India needs to start thinking like a nuclear nation

Last week the Vice Chief of the Indian Air Force Air Marshal BS Dhanoa declared that India would not be able to fight a two-front war involving Pakistan and China.The IAF’s numerical strength is at an all-time low, and the Air Marshal has said that “our numbers are not adequate to fully execute an air campaign in a two front scenario.”

Taken by itself, it is an astonishing statement. Is it possible that any country possessing nuclear weapons would risk fighting an all-out war with another, leave alone two of them?

The Pokhran-II test site after a nuclear device was detonated underground

The chances are remote. But that was not just the Air Force speaking, but the considered view of the government of India framed in an operational directive given by the defence minister to the three services in 2009.

It urges them to be ready for a two-front war, never mind that the services have never in the past two decades been resourced to fight even one short war with one adversary.

Threats

There are several issues here. First, is the question of assessing the nature of threats to India’s security.

Surely, with a million plus troops in its Army, a 600+ fleet of combat aircraft and a powerful navy - India is not exactly a push-over, even for a Sino-Pak combination.

Second, the two-front scenario has been the proverbial nightmare that India has confronted since the mid-1960s.

It probably came closest to fruition in the September 1965 India-Pakistan war when China issued an ultimatum to India to cease fire, and also moved some forces in the Sikkim area to aid beleaguered Pakistan.

Our Soviet alliance checked China in the 1971 war, and there were never any serious indications that Beijing would indeed get into the fight, despite Henry Kissinger egging-on China to attack India. 

During the Kargil war when Pakistan sought Chinese help even the rhetoric was absent, and Beijing politely told Pakistan to get Washington to pull its chestnuts out of the fire.

Third, is the more serious issue of nuclear weapons.

Most reasonable people will assume that a state known to have nuclear weapons is likely to use them only in the face of mortal danger.

Even if India shot off just 10 nuclear weapons, they would be enough to destroy two major cities and kill tens of millions of people in Pakistan or China and, of course, the other way around as well. 

Which leader would contemplate such an outcome?

The Chinese are much more focused on this issue and believe that the chances of all-out war are remote. They prepare their forces to win what they call “informationised local wars”, whether on the seas or the land.

Weapons

India has been singularly unable to adjust its military thinking to the fact that it also possesses nuclear weapons. This is because politicians have decreed that nuclear weapons are not really weapons, they are political instruments meant to be used only for retaliation, or to prevent nuclear blackmail.

So, while the weapons delivery systems are embedded in the military, their command and control is entirely civilian.

Most military personnel do not know anything about India’s nuclear capabilities and act on the belief that their job is to fight a conventional war, while the government of the day will hopefully come through if it goes nuclear.

While the civilians must, indeed, command the nuclear forces, they must understand that they are, in the ultimate analysis, weapons, resting at the very top of the escalatory ladder.

Militaries may not control the employment of such weapons, but they should be fully cognisant about their use and integrate them in their planning scenarios.

'Campaigns'

One consequence of mentally separating nuclear and conventional weapons is that the outlook of the Indian military has not changed.

So, it still sees itself conducting World War II like “campaigns” against adversaries.

The Army continues to hold a large fleet of tanks in its armoury, even though the plans that were made for their use have been shelved because they will trip Pakistan’s red lines.

India need not unilaterally disarm, but it could consider a verifiable reduction of the most aggressive land weapons system with Pakistan.

Besides enhancing stability in India-Pakistan relations, the money saved could be utilised to enhance the mobility and firepower of our forces facing China.

The Modi government has a uni-dimensional focus on modernising the equipment of the military, perhaps it should provide some leadership in modernising their organisation and strategy.

And, in the meanwhile, initiate a conversation with China and Pakistan about nuclear weapons and their dangers.

Mail Today, March 14, 2016

The Chinese Great Leap that is Leaving India Further Behind

The government of India last month showed the world that it cannot maintain control over a minor law and order event just kilometres away from its headquarters on Raisina hill in New Delhi. Just how it proposes to fulfil its bigger plans for overhauling the country’s infrastructure and launching a manufacturing revolution is a bit of a mystery.
All this is more troubling when you look in your neighbourhood and see China purposefully guiding its economy to  a soft landing and laying the foundations for its next advance – to emerge as a rich country by 2050 when it expects its per capita GDP to be of the order of $60,000.
This is no pie in the sky because its building blocks are being placed before our eyes, even though the full fruit of the projects will unfold over the coming decades. The best symbol of this was the arrival of the first “Silk Road” train from Yiwu, in eastern China, to Tehran, through Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan, taking 14 days less than  it would have taken the same cargo to go from Shanghai to Bandar Abbas. These are early days for the ambitious Silk Road scheme, which has the twin goals of connecting China to the high-end markets of Europe, as well as make it the geopolitical anchor of Eurasia.





A second indicator is the complete overhaul of two hoary programmes that have provided sinew to China’s emergence as a technology and manufacturing power. The new national research & development plan unveiled on February 16 will streamline the many state-funded science and technology programmes that are related to agriculture, energy, environment, health and various facets of industry and innovation. Many have a key national security component as well.   And as of now the plan covers 59 specific areas which have been based on the older Projects 863 and 973.
“863” is the numeric rendition of the year (1986) and the month (March)  of the launch of  the State High-Tech Development Programme. This is when several top weapons scientists wrote to supreme leader Deng Xiaoping calling for special focus on a range of civilian technologies to boost China’s growth. The technologies chosen were  in biotech, space, information, lasers, automation, new materials, super computing, telecom, marine  and, since 2001, clean energy.

Project 973 launched in March 1997 was  the National Basic Research programme aimed at giving China a strategic edge in a number of scientific fields ranging from agriculture to rare earths, population, materials and energy.
863 and 973  based themselves on  the American model followed by the National Institutes of Health and the Pentagon, where expert panels worked out priority areas, called for bids and awarded grants and contracts to researchers, labs and companies. They avoided the old British model into which India remains stuck, where all the activity is done under an allegedly autonomous council for scientific and industrial research which owns the labs and the scientists are life-long government employees.
A third indicator of the new directions China is headed towards comes from steps being taken by the National Development Reform Commission to put up 400 billion renminbi ($61 billion) per quarter this year to finance the next layer of infrastructure development across China. The money will be offered in the form of bonds to local authorities.
The goal of the special bond scheme is obviously to serve as a cushion against the slowdown of the Chinese economy which will continue through 2016 as well. But it is also to further enhance urban and suburban services like broadband, public transportation, telecommunications and promote the use of green technologies.
One important area for investment is also underway – the creation of a grid of charging stations for electric cars being made by Chinese companies. As part of 863, China invested a great deal in electric propulsion for vehicles. As a result, it is a common sight to electric scooters and motor-cycles in the streets of Chinese cities. Now, the stage is being set to have a million electric cars on Chinese roads by 2020. For this, a network of charging stations is being organised in cities and on principal expressways. Having missed the internal combustion engine revolution, China intends to have its companies in lead positions in electric car propulsion.
The fourth area of focus is the internet. Chinese plans to emerge as an internet super-power are being operationalised through its 13^th five year plan. According to Wang Yukai of the China National Academy of Governance, its focus is on providing a high speed and secure broadband network throughout the country.
In 2015, China hosted the second world internet conference which was addressed by President Xi Jinping. That China has created a famously autonomous and huge internet system is well known, but what China is seeking to do now is to insist that the principles it has espoused – sovereign control – becomes a universal value.
Last year, China’s internet plans received key political direction from the fifth plenum of the Communist Party. In February 2014, it was announced that a new leading small group on internet security and information technology would be headed by Xi Jinping himself. These leading small groups are apex decision-making bodies, the equivalent of our erstwhile empowered group of ministers (EGOMS).
India, too has explored many of the ideas that the Chinese are working along. Rajiv Gandhi had established a number of technology missions in the late 1980s. But those programmes imploded along with the Rajiv prime ministership. Newer proposals are floating in the air with little direction. Having abolished the Planning Commission, the Modi government appears unclear as to what the Niti Ayog is supposed to do. In any case, unless it controls the money, as the Chinese NDRC does, its decisions will have little value. The unfortunate aspect of the situation today is that there seems to be a drift without any clear direction. Ministerial function may have improved in some areas, but long-range planning and marshalling of scarce resources is absent. As is social stability, but that is an entirely different issue.
The Wire March 8, 2016

Delhi police: Handmaiden to powers that be

The arrest of JNU Students’ Union President Kanhaiya Kumar for sedition, and its accompanying fallout is now descending into a tragicomic farce. The tragic happened on Monday when BJP party men and lawyers attacked JNU students at the Patiala House courts, reportedly with the police standing by. The comic happened on Saturday when seven students belonging to a theatre group were detained and interrogated in New Delhi, allegedly because they “looked like” JNU students. They were taken to the Parliament Street Police Station and let off later in batches. More than the alleged charges of abetting terrorists, the degeneration of the Delhi Police into a partisan body bodes ill for the future.

Leave alone reflect on issues, the police leadership has shown a marked tendency to adopt a completely partisan position on them. This is evident from the promptness with which the police arrested the JNU Students Union president on the basis of a complaint by a group of Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) students. Anyone with even the faintest acquaintance of Indian politics would know that Kumar, an activist of the All India Students Federation, close to the Communist Party of India, is unlikely to make common cause with any group of separatists. The AISF has been staunchly mainstream and has been a strong backer of the government on issues relating to separatism, unlike its cousin the Students Federation of India which has a nuanced stand supporting states’ rights.

Not surprisingly, the Patiala House incident was dismissed as “minor” by Delhi police chief B S Bassi, who has remained centre-stage in this whole affair. On Sunday he said that a Delhi Police alert based on a tweet allegedly from Hafiz Muhammad Saeed was issued to warn students to stay away from “anti-India” slogans.” The tweet on an account @HafeezSaeedJUD, spells Hafiz as “Hafeez”. Analysing the tweets, Praveen Swami pointed out in the Indian Express that it was not networked with other Jamaat ud Dawa accounts and that the @HafizSaeedJUD account had been suspended earlier along with some other accounts by Twitter.

Now, Bassi says that even a fake tweet merited attention because it was “sinister.” The uncharitable thought comes to mind that Bassi retires at the end of the month and has expressed his willingness to serve the nation even after retirement, if called upon to do so. As police chief, he would have served his office better by educating the public on the manner in which social media can be manipulated, rather than using a patently fake tweet to threaten students.

This is not the only controversy that has marred his term. At the end of last month, they were allegedly involved in bashing up a group of students protesting Rohith Vemula’s suicide in front of the RSS office in central Delhi. The brutal beating became public when a video showing some policemen, possibly, plainclothesmen beating up the students. Bassi says he has ordered a probe. A BJP-friendly daily next day showed pictures of police personnel who were allegedly injured by the students. So you can imagine where that inquiry is headed.

One feature that would be of keen interest to any police organisation that had a modicum of professionalism left, is to note how the social media is being used and manipulated to stoke protest. In the process tweets are being faked, and possibly video footage. It is unlikely that Kanhaiya Kumar was shouting any slogans in support of Afzal Guru, leave alone those allegedly calling for the destruction of India. Likewise a video purporting to show some ABVP activists shouting Pakistan Zindabad (Long live Pakistan) seems to be equally improbable.

These events have transpired in a university that is extremely small and diverse. But should this be repeated in other places and in a different setting, you could have a major law and order problem in your hands.

However, our police refuses to become a professional force and remains a hand-maiden of the powers that be. That suits the politicians and it is they who have consistently prevented any serious reform of the police system to take place. For this the BJP alone is not responsible, all political parties from the Congress to the CPI(M) have used and misused the police for their partisan purpose.

The saddest aspect of the whole situation is a word that will not be understood by our rashtravadi (nationalist) BJP. It is the word “bullying”. Taking on a handful of students and stomping all over them is no great sign of bravery. They show little of it in neighbouring Punjab, where the BJP forms part of the ruling coalition with the Akali Dal, and every now and then there are public functions where slogans in favour of Khalistan are raised, and killers of an Indian prime minister and a state chief minister honoured, yet, we don’t get a peep out of the bravehearts of the party.

Mid Day February 16, 2016

India has bigger issues than a few protesting students

At least when the police hit JNU on that hot summer night in July 1975, following the imposition of the Emergency, they came surreptitiously in the night. This time around their raids have been in broad daylight. 

Then, as now, they came invoking the law of the country. But where the Emergency, howsoever wrong, came through a Presidential proclamation under Article 352(1) of the constitution adopted by free India in 1950, the raid on February 12 to arrest JNUSU president Kanhaiya Kumar was on the basis of a sedition law passed by our colonial masters in 1870. 

Disloyalty 

This was a law drafted by Thomas Babington Macaulay in 1833, so there is great irony that a political tendency in this country which constantly inveighs against “Macaulay ki aulad” (children of Macaulay) is today invoking laws that originated with him. 

Sedition cannot be applied to mere words and statements, but only to actually waging war against the state

Not to forget, of course, that “disloyalty” in that law was to the Empress of India who sat in London. 

More than anything else, the incident reveals the immaturity of the ministerial team of the Modi government. 

Where Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh has taken the seemingly high road by calling for action against anti-national elements, his HRD counterpart Smriti Irani has taken the low one, claiming an insult to an abstract non-legal concept called ‘Bharat Mata.’ 

Both missed the point that, as it exists in the Indian law, sedition cannot be applied to mere words and statements, but to actually waging war against the state or abetting it.

In no way did slogans in favour of Afzal Guru, or even those allegedly calling for the destruction of India, meet that test. 

Indeed, given the very limited nature of the protest, there are no indications that the group of students were inciting the group to attack anyone. 

As for the barbad (destroy), it is used in public protests as a catch-all word like zindabad. So a slogan “x ho barbad”, where x can be the management of a factory, a vice-chancellor, America, Pakistan or whatever, means little. 

The two ministers have no understanding that young students will be volatile, excitable, rebellious, often irresponsible, and always ready to take up a cause. It is up to the government to channel their energies, not use the sledgehammer to swat them out. 

Neither do these ministers have the slightest inkling that dissent is central to democracy, not a peripheral issue. 

Authority 

The Sangh Parivar members, who have been thrust into important positions of authority in the country, are all afflicted with a great desire to exercise their power, never mind the spirit of the constitution and the law. 

You cannot get a better example of this from the Maharashtra BJP government’s September 2015 order that virtually conflates sedition with any attack on the government itself. 

In Gujarat, the BJP government has invoked the sedition law against Hardik Patel, who is leading an agitation favouring reservations for the Patel community for sending messages that use “offensive language against the Prime Minister, the state chief minister and BJP president Amit Shah.” 

This is the same tendency of using power that lead to the suicide of Rohith Vemula after being expelled by the University of Hyderabad. In that case, too, the ABVP which is leading the charge in JNU, was involved, claiming that Rohith had participated in the protest against the death penalty to Yakub Memon. 

Constitution 

What is really under threat is the right of the freedom of speech guaranteed by our constitution. By declaring people ‘anti-national’ or ‘seditious’, efforts are being made to abridge these rights. 

Where in the Emergency, the government invoked a provision of the Constitution to deny the right, albeit temporarily, here the effort is to shape the discourse in such a way that any view contrary to that of the Sangh Parivar becomes seditious. So you cannot oppose Afzal Guru or Yakub Memon’s hanging, and nor can you express contempt for BJP notables. 

Amazingly, this great defence of ‘nationalism’ and ‘nationalist values’ comes from a political ideology which had little role in the national movement that brought freedom to the country. 

At that time nationalism actually meant something, including the hardship of long terms in prison. Today all that it seems to be is a cudgel to belabour your adversaries. 

In the 69 years since India gained Independence, we have been through a lot - separatist movements in the North-east, Kashmir, Punjab and even for a while Tamil Nadu. There were wars, covert and overt, famine, economic distress and so on. 

Today in 2016 we have largely defeated all these challenges and stand tall as a nation. Our real task is the economic transformation of the country at the earliest. We need to get down to dealing with that, rather than get caught in hysterical protests against imaginary enemies.

February 14, 2016

J&K's changing political scenery

Just how much difference an individual makes to a process is abundantly clear from the prolonged inability of the People’s Democratic Party and the Bharatiya Janata Party to form a government in Jammu & Kashmir following the death of Chief Minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeed. It is apparent now, if it wasn’t earlier, that it was Mufti’s personality and political skills that had kept the unlikely coalition of the PDP and the BJP going. Now that he is no more, they are finding it difficult to connect.

Late J&K CM Mufti Mohammad Sayeed, his daughter Mehbooba and PM Modi at a rally in November. The PDP went with BJP because of the efforts of Prime Minister Modi and Mufti. However, 10 months down the line, there is an estrangement and for this, New Delhi must accept the major part of the blame. Pic/AFP

On Tuesday, the Governor N N Vohra has called a meeting with both parties to ascertain their views. On paper they are still a coalition and there is no reason why the state needs to be under President’s rule. But behind the drama are longer range calculations of Mehbooba Mufti, the person who built the party with her grit and effort.

Most observers agree that Mehbooba would find it difficult to work with the BJP, but thought that the crisis would come a year or so down the line. But clearly they are wrong, and this also tells us a lot about her filial loyalty since now it becomes clear that she did not see eye to eye with her father on the alliance, but yet she stuck it out till it came to the stage when she had to take the decisions. Perhaps there is something more to the fact that Modi did not find it convenient to visit Mufti while he was in his death bed at the AIIMS in New Delhi.

There is a lot of talk as to the PDP’s unhappiness about the BJP not fulfilling on its promises under their common minimum programme. But PDP spokespersons have been somewhat vague in specifying what these are. In any case, the government is not even a year old and so the coalition partner can hardly be held to account. Word coming out of the PDP last week was that the party was unhappy on a range of issues, from relations with Pakistan to the revocation of AFSPA and development projects.

Actually, all the indicators are that Mehbooba may be readying to stake all in a fresh election, rather than depending on the vehicle of a coalition and, that too, with the BJP. This is evident from her reported remarks following her party meeting last week in which she has spoken of adhering to the “core ideology” of the PDP and going “back to the people”.

In great measure, the current emerging crisis is an outcome of the fractured verdict of the state Assembly election of 2014. In itself, the election was quite unique. For one, it was highly credible, with a 66 per cent turnout, with even some separatist-dominated constituencies seeing an enhanced vote. The PDP, which got 28 seats, was actually hoping to get at least 35 out of the total of 87 seats and make a coalition with the help of a junior partner, perhaps the independents or the Congress.

However, the BJP did spectacularly well and came second at 25, soaking up all the seats in the Hindu-dominated areas of Jammu. But it did have the effect of consolidating the Muslim vote, and the National Conference, which was expecting a washout, actually got 15 seats. The Congress got 12, and became the only party to have a presence in all three sub-regions of the state — Ladakh, the Valley and Jammu. In other words, the election also indicated the huge divide that had taken place with two of the bigger winners confined to specific geographic areas — the PDP in the Valley and the BJP in Jammu.

The PDP could hardly ally with the NC, with whom it competes for the Valley Muslim votes. And the Congress was neither inclined to have a coalition with the PDP nor did it have enough seats to make this a stable coalition. In the end, the PDP went with the BJP because of the efforts of Prime Minister Modi and the Mufti. In any case, the stable formula for parties in states like J&K and Tamil Nadu is to go with the party that runs the country.

However, 10 months down the line, there is an estrangement and for this, New Delhi must accept the major part of the blame. Modi has been so busy with his domestic development agenda and his numerous foreign visits that he has had no time to devote to Kashmir affairs. The result is that the issues close to the political heart of the coalition leader, the PDP, remained unaddressed. These were primarily the need for political dialogue between New Delhi and Srinagar of the type that Manmohan Singh had inaugurated. There is a facile assumption that since violence is down in the state, there is no need for any special gesture towards the state. In any case, the BJP has always opposed any special status for J&K. However, realpolitik demands that New Delhi be seen to be addressing the issues raised by separatists, even if it does not actually do anything about them.

Mid Day February 2, 2016