent vote against him, as against 39 per cent who supported him.
Despite his heroic role in stabilising the US economy and preventing it from sliding to a second Depression, people were concerned only by the current poor economic conditions.
He became the only president since FDR to win an election with an unemployment rate of 7.9 per cent.
He remains, of course, the first African- American to become president, and now, the first to be re-elected.

Outcome

But by the same measure, it was quite an achievement for Mitt Romney as well. When the US election process began, not too many gave Mr Romney a chance against the incumbent President.
The Republican mainstream was dogged by the Tea Party fiscal conservatives and it took an enormous amount of grit for Romney to emerge as the main challenger.
Actually it was his performance in the first debate that got him into the reckoning and he ran a tenacious campaign manifested by the narrowness of the margin, in terms of popular votes.
What is interesting from the CNN exit poll data is the kind of America that supported Obama.
He clearly has the support of its rising number of minorities, the blacks and the Hispanics.
But in addition, he got the strong support of women, with 55 per cent voting for him, as against 44 per cent for Romney.
The young supported him in proportionately larger numbers- 60 per cent in the 19-29 age group backed Obama, 52 per cent of the 30-44 group while 51 per cent of the 45-64 age group (the most numerous) and 56 per cent of the 65 plus age groups went with Romney.
One thing is clear from these elections. The era of social issues colouring the US elections is over. Indeed, the passage of measures to legalise marijuana in Washington State and Colorado, and same sex marriages in Maryland and Maine point to another direction.
But on the key issue, the economy, there is less clarity because neither President Obama, nor Mitt Romney, clearly spelt out their plans to revive the US economy.
As of now the two sides are still locked in a battle because of their differing views on the economy. In the past Mr Obama has sought public investment in alternative energy, education, and railroads and wants higher taxes for the rich, while Mr Romney wants to reduce taxes and regulations as a way of fixing the looming fiscal nightmare that confronts America.

Economy

But the more dangerous part of the problem is unemployment. Alarms are being sounded now that the high unemployment rates could well turn chronic, as the workforce becomes too demoralised to get back to seeking active employment as things improve, or their skills become obsolete in the period they are unemployed.
This is a pattern that has been seen in many countries in Europe. Mr Obama's victory is not likely to mean much for the rest of the world.
With the stage set for the American withdrawal from Afghanistan, we are going into an era that will see a general retreat of American power as the country grapples with the task of reviving its stalling economy.
However, international challenges remain- the longer range one of the rise of China, and the short term one in relation to Iran.
Mr Obama has already declared his new strategy of pivoting back to Asia, but a great deal here depends on how the new Chinese leadership handles the issue of Beijing's claims in the islands off its mainland.
Having faced down Israel in the run up to the election, the behind-the-scenes negotiations give Mr Obama the opportunity of resolving this crisis, the only one that could suck the US into another war, peacefully.

India

During Mr Obama's second term the American perspective on relations with South Asia is likely to remain through AfPak.
Any fair assessment of the developments will show that the Americans will remain deeply involved for the next four years in propping up the Afghan regime and trying to get Pakistan to play ball with Afghanistan and moderating its posture towards New Delhi.
India's relations with the US in relation to the rest of Asia, too, depend crucially on the choices that the new leaders of Beijing make.
Continued assertiveness on the Sino-Indian border will see an acceleration of India's military buildup, as well as closer ties between India and the United States.
In many ways, the Indo-US engagement will have become routine, albeit on a high plateau. Relations are already close and there is already a great deal of cooperation on matters ranging from economic policy to counter-terrorism.
India is buying increasing amounts of US defence systems and the only glitch that may be there is in the area of BPOs.
But this is linked to the wider issue of the way America deals with issues like fiscal policy, immigration, visas, trade policy and so on.
In each of these areas, the Americans can no longer waffle and they are going to be confronted with hard choices whose consequences they must be prepared to handle.
 Mail Today November 7, 2012

Not what the country had hoped for

In India, the political paradigm seems to shift with general elections; be it 1967, 1971, or the more recent 2004, at the time you could almost hear the political cosmic clock go 'tick'.
Given the many variables at play during a general election in a country of the size of India, no one person or event determines that shift of belief systems, yet after the event you know that you are now in a new era.
What we have just witnessed is an effort to move that paradigm a good 16 or so months before the next elections are due, in May of 2014. Sunday's Cabinet rejig was said to be all about bringing the age of youth in the Grand Old Party. But somehow we haven't quite heard that 'click' as yet.

Nature

Critics have panned the exercise, calling it half-hearted and incomplete and commenting that the expected arrival of the Rahul Gandhi era has once again been inexplicably delayed. There were expectations that the reshuffle would mark the point where the political calculus met the national demographics. But this has not happened.
Perhaps this awaits a parallel exercise in the party's organisational functioning. But if the reshuffle is an indicator, it would be unlikely. Even less so than government, the GOP does not seem quite ready to hand over charge to those who will inherit its tomorrow.
But, the party supporters will argue, this was not meant to be a coup de theatre, but a joint effort by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, party president Sonia Gandhi and her heir Rahul Gandhi to take the party away from old patronage/welfare state networks to a forward-looking, pragmatic and non-ideological era.
The Congress is by no means a revolutionary party. Ms Gandhi and Dr Singh are not about to do anything as courageous as come up with "out of the box" solutions that many are urging them to undertake. Their complex task is not merely to enhance the image of the government in New Delhi through the Cabinet reshuffle, but to also triangulate regional and local caste, age and gender equations.

Rahul Gandhi notwithstanding, they are not about to let the Grand Old Party be subject to the politics of courage on the basis of the two bad years it has passed through. Even so, change has been in the air for a while. The dominoes started falling ever since Ms Sonia Gandhi was reluctantly compelled to accept Pranab Mukherjee as the party's presidential candidate.
In an odd way, the quintessential representative of the older generation became the unlikely agent of change because along with him went the mental block against change. The pro-changers have been helped, again paradoxically, by the anti-corruption campaign that has kept the stalwarts on the defensive.
The young, untainted yet, have studiously kept away from defending the Kalmadis, the Rajas, or for that matter Salman Khurshid and Robert Vadra.

Rajiv Gandhi

If you hear the echoes of Rajiv Gandhi in the current ethos, you will not be mistaken and it is no surprise that many of those being pushed to the centre stage - Kamal Nath, Anand Sharma, Manish Tewari, Lalit Maken - were the youth brigade of the 1980s era.
In contrast, today's youth group have actually had a chance to taste the political future. Many of them were already in government, albeit as junior ministers - Sachin Pilot, Jyotiraditya Scindia, Milind Deora, RPN Singh, Jitin Prasada or Purandeswari.
If the eventual takeaway for the Congress of today can indeed replicate the serendipity of the Rajiv Gandhi period and fulfil what he saw as the mandate of pragmatic modernism, it will be a great achievement. However we should not be trapped by notions of ageism.
Generational change does not occur in one dramatic moment, it is always taking place. Look at the Congress party, within it are people born in the 1920s - Treasurer Motilal Vora - thirties like Prime Minister Singh, those born in the mid 1940s - Sonia Gandhi or Kamal Nath and those from the nineteen fiftees, sixties and, like Rahul from the 1970s. All of them are in leadership positions and it is difficult to say where one generation ends and the other begins.

Change

On the other hand, time only goes one way - you get older and eventually fade away and die. So there is no turning the clock back. The young will inherit the earth, like it or not and it is always good to work out planned successions, rather than be overwhelmed by them.
Paradigm shifts are more complex, especially when you are a participant-observer and they involve many variables. You can't really pinpoint the day when people stopped believing that the earth was flat, what they did instead was to stop believing it over a period of time, and hey, presto, one day we all began to accept it.
Something like that is happening with the Congress party. On one hand, age and illness is set to take its toll of a generation of leaders and on the other, shifts in ideas, aspirations, the march of technology and the destructive force of contemporary events - not in the least the attack on cronyism and corruption - are altering the belief systems of the party.
We now have a generation of younger leaders who do not - repeat do not - believe that socialism or even socialistic policies are the answer, or that India must forever march to the tune of non-alignment. They have seen the destruction of the old political ways of doing things, but have not been given the opportunity to show their thing.
So the arrival of the Rahul Gandhi era remains an enigma. His men are swarming the ramparts of the Grand Old Party, but have not quite breached them. Like their mentor, they are still waiting in the wings. Meanwhile, India's decade of demographic opportunity is passing us by.

Mail Today October 29, 2012

The code of collusion that has existed between politicians is breaking down

Living as we do in the age of reverse swing, we may be upon a new era when the old rules that bound the Indian elite in a culture of complicity may be getting over.
This seems to be the takeaway from the charges that are being levelled at Robert Vadra, businessman and son-in-law of Sonia Gandhi.
Not surprisingly, the lament for the good old days came from a quintessential element of that culture - Digvijaya Singh, aka Diggy Raja, the Doon School-educated scion of a royal family in Madhya Pradesh, who has publicly complained that the Congress party did not believe in attacking the "families" of political leaders, else it, too, would have revealed the wrongdoings of the children of L.K. Advani and the foster son of Atal Behari Vajpayee.

The great change that is occurring now promises to transform the Indian polity because at its root is the urge towards democratisation. There is a markedly increased assertion of the underclass - defined by caste, economic level or even gender.
There is an aspiration of all Indians to get ahead and improve their station in life and prosper. In this perspective corruption and malfeasance by the political class and the bureaucracy are seen as attempts to hold back people from what is legitimately theirs.
The key factors amplifying the trend are the growth of literacy and what are called Information and Communications Technologies (ICT). In India they are manifested by the wide penetration of the mobile phone, newspapers and the television across the country.
It is these technologies which have given an edge to the anti-corruption upsurge which the country has been witnessing in the last two years.
They have brought with them an era where it would seem that everyone has a grievance and everyone an opinion, and they all have a platform to air them on.
It is said that the battle of Kurukshetra, with its underhand strategems such as the ones that led to Dronacharya's killing or Aswatthama's night attack on the Pandava camp, led to the Kalyug or Dark Ages we live in.
But the modern Kurukshetra being fought across the country to transform its polity is shifting the paradigm the other way, though somewhat slowly.
It is even now not clear who will be the victor - for every Ashok Khemka willing to act against a blatant act of corruption, we have the powerful Hoodas, who are more than ready to swat them down.
The battle is joined, even though sometimes it is not clear as to who is the victim and who the villain.
As in the great battle pitting Pandavas and Kauravas, the one big casualty is reason and debate, and the spirit of civility; witness Salman Khurshid lowering the threshold further with Arvind Kejriwal.
While, to be honest, there is little civility in the behaviour between the rich and poor, or between various ethnic, religious and caste groups in the country, there has always been a great deal of it among the better off people, especially its politicians.
Despite all the faux anger and thunderbolts they hurl at each other in Parliament or on the public platform, relations between politicians outside the floor of the House has always been the most cordial.
That is why even in the climate of bitterness we have witnessed in recent years, it is not unusual for ruling party ministers to cater to requests made by Opposition leaders.
Another aspect of this code was that all politicians together avoid referring to the personal lives of politicians-their mistresses, second wives, girlfriends or, for that matter the criminal cases that many of them face.
Omerta While this can be understood as a laudable concern for the privacy of individuals, a similar code of omerta has been extended to the business dealings of the relatives of politicians.
This is the code which Digvijaya Singh says has been broken by the revelations relating to Sonia Gandhi's son-in-law Robert Vadra.
Indeed, so explicit has been this code that even in the heat of political debates, politicians refrain from taunting their rivals over charges on which they are being investigated.
When was the last time you heard a Congress leader speaking of Mayawati or Mulayam Singh's "disproportionate assets" cases, or taunting Lalu about the fodder issue in Parliament?
All the action is in nods and winks with the CBI acting on the cases, even while leaving valuable loopholes to enable the accused to slip through. Yes, there is vendetta - Mulayam versus Mayawati in Uttar Pradesh or Jayalalithaa and Karunanidhi in Tamil Nadu, but these are also carried out within some unwritten rules.
Equilibrium What is striking about the situation is the extent to which the mainstream parties are together pole-axed by this development.
Mr Gadkari may rest easy that Kejriwal's attack was somewhat muted, but there is little comfort in knowing that it is becoming increasingly difficult to skew rules in favour of a select few, as has been done till now. In this some institutions of the state are at play as well.
The role of the Election Commission in cleaning up the elections in the country is well known. So, too, has the current Comptroller and Auditor General changed the way the institution functions forever.
The mango people's insistence that the rules of the game become uniform for everyone, and that there be an end to the collusive ways of politicians and bureaucrats, is bringing great political and social change to the country. In such times, it is sometimes difficult to figure out just where the crossover point lies, at which we know that we are in a new era.
Usually these are defined by general elections in India, and it will not be surprising if that is the case this time around as well in 2014.
But it will take a while more before some kind of an equilibrium is reached where democratic aspiration and individual self expression give rise to codes of conduct which make our society truly civil.

Mail Today October 12, 2012

2012 is not 1962

 THE YEAR 2012 is not 1962. That is a fact. Subtract the former from the latter and you get a neat 50 years that mark the anniversary of a watershed event in Indian history — the Sino-Indian war that resulted in a humiliating defeat for India. The defeat brought the Nehru era to a sad end and the years that followed saw the turbulent transition to the Indira Gandhi era, following yet another war, this time with Pakistan in 1965.
Since 2007, relations between India and China have not been even. Talks on resolving the border dispute have stalled, there are reports of increased Chinese incursions across the Line of Actual Control, and Chinese activity in the Northern Areas of Pakistan Occupied Kashmir has increased. The continuing Chinese military build-up, the growth of its infrastructure in Tibet and the nationalistic rhetoric coming out of China has raised the spectre of another Sino-Indian clash.



But 2012 is not 1962. According to Ravi Rikhye, editor of orbat.com, a specialist website tracking troop deployments, “All the Chinese have done with their poking, prodding and insulting is to finally wake the Indian elephant from its perpetual comatose state.” He says that the Indians are now reacting with a build-up that will create a “serious Indian offensive threat” to the Chinese in Tibet.
Major-General (Retd.) Sheru Thapliyal, who has commanded a division in Ladakh and served in the eastern sector, says that India today is better prepared “by way of knowledge of Chinese strategy, tactics, and weapon systems”. In his view the key to the Indian success will be the armed forces that have “gotten over the trauma of the 1962 War and will stand and fight.”
The big worry is that Indian modernisation programmes still remain in prospect. As of today all three services say that the current phase of modernisation will be completed by 2022. That is one full decade, and ten years can be a long time in international politics. And as Thapliyal points out, there is still a great deal to be done on the Indian side of the Line of Actual Control (LAC) to create an effective infrastructure for the military to conduct its operations.

But while Chinese assertiveness, or some unforeseen accident, could trigger a war, there are also good reasons that militate against such a development. In great measure, the 1962 war was a consequence of Mao’s need to reassert his control over the party after the disaster of the Great Leap Forward and to score off the Soviet Union. In some measure it was also, according to John Garver, a China expert at the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs, Georgia Institute of Technology, a misreading of India’s intentions on Tibet and New Delhi’s confrontational “forward policy”. These factors are missing today.
While the dispute remains, and both sides claim significant chunks of the other’s territory, they actually hold and control what they really need — China has Aksai Chin through which its important Xinjiang-Tibet road runs, and India has Arunachal Pradesh. The two sides also have a slew of structured dialogues and official-level talks, in addition to agreements that are aimed at preventing any untoward incidents on the LAC.
Another factor is that China, and Tibet, are far more open than they were in 1962. The higher decision-making in Beijing is still opaque, but the Internet Revolution has created a generation of bloggers who give India a better idea of the public opinion in China.
Linked to this is the availability of intelligence. The Chinese system may be as closed as it ever was, but through what are called ‘National Technical Means’ — satellites, specialised aircraft, electronic intelligence gathering systems — New Delhi now has access to a great deal of information about Chinese capabilities, and there would be no question of the kind of surprise that the Chinese were able to use to good effect in 1962.
Finally, if good intentions and diplomacy fail, there is always the question of deterrence. In 1962, notes Thapliyal, “we were ill-prepared, ill-equipped and deployed in areas of Chinese domination and given the lack of any logistic support and infrastructure, defeat was a foregone conclusion.”
 Today it would be fair to say that despite much smaller forces and a smaller economy, India has managed to create effective parity in the border areas.

There are gaps, especially in terms of infrastructure, but these are being rapidly filled. One metric is in the latest fighter aircraft — India today has over 150 Sukhoi-30MKIs, whereas China has 76 Sukhoi-30MKKs. Of course, the Chinese air force is much larger, but it is also deployed farther afield compared to the IAF, which is, in any case, deployed largely in an arc from Jorhat to Jodhpur. In 1962, for reasons that are not clear, the IAF was not used in a combat role.
Chinese infrastructure in Tibet may be excellent, but its single rail line, various roads and bridges also present an easy target. These are substantial forces and  Rikhye also points to the larger reorganisation that will enable India to fight a two-front war. As he notes, “For the first time India has declared an open offensive posture against China and is creating the means to follow through.” If war is a continuation of politics by other means, so, too, is peace-making. Both countries are at a critical phase in their national reconstruction. China may be way ahead of India, but it still remains relatively poor. Then there is the iron law of war: It is easy to start one, but difficult to control its consequences, leave alone predict its outcome.
Even a cursory look at the order of battle should tell Beijing that 2012 is not 1962, and that a border skirmish could swirl into a larger war with unforeseen consequences. This perhaps is the best guarantee against any new adventurism on the part of China.
Mail Today October 14, 2012