Strategy, not money must drive Modi's military overhaul

Narendra Modi's invite to heads of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation has set a comforting tone for the incoming government.It suggests that the foreign policy of the new government will not destabilise the neighbourhood and will actually emphasise continuity. 

This may not be quite the message many of Mr Modi's more radical followers expected to hear, but it is the one that the new government seems keen to give.
Anyway, "strong" foreign policy must be anchored on strong fundamentals.
And anyone who has studied these things knows that neither the state of the economy, nor our national security machinery, is working at full pace.
In these circumstances to adopt tough postures would be highly irresponsible and, indeed, hazardous, because they could lead India to the kind of misadventure it faced when Mr Nehru ordered the Army to "throw out" the Chinese from the Thag La ridge on that fateful October of 1962. 

Military
The situation with regard to our armed forces is not new. In 2001, in the wake of the attack on Parliament House, the government contemplated the use of the military, but it took them nearly a month to get ready and by the time the moment had passed.
The subsequent year-long mobilisation was a farcical exercise that took the lives of nearly 2000 personnel, without an actual war being fought.
In 2008, once again, when the government explored military options in response to the Mumbai attack, it was told that the Army was not ready because it lacked key tank ammunition, air defence artillery and that its artillery holdings, too, were not in good shape.
It is no secret that our higher national security management is dysfunctional, with the civilians and uniformed people in barely talking terms.

There is no joint planning to speak of, and morale in all three services is low because of the poor political leadership they have had in the A. K. Antony era.
A mere change of governments will not alter the state of affairs which has deep structural roots. A great deal of effort and, principally, political leadership is needed to make our forces fighting fit.
As long as we were focused on Pakistan as the main adversary, we could continue as before because they could be counted on to be a degree worse than us. But this year we have seen the shape of the future.
The American pivot to the Pacific seems to have pushed Beijing to take a forward stance along its maritime periphery, and the effects of this are washing into the Indian Ocean.

Security: Newly sworn-in Prime Minister Narendra Modi shakes hands with Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif after the swearing-in ceremony at the Presidential Palace. Modi's defence policy must shift away from focusing solely on India's relationship with Pakistan 

At the beginning of the year, we saw a major Chinese exercise on the Lombok Straits, which was very transparently aimed at breaching naval choke-points.

Around the same time, a Chinese Shang-class nuclear propelled submarine carried out a patrol across the Indian Ocean and Arabian Sea.
When it comes to China, we cannot afford any complacency, we cannot be satisfied with a military that can -- just about -- cope with Pakistan.
We need one that can fight and win wars with any adversary, or a combination of them.
Deterrent
Dealing with this is not merely a military problem. It is one that requires the maximising of India's comprehensive national power.
The primary requirement here is certainly economic. This is well understood by most people across the country.
Minus a rapidly growing economy, India will be hard put to feed, clothe and house its growing population, and worse, it will also be wasting the demographic dividend of tens of millions of working age young who can help propel its economy to double-digit growth.
Minus a growing economy, it will also lack the resources of maintaining a military system which can safeguard its integrity and protect its interests in its region and beyond.

This is the system which is in a severe state of disrepair. It needs urgent attention, but not in terms of importing shiny new weapons and equipment, but with regard to its organisation and morale.
We need to understand that if the Indian armed forces are going to fight a modern war in today's world, they will need to do this in an integrated fashion.
This integration is required not only between the armed forces and the civilian ministry of defence, but it will also be required within the three services both in terms of their acquisitions and war plans.

Overhaul
Increasingly, most observers, barring, perhaps, the babus in the Ministry of Defence itself, realise that the R&D and government-owned defence industry needs to completely open up.
There is now a need for a complete overhaul of the system and a large-scale entry of the private sector both into defence R&D and industry.
Indeed, India also needs large amounts of FDI in the defence industry. If the Indian defence industry is going to be a viable enterprise, it will have to create a place for itself in the global supply chain as a player, because currently India's defence requirements are simply not sufficient to sustain a stand-alone industry.
As soon as a new minister comes, there will be a big push from vendors to prioritise particular import deals.
It is no secret that fiscal problems compelled the government to put many, such as that of the Rafale fighters, on hold.
The government will do well to look into the rationale of some of these big-ticket items, including the recently approved mountain strike corps, and insist that they be worked on as part of a rational tri-service defence plan, rather than the desires of a single service. 

Integration: If the Indian armed forces are going to fight a modern war in today's world, they will need to do this in an integrated fashion

More important, instead of focusing on the big-ticket items, the government needs to focus on the smaller but more vital cogs in the country's defence machine which are needed to get existing equipment going – armour-piercing ammunition for tanks, replacement for Bofors guns, surface-to-air missiles, heavyweight torpedoes, sonars and multi-role helicopters whose absence is degrading the capabilities of our existing warships.
Having taken care of the urgent requirements, the new Cabinet Committee on Security should insist on a radical overhaul of the national security system before funding new acquisitions.
Suffice to say, there is sufficient slack in the existing system which, if tightened up, will provide for a more efficient and capable fighting force without spending any more money than is being spent today. 
Mail Today May 27, 2014

Modi's diplomatic master-stroke

The invitation by the incoming government of Narendra Modi to the leaders of South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) is being seen for the diplomatic master stroke that it is. In one fell swoop, it has answered several questions about the nature of the incoming regime and also staked out a number of positions relating to its outlook.
To be specific its foreign policy will not divert significantly from those of past governments, and that it will seek to build relations on a template which was actually drawn up during the previous NDA government, headed by Atal Bihari Vajpayee. Even so, there are four significant issues arising from the development.


Newly sworn-in Prime Minister Narendra Modi accepts greetings from Pakistan’s Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif after the swearing-in ceremony of the NDA government at Rashtrapati Bhavan in New Delhi on Monday. Pic/PTI

First, it has sent a powerful signal about what could well in the coming years be called the Delhi Consensus — that democracy works, even for poor developing countries and is the superior way of doing things. In the last couple of years as the US turned inward and Europe appeared to implode, rising China seemed to signal that, perhaps, its authoritarian model was the better one when it comes to development.
In virtually each of our neighbouring nations, there is a battle going on between forces of democracy and those of authoritarianism and anarchy. That the largest nation in SAARC has seen a peaceful, indeed, a routine transfer of power, despite the radical nature of verdict, is a powerful signal.
Second, India has signalled that it will embed its regional policy within the framework of SAARC. This should reduce the disquiet among our neighbours arising from the sheer size of India and its economy. This has a history since India’s Pakistan policy of today is rooted in Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s visit to Islamabad to attend the 12th SAARC summit between 4-6 January 2004.
Two events here shaped the UPA-1 and 2 policies. The first was the signing of the Framework Agreement on the South Asian Free Trade Area (SAFTA) and bring the customs duty on traded goods to zero by 2016. The second was a joint statement in which the Pakistan president committed to ensure that Pakistan’s territory would not be used for terror attacks against India and the resumption of the composite dialogue.
Third, this signal is important because among the foremost tasks that confront the government is to push for the economic integration of the South Asian region. India’s goal of being an economic power of significance cannot take off unless it is able to knit the natural economies of the South Asian region together.
This is accepted by all SAARC countries who are committed to SAFTA. Indian leadership here would be a crucial determinant in moving the project forward in the coming years. We are already at a breakthrough point with Pakistan at last coming around to giving India the Most Favoured Nation (or Non Discriminatory Market Access (NDMA).
Fourth, and this is not something to be talked about loudly: The presence of the South Asian leaders and the prime minister of Mauritius, lays out in a way, India’s sphere of interest in the South Asian and Indian Ocean Region. It goes without saying that Pakistan and Afghanistan are a special case here since Islamabad’s grand strategy has always been to seek parity with India by hook or by crook.
But, the other South Asian nations know that they are ‘India locked’ and that while they may accept aid and arms from China, there are some red lines that they should not cross. This is the lesson learnt, most recently, by Nepal.
When the Maoist government of Prachanda started trying to alter the Himalayan balance by pushing Beijing to play a bigger role in Nepal. India reacted and within a few years it was successful in neutralising him and getting Nepali politics back behind the Indian red lines.
All this must be seen in the context of the Modi government’s larger ambitions to restore India to the economic growth path. Only if that happens over the next few years, will the Indian economy exert a regional pull, but it will also aid in quickening the pace of modernisation of the Indian armed forces.
Presumably, of course, the government will carry out the necessary organisational reforms that are needed to ensure that the Indian military is not just the sum of a certain number of tanks, fighter aircraft and the like, but an effective instrument of India’s national security policy.
Many fire-eaters, who had expected a ‘56’ -inch foreign policy, will be disappointed at this approach. But for one thing, they are not running the government. For another, what is clear is that in the area of foreign policy, which did not figure much in the campaign and constituted an insignificant portion of the BJP election manifesto, will follow the existing track.
Significantly this is derived from those of the BJP-led NDA in the 1998-2004 period, which emphasised engagement with the neighbouring countries. However, with the rise of China, it is clear that unless India’s foreign policy is anchored in a strong national security system, it will not have much of a market either in the region, or the world.
Mid Day May 27, 2014

 

Obama's foreign policy

In a recent op-ed, former Japanese defence minister Yoriko Koike said that the one man who could, perhaps unwittingly, endanger world peace, is not Vladimir Putin, but United States President Barack Obama.

According to Koike, by his ‘scholarly inertia’, Obama appeared to be unconcerned over the “fate of smaller faraway countries.” What she charges Obama with is the willful neglect of the world order which was created by the United States in the wake of World War II.

This system was based on a willingness of the US, the recognised global hegemon, to take the tough policies and implement rules and norms that ensured a generally stable global environment.

It is easy to understand the Japanese angst. The Russian seizure of Crimea could presage a similar Chinese move to snatch the Senkaku islands of Japan which Beijing claims. It was one thing for Putin to reclaim Russian-majority Crimea which had been detached from Russia in 1959.

But now, as it foments separatism in eastern Ukraine and talks of reconstituting the Soviet Empire, the US seems paralysed. Actually the tremors of America’s passivity are being felt across the globe. In the Persian Gulf, historic allies of the US Saudi Arabia and the Gulf sheikhdoms wonder whether the US intends to upend the regional order and place its bets once again on Iran. Or worse, end up doing neither moving to Iran, or backing its allies.

In Southeast Asia, there are few signs of an American Asian pivot. The ‘pivot’ idea is attributed to a 2011 essay by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Her basic thrust was that as the Iraq war winds down and the Americans begin to pull out of Afghanistan, the US will be at a pivot point.

At this stage, Asia was not mentioned, but soon it became clear that the American pivot, later rechristened ‘rebalance’, would be to Asia. The pivot became part of a larger plan to refocus the US military deployments in the Asia-Pacific region after their diversion to the Middle-East and South Asia in the 2001-2011 period.

The obvious urgency for the pivot/rebalance was to counter the rising power of China, and reassure US allies like Japan and the Philippines, who were locked in territorial disputes with Beijing.

Almost immediately, the Asian pivot was overwhelmed by the Arab Spring following revolts in Tunisia, Libya and Egypt in quick succession. But while the situation was manageable in these countries, the revolts in Syria and Ukraine have taken a different turn and brought out the limits of American power. It was also significant that this was the point at which the muscular Clinton was replaced by John Kerry as Secretary of State.

The United States has gone through two harrowing wars and Obama’s main goal is to retrench and recuperate. But when you are the global hegemon, and one that is naturally keen to maintain its primacy for as long as it can, Obama and the US do not have the option of taking their ball and going back home.

It would be wrong to blame Obama alone for this situation. For example, his allies, such as Germany could have done more to control the Russians. But his bigger problem is the US Congress and the American public.

While he is trying to follow a policy of engagement and deterrence, his hands are tied by the Congress, which has pushed the blunt instrument of sequestration to control the budget.

So bitterly divided is the US these days that last year, because of the lockdown of the government, Obama was unable to attend the APEC Summit in Bali, leaving the floor to China’s leader Xi Jinping. America’s long and fruitless wars have been a major drain on its economy.

Its defence spending averaged 4 per cent between 1990-2012 but now, under the sequestration policy of the US Congress, the spending will fall steadily from 4.3 per cent of the GDP in 2012 to 2.8 by 2023.

The consequences of the shift is apparent from the comment of a senior Pentagon official in March that the Pentagon’s plans to pivot to Asia ‘can’t happen’ due to cuts to the defence budget. However, she later clarified that the US Department of Defence would “adapt and innovate” but still make the pivot happen.

Obama has finally made his Asian visit last week, which has included the first visit by a US president to Malaysia since Lyndon Baines Johnson in 1966. But there is not much to show for it.

There has been little or no movement on the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement through which the US hopes to slow down, if not halt, the Chinese economic juggernaut. He has signed a 10-year defence agreement with the Philippines, but he has left unanswered the more important questions about the reliability of the United States as an ally.

The big paradox that the US confronts is the need to confront China and Russia at the same time. Clearly, even the mighty US does not have the energy and resources to do that. Beijing is, of course, quite self-confident because it is locked into the western economies and is, in that sense, sanctions proof.

But a wounded Russia will only rush into the arms of the Chinese. This would serve China well because it would now have access to Russian resources, as well as its military tech which it cannot obtain from elsewhere in any case.

Mid Day April 29, 2014

How the world sees a future Modi Government

Washington: In the capital of the country that has refused to give a visa to Narendra Modi, there is endless speculation among policy makers about what Modi's arrival on the scene means for India, its relations with Pakistan and China and, of course, the United States.

Modi's own statements have helped to thaw the American freeze somewhat. In several interviews he has insisted that his individual issues in relation to the American visa denial will not be allowed to cloud his judgment over India's US policy.

In another interview last week, he has been most explicit – India and the US are "natural allies" he declared, in a formulation first heard during the Vajpayee period.

Indeed, Modi said it was Vajpayee who laid the foundation for a new era of partnership with the US, so "we will build upon that and take it forward."

Assertion

But given his personality, no matter what he says, Modi is not likely to forget the slight of the US visa denial easily. It will therefore be some time before relations with the US can get back to the level they were at the time the Indo-US nuclear deal was signed.

In addition, there will have to be a lot of work done in Washington and New Delhi to undo the era of bad feelings that have characterised Indo-US relations in the last couple of years.

None of this will remove the lingering concerns of the different segments of the US policy community. There are non-proliferation wallahs who worry that the BJP promise "to study" and "review" the nuclear doctrine could lead to India abandoning its no first use pledge.

Those promoting religious rights – who were primarily responsible for his visa denial – worry that a Modi prime ministership could have negative consequences for religious freedom in the country.

Then there are those who worry that an assertive Modi could upset the regional applecart in relation to Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Modi's declaration that relations with Pakistan cannot be normal "as long as the bombs are going off" provides one perspective. Another can be seen from his refusal to court the Muslim community during the elections. In other words, his Pakistan policy could be marked with indifference, rather than active belligerence.

Indian policy towards Pakistan has veered between what can be termed "flexible engagement" and "flexible containment", and it would not be surprising if the latter theme becomes dominant in his dealings with Islamabad.

Then there are those in Washington who look at relations with India through the prism of specific regional issues-Iran, Afghanistan, Ukraine, South China Sea and so on. Given America's own reluctance to get involved in another conflict, they hope that India can play a more active role.

India is not unhappy that the US seems to be preoccupied with developments in the Middle-East and Ukraine. Because they worry that a US desperate to leave Afghanistan could further compromise India's interests in relation to Pakistan.

Likewise, there are concerns that the US is pushing the Russians into the arms of the Chinese and this could result in India losing its coveted status as Russia's favoured partner for arms transfer issues.

Consequences

America itself is going in for an election this year. The mid-term election involves the entire House of Representatives and 34 out of 50 seats in the Senate and 36 out of 50 governorships of the states.

At a superficial level, Barack Obama is not very different from that of Manmohan Singh. He, too, is seen as an indecisive or passive leader. But the US is coping with the consequences of the two wars it fought in the 2000s.

The policy wonks may not like it, but the average American is quite happy to stay away from any new conflict, especially one that could involve another war.

Of great interest in the US are Modi's perspectives towards China. It is known that he has visited both China and Japan. Many feel that these are the countries towards which India could tilt towards in the coming period.

Last week in an article in the Chinese Communist Party mouthpiece Global Times Liu Zongyi, a fellow at the Shanghai Institute of International Studies came up with another angle. He said that that Modi's election is cause for disquiet in western countries and Modi could actually bring China and India closer together.

Development

It is not so much over the issue of human rights or religious freedoms, Liu has argued, but that the authoritarian and tough Modi could give rise to an ultra-nationalist and assertive India which could alter the terms of engagement between India and the west.

As of now, India follows a policy of passive restraint which is essentially defensive. It leans towards the west in terms of its world view. But were Modi to take the Putin track, it could upset the regional power equations. There is, however, an element of wishful thinking in the Chinese argument that a nationalist Modi will avoid getting involved in US plans for India to counter-balance China.

It is difficult to explain to the strategic community here that Modi has not yet been elected. And even if he is, his room for manoeuvre would depend on the kind of majority or plurality he had. But most important, is that Modi's own priorities would be on the economic side because he has raised enormous expectations among the electors on that front.

Getting tough with external adversaries is not a priority area, and in any case the level of toughness he can exercise would be greatly conditioned by the economic situation of the country. Raising the GDP by several percentage points would do more for India's standing, than any act of assertion against Pakistan, China or the US.

 Mail Today May 12, 2014

Modi moves closer to the political centre

As the election to the 16th Lok Sabha moves towards its culmination on May 16th, when counting begins and the results will be apparent in quick time, the frontrunner for the PM's job, Narendra Modi, is making his policy positions clearer and moving distinctly towards the centre of the political spectrum.
In a slew of interviews given to regional, vernacular and wire-services media, Modi has adopted a prime ministerial stance, emphasising balance and consensus over right-wing posturing.
In a recent interview, even while affirming his "Hinduness" he insisted that he was an Indian first.
In another interview to a news channel, Modi said the government was run according to the Constitution of the country and not the ideology of any outfit (read RSS).
Moderation
In a similar vein is his rebuke to Union Home Minister Sushilkumar Shinde for going public on the issue of dealing with Dawood Ibrahim.
Responding to questions about Shinde's statement that India will bring back Dawood from Pakistan, Modi told a Gujarati TV channel: "Can such things be achieved through media. Are these things to be revealed through newspapers…Did America hold a press conference on its plans about tracking down Bin Laden?"
He added pointedly: "They don't have minimum maturity. I am ashamed that the Home Minister made such statements."
Equally insistent has been Modi's effort to dampen the hawks on the issue of nuclear policy. The Bharatiya Janata Party's (BJP) 2014 election manifesto promised to study "in detail" India's nuclear doctrine and "revise and update it to make it relevant to challenges of current times."
Many analysts have interpreted this to mean that India will alter its long-standing policy of no-first use (NFU) of nuclear weapons, but the language of the BJP's manifesto, which had apparently been cleared by Modi himself, was quite moderate and clear.
Actually, the confusion was caused by Sheshadri Chari, the convenor of the BJP foreign policy cell and a member of the group that formulated this section of the party's manifesto, who reportedly said: "Why should we tie our hands into accepting a global no-first-use policy, as has been proposed by the Prime Minister [Manmohan Singh] recently?"

+3

Centrist: Modi has indicated that his foreign policy will mirror that of the last BJP-led government of Atal Bihari Vajpayee

He was referring to Singh's remarks at a conference organised in early April by the Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses on a nuclear weapons free world.
Another angle to this was provided by former Foreign Secretary Kanwal Sibal, a faculty member of a think tank close to the BJP who said the manifesto commitment seemed to have been driven by the need to revise no-first-use in the light of "the increasing nuclear threat from Pakistan".
He also pointed out that countries like the US did not have a no-first-use policy, and that China did not even recognise India as a country that possessed nuclear weapons.
Not surprisingly, the manifesto reference had the non-proliferation ayatollahs around the world fulminating.
Their attitude was summed by the warning issued through an editorial in the New York Times, noting that, "The lack of clarity about the party's intentions on this[NFU] issue introduces more uncertainty into an already unstable region."

Clarity
Actually, there was never any ambiguity on the issue of Modi's attitude towards no-first  -use. On the occasion of the Nani Palkhivala lecture in Chennai in October 2013 Modi was explicit in backing NFU, by praising the Vajpayee's government's nuclear policy and its commitment to NFU.
So it is not surprising that last week, to end the speculation he declared in an interview to ANI that, "No-first-use was a great initiative of Atal Bihari Vajpayee - there is no compromise on that. We are very clear.
"No-first-use is a reflection of our cultural inheritance."
It is not surprising that there is so much speculation, some warranted, some not so, on what a Modi prime ministership would be like.

Modi has not been in Delhi since 2001 and even in the BJP hierarchy he has viewed as an outsider.
His economic perspective is not too difficult to determine since he has made it the centrepiece of his governance platform in the state. But in the area of foreign and security policy he offers a puzzle.
As of now, Modi has clearly indicated that his perspective is linked to that of the last BJP-led government of Atal Bihari Vajpayee, which was centre of the road, if anything.
It is likely that in the area of foreign and security policies which are not easy to change overnight, Modi will rely on experienced players who have had a Delhi connect and are also close to or members of the BJP.
Expectations
It is an irony, perhaps, that in coming to rule Delhi, Modi is like the sultans of yore who came from across the Hindu Kush to rule India.
One feature of their rule was the constant haranguing of the ulema zealots pressing them to take a hard line against the Hindu masses.
But the cleverer sultans, at least, had a healthy sense of pragmatism and realised that they needed the cooperation of the people to sit securely on the throne.
By antagonising the people, all that they would get is rebellion and disorder.
As the new ruler of New Delhi, Modi's first goal, driven by the enormous expectations he has raised across the country, would be a stable administration which can get the economy up and running.
He will have to face the paradox of any person who wins an election - his clock will begin ticking immediately after the government takes office. But, the way things work, the very months in which he is assembling his team, will also be the honeymoon period in which it is easiest to take the most far-reaching decisions. 
Mail Today April 29, 2014

The PMO files

All of you have probably heard of the law of unintended consequences. Well, if you haven’t, you need to reflect on some of the things that we have been witnessing in the recent days and months. Take Mani Shankar Aiyar’s ‘chaiwallah’ (tea boy) jibe. Caught up in his own verbosity at a Congress conclave in January Aiyar declaimed, “There is no way he [Narendra Modi] can be Prime Minister in the 21st century... but if he wants to come and distribute tea here we can make some room for him.” The supercilious Aiyar was taking a dig at Modi’s origins as the son of a tea seller.

But he did not reckon with the consequences. This throwaway remark has formed the cornerstone of the BJP’s strategy of wooing the Other Backward Classes (OBCs) in Uttar Pradesh, and by all accounts it has worked brilliantly in attracting the poorer classes of people to the party. As a result, the BJP could win 40-50 out of the 80 seats that the state has in the Lok Sabha. No doubt the ‘chaiwallah’ dig will provide the BJP payoffs elsewhere as well.

The second instance is more recent and equally obvious. Had the Congress party bitten the bullet and remained quiet following the release of a book, The Accidental Prime Minister, by Sanjaya Baru, the former media adviser to the prime minister on the functioning of UPA 1 and 2, there would have been some immediate news interest because of it is election season, and thereafter some modest sales.

But, egged on by the Congress party, the Prime Minister’s Office chose to fight dirty with an official statement on Friday, the day the book was released, by the current media adviser Pankaj Pachauri that the book was “an attempt to misuse a privileged position and access to high office to gain credibility and to apparently exploit it for commercial gain. The commentary smacks of fiction and coloured views of a former adviser.”

If Pachauri had couched the statement in sorrow, rather than in anger, he may have actually managed to elicit some sympathy for the government. But by coming out in a slash and burn attack, he only provoked a storm and generated so much interest in the media and amongst the people that the first run of 10,000 hardcover books was sold out by Friday evening.

The tenor of party spokesman Abhishek Manu Singhvi’s remarks were even harsher: “Baru is an out of job, disgruntled turncoat who is spreading canards to sell his book and gain cheap publicity.” Never mind that Baru, a senior fellow at the Centre for Policy Research, is the director for geoeconomics and strategy for the renowned Institute for Strategic Studies London, and earns several times more than he ever earned as the media adviser to the Prime Minister.

More importantly, the ‘turncoat’ jibe needs comment. A week before the book hit the market, Baru had sent a copy of the book to the prime minister who reportedly read it and had no comment to make. Anyone who has actually read the book will realise that more than anything else, the book is the work of someone with deep affection for Manmohan Singh and who is keen on bringing out the achievements of his tenure as well as the reasons why he was unable to function, as he ought to have, in his second tenure beginning 2009. And Baru’s is no uncritical account. He has strongly criticised Manmohan Singh for not quitting office when it had become clear that he had lost all control over his government.

Indeed, the sordid story he tells is of disloyalty, but not on the part of Baru, but of those ministers and officials, including the top PMO officers, who bypassed the PM or ignored his directives and thereby undermined his administration.

What rattled the Congress the most was the charge that PMO files were seen by Congress president Sonia Gandhi.

The reason is not too hard to see. First, showing such files to non-officials, be it Sonia or her political secretary Ahmed Patel would be a serious breach of secrecy. Second, the people liable for action would be the officers involved. That is why Pachauri came up with another statement declaring “The statement being attributed to a former media adviser to the Prime Minister that PMO files were seen by the Congress president, Smt Sonia Gandhi is completely baseless and mischievous. It is categorically denied that any PMO file has ever been shown to Smt Sonia Gandhi.”

The fact of the matter, say insiders, is that officers like the Principal Secretary to the Prime Minister T K A Nair and Pulok Chatterji were sharing the contents of official files with Ms Gandhi and Ahmed Patel. The files related not so much to the business of state, but to the top-level appointments in the government which were controlled and manipulated by the ‘high command’.

Since we are at the point of inflection where the old government is likely to be replaced by a new one soon, many of these aberrations and illegalities could well be exposed. If so, they will be testimony to the arrogance of the Congress party leadership which eventually succeeded in chopping off its nose to spite its face.

Mid Day April 15, 2014