Nuclear mind games

Posted on October 1, 2011 by Bharat Karnad

When contemplating Pakistan’s nuclear build-up, Major General Ausaf Ali, an engineer officer and, as Director General – Operations and Plans, arguably the most important man in the Strategic Plans Division, Chaklala, the secretariat for that country’s Nuclear Command Authority, comes to mind. The occasion was his briefing on the Pakistan nuclear weapons programme at an “international seminar” in March 2007 held in Bahawalpur. As the lone Indian invitee, I was apparently the offline channel to convey nuclear signals to interested audiences in India. (The contents of the signalling may be found in my 2008 book — Índia’s Nuclear Policy — and in my numerous writings since then).

Among other things, Ausaf Ali indicated that Pakistan planned to beef up its nuclear forces sufficient to enable a “counterforce third strike” – a scheme too ambitious not to prompt scepticism. A counterforce third strike essentially means having enough surviving nuclear weapons/warheads and delivery systems (missiles and aircraft) to take out Indian nuclear force assets after absorbing an Indian retaliatory hit in response to Pakistan’s first use of nuclear weapons. His impressive confidence, notwithstanding, this strategy is unsustainable for the reason Ausaf Ali also mentioned, namely, that the location of 70 percent of Pakistani nuclear weapons is known to American, Indian and Israeli intelligence agencies and, in a nuclear crisis or conflict, will face pre-emption. The remaining 30 percent, he asserted, “will never be found”. It is reasonable to deduce that the underway augmentation of the nuclear arsenal – with reports of Pakistani nuclear weapons strength now exceeding India’s estimated arsenal and the 100 figure mark, is meant to increase both this force-fraction considered immune to pre-emptive destruction and Pakistan’s margin of safety.

The more noteworthy aspect is Pakistan’s resolve not to be overwhelmed in a nuclear confrontation with India. It is reflected in the reported construction of a fourth plutonium reactor at Khushab. This is a speedy follow-up to the first and second reactors that went on stream in 1996 and 2009 respectively and the third which is at the half-way stage of construction. Deterrence is a mind-game — how I wish I had patented this phrase first used by me in a 1998 book and commonly used by Indian analysts! — and Pakistan seems to be psychologically fortifying itself for it.

None of this will matter very much in an actual nuclear exchange though because however large the Pakistani weapons inventory, especially its protected force fraction, the certainty of Pakistan’s extinction (given the extreme vulnerability of the narrow “strategic corridor” near the Indian border, containing most of its cities and economic centres) versus the obliteration of a couple of Indian cities will compel Islamabad, I have argued, to avoid nuclear first use no matter what the Indian provocation, including limited ingress into Pakistani territory by Indian conventional forces (‘Cold Start’). Of course, Pakistan has discovered that India scares easy and simply having its leaders indulge in nuclear bombast at the first sign of trouble, deters Delhi from approving even punitive strikes.  This happened after the 13 December 2001 attack on Parliament and the 26/11 strike against Mumbai.

A nuclear Pakistan, in any case, poses a greater danger to itself than to India – with the possibility of fanatics accessing nuclear materials, if not whole weapons, in unsettled domestic situations. These jihadis, geared to blowing themselves up, may decide that the use of nuclear weapons or radiation diffusion devices as means of national suicide either by turning them against the Pakistan Establishment or India, advances their cause.

But, Pakistan’s nuclear preparations nevertheless highlight the Indian government’s over- relaxed attitude and quite extraordinary complacency. The stock answers by senior officials to any sensitive questions regarding national security is usually un-illuminating counter-questions: “How do you know we are not taking appropriate actions? And, If we are, would we be announcing them?” Alas, excessive opacity hurts nuclear deterrence when there’s little evidence of meaningful measures on the ground.

For instance, dedicated military-use plutonium reactors cannot be conjured out of thin air nor erected in a trice. Indeed, with the decommissioning of the CIRUS reactor at the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, Trombay, courtesy the nuclear deal with the United States, a third of the weapon grade plutonium production capacity was lopped off. The upcoming breeder reactor having been ruled out of the military ambit by former National Security Adviser MK Narayanan, there’s only the 100 MW Dhruva reactor, if the eight power plants are discounted as source owing to the huge economic costs of diverting these from electricity generation to running them on low burn-up mode for plutonium production. A second Dhruva was approved in the mid-1990s and Prime Minister PV Narasimha Rao sanctioned Rs 600 crores for it. But 15 years on, the project is in the doldrums.  Moreover, instead of constructing a straight-through graphite-moderated reactor exclusively to output weapon grade fissile material such as the ones Pakistan has obtained from China, another multi-purpose Dhruva-type reactor (tasked to also produce isotopes, etc) is on the cards. This last is the result mainly of professional laziness on the part of the Indian nuclear engineers who would rather duplicate something old than design and build altogether new, efficient and, militarily more useful, plutonium reactor.

There are two great nuclear deficit areas: In the light of the failed hydrogen bomb test in 1998, the absence of proven high-yield thermonuclear armaments – a condition only further explosive testing can remedy, and curtailed weapon-grade plutonium production capacity. These shortfalls are particularly onerous when considering it is China with ramped up strategic wherewithal India has most to worry about. With the gaps in Indian weapons performance and fissile material production capacity widening into chasms, achieving credible deterrence vis a vis China, already problematic, will soon become unthinkable. Lulled by the comforting illusions of “minimal” deterrence based on the 20/20 hindsight of the Cold War rather than the verities of the harsh and unforgiving world of international relations, the Indian government seems to be paddling around in the strategic shallows, unmindful of the rapids ahead.

[Published in ‘The Asian Age’ & ‘The Deccan Chronicle’, February 17, 2011, at www.asianage.com/columnists/nuclear-mind-games-007 ]

Posted in India's China Policy, India's Pakistan Policy, India's strategic thinking and policy, Indian Army, Nuclear Policy & Strategy, Nuclear Weapons | 1 Comment

Rethinking Pakistan

Posted on October 1, 2011 by Bharat Karnad

“Cricket diplomacy” and the meeting of the Indian and Pakistan Home Secretaries are important because these were approved through the back channel maintained by Delhi with the Chief of Army Staff, General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani – the hub of power in Pakistan. Whatever one may think of the Pakistan Army, it is a professional force driven by cold calculation. If it thinks it can get away with some outré action or the other against India, it does not hesitate to prosecute it (think Kargil). Equally, it will do an about-turn and sue for “honourable peace” if some adventurist action misfires (recall General Parvez Musharraf’s prodding Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to seek US intervention in the Kargil conflict, and his virtual mea culpa of January 12, 2002 after the December 13 terrorist attack on Indian Parliament the previous year, in order to pre-empt a punitive Indian response and potentially uncontrollable escalation).

Apparently, General Kayani and his uniformed cohort believe that the policy of orchestrated terrorist outrages has run its course, at least for now, as the Pakistan Army, in the grip of excesses at home by the Tehriq-e-Taliban outfits, unremitting drone attacks by its American ally, and of the military pressure of the US-led NATO forces in Afghanistan on the Pashtuns of North Waziristan that’s skewing the delicate tribal balance the Pakistani state has obtained over the years in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province, needs relief on its eastern border. The question is can India capitalize on what seems to be rethinking underway in the Pakistan Army?

Alas, there is surprisingly less give here than is generally assumed. Rewind to the aftermath of Sharm-el-Sheikh and how quickly Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was forced to backtrack on the issue of supposed concessions to his Pakistani counterpart. This is because India’s Pakistan policy is hostage to the petty calculations of the political class in the country and powerful Ministries within the Indian government with vested interest in portraying Pakistan as menace. Pakistan Army’s nursing of terrorism as an asymmetric tool to keep India discomfited sustains this impression. But it does not over-ride the facts of the neighbouring country being economically weak, politically in a pitiful state, and destabilized by unending violence and internal strife perpetrated by Islamic extremists. Nor does it preclude the need for a realistic assessment of the ‘Pakistan threat’ given the sheer disparities. Pakistan’s Gross Domestic Product, for instance, is less than one-quarter of the market capitalization of the Mumbai Stock Exchange!

The trouble is that for the Indian politician ties with Pakistan are an externalization of the sometimes tense Hindi-Muslim relations at home and both are manipulable for electoral gain. This is crass cynicism at work but the ‘Pakistan threat’ also powers the Indian military’s existing force disposition and structure. Thus, the army’s main force is deployed in the west, the short-legged Air Force is attuned mostly for contingencies involving Pakistan, and the Navy has its stock North Arabian Sea orientation. Then again, how else can three strike corps worth of tanks, armoured personnel carriers, and towed artillery accounting for 26% to 32% of the defence budget, be justified if not with reference to Pakistan? Meanwhile, the far more substantive and credible threat emanating from China is only minimally addressed.

The nine Light Mountain Divisions desperately required as offensive capability to keep the Peoples Liberation Army ensconced on the Tibetan plateau honest is nowhere as glamorous as armoured and mechanized formations. Like the Indian Administrative Service that ensures its group interests are never compromised come hell or high water, “cavalry” Generals too are loath to see a reduction of armoured strength sufficient only to thrust and parry against a weak adversary’s limited capability.

Indeed, Pakistan is now the touchstone to get the Government to wake up to even strategic deficiencies that are far more telling vis a vis China. Rapid Chinese strategic nuclear buildup was met with passivity, but recent Press reports about Pakistan surpassing Indian nuclear weapons strength galvanized the Government into ordering some remedial action.

Such Pakistan-centricity is ironic in light of the severely controlled wars of manoeuvre India is politically compelled to wage against Pakistan owing to the organic links of kinship and shared religion, culture, language, and social norms binding the two countries. There is, moreover, the factor of the politically conscious Muslim electorate wielding the swing vote in almost half the Lok Sabha constituencies, who may countenance bloodying Pakistan but not its destruction. Such systemic constraints are not acknowledged by either side but have been in force from the 1947-48 Kashmir operations onwards. In any case, which Indian government would order a military dismantling of the Pakistani state resulting in 180 million Muslims, pickled in fundamentalist juices for half a century, rejoining the Indian fold?

The Home Ministry, intelligence agencies, and central and state police organizations, animated by an institutional habit of mind, are, likewise, Pakistan-fixated, and feed the popular paranoia of a rogue Pakistan always preparing for the next terrorist spectacular on Indian soil. As the 2002 Op Parakram showed, the right response to Islamabad-supported jihadi actions is not mobilizing Field Armies but instantaneous retaliatory air strikes on terrorist installations in Pakistani Kashmir in tandem with targeted intelligence operations elsewhere in that country. Combine the stick of such pressure with the carrot of incentives to wean Pakistan from its hostility, such as unilateral easing of the visa regime, and offer of open trade and investment. It is a policy mix Delhi has not seriously pursued.

But, surely nuclear Pakistan poses a threat? Short of total demolition, which India has not intended even with conventional military means, Pakistan will be offered no excuse for going nuclear. However, if despite the nuclear taboo the General Staff in Rawalpindi contemplates nuclear weapon use for any reason, including in what passes for “wars” in these parts, they’ll be ultimately dissuaded by an “exchange ratio” prohibitively stacked against their country. Loss of two Indian cities is not recompense enough for the certain extinction of Pakistan. It is simply a bad bargain.

[Published in The Asian Age’ & ‘The Deccan Chronicle’, March 31, 2011, at www.asianage.com/columnists/rethinking-pakistan-898   ]

Posted in Great Power imperatives, India's China Policy, India's Pakistan Policy, India's strategic thinking and policy, Indian Army, Indian Politics | Leave a comment

Nuclear Independence

Posted on October 1, 2011 by Bharat Karnad

At bottom, the unrest in Jaitapur is not about the prospective Areva nuclear park and its perils but rather about angry locals feeling cheated and is akin to the agitations in Singur, Nandigram, and several other locations identified for big industrial projects.  Beneath the hullabaloo, it is the prospect of disturbed livelihoods and the supposedly paltry sums being paid the locals for their land that sparked disturbances. But the recent nuclear disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi complex has handed protestors  the club to beat the government with. It has left the far graver issues of the affordability and sustainability of the nuclear electricity-driven atomic energy program unaddressed.

     Alone among all nuclear weapon states, India did it straight. It developed a broad-based nuclear energy science and technology programme first and obtained weapons as a side benefit. This last required no diversion of effort  and little additional investment, but the programme ensured the most economical use of scarce public monies and efficient deployment of the even scarcer resource – skilled manpower. Hence, to Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s query, post-1974 test, about the cost of the atom bomb, the head of the Physics Group at the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, Trombay, and later Chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, Dr P.K. Iyengar, replied it had cost nothing.  Unlike India, however, every other nuclear weapon state  inverted the thrust — seeding a nuclear weapons project and then building a larger programme around it. With national security as rationale, cost was no consideration and the programmes in all these countries naturally evolved with weapons design and production as the core.

In India’s case, the unique trajectory of the Indian programme convinced three generations of Indian scientists and engineers that nuclear security was extraneous to their primary tasks of nation-building-cum-development activity involving provision of cheap electricity, affordable nuclear medicine, cost-sensitive irradiation techniques to extend the shelf life of grains and vegetables, and what not. Except, disarmament and “peaceful uses of the atom” constituted the rhetorical policy shield behind which Jawaharlal Nehru nursed the weapons capability. Not understanding Nehru’s motivation has prevented the nuclear establishment and the Indian government from dispassionately considering how best to utilize the country’s nuclear energy programme for the future.

The early optimism about the peaceful atom was, of course, misplaced. What was also not anticipated were the exorbitant price tags for all civilian nuclear applications. Worse, the environmental dangers posed by nuclear reactors were insufficiently appreciated. Such as the spread of radioactivity, prospectively, from the vast amounts of stored spent low enriched uranium fuel generated by innumerable LWRs (light water reactors) as in Fukushima. As were the problems associated with decommissioning such LWRs by vitrification or entombment in cement, which is as expensive a business as commissioning them, and takes just as long.  Their import at humungous cost – just the six French Areva reactors of doubtful provenance for Jaitapur will cost in excess of Rs 70,000 crores – will, moreover, mostly enrich foreign nuclear industries. Considering the problems and high costs in train, compoundable in case of mishaps, nuclear power plants are more liability than boon, which fact no safety reviews ordered by Dr Manmohan Singh can change.

The Prime Minister has called for “coolheaded discussions” on the future of nuclear energy once the current hysteria subsides. But he has expended too much foreign policy capital, made too many executive commitments with nuclear supplier countries, to rethink his policy of meeting the energy deficit by importing LWRs. It has eventuated in the phantasmagorical and plainly ridiculous plan the Department of Atomic Energy has drafted with an eye, it seems, to helping Dr Singh service his civilian nuclear fixation. The scheme envisages nuclear power production totalling 208,000 MW by 2052 with a 1,000 MW plant sited every 55 kms along the 7,000 km long coastline!  Other than any man-made or natural disaster striking these plants, no one, apparently, has thought about the nearly insurmountable security problems these plants will create and, even less, about the resulting impossibly high unit cost of electricity.

In this context, the Indian government’s enthusiasm for nuclear energy is, perhaps, not puzzling. Unless the goal is for the ruling party to rake in the “commissions”, there is a better solution. Give a fillip to the indigenous nuclear industry and, in the process, amortize public investment in this sector by selling the home-grown 220MW pressurised heavy water reactors (PHWRs) to energy-hungry developing states under international safeguards. This export revenue stream can make the country’s nuclear programme self-sustaining and finance the implementation of the 1955 three stage Bhabha Plan for genuine energy independence. Instead, some 65 years on, India’s nuclear energy programme is being pulled back into becoming a dependency of Western supplier countries and the poor taxpayer is paying hugely for this move, even as the development of second stage breeder and third stage thorium reactor technologies is being starved of funds.

It is still not too late for India to unlearn the nonsensical demand and supply energy arithmetic and follow the lead given by other nuclear weapon states: Designate ever more advanced weaponry as the central mission of its nuclear energy programme. Such a singular thrust, moreover, will provide ample political cover for India to focus on developing the technological competence to where the country’s thorium reserves – the world’s largest, can be exploited for electricity and, in the interim, to install advanced PHWR capacity, fired by the albeit small domestic reserves of uranium, as the bridge via the breeder stage to the thorium reactor. It will require, in the main, Delhi to discard the impedimenta of its declaratory nuclear policy and commitments. Freed of the non-proliferation cant and the system of self-imposed restraints the government has foolishly adopted, India can yoke the atom to national interest and, primarily, military purpose as the United States, China, Britain, France, North Korea, and Pakistan have done. Sadly, our political class lacks the “big power” vision, historical sense, strategic self-confidence, and the guts to change its short-sighted nuclear policy and shrug off the inevitable Western pressure against such transformation.

[Published in ‘The Asian Age’& ‘The Deccan Chronicle’ April 28, 2011, at www.asianage.com/columnists/nuclear-independence-613 ]

Posted in Great Power imperatives, India's strategic thinking and policy, Nuclear Policy & Strategy, Nuclear Weapons, Strategic Relations with the US & West | Leave a comment

Lurking Opportunity

Posted on October 1, 2011 by Bharat Karnad

The one thing Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, instinctively, gets right every time is what next to do with Pakistan.  The execution of Osama bin Laden, the iconic al-Qaeda leader, has put General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani and his Corps Commanders strung out between charges of incompetence and non-involvement cruelly hurled at them by Leon Panetta, Director, Central Intelligence Agency and the US Secretary of Defence-designate.  In the circumstances, the Indian government’s policy of saying and doing nothing that a hyper-sensitive Islamabad finds hurtful, will surely help calm the situation.

Kayani is treading water because, politically, incompetence is a far less onerous charge for the Pakistan Army to bear than non-involvement, which a former head of Inter-Service Intelligence (ISI), Lieutenant General (ret) Asad Durrani dismissed as “inconceivable”. Politically, this sets up the Pakistan Army as an American collaborator, as much responsible for the killing of Osama as the ‘Seal Team Six’ and, hence, the enemy, ironically, of the extremist Islamic outfits the ISI has carefully husbanded as a valuable resource ever since 1979 when, prompted by the US Central Intelligence Agency, these groups were germinated primarily to discomfit the Soviet occupation troops in Afghanistan.

That the Pakistan Army was in deep in this operation is not in doubt. An most intriguing aspect of its complicity revolves around Kayani’s seemingly great interest in Abbottabad and his senior appointments in this area. He headed ISI when Osama was settling down in the vicinity.  After becoming Chief of the Army Staff Kayani posted Lieutenant General Nadeem Taj as his successor at ISI and, a short time later, moved him as General Officer commanding 11 Corps with responsibility for the Pakistan Military Academy situated less than a mile from Osama’s residence. And then, not too long before the SEAL raid, Kayani was at the passing-out parade, his first visit to the Academy in some four years, perhaps, to ensure that all was in readiness for the strike operation. The early reports correctly reported the SEAL flight, and especially the massive and noisy Chinook heavy-lift helicopter despatched as backup for the modified stealth Black Hawk helicopter that crashed, taking off from the Tarbela-Ghazni satellite air field, not distant Jalalabad in Afghanistan. Besides, neither the Black Hawn nor the Chinook has the range to fly from and to Jalalabad un-refueled.

But the US as much as the Pakistan Army has a stake in maintaining the fiction that the Special Forces action was prosecuted entirely unbeknownst to Kayani and his cohort. Because to confirm Pakistan Army’s complicity would be to grievously undermine its stature and standing in the Pakistani society and expose it to public anger and ridicule it last experienced after the 1971 Bangladesh War, except now as an American stooge. A weakened Pakistan Army will make it difficult to sustain the US policy of pounding the Afghan Taliban into joining a coalition government with Hamid Karzai in Kabul – the only way for President Barack Obama to withdraw from Afghanistan claiming victory, incidentally, just around the time the next Presidential elections come around in 2012. Making a scapegoat of the current ISI boss, Lieutenant General Ahmed Shuja Pasha, would be tantamount to admitting either a screw-up or involvement in the Osama mission, depending on how Pakistanis see the situation. It will not, however, prevent the erosion of the legitimacy of the premier role the Generals have arrogated to themselves in national affairs.

This last may not be such a good thing from India’s national interest point of view. While it is all very well to talk fancifully of encouraging democracy and changing the civil-military equation, civilian governments in Pakistan have been as notably as hostile, if not more, towards India as military regimes. Except, when the Generals are directly running the show in Islamabad, there is less artifice and greater possibility of Delhi’s cutting a deal that will stick (like the one almost realized on Kashmir with General Pervez Musharraf in 2006). With civilian governments there’s uncertainty, of not knowing when GHQ, Rawalpindi, will pull the rug from under them. It is not in Pakistan Army’s interest to allow civilians to set policy direction, make peace with India, burnish their reputation, and buttress their hold on power.

In this regard, it is interesting to note the moves by the Pakistan Army politically to build up Imran Khan, the erstwhile cricketer and leader of the Tehreek-e-Insaf Party (TIP), as an alternative to the Pakistan Peoples Party with bad record of governance and the equally tainted Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz) in the opposition. Kayani may have decided to forego a coup, choosing instead to back Imran as a new, hopefully more pliable, figure whose political ambitions can be made to serve the army’s purposes. TIP’s biggest success to date was the recent bandh called by Imran in the Bagh-e-Naran Square area of Hayatabad on the outskirts of Peshawar to protest the continuing American drone attacks on Pakistani territory. Over thirty thousand people joined in the agitation, courtesy no doubt of his meeting prior to the bandh with Pasha. The large turn-out will be used as proof of the popular resistance to the US Af-Pak policy and to bolster Kayani’s demand that the Ámerican presence in Pakistan be thinned out.

The opportunity for India is afforded by Imran, a moderate nationalist and now the Generals’ poster boy, being hoisted to power. He can  facilitate a rapprochement. It is an outcome Kayani may not be averse to, considering Pakistan needs some space for manoeuvre. The United States will persist with the drone-targeting of the al Qaeda-inspired Afghan Taliban and pressure Kayani into wiping out the Pakistani Taliban and their Lashkar offshoots. Exterminating the extremists is a hard choice, because the Lashkars do provide Pakistan with asymmetric war assets, and fighting them will impose huge costs. It will seed domestic turmoil but will  fetch the country the rewards of peace. One hopes Kayani will take the latter, more difficult, path. It’s not much but, for India, it is still a faint glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel.

[Published as “Khan of Pakistan” in ‘The Asian Age’& ‘The Deccan Chronicle’, May 12,] 2011, at www.asianage.com/columnists/khan-pakistan-395

]

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Legacy as lasting nightmare

Posted on October 1, 2011 by Bharat Karnad

The near 9-Richter earthquake, tsunami, disrupted coolant systems, the consequent partial core meltdown in the nuclear reactors, and spreading radioactivity around the Fukushima Daiichi complex constitute the perfect disaster, and could not have been foreseen. But certain nuclear aspects of these inter-connected events have a bearing on the fanciful power generation schemes the Manmohan Singh-led Congress Party coalition government has embarked upon and which it hopes will piggyback on the controversial civilian nuclear deal with the United States.

     The Japanese reactors are of the same low enriched uranium fuelled light water (LWR) type as the French Areva EPR (Evolving Pressurised-water Reactor), the Russian VVER 1000, and the US-Japanese Westinghouse-Toshiba AP 1000 India is on the point of buying. Except, technology-wise, we may be digging ourselves into a hole. Dr Anil Kakodkar, former chairman, atomic energy commission explained, apropos the prospective Areva plant in Jaitapur, that the EPR incorporates the best processes and technologies the French have developed over many decades. This seems akin to cobbling together an aircraft from an assortment of high-value parts taken from different planes. Not reassuring. Without a prototype reactor to prove such technology integration works, the odds are the EPR will amount to less than the sum of its parts and, in operating terms, could turn out to be a fiasco. The other two reactors in the fray are equally a liability. The basic VVER design, safety-augmented in the wake of the 1986 Chernobyl catastrophe, is coming up in Kudankulam without the modified design having proved its druthers elsewhere first.  The new American reactor (AP 1000) is, likewise, unproven, having been rejected by the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission on safety grounds. Undeterred, the Indian government has fast-tracked its purchase, prodded by Washington and powerful American Companies, such as General Electric providing turbines for nuclear power plants. India has thus hoisted itself in the nuclear marketplace as testing ground for half-baked reactor concepts and technologies from abroad.

     Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, obsessed as much with sustaining 8% growth as by an energy quick-fix offered by importing LWRs, has compounded the problem by approving the concept of “energy parks” – a host of nuclear reactors bunched together to achieve production efficiencies of scale. He is apparently unmindful of the dangers of “nuclear fratricide” triggered by reactors in physical proximity incapacitated by an accident in one of them, as happened in Fukushima.  Other than India’s manifest inability to cope with the cascading nuclear effects of several reactors simultaneously facing different types of breakdown, consider the opportunity cost to Indian industry and services sector of a whole energy park – 10,000 MW plus from the single Jaitapur complex — suddenly going missing. That, however, is the lesser problem.

     Because LWRs use low enriched uranium fuel packages on a “once through” basis before being discarded, huge amounts of spent fuel end up stacked in cold water storage pools to dissipate the heat and constitute, as Fukushima shows, a potentially grave health and safety hazard. Indeed, we have 40-years of experience of being saddled with spent fuel outputted by the two US-built LWRs in Tarapur. Given its radioactivity, Washington is unwilling to take back the stored Tarapur spent fuel and a gutless Indian government is not prepared to up the ante by issuing an ultimatum, followed by reprocessing the fuel for use in Indian designed plants as a way of reducing our risk. The issue of what to do with the imported spent fuel, in the event, remains unresolved.  In a nuclear mishap in an energy park, the mass of stored spent fuel could source a calamitous spread of radioactivity in the Indian countryside.

     Then there’s the complex issue of the level of earthquake tolerance to be engineered into reactor construction without completely skewing the cost-calculus. In Jaitapur, as in other quake-prone locations, based on careful seismic analysis certain levels of protection are introduced into reactor construction. There’s no guarantee, however, as the Fukushima reactors, perhaps, built to withstand 3-4 Richter shock indicated, that Nature will be accommodating enough to restrict the quaking to the engineered levels. There, moreover, being no such thing as an absolutely quake-proof reactor, safety levels will be dictated by commercial considerations, especially as every little accretion in quake tolerance adds significantly to the total cost. 

     Whatever the initial figures being bandied about ($11 billion), after factoring in predictable escalations and only minimal quake protection, Jaitapur, for instance, may actually end up costing the Indian taxpayer $15-$20 billion and, depending on the number of reactors, $3-$6 billion a unit, resulting in electricity costing around Rs 30-Rs 35 crores per megawatt compared to the Rs 2-Rs 3 crore per MW cost of power produced by reactors featuring home-grown technology. Even at this latter cost level, hydro and coal sourced energy is cheaper.  For an economist to maintain otherwise, as Dr Manmohan Singh has done, is to upend the logic of viability.

     In the late Forties and Fifties, the dawning nuclear era encouraged dreams of cheap electricity. The visionary Dr Homi Bhabha and his political mentor, Jawaharlal Nehru, neither of them fools, nursed a weapons capability under cover of this rationale. But the dis-economics of nuclear power is such, a nuclear energy programme today makes little sense if it is not mainly national security-driven but which allows for meaningful investments in time-bound, high-accountability, projects to develop breeder and thorium reactors and achieve energy independence in the shortest possible time. Without investing in renewable energy development, the continuing justification by the Prime Minister of nuclear power as the “green” answer for the energy deficit is nonsense. Estimates suggest 35,000 MW from imported reactors will account for only 5% plus of the total energy produced in the country in 2050, a small increase from 2.4% in 2010.  It is a policy geared, it seems, to enriching foreign nuclear suppliers and the “commission”-seeking political class at home and, in the process, to bequeathing India future Fukushimas — Manmohan Singh’s legacy as lasting nightmare.

[Published in ‘Business Today’, April 17, 2011]

Posted in India's strategic thinking and policy, Indian Politics, Nuclear Policy & Strategy, Strategic Relations with the US & West | Leave a comment

Gandhian Guerilla

Posted on October 1, 2011 by Bharat Karnad

‘‘ ‘Twas in truth an hour Of universal ferment; mildest men”, wrote William Wordsworth in his moving poem on the French Revolution, “Were agitated; and Commotions, strife, Of passions and opinion fill’d the walls Of peaceful houses with unquiet sounds The soil of common life was at that time Too hot to tread upon.”

Last week, the common man in India experienced, perhaps, a bit of the excitement that must have gripped Parisiennes and provincials alike in revolutionary France as Anna Hazare brought the Congress Party-led coalition government to its knees. Long used to the comforts of power in a system gilded by corruption it has helped entrench in the country and to popularize among the political class, the Congress party, its coalition partners, the opposition, all nervously hope the extant system somehow survives. But, the Hazare protest gathered critical mass around the country as young and old, sensing the purity of his motive, mobilized behind the 72 year old ex-Army Havaldar.  The initial dismissal of his fast by Kapil Sibal and Abhishek Singhvi, as yet another Jantar Mantar tamasha, turned in short order into abject acceptance of Hazare’s terms – an adjustment in sync with the gathering, but entirely unanticipated, storm.

The Congress Party President Sonia Gandhi apparently weighed the political cost of obduracy against the uncertain outcome of the proposed Jan Lokpal Bill process, and opted prudently for the latter. Sibal believed the Hazare phenomenon was a hollow “media creation”, but nudged by Law Minister Veerappa Moily Prime Minister Manmohan Singh fell in line. The government, however, expects that as co-chair of the joint civil society-government committee drafting the Lokpal Bill, the crafty Pranab Mukherji will cut a deal that will retain for those so inclined among the politically privileged and the armies of facilitator bureaucrats the “perks” of bribe-taking and thievery on the side. All the while, Dr. Singh, who has seen at close quarters how the system has been milked by its minders, predictably sidestepped responsibility. Like Herod, he washed his hands off the mess – the umpteenth time he has done this — by mouthing insincere banalities, such as: “[Corruption] is a scourge that confronts us all.”

By the end of the second day of the fast, it became clear that Hazare was no religious rightwing religious stooge as Singhvi had implied, and that his personalized fight against omniscient corruption had touched a raw public nerve and was fast snowballing into an uncontrollably bad situation for the Congress party. But critics questioned the legitimacy of Hazare’s tactics, railing against the dangers of lawlessness and disorder inherent in seeking system and course correction outside Parliament. Behind the joyous, optimistic, resolute, but determinedly peaceful Movement at Jantar Mantar, it was darkly hinted, hid Jacobin terrors. Such hyperbollicised commentaries missed the obvious.

Anna Hazare is a throwback to the genuine Gandhian, to an age when the Mahatma’s fasts brought British India to a screeching halt even as the colonial authority fretted impotently. The Indian government some seventy years later seems no better equipped to tackle such methods. Hazare’s track record of persuading authorities to comply with demands for probity in public life, combined with a guerrilla sensibility – his insistence that all proceedings of the Joint Committee be videographed was a brilliant move to cut off all avenues of escape and dissimulation by the government – makes him a formidable political protagonist but not a latter day Indian avatar of Maximillien Robespierre, who as head of the dreaded “Committee for Public Safety” unleashed the Jacobin “Reign of Terror” in France of 1792.

Gandhian methods are deeply unsettling to those presiding over the extant order as well as to outsiders who have learned to pull the strings, in the main, because of their unpredictable consequences. Hazare admitted he had not foreseen the mass appeal of his fast-unto-death. But it has spawned unease. Liberal sceptics — in some ways the counterpart of the Girondists in the French Revolution, fear that system overhaul induced by pressures from the street, would cause ruction and instability, undermine the “democratic” functioning of the state, and put the country a step closer to mob rule. Their cry that if Hazare wants change he should contest parliamentary elections, begs the question: How does a reformer get elected without being contaminated by the system and relying on money power and, in any case, as a collective can Parliament sever its moorings and pass laws to banish corrupt practices?  The futile four decade long wait and that too for an Anti-Corruption Bill with more loopholes than restraints, suggests otherwise.

The larger question is the one involving the philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s notion that animated the likes of Robespierre of sovereignty resting with the “General Will” of the people. Mature democracies have evolved to a point where elected legislatures do reflect such Will. In India, once elected, representatives by and large join the ruling class of self-aggrandizers supported by an administrative and legal system that fans their worst instincts. To imagine that the remedies for grave social, economic, and political ills afflicting the country will be generated by this lot is to expect too much.

In the event, Hazare manifests the “General Will” of the people, and his promise of future agitations to shame politicians and compel the system to right itself, may be no bad thing. Indeed, his civil society campaign serves as precisely the check and balance, that Constitutionalists crave, against the venality and “grab as grab can” mentality of many of our elected rulers and their minions in the bureaucracy. True, some of his civil society allies may have dubious antecedents, but they are nowhere as critical to realizing his agenda as Hazare himself. The enduring impact on the polity of his campaign will depend on how it conditions the attitude of the masses to the imperatives of good governance. At a minimum, the youthful activists will be able to recall in tones mirroring Wordsworth’s awe: “Bliss was it in the dawn to be alive But to be young was very heaven!”

[Published in ‘The Asian Age’ & ‘The Deccan Chronicle’, April 14, 2011, at www.asianage.com/columnists/gandhian-guerilla-540 ]

Posted in Indian Politics, Internal Security | Leave a comment

Weak PM, Limp Policy

Posted on October 1, 2011 by Bharat Karnad

Dr. Manmohan Singh, by his own reckoning, is “an accidental prime minister”. That he has no leadership credentials worth talking about, is not a surprise. Install a career economic bureaucrat — he has been successively adviser to the commerce minister, economic adviser to Prime Minister Indira Gandhi – reward for supporting the Emergency, deputy chairman, planning commission, finance secretary, governor, Reserve Bank of India, and financé minister — at 7, Race Course Road, and what you get is Dr Singh, the perfect stopgap PM – something the Congress Party President Sonia Gandhi apparently desired. He has all the obvious virtues. He willingly takes dictation, uncomplainingly accepts everyday humiliations heaped on him as a nominated PM without a political base or constituency, by hard-bitten politicians and cabinet colleagues, and is ready to vacate his post in a trice.

The trouble is Dr Singh’s reputation as the Great Economic Reformer is also bogus. As a senior economic ministry official present at the meetings recalls, when he was asked by Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao in 1992 to produce a “revolutionary” budget, Manmohan Singh offered a draft that was “budget as usual”. An infuriated Mr. Rao, threw down the document and curtly ordered his finance minister to do what was asked of him, namely, configure a scheme to dismantle the license-permit raj and connect the Indian economic system to the globalizing economy. Luckily for his reputation, Prime Minister Narasimha Rao’s initiative worked, and Dr Singh acquired the halo.

It is revealing that in his so far seven years stewardship of the nation, Dr. Singh has not progressed the country beyond the 1992 liberalization threshold. Promises apart, there have been no second stage economic reforms, no revision of labour laws, no new land acquisition norms, no easing of  the bureaucratized functioning of the state to enable business and industry to really take-off and produce wealth for the country (as has happened in China), no nothing. Par for the course, because Dr Manmohan Singh does best when he is given orders that he can implement, but there’s no Narasimha Rao to provide guidance and take political responsibility, only a fractious National Advisory Council running interference, speaking at will, in different tongues, and advancing disparate mainly statist agendas under the aegis of Sonia Gandhi, who has nothing to offer Dr. Singh by way of policy direction or content. Absent a sustained push by the government, such traction as the hugely innovative Indian industrial and business sectors were able to generate, could be maintained for only so long. Predictably, the previously high economic growth rate Dr. Singh ballyhooed to cover up for his do-nothing approach, has dipped to the 7.2% level, and slumping.

With Manmohan Singh at the helm, the inevitable has come to pass elsewhere as well. With the central political will and programmatic thrust missing, foreign and national security policies have, for some time now, been auto-piloting into the doldrums. An opinionated National Security Adviser – M.K. Narayanan, who knew little about strategic issues, understood even less, but had strong views about everything and was particularly susceptible to  American flattery and blandishments that secured for the US the nuclear deal, was replaced by the smooth-talking Shiv Shankar Menon, who was ushered into the post straight from the Foreign Secretary’s seat. At External Affairs, meanwhile, Minister S.M. Krishna spends more time, it is said, adjusting his wig in his vast office than in running the Ministry, assuming he is aware of what his senior officers are up to. This last cannot be vouched for because NSA Menon at the PMO continues to run foreign policy, in the main, because Nirupama Rao, who succeeded him simply does not have the gumption to cut him off. The result is one of the weakest MEA setups in years – an out-of-his-depth Minister relying on a Foreign Secretary with a not so stellar career graph overseeing satraps manning the regional desks who are conflicted but wary enough to also report to the NSA. In all these shenanigans, what’s missing are any clear directives from the Prime Minister, the PMO, or even the NSA. Having barely survived the civilian nuclear deal with the United States in 2008 and then stepping into a storm he had unwittingly unleashed at home owing to concessions he allegedly made to his Pakistani counterpart, Reza Gilani, at Sharm al-Sheikh, Manmohan Singh is in no mood to take chances.

On the other side of South Block, sits the Defence Minister, the very proper A.K. Antony, Buddha-like, mouthing Boy Scout homilies to military commanders, working on a one-point principle: No defence deal with the slightest trace of corruption. In the event, the well-oiled payoffs system has gone deeper underground, doling out rewards to helpful uniformed Service officers and Defence Ministry officials alike. Alas, how can a bordello do business with the Madame insisting there can be no hanky-panky?  It has eventuated in purchases of, for instance, the M-4777 howitzer from the US Foreign Military Sales programme where Washington plays the middleman. Except India has ended up with less effective artillery to outfit the new offense-capable Mountain Divisions at a higher price than the light, long-range gun Singapore Kinetics Limited, blacklisted for minor bribery, had offered, inclusive of simulators and assembly line relocated to India at no additional cost.

As the government lurches from scam to scandal and Manmohan twiddles his thumbs, Home Minister C. Chidambaram, sensing the vacuum, has busily extended his turf, managing to make himself at once the intelligence and the internal security czar. Except his bureaucratic empire-building has not produced results. The National Intelligence Grid (Natgrid) is only partially functional because the reluctance of the intelligence agencies to share information hides behind flaws in the system interlinks. The National Counter-Terrorism Centre (NCTC), some three years after 26/11 is still at the talking stage, a “concept paper” doing the rounds, Chidambaram doing nothing to inject a sense of urgency into the proceedings. On the Naxal front there is desultory operations underway, except with army encampments especially in Jharkhand and Chattisgarh portions of the “red corridor” – the one big innovation and success story, Maoist excesses are tapering off in that region, signal for the concerned agencies of government to slip into infructuous debates, for instance, over whether and how to employ combat aircraft in anti-Naxal operations, which has the Air Force fuming. But, didn’t the Chief of the Air Staff, Air Chief Marshal S.P. Tyagi, pitching for the Hawk jet trainer some years back, justify this multi-billion dollar acquisition from Britain on the basis that this aircraft could also be deployed in the COIN (COunter INsurgency) role?

Half way into its second term, the UPA-II government is paralyzed and the country’s foreign and external and internal security policies are in a state of petrified animation. A non-functioning PM, a laid back External Affairs Minister, a corruption-fixated Defence Minister, and an aggrandizing Home Minister, may make for a dramatic tableau, but not for successful policy or effective governance.

[Published in ‘The New Indian Express’, June 16, 2011, at http://expressbuzz/op-ed/opinion/weak-pm-limp-policy/284622.html ]

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

Nuclear borderline

Posted on October 1, 2011 by Bharat Karnad

Ever year, come January the Indian and Pakistani governments exchange lists of nuclear facilities (along with their coordinates), that each side undertakes not to attack in case of hostilities. Presumably, new power stations and other sensitive nuclear military-related installations are added to the lists as and when these go on stream. This is a civilized way of dealing with an adversarial fellow nuclear weapons-state. It provides some assurance that, even in the most volatile situations, neither government will slip in actions to make bad situations infinitely worse. It is an aim that’ll be furthered by the Foreign Secretaries presently meeting in Islamabad discussing other nuclear confidence-building measures (CBMs) and, more importantly, ways to foster links between the Indian and Pakistani militaries.

That vulnerable nuclear power stations provide attractive military targets  is an issue I have plumbed in my writings. It was a problem that troubled NATO and Warsaw Pact member-states during the Cold War for which the protagonists found no solution such as the one India and Pakistan have devised. Bennett Ramberg, a sometime official in the George W Bush Administration, in the 1970s had first voiced the danger of nuclear power plants located in or near Western European cities proving high-value targets in the first wave of Soviet attacks were the Cold War to turn hot.

In the subcontinental context, the worrisome question is this: Notwithstanding any agreement with India prohibiting such strikes, will the Pakistan army be able to resist the temptation of hitting or holding hostage proliferating Indian nuclear power stations per Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s ill-thought out plan to produce 40,000 MW of nuclear energy by 2050? Indeed, considering the disproportionate payoffs that could accrue to Pakistan, not so much from taking them out as holding these power plants hostage to “good behaviour” on the battlefield, meaning, India’s not exploiting, say, such advantage as has been obtained by its conventional forces.  Assuming GHQ, Rawalpindi, will not pass up this stratagem in war, it is best Indian war planners take such a contingency seriously.

What is the best antidote to such thinking? Construct a string of nuclear power plants at sites along the border with Pakistan so as to neutralize the remotest chance of the Pakistan Nuclear Command Authority considering such strikes in the first place.  The reasons why Pakistan will shrink from attacking nuclear power plants on the border are obvious enough. There is no way of guaranteeing that the plumes of radioactivity arising from damaged nuclear power stations will not drift across to affect the Pakistani heartland of the Punjab. This prospect will also deter Pakistan from launching missile salvos at bunched reactors in the Indian hinterland, because should Pakistan opt for “total war”, the more reactors on the border the better, paradoxically, the chance these will not be hit.  The other reason Pakistan will desist from striking nuclear power plants is that it has a number of the Chinese-built nuclear complexes at Chashma and Khushab, and the civilian nuclear power plant in Karachi that are readily available as targets. The certainty of like response to Indian reactors being struck will incentivize the Pakistan army and its directorate of Inter-Services Intelligence to keep close tabs on the terrorist outfits they have nurtured lest, in their zeal, they mount such an attack and start an affray that will end up costing Pakistan dearer than anything Pakistani strikes can inflict.

The Nuclear Power Corporation Ltd. has already identified several sites in Indian Punjab to host high-yield nuclear power plants. Rajasthan and Gujarat too have been scouted for this purpose. It will not be difficult to tweak the plans a bit to ensure that most of these reactors are located in the border zone. Who can deny Punjab, Rajasthan, and Gujarat, need nuclear power? This strategy will turn potential nuclear hostages for Pakistan into counter-hostages against Pakistan within this country.  Such ruses may seem hard and bloody-minded to the Nervous Nellies populating the Indian government at the political leadership and bureaucratic levels, and, perhaps, even the Indian armed services (not to mention the Commentariat in the Indian media). But, as history shows, preparing for the worst usually prevents the worst from happening — a lesson India seems terminally incapable of learning.

In the nuclear context, it is not clear what additional CBMs Nirupama Rao and Salman Bashir discussed. But Raja Menon and Lalit Mansingh, involved in officially-sponsored Track-II dialogue, have revealed one particular issue that, perhaps, was on the agenda, to do with the mutual withdrawal of the early generation short-range ballistic missiles – Prithvi-I, Abdali, Ghaznavi.  The trouble with formalizing reciprocal actions using a diplomatic agreement is that it accords Pakistan parity with India in the nuclear realm that Islamabad has been seeking for many years, and sets a precedent. As part of second-stage CBMs, for instance, it will hugely complicate arriving at mutually acceptable nuclear force-size and quality levels considering that the Indian strategic deterrent is primarily keyed to the China threat, and Pakistan’s fears are India-centric.

It would have more advisable if, as I have advocated in my 2002 book — Nuclear Weapons and Indian Security: The Realist Foundations of Strategy,  India had unilaterally withdrawn the nuclearized Prithvi-I batteries from deployed status on the western border, as a means of diluting Pakistan’s mistrust and inspiring confidence. This symbolically and politically potent gesture would have reassured the Pakistan army and people without India in any way conceding an equal nuclear status for Pakistan. Moreover, it would have been a safe thing to do because all potential target-sets within Pakistan can be reached by the longer range Agni missiles fired from hinterland launch points.

The fact is positioning the Prithvi-I at the forward edge of the battlefield – whichever genius thought that up — is a damn fool idea; worse, an obvious tripwire neither the existing situation nor the correlation of forces warrant. That the Indian government actually ordered such deployment and it has been in place for over a decade suggests a void in official thinking where substantive nuclear military knowledge ought to be.

[Published in ‘The Asian Age’ & ‘The Deccan Chronicle’ on June 23, 2011, at www.asianage.com/columnists/nuclear-borderline-071 ]

Posted in India's Pakistan Policy, India's strategic thinking and policy, Nuclear Policy & Strategy, Nuclear Weapons | Leave a comment

A Flying Lemon

Posted on October 1, 2011 by Bharat Karnad

The anger and angst in Washington policy circles when the US fighter planes — the Lockheed Martin F-16IN and the Boeing F-18 Super Hornet — did not make it to the Indian Air Force’s Medium-range Multi-Role Combat Aircraft (MMRCA) shortlist was something to behold. It was as if a done deal had been ditched by an ungrateful Indian government reneging on rewards promised the United States for the latter’s efforts in easing India’s entry on to the verandah of the five-country nuclear weapons club – the self-appointed guardians of the global order, and putting it outside the pale of the technology sanctions regime overseen by the Nuclear Suppliers Group.

The American incomprehension with the Indian decision is itself incomprehensible. Lockheed and Boeing actually believed they could win the MMRCA race with products of late Sixties vintage jazzed up with a downgraded Raytheon APG-79 (or even a de-rated “81”) version of the Active Electronically Scanned Array (AESA) radar. The Indian Air Force is not the most advanced, its leadership has its limitations, but damned if it doesn’t know when it is being palmed off with goods long past their sell-by date. It didn’t help that, as enticement, Lockheed offered a “one for one” replacement for the F-16, a decade or two from now, with the Joint Strike Fighter – F-35 Lightning II – the Company is in the process of rolling out to its customers, and which aircraft is precisely the kind the IAF would have loved to fly in early to mid-21st century. As it turned out, the French Rafale and the EADS Typhoon Eurofighter more nearly fit the bill.

To my consternated acquaintances in Washington, who sought an explanation, I offered an analogy. Some two decades back, the Daimler-Benz car Company entered the Indian market with older Mercedes models, perhaps, convinced that the cash-rich yokels would splash good money for anything with the three cornered star on the bonnet. The cars, by and large, remained unsold and the investment in production jigs and tools in their factory in Pune went waste. The German Company quickly made course correction, revamped its operations until now when the newest model cars available in Dusseldorf can be found in Delhi showrooms.

Had the US the wit to dangle the F-35, the IAF would have snapped it up with the US-friendly Prime Minister Manmohan Singh hurrahing the decision along. The American Companies opted instead to squeeze some last few dollars out of the long running F-16s and F-18s at the end of their useful life, and paid the price for it. But why are the Americans squawking? The Indian government has tried to pacify the US defence industry by buying the heavy lift transport plane, the  C-17, the military rationale for which purchase is weak, and for C-130s the smaller, more versatile, transport aircraft, which IAF should have bought more of. Indeed, 20-25 C-130s could have been bought for the $4.5 billion price tag of ten C-17s. The point is the total monies expended for these two aircraft will equal, even exceed, the initial $11 billion cost of the MMRCA.  With the MiG-35 rejected, the Russians too have been mollified by the multi-billion dollar contract for joint development of the 5th generation fighter.

That aspect apart, the addition of three new lines for servicing and support of the chosen MMRCA, C-17 and C-130 to the existing separate infrastructures in place to maintain 27 other types of aircraft already in the air force inventory, will mean the immeasurable worsening of an already unmanageable logistics setup. This apparently does not concern the IAF brass and even less the generalist bureaucrats manning the Defence Ministry, who are habitually clueless about anything remotely military-technical, but whose “advice” the Raksha Mantri relies on to make decisions!

A slight digression this, but the C-17s are expected to be tasked, per IAF’s rationale, to carry tanks to forward battlefields – one tank to a plane — with China. But experts who know about aircraft and have visited Daulat Beg Oldi, Thoise and other forward bases reasonably claim that landing the C-17 in any of these places would strip the surface of the existing air fields. Then again, does the Army really plan on deploying heavy tanks by air to fight the Chinese on the Himalayan uplands, when there’s the relatively easier land route via the ‘Demchok Triangle’ for such armoured vehicles to debouch on to the Tibetan plateau? And, in any case, shouldn’t the Defence Research & Development Organization and the Avadi tank factory be forward-looking enough to design a light, more lethally armed, tank for offensive warfare by the Light Mountain Divisions in the high-altitude desert conditions of Tibet? A slight digression this, but the C-17s are expected to be tasked, per IAF’s rationale, to carry tanks to forward battlefields – one tank to a plane — with China. But experts who know about aircraft and have visited Daulat Beg Oldi, Thoise and other forward bases reasonably claim that landing the C-17 in any of these places would strip the surface of the existing air fields. Then again, does the Army really plan on deploying heavy tanks by air to fight the Chinese on the Himalayan uplands, when there’s the relatively easier land route via the ‘Demchok Triangle’ for such armoured vehicles to debouch on to the Tibetan plateau? And, in any case, shouldn’t the Defence Research & Development Organization and the Avadi tank factory be forward-looking enough to design a light, more lethally armed, tank for offensive warfare by the Light Mountain Divisions in the high-altitude desert conditions of Tibet?

But to return to the deals for the American transport aircraft that are connected to the MMRCA decision, isn’t a biggish fleet of multi-purpose C-130s better suited generally for logistics purposes than a few very large military cargo carriers? Unless the idea is to placate both the Boeing Company by buying the C-17s and the Lockheed Company by  going in for the C-130s. Then again, the Indian government seems to be in the business of sustaining foreign defence industries. To the list of Russian, French and  Israeli defence industries prospering from Indian largesse, one can now include the US defence industry.

But to return to the deals for the American transport aircraft that are connected to the MMRCA decision, isn’t a biggish fleet of multi-purpose C-130s better suited generally for logistics purposes than a few very large military cargo carriers? Unless the idea is to placate both the Boeing Company by buying the C-17s and the Lockheed Company by  going in for the C-130s. Then again, the Indian government seems to be in the business of sustaining foreign defence industries. To the list of Russian, French and  Israeli defence industries prospering from Indian largesse, one can now include the US defence industry. That aspect apart, the addition of three new lines for servicing and support of the chosen MMRCA, C-17 and C-130 to the existing separate infrastructures in place to maintain 27 other types of aircraft already in the air force inventory, is now mandated. That this will immeasurably worsen an already unmanageable logistics setup, seems not to concern anybody, not the Air Force brass dominated by combat fliers, not the generalist bureaucrats manning the Defence Ministry, who are clueless  about anything remotely military-technical, but whose “advice” the Raksha Mantri relies on to make decisions.

This brings the discussion to the two favoured aircraft – the French Rafale and the EADS (European Aeronautic Defence and Space) Company’s Typhoon. Whatever the merits/de-merits of these two planes, the fact is the sale to India will save either the Dassault Company and the French aviation sector from going under or throw a lifeline to the four country European consortium producing the Typhoon that an expert acquaintance dismissed as an aircraft “Germany doesn’t want, Britain can’t afford, and Spain and Italy neither want nor can afford!” Given the record of visionless and spineless Indian negotiators, who are either bought off or are satisfied with near nothings, such as technology licensing arrangements, there is every likelihood that, despite being in an advantageous position, India will end up getting a raw deal.

[Published in ‘The Asian Age’& ‘The Deccan Chronicle’, May 26, 2011, at www.asianage.com/columnists/bharat-karnad-067]

Posted in Great Power imperatives, India's strategic thinking and policy, Indian Air Force, Relations with Russia, Strategic Relations with the US & West | Leave a comment

Terror of Apathy

Posted on October 1, 2011 by Bharat Karnad

The terror bombings in Mumbai – by now a periodic occurrence – are like the cyclones that hit India’s east coast every other year which nobody can do much about. Like in earlier instances, this time around too, it has engendered the usual mea culpas of “There was failure but we’ll do better next time”-kind accompanied by the sight of befuddled politicians and frowning, file-carrying, bureaucrats scurrying about accomplishing much of nothing. Is there any excuse for the lack of in-built redundancy in the communications net that had the Maharashtra Chief Minister Prithviraj Chauhan cut off from the various security agencies for the critical quarter of an hour and more after the carnage started, forcing him to rely on television reports to clue him to the bombings?

Chauhan in Mumbai and Manmohan Singh in New Delhi and everybody in between in position of authority ended up one way or another blaming “the system” for the failure, as if the “system” was something separate from those manning and presiding over it. Political leaders form the core and are apex level decision-makers.  But as the record of sustained misgovernance and non-governance that is increasingly becoming the norm shows, they are more interested in wringing lucre and political advantage out of it, than doing the people or the country any good. While entirely responsible for the mess they have created, they are loath to own up to failure, leave alone face punishment. So, mistakes, muddles, mayhem, malfeasance, scams, scandals, rail accidents, and horrid infrastructure are all readily attributed to weaknesses in “the system” as are the outcomes of deliberate acts of omission and commission by them. The resulting unpredictable, personalised, and ad hoc functioning of government and police agencies, in fact, is what marks out India, notwithstanding the hoo-ha about its being a big emerging market and potential great power, as just another run-of-the-mill disorganized and mismanaged Third World state in no way meriting a place amongst the elite nations.

How much of a Third World state? Well, comparing India and Pakistan using the “Failed States Index 2011”-data provides perspective sorely lacking in most analyses. Pakistan is ranked 12th in the list of failed states topped by Somalia, Chad, and Sudan in the seventh edition of this Index released last month in Washington, DC. This is an improvement over its 9th place finish in 2009. India is ranked 76th – actually dropping down three places from 79th a year ago. Pakistan earns its dubious honour owing to what is judged to be “poor” quality of civil service and police resulting in bad administration and even worse law and order situation, and “weak” political leadership and judiciary.  More specifically, as regards “group grievance” which accounts for violence and strife in society, and insurgency and secessionism, on a scale of 10, Pakistan scores 9.3 to India’s 8.2 – not that much behind a country habitually referred by the Indian political class and the commentariat as a “failed state”. The two countries are both rated 8.5 where “uneven development” is concerned, and graded about the same in the quality of their “public services” – 7.3 for Pakistan to 7.2 for India.  On the whole though, Pakistan is deemed to be in “critical” condition and India is declared “borderline”.

Just why India barely passes muster is best explained by considering what the Indian and state governments have not done since the 26/11 terror strike. Nearly three years on, few of the recommendations for streamlining intelligence gathering and dissemination, upgrading police capabilities, and structural reforms in the law and order apparatus have actually been implemented, with the decision processes mired in turf battles and bureaucratic wrangling. Such actions as were realized like acquiring armed armoured boats for Mumbai inshore water policing, for instance, has been  neutered by not providing adequate fuel for patrolling and allowing these expensive assets to rot. The problem at one level is the sheer multiplicity of organizations and agencies tasked with the same job without a clear authority line. It has led to each of these units working, if at all, at cross purposes with the others. It is a perfect setup for “pass the buck and blame”-game that invariably follows in a crisis. It permits everybody to escape accountability.  With the Congress Party both running Maharashtra and ruling in Delhi, in theory, there ought to be less reason for the official haplessness on display as was the case after the 26/11 attack and, again, in the wake of the July 13 terror bombings. In practice, it does not matter. Mumbai may as well be another country.

P. Chidambaram, the Union Home Minister, about as effective as the Maharashtra Home Minister R.R. Patil, was elevated to the sole command over all internal security programs and the plethora of Intelligence outfits. Despite being aware of the immanence of the terrorist threat, he has not thought it necessary to order the line agencies into realizing on the double – and no nonsense about it — corrective measures, such as the national grid for intelligence information, he had accorded priority after 26/11.  However, the NATGRID that was supposed to be the one point source for authoritative and continually updated information Central and State police and other relevant agencies can access and act on in real-time basis is still only an abstraction, providing grist for inter-agency squabbles. The formal excuse is that the Paper outlining this information coordination and diffusion mechanism is being evaluated. But shouldn’t Chidambaram have cracked the whip and brought closure to this interminable file-pushing and fighting  a long time back?

This brings the discussion to the nub of the problem: the unwillingness of ministers and political leaders in the loop to take hard decisions, because doing so will deny them the escape route should things going wrong. Their reluctance to hammer a more effective law and order arrangement into place is also because a large number of politicians everywhere are involved in collusive criminality with the underworld.  In Mumbai and Maharashtra, they have links with the Dawood Ibrahim gang and, indirectly the Pakistan Inter-Services Intelligence. Talk of enemy at the gate. He is inside the house.

[Published in ‘The AsianAge’ & ‘The Deccan Chronicle’, July 21, 2011, at www.asianage.com/columnists/terror-apathy-873 ]

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