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From the Editor
vol. 10, ISSUE 7 | OCTOBER 2016

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ATIONAL security is one of the biggest issues of governance. If the security of a nation is lax, the havoc
that could be created is unimaginable. So, when a
nation elects any Prime Minister, a paramount concern is, can the leader provide security. Post the surgical strikes, Indians are worried; what will happen
if there is an India-Pakistan war? I want to clear the mist that India will in no
way choose a roadmap that leads to war, though minor surgical operations will
keep on hammering Pakistan. India is very much safe and secure, thanks to our
brave soldiers and military leadership. If we observe, Pakistans Prime Minister
Nawaz Sharif is under pressure from the military, the military from Islamic
forces, and both are under threat from terrorists. Terrorists are pawns of international forces which use them for their social, political and economic ends within
the territory and outside. Pakistan is riding just on its geographical location,
its military, population and a nuclear bomb. So, the territory of Pakistan is a
chaotic no mans land. The government in Pakistan is basically a facade created
by forces which want to control Pakistan by proxy to put down India, which is
on the road of development. What options does India have? Does India want
to capture a rogue nation with a terrorist factory and a nuclear bomb controlled
by a fatigued military? The answer is no. So, what is the purpose of surgical
strikes? Before the Uri attack, Kashmir was already boiling. The Uri attack only
fuelled the fire. In India, people were clamoring for action against Pakistan via
social media, Twitter, Facebook and other platforms. People dug out the video of
Modis election campaign, where he said that to fight with Pakistan one should
have a 56-inch chest. Politically, the message was going down the line that
Modi did not have the guts to take action against Pakistan despite his claims
during the general election. Modis political graph was going down.
Goa, Manipur, Punjab, Uttarakhand and Uttar Pradesh assembly elections
are due in the first half of 2017. The ruling political dispensation cannot ask
the people for vote in such a hostile atmosphere. The common man does not
know the complexities of war or dynamics of international diplomacy. They just
wanted action against Pakistan. Modi realised the pulse and hence, the surgical
strikes. Modi is now being praised by everybody. The surgical operation by the
military has, however, opened a Pandoras box. MG Devasahayam writes, India
generally has three optionsconventional, sub-conventional and nuclear. Allout nuclear war is out of question. Sub-conventional warfare involves stealth
attacks and guerrilla tactics, similar to the Armys surgical strikes. The third
option is conventional warfare. Notwithstanding the importance of regional,
strategic and political considerations and all that is lost in the rhetoric, the truth
is India is not economically prepared to wage war in this manner.
War is never a willful option. War is most of the times imposed on a nation, as
is being instigated by Pakistan against India. The survival of Pakistans political
leadership is based on India bashing. It has to be seen if Pakistan has the will
power and resources to open a full-fledged war with India. In all probability,
the answer is no. Modi has to move fast to convince those forces who are the
perpetrators of war and use a nation as a proxy that war is not a solution. It is a
game. Modi knows the dynamics of the game well. He has to come out from the
messy and dangerous game to take India to new economic heights, for which
he has himself laid down the parameters, and say goodbye to the warmongers.
ANIL TYAGI
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gfiles inside the government
vol. 10, issue 7 | October 2016
CONTENTS
LETTERS
editor@gfilesindia.com
06 Bric-a-Brac
jethmalani silenced, celebrating

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Bric-a-brac
struts & cuts
Silent Ram Jethmalani

malani
video poses problems
NCE upon a time, Rajni Patel,

l,
President Bombay Pradesh
Congress Committee, Justice YV
Chandrachud and Ram Jethmalani were
considered the Trimurti in Mumbai.
Those in the know recall the trios
influence and how they virtually ruled
ed
Bombay. The 93-year-old eminent
lawyer Jethmalani has travelled a long
ng
way since. He is a fiery speaker within
in
and outside the courts. People are
scared for his frank opinions.
Jethmalani speaks his mind without
worrying about the consequences. Ass a
result, he has been in trouble many times.
Recently, there was a video in circulation
ation on
social media, in which he explains the fight against the
black money. He alleged that friendly countries are eager
to disclose the names of those Indians who have stacked
black money abroad, but nobody in the government is
ready to
t ask for the list. During a
conversation with journalists, he
conve
cond
condemned the action of Prime
Minister
Min
Narendra Modi, in such a
language,
la
which is not printable.
The video went viral. Sources
T
disclosed, the video was seen
d
by
b the Prime Ministers Office
and the PMO got into action as
an
the Jethmalanis language was not
tolerable. The job was assigned to
tolera
one of the
t senior most functionaries of
the BJP. The
Th top leader met Ram
Jethmalani at
a his residence and conveyed to
him the seriousness
of the matter. The
seriousn
was arranged between
grapevine is that a meeting
me
the PM and Jethmalani. It is reported that Jethmalani is
in silent mode since he has met the Prime Minister.
Someone aptly said, those who live in glass houses should
not throw stones at others.
Kingdom of cheats!
tarnishing the golden jubilee?
few days ago, the Haryana government held the Golden

Jubilees logo release function at Gurugram with great
pomp and show. The state government was in such a
hurry that it even did not check the antecedents of Kingdom of
Dreams, Gurugram, where the logo was unveiled. Prime
Minister Narendra Modi will formally launch the celebrations
on November 1, 2016 on 50 years of Haryana Formation Day
at Gurugram. However, it is reported that Gurugrams most
popular attraction, Kingdom of Dreams is facing heat from
the Haryana Urban Development Authority
(HUDA) for non-payment of lease fees
approximately worth more than Rs
30 crore over the past four
years. Nobody knows who
suggested that the festivities be
organised at Kingdom of
Dreams. Surprisingly, the State
Department of Sports is the nodal
agency for organising the Golden

Jubilee Celebrations but the Minister Anil Vij came to know

about the celebrations on the same day and did not attend the
function. The logo unveiling was fabulous but the management
of the function was pathetic. Though guests were requested to
join for lunch but after the entry of the Chief Minister and other
dignitaries in the lunch area, there was utter chaos. The private
bouncers of the Kingdom of Dreams started checking for the
invitation card which most of the guests did not carry.
Gurugram SDM Sushil Sarwan was himself clearing the
entry of some dignitaries. The Kingdom of
Dreams project was started during the
Bhupinder Singh Hooda regime.
Objections were raised at that
time also, on how and why the
land had been allotted on such
nominal rates. After the
Manohar Lal Khattar government
came to power, the demand for an
enquiry has been raised again.
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Rafale Deal
who is benefitting?
T took 15 years to discuss the deal with Dassault Rafale. Then, overnight,
India concluded an Inter-Governmental Agreement (IGA) with France for
the purchase of 36 Rafale fighter jets at a cost of 7.87 billion, the first
fighter aircraft deal since the purchase of Sukhois from Russia in the late
1990s. Government sources claim that there is no question of any middleman
or a broker. History indicates whenever the deals are investigated, there were
brokers and middleman in every defence deal. One has to study the context
in which such deals are clinched. The Rafale deal was finalised just after the
Uri attack. After the 26/11 attack on Mumbai, billions of dollars of search
and surveillance equipment was purchased by both business houses and
government. Nowadays, there is more finesse and it is impossible to
pinpoint the brokers. If we turn to the gfiles archives, it carried a cover
story in March 2012 titled, Indias gift to Sarkozy (http://www.gfilesindia.
com/Contents/pdfMagazine/Mar2012/Default.html) The story carried a
box in which gfiles stated, It is significant that hard on the heels of the signing of the agreement between RIL
(Reliance Industries Limited) and Dassault Aviation, an RIL spokesman said the objective of the MoU is to identify
areas where both the companies can work together in the defence sector. The RIL spokesperson said that while there
has been no commitment on any kind of investment or joint venture, teams from both the companies will sit together
to chalk out strategic opportunities. The outcome will depend on the talks and only after the final agreement between
Dassault and the Government is signed for the MMRCA, he said, refusing to divulge details on who will lead
negotiations from the RIL side. The government has now signed the Rafale deal!
Maal kisi ka, kamaal kisi ka

kishore masterminds congress strategy
HE newly appointed strategist of the

Congress party, Prashant Kishore,
approached Rahul Gandhi with a
`72-crore mega-plan for Uttar Pradesh.
Rahul told him the budged was too
high and that he should bring it
down. Sources say the plan was
reviewed and the budget brought
down to `32 crore. Rahul is learnt
to have told Kishore that the
Congress was struggling with a
paucity of funds no industrial
house is coming forward to support
them, and thus the budget should be cut
down to `8-10 crore. Sources informed
that Kishore strategises in a different way and
www.indianbuzz.com
told Rahul that he didnt want money from

the Congress and that he would arrange
for the money himself. Kishore then met
Bihar CM Nitish Kumar and told him
that if he wanted to emerge as the
prime ministerial candidate in the
2019 elections, the Congress will
play a big part in it. Kishore said
he would speak to Rahul about
lending him support. Nitish Kumar
seems to understand what is in
Kishores mind. Apparently, things
are working out and Kishore is on the
way to get money. A perfect case for
maal kisi ka aur kamaal kisi ka (using
somebodys money to anothers benefit).

EYES WIDE SHUT

civil service prabhat kumar
The malady of
political interference
According to a study by the Carnegie Institute, there is a lingering view that
politicisation of civil services has become more, not less, entrenched
N the last seven decades,

innumerable studies on civil
services have been conducted
from time to time. They have been
read, commented on and forgotten.
And now, a new and perhaps more
comprehensive study on the civil
service has been added to the
existing literature, conclusions
of which have been drawn from
the enormous volume of data
generated by several research
studies. Sadly, it relates to the
IAS only.
According to this relatively
more credible study IAS Meets
Big Data by the Carnegie Institute,
there is a lingering view that politicisation of civil services has become
more, not less, entrenched. It says the
World Banks government effectiveness index that captures the quality
of countrys civil service and its independence from political pressure,
places India in the 45th percentile
globally, nearly 10 percentage point
decline from countrys position in
1996, when the data was first collected. It concludes that political interference generates substantial inefficiency; the best officers do not always
occupy important positions, while
political loyalty offers bureaucrats an
alternative path to career success.
The malady of political interference has its origin in the fifties and
sixties when civil servants and politi-

The vaguely defined

equation that the political
boss takes the decision
and the bureaucrat
carries it out, has left
much room for
irrationality, arbitrariness
and indolence
cal leaders started working together.

With deepening democracy, it was
expected that their respective roles
would be defined in the context of
our Constitution and refined further.
Maturing democracy should have
been accompanied by role definition,
which unfortunately did not happen.
The structural lethargy and high individual complacency levels prevented
any attempt for role clarification. The
www.gfilesindia.com

vaguely defined equation that the

political boss takes the decision and
the bureaucrat carries it out, has left
much room for irrationality, arbitrariness and indolence.
Since then, the organised poaching into legitimate jurisdiction of civil
servants has frustrated the emergence
of a mature relationship between the
two important arms of the Executive.
In more mature and stabilised parliamentary democracies, conventions and norms are so embedded in
the culture of governance that there
is any confusion of roles is unthinkable. Even in the Whitehall system,
despite the hilarious caricatures of
Sir Humphrey Appleby and Bernard
Wooley, bureaucracys image as the
repository of knowledge and administrative memory is never questioned.
As a result, whenever public policy formulation is characterised by
enlightened
political leadership,
spectacular performance can be
achieved. Give the civil servants citizen-centric decisions devoid of vested
interests, and then hang them if they
do not perform or misbehave.
The Carnegie Institutes study,
based on the data generated by a large
number of research studies, comes to
www.indianbuzz.com
No worthwhile solution to
this pernicious malady of
Indias democratic
functioning has ever been
attempted. Even the
Administrative Reforms
Commission report
recommends measures of
softening the impact of
political interference, not
of eliminating it
the conclusion that political interference remains one of the biggest obstacles to bureaucratic effectiveness.
Perhaps for the first time, researchers
have drawn a clear, quantifiable links
between the pervasive abuse of transfers and postings of civil servants and
development outcomes.
This is not a new revelation. To
most students and observers of governance, it has always been patently
obvious. But surprisingly, no worthwhile solution to this pernicious malady of Indias democratic functioning
has ever been attempted. Even the
voluminous Administrative Reforms
Commission report recommends
measures of softening the impact of

political interference, not of eliminating it. Measures like Public Services
Bill, Civil Services Bill Performance
and Accountability Bill, etc., would
serve a limited purpose without touching the root cause. No Chief Minister
has yet announced the prohibition of
pressure by any political functionary
in the work of a civil servant.
HE study says, According to

a 2010 survey of civil servants,
only 24 per cent believed that
postings to sought-after stations
were merit based. More broadly,
nearly one in two respondents
thought undue outside pressure was
a significant problem.
No amount of bureaucratic restructuring will change the reality. Even
abolishing the IAS, as sought by
some commentators, will not make
any measurable change in the quality
of governance till a cure of political
interference is found.
Endpoint: Is it too late to attempt
a bilateral model of citizen centric
Politico-Bureaucratic relationship? g
The writer was the Cabinet Secretary and
the first Governor of Jharkhand. He can be
reached at pkumar1511@hotmail.com

COVER STORY
national security
Uri Attack: India

Surgical strikes across
LoC were a part of an
all-out political and
diplomatic offensive
made by India to isolate
Pakistan internationally
as a State supporting
terrorist activities
10

by MK SHUKLA
N September 18, four Pakistani

terrorists carried out with military precision what has come to
be viewed as one of the worst terrorist attacks on the Indian Army. They
killed 19 army jawans and injured
over two dozens of them in Jammu
and Kashmirs Uri sector, in the rear
office of an Indian Army infantry brigade installation. Since then, India
upped its diplomatic offensive against
Pakistan in a bid to isolate the country internationally. We will isolate
Pakistan in the whole world and force
it into eking out a solitary existence,

thundered Prime Minister Narendra
Modi in an outburst of extreme anger.
Seething with anger at the demise
of its soldiers in an unprovoked
attack, the India Army warned on
September 19 that it reserved the right
to respond to any cross-border terror
attack at the time and place of our
own choosing. It squarely blamed a
Pakistan-based terror outfit Jaish-eMohammed (JeM) for executing the
murderous attack. The Army also said
it has the desired capability to respond
to any blatant acts of aggression and
violence as deemed appropriate by us.
www.gfilesindia.com

pulls no punches
Lt. Gen. Ranbir Singh
www.indianbuzz.com
The remarks by Director-General

of Military Operations, Lt Gen Ranbir
Singh, came at a time when some
security experts and political leaders
had openly called for targeting terror
camps in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir
(PoK) after the attack.
The Indian Army has displayed
considerable restraint while handling
the terrorist situation both along the
Line of Control and in the hinterland.
However, we have the desired
capability to respond to such blatant
acts of aggression and violence as
deemed appropriate by us, Lt Gen
Singh said in a statement to the media
at the South Block.

We reserve the right to respond
to any act of the adversary at the
time and place of our own choosing,
he added.
Lt Gen Singhs remark was identical
to the statement given by then Army
chief Gen Bikram Singh in 2013 after
the January 8 violation of the Line of
Control (LoC) in which one jawan was
beheaded and the other had his throat
slit. Well give them a fitting reply...
we will respond at a time and place of
our choosing, he had said.
Following the Pathankot attack
earlier this year, Defence Minister

11
COVER STORY
national security
Manohar Parrikar had also said

the same.
However, top Army sources said
that action will be taken but nature
and timing of it will not be revealed at
the moment.
There should be an element of
surprise which is not there at the
moment as Pakistan will be prepared
for retaliation. The Indian Army, of
course, has its strategy in place and
will do its job, the sources said.
S the public opinion calling for

blood intensified, the government was left with no option
but to let the Indian Armed Forces
conduct overnight surgical strikes
along the Line of Control in Pakistan
on September 28-29. The surgical
strikes targeted seven terror launch
pads across LoC using heli-borne and
ground forces. Addressing a press
conference, Lt Gen Singh said India
inflicted significant casualties on
12

In a different situation, the

countrys political
leadership would have
opted for the principle of
plausible deniability. But
such was the pressure from
the public that the
government confirmed that
surgical strikes were
conducted along the LoC to
safeguard our nation
terrorists and those who were trying

to support them. All Indian leaders,
across party lines, hailed the Army for
successfully executing surgical strikes
and backed the Modi governments
decision as a befitting retaliation
to Pakistan.
In a different situation, the countrys political leadership would have
opted for the principle of plausible
deniability. But such was the pressure
from the public that the government
confirmed that surgical strikes were
conducted along the LoC to safeguard
our nation. Significant casualties
have been caused to terrorists and
those trying to shield them. We dont
have a plan to further conduct such
strikes. India has spoken to Pakistan,
Lt Gen Singh said on September 29.
However, Pakistan dismissed
Indias claim of the surgical strike
and termed it as a quest by its eastern neighbour to create media hype
by re-branding cross-border fire that
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killed their two soldiers, as a surgical strike. In a statement, Pakistan

Defence Minister Khawaja Asif said
on September 29, The Pakistani
Army gave a befitting response to the
Indian army. Indian Army opened
up small arms fire last night on five
sectors across LoC. India is doing
this under a well-planned objective.
If India tries to do this again, we will
respond forcefully. India is doing
this only to please their media and
public. Pakistan Prime Minister
Nawaz Sharif strongly condemned
the unprovoked and naked aggression of Indian forces resulting in the
martyrdom of two Pakistan soldiers
along LoC.
Before the surgical strike was
carried out, India had intensified
its diplomatic efforts in the UN and
elsewhere. Responding to Pakistani
PM Nawaz Sharifs incoherent speech
on Kashmir describing terrorist
Burhan Wani as a freedom fighter,
India, under a right to reply, fielded
a young first secretary whose crisp
and brief statement became the
most popular trend on social media
as soon as it was made. Describing
the Pakistan PMs speech as a long
tirade during the General Debate
of the 71st session UN General
Assembly on September 21, she
attacked Pakistan on the topic of
sponsorship of terrorism. The words
used were less diplomatic, but
definitely no less impactful.
The land of Taxila, one of the
greatest learning centres of ancient
times, is now host to the Ivy League
of terrorism. It attracts aspirants and
apprentices from all over the world.
The effects of its toxic curriculum are
felt across the globe, she said during
her speech.
External Affairs Minister Sushma
Swaraj, in her UNGA address on
September 24, said that Sharif, who
www.indianbuzz.com
Even as Indias military

operation got underway,
the government was
working the phones to
manage the diplomatic
fallout of the LoC strikes in
PoK. The first call between
National Security Adviser
(NSA) Ajit Doval and US
NSA Susan Rice took place
at about 8:30 pm on
September 28
had accused India of human rights
violations at the UN a week earlier,
was heading a government that had
carried out air attacks against its
own people. The brutality against
the Baloch people represents the
worst form of State oppression, she
said, referring to the ethnic minority
in Pakistan.
The war of words heated up
outside the UNGA, too. As Pakistani
army carried out war drills inside
the country and cancelled leave of
its personnel, its Defence Minister
Khawaja Asif went ballistic: We will
destroy India if it dares to impose war
on us. Pakistan army is fully prepared
to answer any misadventure of
India... We have not made the atomic

device display in a showcase. If such
a situation arises we will use it and
eliminate India, Asif told TV channel
Samaa when asked about Indias
intent to launch a surgical strike on
the country.
VEN as Indias military operation

got underway, the government
was working the phones to manage the diplomatic fallout of the LoC
strikes in PoK. The first call between
National Security Adviser (NSA) Ajit
Doval and US NSA Susan Rice took
place at about 8:30 pm on September
28. While officials refused to confirm
whether the NSA informed Ms Rice
of the exact nature of the operation,
their conversation put to rest two
questions: India made it clear that it
did not intend to escalate it to a conflict even if it launched pre-emptive
counter-terror strikes, and according
to senior government officials, the US
didnt intend to restrain India in any
way. Mr Dovals call followed two calls
by US Secretary of State John Kerry
to External Affairs Minister Sushma
Swaraj in the second fortnight of
September to discuss the situation.
Hours after the surgical strike,
the government on September 29
went to work, explaining its actions

13
COVER STORY
national security
11 major attacks on security

forces in J&K since 2014
N the deadliest attack on the Army in Jammu and Kashmir,

heavily armed militants stormed a battalion headquarters
of the Army in North Kashmirs Uri town in the wee hours
September 18, killing 19 jawans and injuring 20 other
personnel.
The following is a timeline of major attacks that have
taken place in Jammu and Kashmir since 1999 till date.
June 25, 2016: Eight CRPF personnel were killed and
20 others injured when militants attacked their convoy
at Frestbal near Pampore on Srinagar-Jammu National
Highway.
February 21, 2016: Three army commandos, including
two Captains, and a militant were killed
in a fierce gunfight with a group of
terrorists holed up inside a government
building on the outskirts of Srinagar.
December 7, 2015: Six CRPF
personnel were injured when militants
opened fire on their convoy near Green
Tunnel at Samthan, in Bijbehara in
South Kashmirs Anantnag District.
November 25, 2015: Three JeM
militants and a generator operator
of MES were killed when a group of
militants attacked an Army camp near
LoC, at Tanghdar in North Kashmirs
Kupwara District.
November 18, 2015: A Colonel with the Armys elite para
commando unit was killed in an encounter with militants in
the forests of Kupwara.
May 31, 2015: Army foiled attack on its Brigade
headquarters in Tanghdar sector of Kupwara District by
killing four members of six heavily armed militants.
March 21, 2015: Two terrorists were killed during a
fidayeen attack at the Army camp on Jammu-Pathankot
National Highway in Samba District. Three persons, including
one civilian, a Major and an Army jawan were also injured
in the attack.
March 20, 2015: A fidayeen squad of militants in army
fatigues stormed a police station in Kathua District killing
seven persons, including three SF personnel, two civilians
14

and two militants, while 12 persons, including eight CRPF

personnel, three policemen and a civilian were also injured
in the incident.
December 5, 2014: A group of heavily armed militants
stormed into an Armys 31 Field Regiment Ordinance Camp
at Mohra, in Uri Sector of Baramulla District, near the LoC.
One Lieutenant Colonel and seven soldiers of the Army,
one ASI and two constables of J&K Police were killed. Six
militants were also killed in the operation.
November 27, 2014: 10 persons, including four civilians,
three army soldiers and three militants were killed in a daylong encounter at the border village of Kathaar in Arnia sector
of Jammu District.
September 26, 2013: At least 13
killed in twin suicide attacks in Jammu
and Kashmir. The dead included four
policemen and two civilians in Kathua
District and four Army personnel,
including
Lieutenant
Colonel
Bikramjeet Singh, in Samba District.
June 24, 2013: Eight soldiers
killed in an attack on a military convoy
at Hyderpora, Srinagar.
March 31, 2013: Attack on CRPF
camp in Srinagar results in five deaths.
October 5, 2006: Terrorists attack
at Budshah Chowk, in heart of
Srinagar, killing five JKP personnel, two CRPF soldiers and
one civilian.
April 6, 2005: A day before the bus from Srinagar to
Muzaffarabad in PoK is to be flagged off, two suicide squads
of terrorists attack the Tourist Reception Centre.
July 22, 2003: A three-member team storms an army
camp, killing eight security force personnel, including a
Brigadier, and injuring 12 others in Akhnoor.
May 14, 2002: 36 persons are killed and 48 others
injured in a fidayeen attack on an army cantonment in
Kaluchak, Jammu.
November 3, 1999: Ten army personnel killed in a
fidayeen attack on 15 Corps Headquarters at Srinagars
Badami Bagh.
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to other countries as well. Foreign

Secretary S Jaishankar held a
briefing for envoys of 22 countries,
including the P-5 (Permanent members of the Security CouncilUS, UK,
Russia, China, France), Germany,
Japan, and key neighbouring countries and West Asian countries about
the developments. A separate briefing was held for former Indian diplomats, retired officials and think-tank
analysts who will take forward
the governments stand on public
platforms and the media.
HE government explained to
foreign diplomats that even
before the Uri attacks, the
government had brought to Pakistans
notice the increasing number of
infiltration attempts across the LoC,
counting at least 19 attempts and
several planned attacks in the past
two months. Each time we were met
with condescension and denial, an
official is believed to have said at one
of the several briefings.
In the week after the Uri attack,
the Foreign Secretary had called in
Pakistan High Commissioner Abdul
Basit twice. On both occasions, India
had offered fingerprints and other
details of the attackers so Pakistan
could try and identify them. However,
the offer was met with no reply.
When asked about the threat of
sparking a full-fledged conflict with
Pakistan, the official is believed to
have said, Fear of escalation cannot
be a reason for passively accepting
acts of violence. But, he added
that India had no desire to conduct
further operations.
Contrary to Pakistans assertion,
China on September 29 signalled that
it was actively engaged in defusing
tensions between India and Pakistan,
using multiple channels, to prevent
a spillover of friction between New
www.indianbuzz.com
Delhi and Islamabad in the region.

As for the tension between Pakistan
and India, recently Chinese side has
been in communication with both
sides through different channels,
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman
Geng Shuang told a media briefing
in Beijing.
He added: We hope that
Indian and Pakistan can enhance
communication and properly deal
with differences and work jointly to
maintain peace and security in the
region. Geng was responding to
questions on whether the attack in Uri
featured during the maiden counterterrorism and security dialogue that
was held between India and China

earlier this week.
China is a friendly neighbour
to India and Pakistan. China hopes
that both the countries could
properly deal with their differences
(through) dialogue and consultation
and
improve
their
bilateral
relationship, strengthen cooperation
in different fields and work jointly for
regional peace and development and
stability, he observed.
Earlier on September 28, Chinas
Deputy Foreign Minister Liu Zhenmin
told Pakistans special envoy to China
for Kashmir that Beijing hopes that
Pakistan and India will strengthen
Contrary to Pakistans
assertion, China on
September 29 signalled
that it was actively
engaged in defusing
tensions between India and
Pakistan, using multiple
channels, to prevent a
spillover of friction
between New Delhi and
Islamabad in the region
channels for dialogue, appropriately

handle any differences, improve
bilateral relations and together protect
the regions peace and stability.
India was expected in the last days
of September to step up its diplomatic
offensive, reaching out to all countries
who have viewed the rising tensions
at the LoC with concern. In early
October, Sri Lankan Prime Minister
Ranil Wickremesinghe as well
as Singapore Prime Minister Lee
Hsien Loong are scheduled to visit
Delhi. At least 10 heads of State and

15
COVER STORY
national security
Will Pak Army chief leave

or get an extension?
by MK SHUKLA
HE surgical strike by the Indian

Army across the LoC on the night
of September 28-29 might have
rendered a big blow to the reputation
of incumbent Pakistan chief of the
Army staff, Raheel Sharif. There are
equal chances of his vacating the
office in November when his term
ends, or hanging on to office till he
has avenged the blow to his vanity/
honour rendered by the Indian surgical
strike. Whether Raheel Sharif hangs
to the office or someone else replaces
him, one thing is sure, Prime Minister
Nawaz Sharif can never be sure of the
army he is supposed to command,
even though he is credited with
appointing the maximum number of
COAS in Pakistan Army.
May it be noted that General
Sharif is immensely popular among
ordinary Pakistanis, who see him as
a bulwark against crime, corruption
and Islamist militant violence. He
has also strengthened the military's
grip over aspects of the government,
including the judiciary and areas of
security policy. Yet the military flatly
rejects the possibility of an extension.
I will request you to avoid
speculation because we have
already taken a position very clearly,
Lieutenant General Asim Bajwa, the
army's main spokesman, told a press
briefing recently.
In a country prone to military
coups, including one in which Sharif
16

himself was ousted from power in

1999, suspicions that the General will
remain in his post persist, including
among some of the prime minister's
senior aides.
Army chiefs soon begin to think they
are invincibles-in-chief, said a close
aide to Sharif, requesting anonymity as
he was not authorised to speak about
military appointments.
What happens at the top of

Pakistan's armed forces will be closely
watched overseas.
According to media reports, the
military high command has sent to
the prime minister the dossiers of four
main contenders. If PM Sharif rejects
the apna banda approach and follows
the universal principle of seniority, his
choices are more or less well defined.
Chief of General Staff Lt Gen Zubair
Hayat is considered in Pakistans
military hierarchy as the senior-most,
followed by Multan Corps Commander
Lt Gen Ishfaq Nadeem Ahmed,

Bahawalpur Corps Commander Lt Gen
Javed Iqbal Ramday and Inspector
General of Training and Evaluation Lt
Gen Qamar Javed Bajwa. These four
generals are from the 62nd Pakistan
Military Academy (PMA) Long Course.
The premier's favourite is said to
be Ramday, commander of the XXXI
Corps who led a 2009 operation to
drive the Pakistani Taliban militant
movement from Swat Valley near the
Afghan border.
The three other dossiers are for Lt
Gen Zubair Hayat, Chief of General
Staff, Lt Gen Ishfaq Nadeem Ahmad,
commanding officer in the western city
of Multan, and Lt Gen Qamar Javed
Bajwa, who heads the army's Training
and Evaluation Wing.
Ramday is considered among
the front-runners, in part because
his family has been associated with
Sharif's Pakistan Muslim League
(PMLN) party for many years. He is
also seen by some security officials
as popular with General Sharif. He's
perhaps as liked by Raheel Sharif as
he is by Nawaz Sharif, said a senior
security official based in Islamabad,
declining to be named.
Hayat oversees intelligence and
operational affairs at the army's General
Headquarters and, before that, headed
the Strategic Plans Division (SPD),
which is responsible for Pakistan's
nuclear programme. Retired and serving
officers who have served with Hayat
see him as a compromise between the
www.gfilesindia.com

military and civilian government.

Ahmad has extensive experience
with military operations, especially
against Pakistan's Taliban insurgency,
and was previously the DirectorGeneral Military Operations. Several
past army chiefs had served as
DGMOs before being promoted to
the top post.
The last candidate, Lt Gen Qamar
Javed Bajwa, is seen as Pakistans
best bet to improve ties with India
as he is said to view extremism as a
bigger threat to Pakistan than India.
Currently, he is serving at the GHQ
as Inspector General of Training and
Evaluationthe position Gen Sharif
held before becoming army chief. He
commanded the 10 Corps, the armys
largest, which is responsible for the
area along the Line of Control (LoC).
He also has extensive experience of
handling affairs in Kashmir and the
northern areas of the country. As
a major general, he led the Force
Command Northern Areas. He also
served in the 10 Corps as a Lieutenant
Colonel, where he was GSO. He has
served with a UN mission in Congo
as a Brigade Commander alongside
former Indian army chief Gen
Bikram Singh, who was also there
as a Division Commander. He was
also the commandant of the Infantry
School in Quetta.
Media reports suggest he is not
an attention seeker and remains
well-connected with his troops. He
is from the infantrys Baloch
Regiment. Three former officers
of his Regiment have risen to be
army chiefGen Yahya Khan, Gen
Aslam Beg, and Gen Kayani. His
appointment as COAS could also
help contain the tide of mounting
insurgency in Pakistans largest and
most restive province. g
www.indianbuzz.com
the government would attend the

BRICS summit in mid-October in
Goa, including Chinese President Xi
Jinping, Russian President Putin,
Bangladesh Premier Sheikh Hasina
and Myanmar Foreign Minister Aung
San Suu Kyi.
New Delhi has already received
support on its move to pull out of
the SAARC summit in Pakistan from
Afghanistan, Bhutan and Bangladesh.
On September 28, Bangladesh
officials said they backed Indias
action across the LoC. India has all
legal and globally accepted rights
to respond to any attack on her
sovereignty and territory, said Iqbal
Chowdhury, advisor to Bangladesh
Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, adding
that Bangladesh always feels that in
these type of things, there should be
restraint from all sides.
NDIAS surgical strike also received

the tacit support of the US. On
September 30, Washington made
clear its support for Indias surgical
strike across LoC to take out terrorist
launch pads and camps. But a State
Department spokesman, John Kirby,
refused to entertain question if there
was any cooperation between India
and the US on the latest Indian
operation. I dont have a specific
laundry list here to read out to you
because, frankly, its something
that weve been constantly working at
with our partners in the region, he

replied enigmatically.
Counter-terrorism
cooperation,
he said, is something that the US is
always working at with its partners in
the region. Were always trying to get
better at combating terrorism in the
region. There are many ways you can
do that, you know, through information sharing regimens and increasing
communication between all parties
involved, he said.
Obviously, an (terrorist) attack
like that (in Uri) escalates tensions.
What I dont want to do is try to get
into, you know, some sort of broad
characterisation one way or the
other, but obviously an attack like
this is horrific..., he told reporters in
Washington on September 29.
He said the US has called for action
to combat terrorist groups like JeM
and LeT and Haqqani network. He
added that while Washington was
closely monitoring the situation on
the LoC, Weve repeatedly expressed
our concerns regarding the danger
that terrorism poses to the region.
Kirby also said that US Secretary of
State John Kerry had spoken to
Minister of External Affairs on
September 27 and reiterated his
strong condemnation of the September 18 Uri terror attack. He (John
Kerry) condemned terrorism in all
its forms and cautioned against any
escalation in tensions, Kirby said. g

17
COVER STORY
security mg devasahayam
The cost of
warmongering
Despite the cacophony on reforms, Indias basic governance and
administration is at its nadir and national security forms part of this. India
does not even have a national security architecture
Based on very credible and specific
information which we received
yesterday that some terrorist teams
had positioned themselves at launch
pads along the Line of Control with
an aim to carry out infiltration and
terrorist strikes in Jammu &
Kashmir and in various other
metros in our country, the Indian
army conducted surgical strikes last
night at these launch pads.
ex-Generals and party mouthpieces,

went for a kill with unadulterated
hatred peddling. As if eye-witnesses,
they rattled out the number of launch
pads attacked, army units that conducted the strike, number of soldiers
in the strike force, distance the soldiers walked, weapons used, ammunition fired and precise number of
terrorists killed. They also talked of

intense diplomatic engagement by
NSA and the Foreign Secretary and
the critical conversation between the
former and his US counterpart.
Nothing was left to imagination.
Some of them were in ecstasy as if
India has won a war and annihilated
Pakistan. In the social media were
ITH these words spoken in

the afternoon of September
29, Lt Gen Ranbir Singh,
Director General Military Operations,
summarised what happened across
the border like a professional soldier
that he is. He added that during counter-terrorist operations, significant
casualties have been caused to the terrorists and those trying to support
them. He was emphatic when he said:
the operations aimed at neutralising
the terrorists have since ceased. We
do not have any plans for continuation of further operations.
This was a limited action. But
because of the hype built up post-Uri,
it became super-class Breaking
News. Media anchors pounced on it
and, in the company of assorted columnists/journalists, ex-diplomats,
18

www.gfilesindia.com

images of Prime Minister Modis face

morphing into a ferocious lion!
Electronic media was at its worst.
Many channels became super patriots,
joining the most jingoist voices and,
in the process, used adjectives that
gave the game away. Media did not
realise that this phase will pass, as all
phases do, but restoring their
credibility with their audiences will
be a herculean task. They did
not separate fact from fiction and
did not draw clear lines between
responsibilities of media and the task
of governance. Instead, they became
cheerleaders of the government and
its spin doctors. In the process, they
created panic resulting in largescale
evacuation of people living in the
border areas of Punjab, abandoning
crops ready for harvesting.
Soon enough the true purpose of
this warmongering media frenzy was
revealed as serving the interest of
business and arms lobbies. President
www.indianbuzz.com
of US-India Business Council, a business advocacy organisation working

to boost India-US trade, made a brazen statement that the expected
increase in Indias defence spending
due to the current stand-off with
Pakistan has presented a tremendous opportunity to major US companies, including Boeing, Lockheed
Martin and Raytheon, to expand their
Indian operations. He went on to say
that the technology on big ticket items
The military view is that

successful surgical strikes
is an event that could
kickstart a new phase of
confrontation between
India and Pakistan,
possibly characterised by
wholly new strategies that
will be tested over time
and refined
will definitely come from the US,

either from the aircraft carriers or
secured communications or from the
missile side.
While so, the military view is that
successful surgical strikes is an event
that could kickstart a new phase of
confrontation between India and
Pakistan, possibly characterised by
wholly new strategies that will be
tested over time and refined. This
view is echoed by some former
Generals. The big question is:
confrontation for what purpose, to
wage another war after 45 long years?
Let us be realistic. An analysis of
various reports shows that it is highly
unlikely that India has the artillery
and ammunition resources even to
fight a limited war like Kargil.
N war, India generally has

three optionsconventional,
sub-conventional and nuclear.
All-out nuclear war is out of question.
Sub-conventional warfare involves
stealth attacks and guerrilla tactics,
similar to the Armys surgical strikes.
The third option is conventional warfare. Notwithstanding the importance
of regional, strategic and political
considerations and all that is lost in
the rhetoric, the truth is India is not
economically prepared to wage war in
this manner.
In any conventional warfare with
Pakistan, it is the Indian army that
will be at the forefront. As of now, the
revenue to capital ratio of army
spending is highly skewed in favour of
the former as much as 85:15. For the
navy and air force this ratio stands
at approximately 50:50 and 65:35,
respectively. This indicates that a
large amount of budget-spend for the
army is towards pay and allowances
rather than for capital expenditure.
Further examination of data suggests
that ratio of indigenous acquisition to

19
COVER STORY
security mg devasahayam
foreign sources is approximately
70:30 for the army, 50:50 for the navy
and 35:65 for the air force. Since
armys artillery and ammunition
needs are exclusively met by ordinance factories (OFs), it is overdependent on domestic acquisition.
This has made the army very vulnerable in terms of its war wastage
reserves (WWR).
As per the armys operational doctrine, India is required to maintain a
WWR of 40 days of intense war [war
(I)]. After the Kargil war of 1999,
army headquarters introduced a new
target of Minimum Accepted Risk
Level (MARL), which was set at 20
war (I). The findings of a CAG
report show that the armys current
WWR stands at a critical low of 10 war
(I), or even less, as of March 2013. As
per data in the report, of the 48
ammunition categories audited by
CAG, it was found that OFs were unable to meet their production targets
across 52 per cent of the product categories. Of this 52 per cent, in 23 per
cent of the product categories, the
shortfall was well over 50 per cent.
ATA further indicates that,

between 2009 and 2013, the
shortfall in ammunition has
increased dramatically from 15 per
cent to 50 per cent. These shortfalls
would have further increased in the
last three years due to several lowintensity conflicts across the border.
As a result of the Ordinance Factory
Board (OFB) not being able to meet
production requirement in line with
WWR targets, the army had provided
for a roll-on indent plan with a view to
at least meet the MARL target requirements. Yet, the CAG report notes that
the OFB was unable to meet even this
target and fell short by as much as 73
per cent. In fact, as of September
2015, our shortfall for 17 types of crit-
20

ical ammunition continues to remain

at 84 per cent. This is the abysmal
defence preparedness about which
former Army Chief General VK Singh
wrote to Prime Minister in 2012. This
secret letter was leaked out and the
blame was wrongly put on the General.
No action has been taken to remedy
the situation and the real perpetrators
of this treason are roaming scot-free.
Realising these constraints and
shortfalls, top military brass has
been reticent and restrained. It is
the political and media minions
who are queering the pitch for war
with an obvious business agenda,
with full knowledge of the devastation
it can cause.
Coming to brasstacks, the surgical
strike and the resultant war-mongering is the fallout of the failure of the
Uri Brigade Commander to secure his
base, which led to his removal from
that position. But retired army brass
insists it was an institutional weakness and not command failure. They
want citizens and even uniformed
personnel to be better sensitised
about national expectations versus
national willingness to part with more
resources for defence and security.
One of them has gone to the extent of
asking the Army to unequivocally
state that the nation will get the security it pays for and no more. One wonders whether mercenary language is
creeping in!
These worthies should realise that
Uri closely followed the Pathankot air
base mess-up by Indian Air Force,
National Security Guards, Indian
Army and Defence Security Corps, all
put together. A disturbing pattern
continuesconfusion in command
and control, indifference to warning
of a terrorist attack, abysmal physical
security measures, leadership without responsibility, incoherent public
communication and political one-
upmanship. Added to this is the same

old media nautanki and Pak-bashing.
Regime change in 2014 has not made
any difference.
Why this? Answer is not far to
seek. Despite the cacophony on
reformsMake-in-India, FDI and
what notIndias basic governance
and administration is at its nadir and
national security forms part of this
basic. In the event, India does not even
have national security architecture.
We have Ministries of Home
(MHA) and External Affairs (MEA)
responsible for internal security
and foreign affairs, respectively.
But we have no geopolitical-based
foreign policy or national security
system. Instead we have a National
6HFXULW\$GYLVRU16$DQRIFHWKDW
has neither institutional sanction
nor parliamentary accountability.
Because of this structural defect
and the concomitant decline of
formal arrangements like the Crisis
Management Group (CMG) headed
by the Cabinet Secretary, national
security is getting increasingly
compromised.
What is worse, in recent times the
www.gfilesindia.com

Pathankot and Uri are evidence of

the crumbling of the last bastion of
professional meritocracy. Integrity of
the Army was severely compromised
during UPA regime and NDA government that calls itself nationalistic and
patriotic, has done nothing to set it
right. In fact, things have worsened
with the OROP muddle and the rise
of mercenary voices. In the event,
individuals and vested interests are
having a free run in pursuing their
RZQDJHQGD6XFKSHUG\LVWKHZRUVW
form of threat to national security
that has caused countries and governments to crumble and fall asunder.
India cannot be an exception.
institutional integrity and prestige of

the Indian Army has been under severe
assault by the arms lobby-infested
Delhi Durbar. Some media honchos
who were part of the Durbar even
went to the extreme extent of cooking
up a coup story in 2012 to discredit
the then Army Chief and belittle the
Indian Army as an institution.
Emboldened by their success, they
then targeted the Technical Service
Division (TSD), a covert-agency to
counter ISI-type operations set-up by
General VK Singh, the then Army Chief.
TSD was pursuing activities directly
related to the safety of the soldiers
JKWLQJ RQ WKH ERUGHUV UHWULEXWLRQ
on the enemy and the security of
the citizens. By its very nature TSD
operation was top secret. In the
event, it is treacherous to publicise
even the existence of TSD. Yet, this
is what precisely happened and a
frontal assault on TSD with the sole
purpose of hounding General Singh
resulted in its disbanding, thereby
severely inhibiting Indias capacity
to combat/avert ISIs asymmetric
warfare and Pathankot/Uri type
humiliation. Both these acts of high
www.indianbuzz.com
The surgical strike and the

resultant warmongering is
the fallout of the failure of
the Uri Brigade
Commander to secure his
base, which led to his
removal from that position.
But retired army brass
insist it was an
institutional weakness and
not command failure
treason have gone unpunished!
This General was replaced as Army
&KLHI E\ D EHQHFLDU\ RI WKH DUFKDLF
line of succession. As the arms
lobby is now celebrating the surgical
strikes, the fallout prophesied by
defence analyst Maroof Raza in
2012 has come true: ...the message
for military commanders is that it
isnt merit or accuracy of documents
that will get them promotions, but
pandering to the politico-bureaucratic
elite. The last bastion of professional
meritocracy in India has crumbled.
The damage will be lasting.
NLESS this severe malady

is addressed with extreme
urgency and integrity of
institutions restored in full, any
amount of war mongering will be of
no avail and India will continue to
remain a nation sans security. War
that is being touted by vested interests
will only worsen things further.
There is a famous saying: Freedom
is the outcome of the tranquility of
Peace. Without these great attributes
in a nation, there cannot be any
development, which has been the war
cry of Modi and his Ministers. War is
the enemy of freedom and peace and,
therefore, the development agenda.
The question in everyones mind
is whether Modi is abandoning the
development agenda by drumming
up the war cry. Or, is it to cover-up
WKH IDLOXUH RI WKLV DJHQGD LQ WKH UVW
half of the Modi Government? Are
the warmongers using soldiers as
cannon fodder, deliberately diverting
scarce funds towards massive arms
purchase? Will this cost India security
and development? The sooner
answers are found the better! g
The writer is a former Army and IAS

officer. Email: deva1940@gmail.com

21
STATE SCAN
controversy expressway
KMP Expressway
Subhash vs Abhimanyu
Differences crop up within Haryana government as CM proposes penalty waive
off for Subhash Chandras firm; Capt Abhimanyu opposes move
by CB SINGH
HE ray of hope for the completion of the prestigious KundliManesar-Palwal

Expressway
(KMPE) project is still far away. This
is perhaps the war of supremacy
between two political heavy weights
Haryana Finance Minister Capt
Abhimnyu and Rajya Sabha MP, Dr
Subhash Chandra.
The fight is not political but financial. It was heightened after work
order of KMPE project to M/s KMP
Expressway Limited, reportedly a
proxy company of Capt Abimanyu,
was cancelled following delay in
project and allotted to Chandras
company M/s Essel Infraprojects.
But, the project has been further
delayed and work is yet to start.
The KMPE project was allotted to
KMP Expressway Limited on January
31, 2006. The completion date was
fixed as July 29, 2009, with a toll
collection period of 20 years and nine
months. But the Concessionaire failed
to complete the work even by
December 2014. The Supreme Court,
in its order dated January 30, 2015,
directed the State government to
award the contract to a new
Concessionaire urgently. Subsequently, the Concession Agreement of
KMP Expressway Limited was
terminated on March 19, 2015.
Differences
between
Capt
22

Abhimanyu and Chandra come to the

fore in a meeting of Haryana Cabinet
ministers held recently for the commencement of the pending work of
6-lane of Kundli-Manesar Expressway
(KMP) on BOT (Annuity) basis.
Haryana Chief Minister Manohar
Lal Khattar had called a meeting of his
Cabinet ministers on September 8,
2016, to waive off penalty of approximately `4.50 crore to be charged for
the delay of the project. But it was
ended hurriedly following objections
The much-delayed project

got a new lease of life last
year when in pursuance to
the Supreme Court orders
dated January 30, 2015, the
State government took the
decision to terminate the
contract of the old
Concessionaire and have a
new Concessionaire
reportedly raised by Capt Abhimanyu.
Health Minister Anil Vij also joined
him to oppose the proposed waiver
scheme of CM, who is considered to
be close to Zee media owner Chandra.
Interestingly, the meeting was attended only by four ministers, raising
questions of quorum.
Capt
Abhimanyu
represents
Narnaund Assembly segment in
Hissar, the home district of Chandra.

Capt Abhimanyu owns a parental
house in Kandakheri in Narnaund
Assembly constituency, besides a
house in Rohtak.
Chandra contested Rajya Sabha
election as an Independent and was
elected with the support of BJP and
Independent MLAs. Votes of Congress
MLAs were ruled invalid following the
ink controversy.
In the meeting, it was decided to
recommend levying damages/penalty
on the Concessionaire from March 2,
2016, to August 24, 2016, at `10 lakh
per week. If the payment is not paid
within 180 days of the Financial Close,
9.30 per cent interest rate is to be
charged on the penalty, it was added.
M/s Kundli-Manesar Expressway
Limited is a 100 per cent subsidiary of
Essel Infraproject Limited.
This project, costing `1,863 crore,
is considered a lifeline for Haryana
and significant for National Capital
Region (NCR). The delay in the project not only gives a bad name to
Haryana but also disappoints Union
Surface Transport, Highways and
Shipping Minister, Nitin Gadkari,
who promised the completion of
KMPE to decongest traffic and to
make Delhi free from pollution.
The Managing Director of Haryana
State Industrial and Infrastructure
Development Corporation (HSIIDC)
Limited, Sudhir Rajpal, in a telephon-
www.gfilesindia.com

ic conversation with gfiles magazine

said there was no concession given in
penalty for the delay in completion of
Kundli-Manesar Section of KMPE
project. He further said that penalty
on delay of project was being charged
at `20 lakh per week till August 24,
2016, from which onward work was
considered to begin.
The penalty of `20 lakh was
enhanced from `10 lakh, following
the intervention and protest by Capt
Abhimanyu in the Cabinet meeting.
Vij said that matter was brought
before the Cabinet but the HSIIDC
was asked to take a final decision in its
Board meeting on its own. He said
that he was in favour of cancellation
of contract to Chandras firm for the
delay of work, but HSIIDC said that it
will further delay the project following fresh tender of the same.
When asked about the waiver of
penalty for delay by the government,
he said question does not arise. Of
the much delayed 136-km KundliManesar-Palwal (KMP) stretch, 53
kms of Palwal-Mathura was inaugurated by Union Minister Nitin Gadkari
on April 5, 2016. The remaining
83-km stretch is still to take off.
The work on development of the
KMP Expressway was started in 2006
during the Congress regime. For
development of this project on BOT
www.indianbuzz.com
Differences between Capt

Abhimanyu and Chandra
come to the fore in a
meeting of Haryana Cabinet
ministers held recently for
the commencement of the
pending work of 6-lane of
Kundli-Manesar
Expressway (KMP) on BOT
(Annuity) basis
basis, Concession Agreement was
signed with M/s KMP Expressway
Ltd. As per the original time schedule,
the expressway was to be ready
by July 29, 2009. Forming a ring
around the NCR area, the eastern
(connecting Kundli, Ghaziabad and
Palwal) and the western (Kundli,
Manesar and Palwal) peripheral
expressways were conceived to ensure
that non-destined commercial vehicles, which are estimated to be more
than 80,000 now, do not enter the
city limits of Delhi.
The much-delayed project got a
new lease of life last year when in
pursuance to the Supreme Court
orders dated January 30, 2015, the
State government took the decision
to terminate the contract of the
old Concessionaire and have a new
Concessionaire. While the HSIIDC
allotted work for the Manesar-Palwal

section on Item Rate Mode in March
last, the work for the remaining
Kundli-Manesar section was granted
in July. The Kundli-Manesar section
is expected to be complete in a
years time.
Impact of KMP
HIS 53-km stretch is to connect
NH-2 (Mathura Road) at Kuslipur
in Palwal with Panchgam village
on NH-8 (Delhi-Jaipur road), near
Manesar in Gurgaon district, making
commuting shorter between the
two districts.
Traffic from Mathura and Agra and
headed for Gurgaon, Manesar or
Jaipur can now use this route instead
of entering Delhi and vice versa,
saving time and money.
The KMP and the 135-km KundliGhaziabad-Palwal expressways will
form a ring road around Delhi to
allow diesel trucks and commercial
vehicles to bypass the capital. It
will help decongest the city and
reduce pollution.
The KMP, or the western peripheral expressway, will pass through
Palwal, Gurgaon, Mewat, Jhajjar
and Sonepat districts. The eastern
peripheral expressway will connect
Kundli, Ghaziabad, Gautam Budh
Nagar and Palwal. g

23
GOVERNANCE
finance tn pandey
The United Budget

of India
Various benefits are expected with the merger of the Railways and Union
Budgets and one can hope to return to better railway revenues in the
not-so-very distant future
EDIA reports of late have

been agog with news about
the changes to be made in
the Union Budget, inter-alia, with the
prospect of the merger of the Railway
Budget with the Union Budget. The
Cabinet okayed this proposal on
September 21, 2016. Apart from the
merger of the two budgets which were
separately presented till last year, the
Cabinet meeting also gave approval to
a few other proposals concerning the
annual budget making.
Budget making in the context of
the Central Government involves
carrying out resource estimation
for funding of various Central
schemes and programmes as well as
Central-funding for States and UTs
programmes and schemes besides
estimates of public spending. The
annual exercise aims at detailing the
roadmap for efficient use of public
resources taking into account socioeconomic and political priorities.
Budgeting involves determination
of what is to be done, the manner in
which it is to be done and the resources
required for it. Cabinets
threepronged approval can be considered
under the following heads:
Merger of Union and
Railway Budgets
The approval for merger of the two
24

budgets will end the practice of separate budgets for the Railways since
nearly 92 yearsthe practice having
been started in the year 1924. The
impact of the change from railways
angle could be that:
There would be no separate budget
for the Railways for FY 2018
the same getting merged with the
Union Budget.
FM will present the railway
accounts also with general budget,
dispensing with the practice of the
Railway Minister making a separate budget speech and presenting
railways financial proposals a day
or two earlier to the presentation of
the general budget.
The Railways, henceforth, would
work like a commercial unit of the
The Finance Ministry has

issued a detailed budget
circular to kick start the
making of the government
annual accounts, switching
to a completely online
system and prescribing
strict and compressed time
lines in keeping with the
big changes announced to
the process
Government of India, having a

distinct identity.
The general budget will have separate sections for demands, grants
and expenditure for the Railways.
After merger, the Railways will not
be required to pay any dividend
to the Government of India, currently to the tune of nearly `9,700
crore. Simultaneously, the concept of capital charge will also go
and the Railways will get support
from the Central Government for
capital expenditure. There would
be a separate discussion on railways receipts and expenditure in
Parliament besides the general
government budget.
Railways will continue to enjoy
financial autonomy.
The Railways are expected to get
an independent regulator (yet to
get Cabinet clearance), who would
be free to recommend fares and
freight rates and rationalise the
fare structure, which would mean a
big transformational change for the
organisation.
But, the merger of the two budgets
may pose a problem if the government
decides to corporatise the Railways.
Other changes approved by
the Cabinet
There is a proposal for advancing
www.gfilesindia.com

After merger, the Railways

will not be required to pay
any dividend to the
Government of India,
currently to the tune of
nearly `9,700 crore.
Simultaneously, the concept
of capital charge will also
go and the Railways will get
support from the Central
Government for capital
expenditure
the date of presentation of the general budget though no finality has
been reached in this regard, which
date is expected to be fixed after the
announcement of election schedule. However, the target is to finish the budget process by March 31.
Currently, the budget process extends
up to May 31 and direct tax changes
are made applicable from June 1.
The present practice of showing
plan and non-plan expenditure in the
budget making will end. There will
be no such classification in the coming budget. With planning and plans
becoming dysfunctional, this distinction loses its relevance and needs to
go, it was felt.
The Finance Ministry has issued
a detailed budget circular a set
of instructions to kick start the
making of the government annual
accounts, switching to a completely
online system and prescribing strict
and compressed time lines in keeping
with the big changes announced to
the process. Due to the change in date
for the presentation of the budget,
the timelines and the informational
requirements from the different
ministries have also changed. These
have been duly incorporated in the
budget circular.
www.indianbuzz.com
Budget planning will now have to

start a month earlier because of the
expected change in budget presentation date to February 1.
HANGE, as the saying goes, is

the law of nature. No progress
or development can take place
if one is static. Water in a pond gets
contaminated, but not in a flowing
river. Hence, the changes proposed
in regard to budget exercises are to
be welcomed, and are in line with
systemic changes for the better. The
Parliament session will have to start
earlier and standing committees will
get shorter time to debate budget
proposals. Also, the data expected to
be considered will be a month shorter
but according to government officials,
this will not make much difference.
The impact of merger of the Railway
Budget with the Union Budget could
create some initial problems. Also,
Railway Budgets in the past have been
used as a political tool by Railway
Ministers; as a measure of getting
popular. All past Railway Ministers
have used the Railways to improve
their images by doling out benefits
for their constituencies while neglecting national priorities. With the
merger of the Railway Budget with
the Union Budget, this practice is

expected to end.
Various other benefits are expected
with the merger and the Railways can
hope to return to better revenues not
in very distant future.
Other benefits are also expected
to result by the proposed changes in
budget making. Dispensation with
classification of expenditure, the plan
and non-plan expenditure is greatly
welcome. Advancing the budget presentation date to April 1 is a good move
as the new financial year from April
1 can start without any hang ups . It
would do away with exercises like
vote on accounts, etc. But, with these
changes, the proposal for changing the
financial year will need to be dropped
and the committee, constituted for
examining this issue, disbanded.
There has been a spate of changes
made/proposed in the past. Much
time and effort need not be wasted on
changes emanating from emotions
such as changing of the names of
roads like Race Course Road,
Aurangzeb Road or some buildings or
cities. Such decisions, in many cases,
cause undue hardship and financial
burden on the citizens without any
benefit in intrinsic terms. g
The writer is former Chairman, CBDT

25
GOVERNANCE
nmdc mining
IRON ORE PRICES
NMDC continues to
suffer losses, voluntarily
Why despite huge losses for several years, NMDC and successive
governments have turned a blind eye to such ill-conceived pricing policy
that benefits only the buyer? Is it because NMDC comes under the Steel
Ministry and not the Mining Ministry?
by K SUBRAMANIAN
HAT happens when a leading

mining company, which is
majority-owned by the government and also listed on the stock
exchanges, deliberately sells its mined
output year-after-year at a hefty discount to international benchmarks?
Ideally, the companys trade practices
should come under intense scrutiny
and a full-scale investigation must be
ordered to dig out the extent of loss,
both to the State exchequer as well as
minority shareholders. This should be
followed by a course correction and
re-pricing of mined minerals.
However, this is not the case if you
are the countrys largest miner and
happen to operate in India. Six years
after the nations auditor, the
Comptroller and Auditor General of
India, tabled a report that found flaws
with
the
National
Mineral
Development Corporations iron ore
pricing formula that was causing huge
revenue loss to the Navratna company, it is business as usual for the Stateowned miner. The CAG audit had
shown that NMDC was adopting a net
back formula, which resulted in low
pricing of the ore. According to the
26

said report, the adoption of the net

back formula resulted in a loss of `100
crore to the company while companies that purchased ore from NMDC
made huge profits.
Fast forward to year 2016. If the
price of NMDCs ore is compared with
the international index price, the
national miners ore is being sold to
steel making companies in the Hospet
region at a steep discount of `2,500 to
imported ore prices in the same
region. Low base price fixation by
NMDC during e-auction and an
absence of competition has meant
that NMDC has suffered an estimated
loss of `2,500 crore in FY2014-15
alone. It is also potential loss to the
Karnataka State Government and the
Central Government as it means less

royalty and less VAT.
A sharp reduction in potential revenue realisation also translates into
lower dividend payout for both the
government, which owns 80 per cent
stake in NMDC, and the 20 per cent
minority shareholders. A back-of-theenvelope calculation shows that going
by NMDCs net profit for 2014-15,
which was a robust 52 per cent of
sales, the company not only suffered a
potential revenue loss of `2500 crore
but also a potential profit loss of
`1,300 crore.
But how has the NMDC managed
to brazen out despite strong reprimand from CAG and numerous petitions in courts, highlighting this grave
anomaly. NMDC enjoys nearly a
monopoly status in the domestic iron
ore market with strong pricing power
and ability to capitalise on any recovery in the steel sector. Being the largest iron ore miner in the country,
NMDC revises its prices every month
depending upon the prevailing
demand-supply scenario and plays a
crucial role in determining mineral
pricing model.
In fact, it was only after taking cognizance of the CAG report, the Apex
www.gfilesindia.com

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FOLLOW US ON :
www.indianbuzz.com

27
GOVERNANCE
nmdc mining
Court had directed that sale of iron

ore be conducted through an e-auction in the State of Karnataka. While
the intent of the Court in ordering the
said e-auction was to achieve transparency in the sale of ore at the correct market price, NMDC has been
taking advantage of its monopoly
position and fixing the price so close
to the base that ore is sold at a steep
discount to the landed cost. Thus, the
situation prevailing during the time of
CAG report in 2010 continues even
today, albeit with a difference. Now,
potential revenue loss is much higher.
While NMDC stoutly denies any
claims, NMDC offers the lowest landed cost to all steel majors depending
on Karnataka ore. The landed prices
of NMDC iron ore is (sic) almost 50
per cent of imported iron ore.
NE then is forced to askwhat

is forcing NMDC to sell at such
huge discounts when it is also
a professionally run corporate that
owns an explanation to not just its
shareholders but also the nation. Why
is it that despite such huge losses for
several years, NMDC and successive
governments have turned a blind eye
to such ill-conceived pricing policy
Ministry continues to guide the

State-owned company and ensure
that Indias largest iron ore miner
provides hefty discount in comparison to international landed prices.
While the Steel Ministry has
announced plans to set up a panel of
experts to study NMDCs pricing
mechanism and auction process, it is
unlikely to result in any substantial
dividend for miners due to pressure
from steel manufacturers. It is baffling how the Steel Ministry continues
to be the nodal ministry for NMDC
despite the obvious and glaring conflict of interest. Thus, the only way to
correct this anomaly, and rightfully
so, is to move NMDC from the Steel
Ministry to the Mines Ministry, failing which the discounted price mechanism would continue to exist.
Low base price fixation by

NMDC during e-auction and
an absence of competition
has meant that NMDC has
suffered an estimated
loss of `2,500 crore in
FY2014-15 alone
sale at a steep discount to imported

ore price, it was recently caught on the
wrong foot in the Supreme Court. In
its response to a civil suit that charged
NMDC of selling iron ore at exorbitant rates to steel manufacturers in
Karnataka, the company rebutted the
same and said the sale price of its iron
ore was at 50 per cent discount to the
price of imported ore!
The reply, which was filed on
August 22, 2016, says: Despite differential prices and all the contrary
28

that benefits only the buyer? While

steel is a key ingredient in nations
development and progress, steelmakers cannot arm twist State-run miners to sell their product at a 50 per
cent discount while they rake in the
moolah. A discount to international
benchmarks may be warranted to
encourage steel output, but it has to
be within a reasonable limit.
It is indeed surprising that even as
CAG has highlighted the anomalies in
NMDCs pricing policy, the Steel
Another way to correct the present

situation is by creating an index for
different regions, where iron ore is
sold based on the landed price of
imported iron ore and which truly
depicts the present day demand and
supply situation. Such index developed by the Indian Bureau of Mines
can be transparently used as guidance
for price and any discount to such a
price needs to be explained mandatorily by any seller. Such guidance and
mandatory law will only ensure the
correct valuation of Indian ore on par
with the imported ore. It will also
ensure that State-owned companies
do not bleed for the benefit of the
private sector. g
www.gfilesindia.com

COMMENT
humour mk kaw
The Unpardonable Sin
AHUL Baba has had many

tragedies in his life, but the
major calamity is the family in
which he has been born. This happens
to be the First Family of the country.
He did not choose to be born to Sonia
and Rajiv, nor was he prepared to
defend his title at an age when his
friends were starting to enjoy life.
Anything he says or does makes
news. The cameras of the electronic
media are eternally focussed on him
24x7. His whispers are noted, his
yawns counted and if he closes his
eyes , he is breaking news on national
television in all its channels.
Recently he committed the unpardonable sin of actually falling asleep
in the Lok Sabha. And horror of horrors! This happened while the atrocities being perpetrated on the Dalits
were being vociferously debated..
In the face of irrefutable audio-visual evidence, it was impossible to
deny the allegation as all politicians
are trained to do. Even then some
bravehearts sprang to his defence
with the explanation that while his
eyes were indubitably closed, he was
not actually sleeping.
Naturally, the other side riposted, if
he was not sleeping, what was
he doing?
Well, the defenders of the faith
said, we do not know what he was
actually doing at a particular point of
time. But knowing his hyperactive
mind which was always in a state of
intense introspection, they could
make an intelligent guess that he was
doing any of the following:
He might be reflecting on the problems faced by the country, which
www.indianbuzz.com
are various and numerous and difficult to resolve

Or, he might be cogitating on the
decline and fall of the Grand Old
Party, and internally and silently
lamenting the poor state of its present political presence;
Or, he might be ruefully recollecting the kind of leadership he had
provided to the party leading to the
aforementioned decline and fall;
Or, he might be reflecting on where
he should go this time for a fresh
bout of introspection and for how
long, without Mama raising her
arched eyebrows.
One particularly loyal and pugnacious lady argued at length that the
poor lad was not used to hot and
humid weather. He is compelled to
shout slogans and lead rallies for
hours together, thus rendering his
tender eyes dry from the inside. When
he enters a cool, air-conditioned
space like Parliament House, the natural tendency is to shut the eyes and
to let the tear glands work, so as to
irrigate the cornea with cool refreshing fluid. That is what the poor boy is
doing now, she concluded.
A very obedient looking specimen
In India we laboured under

the mistaken notion that
only illustrious leaders of
Nehrus stature could
succeed him as PM.
Journalists vied with one
another to predict, After
Nehru who?
from the South certified that Rahul

was very much awake and alert. Since
he entered the House that day, he had
personally consulted him on momentous issues and had received clear
intelligent decisions. Obviously when
he shut his eyes, he did not shut his
mind off. He was thinking.
Many more elaborate explanations
were offered, but we need not repeat
all of these. Let us see how his enemies view this phenomenon of
closed eyes.
A particularly vicious looking leader from Bihar, who carries the reputation of being a Bahubali, alleges that
Rahul enters Parliament as if he is a
part-owner. Obviously he labours
under the misapprehension that he
enjoys some kind of diplomatic
immunity once he enters the holy precincts. The speeches bore him stiff.
His snooze is a befitting response to
all these loudmouths who are
convinced that they are the equals of
Cicero and Mark Antony in
oratorical skills.
A more sedate critic says that we
are all being unfair to the young man.
This is not the appropriate age for a
young man about town being cooped
up for hours, listening to the ponderous pontifications of boring speakers
who speak for hours playing to the
gallery and mouthing sentiments they
do not feel. A normal youth of his economic status and upbringing would
consider it extremely plebeian behaviour to get up from bed anytime before
noon. His day would start around 3
pm and he would actually treat the
evening as a preparation for late night
parties, attending which is the really

29
serious business of living.

Some observers of the political
scene raise the question of whether
Rahul is fit to hold the post of Prime
Minister, for which he so obviously
aspires. They have obviously not read
the sage advice tendered by President
DGaulle of France: When I was a
child, I was told that anyone could
become President of France. Today I
know it to be so.
In India we laboured under the
mistaken notion that only illustrious
leaders of Nehrus stature could succeed him as PM. Journalists vied with
one another to predict, After Nehru
who?As events unfolded after his
demise, we had a succession of PMs
who included such luminaries as
Charan Singh, Chandrashekhar, VP
Singh, Narasimha Rao, IK Gujral,
Gulzari Lal Nanda and so on.
A particularly picturesque PM was
30

HD Deve Gowda, whose main claim

to fame till his elevation to the PMship
of this great country was that he slept
loudly and snorously on the back
benches of Parliament. When people
made fun of his great propensity to
sleep, he was unfazed. He held his
cabinet meetings the same way, leaving the conduct of his meetings to the
Cabinet Secretary. India was none the
worse for having a perpetually sleepy
Prime Minister.
HE moral of the story is that

Rahul will make an excellent
Head of Government. We have a
precedent to buttress this claim.
We cannot let the sleep habits of
leaders to pass judgement on their
suitability for leading the nation.
Narendra Modi is by all accounts a
successful PM, but we have it on his
own authority that he barely sleeps 3
hours in a day. A medical specialist

would immediately diagnose him as a
patient of sleep apnea and prescribe
the C Pap machine for improving his
breathing and give him at least six
hours of sleep every night.
A politically savvy leader is happy
to see Rahul wiling away his time in
useless activities like yawning, sleeping and so on. The more he sleeps, the
better for his political opponents. In
fact, it would be sound strategy to let
Rahul sleep on and let India become
Congress-free at the earliest juncture.
There should be an all-party conclave
to forge a strategy to lengthen the
duration of Rahuls daily dalliance
with Morpheus, the Greek God of
sleep.
If Rahul sleeps, India wins! g
MK Kaw is a former Secretary, Government
of India. (The views expressed are those of
the columnist.)
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KWWSVWZLWWHUFRPJOHVPDJD]LQH KWWSVZZZIDFHERRNFRPJOHVPDJD]LQH www.gfilesindia.com
BOOK REVIEW
by KALYANI JAIN
economy non-fiction
A saga of scams
was a little circumspect when asked

to write about a review of the book
Neta, Babu and Subsidy: Roundup
2000 to 2014, when the opposition
Congress party started a war of words
with the ruling BJP countering PM
Modis statement on the poor performance of the Indian economy during
the UPA rule. PM Modi had during a
nationally televised interview said:
Perhaps I should have published a
white paper on the poor state of the
economy that I inherited from the
UPA. No other book chronicles the
economic decline during UPA better
then Neta, Babu and Subsidy, with
statistical evidence drawn from RBI,
the Government of India data and
international and national institutions. The fact that it starts computing
data from the Atal Bihari Vajpayee
period to the time when the
Manmohan Singh government exited
from power, shows the slump that the
economy went into during the decade.
According to PM Modi, the economy was in dire straits during the
Congress rule, which both P
Chiidambaram and Anand Sharma of
the Congress strongly refuted, almost
immediately. Sharma even went on to
assert: The Prime Minister has no
understanding of the economy.
Former Prime Minister Manmohan
Singh had left the economy in a strong
condition. The average GDP growth
rate was 8.5 per cent during the 10
years of UPA. The Congressmans
anger was largely due to the statement of Modi in response to a question by Rahul Joshi, Group Editor of
Network 18, during a nationally
broadcast television interview of the
Prime Minister on the September 2,
2016. In the interview, Modi had said:
www.indianbuzz.com
written 224-page account of the government in power and is based on

data. The data is in form of 30 graphs,
few of which are reproduced here.
Title: Neta, Babu & Subsidy:

Roundup 2000 to 2014
Author: Sandip Sen
Publisher: Vitasta Publishing Pvt.
Ltd. (2014)
Price: `300
My first priority after forming the

government was that the atmosphere
of despair should be removed and to
create hope and belief in the country.
That doesnt happen with speeches.
Concrete steps need to be taken; it has
been shown to be done. And today,
after more than two years, I can say
with certainty that there is hope, not
just in the people of this country, the
trust of the entire world in India has
grown. There was a time when we
were being seen as a sinking ship. In
the BRICS, the I (representing India)
was seen as wobbly. Today it is said
that if there is a bright spot, it is India.
I think this in itself is a good way to
evaluate.
The book Neta, Babu and Subsidy,
written by Sandip Sen, a veteran journalist (now New Media and Projects
Editor at Delhi Press), and published
by Vitasta Publication, is a tightly
The Rupee Slump

Not surprisingly, the story starts
with the reasons behind the rupee
slump of 2013 and gives three graphs
from the RBIs external debt report
telling a story of rapid decline. In
2004 when the UPA government was
voted to power, the foreign exchange
debt was placed at $112.4 billion, well
covered by forex reserves. By March
2013, the external debt had grown by
350 per cent to $390 billion and the
forex reserves cover fell by 25 per cent
at $292.65 billion. It was not only the
rise of foreign debt, but the sharp rise
in short-term component of debt that
caused the rupee to skid from Rs 39 a
dollar to Rs 66 a dollar during the
intervening decade. The book reveals
how the short-term debt plus ECBs
escalated to an extent that 55 per cent
of the total debt became repayable
during the year 2013, causing the
punters to go short on the rupee which
saw Indias largest currency slump
since the nineties.
This is possibly why PM Modi is so
focused on foreign investment and
though external debt is still galloping
at 10 per cent YOY, the short-term
debt has come down to a reasonable
17 per cent.
Galloping Oil Subsidies
There are many other stories from
the rise in the CAD to the rampant
corruption in the coal sector, but none
more scathing than rise of oil and fertilizer subsidies along with imports
during the decade. The author says

35
that the Vajpayee regime in 2002 had

taken the decision to deregulate
petroleum prices and there was no
subsidy on petrol and diesel during
2002-03 and 2003-04. It was during
2004-05 that the UPA under
Manmohan Singh re-introduced and
stepped up subsidies on petrol and
diesel.
Petroleum subsidies that had
reduced to around Rs 5,430 crore in
2002-03 and were restricted to LPG
and kerosene during the NDA rule,
climbed 20-fold to touch Rs 103,292
crore in financial year 2008-09 at the
end of the UPA I rule, says the book,
giving graphical evidence from the
Petroleum Ministry data. By 2013, the
oil subsidies had risen 30-fold, causing a net payout of Rs 750,000 crore
36

with estimated leakage of Rs 150,000

crore, which the author claims was
the biggest contributor to black
money generated during the UPA
rule.
Fertilizer Import Scam
The book gives circumstantial evidence of several scams during the
UPA regime by showing horribly
skewed data due to faulty and corrupt
decision-making that derailed the
Indian economy. The most telling
data is that on imports of urea and its
subsidy. Urea, in which India was
self-sufficient during the Vajpayee
rule, suddenly saw rising imports
with the advent of the UPA, with the
imported fertilizer being heavily subsidised. Given the subsidies on
imports, bagging and transportation,

it became more profitable to import
and less profitable to produce urea
domestically, an unfortunate situation which continues even today. This
led to Indias domestic production
stagnating and India becoming the
largest importer of fertilizer globally.
In 2007-09, indiscriminate subsidised imports led to sharp international price hike of urea and DAP at a
time when the global economy was
going into deep recession.
The nexus of the netas (Finance
Minister P Chidambaram and the
then Fertilizer Minister Ram Vilas
Paswan) with the babus (Secretary,
Dr JS Sarma, Department of Fertilizer,
and other IAS officers) and the private
sector (Indian Potash Ltd IPL and
www.gfilesindia.com

IFFCO) run by PS Gahlaut and USA is

recounted vividly in the book as decisions get skewed to favour IPL, a privately held company, run by the babus
of India. Yes, it is a believe it or not
episode of corruption and malpractice where babus colluded with netas
and businessmen brazenly to siphon
off thousands of crores of subsidies
for IPL.
The Neta-Babu Collusion
with IPL
During 2007-08, when the fertilizer import scam occurred, Vijay
Chibber, IAS, Joint Secretary
Department of Fertilizer; M Gopal
Reddy IAS, MD MP State Co-op Mktg
Fed; GS Mangat, IAS, MD Madras
Fertilizer; and, Haribhai V Patel, IAS,
MD GSFC, were in the board of IPL, a
private sector company audited by
DelloiteHaskin & Sells. Sarma, IAS,
Secretary Department of Fertilizer,
issued a circular in May 2007 to the
State governments for payment of
advances to procurement agencies
MMTC/ IPL for fertilizer imports.
In June 2007, after the approval of
the committee of secretaries, which
comprised of all bigwigs of UPA babudom, the Department of Fertilizer
authorized IPL to import the entire
DAP requirement that was to be subsidised for domestic supply. The circular made IPL virtually a monopoly
buyer for India and set the international markets on fire as never before.
Within a few weeks, the international
market price of DAP doubled to well
above $500 per MT. For the whole of
2008, the price of DAP kept rising as
IPL kept on buying through a host of
agents close to New Delhis Neta,
Babu combine.
During 2006 and 2007, before
Sarma issued the circular to the State
governments, the turnover of IPL was
Rs 6,125 crore and the debt equity
www.indianbuzz.com
ratio of the company was a lowly 2:1.

Following the largesse of the UPA
government and interest-free advances, the IPL turnover jumped five-fold
to Rs 32,383 crore and the debt-equity ratio skyrocketed to 15:1 in the next
two years. The situation has not
improved much in the fertilizer sector
and even the Modi government is
unwilling to investigate the scam or
initiate reforms. This is possibly
because not only Chidambaram but
also Paswan, the all-powerful food
and civil supplies minister today, and
the babudom deeply involved in the
scams would get exposed.
The book Neta, Babu & Subsidy
has no friends. It exposes not only

many UPA ministers, but also Sonias
favored NGO community funded by
Canada and the US to stop mining
in India, oil barons, mining mafia
and fertilizer importers. It highlights
over a dozen scams that took place
across various sectors and gives the
circumstantial evidence of the decline
of the economy sector by sector, be it
mining or rural development. It is a
must read for IAS officers too, as it
shows that without the complicity of
the bureaucracy, the UPA could not
have pulled of the scams or ruined
the healthy economy that Vajpayee
had bestowed. g
by NARENDRA KUMAR
Inspiring tales of initiative
omen of Kuwait: Turning

Tides is the story of Kuwaiti
women who dared pursue
their dreams at times against immense
odds and made far-reaching contributions to the evolution of Kuwait as
a modern State.
This book features prominent
Kuwaiti women from the fields of politics, diplomacy, education, sports,
art, and business, who break stereotypes of Arab women as subservient
and shackled. In Women of Kuwait:
Turning Tides, the author, Chaitali B
Roy, delves into the lives of these
women and tries to find out what
makes them so strong and successful.
She follows their inspiring journey to
the top of their chosen fields.
Chaitali has her own share of laurels. She has been active in print
media and radio broadcasting in
Kuwait and India for more than 20
years. For the Arab Times, Kuwaits
premier English daily, and for Radio
Title: Women of Kuwait: Turning Tide

Author: Chaitali B Roy
Publisher: Har-Anand Publications,
New Delhi, 2016
Price: `695
Kuwait Foreign Service she has done

extensive research on a wide range of
subjects, including womens issues,
heritage, health, education, Islamic

37
art and culture, and socio-cultural

aspects of the Gulf region. She was
awarded a media fellowship for her
work on Kuwait by East-West Center,
an internationally recognised organization that fosters better understanding between the United States and
countries with major Muslim populations. Passionate about advocating
multi-culturalism, Chaitali has tried
to find connections between cultures
by actively curating and promoting
cultural events on known platforms.
Some of the achievers featured in
Turning Tides, like Sara Akbar, Dr
Masouma
Al
Mubarak,
and
Ambassador Nabeela Al Mulla are
well-known names, both in Kuwait
and elsewhere in the Middle East. But
there are some like Dr Haifa Al Ajmi,
the first woman to get a PhD in Heavy
Oil Management in the GCC. She is a
Bedouin woman who has, with the
active support of her family, risen
above her circumstances to pursue
her ambitions. These are stories that
inspire and need to be told. As a journalist, and as a woman, Chaitali wanted to capture the stories of some of
these women in a book. Her intention
was to preserve these narratives of
courage and to break stereotypes
about Kuwaiti women in particular
and Arab women in general. And that
she has achieved to a large extent.
While writing about these extraordinary women in Kuwait, the author
realised that many of the challenges
they face are global in nature while
cultural conservatism poses other
dilemmas. The stories put together in
this book are a must-read, whether
youre a resident of Kuwait familiar
with the culture or an outsider for
whom the lifestyle of women from
this part of the world is a mystery.
These women are not afraid of
challenges and hard work. Take Sara
Akbar for example. She is a leading
38

name in the field of oil and energy

who began her career as a chemical
engineer with the Kuwait Oil
Company. When Saddam Hussein
retreated from Kuwait, he burnt the
oil wellsand, it was Akbar who
urged and persuaded the management to allow her to join the firefighting operations, which she did.
Many of the women Chaitali has
written about have made history,
serving as the first women in a large
number of different positions. There
is HE Nabeela Al Mulla, first woman
ambassador from the GCC, first
woman from the Middle East and
South Asia to chair the board of the
International Atomic Energy Agency,

and first Arab woman to lead her
country at the UN. Dr Masouma Al
Mubrak served as Kuwaits first
female cabinet minister and was one
of the first three Kuwaiti women to
become a parliament member.
The individual journeys of women
featured in this book are representative of a larger picture. Their lives present interesting insights into a much
misunderstood society. This book will
serve as an important documentation
of the Arabian Gulf culture and the
women there who, undeterred by
socio-cultural and political barriers,
realised their dreams. g
by NARENDRA KUMAR
Emergency and the cold war
he Nation Declassified: India

and the Cold War World is the
first book that comprehensively
reveals the secret history of how
Indias Prime Ministers, their closest
advisers, diplomats, intelligence
agencies and military, coped with
transformations in world order
through the cold war era. Uncovering
thousands of pages of top secret
declassified documents, Indias first
book on Cold War history, The Nation
Declassified uncovers records of discussions between Indian Prime
Ministers and world leaders, diplomatic and defence delegations and
reconstructs tightly guarded secrets
of Indias strategic nuclear and space
programme from Homi Bhabha to the
underground tests of 1998.
The book also makes a reference to
the Emergency and Cold War and the
attitude of the two superpowers, the
US and USSR, towards it. According
to the author, both the US and USSR
Title: The Nation Declassified: India

and the cold war world
Author: Dr. Vivek Prahladan
Publisher: Har-Anand Publications
Price: `995
extended support and understanding

to Indira Gandhi during the
Emergency period. USSR did so
because their leadership had developed a sort of personal bond with her
www.gfilesindia.com

and her advisers as well as her direction of policy, whereas the US could
do very little and also India did not
quite interest them in that decade of
dtente as much as it had during
1962-63 when cold war was at its
peak. In talks with Kissinger, the MEA
file informs us, the Emergency was
explained by Indian officials as aimed
at extra constitutional challenge by a
motley group of reactionary elements
belonging to extreme left and right,
including communal and sectarian
elements. The State Department officials even acknowledged that economic growth had been good even
after the announcement of Emergency.
Records also tell us of meeting
between PMs special envoy DP Dhar
and Soviet Foreign Minister Gromyko
at Moscow on February 10, 1975.
Here, Dhar spoke of Indias internal
politics wherein neo-fascist and
reactionary groups were taking political advantage of the economic situation. Dhar added that all right-wing
strands had joined the JP movement.
He also said the PM was confident
about the elections, which were to be
held in a years time.
Another MEA file brief reveals
discussions between Kewal Singh and
Firyubin on November 25. According
to the brief, the Soviets were told that
Emergency
had
reinvigorated
national discipline, enthusiasm and
devotion to duty. It had also discredited and exposed the extreme right
and extreme left. Singh described
emergency as a very courageous
decision by the Prime Minister.
Firyubin conveyed whole-hearted
support to the Indian government
saying, the real meaning of democracy means that government should
work for the interest of the people
that kind of democracy was real
democracy. Firyubin described the
Jana Sangh as a fascist group. g
www.indianbuzz.com
by K SUBRAMANIAN
Understanding self
INCE most of the times we

completely identify with our
mind and thoughts, we fail to
observe and be aware of our thinking
pattern. The book, Awakening the
Thinking Mind: An Inward Journey,
traces the reason why we think,
behave and react the way we do and
how fear still overrules the human
psyche. While associating themselves
with their own mind and experiences,
the readers can explore and investigate various aspects of nature and
inner working of the mind. Readers
can, in simple ways, learn and experience the ways to calm their mind,
especially under stressed and distressed moments.
To address common problems like
anger, worrying, over thinking and
negative thoughts in our day-to-day
life, this book can surely act as a guiding tool. The book further explores
the central theme of New Age
Spirituality that advocates we are the
Title: Awakening the Thinking Mind

Author: Balvinder Kumar
Publisher: Winspire (LiFi
Publications)
Price: `495
sole architect of our own life, besides

touching a variety of issues that are
central to empowering and awakening of our thinking mind. g

39
BOOK EXTRACT
prime ministers atal behari vajpayee
Janardan Thakur started

his career in journalism
with the nationalist
Patna
daily,
The
Searchlight, in December
1959. In his long and
distinguished career
spanning the reign of
each Prime Minister
since Independence,
Thakur reported from
the thick of some of the
most
momentous
contemporary events at home and afarJPs
total revolution, the Emergency, the bristling
emergence of Sanjay Gandhi, the fall and rise of
Indira Gandhi and then the rise and fall of Rajiv,
the Kremlin of Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev, the Soviet
invasion of Afghanistan and Khomeinis revolution
in Iran, Ronald Reagans re-election in an America
swinging Right, VP Singhs ascent as a messiah
with tainted magic and the rasping run to power
of the BJP. Thakurs journalism, from the very
start, broke traditional moulds of reportage and
writing, going beyond the story that meets the
eye and into processes and personalities that
made them happen. His stories on the Bihar
famine of the mid-1960s and the manmade floods
that ravaged the State were a sensation. He was
perhaps alone in predicting defeat for Indira
Gandhi in 1977 and again singular in exposing the
corroded innards of the Janata Government that
followed. A Jefferson Fellow at the East-West
Center, Hawaii, in 1971, Thakur moved to New
Delhi as a Special Correspondent for the Ananda
Bazar Patrika group of publications in 1976. He
went freelance in 1980 and turned syndicated
columnist. In 1989-91, he was Editor of the
fortnightly Onlooker, and The Free Press Journal.
Thakur authored All The Prime Ministers Men,
probably the most successful of the crop of books
that followed the Emergency. His All the Janata
Men, the story of the men who destroyed the first
non-Congress government in New Delhi, was
equally successful.
He passed away on July 12, 1999.
40

Jaoon to jaoon
kahan?
T is not for journalists to make predictions. Even so, I

had made one, and instead of hedging it with ifs and
buts as the clever ones do, I had stuck my neck out. I
have just returned from the BJP session in Bombay, I
wrote in a syndicated column, with one certainty: Atal
Behari Vajpayee will, sooner or later, become the countrys
Prime Minister. I am not saying he may, I am saying he
will. Mine is not a prediction based on the stars, for I am
no astrologer. Its a prediction based on a close hard look
at the man and his party. Vajpayee leads a party of the
future. Both have blossomed.
That was in December 1980, still the first year of Indira
Gandhis second stint in power, and the march of events
were to make the prediction look so utterly foolish, especially at the end of 1984 when both Vajpayee and the
Bharatiya Janata Party were suddenly down in the dumps.
So much else was yet to happen on the political stage:
the twists and turns, the ups and downs, the violent twitches of the polity. By the time the BJP got back into reckoning, it looked an altogether different entity and Atal Behari
Vajpayee himself was virtually in the dungeon, a sad old
man walking his aging Apso...
But perish the thought. Here he was now, suddenly
resplendent, uncapping his Mont Blanc, putting his signature on history. His finest hour. There were those who
thought Atal Behari Vajpayee had only lent himself to
humiliation that was round the comer, but they were obviously missing both the beauty and the import of the occasion. Some of the best things in life are shortlived. Didnt
the Bard say a lily of a day is fairer far than May? What is
the life expectancy of a butterfly? Two weeks!
Vajpayee lasted for a day less than two weeks, but before
he fell he left a deep niche in the hearts and minds of the
people, something that could never be assured if he had
lasted longer. Like Miltons Lucifer, wrote Jug Suraiya,
Mr Atal Behari Vajpayee has been magnificent in his fall...
the man who is being hailed as the once and future Prime
Minister seems to have wooed and won the hearts of the
nation, thereby perhaps irreversibly altering the future
course of the on-going epic of Indian democracy.
Perhaps at that moment, this was the script that suited
the BJP most: a Vajpayee government ending abruptly,
leaving the people with whetted appetite. For the brief
www.gfilesindia.com

interregnum, the party could never have found a more

charming impresario than Atal Behari. Dream merchants
are at their best in fleeting appearances, more so if they are
to be followed by a bunch of bizarre characters, as was
soon to happen. Perhaps it could have suited the BJP better if the President had given in to the pressures of the
Congress and the other parties and denied it the chance of
forming a government. The party would then have become
a martyr in the eyes of the people or at least the nonpartisan electorate which really counts in the final analysis. The
BJP would have gone to the streets in protest, and would
have won public support if only because of the unseemly
spectacle of 20 so-called parties and dozens of MPs scrambling for a piece of the power cake.
There was little that Atal Behari Vajpayee
could have done with the Presidents offer
except to accept it. By that morning, the
party leaders were said to have veered round
to the view that it would be better to let the
other side play out its burlesque. Unlike the
other parties, the BJP was at a truly historic
juncture. It was finally at the threshold of
power, but unless it was careful it could damage itself irrevocably. If it did just what other
power-hungry parties did indulge in wanton horse-trading it would have dropped
to the common level, never to rise again. And
in any case, 70 short of a majority was too big
a gap to fill.
For the BJP, the obvious thing to do was to put up the
best possible face while the going was good, and with Atal
Behari Vajpayee in the lead that came almost naturally. He
had just to be himself. Some of what Prime Minister
Vajpayee told the nation in the first few days may have
sounded like utter balderdash to the Hindu zealots, but
there was no knowing how many new supporters the party
must have won by its leaders sweet reasonableness.
Projecting the right image was all that mattered at that
point. The party had finally put its stamp on the Delhi
throne and that in itself was an important milestone. There
had been people round the country who had believed that
the BJP could never come to power at the Centre. Perhaps
the party itself did not believe it. In a way, Vajpayee was
himself surprised: to the extent that he said if the party had
known it would do so well, it would have made a better
selection of candidates in some of the states. There were
those who believe that the mere fact that Vajpayee had
been projected as the partys choice for the Prime Ministers
post showed that the leadership was convinced that it was
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not going to make it this time at least not on its own.

There was much sense in that. Vajpayee was not quite the
man to implement the BJPs real agenda, which could happen only if the party had a majority by itself.
That was the most important thing for the BJP: to win
power at the Centre on its own. Then alone could the party
put its real seal on the countrys history. In a coalition
where it was forced to make compromises on most of its
major national objectives for the sake of survival, the BJP
could only bide its time and use the occasion to create a
more favourable impression on the electorate. Everyone
knew that the moment Vajpayee went off the stage, it
would be choc-a-block with a chaotic bunch of characters
who could never agree to agree on anything.
They were united on only one thing: to get
rid of the BJP.
For the rest, there was just bedlam. Even
Ramakrishna Hegde, one of the architects of
the Janata Dals victory in Karnataka, had
questioned the credibility of a government
formed by a so-called front of 17 parties
which had been fighting one another until
the other day. If only the bunch of them had
listened to him in good time, the scene would
perhaps have been very different.
HE BJP knew its final round still lay in

the future, but it was hard for it to
resist the temptation of forming a government once, to get to the summit, as it were, if only for
some days. Perhaps it was important for the partys morale.
Perhaps even more important for Vajpayee himself.
I feel my life has been wasted, Vajpayee said in
December 1983. He felt he had contributed nothing concrete to society. He had looked a lonely, disenchanted
man. He had no desire to be the Prime Minister, not
because he had become an escapist but because politics
had become too murky. Politicians as a class had failed, he
thought. Indira Gandhi was then the Prime Minister, once
again on the decline, trying hard to prop up Rajiv Gandhi
as her successor. I am sure even Mrs Gandhi in her
moments of solitude must be realising that she has failed,
Vajpayee had said.
He was in a state of depression, out of sync with his
partys mindset. There was nothing of the euphoria of
1980-81, when Behram Contractor had written with his
characteristic chutzpah: This week, I met the future Prime
Minister of India, Atal Behari Vajpayee. Not that Vajpayee
makes any such claims. He says: That is all nonsense. I

41
BOOK EXTRACT
dont believe in it. I cant become Prime Minister, because

I dont belong to the Nehru family.
Vajpayee was obviously being coy at that time. Several
pundits of the press and pandits of the astral world had
predicted that he would be the king. He was heading a new
party with lots of promise in it, and he had certainly looked
like having the prime ministerial timber, notwithstanding
all the efforts of the likes of Subramanian Swamy to rubbish him. Some had thought Vajpayee was a lotus that had
blossomed in the muck. That bit about his not belonging
to the Nehru family was no more than a good-humoured
gibe: the familys monopoly had been broken in March
1977. That was a watershed in Indian politics, and if Indira
Gandhi had swept back to power it was only because the
overweening ambitions of the Janata gerontocrats had got
the better of them.
One sure indication was the array of prime ministerial
prospects bandied around in the 1980s. Vajpayee of course
seemed to have quite a fan club in the press, with even the
usually cynical commentator, Sundar Rajan, picking him
as his candidate for Prime Minister: ...he (Vajpayee)
made a profound impression on my mind as a sensitive,
warm, gentle, balanced and thoughtful person qualities
which should help to make a good Prime Minister.
VER the previous decade, no other all-India party

had made such rapid gains as the BJP. From onefourteenth share of the national vote in 1984, the
BJP had climbed to one-ninth share in 1989 to a onefourth share in 1996.
The BJP had won just two seats in 1984. In 1989, it won
87. In 1990, it won assembly elections in virtually all of the
north: Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and
Himachal. In 1991, it was the second largest party in
Parliament after the Congress with 119 seats.
The problem for Vajpayee had arisen after the stunning
defeat in 1984. The RSS had already expressed its disappointment with Vajpayees stewardship of the party and
had turned to the No.2 man, Lal Krishna Advani.
The BJP government lasted just 13 days, the shortest in
Indian history. In his final oration in Parliament, Vajpayee
spoke almost as though he were delivering a campaign
speech. He quoted a couplet from Subramania Bharati,
prefacing it with the announcement that the Tamil language did not pose any problems of understanding for
him... It was a virtuoso performance, reflective and philosophical, and as he led his flock out of Parliament, the
mood was upbeat. He had projected a face of moderation
and responsibility before the nation. But this also made
42

him the odd man out in his own party.

A few days after Vajpayees government fell, the famour
Urdu litterateur, Ali Sardar Jafri, wrote a letter to the former Prime Minister, telling him he had never in his life sat
before the TV set as on May 27 and 28. He thought it had
been a tremendous waste of peoples time because they
had expected a debate on the fate of democracy in India
and what they got was like what Ghalib had said: Hota hai
shab-o-roz tamasha mere aagey every day and every night
a circus happens before my eyes. Another famous writer,
Mulk Raj Anand, wrote to Vajpayee after his fall:
Undoubtedly you stand out in our country today as the
tallest among contemporary leaders. And there seems to
be genuine respect for you from many people who are far
removed from the BJP and its political and social manifesto... If you had been an independent, you would have
been the unanimous choice of all parties as Prime Minister
of our country...
These were not sentiments which could have gone down
well with the BJP and the Sangh parivar. Rarely was
Vajpayee fully in tune with the general ethos of the partys
hard core. While the party was opposing the holding of
elections in Kashmir, Vajpayee was privately urging
Farooq Abdullah to contest. As the party president during
1980-1986, he had tried to turn the BJP into a moderate
umbrella party, which the conservative sections did not
like at all. They were pushing LK Advani to take over and
save the party.
Until not very long ago, Vajpayees moderate line had
been absolute anathema to the Sangh Parivar. In December
1992, Vajpayee had walked out of a meeting of the BJP
national executive in sheer disgust, and there was not a
ripple in the party. In fact, at one point some of the party
hardliners had thought of organising an agitation against
Vajpayee, and some had even wanted him thrown out of
the party if he refused to take back his expressions of regret
over the demolition of the Babri Masjid. They were angry
that Vajpayee had not even cared to attend the kar seva.
But it had then dawned on the party leadership that the
aggressive agitational approach was harming the BJPs
image as a responsible, disciplined party, and was creating
suspicion in the minds of the elite and the middle class in
the country. Worse still, it had suffered in the eyes of the
world. The BJP had all along been highly perceptive to
Western perceptions of Indian politics. Interaction
between the party and the Western diplomats had grown
in recent days, but the demolition of the Babri Masjid and
the countrywide riots and disturbances that followed had
shaken their confidence in the party. The responsible
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leaders of the party, they thought, had lost their initiative

to the firebreathing hardliners.
The forces of militant Hindutva had tasted blood and it
was not easy to put them down. They had taken the drivers
seat in the BJP. Came the elections in Maharashtra and
Gujarat and the tide of Hindutva was on the rise again. The
Vaghela revolt in Gujarat, which later brought down the
BJP government was essentially against the vice-like grip
that the RSS had come to have on the administration. It
brought into sharp focus the divide in the party, its vulnerability and its limitations. If it was not clear to the party
leadership before the crisis in Gujarat, it became evident
after it that there was no way they could win power at the
Centre on the own. A coalition was the best it could hope
for, and for this they needed to project a leader with a

wider acceptability. Vajpayee was the obvious man.
What set Vajpayee apart from the general run of politicians was his charm, which had become such a rare commodity in politics. He could charm even the birds out of
the trees, simply by being what he is a charming human
being. Even the Communists who detest the BJP, and
more so the RSS, change their tone when they speak of
Vajpayee. Ah, he is different. There is nothing of the
Hindu fanatic about him. The RSS does not trust him.
That was his real problem.
Vajpayee has often been called as the right man in the
wrong party (or the wrong man in the Right). After the
BJP was formed, there was the constant tussle between
those who wanted to the party to join hands with other
opposition parties and those who wanted to go it alone.
Some who were clamouring for outright merger claimed
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they had the support of the party president, Vajpayee.

Whatever his line and whether he felt thwarted or not, he
was an unhappy president, torn in opposite directions,
until a point was reached when he began to doubt whether
his vehicle itself was the right one.
OMETIME in the late 1980s, when he had been

sidelined by the hardliners and had become something of a recluse, I had asked Vajpayee why he
could not leave the BJP and forge a new path for himself.
He knew he was totally out of sync with the party, which
was using him only for his public appeal and his catch-all
personality. Even his foster daughter, Gunu, a spirited
young lady who was almost like his alter-ego and knew too
well his despairs and frustrations, had echoed my question, Yes, Baapji, why dont you leave it and go on your
own? After one of his long pauses so characteristic of him,
as though the poet in him were plumbing some deep nooks
of the mind, Vajpayee had said with a smile, Jaoon to jaoon
kahan? It had seemed to me that he lacked the tenacity or
the gambler instinct of, say, Indira Gandhi, who could
build a new vehicle in the middle of a lost battle and push
on to victory. With even a little of that grit and determination, with a little of that dynamism and willingness to take
a risk, Vajpayee would have been a sure winner. He had to
move from being just a crowd-catcher to a vote-catcher,
and for that he needed to create an organisation which was
in tune with himself. It was a tall order, but Vajpayee could
hardly achieve his full potential and give his best through
easy short-cuts.
Nobody knew this better than Vajpayee. Talking to him
on the state of Indian politics at that time, I had asked him
about the streak of escapism in him. No, not escapism,
he had said, and then added, yes, escapism from this
murky politics. And what was it that had made Indian
politics so murky? After a long thoughtful pause, he had
said : Look at the condition of the country. I am sure even
Mrs Gandhi in her moments of solitude must be realising
that she has failed... The politician as a class has failed.
Why? Because they gave up the idea which inspired our
freedom fighters that politics was not a profession but a
mission. Look at the situation today. Everybody is in a
hurry to grab whatever position he can. Nobody has the
patience to wait.
Maybe it was too late in the day for Vajpayee to change
his vehicle. He had been a part of the Sangh family for
decades, an old soldier of the RSS who had turned up for
the Sakhas and ceremonial rallies of the RSS in the obligatory khakhi shorts. What was perhaps difficult for the RSS

43
BOOK EXTRACT
to contain was Vajpayees larger view of life and polity. If

I hadnt come to the RSS, Vajpayee had once told the exJan Sangh president, Balraj Madhok, I would have been
a Communist. Vajpayee had joined the RSS in 1941, when
he was only 15 years old, but he had also become a member
of the Indian National Congress (1942-43), and was associated with the Students Federation in 1945.
Vajpayee had become a great admirer of Jawaharlal
Nehru and had supported the basic tenets of his foreign
policy. In one of his early speeches in the Lok Sabha, in
1957, he said that even if some other party had come to
power instead of the Congress, and if there had been
another Prime Minister in place of Nehru, the country
would still have followed the policy of non-alignment. The
young Jan Sangh MP had made a great impact, especially
when he said that one needed eloquence to speak but both
eloquence and restraint to remain silent. Nehru who had
been listening intently, got up to intervene, a very unusual
thing for him to do, and said he himself did not like to get
involved in every world issue, but what can I do? They
dont let me alone!
was difficult to fight.

One of the real reasons for starting the Jan Sangh was
to oppose the Nehru line, for the Gurus of the RSS realised
that without undermining it nothing new could take roots.
Not surprisingly they went all out to debunk the personality cult that had grown around Nehru and was sought to be
created around Indira Gandhi. They gave it an ideological
cover: it was against the tenets of the Jan Sangh to give
undue importance to an individual it was the work that
mattered, not the man who did it. That was supposed to be
the mindset of RSS pracharaks who worked almost anonymously, and often did great work, without ever coming
into the limelight.
T a reception in the Indian Embassy in Washington,

in the early 1960s, Nehru had introduced Vajpayee
to Dag Hammarskjoeld, then the UN General
Secretary, as Indias blooming young parliamentarian.
When Nehru died, Vajpayees was one of the most eloquent tributes: The sun has set! He described Nehru as
a thoroughly honest man and an idealist who was never
afraid to negotiate, and never negotiated with fear. He
was so choked with emotion that he burst into impulsive
tears. Many years later, as the incumbent foreign minister
in the Janata government, he said in an interview: He
(Nehru) was a great leader. He may have committed mistakes. Who does not? But he gave dignity and sophistication to Indias political life and culture, and enriched
them...
Vajpayee himself is something of a Nehru, albeit of a
homespun variety. Which has been the main ground for
the Sangh Parivars allergy toward Vajpayee. We dont
believe in personality cult this was the constant refrain
of the Jan Sangh which later metamorphosed into the
Bharatiya Janata Party. It stemmed from a deep resentment against the Nehru cult which was strong in those
days. The Jan Sanghs dislike for Jawaharlals political
philosophy or world view was one thing, its dislike for his
personality quite another. They perceived him as an
Anglophile who had hijacked the freedom movement from
the truly Indian patriots. Nehrus aura, or call it charisma,
44

That was the tradition to which LK Advani belonged. A

quiet solid pracharak working beaver-like without ever
projecting himself. Vajpayee, on the other hand, was seen
as a fish from quite a different kettle, so Nehruvian in his
mould that many of the puritanical Sanghites just could
not accept him as one of them. But much as they abhorred
the liberal colourful Vajpayee whom Nehru had patted and
praised for his eloquence, and who could go euphoric over
the brave deeds of Indira and call her Durga, they just
couldnt do without him. He was their vote-catcher, the
man who brought them recognition and applause from far
and near. The two leaders, Vajpayee and Advani, were
quite unlike each other: While the one could soar to poetic
heights and win praise from all sides, the other was cool
and calm and earthy. For a long time the two leaders were
complementary; each had respect for the other.
To begin with, there was hardly any question about
which of the two was the partys public face. At the BJPs
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Bombay session in December 1980, the most strident new

slogan was: Desh ka neta kaisa ho, Atal Behari jaisa ho!
Many hardliners had scoffed at it even at that time. But
those were not the thoughts of LK Advani, at least at that
point. It was only much later, after the Rath Yatra, that
Advani came to the forefront. For a time Vajpayee virtually withdrew into his own little cell, writing poetry, parliamentary memoirs, walking his Apso, watching movies on
the video, and so on.
Whatever Vajpayees personal beliefs about the BJP or
the Sangh Parivar, he has always been cautious on this
score. Whenever attempts are made to highlight his separateness, he has been quick to correct the impression and
assert that he is part and parcel of the Sangh Parivar. Even
so, he could not contain his inner feelings after the fall of
the Janata Party. In August 1979, he wrote a signed article
in The Indian Express in which he first defended the role of
the Jan Sangh component of the government, and then
added: The RSS, claiming to be a social and cultural
organisation, should have taken greater pains to demonstrate that they did not seek a political role. Patronising a
press that takes sides in the sordid politics of power,
involvement in youth bodies that interact with political
parties, participating in trade union rivalries such as the
one which brought enormous misery to the people of Delhi
by callously cutting off the water supply these do not
help an organisation to establish its apolitical credentials.
It is possible that some people genuinely feel apprehensive
about the RSS. A certain onus accordingly devolved on the
RSS, an onus that has not been discharged effectively by
the RSS. Its repudiation of the theocratic form of the state
was welcome, yet the question could legitimately be asked
Why does it not open its doors to non-Hindus? Recent
statements of the RSS chief, Mr Deoras indicate that nonHindus are being encouraged to join the organisation. A
natural corollary of this process would be clear renunciation by the RSS that by Hindu Rashtra it means the Indian
nation which includes non-Hindus as equal members.
In December 1984, Vajpayee had suffered a blistering
defeat from his home ground, Gwalior, at the hands of his
colleague, Vijayaraje Scindias son, Madhavrao. In mid1986, he was back in Parliament but it was not quite the
same Vajpayee. Some had called it a back-door entry,
because getting into the Rajya Sabha for a man of his
standing in the Lok Sabha did not quite behove him. The
Upper House was certainly enriched by his presence, but
he could not have waited until the next general elections?
He was not just another politician, he was the one against
whom all pollsters had compared the ratings of other
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prime ministerial candidates. In 1982, the Indian Institute

of Public Opinion carried out a poll to ascertain the popularity of some of the top political leaders of the country.
Indira Gandhi was on top of the heap, but the answer to her
was Atal Behari Vajpayee, with all other leaders of the
opposition lagging pathetically behind, like lost stragglers.
It was not just a freak poll. The survey showed that Vajpayee
had maintained a steady score right from when he was
first included in the personality surveys in 1977. The
broad picture, said the poll, seems to be that, of all opposition leaders Vajpayee has a standing in his own right and
it will not be raised or lowered in Janata-type coalition. In
1986, the MARG conducted a poll, and it put him as the
answer to Rajiv Gandhi who was then at the peak of popularity. The notable point was that while Rajiv Gandhi was
the Prime Minister marching the country into the 21st
century, Vajpayee was not even heading the BJP anymore; hardliners had elbowed him out. He was not even an
MP then, having lost in Gwalior. The highs and lows of
politics had not affected him. Of how many Indian leaders
could one say that? Vajpayee is definitely a cut above the
rest, especially after the sad departure of Indira Gandhi.
ETTING into the Rajya Sabha had certainly been a

compromise for him. In his mental make-up there
is a streak of strong pessimism, or rather of defeatism, which at crucial moments pulls him down and keeps
him from soaring to the heights he is capable of achieving.
It could be the poet in him that pushes him toward escapism and detachment. At one point, when the Janata Party
government was moving towards its denouement, he was
in hospital, in a state of acute mental turmoil. The poet
welled up:
Raah kaun si jaaun main
Chaurahe par luta cheer
Pyade se pit gaya wazir
Chalun aakhri chaal ya
Bazi chhod virakti rachaun main...
(Which way should I go? We are stripped at the crossroad ...A mere pawn has beaten the minister. Should I
make the final thrust or should I quit the game and
renounce it all?)
He was often torn from within. Jaoon to jaoon kahan? It
was almost a Hamletian dilemma: to be or not to be. In
December 1992, when the Babri Masjid was pulled down
and Vajpayee was totally out of place in that raving
madness of Hindutva, he was at another crossroad, as it
were, but to break away was difficult. It was too late a stage
in life. He was already 66 and not in the pink of health.

45
BOOK EXTRACT
What was more, he perhaps lacked the kind of grit and

determination, the energy and the gusto which Indira
Gandhi had in such great measure. With his kind of
political and personal magnetism, Vajpayee could have
forged a shining new instrument to beat all others. Maybe
it was an inbuilt phlegmatism and poetic pessimism which
kept dragging him down.
VER since that climactic day in December 1992,

when the Babri Masjid was razed to the ground, the
BJP had been salivating for power. Time and again it
has fancied itself being just a heart-beat away from the
Delhi throne: Just one little push and well be there! After
the Masjid was gone, one of the BJP pundits had exulted
how LK Advani was already being treated as the Prime
Minister by the officials of Uttar Pradesh. He made it
seem as though it was a matter of days before Narasimha
Rao would tumble and the crown would be on Advanis
head. But the damned thing had slipped through the fingers. Not again, the BJP leaders reassured themselves: this
time we shall go for the kill. Wait for the final knock-out!
In 1996, they thought they were playing the finals and the
team managers were giving the players a bit of pep-talk
before they went into the ring.
Killer instinct was their catchword. By no means a new
one, except that it was now being shouted from the pulpit.
The partys think-tanks had been full of it for years. Ever
since the early 1980s they had been bewailing: Ah, if only
the BJP had the right political culture, if only it had the will
to power, if only it had the killer instinct. The blame was
often laid at the door of the mother organisation, the RSS:
its soporific complacency; its gradualistic approach: its
preoccupation with building the nations moral fibre
rather than acting as an escalator to power and so on. The
RSS was all dressed up, they bemoaned, but had nowhere
to go. At times, they even blamed it on the Indian people
themselves: their penchant for hero-worship, their
tendency to deify the Gandhis, their susceptibility to the
Congress hypocrisy and the jargon of the Left. There was
nothing the Jana Sanghis hated more than the personality
cult, until they discovered that they needed to project a
face to win elections, that they too needed a name to
complete the slogan Desh ka neta kaisa ho...?
No matter what the goal the Golwalkars of the Sangh
may have set for their political front, it never imagined it
would one day be within striking distance of power at the
Centre, until it began apeing its biggest enemy, the
Congress, quite openly. By the mid-1970s, the party had
realised that it had reached its limit in the power and could
46

not rise any higher without a new ladder. It needed both

respectability and acceptability, and so it had latched on to
Jayaprakash Narayan. The party was just beginning to
learn the ropes of realpolitik. What had helped was the
camaraderie developed in captivity during the Emergency;
the Jan Sanghis suddenly began to look better even to
politicians who wouldnt have touched them with a barge
pole earlier.
But if 1977 was a big leap forward for the then Jana
Sangh, the mother organisation was still wavering, still
unsure whether it was nobler to hang on to the apron
strings of Mother Indira or to go on backing its political
front. The late Balasaheb Deoras had seemed more
impressed with Indira Gandhis visions of a revived
Aryavarta than with the petty politicking of the Jana
Sanghi stalwarts. Both the Dowager Empress and the RSS
chief seemed to have learned some lessons from the

Emergency. While she had sent one of her first copies of
her book Eternal India to Deoras, as though to convince
him how good a Hindu she was, Deoras had passed the
message to his army, which was still recovering from the
trauma of the Emergency, that they need not identify
themselves too much with the BJP, which in any case
looked like such an adulterated version of the Jana Sangh,
without the familiar symbol, deep, without the familiar
communal rantings. The post-1980 Indira Gandhi had
looked like a far better Hindu leader to many in the RSS
than Vajpayee or even Advani who seemed to be pulling
the party away from its moorings. If they were to have an
umbrella party, then why not Indiras Congress? The lady
at least knew how to capture (and recapture) power!
But the political scenario had changed. For the first time
the BJP did not have to suffer from its past inferiority
complex. There was no Gandhi, no charismatic personality
to contend with on the national scene. The protagonists
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were all ordinary people, all a little in thrall of the Hindutva

genie let loose by the Sanghis, all surprised by their
permissive ways, their promiscuous couplings, their
battle-cries. What gave the BJP battle-cry its sharpness
was the change in the RSS itself. There was no Deoras for
the BJP politicians to contend with, or to convince of the
rightness of their political strategies. The new patriarch of
the Sangh happened to be as much a political creature as
they themselves. Prof. Rajendra Singh was not a direct
player in the game, but the insiders said he not only loved
power but understood the mechanics and arithmetic of
power. What was more, he would not hold back anything
that might help the BJP attain the goal, even if it came to
sleeping with the enemy. There had seldom been such a
rapport between Deoras and the BJP president as there
was between Prof. Singh and Advani. Made for each other,
some said. The others didnt really matter, neither Vajpayee
nor Murli Manohar Joshi. While Vajpayee had to be
tolerated as a valuable showboy who could project a
liberal face when required, Joshi had been tamed into a
obedient boy who could carry out errands with a grin on
his face. The ones to watch were really the back- room of
Ambani, pardon the slip, Advani.
But it was still nothing more than posturing. Despite the
battle cries and the muscle-flexing and all the talk about
killer instinct, the party was still queasy on the inside. It
was readying itself for the but had only blunt weapons in
its hands, not good enough for ultimate strike. For want of
anything positive to show for itself, it had to depend mostly on manna from the heavens: Shah Bano, Ayodhya,
Kashi, Mathura, Harshad Mehta, Swadeshi, Civil Code,
Sushil Sharma.
The brief but euphoric 13-day stint as the countrys
Prime Minister, changed Vajpayees persona. He was in a
new avatar. Even the people of India felt here was a man
who had it in him to make a good prime minister. It
changed things for Vajpayee himself, in terms of greater
confidence, an air of optimism instead of his characteristic
pessimism, and the new conviction that he and his party
could do it. He became more pragmatic, more positive,
and more willing to treat politics as a game of power.
Time and again during the two years when the United
Front looked in a precarious position, about to tumble,
Vajpayee made hectic efforts to gather support in the badly
fragmented Lok Sabha in order to stake his claim once
again. He did not succeed, but he was now positive that he
could be the Prime Minister again, if only after fresh
elections. Most public opinion polls established that he
was far ahead of his rivals.
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There were many in the Sangh Parivar who insisted that

the BJP was projecting Vajpayee only because he had the
most charming, most acceptable face, but that Advani was
a more suitable man. Indeed, there had been a lot of noise
about the differences between the top leaders of the party.
At the height of the Ayodhya crisis, when Advani was
riding the crest of the Hindu wave, I had started writing a
quick biography of the rising leader and was trying hard to
think of an appropriate tide. One of my friends in the BJP
came up with a suggestion: Why dont you call the book
The Man India Awaits? It had seemed like an apt and catchy
title. It had then appeared that the demolition of the Babri
Masjid would sweep away Narasimha Rao who had
hibernated while the disputed shrine was being knocked
down brick by brick. Vandalism or not, defiance of
Supreme Court orders or not, the Hindu zealots were
riding high, and on the highest crest was Advani who had
been present during the demolition and had even given
vocal support to the vandals. He was being hailed as the
man of the hour, and the more Raos impotent government
went after him the higher he seemed to rise in peoples
estimation, or at least of a section of the people of India.
When Advani was jailed, he was treated with such kidgloves by the administration that it almost seemed it had
accepted him as the Prime Minister-in-waiting. And all
this while, Advanis senior in the party and admittedly the
more charismatic leader, Vajpayee was in a state of deep
sulk. He had begun by expressing shock and dismay at the
demolition of the Masjid, and even his retraction did not
convince the hardliners in the party. That was a low point
for Vajpayee, and a high one for Advani.
UT politics changes fast. The tide turned. The highflying Advani was suddenly in a trauma after his
name figured in the scandalous Jain Diary, as one
of the leaders involved. It was a trauma not only for Advani,
who suddenly decided to quit the Lok Sabha and not return
till he had been cleared of the charge, but even more for the
BJP. It did not know which way to look.
Had it not been for the hawala charge, which of course
was eventually dropped, Advani and not Vajpayee would
have been the Sangh Parivars choice to head the shortlived government at the Centre. But then there were those
who said that it was precisely because of the foreknowledge that the government could not last that the BJP hardliners allowed Vajpayee to be the Prime Minister. He was
their fall guy. g
Excerpted from Prime Ministers: Nehru to Vajpayee by
Janardan Thakur, Eeshwar Prakashan, New Delhi

47
STOCK DOCTOR
dr gs sood
Equities the best option
HE market may be looking

overvalued from a historical
perspective, but the liquidity
driven rally has got another boost
with the US Feds decision to defer the
rate hike yet another time. Though no
economic pickup is expected for a
couple of quarters as yet, the market
may continue to drive upwards due
to other factors. The crackdown
on black money will push liquidity
into the white economy and boost
consumption, and is also likely to drive
investments away from gold and real
estate to financial assets. The clearing
of balance sheets of public sector
banks and emergence of efficient
private banks and NBFCs makes
the financial system more robust.
The thrust on road construction and
infrastructure will boost demand for
capital and other goods. For the last
two years, corporate earnings have
remained depressed but the same is
likely to pick up in the next two years
aided by good monsoon and rise in
rural demand, easier interest rate
regime and the impact of the 7th pay
commission.
However, global markets remain
worrying and with FIIs controlling
more than 20 per cent of the market,
their exit may cause ripples. The
banking system of the developed
world is vulnerable, especially post
Brexit as the value of collaterals have
come down with a decline in real
estate prices. At the same time, net
interest margins have been shrinking
due to negative or near zero interest
rates. The US presidential election
may bring in further uncertainty and
the warlike situation building up
between India and Pakistan may

make the market nervous.
Improving fundamentals such as
declining inflation and current
account deficit have bolstered the
possibility of a rate cut. Also, the flow
of more stable money such as retail
investors contribution through SIPs,
EPFO and pension funds coupled
with diminishing supply of quality
stocks may even witness a runaway
bull market as soon as the sentiment
and corporate earnings improve.
Moreover, other investment options
have been fast losing their attraction.
The real return on bank deposits will
be abysmally low due to taxability of
the same. Real estate has its own set
of problems with investors having
burnt their fingers at the hands of
reckless builders and parking of black

money getting difficult. Gold has
already been at levels that makes its
risk reward equation adverse. Equities
are, therefore, the best option and the
latest data proves the same with the
household savings in financial assets
increasing to 10.8 per cent of GNDI
(Gross National Disposable Income)
in FY16 from 10 per cent in FY15
most of it going for investment in
shares. Investment in debentures still
remains low at 0.7 per cent of GNDI.
India remains the top pick for FPIs
since it is hard to find a large economy
that is growing at 7 per cent plus in the
world economy that remains fragile.
Investors are advised to follow a
stock specific approach as there still
are stocks that have deep value and
Stock Shop
BY
RAKESH BHARDWAJ
Spicejet
(CMP `62)
HE company that has been delivering

profits for six quarters in a row posted
impressive Q1 results with PBDIT more
than doubling from the previous quarter
despite severe competition and the
management is confident of a similar
performance for the rest of the year. Debt
on the companys books is likely to be
nearly halved to around `500 crore from
`900 crore over the next 12 months.
During Q1, capacity grew by 37 per cent
much higher than peers. The top line
also grew 37 per cent. Margin stood at 30
per cent even as some of the peers saw
their margins plunging. The strategy is to

focus on improving regional connectivity
and international routes where yields are
higher rather than running after market
share. Passenger traffic growth of 20 per
cent, which is considered sustainable,
has made the entire airlines industry
an attractive investment proposition.
Management is confident of maintaining
the passenger load factor (PLF) at around
92 per cent for FY17. With the company
planning to add more aircraft and oil
prices likely to remain soft, the outlook for
the industry appears promising. Even on
a comparative basis, the stock is available
at a PE of just 7 as against the industry PE
of around 12. The stock can give decent
returns over a period of 2 years.
The author has no exposure in the stock recommended in this column. gfiles does not accept responsibility for investment decisions by
readers of this column. Investment-related queries may be sent to editor@gfilesindia.com with Bhardwajs name in the subject line.
48

www.gfilesindia.com

STOCK DOCTOR
dr gs sood
The author has no exposure in the stock recommended in this column. gfiles does not accept responsibility for investment decisions by
readers of this column. Investment-related queries may be sent to editor@gfilesindia.com with Bhardwajs name in the subject line.
www.indianbuzz.com

49
PERSPECTIVE
creation sadhguru
VERYTHING that we know as

physical creation our body, the
planet, the universe, the trillions
of forms that life has donned is just
the mischief of five elements: earth,
water, fire, air and ether. With five
simple ingredients, what utter magic!
This is the sheer brilliance of creation.
In the yogic system, it is understood that with mastery over these
five elements, you take charge not
only of your health, well-being and
prosperity, you are also offered a key
to the deepest mysteries of the universe. The elemental composition of
the human body is 72 per cent water,
12 per cent earth, 6 per cent air, 4
per cent fire, while the remainder
is akash or ether. Although fire constitutes a small part of you quantitatively, its unique nature makes it
qualitatively significant.
The element of fire is closely connected with ether or akash. The
akashic dimension becomes more
accessible where there is fire particularly if certain fuels are used.
When you enhance the akashic element in any atmosphere, a certain
sense of bonding and communication
is enhanced, which explains why traditional storytellers always sat around
a campfire. With an oil lamp, a very
strong and beneficial akashic field can
be created. Candles generally do not
have the same effect, especially when
they are made of chemical wax. In
southern India, ghee or sesame oil is
used when lighting a lamp. Especially
for children, pregnant women, invalids, and for health in general, it can
be hugely beneficial to have an oil
lamp burning in your home.
Fire functions within our body in
different ways. Three forms of fire
burn within us: jatharagni, chitagniand bhutagni. Jathara means stomach or digestive process. If jatharagni,
the digestive fire, is well-nourished,
50

The fires within

it can transform into reproductive
fire. Chitagni refers the fire of chitta, the dimension of intelligence within us that transcends the limitations
of the physical form. The intelligence
of genetic and karmic memory govern
our physical form. However, chitta is
pure intelligence, the living mind of
the cosmos, that functions untainted
by memory. If your chitagni is burning bright, cravings for food, sexuality and other matters of the body will
recede. It is a transcendence rather
than a renunciation. The next dimension is bhutagni, elemental fire. If
your elemental fire is on, the circus of
both the body and mind will not make
much sense to you. Your interest will
shift to a more fundamental aspect of
creation the source of life itself.
If you take charge of jatharagni,
you will have a healthy, robust body.
If you take charge of chitagni, you
will have a phenomenal mind at
your command. If you take charge of
bhutagni, you gain fundamental mastery over the process of life. The play
of elements traverses the entire creation; if you become conscious of the
dimension of bhutagni, you will be a
boundless being.
Yogis would strive to completely
master their jatharagnis and chitagnis in order to become pure bhutagnis. Such people would always maintain their own personal fire, or adhuni. The yogis would use the dhuni to
slowly develop a relationship with
the fire element, which could then
enhance their receptivity. It would
help them to cast out the grossness
of the physical body and draw in the
subtlety of another dimension.
Beyond these three fires, is sarvagni. It touches that dimension where
there are no elements or physical
creation whatsoever. The physical
dimension of existence comprises
less than 5 per cent of the whole. The
rest is unmanifest, referred to as dark
energy in modern terminology. This
is a very cool fire, but the ultimate
fire which holds all other fires within
itself. Unlike the digestive fire which
is a very obvious fire, chitagni is more
subtle, and bhutagni more subtle still.
The sarvagni almost feels absent, but
it is fundamental. Without it, nothing
would happen. Sarvagni is everywhere; if you just become available to
it, the entire universe pervades you. g
Sadhguru, a yogi, is a visionary, humanitarian and a prominent spiritual leader
(www.ishafoundation.org)
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Jivesh Nandan
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K Rajaraman
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Laxmi Priya G
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M Imkongla Jamir
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SP Vaid
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Deepam Seth
Sanjay Kumar
Idashisha Nongrang
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Arvind Kumar
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Bharat Lal Meena
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22-10-1973
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Vinay Katiyar
26-10-1973
YSR Congress Party (Telangana)
04-11-1975
AU Singh Deo
Santiuse Kujur
BJP (Jharkhand)
21-10-1964
10-11-1968
K Gopal
10-11-1959
AIADMK (Tamil Nadu)
gopalnannilam@gmail.com
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53
Tracking
For a complete list of appointments & retirements, see www.gfilesindia.com
VIJAY SURYAWANSHI
VV SAPKAL
The 2006-batch IAS officer of the

Maharashtra cadre has been appointed
Private Secretary to Dr Subhash Bhamre,
Minister of State for Defence.
The 1998-batch IAS officer of IFS has

been concurrently accredited High
Commissioner of India to the Kingdom
of Tonga.
ASHOK KUMAR MAHTHA
YELLAPANTULA MALLIKARJUN
The 1993-batch IRSEE officer has been

appointed Director in the Central Vigilance
Commission (CVC), Delhi.
The former officer has been appointed

Officer on Special Duty (OSD) to M
Venkaiah Naidu in the Ministry for
Information & Broadcasting.
YASHVARDHAN KUMAR SINHA
BHARAT SINGH LASPAL
The 1981-batch IFS officer has been

appointed as the next High Commissioner
of India to the United Kingdom.
The 1994-batch IDSE officer has been

appointed Director in the Central
Vigilance Commission (CVC), Delhi.
SUBHASH CHANDRA KHUNITA

The 1981-batch IAS officer of the Karnataka
cadre has been appointed Chief Secretary,
Karnataka with effect from October 1, 2016.
appointed Officer on Special Duty (OSD) to

Ananthkumar, Minister for Parliamentary
Affairs.
MAHAM SINGH LHUID

The former IAS officer of Meghalaya State
Civil Service cadre, has been awarded
Indian Administrative Service.
ARJUN THAKUR
The former IoFS has been appointed as
Officer on Special Duty to Dr Subhash
Bhamre, Minister of State for Defence.
BHARAT SINGH LASPAL
SHIVA NAND
The 1994-batch IDSE officer has been

deputed Director in the Central Vigilance
Commission (CVC), Delhi.
The former officer, Deputy Secretary,

Lok Sabha Secretariat, has been
DK TEWATIA
Moving On: IAS officers retiring in October 2016

Chief Vigilance Officer (CVO) in National
Fertilizers Limited (NFL) for a period of three
years.
GUJARAT
MAHARASHTRA
SV Deshpande
ATUL BHATT
UTTAR PRADESH
GOA
JHARKHAND
PUNJAB
The former officer has been appointed as

Chairman and Managing Director (CMD),
MECON Limited.
Samir Kumar
AK MITTAL
KERALA
WEST BENGAL

Director (Finance), National Small
Industries Corporation (NSIC).
AM Mankad
Vinod Agrawal
Baleshwar Singh
G Elias
VK Balakrishnan
ODISHA
Upendra Tripathy
54

Anthony De Sa
Anita Agnihotri
Nihar Ranjan Banerjee
Biswajit Gangopadhyay
PANKAJ TYAGI
The 1998-batch CWES officer has been
appointed Director, in the Department of

www.gfilesindia.com
Prime Minister Narendra Modi in a group photograph with trainees of the 118th
Induction Training Programme for IAS officers, in New Delhi on September 01, 2016.
The Minister of State for Development of North Eastern Region (I/C), Prime
Ministers Office, Personnel, Public Grievances & Pensions, Atomic Energy and
Space, Dr. Jitendra Singh, Cabinet Secretary PK Sinha and Secretary, DoPT, BP
Sharma are also seen.
NEW ADDITIONAL SECRETARIES
RABINDRA PANWAR
The 1986-batch IAS officer of the Jammu
and Kashmir cadre, Joint Secretary
in the Ministry of Defence, has been
appointed Additional Secretary in the
Ministry of Defence.
MEENAKSHI GUPTA
Agriculture, Cooperation and
Farmers Welfare.
SANJEEV SINGHAL
Director (Finance) in Mishra Dhatu Nigam
Limited (MIDHANI).
RG RAO
Managing Director, Hindustan Newsprint
Limited (HNL).
R SREENIVASULU
Chairman & Managing Director, Scooters
India Limited (SIL).
SM CHANNE
Maharashtra cadre has been posted as
Secretary, State Election Commission in
Maharashtra.
PRAMOD KUMAR THAKUR

The 2001-batch IAS officer has been
appointed Director in the Ministry of
Minority Affairs.
RUCHIKA GUPTA
The 2001-batch ISS officer has been
appointed Joint Secretary at Director Level
in the Union Public Service Commission.
ANGSHUMALI RASTOGI
The 1995-batch IRSME officer has been
appointed Director, in the Ministry of
Civil Aviation.
www.indianbuzz.com
The 1984-batch Indian Audit and

Accounts Service officer and Joint
Secretary and Financial Advisor in the
Ministry of Labour and Employment, has
been appointed Additional Secretary
and Financial Advisor in the ministry of
chemicals and fertilizers.
ARUN GOEL
(NAWADCO) under the Ministry of

Minority Affairs in the rank and pay of
Additional Secretary.
ANURADHA MITRA
The 1984-batch IDAS officer and Joint
Secretary and Financial Advisor in the
Ministry of Electronics and Information
Technology, has been appointed
Additional Secretary and Financial
Advisor in the same ministry.
VANDANA SHARMA
The 1984-batch ICAS officer and Joint
Secretary in the Department of Pensions
and Pensioners Welfare, has been
appointed as Additional Secretary in the
same department.

Punjab cadre and Vice Chairman of
Delhi Development Authority has been
laterally shifted as Additional Secretary
and Financial Advisor in the Ministry of
Labour and Employment.
SANJEEVA KUMAR
SN SAHAI
The 1985-batch IAS officer of AGMUT

cadre and Additional Secretary in the
Project Monitoring Group, Cabinet
Secretariat has been laterally shifted as
Additional Secretary in the GST Council
against the newly created post under
Central Staffing Scheme.
The 1986-batch IAS officer of the UT

cadre has been appointed Additional
Secretary in the Department of
Commerce.
SUMANTA CHAUDHURI
The 1985-batch IAS officer of the West
Bengal cadre has been appointed
Managing Director in Small Farmers
Agri-Business Consortium under
the Department of Agriculture and
Cooperation in the rank and pay of
Additional Secretary under Central
Staffing Scheme.
ASHOK PAI
The 1983-batch IFS offcer of the
Uttarakhand cadre and Joint Secretary in
the National Commission for Scheduled
Tribes, has been laterally shifted as
Chief Executive Officer in National
Waqf Development Corporation Limited
The 1986-batch IAS officer of the Assam

cadre has been appointed Additional
Secretary in the Department of Health
and Family Welfare.
ARUN GOYAL
UP SINGH
The 1985-batch IAS officer of the Odisha
cadre and Additional Secretary in the
Ministry of Petroleum and Natural
Gas, has been appointed Additional
Secretary in the Ministry of Water
Resources, River Development and
Ganga rejuvenation.
UDAI PRATAP SINGH

The 1984 batch IAS officer of the
Jharkhand cadre and Additional
Secretary in the Ministry of Tourism, has
been laterally shifted as vice-chairman
of Delhi Development Authority.

55
Tracking
RESHUFFLE OF IAS OFFICERS
IN HARYANA
The following IAS officers have been
transferred and posted to different
places in Haryana: RAJAN KUMAR
GUPTA has been appointed ACS,
Health; SHYAM SUNDER PRASAD
is ACS, Town & Country Planning
and Urban Estates Department;
P RAGHAVENDRA RAO is ACS,
Finance and Planning Departments;
PRASANTA KUMAR MAHAPATRA is
ACS, Women and Child Development;
VIJAI VARDHAN is ACS, Labour;
RAJNI SEKHRI SIBAL is ACS, Animal
Husbandry and Dairying; SANJEEV
KAUSHAL is ACS, Excise & Taxation,
PHE; SHASHI BALA GULAT is ACS,
Archives, Archaeology and Museums;
ALOK NIGAM is ACS, Cooperation;
TRILOK CHAND GUPTA is Principal
Secretary, Monitoring and Coordination;
SIDHI NATH ROY is Principal Secretary,
Fisheries; ANIL KUMAR is Principal
Secretary, Scheduled Castes and
Backward Classes; MAHAVIR SINGH is
Principal Secretary, Higher Education,
Civil Aviation; SUMITA MISRA is
Principal Secretary, Housing, Cultural
Affairs; ANURAG RASTOGI is Principal
Secretary, Power; ANAND MOHAN
SHARAN is Principal Secretary, Urban
Local Bodies; ANIL MALIK is Principal
Secretary, Technical Education;
SHRIKANT WALGAD is Principal
Secretary, Environment; AK SINGH is
Principal Secretary, Employment and
Mines & Geology and Industrial Training;
ABHILAKSH LIKHI is Principal
Secretary, Tourism; VIJAYENDRA
KUMAR is GAD, Administrative
Reforms and CEO, Haryana Sarswati
Heritage Board, DG, Environment;
SUBHASH CHANDRA is Secretary,
Revenue & Disaster Management,
DG, Consolidation of Holdings, Land
Records, Special Collector, HQ and
Special LAO; PRADEEP KASNI is
Secretary, Finance; SAKET KUMAR
is Special Secretary, Health, Mission
Director, NH and Commissioner, Food &
Drugs Administration; ANSHAJ SINGH
is MD, Haryana Dairy Development
Cooperative Federation; and RAJIV
RATTAN is Director, Science &
Technology.
56

For a complete list of appointments & retirements, see www.gfilesindia.com
RESHUFFLE OF IAS OFFICERS IN J&K

The following IAS officers have been transferred and posted to different places in
Jammu and Kashmir: PRAMOD KUMAR JAIN has been appointed Chairman, J&K
Bureau of Public Enterprises; BHARAT BHUSHAN VYAS holds additional charge as
Principal Secretary to Chief Minister with Information, Hospitality & Protocol, Civil
Aviation and Estates Departments; LOKESH DUTT JHA is Financial Commissioner
Revenue; NAVIN KUMAR CHOUDHARY has been appointed Commissioner/
Secretary, Finance Department; VINEETA GUPTA is Transport Commissioner; and
PARVEZ IQBAL is Commissioner, Commercial Taxes.
RESHUFFLE IN UP
The following IAS officers have been transferred and posted to different places in
Uttar Pradesh: CHANDRA PRAKASH TRIPATHI has been appointed Special
Secretary, Irrigation and Water Resources; PAWAN KUMAR is DM, Badaun;
BHUPENDRA S CHOWDHURY is DM Sambhal; NARENDRA KUMAR SINGH
CHAUHAN is Special Secretary, IT and Electronics; DEEPAK SINGHAL has been
appointed Chairman, State Vigilance Commission; ANUP CHANDRA PANDEY is
Finance Commissioner and Principal Secretary, Finance with additional charge of
Secretary, Medical Education; BHUVNESH KUMAR is Secretary, Professional
Education and Skill Development with additional charge as Divisional Commissioner,
Lucknow; PV JAGMOHAN will continue as Member, Judicial Revenue Board;
DINESH KUMAR SINGH is Divisional Commissioner, Basti; ARVIND KUMAR gets
additional charge of Relief Commissioner; ANIL KUMAR gets additional charge of
IG, Stamp and Registration; SHIVAKANT DWIVEDI is Vice Chancellor; HEMANT
KUMAR is Director, Midday Meals; DP GIRI is Member, Revenue Board; SAROJ
KUMAR is Special Secretary, Stamp and Registration; PRAMOD CHANDRA GUPTA
is Special Secretary, Higher Education; CHANDRAPAL SINGH is DM, Mainpuri;
MALA SHRIVASTAVA is Joint Development Commissioner, Agra; AJAY YADAV is
Vice Chairman, Agra Development Authority; SHAMBHUNATH is DM, Ata; SURESH
KUMAR is DM, Santkabir Nagar; B CHANDRAKALA is DM, Meerut; JAGATRAJ is
DM, Bijnor; OMPRAKASH SINGH is Special Secretary, Legal Education; and
SANDHYA TIWAR has been posted as DM, Gorakhpur.
SANJIB KUMAR ROY
SREEVIDYA
The former officer, ED (Prod), NALCO,

has been selected for the post of
Director (Project & Technical), National
Aluminium Company Limited (NALCO)
at a Public Enterprises Selection Board
(PESB) meeting.
The 2010-batch IAS officer of the Karnataka

cadre has been appointed Deputy
Secretary, Infrastructure Development in
Karnataka.
ALKA SIROHI
The Member UPSC, has been assigned
to perform the duties of Chairperson,
Union Public Service Commission
(UPSC) with effect from September 21,
2016.
MS MANDEEP KAUR
The 2004-batch IAS officer of the J &
K cadre has been appointed Deputy
Secretary in the Department of Revenue
in Government of India.
G PADMANABHAM
Director, International Advanced Research
Centre for Powder Metallurgy & New
Materials (ARCI), Hyderabad.
SUDHANSHU VRATI
Executive Director, RCB, Faridabad
DS SUDHAKAR RAMAIAH
Director (Finance), Projects & Development
India Limited (PDIL).

www.gfilesindia.com
...by the way

Planning for buses?
Taking NITI Aayog seriously
hat were Ministers and Secretaries of State

Transport Departments doing in Hanover, the
largest city of Germany, in the last week of September
2016? They all were participants at the transport fair
by the International Association of Automotive
Industry (IAA). This is one of the biggest fairs in the
world for sellers and buyers of big buses, trucks and
all modern automotive road transport vehicles. India
has approximately 1.75 crore private and public
transport buses. Volvo, MAN and Daimler are the
only foreign companies which have started
manufacturing buses in India. The government plans
to convert about 1.5 lakh diesel buses run by state
transport corporations into electric buses to cut down
on the huge Rs 8 lakh crore crude import bill and
check pollution. Naturally, the IAA fair is the best
place to see the finest and latest buses for public
transport system. gfiles representative attended the
IAA fair and interacted with many ministers,
secretaries who were baffled to see an automobile fair
of such scale. Our reporter told us that big companies
CEOs were seen anxious to meet the senior
secretaries. India has to manufacture or import
approximately five lakh buses by 2032 as per the plan
submitted to the Planning Commission by a
committee of senior secretaries on transport. A good
quality bus costs Rs 85 lakh at the least. A senior
secretary was heard saying, What a pity, India cant
make a good quality bus and we are talking about
Make in India. g
www.indianbuzz.com
he National
Institution for
Transforming
India, NITI Aayog,
is gearing up for
imparting training
to IAS officers
about its purpose
as even young IAS officers are not taking the NITI
Aayog seriously. As many as, 37 of them were
found missing in a session with NITI Aayog
member and economist Bibek Debroy last month.
The absentees were asked to show-cause but the
DoPT did not want to take any more chances for a
session addressed by NITI Aayog Vice-Chairman
Arvind Panagariya. In an unusual office
memorandum dated September 12, the DoPT
asked assistant secretaries posted in various
Central government ministries and departments
that they have to attend the aforesaid function
without fail. Not just that, they were asked to be
present in the function on time, again
highlighting the words on time in bold letters
to draw their attention. In fact, the Cabinet
Secretariat too swung into action as it postponed a
pre-scheduled meeting fixed between 2014 officers
attached to the Ministries of Commerce, DIPP,
MSME and Labour and Cabinet Secretary PK
Sinha, so as to facilitate the participation of the
young officers in Panagariya session. The topic of
the session was Indian economy wherefrom and
whereto. In fact, the session with Debroy, in
which many were absent, was held on September 9
so as to assist the officers, all belonging to the 2014
batch, to get insights into the socio-economic and
developmental challenges facing the nation, and
strategic policy framework thereof. The officers
have begun their three-month-period as assistant
secretaries with effect from August 1, 2016. While
appointing the officers as assistant secretary, DoPT
in an office memorandum dated June 5, 2016 said
that they were not allowed to go on leave during
this three-month period. g

57
...by the way

The High Commissioner to UK
IPS officers appointment
he UK High Commission is very important to

India and generally a political personality is
appointed as the High Commissioner. But now the
Ministry of External Affairs has decided to send
senior diplomats. Yashvardhan Kumar Sinha, 1981
batch Indian Foreign Service officer and present High
Commissioner of India to Sri Lanka, will be Indias
new High Commissioner to the United Kingdom in
place of Navtej Sarna who is proceeding towards
Washington DC after being
appointed as Indias
envoy to US. Sinha,
58, got into the
foreign service in
his very first
attempt. He
actually wanted to
join the Army but
got attracted to
diplomacy in high
school and college.
He has been High
Commissioner of India to
Sri Lanka since June
2013. Between 2009 and 2013, Sinha served as
Additional Secretary in the MEA, heading the
Pakistan-Afghanistan-Iran division of MEA. Prior to
that, Sinha was Indias Ambassador to Venezuela
(2007 to 2009), Consul General of India in Dubai
(2003 to 2006) and Minister and Deputy Chief of
Mission in Abu Dhabi (UAE) (2002 to 2003). During
1998 to 2002, Sinha was Counsellor at the Permanent
Mission of India in United Nations, handling issues
such as peace keeping, de-colonisation and most
importantly, UN Security Council reforms. In the
1990s, he had a six-year-long innings with Pakistan
(as deputy secretary-Pakistan in MEA and then
Counsellor, heading the political section in the Indian
High Commission in Islamabad. As a young IFS
officer, Sinha worked in Indias missions in Milan,
Riyadh and Cairo. Hailing from Bihar, Sinha did his
schooling both in Chesham (UK) and then at St.
Michaels High School, Patna. He did his graduation
in history from St. Stephens College, Delhi and MA
from the University of Delhi. g
58

he upmanship between IAS and IPS is an old story

among civil servants. The Haryana Governments
decision to post 1990-batch IPS officer Shatrujeet Singh
Kapoor as Chairman-cum-Managing Director of the
Uttar Haryana Bijli Vitran Nigam and Chairman of the
Dakshin Haryana Bijli Vitran Nigam appears to have
stirred up a hornets nest in the state bureaucracy. The
IAS officers termed it as the fall of yet another bastion to
the police and it is learnt that the Association of Haryana
IAS officers is likely to take up the matter with the
government soon. Sources, however, said that the IAS
officers have no reason to rancour since the CMDs
position is not among one of their 112 cadre
posts. The posting of the
he IPS officers on
non-cadre posts started
d with the
commissionerate system
m introduced in
the previous Congress government in
Ambala-Panchkula, Gurgaon
urg
gaon and Faridabad.
This was seen as the first
rst indication that the
IPS lobby was trying to broaden
its area of influence. The
he IAS
association reportedly feels
that its not a question of
an appointment of
an individual; the
issue is that IPS officerss
have no administrative
experience and do not
understand the
system as they are
basically trained to maintain law and order. There is
another school of thought, which has been ignored by the
state, that the electricity department is purely technical
and the post should go to the seniormost engineer. IAS
officers are of the opinion that if the government wants
to encourage interface between the services, let IAS
officers be given charge of the vigilance department. The
real crux is not the appointment but the feeling that
officers who had been ruling in the Bhupinder Singh
Hooda regime are once again making inroads. A tweet in
reaction to the appointment of Ashok Khemka, an IAS
officer who blew the whistle during the Hooda regime,
read: A government officer who was, is or intends to be
corrupt knows where and how to obtain patronage for a
choice posting. g
www.gfilesindia.com

10
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POLITICS
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JAPAN
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JEFF KINGSTON
p76
gfilesindia.com
Haryanas
De facto
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Ministers?
p6
Kabul Chawla
February 10, 2014 `

Febr
VOL. 7, ISSUE 11
M
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PM Y
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Year
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Sameer Gehlaut
Arvind Walia
Anil Bhalla
Owner, Indiabulls
Owner, Ramprastha
Owner, Vatika Builders
63
Regn.No.DL(C)-14/1161/2016-2018 Licence No. U(C)-03/2016-17,

Licence to post without prepayment Posted on 7th & 8th of every month at SPM SRT Nagar,
Post Office, New Delhi 110055 R.N.I. No: DELENG/2007/19719.
`200, vol. 10, issue 7 | Date of Publication: 5/10/2016 | Pages 64
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AWARDS
2016
26-11-2016
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jethmalani silenced, celebrating

08 Eyes Wide Shut

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vol. 10, issue 7 | October 2016

Silent Ram Jethmalani

NCE upon a time, Rajni Patel,

few days ago, the Haryana government held the Golden

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Jubilee Celebrations but the Minister Anil Vij came to know

Maal kisi ka, kamaal kisi ka

HE newly appointed strategist of the

told Rahul that he didnt want money from

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vol. 10, issue 7 | October 2016

EYES WIDE SHUT

N the last seven decades,

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The vaguely defined

cal leaders started working together.

vaguely defined equation that the

measures of softening the impact of

HE study says, According to

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vol. 10, issue 7 | October 2016

Uri Attack: India

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N September 18, four Pakistani

it into eking out a solitary existence,

Lt. Gen. Ranbir Singh

The remarks by Director-General

at the South Block.

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Manohar Parrikar had also said

S the public opinion calling for

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In a different situation, the

terrorists and those who were trying

killed their two soldiers, as a surgical strike. In a statement, Pakistan

Even as Indias military

India... We have not made the atomic

VEN as Indias military operation

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vol. 10, issue 7 | October 2016

11 major attacks on security

N the deadliest attack on the Army in Jammu and Kashmir,

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and two militants, while 12 persons, including eight CRPF

to other countries as well. Foreign

Delhi and Islamabad in the region.

was held between India and China

channels for dialogue, appropriately

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