You Have My Coupoeration

A lot of what was said about the Army’s attempted coup was imagined. Being an army child you learn to imagine a few things yourself. Just like the coup that happened never really happened, I have imagined, innumerable times that the government of the day realizes that they have ill-treated the services for far too long. I have also imagined that that this correction has happened retrospectively. But we all know that the only thing the government does with retrospectively is to change laws every now and then.

So, let me offer my two bits about this whole coup business. If you have been reading newspaper articles like this one here, you’d realize that the Chief of the Army Chief Staff (COAS) doesn’t need to mobilize 1400 soldiers to overthrow the government from places like Hissar. 10,000 of his men are posted in and around the NCR at any given moment. Do the math. Now, irrespective of where you stand on this alleged coup, the COAS or the government please take a few things into consideration before you express an opinion.

In the days that followed this allegedly attempted coup the media became obsessed with the COAS writing to the Prime Minister about the state of the nation’s Army. Shouldn’t the harsh truth that our Army isn’t 100% battle ready due to delayed modernization and the lack of equipment worry us more than the manner in which we got to know of this reality? Editors like Mr. Rajdeep Sardesai tweet things like ‘don’t shoot the messenger’ to exonerate their ilk but I’m sorry to say that jokers like him are one of the reasons why the common person is compelled to look at things differently. It’s very easy for millions to think that the Army Chief is putting the government in a ‘spot’. An equal number on the other side of the debate can’t comprehend why is it difficult for the government to stop being so woefully apathetic to an army that selflessly dedicates itself to the nation. But when in a nation millions of common men and women, who spend a better part of their existence making ends meet, choose to listen to people like Sardesai, they momentarily lose their focus. Like him they start asking who leaked the letter, how did such sensitive communiqué between the PM and COAS reach public domain?

I say it’s good that it reached the public domain. I say it’s rather late. The media is so fixated with the COAS writing to the Prime Minister that it has labeled the whole action and its aftermath as ‘unprecedented’. Is it? Is this the first time an Army Chief has written to a Prime Minister? Rather than looking at the how, when, ever before, never again scenarios the simple question that one needs to ask is just why did the COAS write this letter. It speaks volumes about the pathetic state of affairs. An Army Chief has to write to the PM to inform him about the state of the defense preparedness? And all that the wise men and women of media and politics can look at it in the only manner it should be seen in?

Gen Shankar Roychowdhury, the former COAS, expressed sadness and a little anger at the letter entering public domain but like anyone who has ever served in the uniform was hardly surprised or shocked at the contents of the letter. He knows better than feigning an emotion that isn’t true. Every Chief that has ever served the highest office in Indian Army has felt the same anger, the same shock and the same hopelessness as Gen VK Singh. Every Chief of the Indian Army has in his time asked for the same things that compelled Gen Singh to write to the Prime Minister. Since the day he took charge he has been asking the same question; he got tired of a non-existent government that chooses to refuse to understand the threat called China and Pakistan.

Bureaucrats who on their best days can eulogize the finer nuances of Darjeeling tea or Turkish carpets or Saudi dates till the cows come home sit on the Army’s head when it comes to buying defense equipment. They are straddled with the ghosts of the past such as Bofors so they refuse to take a decision and every time the Army suggests something they move files in opposite direction. They also don’t like the idea of FDI in defense equipment on the pretext that this will compromise our nation’s security. Think about it- a foreign manufacturer within your boundary sets up shop to stock your Army, provides employment to thousands of your citizens and then pays taxes as well isn’t preferred over them sitting in their countries and sending vital machinery every now and then. Of course, the same bureaucrats will move the files or give clearances for these parts to reach our Army. Our Army returns the moneyallocated to it under the defense budget for it can’t spend it thanks to the indecision on the part of the government. And while this is happening China’s defense spending has increased steadily from $30 billion in 2000 to almost $120 billion in 2010 and it’ll be $160 billion in 2012.

Spineless and amoral petty thieves run our nation. They sit in the highest offices and question the integrity of men and women who’d die for this nation without blinking an eyelid. What right does someone like Lalu Prasad Yadav, a charge sheeted criminal, have to question the integrity of the COAS. This is the same man who actually told his brethren that they would be fools to trade their freedom if they support the Lokalpal Bill! How dare he of the fodder scams and bleeding a state and the nation dry ask this? Howdare we allow him to ask this?

Do you think the Chief of Army Staff is a job?

No.

The Chief of the Army Staff of India isn’t a naukari. He and the thousands of men and women he leads aren’t there meeting some key requirements or pleasing 790 members of Parliament who have made this nation a joke. Remember the only thing that stands between your freedom, something that you have started taking for granted as if it were on a prepaid plan, and the lack of it is the brave Indian soldier. The next time you even remotely try to be dismissive of the Army, the COAS or the jawan think of standing guard in -50 degrees Celsius for someone like you who aimlessly flips TV channels because you can’t sleep. And yeah, if the COAS or the Army wanted a coup they could have done that before you finished flipping the 100 odd channels you enjoy.

Further reading- The Economist on Indian economy losing its magic.

Managed Disaster

For many years most of us looked around and wondered ‘what’ was happening around us. Then a man named Dr. Manmohan Singh, economist par excellence, liberalized our economy and for many moons we stopped bothering about everything else and sipped Coca Cola! Two decades later we started asking a new question as we looked around; we knew that the ‘what’ was non-sense and now we were intrigued to know why this all pervasive non-sense is happening?

Sadly I offer no solution. Yet.

We have become so used to things happening in triplicate around us that nothing is blessed with singular objectivity anymore in India. The sheer duplicity of command and execution has become so incestuous that Bold and the Beautiful looks like a fairy tale now. The Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) lays a sidewalk in Connaught Place and a few days later MTNL will have a go at it in the name of some cable work. No one knows who is supposed to do what. But that doesn’t trouble anyone in any place of authority. All functionaries of government of India might not know what to do but in strange unison they all are fully aware of what they aren’t supposed to do.

Take the case of National Disaster Management Authority of India (NDMA). By the sheer definitionit would be clear that they are manage disaster. A look at their website confirms that have been ultra busy in devising action plans when it comes to dealing with any kind of calamity- natural or man made. They have formulated guidelines for Biological Disaster, Chemical (Terrorism) and (Industrial) Disaster, Plan to counter threats to Municipal Water Supply and Water Reservoirs, Strengthening of Safety and Security for Transportation of POL tankers, Incident Response System, Nuclear Disaster, UNDP Disaster Risk Reduction, Medical Preparedness aspects, Psycho-Social Support, Civil Defence Disaster and much more. All this good work has been done by them in the last nine months and it would be safe to say that they seem to be well equipped for a broad range of things that could go wrong.

But what about things that are actually messed up as of right now?

If the government of India is digging into my pockets and funding something called National Disaster Management Authority then why the hell is the Army being called in deal with the floodedCommonwealth Games Village? Created by a Special Act and headed by the Prime Minister, NDMA was established to deal with just this kind of disaster but according to Kiran Walia, the Health Minister of Delhi, the Army has been approached to drain the collected rainwater as other civic authorities have given up. She mulled that the Army was approached, ‘because they are far better equipped to manage flood-like situations.’

Hmm, did I miss the point? If the situation is 'flood like' then how come NDMA is not putting it’s fighting tights on? So while a General Officer Commanding of Indian Army’s Northern Command would be doing something that shouldn’t have happened in the first place or something that NDMC or MCD (why, they even sound same!) should be perfectly proficient to deal, we will never know why the NDMA wasn’t approached.*

A lot of people have often wondered where this country would be if not for the Army or Defence Forces. Remember the time when little Indian Prince and Princess fell into open borewells, it was the Army's Safest Hands that saved the day. Now why would you want to waste money and resources on making the road most frequented safer for the future of India when you have the Army on the beck and call; Prince fell into a 53 feet deep hole in 2005 and in 2010 a girl plummeted into a 200 feet deep borewell! (Just have a look at the related stories section to see the sheer number of such incidents).

The government has sanctioned 46 crores for NDMA (50% of expenditure on disaster management programs, see page 50), which might be pittance compared to the disasters we deal with, and yet no one knows of them? Surely Kiran Walia and Delhi Government or the haloed CWG Organizing Committee doesn’t. But ask the same government to put One Rank One Pension in practice and all Defence Minister Anthony can do is look elsewhere but not before uttering, "At this time we cannot implement one-rank one-pension, but we are nearing the goal. It is a long process."

I don’t know about us but it's only the NDMA that feels safer with NDMA around. No else one seems to have any confidence in their disaster fighting capacity and like always people will some how manage.

Yet the ticking doomsday clock doesn’t worry NDMA.

Why?

Just like every sarkari organization they still feel the world functions as per the Indian Standard Time!

* FYI # 1- It’s not like the MCD hasn’t done anything for the collected rainwater in the CWG Village. It has duly fined the Village several times for mosquito-breeding.

When they realized that this is mosquitoes wouldn’t share Incredible India's sentiments of Atithi Devo Bhava, MCD’s health committee released gambusia fish in the water body to curb mosquito breeding. In a rare act of coordinated effort the gambusia fish was procured from National Centre for Disease Control's hatchery in Delhi.

MCD’s health committee is now happy to inform us that “the breeding in the pond has reduced considerably. The water body is huge and anti-larval medicines are not very effective.”

**FYI # 2- NDMA has decided to use David Bowie's 'Putting Out Fire With Gasoline' as their new theme song. They might not be accepted but at least they will look cool.

Images- Vikrant Parikh via News, Views and Analysis

Lost in Lansdowne

The last three weeks have seen me travel to two distinctively different places. Both have this whole glorious past thing going and yet the sense of history is totally different for either. Both the places, Taj and Lansdowne, bear testimony of people who came from foreign land but for entirely different reasons and yet both ended up ruling and influencing us.

Nestled in the Garhwal Hills, Lansdowne is a sleepy little hill station that acts as the home of Indian Army’s Garhwal Rifles. A British General was so impressed by the valor of Garhwali’s during the Afghan War that he championed the cause of raising a pure Garhwal Regiment. So finally in the 1887 the Garhwali’s, who used to be a part of Gurkhas up until then, got their regiment.

I couldn’t figure it out for the love of my life as to why in the god’s name would someone make a base way up in the hills? Agreed that they got a beautiful thing going up there but still… the Garhwal Rifles have had a glorious past of almost 120 years and have participated in every major war since then. They have been thrice awarded the Victoria Cross, the highest military gallantry award during the Raj. In 1987 The Garhwal Rifles decided to put all it’s achievements in the form of a museum. It’s one of the best museums that I have seen and that’s largely thanks to the participation of the Army. The museum has medals dating way back to late 1890’s, guns from the Afghan war, original plan of Lansdowne and many such items. In the recent past they have won an environmental award for preserving the natural beauty of the place; they also have a man-made lake.

The trip was like a walk down memory lane for me. My father served in the Army and I grew in such areas. My brain started working overtime the very moment I entered the mess where we were put up. The mess was called Roberts and had a wooden staircase leading to Room #8. The high ceiling, the damp smell, the three chairs resting in the verandah offering a breath taking view of the hills… it was straight out of some book. The moment I saw the three easy chairs I could hear Meryl Streep’s voice in my head, ‘I once had a farm in Africa.’

Sudhesh of course thought that perhaps I’d finally lost my head but I quickly regained my composure as I continued to soak in the place. The Roberts mess was built in 1909 and if that wasn’t enough then the main mess, The Garhwali Mess, was constructed way back in 1892. It looked postcard perfect. Only hitch I couldn’t enter it for I wasn’t dressed for the place.

This was the first time I had gone to an Army infested place since 1994. Most things were the same but many things had changed. There was a certain sense of loss that enveloped me as I saw the current crop of officers and troops. Don’t get me wrong but they were so not right. This is a strange dichotomy that plagues the Army. On hand they can’t continue to live in a fools paradise, cut off from the world, that housed them since the British times and they can’t ignore the influence of things not-so-army as well. Thanks to the Internet and cable TV there is a great sense of interaction with the outside world and this is perhaps taking it’s toll on the common soldier. There was a time when the Army was self-contented in its small world of the cantonment that encased them but not any more. I saw Officers, Jawans and Other Ranks everyone flashing a cell phone and on one occasion I noticed a driver continuing to say goodbye on the phone as the officer waiting for him to listen to him!