Cowering kitty, roaring dragon

The ghosts of 1962 are back. With China’s People’s Liberation Army entering and digging in almost 20 km inside Indian territory, our reaction shows that not much has changed despite in 50 years despite our tall claims of packing enough deterrent military punch.

If then it was a myopic Jawaharlal Nehru with his utopian ‘Hindi-Chini Bhai-Bhai’ trust in the aggressively expanding giant neighbour, now it is another statesman prime minister, Manmohan Singh, and his team who have been caught off guard by the Chinese military manoeuvre.

At the time of India’s second round of nuclear tests, the then defence minister George Fernandes had rather undiplomatically, but candidly, said that the nukes were aimed at the country’s most dangerous enemy — China.

With the establishment touting India’s nuclear arsenal and long range missiles, the public may feel the country has enough capability to stop any Chinese adventurism. However, even a quick scan of last decade’s news reports on military preparedness would show that such an impression is merely an illusion.

The armed forces are woefully short of officers and low on morale due to unending line of massive corruption cases involving top level officers. The army is under-equipped and lacks modern artillery pieces and equipment for high-altitude warfare. If former army chief VK Singh’s letter to the government is anything to go by, there isn’t enough ammunition to fight a war.

The navy too doesn’t fare much better. Half of its ageing submarine fleet is always under repair and the relic of an aircraft carrier is virtually kept afloat by faith — on rare occasions when it hits the blue waters between ‘refurbishments, upgrades, repairs and improvements'.

Though Su-30 MKIs and Jaguars add some punch to the air force, lack of infrastructure and adequately protected bases near the border reduce them to defensive roles. The Chinese side is well connected by high-quality road networks, and their air-defence capabilities are nearly impenetrable to the rest of the fleet.

So, with military action guaranteed to deliver another round of humiliation, India is at an unenviable position where it will have to lap up whatever breadcrumbs the Chinese will throw at it and walk away.

What is deplorable is that successive governments and military bosses have dragged their feet on achieving minimum deterrence capability and 50 years after the humiliation of 1962, we are pretty much in the same position.

The reactions of our government are palpably weak-willed, divided and confused — and it is obvious to any keen observer that it is dealing from a position of weakness and hoping for a face-saver rather than problem-solver.

In China, a new leadership has taken over. They would use this crisis to improve their domestic standing and to curry favour with the military. This incursion tactic is also a not-so-subtle message to India that its newfound bonhomie with China’s ‘hostile’ neighbours such as Vietnam, South Korea, Philippines and Japan, and of course, the United States, will have serious repercussions.

Tiger can take on the dragon. However, what we have now is a kitten, whose feeding bowl says ‘Tiger’. Tough luck boys, try better next time.

(This article was published as the editorial column in Postnoon on May 1, 2013.)

Time to streamline anti-Naxal ops

Two Central ministries, ministry of defence (MoD) and ministry of home affairs (MHA), are engaged in a nasty war of words over an incident involving Indian Air Force personnel during an anti-Maoist operation in Chhattisgarh.

An IAF Mi-17 that was providing logistical support to the police was brought down by Naxal fire. The MHA lashed out at the “cowardice” of the IAF personnel who, reportedly chose to abandon the machine and the wounded man where the chopper landed and flee to the nearest camp. The rescue party and reinforcements reached the spot three hours later.

The IAF also came under fire because its personnel did not bother to leave behind its commandos to guard the chopper and the injured cop — leaving the machine and its load of weapons unguarded in the Naxal-infested territory for three long hours.

The Air Force, in its defence, said the blame lay on the state’s police which did not ‘sanitise’ the area near their camp.

While the blame game continues and respective departmental inquiries are on, the uncomfortable issue of (and the ambiguity regarding) the role of the armed forces in anti-Naxal operations has raised its head.

The MoD had earlier declared that its personnel (read IAF) can return fire if fired upon by the Maoists guerrillas. It has not emerged clearly why the armed helicopter, with highly trained commandos on board, could not respond to the attack and went down.

The IAF personnel, before scramming, left an LMG and a pistol with the wounded policeman — how noble!

May be, in that condition, he was supposed to do a Rambo and mow down any possible Naxal assault team.

Now, imagine a scenario if the chopper crew had decided to hold their position. No matter what their training, the sheer numerical superiority of a Naxal party would have overwhelmed them. The result would be that other IAF teams would tend to get trigger-happy, raising the possibilities of civilian casualties. In an area where human intelligence is minimal and terrain preventing easy distinguishing of Naxal patrols and foraging tribals, this would have serious consequences.

There is also the issue of setting up Army camps and training sessions in Naxal strongholds. True, a sovereign country will not be dictated by presence of guerrilla groups when it comes to training and deployment of its forces. Though there has been no untoward incident so far, there is a high probability of the Army getting dragged into the conflict.

The Naxals are no fools to attack army personnel or camps and bring on themselves the wrath of a well-trained and heavily-armed force. However, if a communication gap or a case of mistaken identity results in such an attack – and casualties – things are going to get ugly.

The Army would get involved in the direct action and soon the conflict would snowball into a full-fledged civil war. And when such a conflict takes place it always tends to take a heavy toll on lives (uniformed and civilian) and scars the region’s psyche — and that is something nobody wants.

The government agencies should shake off their lethargy and revisit standard operating procedures (SOPs) so that the forces (police and the military) are in a better position to deal with delicate situations like the one faced by the IAF personnel in Chhattisgarh.

(This article was published as the editorial column in Postnoon on February 6, 2013.)

French connection to serve multiple goals

Finalisation of French fighter jet Rafale as the choice for Medium Multi-role Combat Aircraft (MMRCA) will give the Indian Air Force the much needed boost and plug the gap that will be left by the fast approaching retirement of Soviet-era MiG-21s.
The four-year tender process that began in August 2007 had six contenders — two from the US, one each from France, Russia, Sweden and a UK-Europe consortium. In April 2011, Dassault Rafale of France and Eurofighter Typhoon were shortlisted as the finalists and almost a year later the Frenchman walked away with the contract.
The $10-billion deal for 126 jets, which defence analysts point out may go up to $15 billion with ancillary contracts, will also take bilateral ties between India and France a few notches up. The deal came through at a time when the French industry is battling the fallout of the Eurozone crisis.
This is the second major Indo-French defence deal in the last six months after the $1.4-billion upgrade contract for IAF’s Mirage-2000 fleet. The contract will also boost India’s defence industry and science sectors with the mandatory clause that 50 per cent of the deal amount be invested in domestic partnerships.
The biggest beneficiary will be the PSU Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL), which will manufacture 108 of the jets under a transfer-of-technology agreement; the rest will be supplied by Dassault in fly-away condition before 2015. The HAL team can also use the expertise thus gained from the process to enhance the quality of the indigenously developed Light Combat Aircraft and to develop technologies for future projects.
The MMRCA deal was on the verge of being scrapped a year back when offset proposals of contenders went missing from the IAF headquarters and later resurfaced on a South Delhi roadside. The defence ministry decided to go ahead with the shortlisting process after an internal probe concluded that the documents were part of an appendix and their disclosure would not put any of the contenders at advantage or disadvantage.
More than a defence purchase agreement, the MMRCA deal marks strategic shift in the defence policy. By refusing to heed the US pitch that bilateral ties will be hyphenated with business, India has sent out a clear message to the rest of the world that it doesn’t need a superpower to prop it up and that it will take unpopular decisions to protect its national interests.
By choosing the French fighter, India has told Uncle Sam that the American policy of sanctions and supply disruptions based on its whims and fancies — like it did after the 1998 nuclear tests — will put it at a disadvantage with the French and the Russians, who honour agreements regardless of calm or storm.
India’s decision to diversify its shopping destinations will also ensure that it will no longer be dependent on a single vender or power block for crucial defence supplies. It is also a message to Russia that it can no longer take India’s evergreen friendship for granted, nor allow disruptions in supply chain or maintenance contracts with other international suppliers vying for the massive Indian market.
The transparent and focused MMRCA deal has shown that with the right approach multiple targets can be achieved. With more potent additions to its arsenal, India has asserted that it is not going to bury its head in the sand in a troubled neighbourhood.

(This article was published as the editorial column in Postnoon on February 1, 2012)