Stuff of nightmares

Thursday brought a strange amalgam of tragedy and triumph on the frontiers of technology which Nirad Chaudhury, undoubtedly, would have noted acerbically was not uncommon in this country. Hyderabad saw yet another example of colossal carelessness in the stewardship of lethal weapons; Bangalore a demonstration of Indian grasp of aerodynamics and materials. The full story of the accident at Bharat Dynamics Ltd has not been told and will probably never be told if the Defence ministry has its way. The bureaucratic instinct will be to batten down the hatches and reveal nothing. As usual, national security will be cited as the reason for saying as little as possible about the causes of the accident and the full extent of the damage. But all kinds of inefficiencies and downright stupid practices continue under the umbrella of national security. Therefore, Parliament must not be satisfied with anodyne MoD explanations. It must demand a thorough probe and answers to all the questions raised by the firing of a missileinside the complex at Kanchenbagh. Most of all, Parliament must demand a review and tightening up of safety measures at missile production and storage centres and ordnance factories and depots.

What happened at Hyderabad is the stuff of nightmares. It is the worst accident since the disastrous fire which wiped out one of the army’s largest ordnance depots near Bharatpur. Except for George Fernandes’ preposterous sounding explanation about burning elephant grass, little is known about the origins of the extraordinary fire at the Bharatpur depot. That incident and an earlier one in the Kargil region seems to confirm a pattern of inefficiency in the storage and stewardship of armaments. So the standing committee on defence must ask tough questions. Who in their right minds would put a ready-to-fire missile (or more than one) inside a production centre? How many other missiles were stored there and in what condition? Are normal storage and safety procedures adequate? How can they be improved? Against what kind of ‘events’ have precautions been taken?

Meanwhile, the first ever test flight of the Light Combat Aircraft can be pronounced a success. Congratulations are in order for the engineers and technicians who built the light-weight multi-role fighter aircraft and the pilots who tested it. The take-off and landing were smooth, its 20 minutes in the air a tribute to the skills of India’s aeronautical community. It has taken a long time to get the project off the ground and a long haul lies ahead. Doubts persist about the project: The best aircraft the engineers can build may still notbe the best for the Indian airforce. Nevertheless, this is a moment even sceptics can savour for it marks a sort of passage in the growth to maturity of the domestic aeronautical industry. At the very least, the jinx has been broken and that will be a great morale booster for the slew of agencies, the Aeronautical Development Agency, Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd and others, who must go on to build more prototypes with design modifications, integrating radar and weapons systemsand incorporating the indigenous Kaveri engine. But, down the road, whether there is in the LCA a fighter the air force wants to fly is still an open question.