Arun Shourie -- Dhirubhai Ambani Memorial Lecture
Showing posts with label lecture. Show all posts
Showing posts with label lecture. Show all posts
Monday, May 26, 2014
Wednesday, May 28, 2008
Learning to shield our academic excellence
Arun Shourie, Thursday, September 14, 2006
The number of students who come to India to study is going down. Meanwhile, the amount of money spent on Indian students studying abroad is sufficient to set up 30-40 IIMs or 15-20 IITs every year. The threat is that we may lose our best minds at a rate faster than ever before. The opportunity is that we can be educators to the world
About 8,000 foreign students are studying in India. In Australia, on the other hand, there are about 350,000 — and remember, we add to our numbers every year more than the total population of Australia. Nor is it just that foreign students studying in India are less than a fortieth of those studying in Australia. The number of students who come to India has actually been going down: according to government figures, in 1990/91, there were over 12,765; last year there were 7,745! (By contrast, the increase in 2004 in the number of foreign students studying in China was three times the total number of foreign students that came to India: China hosted 141,087 foreign students in 2005.) We could be educators to the world — just as we could be surgeons to the world. But here is another opportunity missed: while Dubai, Singapore, Australia, to say nothing of distant US, etc. are positioning themselves as education hubs, we remain mired in that bog — the HRD Ministry.It isn’t just that we are missing an opportunity. We are paying a huge cost every year. One estimate puts the amount that is spent on Indian students studying abroad at a figure that would be sufficient to set up 30-40 IIMs or 15-20 IITs every year. And going abroad to study is just the first step. Having studied in that country, having got familiar with the place and people, most decide to take up work there. Soon enough, they settle down there. Science and Engineering Indicators, 2006, reports that of Indian students who received doctorates in Science and Engineering between 2000 and 2003, close to 90 per cent said they planned to stay on in the US; two-thirds had firmed up “definite plans to stay.” The proportions were the same in one critical discipline after another: 91% and 62% in biological and agricultural sciences; 92% and 72% in mathematics and computer sciences; 90% and 70% in engineering...(Science and Engineering Indicators, 2006, Appendix tables, A2-96 to 100.)
The fault is by no means that of the youngsters. And there is no doubt that those who have stayed on in the US, etc. have also done much for India — they have, among other things, helped change the world’s perception of India, and, thereby, India’s perception of itself. But imagine how much our country would have gained in actual productive potential if we had educational institutions of such quality that these youngsters did not have to go abroad. Imagine how much our country would have gained if they worked here, that is if the work environment here had been such that they had felt confident they could develop to their fullest potential, and reap rewards commensurate with their capabilities and with the effort they put in.
And if we persist in the obscurantist policies and practices that mar our educational sector, this drain will only increase in the coming years. Countries are straining to develop themselves as the more attractive destinations — for students, for investors, for firms. Nor is the matter confined to choice, there is a compulsion too, a compulsion of which these leading countries are well aware and to counter which they are taking focused steps. In regard to the US, for instance, National Science Foundation data reveal that in 2003, 85 per cent of those holding Science and Engineering doctorates and working were above 55 years of age; 76 per cent were above 60 years; 20 per cent were 70 and above. The proportions for those holding Master’s degrees were equally significant: they were 85%, 65%, and 16% respectively. (Science and Engineering Indicators, 2006, Appendix tables, A3-43.) And this is just one among many reasons on account of which these countries will continue to aggressively court researchers and skilled workers from India and elsewhere.
Indeed, the threat now is not just that individuals will be wooed away. Countries — from Singapore to South Korea to Taiwan to China to the EU-25 — are making even greater efforts to woo entire firms away, in particular R&D firms. Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan have already become significant research-hubs. But the suction for entire R&D firms can come from farther a-field too. We think of the US as a high-cost economy, as one that is now compelled to outsource R&D efforts to a country like India. But that is just one side of the picture, and that is true only for one end of research. In 2002, US firms spent around $ 21 billion doing research in foreign countries. As against this, foreign firms spent close to $ 26 billion doing research in the US. (Science and Engineering Indicators, 2006, Volume I, 0-4, 0-5, 18.) And that stands to reason: researchers are less costly in countries like India, but today a great deal of research, and almost all of frontier research, involves such high-technology infrastructure that it is best executed in countries like the US.
Things to do
The first thing to do is to stop counter-positioning primary, universal education against higher education. We need both. We can afford both. Second, we must see both — the threat as well as the opportunity: the threat that we may lose our best minds at an even faster rate than the rate at which we have been losing them in the past decades; on the other side, the opportunity that we can be educators to the world.
Third, to ward off the threat and to tap into the opportunity, we require the same sort of measures. To arrest and reverse the alarming deterioration of standards in most of our institutions of higher learning. To ensure that in regard to both - students as well as faculty - merit, performance here and now, alone counts. To ensure that rewards are strictly commensurate with performance.
And resources. A large proportion of these will have to come from the government - for instance, private entrepreneurs just do not have the long horizons that basic research requires. Equally, government alone will just not have enough resources for this sector. Thus, one service that finance ministers can do is to give the most generous incentives and tax-breaks for industry to invest in education and in R&D. For every trifling misuse, a Manipal will come up.
And the resources have to be defrayed not just on equipment - that is what is done ever so often: and by the time the underpaid, under-motivated faculty learn to exploit the equipment to its full potential, the equipment is obsolete. A good proportion of the resources have to be set apart for making salaries and allowances of faculty and researchers and their work-environment attractive enough for them to forego careers in private industry and to choose instead to be in universities and research institutions.
It is obvious that we cannot do any of this so long as higher education and research is dominated by governmental institutions. China, for instance, has launched an aggressive drive to bring back the very best Chinese faculty who are working in universities in the US, Europe and the like. To attract them back, China is giving them remuneration and allowances and work facilities that are better than what they have in universities where they are working. This is being done irrespective of what existing faculty get in the Chinese establishments in which these returnees will be lodged. Can such a thing be done in a governmental organisation in India - what with its scales and unions; what with the fact that the salary of a professor cannot be higher than that of the vice chancellor, and the salary of a vice chancellor cannot be higher than that of secretary, HRD...? I am, therefore, wholly against the current rush for affiliation, etc. We should encourage institutions to de-affiliate, from existing universities and the like. Colleges and research departments and institutions will come to be known by the work they do, by the standards to which they adhere. Along with this movement to de-affiliate we should develop first-rate, wholly objective and reliable methods to rank institutions.
But the gaps are so vast that mere resources will not do. We need to adopt unconventional methods to scale up this sector. The remarkable success that F C Kohli, one of the fathers of IT in India, has achieved with the “total-immersion” method in making absolutely illiterate persons literate enough to read a newspaper within 8 to 10 weeks; his analysis of “gaps” between the best engineering college in Maharashtra and other colleges in the state, and how these can be bridged by using modern IT and communications technologies - these are the sorts of measures we need to put in place. And, instead of stuffing IITs and IIMs with mediocrities just because they were born to one set of parents than another, we should induce them to multiply faculty, and to upgrade existing faculty in other institutions.
Two prerequisites
But for any of these measures to be executed we need two prerequisites. The first is to outgrow clichés. “Do not make a commodity of education,” our politicians shout every time there is the slightest effort to make educational institutions self-sustaining. “Do not sell ma-Saraswati,” they shout every time there is an effort to induce industry to take up education. All such shouting ensures is that existing scarcities continue, and the existing education-czars rate off the lolly. All it accomplishes is to enable a dental college here, near Delhi itself, to pocket a “donation” of Rs 28 lakh from every entrant...Is the way to deal with the fact that 150,000 students have just applied to the IIM, Ahmedabad, for 250 seats in its two-year course, to force it to take in 27 per cent additional students — that is, sixty two more students — on the basis of birth? Or is it to give incentives to industry to set up 62 institutions of comparable worth?
And then there is the even more urgent task — to reverse the recent trend in regard to the few islands of excellence that remain: the recent trend of interfering in the IITs and IIMs. The recent edicts regarding reservations are just one — though by itself fatal enough — lance of such interference. Appointments of directors; hauling them up before Commissions because some congenitally disgruntled employee keeps writing letters to high-ups; the insistence of a legislative Committee that they switch to Hindi as the medium of instruction...There is an all-round assault to breach their autonomy.
To ward off such senselessness, three things are required. First, do not temporise: do not think that the way to meet the assault is to concede a bit - those concessions will not assuage the grabbers; on the contrary, they will become the reasons for the political and bureaucratic class to grab all: “See, the director himself is saying that they are ready to abide by our order - all he is asking is that he be given a little time to do so...” Second, as those who are working in these institutions are in a sense under the thumb of government — and I have been struck dumb by fear to which faculty themselves testify in open meetings — outsiders, in particular the alumni of these institutions, have an important duty: they must constitute themselves as firewalls around these institutions.
But the assault on such institutions is but an instance of the general assault on excellence in India today: from legislatures to civil service to educational establishments, mediocrity is being asserted as norm, vulgarity as right, intimidation as argument, assault as proof. Two classes today stand in counter-position to this assault on standards - entrepreneurs and the professional middle class. Accordingly, the pan-Indian organisations of professionals should get together to contain, roll-back and eventually eliminate this assault.
(Concluded)(Based on the Foundation Day Lecture, IIT, Kharagpur, Alumni Association, Delhi.)Political Will Hunting
Arun Shourie
[Disinvestment Minister Arun Shourie's Cariappa Memorial Lecture 2002, delivered in New Delhi on Saturday, argues for smart governance to secure strategic interests. A country that has ''atomic weapons'' but can't manage its finances will only be ''squeezed into submission'', he says. Exclusive extracts, in two parts.]
You couldn't have asked me to deliver this lecture because of my experience in Disinvestment! And I have no access to classified information on security affairs. Therefore, for myself alone, and based solely on my own study-much of it of the writings of experts like you!
And I do hope that what I say will not now trigger some more "Diary Items" -- that it is because the Defence Minister is speaking on Disinvestment that the Disinvestment Minister has chosen to speak on Defence!
A manuscript-already around 175 pages. By the time I revise it to shorten it-at least 250 pages! Today, I can list just a few conclusions -- I do regret having to excise the evidence that has led me to the conclusions: in part because the conclusions are the obvious ones, in part because the evidence is in many instances as delectable as it is telling. But such is the discipline of the Army that I must stick to the time limit.
A moment of substantial achievements, and several favourable turns-from the victory in Kargil to the turn of events after 9/11. But foreboding.
We often say, ''Anything is possible. What one needs is political will.'' In saying that we use the word ''will'' as if what matters is that the person at the top have the will to carry through a venture. That is of course true in a sense: at times an individual makes all the difference -- Gandhiji during the Independence Struggle, Sardar Patel in the integration of princely states. But the more enduring significance of the expression ''political will'' is not as the will of an individual. It is as the ability of a political system to deliver. That is what is being put in question every other day.
Defence forces are to a country what an iron railing put around it is to a tree: in the end, howsoever strong the railing, howsoever sturdy and well-polished it looks, it cannot protect a tree that has been hollowed by termites from within: the storm shall fell it. What is it that the Soviet armed forces could do which would make up for the sclerosis that the communist regime had imposed on the country? Could the missiles, the atomic arsenal compensate for the stagnation?
Correspondingly, think of Bihar. A population of 83 million, that is a population 30% larger than that of Britain, of Italy, a population equal to that of Germany, and an area 40% as extensive as Britain. In this vast area, over this huge population, governance has evaporated. If I were running the ISI, I wouldn't waste lives in Kashmir. I would just smuggle 20,000-30,000 AK-47s through Nepal into the state. The caste-riven people would begin killing each other, and all the forces the country could muster would get bogged down in restoring order.
Or take Pakistan and China. Only a policy conceived with the perspective of 20-30 years, only strategies actually implemented and that without wavering for 20-30 years can counter what is afoot. But if the horizon of the political class is the hulla of the day in the legislature, or the debating point that can be extracted from the headlines of the day, or the next bout of elections, how can any policy be sustained for 20-30 years?
For the same reasons, will the growing economic strength of China not get translated into military strength? And, will the growing economic distance between China and India not get translated into a greater distance between their capabilities at force projection and ours at warding off such projection?
Salvaging the system of governance is the imperative that all of us -- those in the defence forces, ex-servicemen, ordinary citizens-must attend to today. The armed forces are in fine fettle. We must get general governance up to their standards!
The Enemy Within
An implacable foe. No other identity other than ''not India'', the one whose destiny, whose religious mandate is to break India. True, there are many divisions in Pakistani society-even in regard to what is true Islam; but there is unanimity on two things-that Kashmir must be wrested, and on what must be done to India.
There is progressive Talibanisation of Pakistani society. The only recourse for Pakistan is to direct this explosive force on to external targets. It has waged a very successful strategy: over 61,000 have been killed, and yet the strategy has not provoked a retaliatory war. Quite the contrary, the strategy has worked wonders for the agencies and individuals who have directed it -- it has multiplied their importance, influence, personal wealth.
True, Pakistan has been isolated after 9/11: but it has also been able to extract postponement of dues totalling $ 12 billion, and additional aid, grants and write-offs of another $ 8 billion. But because opinion has turned against cross-border terrorism, will concentrate on fomenting internal fissures, taking advantage of internal mal- or non-governance. And it has been able to build the infrastructure for such disruption. That our agencies have been able to detect and smother 161 modules of the ISI etc. is a real achievement. But the number also indicates that ISI etc. have been able to set up these modules in the first place. Furthermore, 161 are reported to have been uncovered but some of the ones exist. Interrogations reveal that in ever so many instances, the agents were able to obtain ration cards and other papers to establish themselves as Indians-often by just paying paltry bribes of Rs. 2,000-4,000 .
Terrorism is everywhere: cells have been discovered in India, Southeast Asia, Europe. Sometimes it seems some believe that Al-Qaida is the only problem, that if it is dealt with, the problem is licked. But nomenclatures mean nothing: recall the ease with which groups that were outlawed in Pakistan just changed their names and have continued their operations. Al-Qaida is but one of the limbs of this octopus.
There are already sanctuaries for terrorists targeting India in Bangladesh, Bhutan, Nepal, Arakan in Myanmar and within India. ISI moving systematically to use vacuums of this kind: madrasas along our borders. Just one example: in the district in Nepal that borders the Siliguri corridor there are 33 madrasas; 25 of these 33 have been established since 1980.
This is compounded by the rapid Islamisation of Bangladesh: a symptom is the ever-swelling Bishwa Ijtema at Tongi each year: this year about 40 lakh attended. After 1971, the Jamaat-e-Islami had lost practically all influence. As the years went by both the national parties began courting it, specially at election time. Now it is a part of the Government.
Chinese Whispers
China itself does not regard India as a rival, it benchmarks itself against the US. But it regards India as a potential nuisance in part because of India's size, and potential; even more so because of what it considers is th likelihood that India will become an instrument of the US for containing China. Hence the lemma that India is to be kept tied down in South Asia. A representative passage from a Chinese strategist: ''In the next century, to split China's western part, or more specifically, to split China's Tibetan region.... is probably the target of the Western world's geopolitical strategy. Having pushed Russia northward, creating a political barrier like Tibet or Xinjiang between China and the oil-producing countries in Central Asia conforms to the strategic interests of the West to control permanently the world's geographic and energy centre. This dovetails with India's political plot to create a Tibetan buffer zone between China and India. Currently, India is pulling out all the stops to convince the West that it is willing to play the vanguard for the West's effort to achieve this goal, under the prerequisite that the West will adopt an appeasement policy towards its nuclear option.''
For this purpose, ''murder with a borrowed knife'': arms aid to Pakistan, Chinese advances in Myanmar, the reorientation of Chinese strategic doctrine, and the consequent overhauling of the PLA. This has crystallised around three propositions: To ensure that in whatever they do, others -- in particular countries neighbouring China -- always bear in mind China's interests, and her likely reaction; to ensure that if a war is to be fought for defending China, it is not fought on China's soil; to acquire overwhelming capacity for ''local wars under high-technology conditions.''
This in turn requires that China build the capabilities to inflict on the adversary, at the very outset, such terrific losses-for instance, by crippling vital nodes of the victim -- at such lightning speed that the objective is achieved, the adversary is "taught a lesson", and allies are scared away from standing by the victim.
To implement this strategy:
*
Develop "magic weapons"-from those that will blind satellites to ones that will disorient the guidance systems of missiles; from ones that will disrupt power grids, civil aviation control systems, telecommunication and broadcasting networks; to chemical or gaseous agents that can disorient entire populations in an area.
*
Identify the "particular vulnerabilities", the "acupuncture points" of the victim.
Chinese strategic literature devotes much space and analysis to identifying such points for the US. It would be hazardous for us to assume that they would not be conducting similar analyses for India. And always remember the admonition to the Chinese of the Vice Commandant of the Academy of Military Sciences, Beijing, General Mi Zhenyu: ''For a relatively long time, it will be absolutely necessary that we quietly nurse our sense of vengeance. We must conceal our abilities and bide our time.'' Finally, of course, there is physical positioning: the acquisition in the South China Sea of Paracel Islands in 1974, Spratly Islands in 1988, Mischief Reef in 1995. Leasing of Coco Island in the Bay of Bengal... The bases in Tibet...
It is often said that the era when large armies would march across international borders is over. The proposition is true only where the armies are evenly matched. The Gulf War, the war in Afghanistan are recent reminders that if one side is manifestly the weaker one, forces will be hurled across borders also. To ensure that forces do not march across our borders, we must be adequately prepared to crush them if they do. But we also have to contend with what will arise from the preceding propositions: Local war under high technology conditions, using magic weapons "to win without fighting". The best way for doing so-watch as the enemy, through internecine quarrels and mis- or non-governance weakens himself; if necessary, give him a helping hand -- is by exacerbating these internal ruptures.
And, once in a while, "kill a chicken to frighten the monkey" -- not so much to acquire territory, but to break the morale of the adversary, ensure he stays out of your way. It does not take much imagination to infer the types of assaults on India that an enemy would find the least costly, the most effective, and therefore the most tempting:
*
Mass disruptions of the intertwined, integrated systems of a modernising military and economy that depend on ultra-modern modes of communication and command-power grids, stock markets, airport control towers, weapons guidance systems;
*
Funnel arms and funds to warring groups in areas like Bihar;
*
Funnel arms and funds, and give sanctuary to ''freedom fighters'' operating in vulnerable stretches-for instance, to the Kamtapur insurrectionists operating in the Siliguri corridor, to the Bodo Liberation Front and ULFA on the other side, to the various extortionist groups available in Manipur to block the national highways;
*
Orchestrate protracted, near-war to bleed the country -- of the kind Pakistan has waged in Punjab, Kashmir and elsewhere;
*
Suborn mafias, and through them execute Bombay-blasts type operations;
*
Engineer an occasional foray in an outlying, loosely or poorly administered area -- say, some stretch of the Northeast.
We thus have to be prepared for more than large forces crossing international boundaries. That will cost a lot. But that cost is the price of living in our times, in this neighbourhood.
Part II - Where the Buck Really Stops
Indian Express
October 29, 2002
[Disinvestment Minister Arun Shourie's Cariappa Memorial Lecture 2002, delivered in New Delhi on Saturday, argues for smart governance to secure strategic interests. A country that has ''atomic weapons'' but can't manage its finances will only be ''squeezed into submission'', he says. Exclusive extracts, in two parts.]
You couldn't have asked me to deliver this lecture because of my experience in Disinvestment! And I have no access to classified information on security affairs. Therefore, for myself alone, and based solely on my own study-much of it of the writings of experts like you!
And I do hope that what I say will not now trigger some more "Diary Items" -- that it is because the Defence Minister is speaking on Disinvestment that the Disinvestment Minister has chosen to speak on Defence!
A manuscript-already around 175 pages. By the time I revise it to shorten it-at least 250 pages! Today, I can list just a few conclusions -- I do regret having to excise the evidence that has led me to the conclusions: in part because the conclusions are the obvious ones, in part because the evidence is in many instances as delectable as it is telling. But such is the discipline of the Army that I must stick to the time limit.
A moment of substantial achievements, and several favourable turns-from the victory in Kargil to the turn of events after 9/11. But foreboding.
We often say, ''Anything is possible. What one needs is political will.'' In saying that we use the word ''will'' as if what matters is that the person at the top have the will to carry through a venture. That is of course true in a sense: at times an individual makes all the difference -- Gandhiji during the Independence Struggle, Sardar Patel in the integration of princely states. But the more enduring significance of the expression ''political will'' is not as the will of an individual. It is as the ability of a political system to deliver. That is what is being put in question every other day.
Defence forces are to a country what an iron railing put around it is to a tree: in the end, howsoever strong the railing, howsoever sturdy and well-polished it looks, it cannot protect a tree that has been hollowed by termites from within: the storm shall fell it. What is it that the Soviet armed forces could do which would make up for the sclerosis that the communist regime had imposed on the country? Could the missiles, the atomic arsenal compensate for the stagnation?
Correspondingly, think of Bihar. A population of 83 million, that is a population 30% larger than that of Britain, of Italy, a population equal to that of Germany, and an area 40% as extensive as Britain. In this vast area, over this huge population, governance has evaporated. If I were running the ISI, I wouldn't waste lives in Kashmir. I would just smuggle 20,000-30,000 AK-47s through Nepal into the state. The caste-riven people would begin killing each other, and all the forces the country could muster would get bogged down in restoring order.
Or take Pakistan and China. Only a policy conceived with the perspective of 20-30 years, only strategies actually implemented and that without wavering for 20-30 years can counter what is afoot. But if the horizon of the political class is the hulla of the day in the legislature, or the debating point that can be extracted from the headlines of the day, or the next bout of elections, how can any policy be sustained for 20-30 years?
For the same reasons, will the growing economic strength of China not get translated into military strength? And, will the growing economic distance between China and India not get translated into a greater distance between their capabilities at force projection and ours at warding off such projection?
Salvaging the system of governance is the imperative that all of us -- those in the defence forces, ex-servicemen, ordinary citizens-must attend to today. The armed forces are in fine fettle. We must get general governance up to their standards!
The Enemy Within
An implacable foe. No other identity other than ''not India'', the one whose destiny, whose religious mandate is to break India. True, there are many divisions in Pakistani society-even in regard to what is true Islam; but there is unanimity on two things-that Kashmir must be wrested, and on what must be done to India.
There is progressive Talibanisation of Pakistani society. The only recourse for Pakistan is to direct this explosive force on to external targets. It has waged a very successful strategy: over 61,000 have been killed, and yet the strategy has not provoked a retaliatory war. Quite the contrary, the strategy has worked wonders for the agencies and individuals who have directed it -- it has multiplied their importance, influence, personal wealth.
True, Pakistan has been isolated after 9/11: but it has also been able to extract postponement of dues totalling $ 12 billion, and additional aid, grants and write-offs of another $ 8 billion. But because opinion has turned against cross-border terrorism, will concentrate on fomenting internal fissures, taking advantage of internal mal- or non-governance. And it has been able to build the infrastructure for such disruption. That our agencies have been able to detect and smother 161 modules of the ISI etc. is a real achievement. But the number also indicates that ISI etc. have been able to set up these modules in the first place. Furthermore, 161 are reported to have been uncovered but some of the ones exist. Interrogations reveal that in ever so many instances, the agents were able to obtain ration cards and other papers to establish themselves as Indians-often by just paying paltry bribes of Rs. 2,000-4,000 .
Terrorism is everywhere: cells have been discovered in India, Southeast Asia, Europe. Sometimes it seems some believe that Al-Qaida is the only problem, that if it is dealt with, the problem is licked. But nomenclatures mean nothing: recall the ease with which groups that were outlawed in Pakistan just changed their names and have continued their operations. Al-Qaida is but one of the limbs of this octopus.
There are already sanctuaries for terrorists targeting India in Bangladesh, Bhutan, Nepal, Arakan in Myanmar and within India. ISI moving systematically to use vacuums of this kind: madrasas along our borders. Just one example: in the district in Nepal that borders the Siliguri corridor there are 33 madrasas; 25 of these 33 have been established since 1980.
This is compounded by the rapid Islamisation of Bangladesh: a symptom is the ever-swelling Bishwa Ijtema at Tongi each year: this year about 40 lakh attended. After 1971, the Jamaat-e-Islami had lost practically all influence. As the years went by both the national parties began courting it, specially at election time. Now it is a part of the Government.
Chinese Whispers
China itself does not regard India as a rival, it benchmarks itself against the US. But it regards India as a potential nuisance in part because of India's size, and potential; even more so because of what it considers is th likelihood that India will become an instrument of the US for containing China. Hence the lemma that India is to be kept tied down in South Asia. A representative passage from a Chinese strategist: ''In the next century, to split China's western part, or more specifically, to split China's Tibetan region.... is probably the target of the Western world's geopolitical strategy. Having pushed Russia northward, creating a political barrier like Tibet or Xinjiang between China and the oil-producing countries in Central Asia conforms to the strategic interests of the West to control permanently the world's geographic and energy centre. This dovetails with India's political plot to create a Tibetan buffer zone between China and India. Currently, India is pulling out all the stops to convince the West that it is willing to play the vanguard for the West's effort to achieve this goal, under the prerequisite that the West will adopt an appeasement policy towards its nuclear option.''
For this purpose, ''murder with a borrowed knife'': arms aid to Pakistan, Chinese advances in Myanmar, the reorientation of Chinese strategic doctrine, and the consequent overhauling of the PLA. This has crystallised around three propositions: To ensure that in whatever they do, others -- in particular countries neighbouring China -- always bear in mind China's interests, and her likely reaction; to ensure that if a war is to be fought for defending China, it is not fought on China's soil; to acquire overwhelming capacity for ''local wars under high-technology conditions.''
This in turn requires that China build the capabilities to inflict on the adversary, at the very outset, such terrific losses-for instance, by crippling vital nodes of the victim -- at such lightning speed that the objective is achieved, the adversary is "taught a lesson", and allies are scared away from standing by the victim.
To implement this strategy:
*
Develop "magic weapons"-from those that will blind satellites to ones that will disorient the guidance systems of missiles; from ones that will disrupt power grids, civil aviation control systems, telecommunication and broadcasting networks; to chemical or gaseous agents that can disorient entire populations in an area.
*
Identify the "particular vulnerabilities", the "acupuncture points" of the victim.
Chinese strategic literature devotes much space and analysis to identifying such points for the US. It would be hazardous for us to assume that they would not be conducting similar analyses for India. And always remember the admonition to the Chinese of the Vice Commandant of the Academy of Military Sciences, Beijing, General Mi Zhenyu: ''For a relatively long time, it will be absolutely necessary that we quietly nurse our sense of vengeance. We must conceal our abilities and bide our time.'' Finally, of course, there is physical positioning: the acquisition in the South China Sea of Paracel Islands in 1974, Spratly Islands in 1988, Mischief Reef in 1995. Leasing of Coco Island in the Bay of Bengal... The bases in Tibet...
It is often said that the era when large armies would march across international borders is over. The proposition is true only where the armies are evenly matched. The Gulf War, the war in Afghanistan are recent reminders that if one side is manifestly the weaker one, forces will be hurled across borders also. To ensure that forces do not march across our borders, we must be adequately prepared to crush them if they do. But we also have to contend with what will arise from the preceding propositions: Local war under high technology conditions, using magic weapons "to win without fighting". The best way for doing so-watch as the enemy, through internecine quarrels and mis- or non-governance weakens himself; if necessary, give him a helping hand -- is by exacerbating these internal ruptures.
And, once in a while, "kill a chicken to frighten the monkey" -- not so much to acquire territory, but to break the morale of the adversary, ensure he stays out of your way. It does not take much imagination to infer the types of assaults on India that an enemy would find the least costly, the most effective, and therefore the most tempting:
*
Mass disruptions of the intertwined, integrated systems of a modernising military and economy that depend on ultra-modern modes of communication and command-power grids, stock markets, airport control towers, weapons guidance systems;
*
Funnel arms and funds to warring groups in areas like Bihar;
*
Funnel arms and funds, and give sanctuary to ''freedom fighters'' operating in vulnerable stretches-for instance, to the Kamtapur insurrectionists operating in the Siliguri corridor, to the Bodo Liberation Front and ULFA on the other side, to the various extortionist groups available in Manipur to block the national highways;
*
Orchestrate protracted, near-war to bleed the country -- of the kind Pakistan has waged in Punjab, Kashmir and elsewhere;
*
Suborn mafias, and through them execute Bombay-blasts type operations;
*
Engineer an occasional foray in an outlying, loosely or poorly administered area -- say, some stretch of the Northeast.
We thus have to be prepared for more than large forces crossing international boundaries. That will cost a lot. But that cost is the price of living in our times, in this neighbourhood.
Part II - Where the Buck Really Stops
Indian Express
October 29, 2002
Political Will Hunting
Arun Shourie
[Disinvestment Minister Arun Shourie's Cariappa Memorial Lecture 2002, delivered in New Delhi on Saturday, argues for smart governance to secure strategic interests. A country that has ''atomic weapons'' but can't manage its finances will only be ''squeezed into submission'', he says. Exclusive extracts, in two parts.]
You couldn't have asked me to deliver this lecture because of my experience in Disinvestment! And I have no access to classified information on security affairs. Therefore, for myself alone, and based solely on my own study-much of it of the writings of experts like you!
And I do hope that what I say will not now trigger some more "Diary Items" -- that it is because the Defence Minister is speaking on Disinvestment that the Disinvestment Minister has chosen to speak on Defence!
A manuscript-already around 175 pages. By the time I revise it to shorten it-at least 250 pages! Today, I can list just a few conclusions -- I do regret having to excise the evidence that has led me to the conclusions: in part because the conclusions are the obvious ones, in part because the evidence is in many instances as delectable as it is telling. But such is the discipline of the Army that I must stick to the time limit.
A moment of substantial achievements, and several favourable turns-from the victory in Kargil to the turn of events after 9/11. But foreboding.
We often say, ''Anything is possible. What one needs is political will.'' In saying that we use the word ''will'' as if what matters is that the person at the top have the will to carry through a venture. That is of course true in a sense: at times an individual makes all the difference -- Gandhiji during the Independence Struggle, Sardar Patel in the integration of princely states. But the more enduring significance of the expression ''political will'' is not as the will of an individual. It is as the ability of a political system to deliver. That is what is being put in question every other day.
Defence forces are to a country what an iron railing put around it is to a tree: in the end, howsoever strong the railing, howsoever sturdy and well-polished it looks, it cannot protect a tree that has been hollowed by termites from within: the storm shall fell it. What is it that the Soviet armed forces could do which would make up for the sclerosis that the communist regime had imposed on the country? Could the missiles, the atomic arsenal compensate for the stagnation?
Correspondingly, think of Bihar. A population of 83 million, that is a population 30% larger than that of Britain, of Italy, a population equal to that of Germany, and an area 40% as extensive as Britain. In this vast area, over this huge population, governance has evaporated. If I were running the ISI, I wouldn't waste lives in Kashmir. I would just smuggle 20,000-30,000 AK-47s through Nepal into the state. The caste-riven people would begin killing each other, and all the forces the country could muster would get bogged down in restoring order.
Or take Pakistan and China. Only a policy conceived with the perspective of 20-30 years, only strategies actually implemented and that without wavering for 20-30 years can counter what is afoot. But if the horizon of the political class is the hulla of the day in the legislature, or the debating point that can be extracted from the headlines of the day, or the next bout of elections, how can any policy be sustained for 20-30 years?
For the same reasons, will the growing economic strength of China not get translated into military strength? And, will the growing economic distance between China and India not get translated into a greater distance between their capabilities at force projection and ours at warding off such projection?
Salvaging the system of governance is the imperative that all of us -- those in the defence forces, ex-servicemen, ordinary citizens-must attend to today. The armed forces are in fine fettle. We must get general governance up to their standards!
The Enemy Within
An implacable foe. No other identity other than ''not India'', the one whose destiny, whose religious mandate is to break India. True, there are many divisions in Pakistani society-even in regard to what is true Islam; but there is unanimity on two things-that Kashmir must be wrested, and on what must be done to India.
There is progressive Talibanisation of Pakistani society. The only recourse for Pakistan is to direct this explosive force on to external targets. It has waged a very successful strategy: over 61,000 have been killed, and yet the strategy has not provoked a retaliatory war. Quite the contrary, the strategy has worked wonders for the agencies and individuals who have directed it -- it has multiplied their importance, influence, personal wealth.
True, Pakistan has been isolated after 9/11: but it has also been able to extract postponement of dues totalling $ 12 billion, and additional aid, grants and write-offs of another $ 8 billion. But because opinion has turned against cross-border terrorism, will concentrate on fomenting internal fissures, taking advantage of internal mal- or non-governance. And it has been able to build the infrastructure for such disruption. That our agencies have been able to detect and smother 161 modules of the ISI etc. is a real achievement. But the number also indicates that ISI etc. have been able to set up these modules in the first place. Furthermore, 161 are reported to have been uncovered but some of the ones exist. Interrogations reveal that in ever so many instances, the agents were able to obtain ration cards and other papers to establish themselves as Indians-often by just paying paltry bribes of Rs. 2,000-4,000 .
Terrorism is everywhere: cells have been discovered in India, Southeast Asia, Europe. Sometimes it seems some believe that Al-Qaida is the only problem, that if it is dealt with, the problem is licked. But nomenclatures mean nothing: recall the ease with which groups that were outlawed in Pakistan just changed their names and have continued their operations. Al-Qaida is but one of the limbs of this octopus.
There are already sanctuaries for terrorists targeting India in Bangladesh, Bhutan, Nepal, Arakan in Myanmar and within India. ISI moving systematically to use vacuums of this kind: madrasas along our borders. Just one example: in the district in Nepal that borders the Siliguri corridor there are 33 madrasas; 25 of these 33 have been established since 1980.
This is compounded by the rapid Islamisation of Bangladesh: a symptom is the ever-swelling Bishwa Ijtema at Tongi each year: this year about 40 lakh attended. After 1971, the Jamaat-e-Islami had lost practically all influence. As the years went by both the national parties began courting it, specially at election time. Now it is a part of the Government.
Chinese Whispers
China itself does not regard India as a rival, it benchmarks itself against the US. But it regards India as a potential nuisance in part because of India's size, and potential; even more so because of what it considers is th likelihood that India will become an instrument of the US for containing China. Hence the lemma that India is to be kept tied down in South Asia. A representative passage from a Chinese strategist: ''In the next century, to split China's western part, or more specifically, to split China's Tibetan region.... is probably the target of the Western world's geopolitical strategy. Having pushed Russia northward, creating a political barrier like Tibet or Xinjiang between China and the oil-producing countries in Central Asia conforms to the strategic interests of the West to control permanently the world's geographic and energy centre. This dovetails with India's political plot to create a Tibetan buffer zone between China and India. Currently, India is pulling out all the stops to convince the West that it is willing to play the vanguard for the West's effort to achieve this goal, under the prerequisite that the West will adopt an appeasement policy towards its nuclear option.''
For this purpose, ''murder with a borrowed knife'': arms aid to Pakistan, Chinese advances in Myanmar, the reorientation of Chinese strategic doctrine, and the consequent overhauling of the PLA. This has crystallised around three propositions: To ensure that in whatever they do, others -- in particular countries neighbouring China -- always bear in mind China's interests, and her likely reaction; to ensure that if a war is to be fought for defending China, it is not fought on China's soil; to acquire overwhelming capacity for ''local wars under high-technology conditions.''
This in turn requires that China build the capabilities to inflict on the adversary, at the very outset, such terrific losses-for instance, by crippling vital nodes of the victim -- at such lightning speed that the objective is achieved, the adversary is "taught a lesson", and allies are scared away from standing by the victim.
To implement this strategy:
*
Develop "magic weapons"-from those that will blind satellites to ones that will disorient the guidance systems of missiles; from ones that will disrupt power grids, civil aviation control systems, telecommunication and broadcasting networks; to chemical or gaseous agents that can disorient entire populations in an area.
*
Identify the "particular vulnerabilities", the "acupuncture points" of the victim.
Chinese strategic literature devotes much space and analysis to identifying such points for the US. It would be hazardous for us to assume that they would not be conducting similar analyses for India. And always remember the admonition to the Chinese of the Vice Commandant of the Academy of Military Sciences, Beijing, General Mi Zhenyu: ''For a relatively long time, it will be absolutely necessary that we quietly nurse our sense of vengeance. We must conceal our abilities and bide our time.'' Finally, of course, there is physical positioning: the acquisition in the South China Sea of Paracel Islands in 1974, Spratly Islands in 1988, Mischief Reef in 1995. Leasing of Coco Island in the Bay of Bengal... The bases in Tibet...
It is often said that the era when large armies would march across international borders is over. The proposition is true only where the armies are evenly matched. The Gulf War, the war in Afghanistan are recent reminders that if one side is manifestly the weaker one, forces will be hurled across borders also. To ensure that forces do not march across our borders, we must be adequately prepared to crush them if they do. But we also have to contend with what will arise from the preceding propositions: Local war under high technology conditions, using magic weapons "to win without fighting". The best way for doing so-watch as the enemy, through internecine quarrels and mis- or non-governance weakens himself; if necessary, give him a helping hand -- is by exacerbating these internal ruptures.
And, once in a while, "kill a chicken to frighten the monkey" -- not so much to acquire territory, but to break the morale of the adversary, ensure he stays out of your way. It does not take much imagination to infer the types of assaults on India that an enemy would find the least costly, the most effective, and therefore the most tempting:
*
Mass disruptions of the intertwined, integrated systems of a modernising military and economy that depend on ultra-modern modes of communication and command-power grids, stock markets, airport control towers, weapons guidance systems;
*
Funnel arms and funds to warring groups in areas like Bihar;
*
Funnel arms and funds, and give sanctuary to ''freedom fighters'' operating in vulnerable stretches-for instance, to the Kamtapur insurrectionists operating in the Siliguri corridor, to the Bodo Liberation Front and ULFA on the other side, to the various extortionist groups available in Manipur to block the national highways;
*
Orchestrate protracted, near-war to bleed the country -- of the kind Pakistan has waged in Punjab, Kashmir and elsewhere;
*
Suborn mafias, and through them execute Bombay-blasts type operations;
*
Engineer an occasional foray in an outlying, loosely or poorly administered area -- say, some stretch of the Northeast.
We thus have to be prepared for more than large forces crossing international boundaries. That will cost a lot. But that cost is the price of living in our times, in this neighbourhood.
Part II - Where the Buck Really Stops
Indian Express
October 29, 2002
[Disinvestment Minister Arun Shourie's Cariappa Memorial Lecture 2002, delivered in New Delhi on Saturday, argues for smart governance to secure strategic interests. A country that has ''atomic weapons'' but can't manage its finances will only be ''squeezed into submission'', he says. Exclusive extracts, in two parts.]
You couldn't have asked me to deliver this lecture because of my experience in Disinvestment! And I have no access to classified information on security affairs. Therefore, for myself alone, and based solely on my own study-much of it of the writings of experts like you!
And I do hope that what I say will not now trigger some more "Diary Items" -- that it is because the Defence Minister is speaking on Disinvestment that the Disinvestment Minister has chosen to speak on Defence!
A manuscript-already around 175 pages. By the time I revise it to shorten it-at least 250 pages! Today, I can list just a few conclusions -- I do regret having to excise the evidence that has led me to the conclusions: in part because the conclusions are the obvious ones, in part because the evidence is in many instances as delectable as it is telling. But such is the discipline of the Army that I must stick to the time limit.
A moment of substantial achievements, and several favourable turns-from the victory in Kargil to the turn of events after 9/11. But foreboding.
We often say, ''Anything is possible. What one needs is political will.'' In saying that we use the word ''will'' as if what matters is that the person at the top have the will to carry through a venture. That is of course true in a sense: at times an individual makes all the difference -- Gandhiji during the Independence Struggle, Sardar Patel in the integration of princely states. But the more enduring significance of the expression ''political will'' is not as the will of an individual. It is as the ability of a political system to deliver. That is what is being put in question every other day.
Defence forces are to a country what an iron railing put around it is to a tree: in the end, howsoever strong the railing, howsoever sturdy and well-polished it looks, it cannot protect a tree that has been hollowed by termites from within: the storm shall fell it. What is it that the Soviet armed forces could do which would make up for the sclerosis that the communist regime had imposed on the country? Could the missiles, the atomic arsenal compensate for the stagnation?
Correspondingly, think of Bihar. A population of 83 million, that is a population 30% larger than that of Britain, of Italy, a population equal to that of Germany, and an area 40% as extensive as Britain. In this vast area, over this huge population, governance has evaporated. If I were running the ISI, I wouldn't waste lives in Kashmir. I would just smuggle 20,000-30,000 AK-47s through Nepal into the state. The caste-riven people would begin killing each other, and all the forces the country could muster would get bogged down in restoring order.
Or take Pakistan and China. Only a policy conceived with the perspective of 20-30 years, only strategies actually implemented and that without wavering for 20-30 years can counter what is afoot. But if the horizon of the political class is the hulla of the day in the legislature, or the debating point that can be extracted from the headlines of the day, or the next bout of elections, how can any policy be sustained for 20-30 years?
For the same reasons, will the growing economic strength of China not get translated into military strength? And, will the growing economic distance between China and India not get translated into a greater distance between their capabilities at force projection and ours at warding off such projection?
Salvaging the system of governance is the imperative that all of us -- those in the defence forces, ex-servicemen, ordinary citizens-must attend to today. The armed forces are in fine fettle. We must get general governance up to their standards!
The Enemy Within
An implacable foe. No other identity other than ''not India'', the one whose destiny, whose religious mandate is to break India. True, there are many divisions in Pakistani society-even in regard to what is true Islam; but there is unanimity on two things-that Kashmir must be wrested, and on what must be done to India.
There is progressive Talibanisation of Pakistani society. The only recourse for Pakistan is to direct this explosive force on to external targets. It has waged a very successful strategy: over 61,000 have been killed, and yet the strategy has not provoked a retaliatory war. Quite the contrary, the strategy has worked wonders for the agencies and individuals who have directed it -- it has multiplied their importance, influence, personal wealth.
True, Pakistan has been isolated after 9/11: but it has also been able to extract postponement of dues totalling $ 12 billion, and additional aid, grants and write-offs of another $ 8 billion. But because opinion has turned against cross-border terrorism, will concentrate on fomenting internal fissures, taking advantage of internal mal- or non-governance. And it has been able to build the infrastructure for such disruption. That our agencies have been able to detect and smother 161 modules of the ISI etc. is a real achievement. But the number also indicates that ISI etc. have been able to set up these modules in the first place. Furthermore, 161 are reported to have been uncovered but some of the ones exist. Interrogations reveal that in ever so many instances, the agents were able to obtain ration cards and other papers to establish themselves as Indians-often by just paying paltry bribes of Rs. 2,000-4,000 .
Terrorism is everywhere: cells have been discovered in India, Southeast Asia, Europe. Sometimes it seems some believe that Al-Qaida is the only problem, that if it is dealt with, the problem is licked. But nomenclatures mean nothing: recall the ease with which groups that were outlawed in Pakistan just changed their names and have continued their operations. Al-Qaida is but one of the limbs of this octopus.
There are already sanctuaries for terrorists targeting India in Bangladesh, Bhutan, Nepal, Arakan in Myanmar and within India. ISI moving systematically to use vacuums of this kind: madrasas along our borders. Just one example: in the district in Nepal that borders the Siliguri corridor there are 33 madrasas; 25 of these 33 have been established since 1980.
This is compounded by the rapid Islamisation of Bangladesh: a symptom is the ever-swelling Bishwa Ijtema at Tongi each year: this year about 40 lakh attended. After 1971, the Jamaat-e-Islami had lost practically all influence. As the years went by both the national parties began courting it, specially at election time. Now it is a part of the Government.
Chinese Whispers
China itself does not regard India as a rival, it benchmarks itself against the US. But it regards India as a potential nuisance in part because of India's size, and potential; even more so because of what it considers is th likelihood that India will become an instrument of the US for containing China. Hence the lemma that India is to be kept tied down in South Asia. A representative passage from a Chinese strategist: ''In the next century, to split China's western part, or more specifically, to split China's Tibetan region.... is probably the target of the Western world's geopolitical strategy. Having pushed Russia northward, creating a political barrier like Tibet or Xinjiang between China and the oil-producing countries in Central Asia conforms to the strategic interests of the West to control permanently the world's geographic and energy centre. This dovetails with India's political plot to create a Tibetan buffer zone between China and India. Currently, India is pulling out all the stops to convince the West that it is willing to play the vanguard for the West's effort to achieve this goal, under the prerequisite that the West will adopt an appeasement policy towards its nuclear option.''
For this purpose, ''murder with a borrowed knife'': arms aid to Pakistan, Chinese advances in Myanmar, the reorientation of Chinese strategic doctrine, and the consequent overhauling of the PLA. This has crystallised around three propositions: To ensure that in whatever they do, others -- in particular countries neighbouring China -- always bear in mind China's interests, and her likely reaction; to ensure that if a war is to be fought for defending China, it is not fought on China's soil; to acquire overwhelming capacity for ''local wars under high-technology conditions.''
This in turn requires that China build the capabilities to inflict on the adversary, at the very outset, such terrific losses-for instance, by crippling vital nodes of the victim -- at such lightning speed that the objective is achieved, the adversary is "taught a lesson", and allies are scared away from standing by the victim.
To implement this strategy:
*
Develop "magic weapons"-from those that will blind satellites to ones that will disorient the guidance systems of missiles; from ones that will disrupt power grids, civil aviation control systems, telecommunication and broadcasting networks; to chemical or gaseous agents that can disorient entire populations in an area.
*
Identify the "particular vulnerabilities", the "acupuncture points" of the victim.
Chinese strategic literature devotes much space and analysis to identifying such points for the US. It would be hazardous for us to assume that they would not be conducting similar analyses for India. And always remember the admonition to the Chinese of the Vice Commandant of the Academy of Military Sciences, Beijing, General Mi Zhenyu: ''For a relatively long time, it will be absolutely necessary that we quietly nurse our sense of vengeance. We must conceal our abilities and bide our time.'' Finally, of course, there is physical positioning: the acquisition in the South China Sea of Paracel Islands in 1974, Spratly Islands in 1988, Mischief Reef in 1995. Leasing of Coco Island in the Bay of Bengal... The bases in Tibet...
It is often said that the era when large armies would march across international borders is over. The proposition is true only where the armies are evenly matched. The Gulf War, the war in Afghanistan are recent reminders that if one side is manifestly the weaker one, forces will be hurled across borders also. To ensure that forces do not march across our borders, we must be adequately prepared to crush them if they do. But we also have to contend with what will arise from the preceding propositions: Local war under high technology conditions, using magic weapons "to win without fighting". The best way for doing so-watch as the enemy, through internecine quarrels and mis- or non-governance weakens himself; if necessary, give him a helping hand -- is by exacerbating these internal ruptures.
And, once in a while, "kill a chicken to frighten the monkey" -- not so much to acquire territory, but to break the morale of the adversary, ensure he stays out of your way. It does not take much imagination to infer the types of assaults on India that an enemy would find the least costly, the most effective, and therefore the most tempting:
*
Mass disruptions of the intertwined, integrated systems of a modernising military and economy that depend on ultra-modern modes of communication and command-power grids, stock markets, airport control towers, weapons guidance systems;
*
Funnel arms and funds to warring groups in areas like Bihar;
*
Funnel arms and funds, and give sanctuary to ''freedom fighters'' operating in vulnerable stretches-for instance, to the Kamtapur insurrectionists operating in the Siliguri corridor, to the Bodo Liberation Front and ULFA on the other side, to the various extortionist groups available in Manipur to block the national highways;
*
Orchestrate protracted, near-war to bleed the country -- of the kind Pakistan has waged in Punjab, Kashmir and elsewhere;
*
Suborn mafias, and through them execute Bombay-blasts type operations;
*
Engineer an occasional foray in an outlying, loosely or poorly administered area -- say, some stretch of the Northeast.
We thus have to be prepared for more than large forces crossing international boundaries. That will cost a lot. But that cost is the price of living in our times, in this neighbourhood.
Part II - Where the Buck Really Stops
Indian Express
October 29, 2002
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