https://www.epw.in/journal/2018/34/strategic-affairs/modi-helm.html

Modi at the Helm

Whither Nuclear Decision-making?

Vol. 53, Issue No. 34, 25 Aug, 2018

Nuclear decision-making, when examined at the institutional and individual levels, suggests that India’s case is fraught with shortcomings. This adds to the complications for regional security, already present on account of Pakistan’s nuclear decision-making being military dominated. The aggravated institutional infirmities of India’s nuclear decision-making structures and the authoritarian tendencies in India’s primary nuclear decision-maker, the Prime Minister, heighten nuclear dangers in future crises and conflicts.

he Rafale deal reworked by Prime Minister Narendra Modi during a visit to Paris early in his tenure has come under scrutiny recently. Critics have it that the jettison of the original deal—in which India was to get 18 aircrafts and assemble 108 separately—in favour of getting only 36 aircrafts in a fly away condition, albeit with India-­specific enhancements, has been to India’s disadvantage (Sinha et al 2018). The decision figures alongside the sudden demonetisation as another landmark decision by Modi. Critics have it that both cases lacked due diligence in processing. While then Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar was seemingly out of the loop on the shift in the Rafale deal (Dutta 2017), it remains unclear which officials were consulted on demonetisation (Indian Express 2017). What do such major decisions bespeak of India’s ability to handle arguably the most fraught decision, that on nuclear weapons use?

The last four years have provided adequate insight into the workings of the Modi government. The Rafale deal, demon­etisation, and the roll-out of the goods and services tax are taken as the leitmotif on its decisiveness (Hindu 2018). These provide enough grounds to suspect that decision-making on nuclear weapon employment could well be problematic. This is troubling, particularly as the government is about to approach the voters once again for another five years at the helm.

Owing to its nuclear weapons overhang, South Asia has on occasion attrac­ted attention as the “most dangerous place on earth” (Hiro 2016). The contribution of the pathologies of Pakistan’s nuclear decision-making are rather better known (Narang 2014: 75). Pakistan’s military has deployed nuclear weapons as a cover to pursue a proxy war in Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) (Joshi and O’Donnell 2018: 63, 79). While in the Pakistani decision-making structure, the Prime Minister has pride of place in the Employment Control Committee of the National Command Authority, in practice, the military controls nuclear decision-making (Narang 2014: 84). It can be inferred that the institutional interest of the military, which colours its vision of the national interest, can potentially render nuclear decision-making awry.

If this was not bad enough for regional crisis stability and escalatory pressures in conflict, the situation in South Asia is compounded by lesser remarked on deficiencies in Indian nuclear decision-making. This article examines the drawbacks in India’s nuclear decision-making, cautioning that these heighten dangers in regional crises and conflicts. Possible sites of shortcomings in nuclear decision-making are discernible in two ways. One is at the institutional level, with the peculiarities of the Modi government taken into account; and the second is in the character of the primary decision-maker, Prime Minister Modi. If the recourse to the process of decision-making is taken insufficiently, a matured decision is unlikely.

So far the perception has been that organisational position holders among India’s policymaking elite have had a “passive stance on nuclear issues” (Frey 2010: 198). The emphasis on nuclear decision-making discussions in strategic literature has consequently been on the necessity to demonstrate resolve and commitment by the leadership to order a massive or punitive retaliatory strike (Kanwal 2017: 190). The underside of decisiveness in nuclear decision-making reveals two issues: the decision-maker may be held to an image of dynamism and decisiveness, impelling a decision on nuclear use; and this may undercut the taking of recourse to deliberation in high-tempo and high-tension nuclear decision-making.

Institutional Level

The infirmities at the institutional level are owing to the overweening salience of Prime Minister Modi in the government. He rode to power in 2014, forming the first majority government in three decades. The campaign itself was seen as a presidential one, magnifying Modi’s profile and personality. Initial hiccups in cabinet formation were indicative of the problems ahead. For want of a suitably high-profile defence minister, the ministership was given temporarily to the finance minister. There have since been two ministers in the chair, with the finance minister coming back in the interim between the two for a second time. The current defence minister, Nirmala Sitharaman, did not have a traditional heavyweight profile (Hindustan Times 2017). This playing of musical chairs with a significant cabinet position undermines the decision-making table at which the defence minister sits alongside the finance, external affairs, and home ministers, namely, the Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS), the National Security Council (NSC), andpossibly—since its composition is not known—the political council of the Nuclear Command Authority (NCA).

Of the other three ministries, the Finance Minister Arun Jaitley’s office is not only a busy one in itself, but he has faced health issues and grappled with party issues. A low profile has been thrust on External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj, with Modi taking over 50 foreign trips, testifying to the centre of gravity of foreign policymaking having shifted from her ministry to the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO). The home ministry’s disaster management role has been diluted with the National Disaster Management Autho­rity (NDMA), chaired ex officio by the Prime Minister, currently lacking a vice chairperson (News18.com 2015; NDMA nd). A low, technocratic profile of the NDMA furthers the centralisation at the PMO.

Centralisation implies a higher profile for the National Security Adviser (NSA). NSA Ajit Doval reputedly enjoys a close relationship with Prime Minister Modi. As secretary of the political council, his input is, thus, liable to become magnified. The upshot, first, is in an increase of bureaucratic weight, and lessening of ministerial weight in policy- and decision-making. The strategic-level perspective represented by the NSA as head of the executive council of the NCA needs to be superseded by political-level considerations provided by ministerial members of the political council. Dilution and asymmetry in salience between the two levels—political and strategic—tends to have an adverse impact on the political weight and considerations in nuclear decision-making (Ahmed 2010: 5). If the ministers around the table are restricted in terms of their power differential, the Prime Minister–NSA alignment can deflect decisions in directions other than what might have emerged from collegiate and deliberative political-level decision-making.

Second, personalisation, by making the Prime Minister more than the first among equals, results in going against the grain of the Westminster-style parliamentary democracy system adopted by India. An illustration of this is in the joint doctrine of the military, according the Prime Minister the decision-making authority within the political council (Rej and Joshi 2017: 21), which is at variance with the official nuclear doctrine of 2003 that states: “The Political Council … is the sole body which can authorise the use of nuclear weapons” (MEA 2003).

As for the executive council’s input, its advice collectively arrived at is to be conveyed by the NSA. The interrelationship between the NSA and the institutional heads in the executive council—who largely also sit in the Strategic Policy Group of the NSC system—corresponds to that of the Prime Minister and his political colleagues, one of power asymmetry. The other pillar of the NSC system, the National Security Advisory Board, which is expected to be a repository of national security expertise, has been run aground with its membership comprising four members, including the chair (Economic Times 2018), as against 22 members in the first advisory board headed by the doyen of the strategic community, K Subrahmanyam.

Individual Decision-maker

This brings up shortcomings in nuclear decision-making discernible in the character of the individual decision-maker. At this level, the character of the Prime Minister as decision-maker is consequential. Modi’s significance in his government—best illustrated by the information ministry employing some 200 media watchers to regulate the coverage of the Prime Minister by the media (Bajpai 2018)—magnifies the implications of him being the decision-maker.

Critiques of Modi popularly have it that his is an authoritarian personality. Such appraisals usually compare him with Indira Gandhi, infamous for the Emergency days. Sociologist and clinical psychologist Ashis Nandy (2002) has stated that Modi exhibits a

mix of puritanical rigidity, narrowing of emotional life, massive use of the ego defence of projection, denial and fear of his own passions combined with fantasies of violence—all set within the matrix of clear paranoid and obsessive personality traits.

Nandy (2002) writes that on emerging from the interview in which he formulated this impression of Modi, he felt he “had met a textbook case of a fascist and a prospective killer, perhaps even a future mass murderer.”

Modi’s electoral majorities over three successive elections in his home state, Gujarat, have reinforced his image of having authoritarian traits. He was able to fend off then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s possible move to oust him from chief ministership after the Gujarat carnage (Ullekh 2017). He withstood the scrutiny of the Supreme Court through its Special Investigation Team on his role in the carnage (Dasgupta 2012). Facing these challenges contributed to the rise in his political profile. The habits formed in Gujarat have come to define Modi and have carried over to governmental functioning at the centre.

As can be expected, the nuclear field has been affected (Ahmed 2017). The initial promise from a nuclear doctrinal review having found mention in the manifesto of the Bharatiya Janata Party was dashed with Modi silencing any talk of change, claiming nuclear weapons were a “cultural inheritance” (Reuters 2014). As a result, over the past four years, there have only been hints of possible change, such as in his defence minister making a personal observation in public on whether the no first use (NFU) policy tied down India’s hands (Kanwal 2017: 33–35). Consequently, the official doctrine, predicated on NFU and “massive” retaliation (MEA 2003), remains unchanged. The remainder of this article examines the implications of an unchanged doctrine when viewed through the organisational theory lens at the individual level.

Determinants of Decision-making

Four factors are likely to influence decision-making regarding nuclear use. First, is the Prime Minister’s image of decisiveness. This could tend to push for a quicker decision from the political council, overshadowing the abundant caution that needs to attend such decision-making. Second, is the strong-man image of the Prime Minister and the NSA, who respectively chair the two councils of the NCA. Apprehending a heightened reputational risk from a decision that does not conform to a tough line may lead to an unnecessarily harsh decision on the nature of Pakistan’s punishment for the temerity of going nuclear, albeit at a lower-order level of introduction of nuclear weapons into an ongoing conflict. Third, is the perceived reservations the Prime Minister and the NSA have of Pakistan, evident from the prevalent hard line towards Pakistan. Last, but not least, and compounding this issue, is the attitude that Prime Minister Modi has towards Muslims in general (Malhotra 2017).

The upshot of deliberations on nuclear retaliation is less likely to be in favour of restraint. India may go ahead with its doctrinal follow-through of “massive” retaliation, or a watered-down version: “unacceptable” damage. In a recent iteration of this by a former head of the Strategic Forces Command, Pakistan stands to lose 8,00,000 people as primary casualties and another 12,00,000 as secondary casualties to such retaliation (Shankar 2018).

Lest the walkthrough appears speculative, a look at nuclear developments might strengthen the case on nuclear dangers. Commentary on the Rafale controversy has it that the change was possibly necessitated by India needing a nuclear weapons air-delivery system. The India-specific enhancements that have apparently shot up its cost and necessitating secrecy may have been to the nuclear avionics of the Rafale (Mitra-Iyer 2018). Alongside, India is set to purchase the S-400 Triumf air-defence weapons system from Russia at a steep cost of ₹40,000 crore (Hindu 2018). This system is expected to deploy a
protective screen alongside the Defence Research and Development Organisation’s endogenous and exogenous missile defence system around the national capital region. Expec­tation of protection against Pakistani retaliatory strikes will embolden aggression in nuclear decision-making. It provides a rationale for jettisoning self-deterrence from perceived vulnerabilities that constitute mutual deterrence.

India’s nuclear policy and decision-making structure is designed for democratic decision-making. But, the propensities in India’s higher governmental leadership today appear to be the opposite. Thus, the structure is unlikely to function as envisioned. The hollowing out of India’s institutions can, thus, exact a rather steep price. The very traits in the primary nuclear decision-maker that so enamoured the middle classes and voters at the last hustings show up now as liabilities. An extension for the ruling party at the helm in 2019 increases the likelihood that the unthinkable is at our doorstep.

References

Ahmed, Ali (2010): “The Political Factor in Nuclear Retaliation,” Strategic Analysis, Vol 34, No 1, pp 5–8.

Ahmed, Firdaus (2017): “Are India’s Nuclear Weapons in Safe Hands?” IndiaTogether.org, 20 December, http://indiatogether.org/are-india-s-nuclear-weapons-in-safe-hands-op-ed.

Bajpai, Punya Prasun (2018): “A 200-Member Government Team Is Watching How the Media Covers Modi, Amit Shah,” Wire, 10 August, https://thewire.in/media/narendra-modi-
amit-shah-media-watch-punya-prasun-bajpai.

Dasgupta, Manas (2012): “SIT Finds No Proof against Modi, Says Court,” Hindu, 10 April, https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/sit-finds-no-proof-against-modi-says-court/article3300175.ece.

Dutta, Saikat (2017): “Cutting the Hype: There Wasn’t Really Much to Manohar Parrikar’s Stint as Defence Minister,” Scroll.in, 23 March, https://scroll.in/article/832418/cut-the-hype-there-wasnt-much-to-manohar-parrikars-stint-as-defence-minister.

Economic Times (2018): “National Security Advisory Board Reconstituted with Ex-envoy to Russia Raghavan as Head,” 13 July, https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/defence/national-security-advisory-board-reconstituted-with-ex-envoy-to-russia-raghavan-as-head/articleshow/54765284.cms.

Frey, Kersten (2010): “Guardians of the Nuclear Myth,” South Asian Cultures of the Bomb: Atomic Publics and the State in India and Pakistan, Itty Abraham (ed), New Delhi: Orient BlackSwan, pp 195–212.

Hindu (2018): “India, Russia Conclude Negotiations for S-400 Triumf Deal,” 27 May, https://www.thehindu.com/news/international/india-russia-conclude-negotiations-for-s-400-triumf-deal/article24005206.ece.

— (2018): “Narendra Modi’s Is an Honest, Decisive and Sensitive Government: Amit Shah,” 26 May, https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/modi-govt-ended-dynasty-politics-ushered-politics-of-development-amit-shah/article23998346.ece.

Hindustan Times (2017): “Cosmic Elevation to Take a Bow: Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman in Headlines,” 5 September, https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/smashes-glass-ceiling-jnu-gets-defence-minister-how-nirmala-sitharaman-made-headlines/story-1JoquiL78Y9n6dsN3qiL5O.html.

Hiro, Dilip (2016): “The Most Dangerous Place on Earth,” Outlook, 2 May, https://www.outlookindia.com/website/story/the-most-dangerous-place-on-earth/296855.

Indian Express (2017): “No Info on Officials Who Were Consulted on Demonetisation: PMO,” 9 January, https://indianexpress.com/article/india/no-info-on-officials-who-were-consulted-on-demonetisation-pmo/.

Joshi, Yogesh and Frank O’Donnell (2018): India in Nuclear Asia: Evolution of Regional Forces, Perceptions, and Policies, New Delhi: Orient BlackSwan.

Kanwal, Gurmeet (2017): Sharpening the Arsenal: India’s Evolving Nuclear Deterrence Policy, New Delhi: HarperCollins.

Malhotra, Jyoti (2017): “Why Is PM Narendra Modi Obsessed with Muslims?” Indian Express, 11 Dec­ember, https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/narendra-modi-manmohan-singh-congress-bjp-india-pakistan-gujarat-elections-4978061/.

MEA (2003): “The Cabinet Committee on Security Reviews Perationalization [sic] of India’s Nuclear Doctrine,” press release, Ministry of External Affairs, Government of India, New Delhi, http://www.mea.gov.in/press-releases.htm?dtl/20131/The+Cabinet+Committee+on+Security+Reviews+perationalization+of+Indias+Nuclear+Doctrine.

Mitra-Iyer, Abhijit (2018): “When India Failed Rafale,” Observer Research Foundation, 21 July, https://www.orfonline.org/expert-speak/42684-when-india-failed-rafale/.

Nandy, Ashis (2002): “Obituary of a Culture,” Seminar, No 513, May, http://www.india-seminar.com/2002/513/513%20ashis%20nandy.htm.

Narang, Vipin (2014): Nuclear Strategy in the Modern Era: Regional Powers and International Conflict, Princeton: Princeton University Press.

News18.com (2015): “Centre Gradually Weakening NDMA: Former Vice-Chairman M Shashidhar Reddy,” 22 June, https://www.news18.com/news/india/centre-gradually-weakening-ndma-former-vice-chairman-m-shashidhar-reddy-1009972.html.

NDMA (nd): “Members,” National Disaster Management Authority, Government of India, New Delhi, https://ndma.gov.in/en/about-ndma/members.html.

Rej, Abhijnan and Shashank Joshi (2017): “India’s Joint Doctrine: A Lost Opportunity,” ORF Occasional Paper 139, Observer Research Foundation, New Delhi, https://www.orfonline.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/ORF_Occasional_Paper_Joint_Doctrine.pdf.

Reuters (2014): “Modi Says Committed to No First Use of Nuclear Weapons,” 16 April, https://in.reuters.com/article/india-election-nuclear-weapon-idINKBN0D20NA20140416.

Shankar, Vijay (2018): “The Dilemma of a Threshold,” Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies,
1 August, http://www.ipcs.org/comm_select.php?articleNo=5498.

Sinha, Yashwant, Arun Shourie and Prashant Bhushan (2018): “Rafale Defence Scandal Imperils National Security,” Scroll.in, 8 August, https://scroll.in/article/889602/yashwant-sinha-arun-shourie-prashant-bhushan-rafale-defence-scandal-is-larger-than-any-thus-far.

Ullekh, N P (2017): “‘Modi Has to Go’: Post-2002 Gujarat Riots, Atal Bihari Vajpayee Wanted then CM to Step Down,” Firstpost.com, 7 January, https://www.firstpost.com/politics/modi-has-to-go-post-2002-gujarat-riots-atal-bihari-vajpayee-wanted-then-cm-to-step-down-3191210.html.

Watch | National Security Conversations: Making Sense of India's Military Doctrines

Doctrinal thinking in the Indian armed forces and the need to devise a comprehensive national security strategy .

https://youtu.be/N6fK182w3VA

http://www.thecitizen.in/index.php/en/NewsDetail/index/4/14637/A-National-Security-Mess 

A national security mess

The BJP’s desperation is showing. Confronted with budding unity in the opposition, the ruling party is trotting out its election cards. This time round it is taking credit for outing illegal immigrants in Assam, as the Supreme-Court mandated and supervised National Register of Citizens (NRC) process culminates in the state.

Championing the illegal immigrants issue enabled the party to make inroads in northeast India. Now, it seeks electoral dividends nation wide. To the extent it succeeds, it would deepen an ethnic divide, planting and nurturing Bengali nationalism. This is the gravamen of Bengali political heavyweight Mamata Banerjee’s warning, of a possible, if not impending, civil war.

It is strange that a party which prides itself on being sensitive to national security issues should need such cautioning. And, after claiming that four million illegal Bangladeshi immigrants have been corralled in Assam, it is curious that the BJP should make a national security case for appropriating the credit.

The BJP may yet be surprised to find its expectation upturned that religion will hold India together, irrespective of buffeting from ethnic subnationalism.

It is unmindful of recent subcontinental history, which saw a second partition in 1971, with Pakistan – founded on religion – falling apart. East Bengalis threw off the yoke of Punjabi rule and the imposition of Urdu in a civil war.

Mamata Banerjee is no stranger to political grandstanding and hyperbole, but even if civil war is an exaggeration, national security could do without a stirring of Bengali (sub)nationalism. Bengalis constitute a quarter of a billion people and inhabit a contiguous territory on the subcontinent. They are happily divided by religion, for now. If they were to come together as an ethnic nation, they would easily come among the top five nations by population.

History should not end up recording that the first step in this direction was the changeover to the name ‘Bangla’. Already, social media has begun to record Bengalis being mistaken for Bangladeshis. A Bengali (Hindu) writes plaintively about being wilfully mistaken for a Bangladeshi in the national capital. In one brazen case, a Bengali (Muslim) was hacked to death in Rajasthan and the gruesome video uploaded. The perpetrator was later honoured with a float at a religious procession depicting him as a new-found saffron hero.

The Kashmiri, Naga and Sikh insurgencies testify that India is no stranger to ethnic nationalism. The long-running Manipuri and Assamese insurgencies indicate that being Hindu does not preclude an ascriptive challenge to the state. One of India’s concerns has been Tamil nationalism. The desire to preempt its taking an ugly turn prompted India’s Sri Lankan intervention in the eighties.

National security minders in government need to assert themselves to keep the ruling party from unnecessarily putting India’s Achilles’ heel of plurality to the test. The national security establishment’s blind spot is this: that although it tacitly acknowledges plurality as vulnerability, it believes it can paper over it with a turn to religion, using Hinduism as the glue. Its myopia lies in mistaking Hindutva for Hinduism.

National security czar Ajit Doval’s speeches (which litter YouTube today) throughout his ten-year post-retirement wait in the wilderness under UPA rule, make the case for a polity based on religion, and under a strongman to boot. Even as the aspiration was declared, the threat of Islamist terror was magnified – illegal immigrants figuring as a subplot – with Hindutva footsoldiers planting bombs from Surat to Malegaon to build the case.

The stratagem eventuated in Modi, hurling a national security cloak over his chest, ascending to power.

This also explains the home minister’s case, made in the debate preceding the no-trust vote in Parliament, that there have been no terror incidents in India over the past four years.

The culmination of the NCR process is handy, as is the Supreme Court’s coincident appraisal of the challenge to the constitutional validity of Article 35A. To some the Article is the remaining thread that binds Kashmir to India; to others it keeps Kashmir from being bound to India.

No doubt the Muslim angle to this story prompted the Centre’s interest, so much so that the one issue credited to the otherwise moribund mission of the special interlocutor in Kashmir has been his interest in Article 35A. This will whet the BJP base’s appetite, and keep it hoping that in its next iteration in power the BJP would follow through on its manifesto promise of ridding the Constitution of Article 370, that other Article – which to some keeps Kashmir as an ‘atoot ang’ of India, while, to the BJP, it keeps Kashmir different and distant.

There is yet a trump card the BJP has up its sleeve, which it does not need to reveal as it is rather well known – the Mandir card.

At present it is happy to restrict itself to building a statue of Lord Ram. Rahul Gandhi’s speech in Parliament during the no-trust motion, which though made without recourse to notes and with the historic hug on its heels, has not catapulted him into a political David out to lay low the Modi-Goliath. The Modi-Shah duo likely sees a bigger challenge elsewhere, and does not want to elevate the profile of the saffron-clad potential challenger Ajay Singh Bisht, alias Yogi Adityanath, who would, as provincial chief, surely corner the credit for any progress on the Mandir.

In a nutshell, the BJP in its pursuit of polarisation to conjure up another Modi wave can leave a long-term, three-fold national security mess behind. This is the primary security concern, one that needs calling out. It cannot be left to the national security leadership appointed by the ruling party; the more so because its ideological subscription to the Hindutva national project makes it believe that a coat of saffron paint is just what India’s debilitating multi-hued reality requires.

Four million incarcerated in concentration camps is just the right potion to bring this about.

http://www.thecitizen.in/index.php/en/NewsDetail/index/2/14531/Another-Disastrous-Idea-From-the-Modi-Doval-Stable- 

Another disastrous idea from the Modi-Doval stable

(unedited version)

There are two possibilities prompting the Modi Sarkar’s recent airing of a succession of potentially disastrous ideas. One possibility is that the ruling party is panicked and wants to reassure its base that it is alive and well ideologically. The second is to self-confidently provide a preview of its manifesto, setting the stage for the next five years when it would take these up.

One such idea was interfering with the allocation of service to higher civil services inductees. Hitherto it has been based on their merit on clearing the Union Public Services Commission exam. The government wishes to add their showing at the brief Foundation Course at the civil services academy in Mussoorie to the decision on allocation. Critics easily saw through the game plan as one to identify ‘right’ thinking candidates and place them strategically for the purposes of the right wing.

The other idea is to have aspirants for recruitment into the security forces – the military, paramilitary (which presumably includes the central armed police) and police – clear a year-long course instilling a sense of ‘discipline and nationalism’ under the National Youth Empowerment Scheme (N-YES). The course is meant for those exiting classes X and XII and is to impart, inter-alia, training on ‘yoga, ayurveda and Indian philosophy’.

While acquaintance with information technology, disaster management, physical training etc., intended to be part of the course appear unexceptionable, these can only be window dressing for Hindutva by the backdoor. The meat is in the indoctrination.

Currently, those signing up for the security forces are not short of patriotism, even if some opt for these avenues only for landing a job. What the government proposes is to make the course an ‘essential qualification’ for recruitment. This would incentivize enrolment in the course – along with the proposed stipend for those undertaking it - making the course a vehicle for propagation of the Hindutva ideology – the ideology of the ruling party and its supporting political and ‘cultural’ formations. And, with government funding – filched from the National Cadet Corps (NCC) and National Service Scheme.

This is the brainchild of the Modi-Doval combine, to which is credited India’s national security in the form of ‘Modi doctrine’ to some and ‘Doval doctrine’ to others. While Modi prides his NCC background, no doubt well below his shakha days, Doval is product of a military school. Both having made it to the top perhaps credit their respective training and wish to foist it on others, now that they are in a position to do so. To them, militarisation is the route to nationalism of the desired kind: one folk (Hindus), one realm (Bharat), under one - needless-to-name - grand leader.   

Politically, it furthers the government’s targeting of youth with its ideological baggage. Other such measures have been episodes of Mann ki Baat devoted to youth matters, that children across the country forced to watch by school managements as dictated by subservient education officials. Another was the release of a book on exam eve on how to crack exams, authored - or so its dust jacket indicates - by no less than the prime minister himself. (It is another matter that the prime minister’s supposed bachelor’s degree remains a state secret, off limits even to information transparency under the Right to Information Act provisions.) The hope is when they join the electorate, they will heighten the crest of the next Modi wave.

This brainwave - if allowed to be implemented by the electorate allowing Modi the benefit of doubt for another term - has a wider agenda. It will help turn out an annual cohort of 10 lakh ‘force of youth’, expanding numbers currently restricted to attending Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh shakhas on public property, such as in mohalla parks, whence Muslims at prayer were at one location unceremoniously turned out. Together they will form India’s jugend. The debate over whether what India has been witnessing over the past four years is authoritarianism or fascism will be settled decisively thereafter.

What will such youth make of the military when in the military?  

The idea will be sold to the military as a way to enhance its martial vigour. The national security narrative of a besieged India from a ‘two-front’ problem covers for such measures. On the disintegrating Russian front, the Hitler youth, conscripted into the Waffen Schutzstaffel, were at the forefront of suicidal attacks and last stands, that the Wehrmacht itself avoided where possible at the cost of incurring Hitler’s wrath.

For such charging up, mere education will not do. Education must defer to militarism. Last year, an education ministry initiative called for updating of school curricula with a leaf from the sainik school repertoire that includes discipline, physical training and a ‘patriotic outlook’ (shorthand for cultural nationalism). Presumably, by now it is underway in hapless centrally funded and controlled Kendriya Vidhyalayas and Navodaya Vidhyalayas.

Instilling martial virtue in recruitment candidates is a sugar coating. The question has a rather short, straight answer. While those not making it to the security forces deploy as foot-soldiers policing India against liberals, Muslim men, women, gays, Dalits, activists, ‘Maoists’ etc., the military – that alone can put them back into the bottle – would be paralysed, with its lower ranks sharing the world view. The military’s officer cadre – in which is anchored its professionalism – will be outflanked. In short, the military will be subverted.

This is an important precondition to the changes Shashi Tharoor warns about. There are constitutional changes afoot when the ruling party gets another lease in power. It has already more or less shifted secular India to being Hindu India. According to Hindutva votaries, India is secular owing to it being Hindu. To others, a Hindu India is recipe for Hindu Pakistan.

A recent theme is the sanctity of the constitution, which when changed would imply equal sanctity for the changes. Constitutional change could also do without pushback from other institutions, such as in the form of periodic cautionary open letters from retired civil servants and military veterans concerned at the downhill plunge of the republic. The public and publicized venting of hate on Swami Agnivesh recently, alongside four years of lynchings, should serve to silence. Hindu Pakistan will be midwifed by Hindutva’s jugend, mass produced with public monies.

The military in the cross-hairs needs reminding that this idea is not just another one it has been subjected to endure lately. It is of a different order than opening of cantonment roads. It is also of a higher order than whether 126 Rafale aircraft are better than 36 Rafale and whether half a mountain strike corps is enough. It needs warning that an ‘essential requirement’ that its candidates be N-YES qualified seeks to undermine its secular, apolitical and inclusive footing. It needs iteration that a multi-ethnic, multi-cultural and liberal democracy can only have a military subscribing to a liberal idea of India.   

https://thewire.in/security/decoding-the-logic-behind-the-shelving-of-indias-mountain-strike-corps 

Decoding the Logic Behind the Shelving of India’s Mountain Strike Corps

(Unedited version)

The media reports that the Indian army’s much vaunted mountain strike corps (MSC) has been put in cold storage. An insinuation attributed by the media to unnamed sources has it that the MSC’s being put on hold owes to it being a result of institutional interest rather than on strategic necessity.

According to such sources, the army officer corps was looking to feather its nest and accessing a greater slice of the defence budget. By blaming the army for inflating the threat perception in order to make itself the prima donna among the three services suggests however that the sources at the behest of the government are set on diverting attention away from the implications of the decision for the Modi government.

The government, well past its honeymoon period, has been coming in for criticism lately. Its actions following the prime minister’s end-April dash to Wuhan for an ‘informal summit’ with Xi Jinping, such as renaming of Taiwan as Chinese Taipei on the Air India website, reins put on the army’s assertive actions on the Line of Actual Control and distancing from the Tibetan government-in-exile drew adverse comment. There seemed to be turn-around from the policy of self-assertion over the past four years with its highpoint in the 73-day standoff with the Chinese at Doklam last year.

Further, the government downsized the defence budget to its lowest proportion in terms of gross domestic product this year. The government, mindful of the uncertainties that attend crisis and unforeseeable consequences of crisis in an election year, apparently has cold feet on its policy hitherto of standing up to China. It therefore needed to send a signal to China that it is drawing back its claws.

The freeze on the MSC has been the way it has done so, but to scapegoat a politically hapless army by surreptitiously putting it down needs calling out.

But first, a look at the chequered past of the MSC.

The MSC had been cleared by the previous, United Progressive Alliance (UPA), government very reluctantly and rather late in its tenure, when in its second avatar, too weak to fend off the army’s pitch for the MSC any longer, it had sanctioned the corps. The Chinese intrusion that May 2013 in the Depsang sector perhaps forced the government’s hand, with its approval coming quick in wake of the intrusion that July. The first division for the corps started raising beginning January 2014.

The successor Modi government took a view of the new raising early in its tenure, with the finance minister, Arun Jaitley, temporarily double-hatted as the defence minister, going about reviewing its necessity. In the event, the new full-time defence minister, Manohar Parrikar, indicated that the decision was a ‘temporary, not permanent freeze’ on its size.  

While on the one hand the Hindu nationalist government wanted to project a tough-on-security image, the prime minister had indicated at the combined commanders’ conference that the army would require turning to technology rather than compensate for capacity voids with manpower as it was wont to do. The decision was despite the Chinese intrusion early in the Modi tenure in Chumar sector, even as the Chinese president Xi Jinping was being hosted by Modi at Ahmedabad.

Even so, the army persisted with its raising, though it was a difficult going. Immediately prior to the 73-day stand-off with the Chinese at Doklam last year, the second division of the MSC was reportedly under raising at Pathankot. The army had to dig into its war reserve stocks to equip it, thereby depleting those stocks as the defence public service utilities and ordnance factories could not keep pace. Its vice chief controversially admitted to the parliamentary committee that the war reserve fell short of the stipulated levels.

It appears that the government has finally taken a call and clamped down on further new raisings, affecting the corps gaining its full complement. Hopes are now pinned on the study underway by the army training command on ‘optimization’, whereby manpower for the completion of the MSC can be created from within existing resources rather than by increase in recruiting as was the case so far.

The MSC can yet be completed without expanding the size of the army. In any case, the completion date had been set for 2021, as the MSC was to be set up under the 12^th army plan and part of the 13^th army plan, part of the long term integrated perspective plan looking out to 2027. Weapons acquisition has been underway for some two years now, with the 145 ultra-light howitzers cleared for purchase at the cost of USD 750 million under the fast track foreign military sales route in June 2016. In other words, the MSC completion is only postponed, not shelved.

This begs the question as to why so? And, why the perceived need for the government to resort to denigrating the army?

The Modi government has been in election mode all through its tenure. This has placed it in control of over a score states. However, it is hesitant as it faces national elections, with some of its initiatives, specifically the demonetization and the general services tax scheme being poorly conceived and implemented. Its strategy of polarization has been called out for taking India down the Pakistan route to failed state status with religious majoritarianism potentially running riot over governance and rule of law.

Modi is well aware that the feel-good and high-wattage advertising of Shining India had not worked to preserve the pervious National Democratic Alliance government in power. He is also aware that the social outlays of the UPA government had enabled its retaining power over two terms.

Thus, Modi needs in election year to focus domestically and can do without the distraction of a border crisis, especially with a superior foe. He does not need China in the political strategy underway of internal polarization as he approaches elections. Pakistan serves him well on this score.

Thus, he has temporarily toned down the assertive strategy in relation to China, but one to which he can revert once the elections return him to power riding on social spending and a spree of inaugurations in election year. The invite to Donald Trump to grace the republic day lets on that India continues to take its United States partnership seriously, implying that another turn round is at hand once the elections are out of the way.

If election compulsions are behind the decision, placing the army in the line of fire for the decision by implying through ‘sources’ that the army’s organizational pathologies are behind the move inflicts collateral damage on the army’s reputation.

For its part, the army advanced a strategic rationale for the MSC arguing that India faced a ‘two front’ threat. While India had the offensive capability for taming its western neighbour, the army argued that it required a similar capability for tackling its neighbour to its north. The army wished to move from dissuasion to deterrence. While the two defensive divisions that were formed in 2009-10 enabled defensive deterrence or deterrence by denial, an offensive corps would provide the punch for deterrence by punishment.

The UPA’s reluctant falling in line underscored less its agreeing with the rationale than its well-known helplessness in the period. The Modi government’s parliamentary majority enabled over the past four years to challenge the rationale. But it chose not to, using the political fallout of standing up to China to its political advantage, just as it used the escalation on the Pakistan front for its political consolidation in the Hindi heartland.

To, at the fag-end of its tenure, call into question the army’s strategic perspective and advance a reason that deflects any blame from itself for pusillanimity in overseeing it’s defence role is a new low in its political chicanery. Its inability over the past four years to put out an overarching strategic doctrine accounts for its twists and turns in the strategic field, belying its claim to a credible record on defence. It must not be easily allowed to profit electorally from this false claim.   

http://www.kashmirtimes.in/newsdet.aspx?q=81060

Noting the spokesperson-minister’s remarks

It may be a mistake to think that the defence minister is not minding her own business. Most have mistaken her remarks on another 1947 in the offing to be from her pulpit as the spokesperson for the ruling party. They are liable to be surprised some months down the road to find that the defence minister was prescient. As defence minister she would be holding down a critical role, that of leader of the fire-fighting party off to douse the outbreak of a communal conflagration to rival 1947. The defence minister, mindful of her role, is alerting the nation to an impending calamity. A defence minister so concerned is what the nation needs at such an hour of foreboding. This is the charitable interpretation of her remarks.

An army put to aid to civil authority under such a defence minister would surely save the day. Such an army would take the time between now and then to reprise links with the state authorities through its area and sub area headquarters, put in place communication hotlines with redundancies and practice troops to contingencies, foreseen and unforeseen. It would maintain a confidential line to the intelligence bureau at all levels of hierarchy. It would ensure the protocols are in place for preventive, preemptive and responsive action, to seize the initiative. Each column commander would know the parallel administrator, magistrate and the station house officer and have their mobile numbers; social media presence details; and how to get in touch with them when the network and internet is shut down in anticipation. Each commander will be pepped up to ensuring no innocent death or rapine occurs on his watch. His troops will be keyed up to play their role in preserving the nation yet again from a national calamity brought on by its wayward politics. They would do their defence minister proud. Saving the nation thus, she may – who knows - go on to be a grateful nation’s future prime minister.

Now for a less charitable version. Just suppose for a moment the critics of the defence minister’s remarks are right: that she is at it in her dual role as spokesperson for the ruling party, a role she has been unable to shed since she was elevated to cabinet rank, with a seat at the cabinet committee on security and the national security council.  

An army led by the spokesperson of the ruling party is unlikely to deploy timely. Quite like at the time of the Bombay carnage of 1993 and the Gujarat pogrom of 2002, it would be called in too late. It would be misled by a communalized police on the ground. It would be holding up placards, quite like it did when it went to clean up the mess in the heartland of Jatland, announcing - like the police in movies always arriving safely late –  that it has arrived to ring down the curtains. It would then dutifully conduct an internal inquiry, which would be duly filed away in some dusty cupboard – recall the internal report tendered after the Gujarat pogrom by General ‘Zoom’ Zamiruddin Shah (later Vice Chancellor Aligarh Muslim University) - under the watch of a bhakt-bureaucrat of the Gujarat cadre suitably deputed to the defence ministry for just this purpose.

Even so, what can be said without fear of contradiction is that - unfortunately for the split personality spokesperson-minister and try as the Sangh might - the Indian army will not end up doing what they expect or hope for: as a super-gunned police force. While that is all good, is it good enough? What are the dictates of the military dharma in a hypothetical situation painted by its political master?

It is not for this commentator to answer the poser. The military hierarchy had better take their boss seriously, at her word. What they make of it will be known as early as December, since plain-speaking Bharat Karnad, in an article, informs of a rumour of early elections: to have the BJP preempt the drubbing it is likely to get in the forthcoming provincial elections. That itself should set alarms off. A panicked spokesperson spilled the beans on the game plan.

Upfront, she has it that the Congress has a Partition repeat up its sleeve – with Rahul Gandhi teaming up with ‘Mussslims’ – said with a hiss or a ‘venomous, contemptuous emphasis’ according to one attendee at the meeting, Farah Naqvi. The Congress plan - we are informed - is to have the BJP blamed for it, keeping up the din as they have on BJP-induced polarization. Rahul Gandhi’s subversion by the ‘Mussslim intellectuals’ was conveniently scooped by an Urdu newspaper. It begs the question as to how - when the conspiracy is in the open – can 1947 repeat itself? With the game up, should not the Congress retire into oblivion; its leader go back to Italy; and ‘Mussslims’ go to Pakistan/bend down/roll over and play dead/walk themselves into gas chambers?

So, it cannot be a Congress-Muslim conspiracy, even if Rahul Gandhi did indeed say ‘the Congress is a Muslim party’. It’s a conspiracy quite like the one hatched in the house of Mani Shankar Aiyar on the eve of Gujarat elections with Pakistanis, at which at least one former army chief was present. Even though the prime minister – the defence minister’s boss – revealed this to the nation, no action followed. Treason allowed to go unpunished? Or, so much for conspiratorial allegations?

If so, where did Nirmala Sitharaman get her talking points for her press conference from? Four years into this government, everyone knows – and successive elections have demonstrated Indians are politically savvy – that a strategy of polarization is underway. The obvious culmination of such strategy is in one-sided violence of the order – as Sitharaman reminds – of 1947. Muslims will have to be forcibly frog-marched off to Pakistan, with the unregistered ones from the ongoing citizens’ register exercise in Assam presumably pushed (back?) into Bangladesh. A god man, Ravi Shankar, has ratted on the plan, referring to the likely reaction by an unnamed community to the impending Supreme Court judgment on the Ayodhya case. Current day lynchings are but a warming up; present day whats app rumours are mere limbering up for a mobilization for the mother-of-all genocides. Nirmala Sitharaman has done a service in having her spokesperson avatar over take her and broadcasting the invite.

Since she heads the defence ministry, the army needs reminding timely that it is the last line of defence. Under circumstances painted by their boss, it may require contemplating what apolitical means. It may require to unilaterally march off in aid of civil authority. It may have to bundle away violence prone Sanghis. It may have to by example and suggestion turn the police and administration back to the constitutional straight and narrow. It will have to disregard illegal orders. It may have to march to an internal tune – one instilled in it in the retelling through the centuries of the Bhagwad Geetha. It would have to hark back to when at mother’s breast it acquainted with the lore of Mahabharat and Ramayan. It would have to ask itself what its icons, Pratap, Ranjit, Shivaji and Chandragupt might have done in the circumstance. It would have to deliver as the last constitutional bastion. Make no mistake, if the madam defence minister succumbs to the spokesperson in her, this nation’s army cannot but let her down.   

    

   

http://www.thecitizen.in/index.php/en/NewsDetail/index/4/14342/The-Armys-Two-Impulses-in-Kashmir-

The army's two impulses in Kashmir

Human rights: Doctrine and departures

By Ali Ahmed

Below is advice for policy makers and Indian army strategists on the website of an armed forces think tank:

‘There is a need to implement few of hardline practices followed by Israel or USA in tackling terrorists. Policy of restraint needs a quick overhaul. SF personnel must have clearly defined rules of engagement in terms of stone throwing public. Collateral damage has to be acceptable in such cases, but a single SF casualty must not be tolerated.’

Superficially, it is merely explicating what the army chief once famously warned: that stone throwers would be taken as ‘over-ground workers of terrorists’ and disposed-off accordingly. The commentator wishes that they form part of ‘collateral damage’ here on, elaborating what the army chief included as the ‘harsh way’ to deal with stone pelting.

While, in light of killings of three stone pelters, including a sixteen year old girl, it is uncertain if the ‘harsh way’ was merely a threat held out or is being implemented, the army chief can be given the benefit of doubt on his assurance that security forces are mindful of ‘people friendly’ rules of engagement. Rawat had claimed, ‘that the SFs (security forces) haven’t been so brutal — look at Syria and Pakistan. They use tanks and air power in similar situations. Our troops have been trying their level best to avoid any civilian casualty despite huge provocation.’

The commentator thus appears to be arguing against his boss’ view that the Indian way is different. The commentator, a former senior fellow at the think tank, instead wishes for a ‘quick overhaul’ of such restraint, now that the elected government in Srinagar has been sent packing and Kashmir is under governor’s rule.

This despite his army chief putting a stop to such hankering with his admonishing that ‘there is nothing such as stepping up … the army continues to operate with formulated rules of engagement.’

Clearly, there are two impulses within Kashmir.

One is the only sensible recourse that makes the army chief proud of the army’s human rights record. Dismissing the recently released report of a UN human rights body, he said that the army’s record is ‘above board’, well known also to Kashmiris. To nevertheless deter stone throwing, he occasionally vents his exasperation in the media on stone throwers, hoping that by repetition to convince Kashmiri youth that being ‘carried away unnecessarily’ after azadi is futile.

The second impulse leads up to references to the ‘harsh way’ being taken rather too seriously, for instance, in the case in which an officer ended up with a first information report lodged against him.

These two impulses have always been incident in Kashmir, and indeed elsewhere in counter insurgency employment. Doctrine is expected to mediate between the two and the doctrinal tenets are to prevail. In this case, the chief appears to be referring to the longstanding doctrine, articulated in 2006 as ‘iron fist in velvet glove’. There is always present the second – perhaps subversive -counter narrative, referred to by the commentator in question as ‘open steel glove policy’. It is always possible for the second to overwhelm the first.

India’s Kashmir record provides instances when this has been so. While the official narrative has always been one of being human rights cognizant in operations, that these have not always been upheld is unfortunately also true.

A couple of extracts from missives dating to the early and mid-nineties from the Unified Headquarters, presided over by an adviser to the governor in J&K, to the security forces operating there is indicative: ‘Attitudinal change must take place. Indian citizens must not be degraded, ill treated or thrashed;’ ‘Merciless beating of one and all during cordon and search operations. At some times such beatings take place in full view of the public.’

The understanding behind such departures from tenet in practice is that perception management, including media management, can cover up. It is no wonder the commentator in question urges, ‘Media management is paramount…’

The counter narrative has a healthy following. Take the case where human rights has been taken seriously and its violation followed to its logical conclusion, that of the firing of about two score bullets into a car that sped past a check point at Budgam, killing its two youngsters. It was not particularly popular, requiring the army commander having to explain the action to his command in a demi-official letter.

Even so, later his prompt redressal action was harangued in a journal of the think tank in question by a former head of that think tank now with the Hindutva-linked India Foundation. The cultural nationalism-inspired criticism implied that the action of the army commander had ‘political considerations’ at heart.    

This reading of the approach to human rights in the army implies that for the army to walk the talk, its commanders need to first be persuaded and must be exert accordingly to sensitise their command. This is easier said than done.

The army has a command culture which is considerably personalized. The tyranny of the confidential report keeps tactical level subordinates responsive to the command climate that the commander puts in place. The operational level commander could well put in place a laissez faire approach, escaping censure by scoring high on the bean count such as on terrorists killed. Since families alienated are not quantified, the army has in such periods settled for tactical success in return for strategic failure.

The phenomenon appears to be recurring. The army chief in his pitch against azadi admitted as much, stating, “These numbers (of militants who are killed in gunbattles with the army) don’t matter to me because I know this cycle will continue. There are fresh recruitments happening.”

It did not occur to the chief that his ill-advised condoning a brazen violation in the ‘human shield’ episode has arguably contributed to militancy continuing into Operation All Out’s second year though the operation accounted for some 225 terrorists.  

It would not do to restrict the focus on the army alone. There are central police forces numbering in the six digits in Kashmir. There is no known doctrine that informs their conduct. It is well known that they have hands-off supervision. It is no secret that khaki-clad leaders such as late EN Rammohan are an exception. At the height of insurgency and its counter, he expressly forbade paramilitary combining in itself the roles of ‘judge, jury and executioner’. A leadership deficit lends itself to human rights short cuts; the most egregious of which is the slothful retention of pellet guns in a day and age of availability of substitutes in plenty and monies to access these.

While differences can be aired on pages of think tank wares, having divergences within the ranks over fundamentals requires greater vigilance in doctrine dissemination and implementation. Doctrinal dissonance cannot be allowed to take any more Kashmiri lives.