Why India can’t defeat Pakistan in a war? What is the Right time to Fight Pakistan? Explain.

At least 40 Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) paramilitary troopers were killed in the deadliest terror attack witnessed in three decades of Kashmir's insurgency. The surprise attack by a Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) suicide bomber left the nation in shock and anger while Prime Minister Narendra Modi gave security forces a freehand to strike back with equal force.

Indian Army chief General Bipin Rawat welcomed India's decision to call off talks and said that it's time to "give it back" to Pakistan Army and terrorists, Pakistan Army has said that the nuclear-powered nation is "ready for war".

Pakistan Director General of Inter Services Public Relations Major General Asif Ghafoor said,

"We are always ready and prepared for war. War happens when either side is unprepared for it."

One of the key arguments is that the political leadership has to improve their understanding of military matters and involve the views of defence forces while making critical national security decisions. Another provocative take is that the Indian Army is a bloated force and has to shed flab, by reducing the number of personnel at its disposal. They call for a review of both field force and non-field force in the Army in order towards professionalism. The Army to disengage itself from counter-insurgency operations, a task at best left to paramilitary forces, and regain its edge to do its primary task- fight the enemy.

Dragon On Our Doorstep could be a little misleading title since We are not only discussing the China threat but India’s defence strategy. In full play is Pakistan, Kashmir and the red menace, the greatest threat India is facing, as former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh put it. The authors Sawhney and Wahab say that in terms of threat, Pakistan is China and China is Pakistan, pointing out especially the ‘inter-operability’ that both military forces have achieved.

So despite the strongman Narendra Modi at the helm, why can’t India defeat Pakistan in a war? Pakistan has built military power, India a military force.

And Here is the explanation:

“Military force involves the mere collection of war-withal, that is, building up of troops and war-waging material; military power is about optimal utilisation of military force. It entails an understanding of the adversaries and the quantum of threat from each, the nature of warfare, domains of war, how it would be fought, and structural military reforms at various levels to meet these challenges.”

The political leadership which would decide the terms of war engagement understands neither nuclear weapons nor military power.

“Its responses would be slow, tardy, ad hoc and piecemeal rather than bold and substantive if the countries were to go to war.”

Attacking Pakistan will mean starting a World War III . Lets not forget that Pakistan is a country with sophisticated military and advanced missile delivery system with capable of delivering nuclear warheads. India attacking Pakistan will definitely trigger a nuclear war in that region. Pakistan is also in alliance with China and India and Indian relations are still considered not very friendly with China. The Indian military has acknowledged contingency plans exist for punishing Pakistan more severely in the event of a damaging terrorist attack. But all such plans carry the danger of retaliation and uncontrolled escalation. This fear is exacerbated by the fact that both countries possess nuclear weapons. Pakistan has repeatedly signalled it would not hesitate to use them.

Pulwama Attack on CRPF

What else makes Indian defence forces vulnerable? Since the defence forces are outside the government, they have little interaction with the political leadership in peacetime and little say in the acquisition of conventional weapons. The defence services have little knowledge and understanding of their own nuclear weapons and Pakistan’s nuclear redlines. As India does not have an efficient indigenous defence industry, war supplies are not assured. All these, for an average reader, sound pretty scary.

Indian Air Force has critical deficiencies in combat aircraft, training aircraft, simulators, air defence and network-centricity. “Most of all, the joint-ness in operations between the army and the air force, which is a critical requirement at the operational level for a short and swift, war is absent. This was obvious from the last localised Kargil conflict that the two services fought together. Instead of a single operation, the army’s operation was named Vijay, while the IAF campaign was called Safed Sagar.”

India’s foreign policy in relation to Pakistan and criticise Modi for his failure in not rising as a statesman prime minister to transform India into a leading power. Modi’s foreign policy is more optics than substance. India and Pakistan have many things in common besides food and music. India has blinded more civilians in Kashmir with pellet guns than any other regime in the recorded history of the world. Pakistan has abducted many of its own citizens and disappeared them for years. Both acted in the name of national security.

They say that ‘Act East, Think West’ policy is hampered by the perennial failures in strategic thinking and a lack of appreciation for military power. They pick on India’s foreign aid policy and say that if our neighbours are neither deferential nor deterrent there is something amiss. Aid is seldom given to fulfil the needs of the recipient. It is given to meet the requirements- strategic in the case of nations- of the giver. And if the requirements are not met, you increase the aid or diversify it. They also say that India is the only country in the world where foreign policy with nations having disputed borders- China and Pakistan- is made with regard to military advice. All these criticisms should rile the defence establishment and the bureaucrats who have straitjacketed India’s foreign policy.

The government of India should open unconditional talks with everyone alienated from the national mainstream, irrespective of their professed public positions. They caution that even the biggest of powers have not been able to withstand internal discord because they understand that the financial and military effort required to keep it in check debilitates the nation in the long run. if India is able to win over the tribal population of central India and the people from the northeastern states, it will be able to free up a substantive number of its soldiers from internal stability and counter-insurgency operations.

So in the end, the message is that set your home right, the world will follow you. May be Modi can take note.

References : BBC , TOI

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India's improved corruption ranking does not reflect weakening democratic institutions

Corruption flourishes where democratic foundations are weak, and undemocratic and populist politicians take advantage of this

The Narendra Modi-headed Bharatiya Janata Party-led government is stridently triumphalist when the slightest improvement is cited in any sphere, especially by a global agency. It is contemptuously dismissive in exact proportion when what is cited is not improvement but decline. So it is surprising that there has been no song-and-dance about the most recent corruption perception index published by Transparency International, in which India has gained one point since last year and moved up two places, from 81 to 78. The BJP has claimed the entire ground of moral action as its own, all other parties being hopelessly corrupt: does this mean, then, that the BJP is not pleased with the improvement? It is too much to hope that the party and its towering leaders have actually grown a sensitive enough skin to have kept in mind the recent admonition by the Supreme Court regarding the government’s failure to form the lokpal and lokayuktas according to the Lokpal and Lokayuktas Act of 2013. The central anti-graft body, supported by the lokayuktas in the states, was envisaged as a special bulwark against corruption in the public sector, the specific principle on which the CPI is based. It does seem rather odd that a dispensation as concerned about the removal of corruption as the BJP should not make use of the law that was made just before it was elected. The government is not unwilling, surely?

corruption perception index published by Transparency International, in which India has gained one point since last year and moved up two places, from 81 to 78.

The chair of Transparency International has said that corruption flourishes where democratic foundations are weak and undemocratic and populist politicians take advantage of this. This description fits India, although it refers to many countries. The most striking ranking change has been made for the United States of America, which has slipped out of the top 20. Also, the description is only part of the explanation of corruption perception — China has slipped in rank too. On a scorecard that sees 100 as perfectly clean, India has never crossed 50; its latest score is 41. There is really nothing to celebrate. Rather, it is possible to wonder whether the biggest scandals can be ‘perceived’ at all, particularly those over which the government and Opposition keep on jousting. India’s CPI record suggests that its democratic institutions were never very strong and populist politicians never wanting, so the BJP alone cannot be put in the dock. At the same time, the CPI rankings do not reflect the fact that these institutions are now being deliberately weakened.

Reference TT

Who is Shah Faesal IAS ?

On January 9, Shah Faesal stunned the nation with his announcement that he was quitting as managing director of the Jammu and Kashmir State Power Development Corporation. The 35-year-old had topped the Indian Administrative Services (IAS) examination in 2010.

Who is Shah Faesal?

Why did he take such a step?

He termed his decision a “small defiance and protest against unabated killings in Kashmir, lack of reach-out and marginalisation of around 200 million Indian Muslims at the hands of Hindutva forces by reducing them to second-class citizens.”

Did he court controversies?

Mr. Faesal’s frequent brushes with controversy has constantly pushed him to the centre of discourse. As Deputy Commissioner, Bandipora, he ordered a magisterial inquiry into the killing of a civilian, Farhat Ahmad Dar, in firing by security forces on protesters within his jurisdiction in 2014. He followed up the inquiry by writing to the General Administration Department, seeking an amendment to the rules to bring appraisals of officers of the rank of superintendent of police under a Deputy Commissioner’s purview “to reduce human rights violations.” His letter attracted a reprimand from the Chief Secretary, who called it “crossing of the red line.” Subsequently, his tweets and write-ups on the Kashmir problem landed him in a major row. Many BJP leaders, including Union Minister Jitendra Singh, were critical of his views. In July 2018, the Department of Personnel and Training pointed to a tweet of Mr. Faesal and said its contents were “prima facie in contravention of the provision of the All India Service (Conduct Rules), 1968, and All India Services (Discipline and Appeal) Rules, 1969.” An inquiry is pending against him for his tweets.

Where did he grow up?

Mr. Faesal hails from the far-flung village of Sogam in north Kashmir’s Kupwara district, where militancy raged in the 1990s since the area is close to the Line of Control (LoC) and was a major route for youth ex-filtrating the Valley into Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir for arms training. His father, a teacher, was killed by militants in 2002 in the village. The decision of Mr. Faesal, an MBBS with a Masters degree in Urdu, came nine years after he topped the IAS examination. In 2010, he described his feat as “breaking of the myth” of discrimination. In fact, he did motivate hundreds of local aspirants to compete in the Union Public Service Commission examinations, an effort that resulted in a quantum jump in the number of students appearing from the Kashmir valley. With his speeches and interviews, widely televised on Doordarshan, he emerged as a poster boy from the troubled Valley. Mr. Faesal’s story of success became a counter-narrative to the discourse of alienation that was driving youth to militancy and street protests.

What next?

Mr. Faesal, who returned to the State recently from Harvard University after completing a course in public policy, has since announced that he is going to join politics. However, he remained non-committal on joining any ideological platform. He described his stint in politics as “an addition and not an alternative” and made it clear that “he has no aim to divide the J&K electorate further,” a hint that he may join some regional party. In the face of an unprecedented feedback, especially from the youth on social media platforms, Mr. Faesal was swayed against joining a current mainstream party immediately. He said his politics would be “a politics of disruption.” The mainstream parties, which had failed to represent the sentiments of the people, should reinvent themselves and find a new vocabulary, Mr. Faesal said. He has decided to go back to the grassroots and meet people for the next six months before taking a call.

As Reported by The Hindu

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