Army camp attacked

THE bravery and sacrifice of the soldiers was once again put to test in the militant attack on an Army camp in Jammu. Five bravehearts lost their lives and those injured in the firefight will forever carry the scars of the battle. By all accounts, the Army again acquitted itself well. But the same can hardly be said for the country's political leadership. The last three years of Modi governance have been marked by a sickening pattern of loss of soldier and civilian lives in Jammu & Kashmir. Pakistani shelling has disrupted the already subsistence-level lives of citizens along the border: homes abandoned, schools shuttered and normal life gone haywire.

By now the most diehard hyper-nationalist should have despaired with the absence of any enlightenment from the country's security managers about the rationale for persisting with a policy that entails a heavy attrition of lives. The silence appears particularly defeaning because the BJP does not suffer from the handicap of a hostile government in J&K while a hand-picked army chief claims to be giving pain to Pakistani soldiers on the border. Yet the Centre manages to earn a free pass from accountability each time tough questions are asked about the loopholes and quality of its security management by taking recourse to arrogant self-serving posturing on national security. 

The Modi Government needs to be reminded that aggressive statements are to be matched with political calibre and administrative competence. Three years later this loud-mouthism seems to have only left soldiers in Army camps, out on patrol and in bunkers poorly equipped and vulnerable. The Lt Gen Campose committee has spelled out, in scathing details, the vulnerabilities in the security of military camps after the Uri attack.  It took the Sunjuwan attack to stir the Raksha Mantri to take note of that report. Since May 2014, Defence Ministry has been poorly and indifferently led. Politicisation of national security has been packaged as an answer to country's defence. This is no service to the nation.