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Congress plenary and after
Bare-knuckle fight will get worse
by Inder Malhotra
CELEBRATIONS of the 125 th anniversary of the Indian National Congress at the party’s 83 rd plenary have turnedinto a slugfest between the core of the ruling United Progressive Alliance and the principal Opposition party, the BJP.While the Congress attack on the saffron party was confined to the issues of corruption and “subversion of the Constitution” by holding to ransom the entire winter session of Parliament, the head of the Sangh parivar (family), the Rashtriya Swyamsevak Sangh (RSS), fared much worse. The Congress asked its government to probe the Sangh’s “links with terrorist groups”. Digvijay Singh, a party general secretary, who has been leading the attack, went so far as to compare the votaries of Hindutva to the Nazis. Overwhelming emphasis on corruption at the three-day session was inevitable, given the spate of scams of gargantuan dimensions that have engulfed the Congress-dominated ruling combination. According to Surendra Mohan, the upright Socialist leader who died the other day, during the nine years from 1980 to 1989, “there were 16 scams but, under the UPA’s six-year regime, the number has multiplied three times, if not more”. Nor is it a surprise that both Congress president Sonia Gandhi and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, making offence the better form of defence, lambasted the BJP for adopting “double standards” — shouting against corruption in Delhi and shielding the corrupt in Karnataka. The BJP made their task easy. By assiduously protecting not only the Karnataka Chief Minister against very serious charges of land-grab but also the Bellary Reddys notorious for allegedly monumental mining loot, the party with a difference is not just adopting double standards. It is doing something disgraceful. But what the Congress president and the Prime Minister overlook is that two wrongs can never make one right. The pot and the kettle are equally black. Against this backdrop it is no wonder that the BJP has hit back at the Congress equally hard, declaring that the ruling party, mired deep in scandals, was behaving like a “party under siege” and showing signs of suffering from “BJP-phobia”. Arun Jaitley, leader of the Opposition in the Rajya Sabha, mocked that at its plenary the Congress “talked more about the BJP than about itself”. The party also taunted Digvijay Singh for failing to produce the evidence of his phone call to the Maharashtra’s chief of Anti-Terrorist Squad Hemant Karkare that he had “boasted” he possessed. When the Prime Minister, invoking Caesar’s wife, declared that he had nothing to hide and offered to appear before the Public Accounts Committee (PAC), the Congress-BJP confrontation escalated fast. BJP leaders rejected Dr Manmohan Singh’s offer out of hand. Caesar’s wife, they argued, did not choose the forum where she wanted to be judged. The PAC was unacceptable because of its limited remit, and that the Opposition would settle for nothing less than a Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) that the Congress is resisting resolutely. Polarisation of Indian polity has done the country great harm already. The bare-knuckle fight in the offing would make the situation much worse. The disruption of the winter session wasn’t the first of its kind, and sadly it is unlikely to be the last. At the plenary no religious tag was attached to terrorism. But what has already been said about Hindu-versus-jihadi terrorism has dangerous potential. As for the galloping cancer of corruption, Sonia Gandhi’s five-point plan to counter it is unexceptionable. But it should have been enunciated on the day in 2004 when the Congress had returned to power after eight years in the wilderness. Anyway, it is better late than never. However, the nagging questions is: Will the “Sonia Plan” be implemented during the remaining three and a half years of the UPA’s present tenure? Fast-track trial of those charged with graft, state funding of elections, transparency in the award of hugely lucrative contracts and mining licences have been talked of for decades but to no avail. And going by experience so far, it would be easier to get a collective declaration of atheism from a conclave of Cardinals than to persuade Indian politicians, irrespective of their political affiliations, to relinquish discretionary powers, especially of land allotment. One must also say with all due respect that the Congress claim of acting and acting fast against corruption is a trifle exaggerated. It would not have been in the mess it is today if only it had acted against A. Raja at least 13 months earlier. The Radia tapes reveal a rather gloomy picture of his reappointment as Minister of Telecommunications and thus of the Congress stand against venality. The other day the Supreme Court indicted Vilasrao Deshmukh, a former chief minister of Maharashtra and now a Union Cabinet minister, for intimidating a police officer to drop the case against a loan shark, father of a Congress MLA. If the Congress president and the Prime Minister have given Deshmukh the marching orders, the country has yet to hear of them. Anniversaries are undoubtedly occasions for rhetorical flourishes and grandstanding. Even so, one would have thought that at the plenary the party would do some introspection, too, because since the heady days of May 2009, its stock has plummeted and its strength in the country eroded. In the elections in Bihar it suffered ignominiously, winning only four seats compared with nine in the last assembly. Worse, in the state of Andhra that sent the largest contingent of Congress members to the Lok Sabha, the party is in a shambles and the overdue decision on Telangana will exacerbate the rolling crisis. In Maharashtra, partnership with Sharad Pawar’s Nationalist Congress Party is the problem. And of the alliance between the Congress and Mamatadi in West Bengal, the less said the better. Come to think of it, the most revealing moment at the plenary was when a large number of Bihar delegates heckled Mukul Wasnik and angrily told the leadership that he had “sold” almost all the 241 seats that the party contested and of which it had lost the deposit in 207. At the Congress centenary in Mumbai in 1985 Rajiv Gandhi had vowed to eliminate the “brokers of power and influence” who “ride on the backs of millions of ordinary Congress workers” and have converted “a mass movement into a feudal oligarchy”. Twenty-five years on, the promise remains unfulfilled. Sonia Gandhi has delegated this task to a special shivir (camp) a la Pachmarhi and Shimla. Let’s wait and
watch.
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Reports of China building and strengthening its existing infrastructure in Tibet continue to flow in regularly. The latest is that China is building 24 new projects along its side of the Brahmaputra river. While China has constructed a vast network of roads, tunnels, railways and airfields that enable mass rapid movement of troops to the border, the picture on the Indian side continues to be dismal, which is fraught with strategic and tactical disadvantages
Infrastructure cauldron on the eastern frontier
Maj Gen Raj Mehta (Retd)

FOR A ROAD AHEAD: A Border Roads Organisation bulldozer clears a motorable track in the forward areas of Arunachal
Pradesh. The functioning of the organisation has come under critical review by a Parliamentary Standing Committee on Defence |
Defence Minister A.K. Anthony was reportedly shocked when, in December 2007, he personally saw the terrible state of the Nathu La axis in Sikkim vis-à-vis the swish Chinese infrastructure across. The traveller today experiences a sickening feeling of déjà vu. Our border infrastructure is as somnolent as it was in 2007. The strategic 165 km long National Highway 31-A linking Siliguri through Gangtok in Sikkim to the Indo-Chinese border at Nathu La (14,300 feet) still looks bombed out, devastated and gutted. Blocked by landslides, ridden with pot-holed patches and untidily strewn road-widening activity, a one-way journey on this Border Roads Organisation (BRO) road, Sikkim's lifeline, takes over eight backbreaking hours. NH-31A truly represents the dismal state of border infrastructure in the northeastern region, reflected accurately by the state of the equally strategic NH-31 linking Siliguri to the "seven sisters". No better proof of government apathy is more evident than from the 8th report of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Defence tabled in August 2010. Titled Construction of Roads in the Border Areas of the Country, it savagely indicts the "casual attitude" of the Ministry of Defence. One excerpt reads: "It is truly mind-boggling that the Defence Ministry has no data on the roads being made by neighbouring countries in the border areas… Then there is the BRO, which conveniently deflects the question on the slow pace of construction of roads in border areas due to "historical" reasons. Really, did the Government of India actually believe till two years ago… that we should not make roads as near to the border as possible....incomprehensible and inconceivable". Commenting on the Ministry's two Long Term Perspective Plans (LTTP-I and LTTP-II) for augmenting border roads, the Committee notes, "out of the 277 roads of the length of 13,100 km to be built till 2012, only 29 are complete and work is in progress on 168 other roads. No work has yet started in respect of 80 roads measuring 2,624 Km." The Committee has pulled up the BRO for its inexplicable "sense of complacency". It is tragic that the visionary letter that then Deputy Prime Minister Sardar Vallabh Bhai Patel, wrote to Nehru on November 7, 1950 is, 60 years later, an eloquent strategic statement which has not been acted upon. Patel had cautioned Nehru with prescience that a long-term view was needed for "improvement of our communication, road, rail, air and wireless, in border areas and frontier outposts". Nehru never responded, but left as legacy, the incomprehensible ostrich policy of not developing our border areas. Compare this with the Chinese approach. In 1950, the People's Liberation Army (PLA) entered Tibet with two slogans: "Development", and "Strengthening the Borders". These remain constant even in 2010. China has created and upgraded the entire spectrum of infrastructure in Tibet — from railways to roads, power projects, cities, airports, military and missile bases. With Lhasa connected by rail, the network is being extended to Nepal and to the Indo-Chinese border at Shigatse, north of Chumbi Valley and Tsona, north of Tawang. Pan-Asian rail links to Myanmar, Indo-China and Singapore are also proposed. This Chinese projection of national interest to revive, upgrade and promote Chinese influence, trade and commerce, stabilise unsettled areas as well as project its military muscle is neither unfair nor unwarranted. Indian strategic thinkers are driven by the fear of Chinese encirclement of India by their "string of pearls" strategy and by the Sino-Pak collusion in Pakistan Occupied Kashmir. These developments could, however, also be fallouts of Chinese economic expansion and the need to develop China equitably, but with a military subtext. India in her national interest has also started looking towards East Asia. Implementation of Sardar Patel's advice has fitfully started, with accretion in military manpower, news of Agni missile sites being reconnoitered and activation and upgradation of airfields at Nyoma, Fukche and Daulat Beg Oldi, besides moving some top line aircraft to Tezpur. Serious problems however remain unaddressed. Land acquisition, bureaucratic red tape, court cases, lack of cooperation at functional and policy making levels between departments, agencies, statutory bodies, state governments and ministries hold implementation hostage. Progress is also held up by sluggish environmental and forest clearances at the centre and state levels, railway clearances for rail over/under bridges, shifting of utilities - electricity and water pipelines, sewers, telecom cables and law and order problems. Absence of a firm apex and functional leadership, the near total absence of modern processes, systems, and of performance and maintenance audit of BRO by local field Army commanders also seriously inhibits progress as the BRO is answerable only to its controlling Ministry of Surface Transport and the Ministry of Defence. Another issue is the multiplicity of other construction agencies answering to different ministries. The Government's Special Accelerated Road Development Programme in the North East (SARDP-NE) covering 9,740 kms is under the Ministry of Surface Transport and has 10 executing agencies. The Border Area Development Programme (BADP) under the Ministry of Home Affairs has five executing agencies. Thus, 15 agencies and 10 ministries are involved in border infrastructure leading to chaos and total lack of construction synergy. The BRO, once the cynosure of all eyes, today has a huge backlog. Apart from its serious road construction slippages, BRO needs 20 years to complete the 36,000 meters of already accepted bridging work. Seriously understaffed and under-equipped, it functions in a technology/management time warp. Forced to resort to "casual labour" to cut costs, devoid of dedicated airlift (the IAF simply can't cope), with only a handful of its officers trained abroad in cutting-edge construction practices, this once world class organisation is not only in serious decline but is operating with its hands tied in archaic procedures and unimaginative financial norms. Mindless bureaucratic resistance to hiring retired Sappers (officers and men) and General Reserve Engineering Force personnel, and, pitiably, undertaking construction activities in Maharashtra and Chattisgarh that have nothing to do with border infrastructure, add to its woes. What needs to be done is quite clear. An inter-ministerial Border Infrastructure Team (BIT) under the Prime Minister's Office must be urgently set up to implement the infrastructure road map with time bound and fast track sanctions. The Defence ministry should be nominated as the sole ministry dealing with the BRO's functioning, and accountability established through senior field formation commanders. Issues such as getting reputed national and international infrastructure agencies involved in construction, hiring of retired engineer personnel, training key BRO personnel abroad, dedicated airlift, induction of new technology, remote sensing, bringing in drinking water, education, health, power, telecommunications, commerce and connectivity must be part of the holistic vision that will drive the BIT's functioning and accountability. The writer has served in Sikkim 
MILITARY POSTURE in the Northeast The Chengdu Military Region of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) has territorial jurisdiction across the Himalayas opposite India. Headquartered in Chengdu, It is a military administrative command located in southwest China covering Chongqing, Sichuan, Yunnan, Guizhou and the Xizang/Tibet Autonomous Region. It comprises two Group Armies, the 13th and 14th (roughly equivalent to a corps), the Tibetan 52nd and 53d Mountain Brigades, the 149th Motorised Infantry Division at Emei, Sichuan, 2 Mobile Armed Police Divisions (38th and 41st), and the 2nd Army Aviation Regiment.
The assessed strength of the PLA in the region is 180,000 with four motorised Infantry divisions, one artillery division, two armoured brigades, one artillery brigade, and two anti-aircraft brigades. The military districts that fall within the Chengdu Military Region are:
n Chongqing Garrison
n
Sichuan Military District
n Xizang Military District
n
Guizhou Military District
n Yunnan Military DistrictOther Chinese units in Chengdu are: n
MR Combined Armed Tactical Training Base
n
MR Aviation Regiment
n MR Communications Regiment
n
MR ECM Regment
n MR ACW Tech Dadui
n
MR Special Reconnaissance Unit
n
MR Special Operations Dadui
n
U/I Survey and Cartography Dadui
Indian Deployment
The Army’s Kolkata-based Eastern Command and the Indian Air Force’s Shillong-based Eastern Air Command are responsible for the defence of the northeast. The Army’s Order of Battle (ORBAT) includes:n
III Corps (HQ Dimapur)
23 Inf Division (Ranchi)
57 Mtn Division (Leimakhong) n
IV Corps (HQ Tezpur)
2 Mtn Division (Dibrugarh)
5 Mtn Division (Bomdila)
21 Mtn Division (Rangia) n
XXXIII Corps (HQ Siliguri)
17 Mtn Division (Gangtok)
20 Mtn Division (Binnaguri)
27 Mtn Division (Kalimpong) In addition to various independent brigades, two new divisions, 56 and 71, are under raising to cater to operational requirements in that region. Future plans include raising two more divisions and another corps.
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