India tested, found wanting

Posted on May 3, 2013 by Bharat Karnad

A Chinese military move seriously to test India’s resolve has been on the cards for a long time now. But, this is only a gambit by Beijing to see what level of provocation will get the Indian government to act, and a means to establish a baseline for future actions. Alas, the Chinese planners misjudged how much soft tissue there is in India’s China policy, and foreign and defence policies generally, where spine should be.

From the first, the China Study Group (CSG) headed by the National Security Adviser and old China-hand, Shivshankar Menon, which fuels the Ministry of External Affairs’ thinking on the subject and dictates the government’s response whenever China heaves into view, decreed that the brazen armed intrusion be soft-pedalled. Thus, the depth of penetration in the Depsang Valley in Ladakh by People’s Liberation Army troops was initially stated as 8 km, before this figure was revised to 10 km and later 19 km. Now, 19 km is not a distance that small military units “stray across” as much as it is ground covered in a directed mission and yet, the junior minister in the Home Ministry managing the Chinese border with some miserable paramilitary maintained it was a mere “incursion”, not armed “intrusion”. By such hair-splitting is the Manmohan Singh government determined to do nothing?

China, in the meantime, adopted its standard stance when disrupting peace on undemarcated land and sea borders. It refused to acknowledge there was any such intrusion. When the PLA presence at Raki Nullah could no longer be denied, it stood the incident on its head by accusing the Indian Army of “aggressive patrolling”, and followed up by offering a fantastical trade-off: India ceases construction of necessary border military infrastructure and mothballs the advanced landing fields in the area in return for the status quo ante.

All the while, Beijing took its cues from excuses the MEA offered for the Chinese outrage, saying it arose from “differing perceptions” of where the LAC lay. The MEA minister, Salman Khurshid, revealing his cosmetological skills, then referred to the Chinese ingress as acne that can be cured with “ointment”.

With the offensively-disposed Chinese military units inside Indian territory, it was again the CSG-MEA that offered Beijing a reason to stay put, saying the Chinese should be provided a “face-saving” way out of the mess they created by repairing to the negotiating table, whereupon the Chinese government promptly called for talks to restore peace. It is little wonder China sees India as a punching bag, an easy target to bully and badger.

The conclusion cannot any longer be avoided that either the China Study Group constitutes a Chinese fifth column at the heart of the Indian government, or is staffed by idiot savants. The classic illustration of an idiot savant is a mentally challenged person who can memorise the numbers on the wagons in a freight train rattling past his house, but does not know how to tie his shoelaces or, in this case, can read Confucius’ Analects in the original but is unable to see a straight forward land-grab for what it is — loss of national territory. The mostly Mandarin-speaking diplomats and experts in CSG seem so overawed by China they cannot resist acting as Beijing’s B Team.

At heart, the problem is that the 1962 war so institutionally rattled the MEA they still act groggy from that blow fifty years after the event and cannot recall just how military success was gained against the Chinese PLA, most recently in the 1986 Somdurong Chu incident. Having espied a PLA unit on the Indian side of LAC, General K. Sundarji airlifted troops, surrounded the Chinese encampment, placed artillery on the nearby heights ready to reduce the Chinese position to rubble, and tented a unit just 10 metres from the Chinese camp (not 500 metres as is bandied about in the present case in official circles).

It was an initiative, incidentally, the then army chief took disregarding procedure and not consulting the MEA or anyone else in government, whence its success. It unnerved the Chinese who sued for peace.

In contrast, the present army chief, General Bikram Singh who, by repeatedly parroting the government assertion over the past year that China poses no threat and all’s well on that front, in fact, pre-empted any action that Headquarters Northern Army or Leh-based 14 Corps could have instantly taken to vacate the presence of the Chinese troops, and imposed costs on PLA for this little adventure. But subordinate commanders taking their cue from the chief did nothing. The Prime Minister then compounded the trouble by reiterating the MEA-CSG line that this is but a “localised” incident.

Nineteen days into this affair, General Bikram reportedly briefed the Cabinet Committee on Security about prospective actions, such as severing supply links, etc. Except, has he planned on what he’ll do when PLA helicopters or logistics truck convoys turn up to replenish the food and water stocks? Shoot down the ’çopters and destroy the trucks. Fine. Then, is the army prepared for a bigger fight? 14 Corps can mount a divisional-level action easily, but will require immediate airlifting of another division as reserve. Moreover, half a brigade’s worth of army units should forthwith descend on the PLA-occupied site, raze their camp, and physically push the PLA soldiers back on to their side, and no nonsense about it. If this is not done, a permanent realignment of LAC is on the cards in this strategically important tri-junction area.

Much worse, instead of showing self-respect and brio, and making the new Chinese premier Li Keqiang’s proposed Delhi visit in end-May conditional on immediate PLA pullback, Khurshid is planning to fly to Beijing to ensure Li keeps his date in Delhi and to ask the Chinese to withdraw, pretty please! It is as if China is the aggrieved party and needs placation.

Appeasement never pays; it only emboldens belligerent states to become more demanding. China has proved this time and again, but it is doubtful the CSG-MEA and the Indian government even know what the national interest is, or where it lies.

[Published in the ‘New Indian Express’ May 3, 2013 at http://newindianexpress.com/opinion/India-tested-found-wanting/2013/05/03/article1572158.ece

Posted in Asian geopolitics, China, China military, Geopolitics, Great Power imperatives, India's China Policy, India's strategic thinking and policy, Indian Air Force, Indian Army, Indian para-military forces, South Asia | 13 Comments

Faultlines in Defence Production

Posted on April 26, 2013 by Bharat Karnad

The Indian Air Force has been clever over the years in a petty sort of way. Short-range or medium-range combat aircraft and so on are uniquely IAF nomenclature; no other Air Force has such categories. In the age of aerial tankers, describing warplanes by their radii of action is a distraction.

Forty years ago the IAF invented another category of warplanes — “deep penetration and strike aircraft”, which permitted the purchase of Jaguar. The IAF sees this sort of thing as a harmless ruse to serve its interest. The multiplicity of combat aircraft thus procured allows, the service believes, for it to have in crises at least some squadrons in its fleet not subject to sanctions or the spares-and-servicing tourniquet, which supplier countries in greater or lesser measure always apply, depending on their foreign policy goals and national interests of the moment, and which tool of manipulation is now legitimated by the recent Arms Trade Treaty.

This policy of buying aircraft from diverse sources was first articulated in a 2006 note from Air Headquarters (AHQ) to the ministry of defence (MoD), which stated that the requirement for a sub-30-ton fully loaded combat aircraft was being deliberately proposed to escape the Russian stranglehold, and avoid going in for more Sukhoi-30 MKIs or the upgraded variant the “Super” Sukhois. Thus, Rafale passed the spurious test, clocking in at 27 tons. Of course, the IAF-invented range-dictated categories serve another purpose. They confuse generalist civil servants in the MoD and convince clueless politicians that there are big gaps in combat aircraft numbers which need filling.

In this game of “fool you, fool me”, where the IAF is being jerked around by supplier countries, the threat to national security stays unaddressed. IAF is principally to blame, of course. But the inability of the Aeronautical Development Agency (ADA) and other Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) units tasked with aircraft and on-board systems designs, and the sheer incompetence of Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd (HAL) are equally responsible. So criminally negligent has HAL been that in all the years it assembled a variety of MiG-21s, MiG-27s, MiG-29s, and the Jaguar, and the power plants for each of these aircraft at its Koraput factory, it failed to maintain a database. In other words, for all the licence manufacturing it has done over the years, by failing to compile how every component in the aircraft and in the engines does what and how, it has learnt nothing. Had HAL maintained a database of all the items it has put together, the country by now would have had the built-up capability to manufacture the Tejas Mk-I and Mk-II on the run. But this defence public sector unit has reduced itself to an adjunct of supplier companies. That top HAL leadership has not been brought to account on this score and that the Indian taxpayer continues funding such profligacy only reflects the state of things.

DRDO, on its part, has prospered by creating illusion. Other than in certain areas, such as in writing sophisticated software and devising complex algorithms to drive military systems, DRDO projects are mostly scams. Behind every project that’s touted for realising “self-sufficiency” lies imported technology in some guise. In fact, it has been so grossly inept in not insisting on total transfer of technology from its partners that foreign defence firms happily strike deals in which Indian monies fund the development of state-of-the-art technology in other countries but get nothing out of it except finished high-cost products. It is not the fault of the supplier firms that DRDO has proved so inattentive, gullible, and plain reckless with public monies. Take for example the advanced medium-range and long-range missile systems supposedly being collaboratively developed with Israel. Except in striking a contract for Rs15,000 crore, DRDO settled for only a work-share arrangement and that too to fabricate the low-value backend of these missile systems, with the Israeli company retaining the intellectual property rights on all the technology so developed. A similar deal for a short-range missile system with Dassault Aviation has just been signed and another Rs`30,000 crore is consequently going down the drain. Because in this business suckers are not given an even chance, the foreign companies can hardly be blamed for exploiting DRDO’s unwillingness to leverage India’s financial subsidy to obtain full proprietary and production rights for all technologies generated in such projects. So what is the department of defence finance doing other than sleeping on the job?

If DRDO brass were to be hauled up, it would be like pulling out a foundational stone that could bring the whole fraudulent public sector defence industrial edifice that, notwithstanding its claims, has produced no original technology after the Marut HF-24 in the 1970s, tumbling down. It is the reason why the Naresh Chandra Committee’s recommendation that the offices of scientific adviser to defence minister, head of DRDO, and secretary defence R&D be separated, may never get implemented. There are too many vested interests in the armed services, DRDO, and DPSUs who have it good to want this situation to change.

Coming back to Rafale, had Reliance Aerospace gone about it the right way it could have emulated Larsen & Tubro (L&T), which has indigenously developed the engineering, tooling, and manufacturing capability to locally produce everything from nuclear-powered and conventional submarines of any design to artillery systems. This proactive attitude to build up its all-round capability means it is in a position to benefit from “transfer of technology” portions of deals for high-value weapons platforms India has signed in the past two decades, and very quickly to absorb foreign technologies India pays for but which, owing to the complete inability and incompetence of defence public sector units, has to-date not capitalised on. We are talking cumulatively of waste now reaching the thousand billion dollar-level.

If the L&T business model is too onerous, Reliance Aerospace, instead of turning itself into a mere cog in the Dassault Aviation machine by channelling payoffs to the right quarters in the ruling party to lubricate the Rafale deal, could have tried to buy off large chunks of the Rafale-maker, Dassault Aviation itself, as the Tatas have done by purchasing the South African company Denel’s entire 155mm/52 calibre Howitzer line. That might have been the second-best strategy to become a commercially viable defence production entity in double-quick time and do right by the country as well.

[Published as “Zero for DRDO” in the ‘Ásian Age’ on April 26, 2013 at http://www.asianage.com/columnists/zero-drdo-089 and in the ‘Deccan Chronicle’ at http://www.deccanchronicle.com/130426/commentary-columnists/commentary/zero-drdo

Posted in Asian geopolitics, civil-military relations, Defence Industry, DRDO, Europe, Great Power imperatives, India's strategic thinking and policy, indian policy -- Israel, Iran and West Asia, Military Acquisitions, Missiles, South Asia, Technology transfer | 3 Comments

Abusing secularism

Posted on April 23, 2013 by Bharat Karnad

Without getting into the philosophical antecedents of secularism, at its core is the separation of religion and state. In democracies, however, the religious affiliation of voters creates problems if a vocal minority defines its political identity in religious terms, as has happened with the large Muslim community in India.

Indian Muslims are as diverse and vote as differently and along self-interest lines as other citizens do. But political parties have found it convenient to create a persona of a Muslim voter who cares less for economic opportunities available to him and his offspring to make good in the world than for such advantages as the state exclusively bestows on him as a member of a minority faith.

Of course, these advantages are ephemeral because should the parties waving the secular flag overdo their supposedly secularist credo, an apprehensive majority would either vote them out or prevent them from gaining power, which no political party wants to risk.

Thus, secularism is reduced to grand promises and symbolic gestures that achieve nothing substantive for Muslims and other minorities than a fleeting sense of being catered to. This is politics reduced to religious identity, and identity to mere slogans.

The NDA allies, such as the Janata Dal (U), will grudgingly accept Modi as PM because Nitish Kumar needs BJP support to rule in Bihar. Were he to succumb to Congress blandishments, his government may get temporary reprieve but will be forever tainted with its new association and have its personality submerged in the Congress party’s larger image, and will find itself as another regional party tied to Congress party’s apron strings.

The credibility Nitish now commands as a principled politician will be instantly lost. Talking of principles and the “rajdharma” Narendra-bhai is supposed to have not followed in 2002. It must be recognised that he was in power for only a couple of months and just beginning to get a handle on the levers of state government when the Godhra train burning sparked the anti-Muslim riots. The accusation, in the event, that he didn’t do all that he could have to stop the carnage nor show “magnanimity” towards the victims, is to lose perspective.

Secularism spouted by the Congress Party sounds offensive considering that helmed by Rajiv Gandhi in 1984 it oversaw the cold-blooded mass killings of the Sikhs in the Capital, with the numbers of those killed exceeding by far the numbers of dead Muslims killed in Gujarat 18 years later.

The ostensible reason for this anti-Sikh pogrom, it may be recalled, was to “teach” the Sikh community “a lesson” reflecting the spitefulness the Congress is known for. In the aftermath, its henchmen tasked for the dirty job, such as Jagdish Tytler, took the rap and, over the years, have been allowed to “twist slowly in the wind”.

The revival by the courts of the case against Tytler also highlights the differences in the two atrocities. Godhra was a horrendous event and the horrific instant reaction to it against Muslims generally, suggested a breakdown of law and order which even the strongest leader would have found hard to contain in the face of an aroused public. The Delhi massacres, on the other hand, were calculated targeting of persons of a community by the Congress-run central and state governments in an area — the Union Territory of Delhi — which size-wise is a small fraction of Gujarat. If maintenance of law and order is a function of size, then keeping order in Delhi should have been a snap.

But the goons were on the street and ran amuck because they were expressly encouraged by the ruling Congress party to wreak bloody vengeance, which they did. If Narendra Modi can so readily be pilloried for not exercising his authority, what about Rajiv Gandhi’s role in the murders of thousands of Sikhs he legitimated with his bone-chilling statement: “When a large tree falls, the earth shakes”? For the Congress party to claim secularist credentials, in the event and, further, sit on judgment of Modi, is not just rich but farcical.

It is in this milieu of moral relativism, that the JD (U) Central Committee’s deliberations last weekend must be judged. If this party is upset that Modi failed “to discharge his duty” during the riots, then it is a fairly mild response to deter the BJP from possibly anointing the Gujarat strongman as its prime ministerial candidate in 2014. It is also loose enough wording to allow JD(U) to escape the tight corner it has painted itself into.

It is in no position to do much were Rajnath Singh to explain to Nitish Modi that, like other parties, BJP will choose its prime minister after it crosses the 170-180 mark of the Lok Sabha seats. At that tipping point, the smaller parties, including JD(U) will have the choice of rallying to BJP’s standard, coalescing around the Congress Party reduced to 135-140 Members of Parliament, or forming a Third Front with outside help. With Congress more inclined to be the prop for such a regime, the smaller parties bickering among themselves with the sad sack, Mulayam Singh, in the van, will find themselves in the position Charan Singh’s government did in 1981, and will be fated to suffer the same ignominious end when the Congress kicks the support from underneath it.

The general elections that follow this fiasco will be the decisive one and there’s little doubt Modi’s BJP will be hoisted into power by a clear majority.

Facing this prospect, will the JD(U) still split from the BJP, paving the way for the return of the abominable Lalu Yadav in Patna? Nitish can posture all he wants, but JD(U) and the other parties constituting the National Democratic Alliance cannot avoid the trend that is set to make Modi stronger, not weaker, in the years to come. The December deadline, however, permits Nitish and his cohort to consider the trade-offs in staying with BJP or striking out on an unpredictable path partnering the Congress party, which will leave the JD(U) cannibalised.

[Pub;ished in the ‘New Indian Express’ April 22, 2013 at http://newindianexpress.com/opinion/Abusing-secularism/2013/04/22/article1555277.ece

Posted in Indian ecobomic situation, Indian Politics, Internal Security, South Asia | 4 Comments

Scrap Rafale, Viva Tejas!

Posted on April 11, 2013 by Bharat Karnad

The credibility of WikiLeaks has never been questioned. The WikiLeaks documents that reveal Rajiv Gandhi’s role as a commission agent for the Swedish defence major Saab-Scania peddling its Viggen combat aircraft to the Indian Air Force in the mid- to late-Seventies, only confirms the centrality of middlemen in defence deals.

It sets the context for the commission-mongering in the contracts for the German HDW submarine after Indira Gandhi’s return to power, for the Swedish Bofors gun during Rajiv Gandhi’s prime ministership, and in the subsequent high value deals approved by the Congress coalition government since 2005.

The IAF sought an aircraft that could fly low to attack targets deep within Pakistan, and Viggen was entered into the contest which was eventually won by the Anglo-French Jaguar, a deal pushed by defence minister Jagjivan Ram during the Janata Party interregnum for a hefty consideration, as was reported at the time by Surya magazine, edited by Maneka Gandhi. The Jaguar deal proved to be the death knell for the Mk-II version of the first indigenous combat aircraft — the HF-24 Marut, configured by the legendary German designer of Focke-Wulfe warplanes, Dr Kurt Tank, who had been brought in by Jawaharlal Nehru to seed an Indian aviation industry. Its aerodynamics proved excellent for low-level flying and, powered by a Bristol-Siddeley engine, it would have matched Jaguar’s performance. The IAF leadership used the political cover provided by politicians inclined to rake in the moolah to kill the Marut Mk-II, thereby snuffing out the best chance for the Indian aviation industry to take wing.

Forty years on, the country is faced with a similar setting and choice — a Congress coalition government is in power and yet another aircraft deal, for the French Rafale medium range multi-role combat aircraft (MMRCA), is on the anvil. The Manmohan Singh regime can approve the $22 billion contract facilitated by corrupt practices that will become known soon enough, and benefit France. Or, it can choose an indigenous option that can revive a comatose Indian aircraft industry.

France and Rafale-maker Dassault Avions have offered sufficient provocation. After agreeing with India during the Arms Trade Treaty negotiations that the supplier obligation had to be balanced with buyer responsibility, Dassault has refused to abide by the provisions in the Request for Proposal (RFP) that made it responsible for the quality of the 108 Rafale MMRCA produced under licence by the public sector Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd. (HAL) designated in the RFP as prime contractor for the project. If Dassault had doubts it should have clarified this aspect before bidding for the deal, not after winning it, which prima facie suggests bad faith — enough cause to junk it.

A viable alternative is available in the Mark-II version of the Tejas Light Combat Aircraft (LCA) — its design fits the bill of an MMRCA and it is already undergoing wind tunnel testing. Not only is its 4.5-generation avionics suite common with that of the MK-I, but at its heart lies a ready-to-use AESA (Active Electronically Scanned Array) radar developed in collaboration with Israel that is comparable to that on the Rafale, except that the Thales RBE2 AESA radar for the Rafale is to be fully developed with the monies deposited by India!

With the larger air intake and the slight upward curvature of its wingtip, Mk-II Tejas, experts believe, has a better angle of attack (in excess of 28 degrees) with heavier payload than what Rafale can manage. The larger, three-metre longer, version of the Mk-I LCA, able to carry a bigger weapon load (five tons for Mk-II to Rafale’s stated six tons, which will be lesser because the European ambient conditions it is built for don’t obtain here), and has similar range, about 600 kms, and can be inducted into service in less time than the Rafale will take to roll out of HAL lines. Further, with a cranked-arrow delta wing with canards, the Mk-II will be superior to the Rafale in manoeuvrability. The basic Tejas Mk-I is already entering Limited Series Production (LSP) as prelude to full production. It will not be difficult to speedily establish a separate development and production line for Mk-II. In fact, HAL has shown confidence to reject European offers of help to set up the Tejas production infrastructure.

Picking home-grown products will also permit the rationalisation of IAF’s force structure — ridding it of its inventory of aircraft so diverse it has created a logistics nightmare. The Mk-I Tejas, as planned, can fill the air defence role, and the Mk-II variant can more than adequately meet the medium-range interdiction and strike role of the MMRCA. Because Tejas Mk-I and Mk-II are locally built, there will be capacity for surge production to meet any spike in the demand for spares, freeing the IAF from the constraints imposed by foreign suppliers that have always affected its operations.

Local production based on hundreds of SMEs (Small Manufacturing Enterprises) is the backbone of any advanced aircraft industry. It is actually this issue and the unwillingness to fully transfer technology that is at the core of Dassault’s differences with the Indian government. According to those in the know, Dassault’s local partner, Reliance Aerospace, is supposed to have agreed to accept only limited technology transfer — even though total transfer of technology is paid for — and to source critical components and sub-assemblies for the “Indian-made Rafale” from French SMEs. Dassault, by these means, seeks to insert the French SMEs permanently into the Indian manufacturing loop, thus making it vulnerable to French policy whims.

The Congress government has the choice of accommodating Dassault, a position that will be heartily backed by the usually compromised and short-sighted IAF brass, and keep the French aviation industry in the clover or, by scrapping the deal and opting for the Tejas Mk-I for air defence and Mk-II as MMRCA, empower and grow the indigenous aviation industry and Indian SMEs.

With a record of unimaginable corruption, the least that can be expected of the Congress-led government is that, in its last year in office, it will do something good for the country for a change.

[Published in the Asian Age April 11, 2013 at http://www.asianage.com/columnists/scrap-rafale-viva-tejas-360 and in the Deccan Chronicle at http://www.deccanchronicle.com/130411/commentary-columnists/article/scrap-rafale-viva-tejas%5D

Posted in Asian geopolitics, civil-military relations, Defence Industry, DRDO, Great Power imperatives, India's strategic thinking and policy, Indian Air Force, indian policy -- Israel, Iran and West Asia, Military Acquisitions, Pakistan, Pakistan military, South Asia, Strategic Relations with the US & West | 10 Comments

Messing with Sri Lanka

Posted on April 6, 2013 by Bharat Karnad

It was the early 1980s when, as I recall, Anton Balasingham, “foreign minister” of the “Tamil Eelam” walked into my office, and vehemently protested a piece I had written warning of the dangers of being sucked into the Sri Lankan civil strife that was soon to morph into a full-fledged civil war with not little help from India. The Liberation Tigers of the Tamil Eelam (LTTE) cadres were trained by the Indian external intelligence agency, RAW, in guerrilla tactics, including demolitions, and in setting up a covert logistics chain. The Jaffna Tamils proved a highly motivated lot and clearly good pupils. Indeed, they attained proficiency so quickly that, in short order, this militant group emerged as the finest, most dreaded guerrilla force, and its leader, Velupillai Prabhakaran, as possibly the most brilliant tactician, effective strategist, and ruthless contemporary exponent of guerilla warfare in recent times. He expeditiously despatched budding competition within the Tamil rebel ranks, managed overseas supply of arms and ammunition for his forces, drove the Sri Lankan army into the ground, and ran circles around the Indian Peace Keeping Force after it entered the fray in 1987.

Besides his battlefield acumen and exploits, Prabhakaran’s leadership and motivational skills were such that there was never any shortage of Jaffna youth willingly donning explosive jackets, sharing farewell meals with the Jefe Maximo (supreme leader), and embarking on suicide missions to create unimaginable mayhem in Sinhala strongholds. In fact, so remarkable was Prabhakaran’s hold on, and leadership of, the LTTE that it neutralised the Indian Army contingent sent on coercive “peace making” at the “invitation” of that old fox, Sri Lanka President J. R. Jayawardene. India was thus hoist with the contingent containment of LTTE, a force the Indian government with its usual strategic myopia, had empowered. In other words, Colombo tasked the Indian Dr. Frankenstein to slay the monster he had created.

Predictably, the IPKF failed despite deploying helicopter gunships and tanks to assist the 80,000-strong force comprising four army divisions. The Indian Army, that had barely got the handle on insurgencies in the northeast by then, was pitchforked into an alien milieu where friends were foes, and there was no consensus about what to do or how to do it.

It lost more men — some 1,200 in operations than in any other single conflict since Independence. One can understand why the Sri Lanka Army, facing so formidable an adversary, prosecuted its actions in the final phase with such extreme prejudice.

I elaborated for Balasingham the arguments I had made against an Indian role in stoking separatist sentiments and helping the Tamil insurgency in Sri Lanka, or any other adjoining state — which case holds to this day. Politically, I said it was dangerous for India — itself a patch-work of different sub-nationalities, to encourage the fissiparous tendencies within neighbouring countries in a region of overlapping ethnicities and loyalties, because that would legitimate similar foreign attempts at balkanising India, and that such involvement would inevitably draw the Indian military into the actual fighting. Once that happened, I told him, it would be a disaster for the Indian armed forces because, as per historical experience, embroilment in civil strife usually bodes ill for the intervening foreign entity. Besides risking life and limb of Indian soldiers, it would, I ventured, tar the reputation of the Indian Army and, worse, end up seeding lasting ill-will in a previously friendly country. Unhappily, all these came to pass. Balasingham, however, remained unconvinced, maintaining that India could not “wash its hands” off the Eelam, or “disown its blood ties” with the Tamils in Sri Lanka.

The Indian armed intervention combining with the pro-consular attitude of the Indian High Commissioner in Colombo at the time, J.N. Dixit, moreover, left a deeply negative impress in Colombo, generating enduring resentment of India that President Mahinda Rajapaksa has mined to consolidate his rule in that country. It fuelled the Sri Lankan policy in the last decade of actively courting China which, beyond Humbantota, may soon fetch Beijing an oil tank farm and a naval presence in Trincomalee, a deep water port Nelson called the finest in the Indian Ocean.

Fortunately, the Indian government is now determined to go only so far in placating popular sentiments in Tamil Nadu, whence the half-hearted attempt in Geneva to introduce the word “genocide” into the UN Human Rights resolution targeting Sri Lanka but only after first alerting Colombo lest this move be perceived as other than a cursory bow to domestic politics. It was followed by External Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid rejecting outright the main planks of the resolution passed by the Tamil Nadu Assembly — moving a resolution in the UN for a referendum on the Eelam in Sri Lanka, treating that country as unfriendly, and imposing economic sanctions on it.

What is incomprehensible is not that the recent events reinforce the reality of Tamil Nadu state politics adversely impacting bilateral relations with Sri Lanka. Colombo is familiar with New Delhi’s predicament on this score. Nor is it particularly surprising that the opposition DMK withdrew its support to the UPA coalition government headed by Manmohan Singh, and together with the ruling AIADMK and other Tamil parties is engaged in competitive pandering to the street sentiments. This has involved actions ranging from petty (disrupting sports ties) to vicious (not discouraging assaults on visiting Sri Lankan Buddhist monks) to foolish (demanding the arrest of the Sri Lankan High Commissioner, Prasad Kariyawasam, for his factual statement that the Sinhalese too are ethnically of Orissa Indian stock). But that the calm, calculating, and sure-footed AIADMK chief minister of Tamil Nadu, Jayalalithaa, who has a better shot at the prime ministership if a Third Front materialises after the 2014 general elections than, say, the blustery Hindi-heartland hankerer for the job Mulayam Singh, has foreign policy-wise made a mistake. Sympathetic noises supportive of the Tamil community across the Palk Strait is one thing. Going the extra steps to reinforce fear in the minds of the Sri Lankan people can, however, become a liability for a prospective PM.

[Published in the ‘New Indian Express’ April 5, 2013 at http://newindianexpress.com/opinion/article1530725.ece ]

Posted in Asian geopolitics, China, China military, civil-military relations, Geopolitics, guerilla warfare, India's China Policy, India's strategic thinking and policy, Indian Air Force, Indian Army, Indian Navy, Indian Ocean, Indian Politics, Internal Security, South Asia, Terrorism | 3 Comments

China hand behind growls of NoKo paper tiger

Posted on March 29, 2013 by Bharat Karnad

The Kim Jong Eun regime in North Korea is the proverbial paper tiger — all sound and fury, and near farcical capabilities when matched up against any of its adversaries in the Far East. It’s another matter that the US has fallen for this by deploying strategic bombers over SoKo, etc. NoKo’s blustery posture, heightened by the “ënhanced” Fusion-boosted fission device tested early February of Pakistani design and provenance and Chinese technical vetting and oversight, is not maintainable, however. (See previous blogs on the NoKo test, etc.) The important thing that’s predictably and wilfully being missed by the international and especially Western-American stratgeic communities is the fact of Pyongyang’s confidence being bolstered by Chinese steel. (Wilful neglect of this factor because otherwise the US would have to confront China head-on, a fight for which it has no stomach.) It is the assurance of Beijing’s military might that propels Eun’s almost clownish escalatory moves. It is China then that’s encouraging NoKo show of bellicosity. To wit this note in the ‘Powerful Nation Forum’ — revealing, eh???! — of ‘People’s Daily’, Feb 19, 2013, which referred to any crisis instigated by NoKo as beneficial to China because it diverts US pressure from China, distracts Japan from the Senkaku dispute theatre, and permits Beijing to step in as mediator-peace-maker. Very, very clever strategy.

Posted in Asian geopolitics, China, China military, Europe, Geopolitics, Great Power imperatives, Japan, Northeast Asia, Nuclear Policy & Strategy, Strategic Relations with South East Asia & Far East, United States, US. | 4 Comments

Frog in hot water

Posted on March 29, 2013 by Bharat Karnad

John Garver, a leading American expert on Sino-Indian relations, has likened Beijing’s strategy towards India to the traditional Chinese way of cooking a frog. Plonk the frog in a vessel and turn up the heat slowly. If the water was hot to begin with or the temperature were to rise much too quickly, the frog would simply jump out and escape.But if the heat is turned up gradually, the frog luxuriates in the warming water, unmindful of the fate awaiting it until it is too late for it to do anything.

Having contained India strategically to the subcontinent by nuclear arming Pakistan and, with the urgings of military assistance and economic aid, encouraged its landward neighbours (Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Nepal) to stand up to India, Beijing is even tempting Bhutan to look east and away from New Delhi for its needs. Such developments are forcing the Indian government to be preoccupied with its immediate periphery
rather than to focus on strategic issues.

With the idea of further confining the frog to the vessel, Beijing has worked hard to alienate the adjoining maritime states from India as well, turning the once welcoming waters of the Indian Ocean into a cauldron that, should New Delhi continue with its wayward policies, may soon boil over. Here again the means used are tried and tested — a spate of high-value infrastructure projects are but a thinly veiled wedge to mine the mother lode of Sri Lankan and Maldivan resentment against “big brother” India.

The modern container port complex in Hambantota, Sri Lanka, a container port and another airport upcoming in the Maldives, and armaments by the shipload to Bangladesh are real gains for these countries and could be the precursor of more such projects to draw these island and littoral states into the Chinese security orbit as a means of neutralizing India’s dominant position astride the busiest, most strategic of oceanic highways.
Combined with Beijing consolidating its political hold on Nepal through the Maoist cadres and making deep inroads into Burma by constructing the north-south road and rail transportation and energy grids, it is also tying up Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran and Central Asia in oil and gas pipeline network to deliver energy resources to China’s western provinces of Xinjiang and Chinese-occupied Tibet (CoT). Beijing’s plan is grand and audacious both in its conception and implementation. The increasingly marginalised New Delhi, meanwhile, morosely chews the cud, limiting India’s options at every turn, such as by not getting in on the proposed Iran-Pakistan-India gas pipeline. Colombo, Male, Kathmandu and Yangbon, meanwhile, play up the virtues of a “friendly” China, and preen themselves, being finally in a position to command New Delhi’s attention and respect.

The Chinese strategy of alienating the neighbours from India and consolidating its own presence in the region is deftly prosecuted with soft words issuing in tandem with hard, well-thought-out actions, with the Indian government, predisposed to doing nothing, lulled into inaction. Despite all the evidence of the warming water, the Indian frog seems determined to not feel the heat.

National security adviser Shivshankar Menon, apparently oblivious to the developments adversely affecting India’s vital national interests in the Indian Ocean Region, declared the other day that “maritime rivalry with China is not inevitable.” Such pronouncements do nothing, of course, to prevent New Delhi appearing foolish, confirming the Chinese estimation of this country as a“pushover state”.

The Chinese have concluded that it pays to talk peace and trade, but with an overlay of the hardline. Thus, even as the visiting People’s Liberation Army’s Deputy Chief of Staff, Lt. Gen. Qi Jianguo, signed an agreement renewing joint military exercises and service-to-service exchanges, Chinese President Xi Jinping made clear that a resolution of the India-China border dispute is not on the cards because it “won’t be easy”.
This raises the question whether New Delhi’s eagerness to resolve the dispute isn’t misplaced, and whether it would not be more prudent to formally shelve the special track dialogue rather than try and revive it as Mr Menon seems intent on doing during his planned Beijing trip in the second week of April. With the Chinese voicing the futility of such dialogue, his insistence on it reveals desperation— from the Chinese perspective, it is a sign of weakness.

Mr Xi met with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on the sidelines of the Brics Summit in Durban to discuss terrorism emanating from the Afghanistan-Pakistan area. It is an issue that is to be followed up with official talks in Beijing. The Chinese, it is obvious, will use the terrorism issue to zero in on Tibetan unrest and the alleged Indian hand stoking it. The Indian representatives would do well to remind the Chinese that India accepted China’s suzeraingty on the premise of a genuinely “autonomous” Tibet, which cannot be taken to mean Indian quiescence in the face of sustained state violence against the Tibetan people, and that it is time Beijing respected the inherent rights of Tibetans in their own homeland. This will hint at the hard options open to India of aiding the Tibetan freedom movement in the future.

Such plain talking should be followed up by arming, on a priority basis, Vietnam with nuclear missiles and distributing the supersonic Brahmos cruise missile to any Southeast Asian country that wants it. Those who suggest that New Delhi should try and co-manage Asia with a fast-ascending China should consider where that would get India, already seen to be lacking in the essentials that constitute great power. It is a reputation that will repel countries from rallying to the Indian standard and seeking security in a milieu roiled by Chinese aggressiveness. New Delhi being over-mindful of Beijing’s concerns has only worsened India’s relative position.

It is time India joined Japan, Asean and Taiwan to impose on Beijing the costs of living dangerously. The process of reversing the heat to cook the Chinese frog in the South China Sea waters is long overdue.

[Published March 29, 2013 in the ‘Ásian Agé’ at http://aggwww.asianage.com/columnists/frog-hot-water-759, and the ‘Deccan Chronicle’ at http://www.deccanchronicle.com/130328/commentary-columnists/commentary/frog-hot-water

Posted in Asian geopolitics, Central Asia, China, China military, Geopolitics, Great Power imperatives, India's China Policy, India's strategic thinking and policy, Indian Navy, Indian Ocean, indian policy -- Israel, Iran and West Asia, Japan, Missiles, Northeast Asia, Nuclear Policy & Strategy, Nuclear Weapons, South Asia, Strategic Relations with South East Asia & Far East, West Asia | 11 Comments

MIRV-testing by stealth — II

Posted on March 28, 2013 by Bharat Karnad

Sorry, original blog on the issue of MIRV testing by stealth inadvertently deleted. This augmented replacement blog on the same topic.

The PSLV-C 20 launched February 25 carried a payload of seven satellites, which were injected into their separate precise orbits using the embedded System-on-Chip (SOC). The SOC, it may be recalled, was used on Agni-5 for guidance and terminal accuracy. The SOC on C-20 is the testing of MIRV capacity by stealth. And while India has had this capability to disperse payloads from PSLV — MIRV tech in situ since 2004-05, this is the first near military application of it. Hopefully, GOI will greensignal a proper MIRV-ed Agni-5 test soon. The only problem with the MIRVed military payloads will be that such miniaturisation of nuclear and thermonuclear weapons as has been obtained to fit the nose cone geometries of Agni missiles cannot be reliable, unless the level of miniaturisation achieved in the 1998 tests is deemed adequate. Because that’s the level at which the weapons designs have got frozen, and absent further testing, will be a liability. To iterate, assuming warheads miniaturised to a certain extent were actually tested in 1998, then that’s all the level of miniaturisation the country will have to be content with. No testing means that the 20 KT weapon has been sufficiently miniaturised to fit several of these in the nose cones of Agni IRBMs. The bigger, older, problem remains however: The fizzled S-1 means the thermonuclear weapon too is suspect. Marry the suspect miniaturised warhead with the suspect thermonuclear warheads and we get a suspect hydrogen deterrent assuming again there’s such a thing. In the event, the 20 KT fission warhead seems the standard weapon for all delivery sytems. So, why pretend to having fusion weapons in the 125-175 KT scale in the arsenal? After all, there’s only so much traction missile accuracy will get India against equally accurate Chinese missiles carrying the 1.1-3-3 megaton standard issue warhead on its IRBMS.

Posted in Asian geopolitics, China, China military, Cyber & Space, Defence Industry, DRDO, Geopolitics, Great Power imperatives, Military Acquisitions, Missiles, Nuclear Policy & Strategy, Nuclear Weapons, satellites, South Asia | 16 Comments

Narendra Bhai vs. Rahul Baba

Posted on March 22, 2013 by Bharat Karnad

Democracies are renowned for hoisting kooks and incompetents into power. The Indian democratic system is additionally notorious for electing musclemen, criminals, and worse. So if the choice in the 2014 general elections is between Narendra Modi and Rahul Gandhi, it may just prompt the people to vote for one or the other major party and candidate because the alternative of a “third front” leader, such as Mulayam Singh, as Prime Minister in a hung Parliament is too horrific to contemplate — the UP-ization of India!

Comparing the Bharatiya Janata Party’s front-runner, Narendra Modi, and the ruling Congress Party’s presumptive PM, Rahul Gandhi, is an exercise in weighing the merits of the persons in question and the party politics they have negotiated. Modi, is a small town (Vadnagar) aam aadmi with incomparable political management and administrative skills and, a vision for his state and nation that is at once reality-grounded and aspirational. Having honed his talents as a pracharak in the local Rastriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) shaka, Modi made his name as party mobiliser and, in the process, apparently outgrew the Hindutva ideology. So much so, that soon after becoming chief minister of Gujarat he began alienating the RSS, Vishwa Hindu Parishad, in the state, starting with demolishing small temples and the like that routinely come up illegally overnight in cramped Indian urban spaces, the land-grabbers capturing valuable real estate in this manner were secure in the belief that the government would do nothing.

Inside of a decade, Gujarat was turned into the best-run state in the Indian Union with 24/7 water and electricity emerging as the leitmotif of Modi’s good governance model. Despite the step-motherly treatment, Modi claims, his state was meted out by the Congress coalition at the centre in terms of undeveloped port infrastructure that would otherwise have increased international connectivity, Gujarat is among the most vibrant in terms of attracting industry and investors, and generating employment.

His Spartan lifestyle combined with maintenance of absolute propriety (the Modi family being asked to stay put in Vadnagar) means he is entirely free of the taint of corruption in a setting where politics has become a shortcut to wealth and ruling families freeload. With the top man not on the take and unwilling to countenance corruption, the state government and administrators run clean, enthusing party cadres and rocketing his political stock upwards among the masses fed up with “politics as usual”.

With his record, his rise on the national stage was inevitable. Just how open his mind is to new ideas was evidenced at the recent India Today Conclave, where he offered novel solutions. Consider his policy of erecting solar panels over irrigation canals — minimising water loss through evaporation and, at the same time, producing electricity. Or, the proposal he conveyed to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh about turning the arid belt dividing India and Pakistan stretching from Gujarat to Rajasthan into an extended solar park. Besides producing power for the grid, it would be a physical barrier to infiltrators, and provide the means for vastly improving the living quarters of the Border Security Force, motivating the BSF troopers to greater vigilance and efficiency. This is in refreshing contrast to the identity-based politics, which’s the norm.

In contrast to Modi, a hardy product of rough and tumble grassroots politics, for Rahul Gandhi the top job is an entitlement. A habitué of Lutyen’s Delhi — where his family has resided since independence, he has grown up insulated from the rigours of everyday life. With the dynastic principle early established by Jawaharlal Nehru when he installed Indira Gandhi as the Congress party president, Nehru-Gandhi dynasts have controlled the party and ruled the country.

This is democracy after a fashion with the top post reserved for “the Family” and competition permitted for lesser positions within party and government. It has promoted dynastic culture down to the village-panchayat level.

Congress party scions like himself and with whom Rahul is at ease with, figure prominently in his plans for rejuvenating the party. Many of them occupy junior ministerial posts —Jyotiraditya Scindia, Jitin Prasad, Milind Deora, Sachin Pilot, Deepender Hooda, et al, on down. Dynastic politics as khandani pesha (family business) is so infectious, other parties have emulated the Congress, producing the Yadav parivar of the Samajwadi party, Supriya Sule of the Nationalist Congress party headed by Sharad Pawar, Raj Thackeray of Shiv Sena, Sukhbir Badal of the Shiromani Akali Dal, and the numerous Karunanidhi progeny of the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam. Taking their cue from the Nehru-Gandhi’s, these clans indulge in corruption varying in brazenness, and spawn second-order beneficiaries. Every Kunal Bhadoo (Congress Haryana CM Bhupinder Hooda’s son-in-law who has cornered land in Haryana) takes inspiration from the ersatz real estate tycoon-ship of a certain Robert Vadra.

With Ottavio Quattrochi-managed Bofors and Snamprogretti deals during the Rajiv Gandhi regime as background, and Milan court documents indicating monies being funnelled to “the Family” in the latest defence scam involving Agusta-Westland helicopters, Rahul’s fulminating against corruption — “People who are corrupt stand up and talk about eradicating corruption”, or his campaign to rid the party of the high command and culture of suchphancy, for example, smacks of sheer chutzpah.

While constituting the high command and benefitting however indirectly from the scams his family is linked to, he reckons that not being implicated himself gives him sanction to moralise on the issue. Alas, it is a thin reed to hang his clean image on.

Worse, Rahul seems devoid of original ideas. His recent utterances have been traced to his father’s pronouncements in the mid-’80s. A party man explained that every new Congress dynast seeks “inspiration” from the speeches of his predecessors, revealing the standard Congress strategy of recycling old slogans, reissuing stale promises, followed by populist measures that bankrupt the country when in government. It highlights the difference between talkers and doers, status quoists and change inducers, pretenders and leaders, and Rahul-baba and Narendra-bhai.

[Published in the ‘New Indian Express’ March 22, 2013 at http://newindianexpress.com/opinion/article1511457.ece

Posted in Asian geopolitics, India's Pakistan Policy, Indian para-military forces, Indian Politics, Internal Security, Pakistan, Pakistan military, South Asia | 28 Comments

A can-do helmsman

Posted on March 15, 2013 by Bharat Karnad

Nations on the march, or those in the dumps, have sometimes found great leaders to lift their spirits, offer a guiding vision, fuel ambition and help them leap forward. A down and out China found Deng Xiaoping, a fast-declining Britain got Margaret Thatcher, and a de-spirited America had Ronald Reagan.

They brightened the material prospects of the countries they led, of course. But, more vitally, they imbued the people with a sense of national mission and pride that transcended the circumstances their countries found themselves in. India has yet to find such a helmsman to set it on the course of self-belief and glory in the 21st century.
How much leadership matters, just how critical a difference one inspiring leader can make in changing the destiny of a country, is relevantly evidenced for India, in the phenomenon of Deng Xiaoping and the rocketing rise of China he triggered. A man of uncommon common sense, Deng, who was once paraded with a dunce cap during the Cultural Revolution in the Sixties, waded through the shallows in the still ideologically treacherous Maoist China by “feeling the stones with his feet” (as he put it).

No high-sounding ideals or straitjacketing ideology animated him. But his overwhelming desire to realise the aspirations of downtrodden masses for a better life while ensuring the country packed big guns — in line with Mao’s dictum that power flowed from the barrel of a gun — did the trick. Free enterprise and state capitalism were given free rein and, as part of the 1979 “Four Modernisations” programme, the Chinese military was frogmarched into self-reliant modernisation. This two-pronged policy has restored to China its lost greatness.

Milton Friedman, the laissez faire economics guru, touring India in the late 1950s to
assess Indian economic trends, concluded that Jawaharlal Nehru with his emphasis on a gigantic public sector was doing little right, but at the grassroots level, sans government interference, little was going wrong. He was particularly impressed by the small industry-driven Ludhiana, which he suggested was the free-market model of raw muscularity which, if followed, would fast-track India into the industrial age. Nehru paid no heed. Indira Gandhi had her moment in 1966 when, with the economy plummeting, she contemplated freeing it from its socialist thrall, but ultimately chose to remain within her comfort zone and tighten the state’s grip on it, instead. The economic reforms P.V. Narasimha Rao began in the 1990s, while not comprehensive, were irreversible. Atal Behari Vajpayee could have but didn’t push the pedal, and the economic liberalisation that Manmohan Singh has overseen assumed a pedestrian pace, even as an unending series of scams using the vestigial socialist state machinery, unspooled.

It cannot be that the Deng-kind of common sense is missing in the Indian establishment. It is just drowned by the self-interest of the vast hordes of politicians and apparatchiks (the armies of babus, from peons to beat constables to secretaries to the Indian government) manning the rusted colonial-era administrative structure geared primarily to revenue-collection and maintaining law and order. Post-1947, this system at the Central, state and local levels has evolved into a mechanism to exempt its handlers from accountability, leading to politicians and those on the public payroll milking it for all it’s worth while not being answerable for anything they did. Why would these beneficiaries want anything to change? This is the challenge facing the country. But which leader is best placed to tackle it?

The choice is stark. There’s Rahul Gandhi heading the Congress Party and Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi leading the Bharatiya Janata Party. As the ablest chief minister in the Indian Union of states and the only one to run a provincial dispensation providing water and electricity 24/7, Mr Modi has no peers. He has relied on the same bureaucratic structure that proved hopeless elsewhere and, with his can-do attitude, problem-solving mindset, no-nonsense managerial methods, and fixing of responsibility, transformed it into a well-oiled machine. Corruption and waste have been trimmed, and Gujarat is at the top using any development metric. The Gram Jyoti programme epitomises his innovative thinking. With Mr Modi decreeing a binary feeder mode, the state electricity board now has power coursing to villages through a 24-hour line, and for agricultural use at nights and non-peak periods. This has revolutionised farming and brought prosperity to the hinterland. So confident is Mr Modi of his outcomes-based policies and programmes that, not too long ago in a closed forum, after articulating his own he asked the Prime Minister point-blank: “What’s your vision?” and received the usual blank Dr Singh stare. Importantly, Mr Modi is the first leader to trash public sector enterprises — the biggest drain on the treasury, saying “government has no business to be in business”.

The 2002 Gujarat riots are seen by many as too big an obstacle for Mr Modi. Except that elections over the years at all levels in Gujarat have shown that his record of good governance — a hafta-free life and hassle-free delivery of services and benefits to all the people — has trumped bad memories and can, in significant measure, win over Muslim voters. Otherwise, they have to rely on the empty promises, symbolic gestures, and Modi-bashing fulminations by run-of-the-mill politicians and token Muslim leaders — the stock-in-trade of “secular” parties ranging from the Congress to the Samajwadi Party of the Mulayam Singh parivar. In response, Mr Modi has enunciated his “Índia First” theme as a secularist credo. Moreover, the blunting of the Hindutva spearhead, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, in Gujarat has not gone unnoticed.

The Congress is relying on the untested and unproven Rahul Gandhi in the hope that, like his father Rajiv, he’ll bring fresh thinking to government. But lacking hands-on experience of managing under-performing institutions, Rajiv was consumed by the system; his tenure is remembered for the iconic Bofors corruption case (the model, incidentally, for defence scandals in the current Congress rule). Finally, like other politicians Rahul has only talked change; Modi has actually implemented it. Who should the people trust to deliver the goods?

Published in the Ásian Age’, March 14, 2013 at http://www.beta.asianage.com/columnists/can-do-helmsman-912

Posted in China, China military, Europe, Indian Army, Indian ecobomic situation, Indian Politics, Internal Security, Military Acquisitions, South Asia, Technology transfer, United States, US. | 8 Comments