The 'incident': Nothing but political

http://epaper.kashmirtimes.in/archive.aspx?page=6&date1=04/26/2018

The Kathua ‘incident’ (to quote the prime minister) was not in a vacuum. The assumption of the perpetrators was that impunity was at hand, since the victim was Muslim. This impression of theirs has been long in the making. Muslims have been fair game over the past four years, victims of lynchings for eating beef or love jihad. Earlier, many have been put away for long periods for alleged participation in terror bombings, even in instances of bombings for which the Hindu perpetrators have been identified and, indeed, owned up to. Most saffron terrorists have been let off by courts lately. Those who led mob violence in Gujarat have also been left. Mr. Modi’s selective verbalizing suggested to the perpetrators that the law can be winked at. Finally, the anti-Rohingya policy of the government, with its eddies in Jammu, where a set of Rohingya Muslims are refugees, emboldened them further, making them believe that the anti-Muslim sentiment would translate in support for their supposed endeavour to drive Muslim nomads from the vicinity.

Thus, the perpetrators of the Kathua ‘incident’ believed they could get away with it. They almost did, in that a coalition partner in the state government, the BJP, far right organisations, some in the community and the lawyers’ association provided them cover. However, that they were finally caught tells that there is a reversibility in the tide that manufactured this impression in their minds. The social media backlash, largely a middle class revolt against the BJP, prompted Mr. Modi to break his silence. In crisis management mode since he characterized the dastardly deeds, when taken alongside the ‘incident’ at Unnao, as ‘incidents’. Panicked, he has since gone on to try and take the political sting out of the episode, calling from foreign soil for such ‘incidents’ not to be politicised.

But, as recounted at the outset here briefly, the ‘incident’ itself is an outcome of the politics of the last two decades, that witnessed the rise of Mr. Modi and the manufacture of the wave that brought him to power. The buck must stop with him. It is not time to shift the goal posts on politicization when the tide is turning. But Mr. Modi can be expected to say that; after all it is a fight for another five years at 7 Race Course Road.

It needs little elaboration as to how Mr. Modi bears moral responsibility. As leader of his devotees, he bears a measure of responsibility for their conduct. After all, the two state ministers who resigned from the state government for supporting the perpetrators were from his party and the Hindu Ekta Manch is part of the saffron brigade of which he is the prime champion. But the more significant part of the responsibility – which this op-ed dwells on in some detail further - owes to the manner his elevation from Gujarat to Delhi has led to what is now seen as a national ethical and moral crisis. Devotees appear to be finally de-mesmerising themselves. That it takes such ‘incidents’ to awaken them speaks for the depths India has fallen and is liable to fall in case of another Modi term.

Equally bad ‘incidents’ heralded Modi’s arrival on the scene, when he – in his reading of the Gujarat carnage – could not stop it. Even so, it was as much his abdication of Raj Dharma as the complicity of his administration and the police under him in keeping perpetrators from the gallows that set the tone for the moral decline. Even if the judiciary appears to have closed the inquiries, the jury is still out on a string of incidents thereafter, be it the killing of that state’s home minister or the series of encounter killings of Muslims supposed out to avenge the carnage by targeting Mr. Modi. This helped his constituents rally round him and made for a national profile for Mr. Modi.

The vilification of Muslims across India proceeded apace. As it has turned out, the bombings then attributed to Muslims, such as at Malegaon, were found to have saffron fingerprints. The idea behind this strategy of the saffron combine was to consolidate the Hindu vote. Mr. Modi emerged as the savior, outflanking the comatose Congress government. Its foreign policy dividend was to project Pakistan as the ‘Other’. This accounts for the BJP in opposition holding the Congress led United Progressive Alliance’s government hostage over its reaching out to Pakistan, twice over: before and after 26/11. The moral decline beginning with the lack of traction for Gujarat carnage cases, persisted with the wide acceptability of the orchestrated notion of Muslim provenance of terror. The orchestration of this canard was by the Hindutva aligned think tanks and closet cultural nationalists in the strategic community, who are now in the open and ever willing to stand up and be counted on prime time. Some have billets in the national security establishment, including one at its helm currently.

Since Mr. Modi’s coming to power in Delhi, the departure from ethical governance has only widened. As if recognizing the writing on the wall, the judiciary has fallen in line, the latest evidence being its decisions in favour of Maya Kodnani on the Gujarat carnage case and for Swami Aseemanand over the Mecca Masjid blast. Full blown political capital is made from the reactivation of the Line of Control. The phone has been kept off the hook with Pakistan since the Pathankot airfield terror attack. It is another matter that the attack itself has doubtful origin in that there remain unexplained connected happenings with it, such as the wandering of the Gurdaspur police chief in the vicinity of the border seemingly to escort the infiltrating terrorists to a prospective target. The mystery has even been acknowledged in the book of an acolyte of the former defence minister from within the strategic community, Securing India: The Modi Way.  For their part, the Kashmiris have yet again been pushed back a couple of decades.

It is easy to see that the same strategy that brought Modi to power – by creating a Hindu vote bank against an internal and external ‘other’ – continues at work while the BJP is in power. This implies that the moral responsibility for the outcome rests with the ruling party, its supporting political formations, and devotees willing to suspend disbelief. They are culpable for such a situation having come to pass. Since the ruling party has profited politically from this, it is a political matter, howsoever much the perpetrators in individual ‘incidents’ are equally personally liable.

Unfortunately for the perpetrators, the fresh breeze afoot got them. There is enough time for this breeze to pick up and gather into a storm, to blow the rulers back into the fringe whence they came. It is no wonder Mr. Modi wants the traces from the events over the past two decades – the principal one of which has been the Modi wave - to be wiped clean from the ‘incident’.

A police wallah as proto Chief of Defence Staff

http://www.thecitizen.in/index.php/en/NewsDetail/index/4/13644/A-Policewallah-As-Proto-Chief-of-Defence-Staff

The armed forces have been delivered another blow. The national security adviser, Mr. Ajit Doval, who, as everyone knows from the hagiography that accompanies his actions, has a back ground in the police and intelligence, is now to also head among his other onerous duties, the defence planning committee. A noted analyst, Manoj Joshi, discerns the new job as equivalent to the Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) or permanent Chairman Chiefs of Staff Committee.

In a way, the armed forces had this coming for two reasons. One is that they have not put their act together on this score for some three decades. The air force has always held out against a CDS like appointment. Frustrated, the army backtracked from its advocacy some mid last decade and then got back to renew its support for the appointment. The silent service, the Navy, has kept itself aloof from the controversy.

As a result, the three major committees that have looked at the matter since the turn of the century, the Arun Singh Committee as one of the four committees set up after the Kargil Review Committee recommendations was relatively clear on the CDS functions. The Naresh Chandra Committee set up by the comatose United Progressive Alliance government, was mealy mouthed in its recommendation, no doubt because it was headed by a heavy weight bureaucrat. Even the Shekatkar committee, that turned in its report to the previous defence minister, was unable to make a dent in the status quo.

If the army chief is to be believed on his ‘two front’ formulation, the need to have the three horses pull together has seldom been greater. The air force in its latest exercise, advertised as the largest ever, shifted from a focus on the western front to the eastern front midway through the exercise, underlining how seriously they take the collusive threat from India’s two adversaries.

This accentuates the need to optimize India’s resources devoted to defence. The prime minister in his first address to the commanders of the services at their conclave aboard the INS Vikramaditya had intoned as much. If this requires a head umpire over the three chiefs to have them work out of one script then the higher defence organization must have it. Service parochialisms cannot be allowed to stand in the way of national security. If and since the three services were reluctant to see eye to eye on this, then the appointment has to be thrust on them.

However, the quasi CDS is yet another stop gap measure. It is evident that it is not only service reluctance at play but bureaucratic chicanery. The bureaucrats are loath to have a high-ranking serviceman at the upper reaches of the hierarchy, not only for protocol and reasons of privilege but that the appointment would carry powers and responsibilities that they currently revel in, conferred by allocation of business rules dating to just prior to the Sino-Indian war. If the defence minister, the cabinet committee on security and the national security committee were to get a single point advice, they would not be able to play off one service against the other, that service veterans inform is a favoured pastime in the defence ministry.

The series of defence ministers over the tenure of this government – known to be short on talent - have not been able to fill the chair they occupied. The over-worked Mr. Jaitley (who has been in and out of hospitals) had two innings in the chair; Mr. Parrikar was home sick when in it; and the current one has yet to overcome her hangover as party spokesperson. That the defence planning committee has been foisted on the defence establishment suggests as much. 

The second - more significant if less visible - reason is that the defence planning committee is not so much to stream line the work and output of the defence sector as much as to revisit civilian control over the military. Every institution in the country has been hollowed out. The spate of exonerations by the courts of people involved in carnage and terror – specifically Maya Kodnani and Swami Aseemanand respectively – and the Supreme Court’s reluctance to get to grips with the mysterious death of fellow judge, Loya, suggests that the armed forces are the last institution standing. Since their professional and apolitical character makes it difficult to trammel them, as has been done with the media, police and bureaucracy, they need further lynchpins to tie them down.

The hurried setting up a defence planning council through executive order with barely a year to go to elections can only have a rationale outside of the strategic lamppost under which most would look. There is more to be done in the reset of India over the forthcoming term of the government, once the matter of elections between then and now is out of the way. The declining support in the people at large and the masses after a series of hit-wickets by the Modi government, such as demonetization, general service tax, and the laxity in condemning and action against rapes, polarization appears the only card left. Retention of power can now only be through letting the foot-soldiers of Hindutva crawl through society. On this count, the only institution left that can put the foot-soldiers of Hindutva back into the bottle needs tight control. Furthermore, the armed forces need an ideological dose of cultural nationalism, that can be safely administered when the government is back in saddle. Consequently, the committee needs to also be seen in the light of civil-military relations, in addition to any strategic sense it may make.

It is for this reason that the national security adviser, renowned as an intelligence czar, has been appointed as head of this committee. He has long had a foot in the Hindutva camp. In fact, he can be credited with organizing the support for the Modi wave within the strategic community well before it became a tide. The social media blitz of 2013-14 by the brigade of saffron trolls, that led up to the Modi tsunami, also has an intelligence man’s fingerprints all over it. With his mastery of the national security apparatus and his impeccable ideological credentials, besides a lifetime in high risk appointments, has him well suited for the post.  

The links between his erstwhile think tank and the military are deep. There are several retired members of the brass associated with the VIF. On leaving its directorship he had handed over the reins to a retired army chief. Thus, he has a constituency in the military, that in turn has amongst the ranks of its veterans some hypernationalists. In effect, he has an organic support base that would not find it odd for him to be virtually at the military apex, more or less displacing the minister. If there are doubts in the strategic community they can outshout the opposition. Not to forget, the army chief is a Doval acolyte and ethnic cousin, who owes his elevation to the rank over two of his seniors to intercession on his behalf by someone. 

It’s a job tailormade for Mr. Doval. In discussions on the CDS appointment, the usual refrain is that the appointment should carry weight in the hierarchy conscious military by being either be first among equals among the chiefs as another four-star general since, in India’s case, a five-star general makes for field marshal, a rank not readily conferred. Though Mr. Doval has cabinet rank in his capacity as national security adviser, he would be rather pleased with the arrangement on two counts. One, as a policeman he would have likely nursed a grouse against the military’s chip on the shoulder against counterparts in khakis. Two, as a military school product, he would have dreamed – as with any other cadet - of making it to general rank.

In short, the defence planning council has more to it than meets the eye. Its true role will only emerge if this government has a term following this one and then, it would not only be in better strategizing by the Indian military, but in revising the very ethos of the military.

Under the assault of social media, attention spans have contracted somewhat. But that is not any reason to worry. There are short introductions available to catch up on weighty matters, such as in the case of national security. These help in gaining a working understanding of issues outside a reader’s usual beat and on the quick, being small handbooks intended unambitiously as ‘introduction’. The Oxford series comprises some 30 paperbacks covering daunting topics such as monetary policy and capital flows and exchange rate mechanisms, alongside appealing titles such as Bollywood and Mughal painting. These are a mite bigger than OUP’s Very Short Introductions, paperbacks smaller in size, but not on that account any less in academic content. Placed strategically at airport bookstalls they provide intellectual fare to last a flight, given India’s distances. Chris Ogden’s take on India’s national security is by the yardstick of ‘one for the road’, a good buy. Ogden lectures on Asian security at the University of St. Andrews, Scotland. His earlier books include Indian Foreign Policy and the more interestingly—if elaborately—named, Hindu Nationalism and the Evolution of Contemporary Indian Security: Portents of Power.

The format of the series does not permit the expert to talk down to the reader, but to engagingly expand the horizons of learning. It is a bonus if the reader goes on to conquer more crests, such as perusing intellectual terrain mapped in the bibliography.

Sensibly, Ogden does not attempt to overwhelm the reader with his learning. The reader does come away with the satisfaction of having gained a measure of the headlines, since anything newsworthy has national security connotations. As Ogden reminds, national security has expanded from its military centric connotations to virtually include anything and everything, coopted into security studies by subject matter designations as energy security, environmental security, economics, social cohesion, etc. Lately, as Ogden notes, pollution too has been corralled into being an issue in national security—inter-alia—through its effects on health. Even so, territory and big battalions continue to be significant to national security.

Ogden very usefully covers national security through the constructivist lens, in that he locates India in its history, identity, culture, perception and the interaction. He takes a look at how India has changed and is changing, believing that its history has embedded a certain set of values, principles and behaviours. India’s geography, political underpinnings and social foundations have collectively formed for India a unique identity. This makes for cultural traits that distinguish India, giving it an exclusivity from the rest. India’s perceptions shape its national security threats and interests; and, finally, he characterizes as ‘interaction’, the interplay of Indian perceptions with perspectives of others in its region and global neighbours.

An additional theoretical motif he uses is the well-known Maslow hierarchy of needs. While it is usually related to individual needs—from survival to self-actualization—here Ogden adapts it for the nation. Doing so he espies India as subsuming multiple Indias with a portion of it barely surviving and—incongruously—a small elite reaching for the stars. This is significant to his book title negating the conclusion that India’s national security story is not so much about security but about India’s insecurity. This is the key take away from the book, especially for readers conditioned by prime time’s coverage of Mr. Modi’s half century of flights off to some or other capital that India is the next best thing that happened to global politics.

Ogden seems to caution—and timely—that India might well end up as a wannabe great power on two counts. The first appears to be a holdover from his previous book on the influence of Hindutva on India’s strategic culture and the second, on India’s continuing inability to pull a sizable minority of its people out of poverty. The latter inability appears to be getting more pronounced in the Modi era of jobless growth rates—themselves decelerated by gambits such as demonetization and GST—and crony capitalism. This boosts reliance on the former, papering over challenges under a revised concept of nation—Hindi-Hindu-Hindustan. The two taken together, being mutually reinforcing, make for Indian insecurity.

This insecurity is accentuated since India is not quite looking that way at all. Ogden outlines three domains of security—democracy and secularism, sovereignty and territory and modernization and great power. In the first domain the major threats are militancy, separatism and communalism. The threats in the second domain are ones Indians are routinely made familiar with by the ongoing firing along the Line of Control with Pakistan and the periodic incursions by China into areas of contested versions of the border. It is in the third domain that the real sting of Ogden’s work lies. He says that ‘at the heart of this domain the central fear is that of India’s destiny being not fulfilled which will not thus only impact on her status but also impede her self-sufficiency and autonomy in the world.’ This cautionary word needs being taken seriously by national security minders and their political supervisors. Unfortunately, that cannot be the case so long as India is in an ideological thrall, fighting off medieval monsters internally (witness the hysteria around Bollywood’s ‘Padmavat’) and, externally, sidling up to a hyper-power poised on dotage.

Two mundane—if inescapable—chapters make up the rest of the book. One deals with internal security and the second with security in its external dimension. As can be anticipated, these cover the threats and actors and their efficacy. The internal security chapter is enhanced by its coverage of ‘societal issues’. Whereas he is appreciative of India’s strides on the overall welfare front, he rightly points to democratic deficits such as on human rights (blinding and killings of stone throwers in Kashmir), quality public goods as education and health, minority security (lynchings by the cow brigade) and gender equality (leading to some 66 million missing women).The external security chapter has three quarters of an A5 page on nuclear forces. This is to minimize perhaps the greatest national security threat facing South Asia, especially when the Army Chief threatens to call Pakistan’s ‘nuclear bluff’ and Pakistan more or less says ‘bring it on’.

Ogden’s conclusion from his discussion of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs—physiological, safety, psychological, esteem and self-actualization—situated to India as a polity and nation is most apt. While Maslow’s individual graduates from a lower level to the next, with met needs at each enabling a reaching out for higher order needs, India—to Ogden—appears to be meeting all needs simultaneously. He advises that ‘it may be in India’s national interest to fulfil Maslow’s original intentions of first fully meeting basic needs, as only then will New Delhi be able to genuinely achieve its great power aspirations.’ Is anyone in Sardar Patel Bhawan, the seat of India’s National Security Council Secretariat, listening?

The Hindutva project and India's military

http://www.thecitizen.in/index.php/en/NewsDetail/index/4/13423/The-Hindutva-Project-and-Indias-Military

As per its chief, Amit Shah, the Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) intends to get 50 per cent of the votes at the next hustings. It has enough time to put its act together, having been forewarned of the mood through its losses in the recent by-elections, particularly in the stronghold of India’s most electorally significant state, Uttar Pradesh. Even though it now runs the governments across India’s landmass in some nineteen states, the ambitious figure set by Amit Shah for the BJP showing is seemingly implausible.

It is nevertheless the kind of figure the ruling party needs to get on full throttle with its political project. Liberal conspiracy theorists see the BJP as the political front of the wider right wing ‘parivar’ led by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). The pseudo- cultural political formations comprising the parivar reputedly have a political project for the transformation of India in mind, termed Hindutva. To the extent the BJP is not quite a normal conservative political party, but a Trojan horse in national politics of the parivar, it is set out to implement the Hindutva project. This is not a conspiracy theory as much as a self-confessed project of the ruling party.

Since the political masters of the military – the current day lead party in the ruling coalition – answer to a far right conglomerate with uncertain obligation to the national Constitution, it bears reflection as to what the Hindutva political project implies for the military. The ruling party has now been in charge for nearly two terms over two separate stints in government as the primary partner in the coalitions. The clue therefore lies in how the ruling party has approached civil-military relations over its two terms.

The two terms are markedly different, in that the first term was under Atal Bihari Vajpayee, who was very much an insider to Delhi’s politics and a traditionalist. Thus, besides showing its fangs early in its innings in the sacking of the naval chief by the defence minister, himself a leader of a marginal party in the coalition out to prove his loyalty to the ruling party, it left the military largely to its professional self.

The tone was set by the nuclear blasts early in Vajpayee’s second stint as prime minister. Drawing the right conclusions from the blasts and their echo across the border in Pakistan, the government launched the Lahore peace initiative. In the event, the initiative was aborted by the Pakistani army’s intrusion into Kargil.

The conflict aftermath kept the military to the professional till, particularly with Kashmir boiling over. Operation Parakram, launched in wake of the parliament attack, set the stage for the remainder of the Vajpayee tenure. That the army could not deliver conventional retribution led to the mobilization being covered up as coercive diplomacy. Suitably chastened, the military busied itself with reworking its conventional doctrine.

The second term of the BJP has been under an outsider, a former provincial chief minister, out to overturn the Lutyen’s Delhi-based ‘establishment’. An elaborately manufactured electoral ‘wave’ led to elevation of the chief minister to 7 Race Course Road. The military was part of the forming of the wave, with its veteran’s rally in Rewari enabling its build up, along with other momentum-imparting factors as the anti-corruption foray by former military man, Anna Hazare. The arrival for the first time in three decades of a majority government and its promise of a corruption-free development agenda, conferred on the ruling party greater scope for re-engineering governance, and, at one remove, India.

The national security policy promised was a muscular one.

The stage was set by first creating the illusion of working for peace, with a hand outstretched towards Pakistan’s civilian government. That was equally speedily withdrawn, with the Line of Control reactivated in the very first year of the government. The situation along the LC has been steadily downhill since, with the surgical strikes across it being the high water mark.

On the eastern front, there was a similar reverse, with the front being seen as the second of a ‘two (and half front)’ war. Current-day headlines portend a Doklam II, with China reportedly resuming road construction activity that led up to the seventy three day stand-off last year. The additional ‘half’ front presumably is the prognosticated tie up between fifth columnist Muslims and the Maoists in the hinterland.

Even as the military has the two-front mantra as the government’s strategic doctrine for a guide, it has been left out in the cold without the wherewithal to fend off its two collusive enemies. Its vice chief recently let on to the parliamentary standing committee on defence that the decline in the defence budget to its lowest level in relation to the gross domestic product since the 1962 War was insufficient to cover for inflation and provide for the 125 odd procurement projects the military currently has underway, leave alone cater for modernising its equipment of which sixty per cent is vintage.

In short, the military is left to tackle an active western front and potentially active eastern front and to the extent it falls short, it would be left holding the can.

The government has taken care to have an amicable army chief, superseding two of his seniors. The Chief has been faulted not only by the liberal portion of the commentariat but also by sundry politicians and the opposition for being rather inclined towards the party line of the ruling party. The army chief’s latest speech was at the right wing think tank, the Vivekananda International Foundation.

Controversial godman, Sri Sri Ravi Shankar was invited to address a naval function. The air chief in his remarks at the air force day was criticized for being overly welcoming of the controversial turn in the Rafale deal. These and ever increasing incidence of such instance are seen as a departure from the hitherto apolitical utterances and practice by the military.

Clearly, the military cannot remain unscathed from Hindutva’s reset of Hindustan. However, it is intriguing that the military appears as being sidelined, even as its derring-do – such as in the surgical strikes - is used as political capital by the ruling party. This needs an explanation.

The Hindutva political project of a reset of Hindustan is an expansive one, which down the road could conceivably include rewriting the Constitution. Traditionalist institutions, such as the army, need to be softened timely for the rollout of the more consequential aspects of the project over the coming term of the ruling party.

The military – so far - sees itself as professional, apolitical and secular. The ante on the professional part is upped by the need to defend the borders on the two fronts. The military is also given full play in a portion of the ‘half front’, Kashmir. A professionally engaged military is unlikely to have any interest, attention span and energy for political pushback. Keeping the military to the professional till is termed objective civilian control of the military.

The apolitical characteristic - glimpsed earlier - is endangered in the military leadership buying into the ideology of the ruling right wing formations. The self-confessed ideological agenda of the ruling dispensation is to revise secularism. The secular characteristic of the military is alongside its sister characteristic – apolitical - in direct line of fire. The precedence set of deep selection of the military leadership enables elevation to its apex of those who show such propensities. This form of civilian control of the military is termed subjective control.

Seen is a blend of objective and subjective civilian control in action. In short, the Hindutva project entails a movement away from objective civilian control to subjective civilian control. It is at the expense of the apolitical and secular character of the military, even as the professional characteristic is temporarily boosted to cover the dilution of the former two. Even this boost is a chimera in that the military continues as a supplicant for the monies to meet professional ends.

From a civil-military relations perspective, it promises to be an interesting second term for the Modi government, should Mr. Shah deliver as he reckons. Since objective civilian control is a characteristic of democratic states, the shift away portends alongside a shift to an authoritarian and ideological state.

http://www.kashmirtimes.in/newsdet.aspx?q=77428
Is there an Indian 'deep state'?
t stands counter to democratic values, the presence of a deep state in either a matured or a putative form is an existential danger to democracy. Since a prerequisite for democracy is eternal vigilance, a timely and periodic scan of democratic credentials of a country is necessary. Though seemingly counter-intuitive to subject India to such test, it is unfortunately no longer unthinkable to do so. 



The concept of 'deep state' sits easy on Pakistan. As it readies to observe the seventieth iteration of Pakistan day on 23 March, the most significant aspect of its history that overhangs its present is that it has been run by the army for over half its independent existence. This legacy accounts for the rumoured 'deep state' in Pakistan that comprises a core military and intelligence elite. 

The 'deep state' in Pakistan is credited with the continuity in Pakistan's policies, such as anti-India proxy war or seeking strategic depth in Afghanistan. The deep state is immune to democratic shifts, taking control of government policies on India, nuclear matters and Afghanistan. Its notion of national security has a few well-recognised elements such as Pakistan as a national security (garrison) state; protection and expansion of ideological frontiers of Islam; preservation of corporate interest of the military; and internal (leveraging domestic resources) and external (allies) balancing in a manner as to offset the power asymmetry with India. 

That a deep state has its own agenda is clear from the Pakistan case. Take for instance the price Pakistan has paid for its internal balancing measure of relying on jihadi assets for furthering proxy wars in India and Afghanistan. On the surface this appears contrary to Pakistan's national interest of internal security and stability. The deep state appears to believe that this is an affordable price to pay and that it has control over the Frankenstein propensities of such enterprises. The deep state is thus an amorphous entity autonomous of accountability. 

The deep state has continuity that kitchen cabinets of democratic regimes do not have. The kitchen cabinet of Indira's days dispersed when non-Congress governments were in power. The deep state is narrower than the Establishment. In the US, the Trump phenomenon points to the disaffection of the Trumpian voter with the Establishment, identified with the political elite in Washington, DC. In Pakistan's case, the incestuous Establishment reputedly includes prominent families of the industrial and feudal elite. The deep state is thus in a more potent category all by itself. 

Given that it stands counter to democratic values, the presence of a deep state in either a matured or a putative form is an existential danger to democracy. Since a prerequisite for democracy is eternal vigilance, a timely and periodic scan of democratic credentials of a country is necessary. Though seemingly counter-intuitive to subject India to such test, it is unfortunately no longer unthinkable to do so. 

An Indian deep state can easily be dismissed. India is the world's largest democracy and the most long standing one in the developing world. Its record as a procedural democracy is unmatched and relatively unblemished. With the usual platitudes out of the way, this commentary gets down to the business of gauging the extent to which a deep state might exist (if not quite thrive) in India. 

Recently, the leading light of the pseudo-cultural formation, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, said that his foot-soldiers can mobilize in three days. He was contrasting their alacrity to arms to the army's comparatively slovenly (to him) mobilisation. One reason that Operation Parakram did not go the full distance from coercive diplomacy to conventional war was the long time lag for the army to get into operational gear, particularly its lumbering strike corps. To its credit the army has since cut this time down, as the name Cold Start doctrine suggests. The leading light of the RSS was of course unmindful of the different order of magnitude that mobilizing to lynch unsuspecting skull cap wearers is from mobilization for war. But that detail did not detain the head honcho of the political formation and its group of affiliates. Comparing Hindutva inspired mobs out for mayhem in some neighbouring Muslim inhabited ghetto with the army off to war is like comparing apples to oranges. 

Irrespective of this inconvenient observation, the comparison had a purpose. The Sarsangchalak was making the point that the Indian state has lost the monopoly over force. There is now in India a power-that-be outside of the state, which as is well-known is notably averse to some (if not all) constitutional provisions. This is not a new or emergent reality. The riot system has been around since Partition. In a famous instance, a regional satrap had apparently given the rioters 72 hours to be able to wreak their vengeance. In the interim, the subverted and spineless police allegedly misdirected army columns coming to aid of civil authority. The army's after action report has not been leaked (as yet). 

A religious figure, Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, recently pointed to the potential for violence in case the verdict in the Ayodhya land dispute was to go against any community. In one interpretation, while it is taken for granted that the Muslims, if disappointed by the verdict, would go down the route of terrorism, radical Hindus are expected to riot. Here the RSS supremo's boast on his organisation's mobilizing capability needs to be factored in. Essentially, Ravi Shankar is informing of possible mob violence. Doing so can be taken as cautionary, as also as intimidating. The latter is in relation to Muslims, who have been at one end of Ravi Shankar's unilateral intervention in the case for an out-of-court settlement. The possibility of mob violence as a result of its judgment cannot but exercise the Supreme Court to be cautious. It is no wonder that the august body ruled that there be no undue activism by sundry busy bodies, such as Subramaniam Swamy, while it deliberates on the matter. 

The portended violence is not necessarily emotive, arising from primordial affiliations of religion and identity. It is rather an orchestrated likelihood, particularly since the ruling party that has perfected the riot system - that was originally honed by the erstwhile ruling party, the Congress. It has deployed the system to electorally benefit from resulting polarization, for instance, in Muzzafarnagar and more recently in Kasganj. Since the development mantra is unlikely to work a second time round (the first having been in 2014) and in light of its record on this score over the past four years, the need for riots is nigh. The recent losses in Phulpur and Gorakhpur only serve to heighten the need for a mother-of-all-riots. It is with good reason that the opposition party called for a delay in the Supreme Court's judgment on the Ayodhya case till after the national elections. 

What the discussion suggests is that there is an emergent deep state in India that would like to mould the democratic verdict in a particular way. At this juncture in the discussion, the question arises as to the extent of reach of rightist political formations into the state itself. The depth of this reach into the heart of the Indian state is the level of current day articulation of the deep state in India. 

The sub-judice case that prompted spillover into the open domain of the internal dissent within the highest court of the land provides a clue. The case in question is the mysterious death of one CBI court judge and the subsequent (perplexing) exoneration of a high-profile political personage in the case of 'encounter' deaths dating to 2005 in Gujarat. The deaths, initiated at the behest of an intelligence bureau input, were instrumental in elevating the national profile of the provincial head there, which over the following years acquired increasing prominence riding on the planted and motivated canard of a fifth columnist minority. The aim was the manufacture of an impregnable vote bank and turn India into a majoritarian democracy. 

The ploy succeeded as the United Progressive Alliance (UPA), tottering from scam to scandal, did not have the gumption for a judicial follow through. By the end of the UPA period, the beginnings of the deep state were evident, but outside the state itself. The formation and direction of the troll brigades to bring down the UPA and take over the anti-corruption agenda is evidence. The wannabe deep state then is now the deep state. 

The Indian deep state has had a short existence so far. Faced with national elections, and an uncertain outcome, it may not grow to becoming a deep state in the conventional definition. The need for self-perpetuation, and its self-justifying rationale of preserving the good work done so far of strides towards a Hindu India, require that elections return the ruling party to power. Self-preservation implies insuring against judicial accountability. Since to them aims justify the means, it promises to be an interesting run up to national elections.

http://www.thecitizen.in/index.php/en/NewsDetail/index/4/13334/Budget-Let-Down-Further-Strains-Army-Govt-Relations-COAS-Supportive-Vice-Chief-Disappointed

Budget let down further strains army-government relations

Through in its budget presented on February 1 the government hiked the defence allocation by just short of eight per cent over last year. This pegged at a mere 1.58 per cent of the gross domestic product, making it the least allocation by this yardstick since the 1962 War. The push back from the military on the straitened defence budget was not long in coming.

The Army’s candid deposing in front of the parliamentary standing committee on defence came to light with the release on March 13 of the committee’s forty-first report on ‘Demand for Grants 2018-19’. The report carried the Army vice chief’s lament that this was far short of its expectations on several counts, including rendering it unable to cover ongoing modernization projects, leave alone cater for the Army’s pet project of creating an ability to fight a ‘two front’ war.

The standing committee’s report has not drawn attention over the recent past. Though the defence budget has been declining in relation to the GDP over the past four years, there was little appetite in the strategic community to critique this. This was in contrast to the vociferous criticism of the government in the UPA period that usually followed these annual, routine reports.

The reports invariably carried a stricture on the government to be more attentive to matters of defence, alighted upon by the strategic community less as a stick to beat the comatose Manmohan government but more to set the stage for a ushering in a different ruling party, the Bharatiya Janata Party, which promised to be strong on defence. The declining defence budget escaped being targeted thus far since the government created an illusion of a strong defence by taking a proactive stance on both borders, activating the Line of Control (LC), while staring down the Chinese along the Line of Actual Control (LOAC).

A key indicator for the operation of a national security doctrine is the defence budget. The relatively measly defence budget thus seemingly contradicted expectations of a government wishing to be seen as strong on defence. Yet, the usual critique was somewhat absent because the strategic community – honourable exceptions apart - did not wish to berate those it had championed.

Even the standing committee’s report has not attracted the critical commentary the UPA was subject to. The strategic community appears to be taken in by the government’s explanation that it is taking out a defence investment and manufacturing policy that would compensate over the long term for any shortfall.

More plausibly, the fall in allocations to levels that could raise eyebrows owed to the budget being seen as more of an election budget, possibly the last one prior to elections either later this year or early next year. With monies for schemes such as the national health insurance scheme to cover some 10 crore vulnerable families needed, the amount was presumably found by axing the defence budget. Having created an image of being mindful of defence, the government perhaps thinks that it could trade this for shoring its image in the electorally more consequential social and welfare sectors, especially since its development promise has faded considerably.

Equally, the government in election year is unwilling to chance a crisis on either border. The budget is a means to signal potential adversaries of intentions. The government is perhaps unwilling to set off a self-fulfilling prophecy, with heightened allocations posing a security dilemma for adversaries, thereby bringing about a scenario better avoided. At least in election year, the government would not want threat perceptions to spike, since the outcome of aggravation is both out of one’s sole control and can never be guaranteed.

A Doklam replay that goes awry this year could prove fatal for the government’s longevity. It would not want to put its electoral cards in the Army’s basket, howsoever alert and professional. The government would not want India’s claims of defence preparedness – such as finance minister’s budget speech boasts on border infrastructure improvement - tested prematurely, and certainly not in election year.

However, continuation of artillery duels on the Line of Control (LC) can be indulged. The electoral dividends of a continuing low intensity conflict along the LC can be had without the costs of conventional show down. The ruling party’s need for polarisation for elections does not require a costly war.

Though the Army trotted out the threat of the worst-case scenario of a two front war in its reservations expressed to the standing committee, the government has other instruments of state to ensure that the worst-case is avoided. In relation to Pakistan, the intelligence game can continue under tutelage of the national security advisor, who while lining up for the post had famously warned Pakistan that it stood to lose Baluchistan. As regards China, India now has as its new foreign secretary the diplomat credited with defusing the prolonged crisis at Doklam.

Finally, the government perhaps thought that it could get away, leaving perception management surrounding the exercise to the Army chief, by now known for his proximity to the ruling party line. There was no pushback by the Army chief over being shortchanged by the government in the budget. Instead, his first remarks since budget day came a month later, on the defence expenditures being a sine qua non for economic growth. These were characterized in the media as a defence of the budget allocation. However, his deputy made amends in speaking of the army’s disappointment.

Of late there appears to be dissension in the brass. At a university seminar in Chandigarh late last month, the western Army commander thought that to fight a two-front war was not ‘smart’. His training command counterpart went further, observing that brinkmanship is no substitute for statesmanship that alone can bring about de-escalation along the LC. Both, speaking in wake of the budget downsizing, were no doubt cognizant of its implications. The vice chief has joined them in calling out the government’s playing fast and loose with defence matters.

Potentially this a juncture of unravalling of the Army’s illusion of a government keen on shoring defence, that accounted in part for the Army’s seemingly unnecessary cozying up to the ruling party over the past few years. As momentum built up to the Modi wave prior to last national elections, the military was one of the first converts, best illustrated by its former chief VK Singh escorting PM Modi to the podium at a veteran’s rally at Rewari.

Modi-military equations have since been patchy, peppered with controversies over the seventh pay commission, the one-rank-one-pension, the status-equivalence issue with bureaucrats, fishy arms deals such as the turn-round on Rafale, arrest of a former service chief, dithering over the chief of defence staff etc. Not to forget, the claim by the head of the right wing political formation supportive of the ruling party that his outfit – the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh - can outdo the Army in mobilization. What the Army does in three weeks, it can do in three days.

The chequered relations have now been capped by a budget let down. Discernible is an unraveling of the Army’s illusion that a conservative-realist government that best understood it and national security is at the helm. Instead, the fallout of the reduced budget could be in the Army beginning to see a self-interested ideological formation furthering its own electoral interest while preying on the Army’s need for self-esteem.

http://www.tribuneindia.com/news/comment/a-revolt-of-the-generals/556256.html

A revolt of the generals?

AN editorial in The Tribune ('Generals speaking', March 2) has it that there is dissension in the ranks. The editorial follows two generals who, while speaking at a seminar in Panjab University, Chandigarh, seemingly contradicted earlier utterances of their Chief. Recounting recent forays by the Army Chief into political territory, the editorial concludes that the generals, including the Army Chief, should drive in their respective lanes.

At the Chandigarh seminar, the head of the Army's Western Command said that the idea of a two-front war is not 'smart'. Recall, a 'two and a half front war' was the Chief's innovative formulation last year, referring to a collusive threat from China and Pakistan, alongside a domestic 'half front' unsettled, presumably by a Maoist-jihadist insurrection. 

The second general, its training command head, called out the lack of traction of the political track with Pakistan, even though the Line of Control (LoC) has been activated with artillery crunches, resulting in deaths and displacement on both sides. The Chief is part-owner of the policy reversal of ceasefire on the LoC, having under his belt the proto-surgical strike in cross-border raids on the Myanmar border that were then grafted on to the LoC. Predictably, escalation resulted and with little prospect of a negotiated return to the pre-existing ceasefire.

Both generals have a point. They are mindful, perhaps, that with the defence budget this year reaching its lowest level since the 1962 war in terms of percentage, it would be prudent for India to cut its coat according to the cloth on hand.

A textual view is that the two are drawing attention to the advantages of strategic prudence. Since there can always be two views on strategic matters, their querying the Chief's perspective is unexceptionable. A professional diversity of opinion such as this must enliven Army commanders' conference, enabling robust policy input from the Army's side. 

However, strategic debate apart, can a subtextual view be taken of their remarks, one perhaps unintended by the two, but one informed by the subtext of their remarks? 

The two army commanders were speaking at a seminar on Pakistan. Drawing analogy from Pakistan's case, the training command head had this to say, "This (Pakistani praetorianism) is in stark contrast to India where the armed forces owe allegiance to the Constitution, and not to any party, person or religion (italics added)."

Normally, there would be no need to give voice to this homily. The distinction between India and Pakistan would appear to be self-evident. However, the times are changing. A cautionary word that Indian politics is headed the way of Pakistan is not infrequently heard. 

The training command head said as much, likening Pakistan to a mirror on the wall, which India needs to look at so as not to "make the same mistakes, particularly in light of growing radicalisation and intolerance within our own society over mundane issues."

The two statements together indicate an unease with the political forces causing distress in society, and an apprehension of the military's growing proximity to such forces. 

The seeming proximity is seen in the Army Chief's utterances. His latest remarks in the context of elections in three north-eastern states drew attention to the threat of illegal immigration. At the start of the ongoing run-up to the Karnataka elections, the Chief went down to Coorg and pitched for the Bharat Ratna for a son-of-the-soil, Field Marshal Cariappa. Rawat's positions have constantly been at odds with one of the two coalition partners in J&K, where the Army is the protagonist.  

It is increasingly evident that the Army Chief's remarks are aligned with the political plank with the right wing ruling party. The benefits in a tough-on-national-security image are, perhaps, excusable. More problematic is ballast for the political project under way of the ruling party and its supportive pseudo-cultural formations. 

This has led to a growing suspicion that the Army Chief is down a political route, out of sync with the tradition of public reticence by military chiefs and the apolitical character of the Army. Since political and professional are inversely proportional, this impacts military professionalism. 

The Army's leadership needs to cauterise the Army from the influences from without. The Army commanders form the Army's collective leadership. The subtext in the words at the seminar of the two army commanders — perhaps unintended by the two — appear to call on their Chief to pull back from the brink. It is a timely call worth heeding.