ICYMI #TheTribuneOpinion: From RCB celebration tragedy to why India doesn’t need theatre commands

Although the IPL matches provided wholesome entertainment to the masses for over a month, the fun extravaganza ended in a tragedy that took the lives of 11 cricket-crazy fans at the Chinnaswamy stadium. They got caught in the brazen display of apathy and insensitivity outside the venue when felicitation of RCB players went on inside uninterrupted. It was the RCB management, the Karnataka Cricket Association and the Karnataka Government who in their overenthusiasm forgot that the event needed prior planning when the entire city was invited to be a part of the event, writes The Tribune Deputy Editor Vikramdeep Johal in his article Spare a thought for the madding crowd at Chinnaswamy stadium. Raising the red flag, he recommends the Centre and the states to implement the guidelines set by the National Disaster Management Authority on crowd management.

Despite the fact that a mishap is always waiting to happen in India, there is good news too from the North. More than a century after Jammu and Kashmir’s Maharaja Pratap Singh dreamt of connecting his lands in the Jammu region with the Kashmir Valley, his dream has finally come true. Spanning over decades, Prime Minister Narendra Modi can take full credit for this humongous project needing 38 tunnels and 927 bridges over 272 km of tracks, writes The Tribune Editor-in-chief Jyoti Malhotra in the article The train to Naya Kashmir in her weekly column The Great Game.

There is yet another feel-good story with Indian IAF officer Shubhanshu Shukla being a part of the NASA space mission slated for June 10 to study the possibility of farming in space. Around 8,000 years ago, early farmers began experimenting with growing plants for food on Earth, scientists are now figuring out how to grow them in space. Shukla is scheduled to conduct food and nutrition-related experiments with Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) and India’s Department of Biotechnology being a part of the mission. TV Venkatewaran throws more light on the issue in his article ISRO aiming for a rich harvest in space.

Talking of the Nature’s resources and how we humans utilise and misutilise them, there is a lot of talk about rare earth elements (REEs) these days which are a component of our daily life in one form or the other, like mobiles, LEDs, medicines, automobiles , goggles and even missiles. However, these REEs have now become a flashpoint in geopolitics with China monopolising 90 pc of them. With the current Trump-induced trade wars affecting inter-country relations, it has already started showing its effects on ancillary industries, like India’s automobile sector.  Read more on the issue in this informative Op-ed by ex-GNDU prof SS Sekhon in his Op-ed article Geopolitical stakes rise over rare earth control.

With China being a predominant force in world geopolitics, there is an Op-ed piece by Vappala Balachandran Shangri-La Dialogue not a front against China in which he writes about the mistaken view that the Shangri-La Dialogue was started by the US as a front against China. On the contrary, China feels that the Shangri-La Dialogue is an important forum to rebut allegations about its defence policies for Asian countries.

In an interesting turn of events, US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick declared in a US court that Trump used trade as a bait for India and Pakistan to bring about a ceasefire. India cannot help feeling let down by Trump’s actions and statements after Operation Sindoor, write ex-MEA secretary Vivek Katju in his article US President Trump’s truce claim is alive and well.

Coming to India’s defence strategy, with future conflicts largely to be determined in the aerial and digital domains rather than on the ground, the IAF has emerged as a focal pillar of India’s overall military strategy, writes senior journalist  Rahul Bedi in his article The IAF, from a support arm to a strategic force in the skies. The IAF can no longer be viewed as a mere ‘support arm’ to the ground forces, as had been said by the first Chief of Defence staff late Gen Bipin Rawat in 2021, he writes.

There has been a growing discussion on the need of theatre commands, which are unified commands where resources from the Army, Navy, and Air Force are pooled under a single commander. Air Marshal RGK Kapoor (retd) argues in his Op-ed piece Why India does not need theatre commands that given the nature of conflict that is unique to India, we have two collusive neighbours who need to be tackled as a single entity. With the planning and execution of operations exercised from Delhi, it necessitates the military leadership to be present in Delhi. All future wars will be joint operations with decentralised execution through respective chains of command and Op Sindoor reinforces the argument that changes brought about in jointness and synergy are more important than theatre commands.

Not to miss the Indian political landscape, in the article More misses than hits for Congress, political scientist Ajay K Mehra writes that the Congress has a mountain to climb to re-establish itself as an alternative at the national level. Instead of grumbling over the government’s selection of Cong leaders for the multi-party outreach delegations, it should have blown with the wind and welcomed BJP’s choice of Tharror as one of the key delegation leaders, he writes.