Misuse of security laws

THE phenomenon of antibiotic resistance is not unknown in India where it is easy to buy them over-the-counter. The result is that when you really need them, they are ineffective. And in a country with the highest bacterial disease incidence in the world, the consequences are tragic.

Something like this is happening with the laws of the land aimed at protecting the security and integrity of the country.

Draconian laws

Invoking draconian laws like the National Security Act, 1980, (NSA), or the colonial-era Indian Penal Code Section 124A, which penalises sedition, in trivial cases, is setting the stage where the laws will become ineffective in confronting real threats.

On Monday, news reports said that three people have been arrested under the NSA by the Uttar Pradesh Police for cow slaughter in Bulandshahr. Yes, cow slaughter. This relates to the December 3 incident in which a police inspector, Subodh Kumar Singh, was killed by a mob protesting the alleged incident of cow slaughter.

Irony would be too mild a word to use here, where the death of a policeman on duty is treated as an ordinary crime, while the alleged killing of cows is a national security threat.

The UP government has taken great pride in invoking the NSA, in what it claims to be its bid to fight crime. It enables the government to detain a person for up to 12 months, using it against any person whose actions are prejudicial to the security of India, the relations of India with any foreign country, the maintenance of public order and essential services and supplies. A person can be detained for 10 days without even being told why he or she is being detained. A three-person advisory board made up of high court judges, or persons qualified to be so, can extend the detention to three months.

In January 2016, the Yogi Adityanath government in UP itself issued a press release claiming that the NSA had been invoked against 160 persons, including the dalit activist and commander of the Bhim Army, Chandrashekhar, who was arrested in June 2017 and released in September 2018.

NSA detentions are, of course, a less drastic course taken by the UP government; it has also killed more than 50 alleged criminals in police “encounters”.

This has now drawn the attention of the Supreme Court and UN human rights activists. It is well known that in India “encounter” killings often amount to nothing but officially sanctioned murder.

Lost in translation

The Union government is not to be left behind in this feast of extrajudicial activism. It has ordered the Delhi Police to launch a case of sedition against Kanhaiya Kumar, Umar Khalid and eight others.

The fact that the charges are being made three years after the alleged use of “anti-national slogans” by Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) students in February 2016, and on the eve of the general elections, suggests that their motive is political.

The case against Kanhaiya Kumar is thin. Anyone with a modicum of understanding of politics will know that he, a Communist Party of India activist, will not be a supporter of separatism or advocate a violent overthrow of the government. That is a past the CPI buried 70 years ago. The police has deliberately mixed up a situation where Kashmiri students who may have raised slogans against the Indian state, with the presence of the JNU Students Union activists who happened to be at the scene.

Meanwhile, an Assamese intellectual, Hiren Gohain, has been charged with sedition for a speech he delivered at a rally in Guwahati on January 7, opposing the Centre’s decision to pass the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill, 2016, in the Lok Sabha.

Actually, Gohain has been a stern critic of the Bharatiya Janata Party, which he says is seeking to spread Hindutva in Assam through measures like this Act. In fact, he has been a strong supporter of the National Register of Citizens.

Muzzling liberty

Section 124(A), which has been imposed on Kanhaiya and Gohain, goes back to 1870 and was clearly aimed at preventing the expression of any dissent by against British rule in India. So, not surprisingly, in 2019, it is being trundled out to suppress political dissent; Not to really safeguard the country’s security and integrity.

In 2018, INDIA TODAY revealed that of the 179 people arrested for sedition in the period between 2014 and 2016, only two were convicted. Not surprisingly, the maximum arrests, and no convictions were in Haryana. This was probably a fall out of the Jat agitation for reservations.

Among those tried and sentenced for sedition was Mahatma Gandhi, who described Section 124A as “perhaps the prince among the political sections of the Indian Penal Code designed to suppress the liberty of the citizen.”

What the Mahatma said in 1922, seems to resonate today as well.

Mail Today January 16, 2019

China, Clearly a Country in a Hurry When It Comes to Space

The Soviet Union’s Luna 2 mission reached the Moon – the first human-made object to do so – in September 1959. The first crewed mission, that of the US, came about almost exactly a decade later, in July 1969. After that, there were six more human landings and many uncrewed ones. But there were no more soft landings between August 1976 and December 2013, when China’s Chang’e 3 mission soft-landed on our natural satellite.

In terms of novelty, what is unique about Chang’e 4 is that this is the first time a space vehicle has landed on the far side of the Moon. This was a significant achievement because it is not possible to communicate directly with the spacecraft; signals have to be relayed through another satellite near the Moon and ‘visible’ from Earth. In the mission’s final phase, Chang’e 4 had no remote support and the crucial deceleration process had to be programmed in advance. As technical achievements go, of course, this does not quite compare with America’s spectacular human spaceflight missions.

But despite its past interest, the US and Russia don’t seem too interested in exploring the Moon. Currently, the Chinese and Indians are the ones doing that, suggesting there may not be much direct scientific or technological benefits to doing so. The Google Lunar XPrize competition to promote privately funded options failed and its $30 million award remains unclaimed.

Writing on the benefits of going back to the Moon, Nathan Wong, a consultant for the Lunar XPrize listed science, power, water, analogue demonstration and launch port capability as the potential benefits. However, all of them are clearly well into the future and do not seem to evoke much interest at the moment.

In 2013, at the time when Chang’e 3 made the first soft-landing on the Moon in decades, Ouyang Ziyuan of the department of lunar and deep space exploration in China rationalised the Chinese programme thus:

• First: to develop technology, because the effort requires great communications, computing and IT skills
• Second: to understanding the nature of Earth’s neighbour, its origin, composition, history, etc.
• Third: Team-building for a mission-mode approach that can be applied in other space or scientific endeavours

As for direct benefits, Ziyuan spoke of a future with manufacturing processes that could benefit, for example, from belts of highly efficient solar panels on orbit to produce power for those below. But any of these, or others besides, are decades away from being realised.

So, in essence, the Chang’e 4 mission was a prestige project, with the important goal of enthusing a Chinese space programme that has been growing by leaps and bounds and – like its American and Russian counterparts – has a military component as well. It has, as we noted, developed important IT-related capabilities, it presumes a certain launch vehicle capability for China and an ability to launch complex satellites.

Perhaps the most important project in the near horizon is the Chinese space station, under the Tiangong programme. China launched its first space laboratory, the Tiangong 1, in 2011, and Tiangong 2 in 2016. By 2020, it hopes to establish a multi-module space station weighing some 60 tonnes with the ability to support three astronauts for long-term habitation.

China also announced in 2017 that it would send astronauts to the Moon. Of course, it has already been the third country to independently send a human into space (Yang Liwei’s successful 2003 flight aboard Shenzhou 5). Since then, there have been five more missions that have carried a total of 12 astronauts, including two to its first space station, Tiangong 1.

But these are the high-profile programmes. China has a number of scientific as well as workhorse satellites with both military and civilian applications. Among the better known is the Beidou navigation satellite system, which already has a constellation of some 60-70 satellites. It also has a well-rounded launch vehicle programme with the Long March 5 rocket being the latest, capable of hoisting satellites of 25 tonnes to low-Earth orbit, 14 tonnes to the geostationary transfer orbit and 8 tonnes for trans-lunar injection. (The GSLV Mk III can carry 4 tonnes to the GTO.)

Unlike the Indian programme, and like those of the US and the Soviet Union, China’s space programme has its origins in the development of ballistic missiles in the 1950s. In 2007, China carried out an anti-satellite missile test that successfully destroyed an old weather satellite. In 2013, it carried out a test of a manoeuvring satellite that “captured” another satellite.

China is clearly a country in a hurry when it comes to the space programme. Just 15 years after the first Shenzhou carried a man into space, it now is on the verge of establishing an orbiting space station. While many of its space endeavours are for routine things like communications, meteorology and remote-sensing, there are missions that are to “show off” technology and, of course, military applications.

The next decade could see a greater militarisation of space. After all, the US just last year revealed plans to create a Space Force, which it says it needs because its adversaries (read: China and Russia) have made space a war-fighting domain. But the US remains number one, and we should not forget that if the Chang’e 4 was landing on the Moon, a NASA spacecraft was sending us photographs of an object 6.5 billion km away.

The Wire January 11, 2019

CBI verdict: With hand caught in the Bureau

No matter how spinmeisters spin it, the Supreme Court’s order to reinstate Alok Verma as Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) director is a tight rap on GoI’s knuckles. The court has set aside the October 23, 2018, order of the Central Vigilance Commission (CVC) and GoI divesting Verma of his powers, and appointing M Nageswara Rao as the interim chief.

The apex court has added that Verma would not have the power to take major policy decisions till a high-powered committee that selects and appoints a CBI director takes a decision on the matter. They ordered that this committee, which comprises of the PM, the leader of the Opposition and the Chief Justice of India (CJI), be convened within a week and take a decision on the basis of a CVC inquiry against Verma, whose report had been given to the court in a sealed envelope in November.

Last October, GoI had, in a midnight action coordinated by National Security Adviser (NSA) A K Doval, sent both Verma and his deputy, Rakesh Asthana, on leave, saying that they had no option as the two officers were locked in a bitter feud. CBI had earlier booked Asthana as a prime accused in a bribery scandal.

Verma had challenged the order saying that it went against the rules that mandate a fixed tenure of two years for the CBI chief. An NGO, Common Cause, had also filed a petition against the government move.

The court’s view of the shoddy situation was evident from the fact that it asked a retired judge to supervise the CVC inquiry against Verma. Simultaneously, it had ordered that interim director Rao could not take any policy decisions. In essence, what the court has now done is to shore up CBI’s autonomy that it had established since the Vineet Narain judgment of 1997.

Key to this was the direction that the appointment and dismissal of the CBI chief take place as per the process of the law. In this case, it required the concurrence of the three-man committee, and this did not have any role for the CVC in it.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi stayed largely aloof from the controversies generated by the Asthana-Verma spat last year. This was despite the charge that Asthana, a Gujarat cadre officer, was a protégé of his. But, now, as the chair of the three-man committee that has to deal with the issue, he has the hot potato in his hands.

The issue is even more salient because of reports suggesting that Verma was removed because he was seeking to investigate the Rafale deal on the basis of a complaint submitted to CBI by Arun Shourie, Yashwant Sinha and Prashant Bhushan.

But the PM only has himself to blame for all this. GoI agencies have been misused in the past as well. But the track record of this government is arguably in a class of its own. The ‘coup’ against CBI had elements of arbitrariness as well as incompetence, a lethal combination.

Whether it is universities, the Right to Information (RTI) system, or even the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), we have seen convention — and even the law — being ignored so as to get it one’s way. Instead of using his considerable political authority to reform and restructure the economy and build institutions to modernise the country, Modi’s goal seems to have been a desire to shore up his personal authority and prestige.

Institutions like the Central Information Commission (CIC) have been made virtually comatose by leaving vacancies for information commissioners vacant. GoI has moved amendments to the RTI Act to undermine its autonomy. On the other hand, it has not hesitated to stake out powers to track the information of the ordinary citizen through a variety of administrative orders relating to phone and internet surveillance.

All this smacks of an arrogance that earlier led to ‘unilateral’ decisions like demonetisation in November 2016, and the Nepal blockade in 2015. Sadly, given the past experience, GoI will probably take all the wrong lessons from the Supreme Court’s rap. It may look for ways and means to undermine the judgment —as we see happening in the case of Aadhaar, where GoI is trying to amend the law to bypass a Supreme Court verdict.

Economic Times January 8, 2019

India to lose out in new-era wars

WE  need to take a balanced view of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s ‘order’ to the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) to continue strengthening its combat capabilities and be always ready for battle. This is the kind of message that leaders all over the world are expected to give to their militaries, so it should not be taken to mean that the PLA is about to embark on a new wave of aggressive behaviour. 

In his speech, Xi did emphasise that China faced unprecedented risks and challenges and so China’s armed forces needed deeper “preparation for war and combat” to ensure an effective and efficient response “in times of emergency”.  

Though probably aimed elsewhere, there is a message there for the Indian military, which confronts China across a 4,000-km disputed border and is learning to cope with the PLA Navy movements across the Indian Ocean. Since the Doklam episode in 2017, the land border has been more active than ever; in the past year, there have been reports of the PLA upgrading its posture across its length. 

 Xi’s remarks came two days after he raised the temperature on Taiwan by calling for ‘peaceful reunification’, while asserting that his government made “no promise to renounce the use of force” in relation to the issue. The ‘Taiwan contingency’ remains the premier focus of the PLA’s deployments, followed by the South China Sea. On both accounts, it must contend with the fact that its premier adversary is the US, by far the much stronger power in the western Pacific. 

 Overall, the message seems to be that the PLA needs to double down on reform and restructuring that began in 2013. This is more so when Beijing is confronting an unprecedented political challenge from the US, which has now categorically designated China as a strategic challenger. Technology has emerged as a major area of this rivalry and the US is convinced that China has been systematically working to acquire western technology through acquisitions, forced transfers and thefts to gain strategic advantage.

The threat of an all-out war between, say, the US and China, or India and China is remote. But what is real is the jockeying for advantage in which both sides worry that emerging technologies could provide the other with some as yet unknown battle-winning edge. However, as of now, the PLA is still in the midst of its restructuring and reform process that has led to considerable disruption through its reduction of numbers, as well as reorganisation into theatre commands. 

 For obvious reasons, the PLA is emphasising the reform of military education and training to accompany the acquisition of new equipment. The PLA’s joint operations research and experimentation has revealed weakness in its military training institutes, joint proficiency of its officer cadre, joint training, doctrine and tactics and logistics, and command structures, all of which are being addressed in the current reform.

The key thrust of the reform process has been jointness. Over the years, the PLA has been moving from ‘coordinated joint operations’ to ‘integrated joint operations’. It took a major step under the 2013 reforms, with the creation of theatre commands and the establishment of joint headquarters to create optimal joint operational capability.   

The foundation of integrated joint operations lies in developing an effective system of systems capability. This, in essence, is the fusing of various components-weapons, equipment, units beyond their individual capacity to provide synergy. At the heart of this lies the development of integrated command, control, communications, computer intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (C4ISR) structure which will not just link the systems and forces, but also enhance their joint operational capacity. 

The PLA’s Strategic Support Force (PLASSF), set up on December 31, 2015,  has sought to integrate capabilities in space, cyberspace and the electro-magnetic spectrum into the PLA’s combat arms. Its goal is to meet the PLA’s military strategic guidelines of being ready to fight and win ‘informationised’ wars. 

The SSF has been involved since 2016 in the PLA’s key annual Stride exercises. But, say observers, it is still some way from developing its fifth generation of operational regulations (the previous set was issued in 1999) that will guide its operations in space and the cyber domains. 

 The shift of the PLA from being a continental force to one capable of integrated joint operations within China’s borders and without could easily span a generation. Clearly, at present their capabilities remain far behind those of advanced countries like the US and Japan. In that sense, Xi’s injunctions and those of the PLA Daily are by way of being exhortations to do better. Under Xi, the deadlines have been advanced. In the 19th Party Congress, Xi announced that modernisation of the PLA would be complete by 2035. Earlier, the third stage of the plan was for it to be completed by 2049.  However as Xi himself noted, the PLA is not likely to become a world- class military till the mid-century. The US will remain the dominant global military power for the foreseeable future and can look after itself. 

The big questions are for India, which has failed to push through any significant reform and reorganisation in its defence system. The political leadership seems to be uninterested in it. Meanwhile, its component force (Army, Navy, Air Force) leaders periodically boast about capabilities they don’t have and so, we are simply not ready for the new generation of warfare. 

The Tribune January 8, 2019

Blowing hot and cold: PM is right, it will take time for Pakistan to change, but smart policy would make that time shorter

Despite the criticism that it was more of a monologue, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s recent interview provided important insights into the man and his policies. Nowhere did they appear more problematic than when he spoke about Pakistan.

In response to a question as to why cross-border terrorism had not stopped despite the so-called surgical strikes two years ago, he declared that it would “take more time for Pakistan to mend its ways”. He attacked those criticising the surgical strikes for speaking “the language of Pakistan”, said that terrorism and dialogue could not go together, and claimed that India had “managed to isolate Pakistan on the global arena”.

Coming from a politician about to go into an election some of this was understandable, but coming from the PM who should have led a coherent policy towards a country which is arguably the biggest foreign policy challenge to India, it was disappointing.

In 2014 and 2015, Modi’s approach to Pakistan veered from warm embraces to sudden put-downs. The next two years, 2016 and 2017, saw hot exchanges: cross-border attacks, surgical strikes, loud campaign to push for a comprehensive convention on international terrorism (CCIT) and “isolate” Pakistan.

None of this worked, so in 2018, things cooled down, New Delhi sought to curb cross-border violence and agreed to implement the 2003 ceasefire accord. There was another edition of the farcical process when India agreed to a dialogue and then called it off. Later in the year, India and Pakistan agreed to create a corridor from India to Gurdwara Darbar Saheb, where Guru Nanak lived for the last 18 years of his life, in what is now Pakistan. On Thursday, Modi claimed ownership for the initiative which, we all know, has had a somewhat more jaded history.

Just how policies did not work out is best brought out by the surgical strikes. They were meant to deter cross-border attacks. But they did not. Just two months after, there was a far more serious attack in Nagrota, the headquarters of 16 Corps. India did not react. Neither was there any response to a Jaish attack on Sunjuwan camp near Jammu in 2018. As for Pakistani BAT attacks, they have been going on constantly, the most recent being the failed one of December 30. After publicising and hyping the surgical strikes, India needed to respond to every attack, if it wanted to reinforce deterrence.

For the record, whatever the PM may say now, it was his party that has politicised the action, first by disclosing it, then by using it in the UP elections, and confirmed this by celebrating what is a relatively minor military action as a ‘Surgical Strike Day’ across universities and educational institutions.

The consequences of the failure of the Pakistan policy are many. There are opportunity costs to be paid for the constant tension on our western borders and for our failure to integrate South Asia into a single economic area. As of now, New Delhi appears to have no intelligible policy response to the current developments in Afghanistan. The Sino-Pak axis continues to gather strength, now expanding outwards in the Arabian Sea.

Sure, as the PM says, Pakistan is not going to change overnight because of war or some surgical strike. Change can only come through a careful and consistent combination of policies that encourage good behaviour and penalise the bad. It also requires patient diplomacy involving third parties – China, Saudi Arabia, the US or Russia. But most of all it needs an understanding that change has to come from within Pakistan itself. You cannot shift the behaviour of a country which you demonise for domestic political purposes.

Managing Pakistan effectively is a pre-condition for India’s putative rise. Modi is not wrong when he says it will take time for Pakistan to change. But smart policy would make that time shorter, rather than doing things that is stretching it, unconscionably, far into the future.

Tiimes of India January 5, 2019

India’s tryst with 2019

The one big event for India in 2019 will be the Lok Sabha elections. Once considered a cakewalk for Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the elections now look competitive. Further, as the recent Assembly polls showed — predicting any outcome would be a hazardous exercise.

Modi has been in election mode since the beginning of 2018, if we are to go by Prime Ministerial inaugurations.

From tunnels, bridges, giant statues, airports, chocolate factories, hospitals, to partially-constructed highways, and sections of the Delhi Metro, nothing has been too small to escape the PM’s attention. According to reports, January 2019 could see a huge shower of election-related sops.

BJP’s jaded rhetoric

The Bharatiya Janata Party used the weapon of anti-incumbency to devastating effect in 2014. Since then, it has sought to keep on reshaping this message. Whether people buy the view that Jawaharlal Nehru was responsible for the country’s current ills, is another matter. One of Modi’s greatest skills has been his ability to shape the narrative. This was evident right through demonetisation, but since then there has been considerable erosion.

The big challenge for PM Modi is to shape a new narrative. (Photo: Reuters)

No matter what the government does, it cannot convince the farmers that everything is hunky dory — or that the crop insurance scheme, high minimum support price, or rural livelihood missions will solve their problems. Nor can it convince people that it has excelled on the job front.

The big challenge now is to shape a new narrative. The obvious one is the need for a renewed mandate for Modi to enable him to complete the tasks he has been doing so well till now. This, however, gets caught in the glass ‘half full’ or ‘half empty’ binary.

It is difficult to escape the feeling that overall the Modi-government has failed to provide the critical push needed to transform India into a modern and prosperous country. Instead, there has been a dangerous tendency to polarise the populace on the basis of caste, creed and substitute rhetoric for action.

Trump and trade wars

The second major development to look out for in 2019 will be the US-China trade war. March 1 is the deadline set by the truce the two sides worked out on the sidelines of the G-20 summit in December.

What are the chances they will be able to meet it? Perhaps what we will see is its extension bought by Chinese trade concessions.

But we are unlikely to see a return of Sino-US relations to the entente that existed earlier. The rapidity of China’s growth in a range of areas has now convinced the US that Beijing has become a peer competitor whose goal is to displace America as the number one country in the world. Given its economic trajectory, China will be the world’s leading economy, but the US will remain the premier military power for some time to come. This is owing to the geography of the United States, and that its defence spending is nearly thrice more than China’s.

As of now, there are no signs that the Republican Party is ready to abandon Trump. (Photo: Reuters)

Another development to watch out for is the continued unfolding of the Trump presidency. Many argue that the US President Donald Trump has now, at last, rid himself of establishment figures and is set to run the show on his own terms, pushing policies that he deeply believes in. However, the Mueller investigation into allegations of Russian interference in the US elections and wider poll violations by Trump remains a wildcard. As of now, there are no signs that the Republican Party is ready to abandon Trump. Unless the party changes its attitude, we are destined to see more of the same in the US in 2019.

UK’s road to Brexit

A fourth significant geopolitical change scheduled for 2019 is the UK’s departure from the European Union — or Brexit — in March 2019.

Will the UK stick to the withdrawal agreement that has been worked out with EU? There are various other possibilities here, but British politics has been so messed up that no one is willing to bet on anything. Even though experts have forecast doom and gloom for UK outside EU, so far, the economy has been doing reasonably well.

The UK is the world’s fifth largest economy and there are indications that it could overtake Germany to become Europe’s largest economy in the coming decade. As a member of the UN Security Council, Britain is a power in its own right. But working through the EU’s 28-member grouping, it was able to extend its power and influence even more.

Brexit may close British choices in one direction but could provide newer opportunities for the country in its ties with the US and China.

Mail Today,December 31, 2018