FOR BHARAT'S SAKE, AND INDIA'S, DUMP COLONIAL INSTITUTIONS

In the middle of all the noise in the media about the Naxal problem, brought to the fore again by the 'train-jacking' of the Delhi-Bhubaneswar Rajdhani by nearly 500 citizens, an extremely important aspect is being overlooked, yet again. But that is not surprising.

As far as media is concerned, everything has to be summarily reduced to politics after a perfunctory analysis because that is all that most media stars are drenched with, given their backgrounds and almost zero experience of, and exposure to, Bharat, a part of which is up in arms against India today. I still remember the shocking Nithari killing and cannibalisation case. A celebrated anchor, after a brief visit to the bowels of Noida, immediately turned the debate to the 'political dimension'. Why was that done? Because that is all what most Delhi journalists understand; the then CM of UP, Mulayam Yadav, and the Centre were daggers drawn - it made a great story. Also, most media stars we see have virtually no idea of how things work at the ground level on a day-to-day basis, or how the police, or any other instrument of state, is organised and the manner in which it functions.

That is mainly why serious systemic and institutional failures at the point of interface between the state and the citizen keep getting pushed under the carpet in every debate. That is what is happening now too.

In so far as politicians are concerned, the picture is no less dismal. At the state level, the whole thing has turned into a political blame-game between the Communists, who are in power in West Bengal, and Mamata Bannerjee who wants to evict them. At the level of the Centre, it has been turned into a black-and-white fight between the state and those who are questioning its failures through armed rebellion. As far as most human rights activists are concerned, it is almost exactly the opposite: the state is the terrorist; it is to blame for driving its own people to picking up arms to redress their long unheard grievances; therefore, it should abjure force and hold talks unconditionally.

The few senior cops who have been taking part in discussions across channels have, quite expectedly, been taking the official line that it is the duty of the state to act with force against those who have picked up the gun. Bureaucrats, particularly those who have served in Naxal affected areas - 150 districts - and have a first-hand experience of the sordid mess that their administration has been making over decades, are not to be seen or heard anywhere.

There is virtually no voice on the airwaves saying that there is something fundamentally flawed with our system of policing and administration that needs to be fixed. I have been saying for a long time that the antiquated, colonial system that India seamlessly continued to follow after the the British left needs to be overhauled completely. It is an elitist system that is primarily responsible for not letting British India become the Bharat that it should have after Independence. On the contrary, it has only increased that divide and created a whole new class of Indians who are completely disconnected from almost 80% of their country men who, for them, live in another country called Bharat.

The British created two institutions, represented today by the IAS and the IPS, with the sole purpose of using them as instruments of colonial power to ensure that the natives did not create any law and order problem against their imperial masters, and quietly paid taxes etc that the Empire wanted them to, to generate revenue for its own sustenance and growth. They were British institutions manned by English-speaking brown men for and on behalf of the Empire alone. Their organisational structure and functions were designed to prevent them from identifying themselves with natives or empowering them mentally or materially in a manner that would make them feel that they were equal to them, the Indian elite, much less the white man himself.

63 years after Independence, the structures and attitudes remain virtually the same, the exceptions being stray individuals. The DC and SP of a district continue to remain remote, imperial sahibs who reside in huge, barricaded bungalows looked after by a retinue of native servants. They continue to believe that they are the lords and masters of the many deprived souls with whom they share no affinity, and natural claimants to a 'cut' in the glamour and wealth of the few - criminals included - who need their protection and patronage to flourish without being troubled by the poor whom they sometimes exploit. So, most of them spend the little time they get in these appointments, where they are in direct contact with their own people, doing what India's colonial masters and rippers did to a conquered, alien people over a hundred years ago.

The connect that the most important powerful instruments of the state must have with its people as the equals that they are supposed to be in a democracy, thus, does not even begin. It is institutionally precluded. The same attitude and approach has filtered down to all other institutions and officials. That is why democracy and freedom have not yet touched millions of Indians, save during the occasional trudge to the voting booth. We are reminded of their existence only when they either pick up the gun to show their anger at their colonial administrators, or when they are misled by those like the Maoists who promise them that only the ones with guns share their heart beats and feel their pain, as equals, and will wrest their rights for them.

It is these very imperial administrators and police officers who, after a few years, go on to head various government departments and police forces. Since only they know exactly what is wrong within, but have been the direct beneficiaries and perpetrators of the increasing rot, they also know best how to con the rest into believing that since they are the best brains that India has thrown up after one exam, only they know what is for best for India, and are doing it, despite dirty politicians. They also know how to convince/pressure others that the only way to improve anything is by giving them even more power and control!

How completely these guys have corrupted the system can be gauged from just one example. When the Pay Commission recommendations were being finalised, former Cabinet Secretary TSR Balasubramanian actually said in a live television debate that bureaucrats like the Commerce Secretary, Finance Secretary etc deserved a Rs 10 crore salary, 1000 times the President's, for the kind of work they do. Can you see what he was trying to say? He was openly claiming a 'cut' for the the initials and recommendations that babus put on files, only because someone stands to benefit from those decisions financially!

This is the attitude at the very top of the heap, not at some lowly octroi post. It is this approach that has destroyed nearly every institution of the state. No official is ready to do something unless he is paid for it; and if he is well paid, he is willing to even to do what in his position he must not, no matter what happens to the people adversely affected by it, particularly if they are poor, second class natives who live in another world. When you add to this the impossibly complex rules that make it virtually impossible to hold government employees, from secretary to sweeper, accountable for almost anything, and assured promotions for doing little more than staying alive while in service, you get the sordid spectacle of sloth, absenteeism and near total absence of motivation to even think of excelling.

Subramanian has also said on a number of occasions, almost with pride, that corruption is no longer an issue and that nobody ever gets convicted for it; the rot is so deep and completely accepted. I may also mention here that, in a moment of weakness, a very senior official once told me that he was not in service for the salary; that was not sufficient to meet even the pocket money needs of his two teenage kids, he said. That says everything about what babudom has done to some of our best brains and what they have in turn done to destroy it.

Sitting in our urban bubbles, relatively untouched by the state, some of us may not find it easy to understand how colonial institutions of the state have alienated its citizens in the remote areas that we will perhaps never step into. Some celebrity activists do go there, but more often than not, they do so in pursuit of greater visibility and space in the national media, and in the West, rather than out of any genuine empathy or sense of belonging with these people. That is why they invariably come out with half-baked, uni-dimensional, even childish, responses that are often dishonest, because they primarily want to sensationalise and provoke rather than bring about the real change that is needed to help those whose cause they claim to champion.

India's top civil servants are not going to let the failed and almost completely dysfunctional colonial structure that benefits their small but very powerful tribe be disturbed at all. Unless they are forced to. Given our equally corrupt political system that has aggravated the problem by promoting rule by division rather than inclusion, one can be reasonably certain that meaningful change is not going to be ushered in willingly.

Yes, the armed rebellion of the Maoists needs to be crushed and the writ of the state established. But what we must realise is that unless the existing institutions of administration, policing etc are discarded and replaced by ones that firmly re-connect the state with its people as equals, rebellion in some form or the other will have to be faced time and again. Today it is in the hinterland; tomorrow it will be in your city. The form and method may be different but the rage and pain will be the same. And the intensity will keep on rising till India and Bharat become one.
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3. 1000 times President's salary for India's babus!
4. Corrupt, colonial India faces volcano
5. Covering up the mother of all corruption scandals
6. Conspicuous consumption and conspicuous poverty
7. Bharat and India: armed rebellion and mental secession

INDIA HAS MUCH TO LEARN FROM CHINA, AND MUST

China's dramatic transformation into an economic power house in virtually the blink of a sleepy Indian eye has shaken some Indian leaders out of their misplaced slumber. It is beginning to dawn on them that India has to get out of the self-congratulatory mindset that it has got stuck in following a few years of relatively rapid economic growth on a small base, because that is not going to get it anywhere close to what China has achieved. But, as always, this reactive response is very limited, and is destined to fail.

It has taken Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh to ask the lethargic Planning Commission to wake up to what China has done to its railways and prepare a road map to reform Indian Railways. Two decades back, Chinese railways was behind its Indian counterpart. Today, it carries four times more freight and is expanding three times faster. Since 1992, the Chinese have added 1,000 km of tracks every year as against 100 km by the Indians. But it was India's Railway Minister Laloo Yadav who, at the behest of his bureaucrats no doubt, pompously made a fool of himself by showing off his 'management skills' to students of Harvard, Wharton, IIMs etc.

This is precisely the kind of political and bureaucratic deception that has kept India in darkness even while our biggest neighbour has flooded its almost 1.5 billion citizens with the light of progress and prosperity. The media has helped in this failure too. It has remained completely focused on the West, which is its reference point, and has continuously dismissed China, with which it is unfamiliar, in one line by saying that it has a totalitarian regime while India has democracy. 77% Indians who continue to live in darkness on Rs 20 a day must feel as blessed by democracy as the few who have millions to splurge.

We have gone horribly wrong somewhere. What makes this worse is that we could and should have done much better. This self-inflicted failure is best exemplified by the fact that the two areas in which India has excelled at a scorching pace are those where the shackles put by the government are the weakest. From a situation when there was a waiting period of 10 years to get a telephone from the government - and unaffordable long distance tariffs - to becoming the second largest mobile telephone market in the world with the lowest tariffs, in a little over a decade, is an astounding achievement. Same is the case with the software industry where India has been able to become a global player from nowhere, thanks to a few visionaries and the near-complete absence of bureaucratic interference.

There is little doubt that the whole process of governance and its framework needs to be overhauled. But, there is not even a thought in that direction. That is primarily because those who are benefitting the most by the existing system are the ones who have the power to decide on the changes to be put in place. And they know better than all of us that any real change will render them almost completely irrelevant. That is why no one looks towards China, and that is why everyone keeps going on learning tours to the West - where their kids live/study - only to come back and do nothing.

The Prime Minister must know that piecemeal directions like the one that he has given are not going to make the Indian Railways get ahead of, or even close to, the Chinese, ever. Their railways has not steamed ahead in isolation by accident. Nor has ours failed to get any real move on vital national projects like the two dedicated freight corridors, among many others, by chance or due to bad luck. Or because India is a democracy.

Something has to be done about the sloth and the lack of purpose and pride that afflicts every government department. Something has to be done to put a sense of time and urgency into decision-making and enforce accountability. Something has to be done to end the colonial disconnect between arms of the government and the people, and involve the latter more meaningfully in governance.

Even the Russians, recently 'blessed' by democracy, are not letting that model of governance blind them to the needs of their country. In 1949, the People's Republic of China was born with an ideology it had aped primarily from the erstwhile Soviet Union. Exactly 60 years later, the balance of economic and ideological power has reversed. But Russia is not sitting either on false pride or the idea of democracy. As per a report in The New York Times, it is openly looking at China as a role model. Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin is examining how his country can emulate China which has used a one-party system to not only keep the country well-governed but also drive unparalleled economic growth. The Russians are keen to learn lessons from the divergent paths taken by the two countries in the last couple of decades in which Russia has had to endure dark days while China has carried out a similar shift smoothly and powerfully. We should have been doing the same too.

Many living Chinese nationals have seen their country change three times almost completely. A feudal and backward nation of opium eaters became a communist state in 1949. That change turned the society on its head and lead to millions of deaths as Mao Zedong tried to put communism into practice at every level. That also resulted in a famine that saw around 35 million Chinese die. Such disasters made it evident that there was an unbridgeable and unacceptable gap between the theory and application of communism. Rapid economic growth required to catch up with West and usher all round prosperity was simply not possible with that ideology. That is why after Mao, Deng Xiaoping wisely dumped communism before if could throw the country into chaos again, and evolved a new brand of capitalism with a one-party rule. China also did not allow dynastic politics to take root, as was attempted by the Gang of Four led by Mao's widow.

In contrast, what have many living Indians seen? As far as governance is concerned, no one can tell when colonial rule ended and free India began; the only visible change that Independence ushered in was that the leaders elected by the people stopped reporting to the Governor General and the British Crown. Thanks to a couple of visits to the the Soviet Union that impressed him, Nehru tried to marry socialism with a colonial government structure, only to gave birth to the licence permit raj, unbridled corruption and many other ills that almost choked India to death. It was only after India had to pawn 47 tons of gold in the early nineties to stay afloat that some regulatory chains were loosened. That one step, forced by extreme circumstance mind you, is what saved India and allowed it to register faster economic growth. But when seen in the light of what China has achieved, our many failures easily swamp our few achievements.

Thus, if there is one nation from which India can learn the lessons it needs to about the whole business of governance and economic upliftment, it is China. The copied model that we have stuck to without daring to change some things laid down around 150 years back, has done nothing at all to give the taste of freedom and economic empowerment to nearly 80% of India's citizens even after 63 years. China, on the other hand, has continuously experimented heavily, from the individual upwards, to evolve a system that works like no other, and become a super power.

What is it in their system of governance, planning and implementation that allows the Chinese, for example, to pro-actively think of and then build the kind of railway system that they have, to construct a railway line into Tibet through permafrost conditions and heights of 16,000 feet? What are the structures of governance, revenue and expenditure in villages and towns that ensure that benefits of economic progress reach the last citizen and do not remain confined to the top 15-20%? What is their unique national security and strategy apparatus that is always ahead of the curve and on course to actualising the power and strength that is required to protect the economic and security interests of a nation of 1.5 billion people?

Answers to these and many other questions are urgently required by India. Piecemeal, reactive efforts to replicate what the Chinese have achieved are not going to take India where it should reach with its enormous and as yet unexploited strengths and capabilities. The Chinese have not reached where they have is so short a time by such reactive and disjointed efforts. Had they adopted that approach, they would surely have still been behind India in most fields, forget about going past America.

India and Bharat have to be united without further delay. And that, as should be evident to everyone by now, is not possible through the use of the very instruments of state that have created them in the first place. To this end, there is much that we can learn from China, more than we can from any other country.

A task force or commission needs to be set up without delay to study in detail every single instrument of governance, from the bottom to the top, in every single field, that China has evolved and put in place based on its experience and cultural genius. The task force should not include a single politician or bureaucrat or anyone vulnerable to them because that will make it a non-starter and ensure that only cosmetic changes that increase their power and authority are implemented. Only a completely honest and open-minded approach that has India, including Bharat, in focus will unshackle the genius of this nation and enable a vast majority of its people to experience the glow of freedom for the first time.
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4. Bharat and India: armed rebellion and mental secession
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BHARAT AND INDIA: ARMED REBELLION AND MENTAL SECESSION

The recent elections in Maharashtra have brought a harsh truth to the surface: rulers of Independent India have failed the people of both Gadchiroli and Mumbai, Bharat and India. How does one draw this seemingly illogical conclusion despite the fact that Naxal-affected Gadchiroli saw a high voter turnout of 63%, while India's commercial capital, despite being hit by India's worst terror attack less than a year ago, could enthuse only 43% voters to get their fingers marked, even though the city was shut officially to enable every one to vote?

Gadchiroli is one of the 160 districts of India affected by the Naxal movement that is active in the states of Bihar, West Bengal, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Andhra Pradesh and parts of Orissa, Kerala and Madhya Pradesh. The Maoists, as the Naxalites are popularly called, are engaged in an armed struggle against the present Indian state because they believe that it has failed to empower millions of Indians who continue to suffer unbearable poverty and exploitation.

There can be no denial that even 63 years after Independence, there remain a vast number of Indians who are leading a sub-human existence. According to the Planning Commission, 300 million Indians are below the poverty line while some estimates suggest that as many as 77% Indians live on less than Rs 20 per day. Naxalites hold sway where the poorest of the poor Indians live. In these areas, schools and primary heath centres are virtually non-existent, there is little or no road connectivity and there are virtually no employment opportunities. To cap it, the already wretched existence of the people has been made even worse by corrupt officials, politicians and feudal landlords. If in other parts of the country, 84 paise of each rupee meant for the aam admi is siphoned off by corrupt officials and politicians, you can imagine that in these 'extreme' areas, virtually nothing has ever reached him.

We have to, therefore, understand that conceptually, Naxalism represents an indictment of the form and frame of the state that has failed to meet its most fundamental obligation to its people despite being in position for so long. Most of us living in relative comfort in the cities have a one-dimensional view of the Maoists. However horrifying and unacceptable that may be to us, we must remember that there are still a few among the affluent lot whose hearts not only beat for these unfortunate, helpless and exploited fellow Indians, but they have even given up lives of comfort to be with them and guide them in their struggle to get out of their very dark pit.

Kobad Ghandi, who was arrested last month, is an unlikely political mentor of the Maoists. He hails from an affluent family from Mumbai, was Sanjay Gandhi's classmate at Doon School and did his Chartered Accountancy from Oxford. His wife, who died of malaria last year, also was from Mumbai. Yet, the couple gave up the good life and chose to devote themselves to what is essentially a noble cause. Ravi Sharma, an agricultural scientist from Andhra Pradesh and Anuradha B his wife, both arrested yesterday, also did the same.

If the cause that the Naxals have taken up is so undeniably just and one that rightly shames free India, then why is it that in Gadchiroli so many people turned out to vote for the politicians who have been exploiting and failing them for over half a century? Is it not damning evidence that the alternative that the Maoists promise and have delivered so far is worse than what the netas have? The Maoists may be in almost complete control of many areas, but that is manifestly more due to the power of the gun in their hands than the ideas in their heads. They are employing a very old and failed ideological tool to obtain a social solution in an entirely different age and setting. The very poor man may know that they are working for him, but by now he has also discovered that this is not the deliverance he is looking for. So, he has been forced to choose between the lesser of the two evils before him. He simply has no other choice.

Since 2005, Naxal violence has claimed an average of sixty lives per month. And, as the recent beheading of police inspector Francis Induwar in Ranchi and the killing of 17 policemen in Gadchiroli shows, the danger posed by Maoists is too real to be ignored any longer. Dr Manmohan Singh was not wrong when he says that Naxalism poses the greatest internal security threat to the country. Home Minister P Chidambaram has also shown rare political resolve to use force to defeat this challenge that some politicians have been exploiting - anything new? - for petty political gains.

No matter what bleeding-heart liberals and human rights activists bubbled in Delhi might say, it is the sacred duty of the state to ensure that the law of the land prevails and that ordinary citizens are not terrorised by anyone promising a better future at the point of a gun. One can keep arguing in TV studios about state-sponsored terrorism, ideology etc, but that must not deflect us from the task of ending the prevailing anarchy with minimum loss of time and life.

The people of Mumbai, by keeping away from the voting machines in these troubled times, have also unmistakably conveyed the message that they have lost faith in the ability and intention of politicians to do what they are expected to. They too have have sent a signal, again, that the manner in which the country is being governed generates no hope in them, no matter which party is in power. This is particularly true for the elite and the middle class as they are the ones who have stayed away from the voting booths.

The people of Mumbai, unlike those of Gadchiroli, have not voted because they can afford to not vote for the lesser evil. Why? Because they have another option. They can, as Rajdeep Sardesai says, "secede mentally if not physically" from the Indian state and become "resident non-Indians". As long their comfortable lives are not touched by the failures all around them, save for a few minor irritants that they have learnt to live with, they don't give a damn about what happens elsewhere. They lives are not confined to and stymied by the many failures of India that have kept nearly 900 million Indians in darkness without hope. They can manage with and without the state and its unresponsive instruments. They know voting is not going to change anything. So they don't want to waste their time and effort taking part in what has become a mockery of democracy.

This "mental secession" of the elite from the rest, of India from Bharat, is what led to the mess in the first place. The biggest mistake newly Independent India made was to do little more than change the colour of the skin of its rulers. No effort whatsoever was made to replace the colonial tools of governance, deliberately designed by the British to maintain a clear and unbridgeable gap between the elite and the natives. The British had a motive for creating an elite that looked up to and aspired to be as much like them as the colour of their skin allowed, and as distant from and superior to the natives they were expected to keep firmly in control on behalf of their masters.

When free India opted for an inherently flawed model of democracy not suitable for a large and diverse country like India, even that exercise remained confined to the legislature only. The judiciary, administration and police remained as colonial as they were before Independence. The involvement of the people in governance has, thus, remained mostly limited to casting their votes every few years. The rest of the government machinery remains as aloof and arrogant and above them as it always was. In fact, over time, even politicians, the only ones that normal Indians have a say in choosing, have also become equally, if not more, removed and distant from the people whose voice they are supposed to be.

Of late, there is a democracy-killing trend that has gathered great momentum. A few hundred political dynasties, big and small, have emerged across the country and taken vice-like control. Though there are over a thousand political parties in India which should indicate that the democratic process is robust, exactly the opposite is true. There is no inner party democracy in most parties and many of them, big and small, are no more than family fiefdoms.

This has happened primarily because politics, like the colonial administration, police and, to some extent the judiciary, is becoming a platform for plundering India. That is what the British did too. But they were here precisely for that purpose. This was not their country. It is India's misfortune that the elite they created and the politicians who have succeeded them, are doing exactly the same, exceptions apart. The only difference now is that the loot remains largely in India, if it is not rotting in Swiss banks.

This is not the value system or the model of governance that is going to deliver the people of Bharat from the misery being inflicted on them by the ruling elite of India. All that it is going to do is to ensure that the Bharatiyas who break out of their hell-holes, despite the government or due to it, will also choose the easy way out and mentally secede from Bharat. They too, like the present elite of Mumbai and elsewhere, will seal themselves in their comfortable bubbles and just shut themselves out from the misery and poverty that writhes but a few feet away.

Yes, Naxals post a grave threat to the security of India. Yes, they are employing unacceptable tools and an ideology that has invariably inhumanly oppressed the very classes it is supposed to uplift. But is any one else in the country seriously committed to the task of trying to lift almost a billion souls out of despair? Let us not hide behind 'trickle down' theories and some such nonsense to justify our insensitivity and failure as a nation.

The example of China is before us. So we can't pretend that it can't be done, and wave the 'empowering' flag of democracy in front of the deprived and the hungry. Our models of democracy and governance have failed thus far and the disastrous direction that they have taken of late will ensure that they will not succeed in future too. So, while putting down of the armed rebellion of Maoists is essential, it will succeed only if we show even greater resolve and firmness in simultaneously putting away the tools that have failed Bharat and perpetuated colonial India.

I read a tweet somewhere which said that we must ban from politics the 400-odd families that have taken over India. That may sound silly, but it tells us that dishonest cosmetic changes will not work. This nation did not fight for Independence to live with armed rebellion on one side and mental secession on the other. Both are equally dangerous and both need to be addressed urgently and honestly.
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Readers may also read:
1. Democracy - mockocracy - revolution
2. Capital punishment, not gain for the corrupt
3. 1000 times President's salary for India's babus!
4. Corrupt, colonial India faces volcano
5. Covering up the mother of all corruption scandals
6. Conspicuous consumption and conspicuous poverty

FOCUSED CHINA POWERS AHEAD OF SHACKLED INDIA

"Political power grows out from the barrel of a gun...whoever has an army has power, for war settles everything". 82 years after Mao Zedong uttered these immortal words to guide his country forward, China has erupted dramatically on the international scene from nowhere as a super power that is on course to replace the US as the greatest military power the world has ever seen.

Just 60 years ago, the People's Republic of China (PRC) was born from the ruins of a civil war and an eight-nation military invasion during which millions of lives were lost. The Chinese follow a 60 year Luni-solar calendar. October 1, 2009 marked the completion of the first cycle since the present Republic was established, and the beginning of a new one. That is why the Chinese marked this day with a dazzling show of military might that no one would have thought was possible just twenty years ago.

India became independent two years before PRC came into existence. At that time, both nations were almost equally backward and poor. While India started an uninterrupted but excruciatingly slow march towards development almost immediately after Independence, China went into a near tailspin from which it could not have recovered but for the resilience of its people and their 'chi ku'. The great famine of 1959-61 claimed around 30 million lives, and millions more were killed due to Mao's disastrous cultural revolution. In fact till 1978, when Deng Xiaoping threw classic communism out of the window to get economic cats of all colours as long as they could catch mice, India was economically almost at par with that country, although militarily it had already allowed itself to fall way behind.

But, despite these initial disasters, China neither forgot its history nor its goals, as it saw them, and used its military power to settle all issues decisively and expeditiously in its favour. Within 13 days of the formation of the PRC, the People's Liberation Army (PLA) trooped into Xinjiang and began the process of rapidly changing its demographics. As a result, as per Chinese census, the number of Han Chinese increased from 200,000 in 1949 to 7.49 million in 2000. A year later, Chinese troops marched into Tibet and by September 1951, entered Lhasa and started settling Han Chinese there too. Around the same time, India was incorporating Article 370 in its constitution to help turn Kashmir into a permanent conflict zone that would claim the lives of thousands of Indian soldiers later.

Even as Mao was trying his level best to give Nehru much needed lessons about the inescapability of having of a strong military, Nehru was busy deluding himself that the era of wars was over, that India did not need an Army and that its borders could be managed by the police. Though he could see that China was speedily converting India's buffer against that country into its buffer against India, and pushing Chinese troops, for the first time in history, to India's borders, he reportedly welcomed China's annexation of Tibet on the ground that a dose of socialism would be good for the people of Tibet.

Consistently ignoring the advise of his generals to enhance the capability of the military as the threat from the Chinese grew larger, and letting Krishna Menon play havoc with the ministry of defence, Nehru all but invited the Chinese to rout India's ill equipped and outnumbered troops in 1962. No matter what he may have done earlier, there is no way that Nehru would have got away in any self-respecting country with his monumental blunders that culminated in the 1962 rout. That he is still remembered with respect, not shame, explains to some extent as to why India continues to remain foolishly passive, and mentally and militarily weak.

47 years have passed since 1962. In these years, China has sprinted ahead to become a military giant that evokes awe. India, on the other hand, has remained content with having a much inferior military capability that has not been able to deter even a much smaller Pakistan from vigorously pursuing a proxy war for over two decades now. Mind you this is in spite of the fact that China has never stopped claiming that Arunachal Pradesh and other smaller pieces of territory all along its 4000 km long border with India are a part of China, and has doggedly refused to give up any of its territorial claims in the innumerable rounds of border talks it has held with India over many years.

China knows only too well that no government in India can afford to give up any territory to China on the negotiating table. China also knows that India's strategy-blind politicians have foolishly pushed aside and capped the barrel of India's gun, and mindlessly allowed China to speed away in conventional and nuclear military capability. India, they also know from past experience, will quickly accept reality whenever China invokes the golden lesson of Mao to settle the boundary issue in its favour.

More disturbing than the fact that China has raced ahead of India is the near complete absence of hurt pride among the elite that is responsible for, and has benefitted disproportionately from, the path that India has chosen. Not only is this lot absolutely comfortable with the increasing gap that China has created and is going to maintain, it is also conning fellow Indians and preventing them from reacting in the manner they must, by lulling them with the lollipops of 'democracy' and dishonest half-truths.

Democracy is not the reason why India has fallen behind, just as communism is not the reason why China has powered ahead. The US is a democracy as are all countries of Western Europe, while communism has failed and collapsed everywhere. China is where it is today because its leaders have shown a realism and dynamism to ruthlessly discard, where necessary, copied systems and ideologies, and adopt new ones keeping in mind the nation's objectives. They have thrown into the dustbin virtually everything Mao taught and practiced except the one thing that got into China's fold vast swathes of territory and made it secure against another aggression or invasion. India, on the other hand, refuses to change track; individuals and families continue to take precedence over the nation.

China has not forgotten the fact that it was invaded in WW2; nor has it forgotten the earlier invasions of the Mongols and others. "Remember history well, do not forget the past"; that is what Chinese President tells Hu Jintao tells his people. India's leaders and bureaucrats, with the help of power journalists like Shekha Gupta, on the other hand, want Indians to forget the past; remembering it reveals the harsh truth that they have failed to learn the needed lessons and do whatever it takes to ensure that we are not tripped in the same manner by anyone ever again. It is not out of thin air that Mao spoke of the need of a powerful military much before the communists came to power. It is not by accident that China is today a military super power while India not even in the frame.

We don't need enemies to defeat us; there are many among us who, like always, are doing that job well. That is one reason why some don't want us to remember what happened in the past.

As you would have noticed while watching that awesome show of Chinese military might, the military not only projects a nation's power, it is a powerful symbol that visibly enhances national pride among it citizens and awe, fear and respect among those of other countries. As a result a powerful nation wins many 'wars' without firing a single shot and losing a single life. The Chinese understand that well. But in a nation where cops and generalist bureaucrats can think of nothing better than running the nation's military down just to claim top spot for themselves as individuals with the help of conniving media personalities and corrupt politicians, what better can you expect, except dirty tricks to sweep their dirt under the carpet, even as the nation continues to remain much, much weaker than it should be and therefore almost afraid and ever ready to crawl? Can something so illogical and dysfunctional be even imagined in China and the US?

It is not just the military. China has also put in place a system of governance and employed ideologies that are unique to the requirements of that country. India, on the other hand, has not only not stuck to a model of democracy blindly copy-pasted from a very different and tiny island, but has actually further subverted and corrupted it willfully to suit the selfish interests of a few individuals, cadres and groups, who very well know that the nation has paid and is paying a heavy price for it. For them, the self comes above all else.

More than 30 million Chinese died of starvation 60 years ago. Today there is not one Chinese below the poverty line. Very few Indians have died of starvation in the last 60 years. But today 880 million of them live a sub human existence on less than Rs 20 a day. What meaning does democracy have for them? Should we the better off be so selfish as to be happy with a system that gives us the kind of 'freedom' we want but keeps many, many more just as poor and enslaved as they were 62 years back?

The very, very few who have become very rich and powerful due to their sometimes criminal and almost anti-national decisions that continue to keep nearly 70% Indians in the dark bowels of deprivation and exploitation, and the nation militarily as vulnerable as it was in 1962, want status quo to be maintained. They want Indians to continue to remain ignorant of their many colossal failures because an honest and much needed overhaul will throw them from the perches they have dishonestly created for themselves, mostly at the cost of the nation.

If India has to break free of the terrible shackles that they have put around it, they have to be ruthlessly weeded out. There is no other way.

India desperately needs a Deng Xiaoping.
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Readers may also like to read:
1. Facing the challenge of China's military modernisation
2. China and India:winning wars vs defending the country
3. India's 'Power': weakness=virtue, strength=immorality
4. China and India: bully and forever bullied
5. Democracy, morality and national interest
6. Myanmar lost to China: India's encirclement complete
7. Diplomacy cannot counter China's challenge
8. China gets dangerous, but nothing can move India
9. Admission before accusation, surrender before attack
'

ADMISSION BEFORE ACCUSATION, SURRENDER BEFORE ATTACK

Chinese intrusions into Indian territory are not only increasing disturbingly, they are also occurring in new areas, besides becoming becoming more and more audacious, as if to taunt India. Yet, the response of those who are ru(i)nning India's Ministry of Defence (MOD) continues to be like that of a petrified lamb that has been unexpectedly confronted by a tiger. But even by their standards, the way they have responded to the latest report of Chinese intrusion into India territory is shocking.

In the latest incident, Chinese troops entered nearly 1.5 kilometers into Indian territory, painted rocks with red spray paint, and wrote "China" in Cantonese on them. What makes this intrusion really serious is that this is the first time since Independence that the Chinese have entered this area and graphically claimed it as their own. The 22,420 ft Mount Gya is located at the tri-junction of Ladakh, Himachal Pradesh and Tibet. Its boundary was marked during the British era and regarded as the international boundary between the two countries.

The Chinese, as always, have rejected India's accusation as groundless and about something that has not happened at all, along with a stereotyped statement that China is committed "to seek a fair and mutually acceptable solution through peaceful and friendly negotiation". The Chinese response is perfectly justified because that country has no illusions about the real estate it must grab by force at the right time, to complete the unfinished agenda and humiliation of 1962. So, it has been systematically and relentlessly projecting its national will, and creating "evidence" all along the more than 4,000 kilometer long border. This will be used later, backed by photographs surely, to justify its occupation by saying that these areas always were part of China.

What does India's MOD have to say? "This incursion is not a major issue". That is not all. It has also given the Chinese a completely clean chit on the logic that there is a difference in perception of the Line of Actual Control (LAC). But the icing on this cake of abject surrender is the statement that "incursions happen from both sides". This "proactive" admission has been made even when the Chinese have not accused Indian troops of a violation, just to make sure that they don't bare their real fangs yet. Have we ever heard of China accusing Indian troops of repeatedly intruding into Tibet like India does almost every second day? (It might start now). Is it not Chinese troops alone who keep entering deep into Indian territory repeatedly on the quiet to leave behind tell-tale signs of their presence, to deliberately let the Indians know that, as far as they are concerned, those cold and inhospitable areas belong to China?

No doubt there are some parts in the difficult terrain along the LAC where it is not easy to identify the watershed. But, will anyone answer as to why all doubts and disputes pertain to areas that fall on India's side of the perceived watershed? Have the Indians ever dared to claim even an inch of Tibet that is now China thanks primarily to the fatal strategic blindness of Nehru?

China's latest military doctrine states that "unresolved border disputes would be one reason for going to war". Its southwest border (with India) has also been identified as a potential theater of war. China has 14 neighbours. It had border disputes with most of them, including Russia. But over the years, it has solved its disputes with 12. The only ones that China has doggedly refused to resolve are the ones with India and Bhutan. Unlike Nehru, who simply wrote off "distant" Aksai Chin, the Chinese are unrelenting in their intention to grab even more land in remote and inhospitable areas which are far away from mainland China.

The latest incursion into Himachal Pradesh/Ladakh has never happened before. The decision to intrude so deep into this area surely would not have been taken locally. There is a significant political message in this display of national will. Is it not a major issue that should cause serious concern? One would like to believe that MOD's statement is for public consumption and that privately India is taking necessary steps to ensure that the Chinese do not dare to try a 1962 again.

Unfortunately, that is not true at all. The babus of MOD have already surrendered to the might of China and are seemingly content to patiently wait for it to put India out of the misery of border violations by grabbing Arunachal Pradesh and other claimed areas to settle the dispute once and for all. Which other MOD will actually pay glowing tributes to China as an "important player in global affairs", proceeding firmly ahead on its "well charted out goals"? In its annual report of 2008, the MOD, in fact, not only pretends that there is no threat from China but also lauds that country for "improving bilateral relations with its neighbouring countries at diplomatic, economic and military levels"! Even the Pentagon is concerned about China's military build up. Perhaps that is because it is in the hands of honest, nationalist professionals, and not unaccountable, time serving bureaucrats.

India's military leaders, unfortunately, are little better. They have meekly played along with the babus, despite knowing better as professionals and as leaders on whose command young sons of India are expected to die without asking why. There is a widespread belief within the services that successive Army Chiefs have sold their souls, and their country, out of greed for post retirement rehabilitation as Governors and Ambassadors. Present Army Chief Deepak Kapoor's very guarded statements and the ominous silence of his not-so-illustrious predecessors lends real credence to this belief that would be a cause of concern in any responsive military organisation. Little wonder these guys do not enjoy the kind of respect that real leaders of men do.

Such being the state of India's national security apparatus, does India have real options? A besieged fort cannot be held by firing flower bouquets from its cannons or by waiving the white flag every time a cannon ball hits it. Perhaps there is an unintended point in Chetan Bhagat's juvenile views. The way things are, India will do well to show great "statesmanship" and "good neighbourliness" by unilaterally giving Kashmir to Pakistan, and Arunachal Pradesh and other claimed areas to China.

Why wait for lakhs of Indians to be slaughtered when you know that defeat is certain whenever the besieger decides to launch an assault? Admission before accusation must logically lead to surrender before attack. No?
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Readers may also like to read:
1. Facing the challenge of China's military modernisation
2. China and India:winning wars vs defending the country
3. India's 'Power': weakness=virtue, strength=immorality
4. China and India: bully and forever bullied
5. Democracy, morality and national interest
6. Myanmar lost to China: India's encirclement complete
7. Diplomacy cannot counter China's challenge
8. China gets dangerous, but nothing can move India

INDIA'S SECURITY CHALLENGES: WHO CARES!

In the chain of adverse developments which must cause serious concern to India, the latest is that Pakistan already has 70 to 90 nuclear weapons and is pushing ahead with a superior plutonium-based nuclear program. A new nuclear-capable ballistic missile and two similar cruise missiles are also under development. This news is serious enough to make India's Army Chief Deepak Kapoor say that Pakistan is going well beyond the "so-called requirement of deterrence".

Consider the following related developments:

• The Obama administration has notified the US Congress that Pakistan has modified US supplied Harpoon anti-ship missiles to hit land targets
• The US has also accused Pakistan of modifying US made P-3C Orion aircraft for land attack missions
• Chinese intrusions into India territory have shown an alarming increase
• Chinese military journals are getting increasingly hostile, reminding India of the 1962 debacle and warning India that the next time China "will not pull back 30 km" as it had then.
• A recent article in a quasi-official Chinese website says that it is in China's interest to break India into 20-30 pieces and that it must recover the 90,000 square km territory of Southern Tibet, or Arunachal Pradesh.
• China is aggressively trying to encircle India from all sides. It latest gas pipeline agreement with Myanmar to supply 100 billion cubic metres of gas annually is a huge step in that direction.
  

One can go on adding to this list which should make it clear to anyone with even ordinary intelligence that India is surrounded by at least two neighbours who are furiously developing offensive military capability. If you view this in the light of the fact that both China and Pakistan do not have unresolved disputes with any country other than India and also face no real security threat from any other nation, then you cannot escape the logical deduction that India needs not only to reactively take measures to protect itself, but it also needs to do something proactively to put it past Pakistan to compete with India militarily, quite like China has done to India.

Unfortunately, in India, national security is often viewed as an unpleasant and unnecessary intrusion into and against national development. The natural, and uninformed, if I may add, Indian impulse is to unilaterally "give in" while negotiating with neighbours, in the fond hope that as a result, peace will prevail and money "wasted" on defence better used "productively". Despite the many nasty experiences of the past, we simply refuse to understand that any concessions given out of a weakness that is visible to all can buy only illusory peace, with serious long term repercussions.

This defeatist mindset tries to cover up its weakness by seeking moral sustenance from Buddha and Gandhi, conveniently forgetting that in their lexicon, the word "cowardice" does not exist.

A perfect example of this debilitating disease that has already cost the nation heavy, is a column by author Chetan Bhagat in the Hindustan Times of August 24, 2009. The arguments put forth by Bhagat are, in fact, so juvenile and out of touch with reality that it is a given that had his name not been appended to them, the essay would have found place only in a trash bin.

That is India's difficulty. Bhagat is not alone. There are many like him out there who, when it comes to national security, effectively say the same thing: "Who cares!".

Sample some of the unbelievable statements made by Bhagat in the column in question:

• How badly do we want Kashmir? At the cost of making colleges for the young generation in the country? At the cost of not doing irrigation projects for our farmers? At the cost of not building roads and power plants? At the cost of living in high inflation forever?
• We can have an alliance with another nation if the aim of defence is to protect our borders. For instance, America has a big need to ensure safety of its own borders and cut global terrorism. We can work with them — yes, by giving them some access to our country. For us, it can save costs of protecting ourselves...We may shudder at the presence of American involvement in our defence, but frankly what advantage could they gain against us if they help us protect our borders?...They have much to gain from our potential market for American products and cheap outsourcing... let’s outsource some of our defence to them, make them feel secure and save money for us. Having a rich, strong friend rarely hurt anyone.
• We need to have peace not only because it is a good thing — but also because we can’t afford to fight or stay prepared to fight for the next 20 years. We are hiring more security guards outside the house when there isn’t money to put the kids in school...Money spent on bullets doesn’t give returns, money spent on better infrastructure does.

Is this guy talking about the security of huge nation of 1.3 billion people or about making peace in some "mohalla" with a small change give-don't-take accommodation?

In the forties, Pandit Nehru effectively said "who cares" about the rest of Kashmir when Indian forces were poised to march to Muzaffarabad. In the fifties, he said the same thing about the 38,000 square kms of territory that the Chinese occupied in Aksai Chin. In 1962, it was "who cares" about the people of the entire North East when Nehru bid them goodbye from India after he came to know that Chinese troops had reached the outskirts of Tezpur.

Today, it is "How badly do we need Kashmir?". Tomorrow the likes of Bhagat will ask the same question about Arunachal Pradesh, what to talk of the 5,180 sq kms of Kashmir ceded to the Chinese by Pakistan in 1963, which has all but been written off. After that, it might be Bengal, Andaman Islands, Punjab and perhaps even the place where Bhagat comes from. How can one forget that Pakistani leaders are already justifying terrorism not just to wrest Kashmir but due to the "condition of Muslims in the rest of India"? No prizes for guessing where that road is headed. But, who cares! As long as some money can be "saved" to build roads, colleges etc.

Even worse is Bhagat's not-smarter-than-a-fifth-grader suggestion to outsource the protection of our borders to the US! I mean how can anyone with even a pretense of intelligence think like that? Why outsource just defence? Why not outsource governance too? And become their de facto colony?(That will automatically happen when you outsource defence). They will then be able to recruit Indians as soldiers to fight and die for them all over the world in return for the kind of "protection" that the British provided to us when they ruled India! Then both Pakistan and China will also not be able to cast an evil eye on this "country". And our kids will be able to go to great colleges, drive on smooth highways, shop in swanky malls, and say "who cares" with gay abandon! Great deal! Wonder why a much smaller Pakistan has never thought of it. It will get Kashmir in a jiffy if it resorts to such terrific outsourcing.

No wonder Bhagat does not have the capacity to question America's "big need to ensure the safety of its own borders and cut global terrorism", even as he dismisses India's security needs. No wonder it has not even struck him that China spends many times more than India on its defence despite not having even a fraction of the threats that India faces, or the fact that it has been doing so since decades and not after it has become economically strong. No wonder he sees in Pakistan a harmless dove - despite a much higher GDP spend on offensive defence and terrorism - that a hawkish India does not want to reconcile with and to whom it wants to teach a lesson, for no reason whatsoever!

Bhagat's closing argument that India needs to have peace because "we can't afford to fight or stay prepared to fight for the next 20 years" sums up not only his abysmal ignorance about the fact that real peace between nations comes at a price, but also lays bare the same fatal misconception that led Nehru to say before 1962 that India does not need an Army and that its borders could be manned by the police.

Unfortunately for India, variants of this view continue to dominate India's security structure. Babus who have the NSA and the MOD in a vice-like grip, have no expertise in matters related to strategy and are also not accountable to anyone. Perhaps some of them are planning to get the government to agree to a surrender on Kashmir. Perhaps Bhagat's column has been sponsored as part of a plan to prepare the nation to meekly accept the impending unlocking of the main gate of the fortress called India.

So what if the fortress falls speedily after that, as it undoubtedly will. At worst India will be back to where it was a little over half a century ago, isn't it? Who cares!

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1. Facing the challenge of China's military modernisation
2. China and India:winning wars vs defending the country
3. India's 'Power': weakness=virtue, strength=immorality
4. China and India: bully and forever bullied
5. Democracy, morality and national interest
6. Myanmar lost to China: India's encirclement complete
7. Diplomacy cannot counter China's challenge
8. China gets dangerous, but nothing can move India
9. Musharraf's shockers on terror, Kashmir and Indian Muslims
10. India, learn how to get Pakistan to walk

CHINA GETS DANGEROUS, BUT NOTHING CAN MOVE INDIA

The posture is getting increasingly aggressive and the objectives more and more dangerous.

China, as India should have understood decades back, but has manifestly not till now, is not mindlessly keeping alive its border dispute with India, particularly over Arunachal Pradesh or Southern Tibet as China calls it. It is the perfect and ready excuse that China needs to switch from dialogue to military attack whenever it chooses to. All it has to do is to suddenly claim that the Indians are being unacceptably difficult on the negotiating table, and have left China with no choice but to liberate Southern Tibet through use of force.

This is such a straightforward deduction that it is unbelievable that India's politicians and babus have colluded to keep India as vulnerable as it is today, that too in the light of the stinging lesson of 1962. This failure is inexcusable. But it seems that the buck does not stop anywhere in India. India's security apparatus has been systematically hijacked fraudulently by generalist, department hopping babus, even though they do not have even a remote understanding of what they are dealing with. Add to this the fact that they are not in any manner accountable to anyone for the colossal price that India will undoubtedly have to pay for their blunders, and you have a perfect recipe for a national disaster of frightening proportions. Tragically, that is not what concerns them. The nation can go to hell for all they care, as long as they can hold on to every single lever of power and decision making in the MOD, MEA and NSA.

In March last year, Chinese President Hu Jintao asked the People's Liberation Army of China (PLA) to enhance its capabilities to win hi-tech regional wars, respond to security threats and accomplish a diverse array of military tasks. Almost in tandem, Chinese military journals started, without any provocation, to talk tough against India and accused it of going on the "same old path of confrontation with China as it had in 1962", and warned that China "will not pull back 30 km" as it had in 1962.

That belligerence and hostility should have, but did not shock officials in the NSA and MOD, who simply don’t seem to care, or in the Foreign Office, who have made it a national policy to crawl when China says "walk". That is the one and only way they have found for India to ensure that the Chinese are kept looking good and the illusion of "friendship" is maintained. Why? One, because they have no expertise in matters related to strategy and security and, two, because they do not want to spoil their cozy status quo party; their "West" fixation and cadre supremacy depend entirely on it.

But, did anyone else sit up and take notice? Did anyone else join the dots and tell the political leadership that the military gap between India and China had become uncomfortably large and that India needed to do something about it on a war footing, if it did not want to face a debacle worse than 1962? You know the answer. Everyone in the know knows the answer.

So, while the Chinese kept officials in the MEA happy and the babus in the NSA and MOD in comfortable slumber by cooperating with India on insignificant issues in various international forums, where it mattered they kept getting and talking tougher, and did not blink before responding in a hostile manner, when needed. At the NSG meeting in Vienna last year, for example, they tried their best to sabotage the clean waiver without which the Indo-US Nuclear Deal would have been useless. But for Bush, they would have succeeded too. Subsequently, they also officially blocked a $ 2.9 billion assistance program from the ADB only because some of that money was to be used in Arunachal Pradesh. All this was accompanied by tirades against India's economic progress, its relations with Pakistan, its response after 26/11 etc. Did it cause even a drop of sweat to appear on the brows of those in charge of India's national security apparatus?

Emboldened by its military might and India's expected zero response, China has now dropped the bombshell that even the totally blind cannot ignore. A recent article in a quasi-official Chinese web site has, for the first time, echoed the objective that Pakistan has been pursuing almost since its inception. It says that India must be broken into 20-30 pieces and that it is in China's interest to do so. To make this a reality, it goes on to say, China should " bring into its fold countries like Pakistan, Nepal and Bhutan, support Ulfa in attaining its goal for Assam’s independence, back aspirations of Indian nationalities like Tamils and Nagas, encourage Bangladesh to give a push to the independence of West Bengal and lastly recover the 90,000 sq km territory in southern Tibet".

China has also just launched its biggest ever military exercise to improve its capacity for "long range projection" . It involves 50,000 troops, some of whom will use trains moving at 350 kmph and civilian passenger and cargo aircraft, to move thousands of miles.

So, now we have not one but two strong neighbours who want to break India up in their national interests. They both see an emerging but pacifist India that has no territorial ambitions whatsoever, and that looks only inward, as a threat to their countries, for different reasons. And to counter what Indians know is an imaginary threat, they are speaking of dismembering this country.

India, on the other hand, refuses to see any country as as a threat at all, no matter what the provocation, no matter what the historical background. Its army of ignorant and disinterested politicians and babus wants to keep pretending that all will be well eventually if India walks more than half the distance, even if it is to effectively surrender, and if it engages in "proactive diplomacy". This inexplicable foolishness despite the nasty experiences of 1947, 1962, 1965 and the ongoing proxy war that Pakistan launched in 1989, is something that cannot be grasped by anyone save the few Indian "analysts" who are on the government's page either due to sheer ignorance or some sort of political convenience.

That is perhaps why Naval Chief Admiral Sureesh Mehta has been forced to publicly warn the nation a few days before his retirement that "In military terms, both conventionally and unconventionally, we neither have the capability nor the intention to match China force for force…”. No capability, no intention. There is no capability presently because there never was an intention in the past; there will be no capability in future too because there is no intention even now. That is precisely why the gap has become "too wide to bridge and is getting wider by the day".

No matter how dangerous China gets for India, India's response will not change. Nothing can move its leaders. They will keep helplessly parroting that India's ties with China are fundamentally healthy. And do nothing at all to even narrow the gap that they have mindlessly allowed that country to create in just a few decades.

For years, China quietly but furiously developed its conventional and nuclear military capability and did not make any threatening noises, to lull a very willing India into complacency. Even during that period, it did not stop regular and increasingly deeper incursions into Indian territory, without drawing a befitting and respect-generating response from an India that has remained scared to death thanks to the 1962 debacle.

Having successfully created the minimum military gap that it had deliberately set out to, the tiger has cast away the sheep skin that it was wearing. Having done that, it is now threatening to attack the petrified lamb called India by blaming it for drinking and soiling the water that is actually flowing downstream from him to the poor creature.

The lamb in the original story had no hope and was eaten by the tiger, even though it was not at fault, because it really was no more than a weak, defenceless lamb. India is no born lamb. It has been turned into one by its security blind politico-bureaucratic machinery that has obdurately refused to learn any lesson from history, ancient or contemporary, and has put in place a structure that has reduced this huge nation to such a pitiable state that not just China but Pakistan - even Bangladesh and Nepal - treat it without fear and with a contempt that would shame any self respecting nation.

An insecure, ignorant, arrogant and paralytic mindset is not capable of listening to professional advice or acting on it. Worse, it is not even confident of allowing professionals to take the lead in doing whatever is needed to prevent other nations, big and small, from taking it for granted and humiliating it repeatedly. That is why a slightly bigger China has become much bigger and stronger, and a much smaller Pakistan has become bigger than it should ever have and strong enough to force India to unilaterally give concessions in the brainless hope that it will put an end to its proxy war.

If things continue to drift as they are, India is going to face an outcome worse than it did in 1962, whenever the Chinese exercise the military option they are talking louder and louder about. Should both Pakistan and China decide to join hands to break India up, as China has begun to say, it will simply be a no-contest and the dismemberment of India will be accomplished quickly and with minimum force. China, as should be evident to all now, has not been cultivating Pakistan for all these years just to keep India tied down: whenever they get a real chance, they will do much worse.

Did India's freedom fighters fight for Independence so that in just over a generation our leaders would make us so relatively weak that our very existence as a nation would be under threat? Can India afford to let its leaders keep hurtling it towards a disaster of such proportions? What will it take to make the blind men who are leading India to open their eyes and act as they must to safeguard the freedom of a billion people who have placed their trust in them? Or are they just not capable of keeping soon-to-be superpower India secure and Indians safe?

Picture source: Xinuha

UPDATE: The Beijing based Chinese website that published the " Break up India" article has, predictably, claimed that it does not reflect the views of any government think tank. It also wants India to believe that the article was a web posting by an anonymous internet user whose identity and credentials have not been verified. Such a denial was expected. Had it been acknowledged that it represented the views of the state, it would have been tantamount to an declaration of war.
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Readers may also like to read:
1. Facing the challenge of China's military modernisation
2. China and India:winning wars vs defending the country
3. India's 'Power': weakness=virtue, strength=immorality
4. China and India: bully and forever bullied
5. Democracy, morality and national interest
6. Myanmar lost to China: India's encirclement complete
7. Diplomacy cannot counter China's challenge

INDIA TO PAK: YOU KEEP SHOOTING, WE'LL KEEP TALKING

A month and a half back, India's new Foreign Minister SM Krishna had given as clear an indication as he could that Mumbai 26/11 had been placed in the archives, like numerous previous terror attacks had been, and that India was ready yet again to offer the other cheek to Pakistan, even though it was still bleeding as a result of the many slaps given by the latter earlier. "Never negotiate out of fear, but never fear to negotiate". These were the little understood words of John Kennedy that Krishna used to justify what was clearly going to be a climb down of humiliating proportions.

Anticipating where Krishna and the officials at the Foreign Office were preparing to take India, this is what I had written then: We are getting back to square one, tail between legs, the empty bark beginning to sound like a pleading yelp. And all this without even the dignity of a face-saving concession by Pakistan, however tiny. Kiyani and gang must be laughing their guts out, after spitting contemptuously in India's face, yet again. The "buzdili", cowardice, that defines India's response to Pakistan's open and unrelenting efforts to hurt it through covert use of force, and spotted long back by former ISI chief Hamid Gul, is only getting worse.

I must admit that I was wrong. The capitulation Krishna and the officials in his office were planning for India was actually far worse and far more damaging. I can only imagine that they were able to sell their dumb and defeatist ideas to Dr Manmohan Singh by covering them with the lofty but empty and divorced-from-reality Nehruvian idealism and magnanimity that has repeatedly seen India give but not get. That failed and disastrous mindset was clearly responsible for making the PM say that India will not be a great country without engaging Pakistan.

A country does not become great by engaging other countries on their terms, particularly when those countries are waging war against it. By doing so, quite the reverse happens, and over time a great country is weakened and then defeated by a determined enemy. But who will teach that to our career diplomats and politicians?

During his visit to Pakistan in 1999, Atal Bihari Vajpayee tried to illuminate Pakistanis by saying, "One can change friends, not geography, not neighbours". He was greeted with Kargil a few months later. Ten years later, Manmohan Singh, after the terror attack in Mumbai, still said: "we cannot choose our neighbours...an alert and pluralist society like ours is the best defence against terrorist onslaughts". He was greeted in Sharm el-Sheikh by an even more aggressive Pakistan that got him to agree to a joint statement that has shocked and angered a lot of Indians.

The whole world has known since the dawn of civilisation that you cannot change your neighbours. And ever since then, there has been a never ending struggle to ensure that your neighbour remains friendly to you and does not engage in acts that are hostile to your interest. Whenever that equilibrium is disturbed, the matter is more often than not settled through use of force or, better still, the threat of it. For the bigger nation, diplomacy is merely an instrument to convey to your neighbour the minimum that you expect of him, and to tell him that failing which he must be prepared to face unacceptable consequences. And to make such a warning credible, you have to consciously develop the means that can deliver that message effectively without him being able to respond and hurt you in turn beyond a point.

Unfortunately in India, diplomacy - mere words - has become an end in itself. Negotiations and talks based on fear and cowardly morality have become the prime vehicles by which a huge nation of more than a billion people wants to interact with and influence its neighbours who are in its strategic sphere of influence. This sorry state of affairs is partly because of politicians who have no understanding of national security and strategy and partly because career diplomats and other departments of the government work in water tight compartments and are busy building their own dysfunctional bureaucratic empires.

Pakistan also knows that it cannot change it neighbours. But it is not willing to accept the existence of its neighbour in the east in its present form and wants to change the dynamics to suit its own view of history based solely on religion. So, ever since its birth, it has unsuccessfully used various means to bring about that change. The present and ongoing zero cost, zero risk method of using terror or low intensity conflict is one that it has employed for over two decades now, with no reaction from India despite the heavy cost it has been paying to fight it. To those who have their eyes and minds open, it is evident that Pakistan is not going to give it up till it is forced to.

The only guys who manifestly cannot see fundamental fact this are politicians and officials making a career out of writing notes in the Foreign Office, NSA, MHA and MoD. That is why the PM says that India will only passively keep defending itself against this proxy war with the help of "an alert and pluralistic society". That is why a Foreign Minister misquotes JFK to begin talking with Pakistan once again to mask his helplessness. And that is why India agrees to a joint statement that no self-respecting country will even consider, just eight months after the worst ever terror attack on its soil and despite Pakistan having done nothing to show that it will not allow its territory to be used against India.

Who would have even dreamt that India would agree to a statement which says: "Action of terrorism should not be linked to the composite dialogue process and these should not be bracketed". Worse, how could India ever agree to the inclusion of "threats in Baluchistan and other areas" of Pakistan, because their very mention implies that Pakistan is accusing India of supporting terrorism in the whole of Pakistan? And that too after losing thousands of her sons in fighting terrorists in Kashmir and with Pakistan not only not accepting its active involvement in the war there, but also openly threatening that peace is not possible till Kashmir is resolved?

The PM may have said after the Joint Statement was issued that the composite dialogue process cannot resume till the perpetrators of 26/11 are brought to book. That means little given what has been accepted by India in writing. This virtual surrender that has also opened up endless future possibilities for Pakistan to accuse India of supporting terrorism in Pakistan, shows that Pakistanis remain, as always, one step ahead of India. That is simply because they know what their objective is and they know how to deny it too by lying through all their pores, without giving a damn whether India believes them or not.

Once again, India has let Pakistan get away with a blatant act of war. Once again, India has told Pakistan that it can keep shooting at India and keep killing its sons and daughters. India will not react; it cannot because its politico-bureaucratic set up is convinced that India can stop those bullets and beat Pakistan solely with the help of poorly drafted statements and an "alert pluralistic society", forgetting completely that it is this very pluralism that Pakistan cannot live with and wants to alter by all means at its disposal. The bullets from Pakistan will not stop if India does not change the way it thinks and responds. And that cannot happen till it keeps trying to mount the moral horse at the slightest pretext to claim a hollow 'victory', beyond which its bureaucrats do not want to see for obvious reasons.

When the Prime Minister of a country says in full glare of the international media at Sharm el-Sheikh "dialogue ke siwaye koi chaaraa nahin hai" he immediately makes one billion people of the country look like helpless cowards who have no choice but to surrender before someone who is holding a gun to their heads. And he all but legitimises the use of that gun by the enemy. Dr Manmohan Singh is an honourable man. But he is an economist by training, not a strategist. Unfortunately, it is evident that officials in the Foreign Office and in the NSA who have his ear are also equally ignorant and ill equipped to understand and deal with a mindset called Pakistan, a mindset honed and controlled by its generals.

Eloquence is no substitute for real understanding of an obdurate and offensive military mindset. Without that understanding, an appropriate response that Pakistan will understand and react to in a manner that we want, will not be forthcoming. And India will be forced to take hit after hit like a helpless duck. We have to force Pakistan to stop shooting. Talking like defensive dimwits is not going to make it put the gun down. It is time for India to get fresh, knowledgeable and focused minds into controlling positions in the security and diplomatic apparatus of the country. The sooner we do it the better. Till we do, the bullets will keep coming and all we will do is talk like zombies who have lost their way in a self-made labyrinth.
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Picture source: Gulf News

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