ARE WE HEADING TO BEING A FAILED STATE ?
The article below really impressed me and i am putting it in my post. Hope you will share the views of the writer.
The invasion of Mumbai by Pakistani terrorists is but a replay of times past: The periodic and predictable arrival of barbarians over the Khyber Pass, laying waste to the countryside, and wreaking untold damage on a long-suffering populace. The only crime that the average Indian committed was to focus on the creation of wealth; of course, the barbarians came because of the wealth.
Today, once again, India is generating capital, and the intention is to thwart its economic rise. Then, as now, the rulers failed the populace. There is an implicit contract between the rulers and the ruled: You pay the taxes, obey the rules, and we ensure that your life, liberty and pursuit of happiness are unhindered. India’s ruling class failed signally to honour this contract -- they never did figure out that the simple expedient of defending the Khyber and Bolan passes would be enough to save the plains, because nature had been kind enough to build the impregnable Himalayas all around India. You pay the taxes, obey the rules, and we ensure that your life, liberty and pursuit of happiness are unhindered I have never got a satisfactory answer to the question as to why we didn’t build the Great Wall of India.
The Chinese built a 1,500-mile wall; Indians could surely have built a 15-mile wall and kept the marauders out. But there was clearly a failure in leadership and in strategic thinking. Time after time, the barbarians would pour in through the passes, march to Panipat or Tarain, and there, in a desperate last-ditch battle, the Indians would lose, again and again. The result: Disaster. Furthermore, there were traitors in-house, too. They would collude with the invaders to the detriment of their fellow Indians. Jaichand, during the second battle of Tarain in 1192, turned the tide of the battle by allying with Mahmud of Ghori against Prithviraj Chauhan, with the result that northern India suffered 700 years of tyranny -- it was a clear tipping point. Or take the battle of Talikota that ended the magnificent Vijayanagar empire: it was their own troops that betrayed them. Fast forward to today. India is under withering attack on all fronts. To the east, there is the demographic invasion by Bangladeshis, including unhindered infiltration by terrorist elements.
The entire north-east is in danger of secession, given both the narrow and hard- to-defend ‘chicken’s neck’ that connects the area to the Gangetic plain, as well as the Christian fundamentalism and terrorism that is on the verge of turning into a move to secede on religious and ethnic grounds, a la East Timor. The northern frontier is restive, with Nepal, a former ally and buffer State transformed into hostile territory, with its porous borders turned into a way of infiltrating terrorists into India, with the declared intent of capturing the ‘Pasupati-to-Tirupati corridor’, in other words, most of the eastern half of the country. China is making increasingly belligerent noises about Tawang and all of Arunachal Pradesh. They are gambling that, despite the summit that just took place in Dharamsala, the steam has gone out of the Tibetan resistance movement. They have been emboldened by the fact that Tibetans were not able to disrupt the Olympics, and the more immediate betrayal by the British (see the International Herald Tribune’s Did Britain Just Sell Tibet?), who declared, contrary to all the historical evidence, that Tibet was always a part of China. Besides, the Chinese fully intend to move forward with the diversion of the Brahmaputra, which is in effect a declaration of war against the lower riparian State, India. It is likely that the Chinese will march into Tawang -- there is a lot of chatter in Chinese circles (see, an analysis by D S Rajan at the Chennai Centre for China Studies) about a ‘limited India-China war’, a replay of 1962. The Chinese have, in addition to pure geopolitics, another reason to do this, as was pointed out by strategy expert Brahma Chellaney -- as in the years preceding 1962, the world is now once again hyphenating India and China. By handing India a sharp conventional military defeat, China would like that hyphenation to be removed decisively, as it surely would be. India will once again be seen as the loser it has been during the entire 1947 to 2000 period. In the northwest, Kashmir burns. The population clearly views India as a colony -- they want Indian money, but they are not willing to make the slightest concessions to majority community sentiments. It is very convenient for them to have the cake and eat it too -- there is the little-known fact that J&K has practically nobody under the poverty line (2 percent and falling), as compared to the average of some 20 percent in the country as a whole.
Kashmiris have prospered mightily despite -- or is it because of? -- the brutal ethnic cleansing of 400,000 Pandits now languishing in refugee camps. In the traditionally quiet peninsula, there is evidence of tremendous terrorist activity. In Kerala, it has been reported widely in the Malayalam media that 300 youth have been hired, trained and dispatched to Kashmir with explicit instructions -- kill Indian soldiers and support Pakistani intrusions. Terrorism is just another job. Sleeper cells exist in every town. The Konkan and Malabar coasts are dotted with safe harbours, where weapons, counterfeit currency and contraband are cached.
The preferred mechanism -- bomb blasts to inflict maximum damage. Logistics, safe houses, surveillance, forged documents, etc. are provided by a wide network. The fact is that all these threats are overwhelming the security apparatus in the country, such as it is. It is quite likely that the Intelligence Bureau and the Research and Analysis Wing and the Anti- Terrorism Squad had some inkling of something big being planned, including the movement of small arms on the Ratnagiri coastline, and the logistics-related activities of known suspects.
It is unclear why they didn’t take preventive action. There is a terrifying possibility -- that they in fact had no idea this was going on. There is an aphorism that you cannot stop all terrorist activity, but in India the situation is such that no terrorist activity is stopped -- they strike at will, and the populace is left to pick up the pieces of broken lives. This is no way to run a country. The frightening possibility is that the Jaichands have in fact taken over the State. In which case, we can anticipate the total dismemberment of India -- possibly preceded by an interregnum where it is a failed State -- in the near future. There is one other possibility -- that the army will have to take over. It is a remote possibility, for two reasons -- the Indian Army has been determinedly apolitical; and the State has continually striven to weaken it. Someone once made the ridiculous statement that India really didn’t need an army, only a police force, and it appears the entire political class and bureaucracy have internalised this slogan.
From 1962 -- as always, on November 18 I silently saluted the martyrs of the Battle of Rezang-La, where C Company, 13th Kumaon died heroically to the last man -- when the ill-equipped troops froze to death on the Himalayan heights, to the refusal to increase military salaries when the bureaucrats awarded themselves 300 percent increases recently, the State has told the military that it doesn’t value them.
All the services are starved of funds. One possible outcome is that the Indian military forces will gradually wither away and die, thus making the statement about India not needing an army a self-fulfilling prophecy.
There is another possibility -- that of a military coup d’etat. Normally, the prospect of a military takeover -- given that they all end up badly -- from a democracy is not something one would welcome. But then India is not a democracy -- it is a kakistocracy, rule by the very worst possible people -- which has the trappings of a democracy but not the substance, so I wonder if military rule could possibly be any worse.
But the chances are getting increasingly good that the Indian State will collapse, just like Pakistan already has. A recent risk assessment by the World Economic Forum and CII considers the economic, energy, food/agriculture and national security that face India. The report is more concerned about the first three items, assuming that India is secure enough as a nation. I hope they are right, but this invasion of Mumbai -- so daring and audacious -- makes me wonder. I have considered a nightmare scenario of Chinese battleships arriving in triumph at the Gateway of India, to be welcomed with marigold garlands by the Jaichands, but I have to admit I never thought a motley crew of Pakistani terrorists would invade.
The very future of the Indian State, suddenly, is in question. And it is mostly from self-inflicted, avoidable wounds. The failure of leadership is causing India to cease to exist.
Rajeev Srinivasan
The invasion of Mumbai by Pakistani terrorists is but a replay of times past: The periodic and predictable arrival of barbarians over the Khyber Pass, laying waste to the countryside, and wreaking untold damage on a long-suffering populace. The only crime that the average Indian committed was to focus on the creation of wealth; of course, the barbarians came because of the wealth.
Today, once again, India is generating capital, and the intention is to thwart its economic rise. Then, as now, the rulers failed the populace. There is an implicit contract between the rulers and the ruled: You pay the taxes, obey the rules, and we ensure that your life, liberty and pursuit of happiness are unhindered. India’s ruling class failed signally to honour this contract -- they never did figure out that the simple expedient of defending the Khyber and Bolan passes would be enough to save the plains, because nature had been kind enough to build the impregnable Himalayas all around India. You pay the taxes, obey the rules, and we ensure that your life, liberty and pursuit of happiness are unhindered I have never got a satisfactory answer to the question as to why we didn’t build the Great Wall of India.
The Chinese built a 1,500-mile wall; Indians could surely have built a 15-mile wall and kept the marauders out. But there was clearly a failure in leadership and in strategic thinking. Time after time, the barbarians would pour in through the passes, march to Panipat or Tarain, and there, in a desperate last-ditch battle, the Indians would lose, again and again. The result: Disaster. Furthermore, there were traitors in-house, too. They would collude with the invaders to the detriment of their fellow Indians. Jaichand, during the second battle of Tarain in 1192, turned the tide of the battle by allying with Mahmud of Ghori against Prithviraj Chauhan, with the result that northern India suffered 700 years of tyranny -- it was a clear tipping point. Or take the battle of Talikota that ended the magnificent Vijayanagar empire: it was their own troops that betrayed them. Fast forward to today. India is under withering attack on all fronts. To the east, there is the demographic invasion by Bangladeshis, including unhindered infiltration by terrorist elements.
The entire north-east is in danger of secession, given both the narrow and hard- to-defend ‘chicken’s neck’ that connects the area to the Gangetic plain, as well as the Christian fundamentalism and terrorism that is on the verge of turning into a move to secede on religious and ethnic grounds, a la East Timor. The northern frontier is restive, with Nepal, a former ally and buffer State transformed into hostile territory, with its porous borders turned into a way of infiltrating terrorists into India, with the declared intent of capturing the ‘Pasupati-to-Tirupati corridor’, in other words, most of the eastern half of the country. China is making increasingly belligerent noises about Tawang and all of Arunachal Pradesh. They are gambling that, despite the summit that just took place in Dharamsala, the steam has gone out of the Tibetan resistance movement. They have been emboldened by the fact that Tibetans were not able to disrupt the Olympics, and the more immediate betrayal by the British (see the International Herald Tribune’s Did Britain Just Sell Tibet?), who declared, contrary to all the historical evidence, that Tibet was always a part of China. Besides, the Chinese fully intend to move forward with the diversion of the Brahmaputra, which is in effect a declaration of war against the lower riparian State, India. It is likely that the Chinese will march into Tawang -- there is a lot of chatter in Chinese circles (see, an analysis by D S Rajan at the Chennai Centre for China Studies) about a ‘limited India-China war’, a replay of 1962. The Chinese have, in addition to pure geopolitics, another reason to do this, as was pointed out by strategy expert Brahma Chellaney -- as in the years preceding 1962, the world is now once again hyphenating India and China. By handing India a sharp conventional military defeat, China would like that hyphenation to be removed decisively, as it surely would be. India will once again be seen as the loser it has been during the entire 1947 to 2000 period. In the northwest, Kashmir burns. The population clearly views India as a colony -- they want Indian money, but they are not willing to make the slightest concessions to majority community sentiments. It is very convenient for them to have the cake and eat it too -- there is the little-known fact that J&K has practically nobody under the poverty line (2 percent and falling), as compared to the average of some 20 percent in the country as a whole.
Kashmiris have prospered mightily despite -- or is it because of? -- the brutal ethnic cleansing of 400,000 Pandits now languishing in refugee camps. In the traditionally quiet peninsula, there is evidence of tremendous terrorist activity. In Kerala, it has been reported widely in the Malayalam media that 300 youth have been hired, trained and dispatched to Kashmir with explicit instructions -- kill Indian soldiers and support Pakistani intrusions. Terrorism is just another job. Sleeper cells exist in every town. The Konkan and Malabar coasts are dotted with safe harbours, where weapons, counterfeit currency and contraband are cached.
The preferred mechanism -- bomb blasts to inflict maximum damage. Logistics, safe houses, surveillance, forged documents, etc. are provided by a wide network. The fact is that all these threats are overwhelming the security apparatus in the country, such as it is. It is quite likely that the Intelligence Bureau and the Research and Analysis Wing and the Anti- Terrorism Squad had some inkling of something big being planned, including the movement of small arms on the Ratnagiri coastline, and the logistics-related activities of known suspects.
It is unclear why they didn’t take preventive action. There is a terrifying possibility -- that they in fact had no idea this was going on. There is an aphorism that you cannot stop all terrorist activity, but in India the situation is such that no terrorist activity is stopped -- they strike at will, and the populace is left to pick up the pieces of broken lives. This is no way to run a country. The frightening possibility is that the Jaichands have in fact taken over the State. In which case, we can anticipate the total dismemberment of India -- possibly preceded by an interregnum where it is a failed State -- in the near future. There is one other possibility -- that the army will have to take over. It is a remote possibility, for two reasons -- the Indian Army has been determinedly apolitical; and the State has continually striven to weaken it. Someone once made the ridiculous statement that India really didn’t need an army, only a police force, and it appears the entire political class and bureaucracy have internalised this slogan.
From 1962 -- as always, on November 18 I silently saluted the martyrs of the Battle of Rezang-La, where C Company, 13th Kumaon died heroically to the last man -- when the ill-equipped troops froze to death on the Himalayan heights, to the refusal to increase military salaries when the bureaucrats awarded themselves 300 percent increases recently, the State has told the military that it doesn’t value them.
All the services are starved of funds. One possible outcome is that the Indian military forces will gradually wither away and die, thus making the statement about India not needing an army a self-fulfilling prophecy.
There is another possibility -- that of a military coup d’etat. Normally, the prospect of a military takeover -- given that they all end up badly -- from a democracy is not something one would welcome. But then India is not a democracy -- it is a kakistocracy, rule by the very worst possible people -- which has the trappings of a democracy but not the substance, so I wonder if military rule could possibly be any worse.
But the chances are getting increasingly good that the Indian State will collapse, just like Pakistan already has. A recent risk assessment by the World Economic Forum and CII considers the economic, energy, food/agriculture and national security that face India. The report is more concerned about the first three items, assuming that India is secure enough as a nation. I hope they are right, but this invasion of Mumbai -- so daring and audacious -- makes me wonder. I have considered a nightmare scenario of Chinese battleships arriving in triumph at the Gateway of India, to be welcomed with marigold garlands by the Jaichands, but I have to admit I never thought a motley crew of Pakistani terrorists would invade.
The very future of the Indian State, suddenly, is in question. And it is mostly from self-inflicted, avoidable wounds. The failure of leadership is causing India to cease to exist.
Rajeev Srinivasan
posted by vaneet kundra at
Thursday, January 15, 2009
4 Comments:
Dear Mr. Kundra,
I had suggested in a comment which your blog has not carried for reasons best known to you, that you need to exercise due care on selection of blog content. The "Failed State" article by Srinavasan is another example of a wrong article to carry. Any one with rudimentary knowledge of history will tell you that the author has been selective with the truth. His strategic deductions also are warped and indicate his poverty of ideas and subjectivity more than his intellect.
The problem is not with Chinese type walls. They incidentally did NOT help China, nor will a 15 mile wall help us. What will help us is the belief that no barrier in the world (including the Hindu Kush, the Himalyas, the Great Wall) is impenetrable. What is needed in nation building is self belief, a resolve to stand up and do what it takes to sustain growth, create national gross happiness, security from real and implied threats.
Considering India as a state on the way to collapse is thoughtless and absurd and is extremely poorly elocuted by the author.
Personally, I would be very careful on what should enter your blog for fear of diluting its avowed aim and mission.
Yours sincerely,
Raj Mehta
Dear Gen. Raj Mehta,
Perhaps, you have a greater knowledge of military than all of us, as you have remained at the helm of affairs in the military. You may be right that the contents of the blog do not reflect the ideas, in true sense. But sir, What do you have to say about the failed diplomacy by the current govt. ? We have had a national shame in shape of Mumbai terror attack and we are still waiting to act, looking upto America and UK to solve our problems. You are aware that these countries are directed by their self- interests and no country is going to fight a war for india against Pakistan. Whatever has to be done, is to be done by India alone. Do you think shaming a billion people openly by a rogue state, should be be forgotten ? What measures do you suggest, when the entire nation is looking upto our leadership, to deliver. Diplomacy has failed and Pakistan has come out to be a winner. Should we keep quiet about it and let Pakistan perpetrate India with deaths of innocent people, our blood flowing like gutter water again and again ? You may be right about the article, but i request you people to make an opinion movement to tell the govt. to act, otherwise we are no short of becoming a failed state.
I agree with Gen Raj Mehta's views that that the author has been selective in penning down the truth and many of his deductions lack intelligent thoughts, logic and pragmatism. Perhaps, the author wanted to emphasise on the gloomy state of affairs as he perceives them, but not necessarily true in all respects. But, the fears expressed by the General that such articles may have negative impact on the readers are unfounded, and much less, likely to dilute the avowed aims and mission of Mr. Vaneet Kundra, instead, they may rekindle the patriotic thoughts and positive reactions from the readers, just as it has happened with the General! The scenario is not as bad as the author has tried to portray to lead the country to a state of being a failed state, please note Mr. Vaneet Kundra. The delayed actions by the Govt. post 26/11 Mumbai carnage could also be construed as our Govt. trying to build up international support and diplomacy and give enough time for the forces to chalk out a fail-proof plan and be ready in all respects for the decisive assault if the enemy does not come to its knees, which indirectly gives the enemy a chance to act on its own as well. This much allowance is definitely required especiallly knowing, as brought out in your comments, that all Nations have their own self-interests and we have to fight our battle on our own. India is highly resilient to bad times and demoralising incidents and shall bounce back to normalcy as it has innumerable masses of patriots not only in the Defence forces but also all sections of the society, when it comes to burning National issues. The equations with China are not as bad as they were in 1962 and the perceived threats from China can be comfortably challanged. Rest of the challanges facing the country can be tackled firmly only when issues of rampant corruption, discrimination and vote bank politics are tackled firmly by active participation of the innumerable citizens' forums, NGOs and patriotic and concerned individuals that I read about day-in and day out on the internet, various blogs, comments, opinions and letters in various news papers and other media. So, there's HOPE; we need to bring together all like minded and concerned citizens, industrialists, businessmen, corporates, veterans of various services and the innocent/ confused/un-lead/un-guided youth of the country, and begin a movement to undo all the wrong that has happened during the past five decades of Governance to restore our cultaral, moral, human and Nationalistic values and etch out programmes and policies towards growth, progress and peaceful co-existence. We have enough hidden wealth stached away in Swiss banks to accomplish such things and much more. As General Raj Mehta has aptly said for Nation-building, it is the self-belief and confidence, strong resolve for sustained growth, affirmative action, implementation and monitoring, keeping in mind security from real and implied threats and risk factors, that will ultimately create National Gross Happiness, Peace and Progress.
Dear Cdr Khilari,
As are voters are learning to get mature to elect candidates, who deliver, i am sorry to say, the politicians have learnt no lessons from so many attacks coming regularly from Pakistan. Each time, there is tough language which is used and the bulb fuses. This was the golden opportunity for our govt. to act decisively as for the 1st time any terrorist has been caught alive. Inspite of having given proofs to all the western countries and to Pakistan, Indian diplomacy has failed miserably. Pakistan attacks and wins diplomatically also. This shows the incompetence of our govt, how to handle foreign affairs. When the whole world knows that the roots of terror, lie in Pakistan, even before the proof was given, Why did'nt our govt. act there and then. Surgical strikes, next day, was the need of the day. America and the western nations would have come to negotiate, to stop all this. India would be talking from the high point of strength. Both the purposes, would have been solved. Pakistan would know, that India can act, if fiddled with and the image of India would have been enhanced in the world. that it is no less than America, if fiddled with from outside. But alas, this maturity was not there in the govt. Now they are going with a begging bowl to all the countries and Pakistan has won both the diplomatic war and the terror strike. When would our politicians learn ? When would the physce of slaves for 700 years will change ?
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