Opinion India under seige
This week I would have liked to write about some peacetime subject like the Environment Ministrys latest efforts to clean the Ganga or the World Banks new report....
This week I would have liked to write about some peacetime subject like the Environment Ministrys latest efforts to clean the Ganga or the World Banks new report that shows what a mess there is in Indian secondary education. At 40 per cent,our enrollment rate is worse than Bangladesh and Vietnam,which is beyond disgraceful,but what hope is there for peacetime subjects in a week in which huge chinks in national security got exposed. Within hours of each other last Thursday came attacks from our two biggest civilian enemies: jihadis and Maoists. Had they colluded they could not have proved more convincingly that Indias defences are no stronger than a tattered curtain.
How can the Indian Embassy in Kabul be targeted by an Islamist suicide bomber within a year of the last attack? Did we do nothing to strengthen its security perimeter? And,if we did,how was it so easily breached? After the last attack on July 7,2008,that killed 58 people,including an Indian Brigadier,a senior diplomat and two security personnel,it became quickly clear that the ISI was involved. American intelligence agencies intercepted communications that proved this. What did our Prime Minister do when he got this information? Did he take the Pakistani government to task? Did he make it clear to the world that a civilian government in Islamabad had not reduced even slightly the Pakistani Armys involvement in jihadi terrorism?
It is obvious that whatever efforts he made were as usual mild and ineffectual or why would President Obama have agreed last month to give the Pakistanis an annual grant of $1.5 billion for the next five years? Its true that the Americans are insisting on some stringent conditions this time. They want more tracking of where the money goes but General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani has said aggressively and publicly that he will not tolerate any infringement of sovereignty so its very possible that Pakistan will get its grant anyway. Undoubtedly,some of this money will go towards financing groups like the Lashkar-e-Toiba whose stated objective is to destroy India. The fact that the Pakistani government is unable to arrest Hafiz Mohammed Sayeed is proof that he continues to have intimate relations with the ISI.
So what is the Government of India doing to protect us? In one word: nothing. There is not the smallest indication that we are better protected against the jihad now than we were before Mumbai was attacked. Are we waiting for the next attack before something is done?
On the Naxalite front,there is the smallest glimmer of hope. The Home Minister has made it noisily evident that he is in a mood to finish off the Naxalites,wherever they are. Alas,this is easier said than done. We need a nationwide strategy at the very least and there are no signs of this strategy despite the Prime Minister having said at the beginning of his first term in office that the Naxalites constituted the single biggest threat to national security.
What has been done to counter this threat? Its true that a few big fish,including a Naxalite leader from the Doon School,were caught recently but the Naxalites responded brutally by beheading an official in Bihar and killing 17 policemen in Maharashtra. That they are winning their war against the Indian state can be seen from the statistics. They now operate in around 200 districts across ten states and are believed to control 92,000 square kilometres of territory. I have personally seen documents that outline a game plan for the next ten years. At the end of these ten years they plan to be able to attack not just sleepy,unguarded villages but cities like Mumbai and Delhi. These plans can be downloaded from the Internet and are written in English that is more comprehensible and correct than any plan drawn up by the Government of India.
The Home Minister needs to do more than make threatening noises. He needs to explain why the Naxalites appear to be winning. If it is because of the incompetence of state governments,we need to know what he is doing to make these state governments behave more responsibly. Why should they not be made to pay reparations to the people of India every time they are unable to prevent an attack?
It was during Dr Manmohan Singhs last tenure that the Maoists and the Islamists achieved the advantage that is so obvious today. If we have five more years of the same,we have quite simply had it. India as we know it,could cease to exist and nobody would be happier than China and Pakistan. Is it just a coincidence that their dream of breaking up India is the same as that of the Maoists and the Islamists?
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