:: Saturday, September 28, 2002 ::

The Sukhoi:

The Russian-made fighter Sukhoi Su-30 MKI takes off during an induction ceremony in to the Indian Air Force at the Indian Air Force base of Pune in the Indian state of Maharastra Friday, Sept. 27, 2002. (AP Photo/Ajit Kumar)

The Indian Air Force recently acquired 28 Sukhoi fighter jets from Russia, several of which are capable of carrying a nuclear payload. The plane has a range of 3200 km, but this could be extended with air-to-air refueling planes, which India is purchasing from Uzbekistan. The French and Israelis also supplied several of the weapons components for the new fighter jet.

Shortly after India's nuclear tests, Jashwant Singh claimed that the National Security Advisory Board (NSAB) was drafting an Indian Nuclear Doctrine (IND) based on a triadic strategy of land, air, and sea based nuclear weapons.[*] To a large extent, the Sukhois seem to be an elaboration of this strategy. Of course, India's Air Force has had the capability to deliver nuclear weapons since 1974 using retrofitted Jaguars and later the MiG-27s and Mirage 2000s.[*] However, none of those aircraft could penetrate deep into Chinese territory with nuclear weapons as the new Sukhois can do. Thus, the Sukhois represent an upgrade in the ability to carry out a nuclear strike against regional foes. This means that India appears to be abandoning its previous doctrine of "minimal nuclear deterrence" for one of "deterrence by punishment."[*]

Some strategists may want to argue that a triadic nuclear strategy does not abandon the "minimal deterrence" approach outlined by Prime Minister Vajpayee in 1998, however a triadic srategy is generally considered a maximalist deterrence strategy. As Rear Admiral Raja Menon stated

"...There is a serious dysfunction between 'minimum deterrence' and a tri-Service arsenal. The two cannot go together, and is akin to yoking a horse and camel together."

The main objection to the triadic or tri-service strategy is that it seems aimed at fighting a nuclear war rather than seeking to deter a nuclear war. If fighter jets and submarines are equipped with nuclear payloads, it becomes only that much easier to imagine that such forces would be used in a conflict in which India may find itself on the losing side. The aim of a triadic nuclear strategy is hardly limited to "survivability." Survivability could be ensured through numerical proliferation of nuclear devices in just one of the services (e.g., submarines). The true aim of a triadic strategy is to acquire the capability to actually fight a nuclear war (as absurd as that may seem to most civilians).

Whether this new strategy will actually fuel an arms race on the Asian continent remains to be seen. The Chinese already have a similar set of Sukhoi fighter jets, as well as the missile capability to deliver a nuclear warhead. Similarly, Pakistan also has F-16s that are capable of delivering a nuclear payload as well as its share of missiles.

One must keep in mind that the US remains the main cause of the nuclear insecurity in Asia. Until America begins to seriously dismantle its nuclear arsenal, China will not feel safe. As long as China continues to upgrade its forces, India will not feel safe and so on and so on. Nevertheless, it is troubling to see India moving further down the road of militarism.

:: Vikash Yadav 12:17 PM [Permanent Link] :: ::
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ID Cards:

According to today's Statesman:

The BJP today suggested issuing multi-purpose identity cards and compiling a National Citizens Register for an effective check on terrorism. The suggestion was made at an emergency meeting of the party’s central office-bearers and national executive. BJP president Mr M Venkaiah Naidu said these measures may not be fool-proof but would be “quite useful to check cross-border terrorism and infiltration effectively”.

What is about right-wing parties and their desire to make sure everybody's papers are in order? It is striking how similar this proposal for a national ID card is to the one suggested by some of George W. Bush's staffers and supporters shortly after 9/11.

Let me venture a hypothesis about the relationship between right-wing parties and ID cards: ID cards are not a way to deter effectively the horrors of terrorism. This should be obvious from the ease with which ID cards can be forged by professional terrorist organizations, as well as the documented evidence that officials have a great deal of difficulty matching a photo ID with an actual person. National ID cards are a licence to violate the rights of others. Conrad has often argued rather persuasively that the act of interrogating the citizenship of others is an implicit denial of that person's full status as a citizen. ID cards give authorities the licence to challenge citizenship at will under the guise that "the innocent have nothing to hide" -- the motto of fascist and totalitarian states.

Moreover, the requirement to carry or present ID cards makes the citizenry complicit in carrying out the will of the state. In the US for example, when California voted to deny social and health services to those who could not produce proper documentation, doctors and teachers were horrified to learn that they had been conscripted to report "illegals" to the state.

States collect information under the (generally false) assumption that terrorism and crime can be prevented if the quantity of information increases. In essence, the desire to gather information grows out of insecurity. Right-wing parties require a high level of citizen surveillance in order to collect the amount information they believe is necessary to ensure security, because these organizations already question the loyalty of much of the citizenry even prior to any terrorist incident. They must create a nation of informants and domestic spies. Once the information collection begins, the apparatus must justify its desire to continue collecting information by creating a persistent fear of infiltrators and "sleeper cells." The failure of this technology, only leads to demands for further increases in surveillance and information gathering and calls for even greater sacrifices of civil liberties. Insecurity, paranoia, and the will to knowledge feed off of one another, leading to fascist and totalitarian states.

Proponents of ID cards will usually refer to the fact that even the UK had compulsory ID cards in wartime. This overlooks the obvious fact that all parties to the conflict in the Second World War were totalitarian. The default counter-argument then becomes that we should be totalitarian if we too hope to win the war on terrorism. However, this is a poor line of argumentation. The major difference between Second World War and the current Global War against Terror is that the former was a real war and the latter is an over-hyped police action against non-state actors. There is no need for a totalitarian solution to a non-war.

The truth is that public policy solutions such as national ID cards and PhoneTip hotlines are policies born out of fear.

The motto of a free and brave people should not be that "The innocent have nothing to hide," rather it should be that "The brave and the righteous have nothing to fear, but fear itself."

:: Vikash Yadav 12:57 AM [Permanent Link] :: ::
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Ahh... life in America:

Here is a rather odd confession in the Village Voice from one of Ashcroft's informants. At least the author of this article had the guts to face the person that she falsely accused.

To be honest, I think if any of these "stool pigeons" falsely report some one to the FBI, the "informant" should be stripped of their citizenship and swiftly deported to someplace really bad, like France!! By "false" I mean any hunch that turns out to be wrong. If one is going to disrupt the life and violate the rights of another citizen/resident, one should have to be damn sure they are right. Anyway, deportation is fair punishment for bearing false witness -- how could the bible-thumping Attorney General object? Isn't this one of the Ten Commandments or was that amended by the Patriot Act to read -- Thou shalt snitch on thy foreign-looking neighbors to Operation TIPS?

Well, join the Village Voice next week for the hilarious sequel: "I thought my professor/doctor/local computer geek was a terrorist, so I turned him into the FBI."

:: Vikash Yadav 12:31 AM [Permanent Link] :: ::
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Voter Turnout:

The Hindu has a good informative article on voter turnout in the second round of the Kashmir elections. Express India.com has a nice graphic illustrating the voter turnout, unfortunately the image is too fuzzy to read on most computer screens.

I think the government's claim that the elections were "by and large violence free" is rather questionable (especially given the shootout between security forces and extremists in Srinagar yesterday), nevertheless there was a large turnout except in some urban areas. There was a predictable disparity in the voting turnout in Jammu in comparison to Srinagar, as well as between the Shia and Sunni communities. Overall, the observation of the "hartal" or boycott of the polls will necessarily skew the legitimacy of these results.

I am sure this election will take a backseat to the current unrest in Gujarat, but perhaps we can return to discuss and analyze the results of the election at another point in time. I also think the timing of the terrorist attacks in Gujarat should not necessarily be seen as a separate from the end of the Kashmir elections.

:: Vikash Yadav 11:24 AM [Permanent Link] :: ::
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Terrorist Attack at Gandihnagar:

From the BBC's South Asia desk:

" Gunmen have killed at least 23 people after storming a Hindu temple in India's western Gujarat state, the authorities say. Many more have been injured in the attack, which took place at the Swaminarayan Temple in the state capital, Gandhinagar, as hundreds of worshippers prayed inside. Troops are now besieging the complex, and gunfire and explosions can be heard. Gujarat was hit by India's worst religious bloodshed in a decade in February and March this year, and the authorities are now appealing for calm.

Home Minister LK Advani told journalists in the Indian capital, Delhi, that the victims of the temple attack included 13 men, six women and four children. Twenty-three people are dead - the terrorists are still inside LK Advani, Deputy PM He appealed for Hindus and Muslim not to resort to violence. "I hope people will understand that communal conflict would serve the interest of those who do this," he said. He said the gunmen were still inside the complex. It is not known who they are. It is feared that dozens of people may still be trapped.

Officials say the shooting started when three men entered the temple and started firing indiscriminately at worshippers with assault rifles. "I heard a loud noise and gunshots. I didn't know what was happening," one man said, after escaping with his two children. "There were about 600 people at the time of the attack. Thank God I am alive." Hundreds of people were inside the temple complex he BBC's Jill McGivering, from outside the ornate sandstone complex, described a chaotic situation with emergency vehicles standing by and crowds of local people waiting for news. Mr Advani said 500 people had been evacuated from the temple. One volunteer, his clothes stained with blood, said he had personally brought out about 20 casualties, although he was not sure how many of them were dead. Gujarat witnessed widespread religious violence earlier this year when Muslim mobs were accused of setting a train carrying Hindu activists on fire. More than 1,000 people - mainly Muslims - were killed in the ensuing rioting. Some estimates put the figure as high as 2,000.

International tension
India's ruling party, the Hindu nationalist BJP, said the attack could have been carried out by "Pakistan-supported" terrorists. Pakistan condemned the attack, and denied any role in it. A government minister blamed the BJP for failing to build a tolerant society in Gujarat. Tarun Patel, spokesman for the Shri Swaminarayan temple, in Neasden, north London, which has strong connections with the Gandhinagar temple, said they had been unable to get much information from the scene because of problems with the telephone connection. "Obviously our concern is for the people inside the complex, and the best thing we can do at the moment is to pray for a peaceful conclusion," he said. The Swaminarayan organisation, part of the Hindu faith, was formally established in 1907. It preaches religious tolerance and practical spirituality. Around two million people visit the Akshardham temple in Gandhinagar every year. "

It is too early to tell who exactly the terrorists who attacked the Temple Complex are and their precise reasons for doing so. However, I think that it must be linked to the recent communal violence in Gujarat and the hardline BJP state government: elements which I fear played a role in the choice of target in this case. The obvious intention is that by causing terror one can make their two siblings of Fear and Anger breed and multiply, destabilising the a state already wracked by communal tension and fulfilling the terrorists goals (Gandhinagar is also the home Consituency of LK Advani the Home Minister of the BJP coalition and generally seen as the leader of the more hardline faction of the BJP). The Central government must act quickly to resolve the situation and extricate the hostages (it has already despatched National Security Commandoes to the Temple Complex) repared to call out the Army to enforce law and order if the communal rioting seems to rear its ugly head again. We should not experience a repeat of the Bombay riots in the wake of the Babri Masjid demolition, when the then Prime Minister PV Narasihma Rao allowed Bombay to burn for several months before reluctantly calling in the Army. I hope Indians can withstand this test of its ideal of democracy, secularism and equality.


:: Conrad Barwa 10:58 AM [Permanent Link] :: ::
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The Prophets of Globalisation:

Below is a piece on the supposed benefits of globalisation for the Indian economy, it is an extract of a larger article written by Thomas Friedman for the New York Times. There is so much that appalls me in this ariticle it is difficult to know where to start; I suspect that Firedman spent too much time in very selected sites in India like Bangalore and this goes some way in accounting for his rosy view of the effects of globalisation on the Indian economy. But then again what one expect from someone who writes comments like "..you cannot have McDonalds without Macdonell Douglas.." I particlarly dislike the almost evangelical belief in the benefits of a market economy and the casualy akcnowledgement of those left out of the globalisation process at the end with the allusion to the poor in Indian villages. What does Friedman offer them, except a vague plea/moral admonishment that the West needs to open up its own markets to the Third World. Isn't this the classic fallacy of the Left-leaning liberals that if only the West/developed countries on humanitarian grounds/moral reasons pursued the right policies then even the poor masses of the Third world could enter Consumer Heaven and the Promised land of Development. After more than a century of of the after effects of Colonialism and capitalist expansion into the periphery how can such myths still endure?!

" If one thing stands out from 9/11, it's the fact that the terrorists originated from the least globalized, least open, least integrated corners of the world: namely, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Afghanistan and northwest Pakistan. Countries that don't trade in goods and services also tend not to trade in ideas, pluralism or tolerance. But maybe the most important reason why globalization is alive and well post-9/11 is that while pampered college students and academics in the West continue to debate about whether countries should globalize, the two biggest countries in the world, India and China — who represent one-third of humanity — have long moved beyond that question. They have decided that opening their economies to trade in goods and services is the best way to lift their people out of abject poverty and are now focused simply on how to globalize in the most stable manner. Some prefer to go faster, and some prefer to phase out currency controls and subsidies gradually, but the debate about the direction they need to go is over. "Globalization fatigue is still very much in evidence in Europe and America, while in places like China and India, you find a great desire for participation in the economic expansion processes," said Jairam Ramesh, the Indian Congress Party's top economic adviser. ". . . Even those who are suspicious now want to find a way to participate, but in a way that manages the risks and the pace. So we're finding ways to `glocalize,' to do it our own way. It may mean a little slower growth to manage the social stability, but so be it. . . . I just spent a week in Germany and had to listen to all these people there telling me how globalization is destroying India and adding to poverty, and I just said to them, `Look, if you want to argue about ideology, we can do that, but on the level of facts, you're just wrong' "
That truth is most striking in Bangalore, India's Silicon Valley, where hundreds of thousands of young Indians, most from lower-middle-class families, suddenly have social mobility, motor scooters and apartments after going to technical colleges and joining the Indian software and engineering firms providing back-room support and research for the world's biggest firms — thanks to globalization. Bangalore officials say each tech job produces 6.5 support jobs, in construction and services. "Information technology has made millionaires out of ordinary people [in India] because of their brainpower alone — not caste, not land, not heredity,"said Sanjay Baru, editor of India's Financial Express. "India is just beginning to realize that this process of globalization is one where we have an inherent advantage." Taking advantage of globalization to develop the Indian I.T. industry has been "a huge win in terms of foreign exchange [and in] self-confidence," added Nandan Nilekani, chief executive of Infosys, the Indian software giant. "So many Indians come and say to me that `when I walk through immigration at J.F.K. or Heathrow, the immigration guys look at me with respect now.' The image of India changed from a third-world country of snake charmers and rope tricks to the software brainy guys." Do a majority of Indians still live in poor villages? Of course. Do we still need to make globalization more fair by compelling the rich Western countries to open their markets more to those things that the poor countries are best able to sell: food and textiles? You bet.

:: Conrad Barwa 7:07 PM [Permanent Link] :: ::
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The Colonisation of the Res Publica:

I found the story below extremely worrying, though the initial story over Coke and Pepsi's outrageous action of blazoning their corporate logos in the Himalayan foothills of northern India as an advertising gimmick broke some time ago. I think it illustrates very clearly Vikash's point made in an earlier post that it is necessary to preserve some space for the res publica otherwise the concept of a Republic will become redundant. I think it just goes to show that it is in the nature of Capital that is seeks to colonise all spaces that are beyond its reach, such an expansionary dynamic is written into its very internal structure. Though I should add that the MNC's claimed that it was local distributors and agents responsible for the advertising gaffe, this still in no lessens their culpability in my eyes, though it warns us that we should not reduce these conflicts to a simplistic core-periphery analysis as the penetration of capitalism has created a local counterparts all too willing to co-operate with foreign Capital. Still the high court ruling is a heartening decision.

"Pepsi, Coke ads harm ecosystem"

New Delhi, Sept. 22. (PTI): A committee appointed by the Supreme Court to examine damage to environment by multinational cola giants, Pepsi and Coke, and some other firms in Himachal Pradesh by painting rocks with their advertisements, has said that dangerous toxic paints used by them has caused harm to the fragile ecosystem. The committee, in its 29-page report submitted to the apex court, said "almost the entire stretch of road between Pandoh dam in Mandi district up to Beas nullah close to the mighty Rohtang pass, the gateway to Lahaul valley, has been covered with the advertisements of various sizes and colours painted on the rock surfaces by different organisations." Describing it as "commercial vandalism" of the area which is a major tourist attraction, the panel said the rocks along the road and boulders on river beds "have been painted with toxic paints with total disregard to fragile ecosystem and environment." "The most beautiful and spectacular areas of Himalayas which have great ecological and geological importance, have been spoilt by the actions of these organisations in a manner which jars the scenes of the visitors," the report said.

Source: The Hindu, Sunday, September 22, 2002.

:: Conrad Barwa 11:49 AM [Permanent Link] :: ::
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