Endless delusion

Posted on October 8, 2011 by Bharat Karnad

Come the annual meeting of the United Nations General Assembly in autumn and there’s India, predictably making the same old pitch for a permanent seat in the Security Council as part of “comprehensive reform” of the UN. As in the past, this year too efforts of the G-4 (Group of Four – India, Brazil, Japan and Germany) to obtain permanent membership,  have tanked.  This despite a desperate need for re-organizing the UN to facilitate  graceful stepping-down of legacy great powers, Britain and France, and their replacement by new powers in the offing, among them India.

The G-4 aspirants alas have their separate detractors. Brazil is challenged by Argentina and Japan is vetoed by China. And then there’s India, whose candidature is at once the most credible and the least likely to fructify.  This anomalous situation is because India has all along approached the United Nations as a supplicant, one afflicted, moreover, with the entitlement syndrome. It is not clear on what basis India feels entitled to secure a permanent seat, considering its policy reach is confined to South Asia, it has botched the job of pacifying its neighbours, and hasn’t done anything of note in the international arena since leading the charge on de-colonisation in the 1950s.

The criteria of great powers shared by the five permanent members – the United States, Russia, the United Kingdom, France, and China – are, firstly, that they full-fledged nuclear weapons states with diverse nuclear and thermonuclear armaments of verified yields and reliable performance that can reach any point on earth. Secondly, they are managers of the global order, using coercive diplomacy, failing which deploying military forces to maintain regional balance and global stability. A third factor is that these  states are also the main pillars of the international system of trade and commerce. And finally, there’s a decisive quality to their foreign-military policies that is missing from India’s thinking – their belief in the efficacy of hard power.

Preparing to beat up on small countries, such as Pakistan, has actually hurt India’s reputation. If a country cannot distinguish the strategically consequential China threat from small time danger on its western flank, can it be relied on to make reasonable judgements on issues of war and peace that Security Council permanent members are called upon to do? Worse, India’s Pakistan fixation has permitted China, as an “all weather friend”, to intrude into South Asian affairs and shrink India’s natural sphere of influence. With India’s preening posture against Pakistan turning into a “tail between legs” attitude once China enters the scene, India’s image in the world has taken a hit. Pakistan may not have a veto but its patron, China, does and to date Beijing has exercised it cleverly. The Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao recently asked India to disengage from the G-4 effort as it involves Japan. Of course, should Delhi be foolish enough to follow the Chinese advice, Beijing will next stop India’s entry on the pretext of the unresolved Kashmir dispute. The hard-headed men leading China are not the self-abnegating kind and repeat the mistake made in the 1950s when, rather than grabbing Chiangkaishek-led Taiwan’s seat in the Security Council offered to India by the United States, Jawaharlal Nehru pleaded for China to be seated instead! In the event, India is in a losing position no matter what Delhi does. The obvious strategy of blunting Pakistan’s fear by reorienting the Indian military China-wards as a first step to co-opting Islamabad, has not occurred to the Indian government.

To revive India’s international leadership role, the Manmohan Singh regime once again dusted off the Rajiv Gandhi Action Plan for time-bound nuclear disarmament, which has about as much chance in the real world as a spit ball’s in hell.  But it is in line with the Congress Party government’s mindless strategy of keeping the Indian thermonuclear deterrent unproven, unreliable, and thus permanently on par with Pakistan’s nuclear weapons inventory. Furthermore, the Manmohan Singh regime alienated its strongest backers – the United States, by neither expending political capital to realise a substantive strategic partnership nor coming up with an alternative scheme, and Israel, the source of most of the Indian military’s advanced technology edge, by joining in the call for a sovereign Palestinian state instead of leaving it to the two sides to thrash it out in negotiations, in the manner Delhi would prefer the Kashmir issue to be settled. The result was President Barack Obama rejected a meeting with Manmohan Singh in New York, and Israel is hurt.

To be recognised as a great power, India will have to do what other great powers have done throughout history: Think big, act big, take risks, and  back up its diplomacy with force but only against an equal or bigger country, aggressively consolidate and extend Indian military influence into China’s backyard in the South China Sea and, landwards, in Central Asia, and secure the core wherewithal of hard power, namely, a versatile high-yield thermonuclear arsenal, which will require further testing, and Inter Continental Ballistic Missiles, in the face of American and Chinese pressure. Get the big stick first, talk softly later. An in-your-face attitude is more likely to get India an invitation to join the high table in the UN and elsewhere, than being agreeable. To believe India will attain great power by lesser means is to be delusional. Unfortunately, there is no dearth of deluded persons in Delhi who believe India’s “exceptionalism” is enough.

[published in ‘Asian Age’& ‘Deccan Chronicle’ on Sept 29, 2011, at www.asianage.com/columnists/endless-delusion-899 ]

Posted in Great Power imperatives, India's China Policy, India's Pakistan Policy, India's strategic thinking and policy, Strategic Relations with South East Asia & Far East, Strategic Relations with the US & West | Leave a comment

Buying out of trouble

Posted on October 8, 2011 by Bharat Karnad

A quick Quiz: what’s common about India’s North-East, Kashmir, and Afghanistan? It’s money. The Indian government’s attitude to any insurgency-infected state and, indeed, its solution to ending rebellion and bring distant communities within the Indian fold, is essentially to tempt the “freedom fighters” into getting hooked on easy money. It is a successful strategy. For the guerillas, it is better by far to forego traipsing around in the jungle, hunted like vermin by security forces and no knowing when a bullet gets you. Moreover, after a few years living as outlaws, when the romance has worn off, and the fatigue of living meagrely off the land, of being always on the run, sets in, the insurrectionists give up the ghost, make peace with the Indian state, decide to enter the political process, parley their hard-earned reputation as underground leaders into votes, get elected chief minister, and lo and behold! discover they never had it so good – the state treasury at their disposal to use it for the good of the people or, if they are so inclined, to siphon off the monies into personal accounts. This is preferable to running extortion rackets – the norm of the North-Eastern insurgent groups Ask Lalthanhawla, head of the Manipur Liberation Front and later Chief Minister of Manipur.

     Lalthahawla’s example has proved irresistible. Leaders of the United Liberation Front of Asom, for instance, too have come in from the cold, and those of other separatist outfits, such as the Isak Swu-Thuingaleng Muivah faction of the National Socialist Council of Nagaland, are in the line for rapprochement with the Indian government. What they seek is a face-saving way to re-enter normal life and join the political mainstream.

     Kashmir is the oldest of these boondoggles. Political life in that state, as the US Ambassador reported to the State Department, is “as dirty as the Dal Lake” with every “political family” and religio-political group in sight, such as Mirwaiz Umar Farooq’s and Yaseen Mallik’s, prospering by being on the take, and benefitting one way or another from access to public funds. (Thank you, Wikileaks!) There’s something homey, democratically comforting, and richly comic, about the Indian tax-payer, good naturedly or otherwise, subsidising the lifestyles of Kashmiri politicians and separatists alike.

     This modus operandi of the Indian state to buy and retain the loyalty of often times cantankerous outlier peoples is, at one level, a mark of political genius. After all, this is how India, a hugely heterogeneous, composite state, cements its nationhood. Except, the lure of easy money to fuel the local politics and sustain the separatist cause become damn good reasons for the beneficiaries to do whatever is necessary to ensure the enormously gainful status quo never ends. Thus, Mallik, Ali Shah Geelani (charged with “money laundering”), and the Mirwaiz, the MGM of Kashmir, for example, dutifully meet visiting Pakistani dignitaries in Delhi, make pro-independence noises, and generally keep the kettle on the boil even as the more mainline parties such as the ruling Abdullahs’ National Conference and the Peoples Democratic Party of Mehbooba Mufti talk of reviving the 1953 Constitution. Their potential for mischief is the leverage.

      Afghanistan has posed much the same problems to the United States in over a decade of hard fighting and negotiating. When the outgoing Chairman, US Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral “Mike” Mullen lashed out at Pakistan, saying the Haqqani shura was the “veritable arm” of Pakistan’s Directorate of Inter-Services Intelligence, he was expressing Washington’s frustration with its inability to sift the “good” Taliban from the “bad” Taliban – the measure of goodness determined by which sections among the followers of Mullah Omar and the Haqqani Waziri tribal network are buyable and pliable and, once bought, will stay bought.  Had such amenable Taliban been found – and it was not for want of trying these many years — Washington’s justification for military withdrawal would have seemed more credible. Instead, the departing American military units will carry the taint of defeat and, worse, confirm the widely held belief in the world, that while America jauntily jumps into “bushfire” wars without much prior thought, it lacks the will and the stomach to see the fight to a successful end. It is a bad reputation to lug around, as it will end up costing the United States allies and partners it seeks the next time, as a self-appointed international policeman, it despatches expeditionary forces to fight terrorism, impose democracy, enforce peace and order, or to obtain stability in distant parts of the globe.

     In this imbroglio, Pakistan is worst affected. The US has about given up on it, but Beijing is not eager to replace Washington and won’t pick up the yellow man’s burden and become the principal benefactor, patron, and strategic ally of Pakistan as this may exhaust the Chinese treasury before the returns roll in; in other words, that such involvement is simply not worth the dubious honour of being counted as Pakistan’s “all weather friend”. So that country is left by its supposed well-wishers to twist slowly in the wind. But you’d never know of Pakistan’s predicament after hearing their Ministers and Generals talk. The effervescent Foreign Minister, Hina Rabbani Khar, is a revelation. Good looks combined with a keen mind, the gift of eloquence, and an imperturbable nature meant that, whilst recently in America, she used television not just to press home the Pakistani view but to turn the tables on the US. After reminding interviewers that the Taliban are a CIA creation, she rounded on American intelligence. If it is, in fact, as good as its reputation, how come, she asked tartly, the Haqqani-sourced suicide bombers were not apprehended during their longish journey from the badlands of North Waziristan to Kabul, where they struck the US embassy? The head of ISI, Lieutenant General Shuja Ahmed Pasha, on his part, warned of dire consequences if the US dared to attack Pakistan. What tremendous display of brio and offense-mindedness, and that too from a losing position!  

[published in ‘New Indian Express’, Oct 7, 2011]

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Posted on October 6, 2011 by Bharat Karnad

Heard Afghan President Hamid Karzai at the ORF lecture yesterday. Spoke well. He identified the region Afghanistan is in, correctly, as “Central South Asia”.  The strategic partnership he has inked with India, it’s clear, is leverage he means to use to extract concessions from Pakistan, a country he called Afghanistan’s “twin brother”. This treaty, at once, affords Pakistan opportunity and poses it danger. With Afghanistan relying on India not just for training all its security — military, police, and intelligence — forces, but also for arms and ammunition and, possibly in the future, more high value military hardware, Islamabad faces the prospect of an “Indianised” Afghan armed forces to its west. This is the stick. The carrot to get the Pak army generals to push the Afghan Taliban towards a negotiated settlement with Kabul is to play on their fear that the Karzai regime will move even more India-ward.

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India’s first line of defence

Posted on October 1, 2011 by Bharat Karnad

Nations establish moral ascendency over other nations only by victory in war. Shrugging off the possibility of American nuclear attack, China crossed the Yalu River in October 1950 and almost brought the United States led-forces in Korea to their knees, rubbed India’s nose in the dust in 1962, and in 1969 militarily stiff-armed the Soviet Union on the Ussuri River. Elsewhere in Asia there is Vietnam, a much smaller but a truly extraordinary military power with an unmatched record of serially beating up on intruders and interventionists. It bloodied China every time it ventured south over two thousand years of its history. In more recent times, Vietnam ended France’s imperial pretensions at the Battle of Dien Bien Phu, kicked the Americans out and in 1979, even as its regular Divisions were held in reserve, its militia of  hastily armed and trained villagers in the border provinces proved more than adequate to kill 25,000 and injure another 75,000 out of an invading force of 100,000 Peoples Liberation Army troops Chairman Deng Xiaoping had ordered into action to teach Vietnam “a lesson”, much as Maozedong had launched his “self-defence counter-attack” against India.

Except, it was the Chinese who were taught a brutal lesson in offensive guerrilla resistance and faced humiliation they cannot easily forget. The thrashing China received at the hands of the Vietnamese 32 years ago has resulted in respect Beijing shows Hanoi that Delhi can only dream of. Thus, in the latest clash last month in the South China Sea over the disputed Spratly island chain, after Chinese ships cut the cables of a PetroVietnam oil exploration vessel, Vietnam responded with strong words backed by naval live fire drills. Fearing the situation was sliding into loss of face, this time on sea, the Chinese quickly asked for talks.

But Vietnam is no brash belligerent ready to take on the next bully on the block. While prepared to fight any comer in defence of its territory and interests, it is mindful of its military weaknesses where China is concerned, one of which is its seaward flank fronting on Hainan Island complete with the Sanya nuclear submarine base, hosting the most versatile of China’s three fleets — the South Sea Fleet. During the 1979 Chinese invasion, Vietnam faced possible Chinese naval attacks which Beijing was deterred from mounting because the Soviet Union, then at loggerheads with China, sent in four warships into the South China Sea. Vietnam has ever since viewed a meaty presence of an out-of-area friendly naval power in waters offshore as an insurance to ward of the dangers from the Chinese Navy.  Russia today, much reduced, cannot perform that role, and the United States is unreliable. Hanoi’s hopes, therefore, rest on the Indian government mustering the strategic will to fill the void. A Vietnamese military delegation headed by its Naval Chief, Vice Admiral Ngyuyen Van Hien, visiting Delhi a fortnight back, explored ways of developing mutual confidence and trust. For a start, they sought training for its crews – that the Russians had previously trained obviously not to the Vietnam Navy’s satisfaction, for the Kilo-class submarines Vietnam is acquiring from Moscow. Should China act up, a strong Vietnamese submarine arm will be a meaningful counter to Chinese warships mucking about offensively around the Spratlys.

The more significant thing was Van Hien’s offer of the port of Nha Trang on the South China Sea for Indian Navy’s use. Nha Trang shares virtually the same longitude as the Sanya base on Hainan but, Latitude-wise, is located a few degrees south. An Indian naval flotilla voyaging frequently between the Andamans and Nha Trang, and sustained by a basing and provisioning arrangement on the Central Vietnamese coast, will amount to a near permanent Indian presence in the South China Sea, signalling Indian intent and forward positioning that can screw up the Chinese naval and strategic calculus, and push Beijing planners, for once, onto the back foot. At a minimum, it will be an analogue of the sizeable Chinese para-military (Peoples Armed Police) presence in the Gilgit and Baltistan regions of Pakistan-occupied Kashmir. And, it will aggravate China’s offshore situation already roiled by the US Navy’s continued loitering in this area contested, other than Vietnam and China, by Malaysia and Brunei.

As always, however, there’s a glitch. Even though Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and his National Security Adviser Shiv Shankar Menon are reportedly for an Indian naval presence in the Vietnamese seas and want India to be a staunch strategic partner of Vietnam, the until recently Defence Secretary, Pradeep Kumar, was pressing the brakes. Fuelling the innate over-caution of his minister, A.K. Antony, he argued that such a stance would needlessly “provoke” the Chinese and, therefore, is avoidable. It is remarkable characteristic of the dysfunctional Indian system that despite the PM’s and the NSA’s support for this initiative, a Defence Ministry bureaucrat can so easily gum up the works. Hopefully Kumar, the latest in a long line of military ignoramuses and strategically inaction-minded Defence Secretaries, will be succeeded by someone a bit more on the ball.

Tit-for-tat is something Beijing appreciates better than the apologetic do-nothing tone of statements on China usually emanating from the Ministry of External Affairs and the generalist Defence Ministry civil servants. The Indian government should long ago have responded to the nuclear missile-arming of Pakistan by China by equipping Vietnam with nuclear-tipped ballistic missiles and the Brahmos supersonic cruise missile, as I have been advocating the past 15 years. The fact that the Indian government has not done this and, indeed, not accorded top priority to militarily advantaging Vietnam in every possible way, indicates the essential infirmity in India‘s strategic thinking. China has used Pakistan to try and contain India to the subcontinent. Time India returned the compliment and cooperated with Vietnam, which does not shrink from a fight, to contain China to its immediate waters. To act on the basis that Vietnam constitutes India’s first line of defence is long overdue. It will ensure, among other things, that the bulked-up Chinese Navy can be bottled up well east of the Malacca Straits.

[Published as “Good morning, ‘Nam” in ‘The Asian Age’& ‘The Deccan Chronicle”, July 7, 2011 at www.asianage.com/columnists/good-morning-nam–604 ]

Posted in Great Power imperatives, India's China Policy, India's strategic thinking and policy, Indian Navy, Strategic Relations with South East Asia & Far East | 1 Comment

People’s visceral antipathy

Posted on October 1, 2011 by Bharat Karnad

The everyday experience of the average citizen is that he faces the “pay up the bribe or wait forever/face-the-music” situations at every turn. In this milieu of an exasperated and beaten citizenry, it is surprising that an Anna Hazare has taken so long to emerge. In any event, the common man’s visceral antipathy towards the petty government officials conflated with the mega-scandals engineered by those in the highest echelons of government he hears about, is powering the Jan Lokpal Movement. Aiming to end the entrenched system of  extortion, commission-mongering, and plunder of public monies, and the nexus between rent-seeking politicians and armies of facilitator officials, it has drawn the masses – and not just the middle class – who have cottoned on to Anna Hazare’s anti-corruption cause, at a minimum, to vent their anger, frustration, and disgust.

The Jan Lokpal Movement has gained traction, it must be noted, despite considerable criticism by, among others, certain Dalit intellectuals who have damned it as an upper caste phenomenon, presumably because they believe Dalits neither face corruption nor suffer its impact, and the two Roys — Arundhati, the “Cadillac Communist” who, true to her mischievous tendencies, has sniffed out a conspiracy involving the RSS and the corporates she claims is propelling this Movement, and the other, Aruna, whose alternative draft Bill is proving a god send for a beleaguered Manmohan Singh government, which is clutching at straws to save face and deny Anna Hazare’s Jan Lokpal Bill a free run in Parliament.

If the Dalit critics and Arundhati are too outré to merit serious attention, the third, Establishment, view represented by Aruna Roy and seconded by eminent lawyers and newspaper editors, is offering a contest. Anna Hazare’s demand that his draft bypass “parliamentary due process” and be sent directly to Parliament for debate amounts, this view maintains, to making laws on the street.  But parliamentary convention does not bar side-stepping the Standing Committee of Parliament in extraordinary circumstances. The problem for the government is that the size of the crowds rallying round the Anna banner, as a measure of the public support for the Jan Lokpal Bill, is only increasing and, worse, fasting is telling on Anna Hazare’s health. In this context, the government responded not with conciliatory measures but brinksmanship. While agreeing to have the Standing Committee of Parliament consider the Jan Lokpal draft, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh made it clear he wouldn’t fast-track its passage through to parliamentary discussion around the August 30 deadline announced by Anna Hazare. Clearly, the government hoped that Team Anna’s resolve to stay put will erode for fear of Anna’s health status plummeting before insurmountable public pressure compels the government and Parliament to acquiesce in a stronger Lokpal Bill than the Congress party would prefer. This is a dangerous political game Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and his advisers have embarked upon. His government will pay dearly for it should things go wrong, as they well might.

It is apparent the Establishment, for obvious reasons, is loath to accept a powerful Lokpal institution, notwithstanding the quite astounding economic benefits that could accrue to the country from a corruption free system. According to a detailed calculation by Ashish Puntambekar, Project Designer of the (private sector venture) Indian Education Megaproject, the windfall to the country from a transparent investment regime will triple Foreign Direct Investment to $ 75 billion by 2016 and “catalyze” $1.7 trillion in infrastructure funding. This, in turn, will have an investment multiplier effect on the Indian economy of $5.1 trillion by 2025, resulting in a three-fold increase in the  national Gross Domestic Product to $4.5 trillion within 15 years. One would have imagined that an economist Prime Minister trumpeting the need for 9% growth and fully aware of the stupendous economic gains from it, would lead the charge on obtaining an unsparing and comprehensively cleansing-capable Lokpal Bill. Instead, Manmohan Singh seems determined to de-fang Hazare’s draft by insisting it run the gauntlet of the Standing Committee, where it will be subjected to the tender ministrations of its members, among them paragons of incorruptibility such as Lalu Prasad Yadav and Mulayam Singh.

That the nominated Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh, more a party apparatchik than economist,  wants a weak and pliable Lokpal and will do whatever is necessary to get one, points to the extraordinarily huge stake in terms of pelf and patronage the Congress party in particular and the political class in general have relied on to consolidate their hold on power.  Whence its own weak Bill crafted by Kapil Sibal and P Chidambaram based on the principle that bureaucrats are answerable only to the government. Thus, the lower bureaucracy that the people most come in contact with on a daily basis, for example, is out of its ambit. Other designed weaknesses in this Bill ensure that for the Bribe-takers Inc at local, state and central government levels, it is business-as-usual.

An altogether different principle is the foundational premise for the Right to Public Service Act 2011 promulgated by the Nitish Kumar government in Bihar – a piece of legislation based on a similar law earlier implemented by the Bharatiya Janata party government in Madhya Pradesh. These innovative anti-corruption laws expressly make government servants accountable to the people and hold them responsible for non-delivery or delayed delivery of designated government services, a principle encompassed in Team Anna demand for a people’s charter from each central government Ministry. Is it just coincidence that the main opposition National Democratic Alliance governments in both these states have alighted on such novel schemes to curb corruption even as Congress party governments at the centre and in various states seem bereft of bright ideas?

Whatever the immediate prospects of Hazare’s Jan Lokpal Bill, the fact is the Indian people have reached the limits of tolerance for corruption, and a genuinely independent and powerful Lokpal exclusively controlling the Central Vigilance Commission and the graft investigation cell of the Central Bureau of Investigation, cannot long be postponed. But there’s one aspect of Anna Hazare’s agenda that’s troubling.  Buoyed by the unexpectedly large and sustained  country-wide public  support for his campaign, he has talked of extending his fight against corruption to also reforming the agricultural and tribal land acquisition norms he claims exclusively benefit industrialists, and righting the educational system he avers is short-changing children, etc. While corruption is a universal affliction prompting mass activism, the other issues have limited general appeal and, if conjoined to his successful anti-corruption actions, may end up running the former into the ground and blunting the latter.

[Published in ‘The New Indian Express’, Aug 26, 2011, at http://expressbuzz/op-ed/opinion/people’s-visceral-antipathy/307600.html

]

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Peas in a pod

Posted on October 1, 2011 by Bharat Karnad

It is curious that India and the United States – the two most important democracies in the world today, have in Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and President Barrack Obama, chief executives who, it turns out, share traits that the Washington Post columnist, E.J. Dionne, Jr., identified as Obama’s hallmark, namely, being at once risk-averse and competitive.

In the three weeks this writer recently spent in America, it was impossible to escape the incessant drumbeat in the media about the  economy on the skids, raising of the national debt ceiling amidst rancorous partisanship, the loss of “Triple A” credit rating, and an ascendant China, fearing its huge investment in some 13% of the US treasury bonds issued being reduced to waste paper, furiously wagging a finger at Washington, demanding Americans  live within their means. (In all this gloom, amusement was afforded visiting Indians and NRIs, at least, by the website of a major Indian newspaper heralding an Indian as having “downgraded the United States”!) Meanwhile, at the centre of the hubbub, Obama stayed on the sidelines, mostly disengaged, even as Republican Party right-wingers called him names. It felt like home.

With scams and scandals of all kinds coming home to roost within the Congress party portals, bad economic news dogging his every step,  Manmohan Singh, other than sleep-talking through much the same Red Fort speech he has made the last seven years on Independence Day, has stayed mum, barricading himself in 7 Race Course Road, a mute spectator to things going horribly wrong for his government and for him personally. Except, unlike Obama, the Indian Prime Minister is no mass leader nor a political visionary; even less is he an orator able to turn around a disbelieving public. His muffled, mealy-mouthed, mumbling that passes for public speeches actually sets many a teeth on edge. Dr. Singh hopes to keep warbling the same old song without taking any follow-up actions he has been promising these many years to implement second generation economic reforms desperately needed to shift the economy to a higher plane?

But transforming India into a powerful growth engine, at a minimum, requires overhauling archaic labour laws and instituting new land acquisition norms in order to give fillip to industry, and boosting the rural economy by freeing the agricultural sector from export and other restrictions, none of which is being done because of fear of the faux socialists — Messrs Mulayam Singh, Amar Singh, Lalu Prasad Yadav, and Company, and the unpredictable politics of Mayawati. It is another matter, that these worthies have, so far, been held in check by Manmohan Singh    manipulating of the Central Bureau of Investigation corruption cases against them. But general economic up-gearing and CBI threats nevertheless entail risks because over-done, these measures may persuade these leaders to join with the Bharatiya Janata Party-led opposition to bring down the Congress Party coalition government.  And risk-taking of any kind, especially with so much at stake, goes against Manmohan Singh’s over-cautious nature and the party chief, Sonia Gandhi’s plans. After all he is a career bureaucrat hoisted, for reasons of zero-threat to the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty and his personal malleability, to the top post in government, an arrangement that permits Mrs. Gandhi to keep her hand on the steering wheel, a control now reinforced by her chosen civil servant, Pulok Chatterji, replacing T.K.A Nair as Principal Secretary to the PM. Acquiescing in this scheme of Sonia rule shows up Manmohan Singh as an ambitious person, happy in a Mephistophelian deal he has cut for himself.

The corporate bosses’ understanding of the turgid pace of economic reforms is limited by the metaphor they have used.  Y.C. Deveshwar of Indian Tobacco Company in the August 2 meeting with Finance Minister Pranab Mukherji reportedly ventured that the problem lay with two drivers — one pressing the accelerator, the other the brake. It’s a view similar to the Infosys founder N.R. Narayana Murthy’s that the government’s “culture of taking slow decisions” is attributable to “two leaders in the set-up”. While such takes on reality seem reasonable at first glance, they are wrong in their essentials, in the main, because they assume that Manmohan Singh is driven by the desire for systemic change. The fact is he never had his foot on the accelerator, even as Sonia Gandhi never lifted hers from the brake pedal for fear that any forward movement will undermine the ruling party’s pseudo-Leftist moorings. Indira Gandhi’s “Garibi Hatao” (Remove Poverty)-brand of crude populism masquerading as socialism, is the true ideological lodestar of the Congress Party, not the quaint Fabian Socialist tenets that animated Jawaharlal Nehru’s policies. Manmohan Singh, the ultimate apparatchik and beneficiary of the system, in the event, has a disincentive to burnish his reformist credentials, such as they are, if that involves crossing the Party line. Sonia Gandhi, on her part, may understand little about socialism other than that it has kept her family in the clover for a very long time. But it is sufficient reason for her to stay with the socialist rhetoric, statist solutions, and a horrendous state apparatus, which together have turned corrupt practices and mis-governance into a thriving cottage industry.

Where corruption is concerned, Manmohan Singh and Obama are somewhat similarly placed.  Personally clean, Obama owes his meteoric rise from a grassroots organizer in Chicago to the corrupt Democratic Party  political machine ruthlessly run, gangster style, first by Mayor Richard J. Daley, who bequeathed the machine to his son, the even longer serving Richard Michael Daley, whose brother, William J Daley, incidentally, is Obama’s White House Chief of Staff.

Manmohan Singh may not be corrupt himself, but that is small consolation considering he is presiding over, a government that, going by the sheer extent, scale and magnitude of the loot indulged in by his party members and cabinet colleagues, is patently the most corrupt in independent India’s history. The muck has long ago stuck to the Prime Minister’s escutcheon. So, when he repeatedly declares that the corrupt will face punishment, who takes him seriously?

[Published in ‘The Asian Age’& The Deccan Chronicle’, August 17, 2011, at www.asianage.com/columnists/peas-pod-210 ]

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No buckling down to China

Posted on October 1, 2011 by Bharat Karnad

Many years ago, an Indian flotilla out in the Gulf led by Rear Admiral Madanjit Singh (later Vice Admiral and Flag Officer Commanding-in-Chief, Western Naval Command) was asked by an United States naval ship to identify itself and to its query “How long have you been here?” replied “Since before Christ!” Wonder how the Captain of the amphibious assault ship INS Airavat, steaming out of the Vietnamese port of Nha Trang on the South China Sea and proceeding up-coast to Haiphong in the third week of July this year, and ordered by a Chinese naval ship to, in effect, get the hell out of “Chinese” waters, responded? One hopes he did so with the proper amount of insouciance and steel.

Run-ins on the high seas are not that uncommon, but the manner in which a country’s warships react to challenge, matters. If they show confidence and don’t back down, the navy earns respect, and the country too.  In the early Nineties, the Australians got the fright of their lives when another Indian flotilla returning home after the Naval Expo in Limpopo in Malaysia, this one under Vice Admiral Vishnu Bhagwat, then Flag Officer Commanding Western Fleet (Later Admiral and Chief of Naval Staff) warned an Australian Naval surveillance aircraft against buzzing the Indian ships and violating the sovereign air space above the Indian naval group, and to show his intent, opened up the short range surface-to-air missiles for firing. Admiral Bhagwat was criticized by Nervous Nellies in the Service and in the government for being “trigger happy”. But, the Australian planes high-tailed it out of the area and never bothered the Indian ships again. There’s more gained in military encounters from standing one’s ground than buckling under at the first sign of pressure.

It is all very well for the Indian Navy to carry out manifestly minor tasks — tracking down pirate mother ships off Aden and its Marine Commandos  beating up on the Somali irregulars in the business of holding merchant vessels hostage for big money ransoms that are then channelled to rich international criminal syndicates. Or, even “escorting” American naval ships through the Straits of Malacca, a task the Navy boasted of early in the last decade as a meaningful mission.  It is a quite different thing for Indian Navy ships to face down the Chinese Navy in what the latter considers its backyard. But it is precisely these sorts of operations that the Indian Navy better prepare to prosecute here on, because their Chinese South Seas Fleet out of the Sanya base on Hainan Island means to lord it over the entire watery expanse east of Malacca, using that commanding presence to bully smaller littoral nations in the region and to psychologically cripple the Indian Navy – the only Asian navy in South East Asia that can match it in the technological realm and is its superior in conventional fleet tactics. For it to back down even fractionally would be to hand the advantage to China, which whatever its pretensions backs itself with nerveless actions. Like deterring the US carrier task force steaming towards the Taiwan Straits during the 1996 crisis from crossing the Chinese-designated red-line by firing a live missile across the bow of the lead American ship. In early 2001, a Chinese J-8 interceptor first damaged US Navy’s EP-3 aircraft by deliberately brushing this American signals intelligence plane before forcing it down on Hainan base where its aerospace technologists studied it for reverse engineering purposes. The American plane and crew were released only after the process of scrutinizing the downed aircraft was completed and Washington issued an abject apology.  Would the Indian Navy do anything remotely this aggressive in the waters off the Indian mainland, let alone take on the Chinese naval main force elements in this manner in defence of the larger principle of freedom of the seas?

One of the reasons to suspect it won’t is the craven attitude of the Indian government to international laws and principles that Beijing has increasingly taken to violate in the belief that, one, India lacks the guts to reciprocate or counter with harsh measures no matter how much its national interest is compromised and, secondly, that, if actually roused, it can be pacified with some small gestures and conciliatory noises.  Such bone-headed pusillanimity is on display in every aspect of India-China relations. Take the significant issue of the Brahmaputra River diversion that this analyst has been highlighting since 2000 and the present Congress government began taking seriously only around January 2008 when Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on a state visit to China suggested a joint mechanism to monitor the flow of water in this shared river, upstream of  the Great Bend in Arunachal Pradesh where the Tibet-originating Yarlung-Tsangpo River enters India as the Brahmaputra, and was peremptorily turned down. Since then every year brings new evidence of plans and massive head works being built or survey tasks being undertaken on the Tibetan side of the border without so much as a squeak from the Indian government. And, when some slight noise did finally emanate from the Prime Minister’s Office a couple of months back, it was only to state that Dr Manmohan Singh trusts in China’s profession of benign intent and is convinced the Chinese would only construct run-of-the-river projects.  What’s one to make of such cupidity, such extraordinary levels of wilful naivete and gullibility, and the tendency to lend credence to Beijing’s  assurances than rely on incontestable evidence of massive upstream civil engineering activity picked up as imagery by Indian satellites and confirmed by Indian military’s field intelligence and information from the Tibetan exile community circles?

If the Indian government is unwilling to uphold international law supportive of India’s interests which prevents an upper riparine state from diverting any shared river waters, it is hardly surprising that recurrent violations by the Chinese People’s Armed Police and People’s Liberation Army units manning the 4,000-km long Line of Actual Control separating India and China are dismissed by the Indian Foreign Secretary as inadvertent and inconsequential, and Indian Navy ships sailing in the South China choose to swallow insults than get into an altercation.  The more China pushes India in the chest, unless India push back muscularly, it will soon itself pushed into a corner. The Indian armed services ought to react to Chinese military provocation in a military manner, and not look over the shoulders fro instructions from MEA, and the Indian Navy ought to make it clear that it is patrolling South China Sea, which’s not China’s sea.

[Published in ‘The New Indian Express’, Sept  9, 2011, at http://expressbuzz/op-ed/opinion/No-buckling-down-to-china/312413.html

]

Posted in Great Power imperatives, India's China Policy, Indian Navy, Strategic Relations with South East Asia & Far East, Strategic Relations with the US & West | Leave a comment

MMRCA or Bust?

Posted on October 1, 2011 by Bharat Karnad

The Medium Multi-Role Combat Aircraft, worth some $11 billion, is currently the biggest military deal on the block.  There are two prongs to the deal: providing the Indian Air Force with a so-called “4.5 generation” multi-mission aircraft and securing transfer of technology (ToT) to beef up the indigenous capability to design and develop sophisticated fighter planes. ToT comprises a substantial part of the payout. Except Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) has lacked the wherewithal but,  more importantly, the will to absorb and evolve transferred technologies. It has progressed not much beyond licensed production, which amounts to putting together planes from crated parts.

If HAL leadership had any vision and self-respect, it would long ago have chosen the more challenging path of nursing the requisite technology innovation skills to produce in-date warplanes, instead of remaining a mere serial assembler of aircraft – MiG-21, Jaguar, MiG-27, MiG-29, Su-30 MKI, and, in the future, the MMRCA and the Russian Fifth Generation Fighter Aircraft (FGFA) – Sukhoi-PakFA (T-50).  Foreign suppliers have happily adjusted to this Indian milieu where, notwithstanding the self-reliance rhetoric, top dollar is paid for supposedly total ToT without India insisting on the transfer of the “flight control laws” that reveal why the particular plane is built the way it is, and the “source codes” – millions of lines of software — that disclose just how the various aspects of the plane are constructed. Minus these laws and the codes, it is impossible to achieve core competence in combat aircraft design and development. Indeed, foreign suppliers these days take the money but refuse to part with even lesser technologies contracted for, pleading that strictures in their domestic laws prevent such transmission! An instance of this is France denying India inertial navigation-related angular and linear accelerometer (motion sensor) technology it had bought. So much for benefits accruing from transfer of technology!

The truth is that the present acquisitions system maximally facilitates corruption, however much Defence Minister AK Antony (aka “Saint Antony”) would have it otherwise. Thus, HAL is reduced to a bit player in part because the Department of Defence Production and the IAF favour importing high-value military aircraft. This is so because other than the political class habituated to direct augmentation of offshore accounts, bureaucrats, armed services officers, HAL staffers, et al, also have their snouts in the trough, gaining from generous bribes and payments in kind, such as immigrant visas and “scholarships” for their progeny to attend fine universities in the West. In earlier, simpler, times, a bottle of Scotch sufficed!  With money to spend and more aircraft suppliers than buyers, an Indian government can compel supplier countries, including Russia, to onpass even the ultra secret flight control laws and source codes. It hasn’t done so for the obvious reason that it would choke off a rich source of black money and other goodies.

The more fundamental question is why’s IAF turning an already horrendous servicing and maintenance situation it’s saddled with – given its inventory boasting some 27 different types of planes — into an absolute logistics nightmare, by going in for yet another variety of aircraft and that too an MMRCA when it already has, and could acquire more of, the Su-30MKI, which fits the bill and, according to reputable international aviation experts, is the most powerful and versatile fighter-bomber aircraft flying bar the American F-22 Raptor? Certainly, none of the planes in the fray – the F-16IN, F-18 Super Hornet, Rafale, MiG-35, Typhoon, and Gripen, surpasses it in performance. The IAF, however, feels the need to “diversify” in order, it claims, to minimize the effects of the Russian spares stranglehold on Indian airpower. In that case, how to explain the $34 billion FGFA contract, which’ll perpetuate reliance on Moscow?  The real problem with inducting the MMRCA and FFGA is that these aircraft are already almost obsolete. They are extremely vulnerable to advanced air defence systems and even their missions can be more effectively carried out by ballistic and cruise missiles in the strike role and the variable range drones for surveillance, ground attack and other tasks. If sophisticated pilotless aerial vehicles are the future then, as an interim solution it’d be more pragmatic to buy the whole lot of 126 new MMRCA off the shelf at enormously reduced unit cost and lifetime worth of spares at cut-rate prices, rather than throw good money into the farcical “ToT”. All of this’d be available for less than half the currently estimated price-tag. The large savings could be channelled into a high-tech drones programme.

In this regard, there have been some very questionable decisions. First, the Congress Party regime of PV Narasimha Rao in the mid-Nineties failed to insist on a quid pro quo of jointly-held Intellectual Property Rights for all Su-30MKI technologies and complete ToT inclusive of the “laws” and “codes” in exchange for the infusion of Rs 6,000 crores, which prevented the Su-30 programme from going under. Next, the IAF after failing in its bid to secure additional Mirage 2000 aircraft conjured up the MMRCA rather than consolidate its fighter strength by augmenting its Su-30 fleet. And lately, the IAF and the Manmohan Singh government passed up the opportunity for kick-starting an indigenous modern combat aircraft design and development effort by turning down an independent proposal by the Mikoyan Bureau. The progenitor of MiG fighter planes had suggested that India fund the development of its new “1.44” fighter it has designed to equal, even exceed, F-22 performance parameters. In return, India was to jointly own all its technologies and the rights to further develop this platform, and produce it for IAF use and world-wide sales. The excuse for Delhi’s nyet was that the Russian government, which backed the Sukhoi Bureau and had vested interest in promoting its sales, warned that India would be making all the financial investments and bearing all the risks. Given the solid track record of the MiG Bureau, this was a no-brainer. But when have the risk-averse and strategically short-sighted Indian government and IAF acted sensibly?

[Published as “Whiskey Charlie” in ‘The Asian Age’& ‘The Deccan Chronicle’, May 3, 2011 at www.asianage.com/columnists/whiskey-charlie-915 ]

Posted in Indian Air Force, Indian Politics, Military Acquisitions, Relations with Russia, Strategic Relations with the US & West | Leave a comment

Special Command

Posted on October 1, 2011 by Bharat Karnad

Special Forces (SF) are the stuff of legend and military lore. Their derring-do and nerveless actions in the field have time and again rescued the losing side and turned the course of wars. Because the SF are geared to attaining the ends by any and especially unorthodox means, they have scant regard for the norms and procedures conventional forces live and fight by, and end up treating the regular military with disdain. The payback is in terms of the SOF facing institutional inattention, fighting  for budgetary crumbs, and their commanders rarely rising to the highest ranks in the Services. The fabled Major David Stirling leading the Special Air Service (SAS) – the most accomplished of the British SF in the Allied Eighth Army active in the Maghreb, famously said that during the Second World War he fought as many battles with his own military brass as he did with the Axis Powers.  The relations of the Indian Special Forces with their parent Services are likewise fraught and for many of the same reasons.

The regular military find the SF’s swagger and “can do” attitude grating, their unconventional methods distasteful, and dealing with their commanders a strain, but damned if they don’t covet the romance, glamour, and mystique of the individualistic and lethal commando that attends on them and their line of work. Hence, the Armed Services have sought to at once perpetuate and strengthen their control of the SF and to blur the distinction between them and the line units. Thus, the Indian Army, for instance, has from the beginning insisted, firstly, that the SF are an extension, and remain within the administrative ambit, of the “Parachute Regiment” and draw their officers and men exclusively from this fraternity. And, secondly, that the purely paratroop battalions be converted to paratroop-commando, notwithstanding the quite different missions the two types of forces are optimized for.  Paratroopers are infantry able to be parachuted as the airborne element for forced entry behind enemy lines, or in any sector where rapid build-up of forces is required. Paracommando, on  the other hand, are specialists in clandestine operations, able to be inserted by parachute or other means, in peacetime, war, and in operations other than war. Erasing the differences between the parachute and the para-commando units suggests the Indian Army, apparently, neither appreciates the quite different roles these two types of forces play, nor the gravity of depriving the country of military options in war by misusing the para-commando to do the job of parachuted infantry and vice versa, thereby limiting the forces available for these separate roles.

The other Services too have their Special Forces (SF). The Navy’s versatile MARCOS (Marine Commandos), styled after the US Navy’s SEALs (Sea, Air, Land), have been successfully blooded, for example, in Sri Lanka (Operation Pawan). Their action prevented the escape of the LTTE leaders to Tamil Nadu by scuttling that outfit’s vessels and, positioned on the Wular Lake in the mid-Nineties, they pre-empted the ingress by the jihadis into J&K. These days the MARCOS are itching to wipe out the Somalian pirates and bases, if only the Indian government affords them a carte blanche instead of the conditional approval of actions. The Air Force’s ‘Garud’ unit training, among other things, to destroy enemy air capability on the ground, has reportedly impressed in recent realistic exercises.  With the acquisition of the C-130J airlift aircraft and amphibious warfare ship, INS Jalashwa, India now has an all Services SF nucleus to mount and sustain credible special operations.

The question is: Who should control the SF? The option is between expecting the Special Forces to deliver as part of the parent Services, or to constitute a separate Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) in the Defence Ministry as I have advocated. At an international seminar on Special Forces held last week, hosted by the Centre for Joint Warfare Studies under Headquarters Integrated Defence Staff (IDS), the head of  Israeli SF, Brigadier Eyal Eisenberg, former Chief and current Colonel Commandant of SAS, Lieutenant General Sir Graeme Lamb, and ex-Commander of the German SF, Brigadier Hans-Christoph Ammon, spoke about the conduct of Special Operations in the context of a Joint Command. Indeed, the historical record favours it.  After an initial period of operating under parent Services, the US Office of Strategic Services and the British Special Operations Executive and SAS gained their greatest successes in World War Two when grouped under a single Special Operations Headquarters under the Supreme Commander in Europe, General Dwight D. Eisenhower. Nearer home, Lord Mountbatten, as C-in-C, South East Asia Command, had the largest number of SF in his charge, utilizing them to considerable effect against the Imperial Japanese land forces.

The reasons for a JSOC are compelling. A unitary Command will be best able to represent the singular as well as combined SF interests, recruit the best talent from the three Services,  assess the operational strengths and limitations of each type of SF, draw up Special Operations plans to mesh with the larger strategy, configure mission-based force-mixes for maximum impact, fight for an equitable portion of the defence pie, evaluate the various capability gaps and the materiel and human resources requirements of the SF, and to prioritize on an inter se basis the acquisitions and augmentation programmes. It will be a radical improvement on the existing state of affairs where the Armed Services tamp down on their respective SF and persistently mis-apply SF assets.

At the Conference, Lieutenant General HS Lidder, a former commando and Chief of IDS, proposed a JSOC under the National Security Adviser. An excellent idea, except he envisaged this arrangement only for peacetime, with SF reverting to the parent Service in war. This last is to fall back on a bad system wherein SF, subsumed in Theatre Command plans, are penny-packeted as Army Reserve and tasked mostly with trivial missions, such as blowing up culverts and ammo dumps across the Line of Control. It is akin to deputing highly-trained and motivated neuro-surgeons to diagnose fever and hand-out aspirin.

[Published in ‘The Asian Age’ & ‘The Deccan Chronicle’, March 17, 2011 at www.asianage.com/columnists/special-command-181 ]

Posted in India's Pakistan Policy, India's strategic thinking and policy, Indian Air Force, Indian Army, Indian Navy, Indian Politics, Internal Security, Special Forces | 1 Comment

Can India say “Don’t Mess with us”?

Posted on October 1, 2011 by Bharat Karnad

The significant thing about the successful effort to locate and kill Osama bin Laden, the global symbol of Islamic extremism and head of the al-Qaeda terrorist organization, is its doggedness. Stretching out over three Administrations and some ten years, this hunting down of Osama suggests the resolute will of the US Government to mete out condign punishment to the chief ideologue and planner of the 9/11 terrorist spectacular – two hijacked American passenger aircraft slamming into the twin Trade Towers in New York.  The subsequent US military intervention in Afghanistan dislodged the al-Qaeda friendly Taliban regime in Kabul but, through acts of omission, failed to take out Osama  in the campaign in the Tora-bora mountains. The important thing to note is that Osama ultimately paid with his life for his terrorist excesses and the message it has telegraphed to jihadis everywhere is the same as that sent out by Israeli special forces actions in assassinating hizbollah leaders, namely: Don’t mess with us.

The Indian Government will be pleased that its own intelligence, communicated to the US agencies through the intelligence-sharing  mechanisms in place, that the Pakistan Army and its Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence were directly involved in protecting Osama and his cohort, and further that the ISI perceived the al-Qaeda leaders as providing Pakistan a cashable policy leverage against Washington, was on the mark. But that was unlikely to have been a great revelation to the US Central Intelligence. But, there is no reason for Delhi to gloat because it would be silly to assume Washington knew nothing about any of this, or that ISI had no hand in harbouring bin Laden. The latter story of ISI being as unaware of Osama in the cantonment town of Abbotabad as the US but intent on helping American Special Forces to carry out the operation, is too pat and won’t wash, considering Osama was housed in some luxury, surrounded by sixteen foot high walls and protected 24/7 by ISI minders, in close proximity to premier Pakistan Army installations, among them, the Pakistan Military Academy and the Pakistan Army Training Centre!

In this situation, it will be foolish indeed for the Manmohan Singh regime to expect that a more enthused Washington will do what Delhi has wanted it to do all along but so far has resisted doing: Pressure the Pakistan Army and ISI into closing down their terrorist-support structures, and handing over to India the likes of Mahmood Azhar of the Jaish-e-Mohammad and Lashkar-e-Tayyaba (LeT)’s Hafiz Saeed implicated in the 26/11 terrorist attacks in Mumbai. The Obama Administration has already weakened the Pakistan Army by making it complicit in the covert anti-Osama operation and, thereby, cleverly closing the option of the ISI publicly disavowing any role in, first, keeping Osama safe, and then, under pressure, standing aside as he was killed.  But it is not going to imperil its own position, interests, and leverage it has gained, nor further alienate Pakistani Army and state by demanding  Islamabad help India out on the terrorism front.

In other words, India will have to do the hard anti-terrorist work by itself.  The trouble is: Does the Congress Party coalition government, encouraged by the successful action to finish off Osama, have the guts, gumption, but mostly the will to rethink its “kya phark painda hai”– (who cares, what difference will it make) attitude, when it comes to doing what any self-respecting country would do when under terrorist threat – bump off those responsible in a major way for terrorist strikes within India? It is the sort of targeted intelligence operations I have been advocating for over a decade now as the only response rather than uselessly mobilizing the field army for war and getting everybody’s dander up (as happened with the 2002 Op Parakram).  Surely, Muridke – headquarters of LeT, is not all that inaccessible.

The far greater covert operations challenge is posed by the absconding Mumbai gangster Dawood Ibrahim and his so-called D-Company, under ISI protection and ensconced in a posh bungalow in the tony Clifton area of Karachi, virtually thumbing his nose at India. Almost all the underworld activity on the western seaboard – from smuggling arms and RDX, running extortion and hawala rackets, black money laundering, loan-sharking, to facilitating LeT actions, such as the ones in Mumbai, is attributed to this man’s network. Instead of setting a priority agenda of having a sustained coordinated intelligence operation, powered by the absolute determination to go it alone if need be, Delhi habitually pleads with Washington to do something.  “Soft” help can be solicited from Israel’s Mossad, the US Central Intelligence, and whoever else may be willing, but Delhi cannot bank on any assistance. No other country is going to do the heavy lifting for India.

True, the “Gujral Doctrine” of the mid-1990s, requiring RAW to cease and desist from all involvement inside Pakistan, especially in the then ongoing “civil war” in Karachi, defanged RAW (Research and Analysis Wing). Two generations worth of carefully cultivated intelligence assets were lost. But the shared South Asian social fabric is such, humint (human intelligence) assets can be relatively easily procured. This won’t be easy, because it involves winning back trust of potential local collaborators. But it can be done. Together with the country’s elint (electronic intelligence) capabilities, repeated missions can be mounted to remove Dawood Ibrahim and Company permanently from the scene. And India need never own up publicly to any such action (unlike what Obama has done vis a vis bin Laden).  Imagine, however, the message it will send out to the aspiring Dawoods of the Indian underworld: You can hide for a time, you can run for a while, but finally we’ll get you, you WILL pay! Or, to the Hafiz Saeeds of the jihadi fraternity: Send your boys across the border at your personal peril!

But instilling such dread in terrorists and other Pakistan-based no-gooders seems beyond the ken of the Indian government in general and, in particular, Dr. Manmohan Singh — a Prime Minister trapped between doing little and doing nothing on almost every issue.

[Published in ‘The Asian Age’& ‘The Deccan Chronicle’, May 3, 2011, at www.asianage.com/columnists/can-india-say-‘don’t-mess-with-us’-577 ]

Posted in Great Power imperatives, India's Pakistan Policy, Indian Politics, Internal Security | Leave a comment