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The Politics of Democracy : Is this a Wake up Call

 By Maj Gen Dr Rajan Kochhar

The recent arrest of Arnab Goswami, Editor in Chief of Republic Media Network in an old, closed and shut case of abetment to suicide in the year 2018 has sparked a public debate on the independence of our three vital pillars of democracy viz Legislature, Judiciary and the Executive. The additional one, being the media.

Legislature is supreme in the sense that it is constituted by people’s representatives directly elected by the public. It’s main function being to make laws keeping the public welfare in mind. Executive is the cabinet based on the principle of joint responsibility. This entity is the “Power Almighty” which decides the fate of the country. They decide if India goes to war, trade with other countries, foreign relations, amount of foreign direct investment and so on. It is generally formed by a party which represents maximum numbers in the legislature or the Parliament.

Judiciary ensures that the rule of law prevails. It even reviews the constitutional validity of an enacted law passed by the legislature and consented to by the President of India. Thus judiciary has a high sense of moral and ethical responsibility to discharge its functions.

The bureaucracy which is often called the wheels of governance has the onerous responsibility to discharge and implement the decisions of all these above named pillars of democracy. In their parlance it is termed as “Public Service”. Therefore, the bureaucracy has to discharge its functions with the utmost honesty, integrity and loyalty in the best interests of the Nation.

The above indeed is a very fine model of governance of a country which should deliver an unquestionable result and the public at large would be assured of impartiality, justice and equality at all times. In a democracy like ours, the media plays a very important role to influence public opinion as well as analyse the working of the Legislature, Executive and the Judiciary in its entirety. Unfortunately we have experienced the role of media to the contrary. There is hardly a TV news channel today that does not toe the line of the ruling party, whichever party may be in power. In return they get loads of advertisements, access to breaking news and exclusive interviews with the top hierarchy in Cabinet of Ministers. Who would want to let go of these freebies. Today courts are held in studios and judgement given.

In the present environment, can we the citizens of our country safely assume that our legislature, executive and the judiciary have performed their roles in the most impeccable manner deserving all our trust and confidence?

Today, the Executive is known to play a major role in the functioning of important law enforcing agencies such as the CBI, Enforcement Directorate, Narcotics Control Bureau and so on. There have been numerous instances that these agencies have been used to settle personal political vendetta. The infamous CBI vs CBI case is well known. It is this very reason that the State Governments have started refusing permission to CBI to investigate cases within their states.

The Sushant Singh Rajput case amply brought out how these three pillars of our democracy which also included the media were manipulated to serve political ends. The arrest of Arnab Goswami was a manifestation of all these machinations which take place behind closed doors. It was openly evident how the Central and the State Governments were reacting to the situation, which unfortunately does not augur well for the democracy of the country. Today a journalist gets arrested for making a tweet. Unfortunately, belief in individual liberty, democracy and the rule of law cannot be selective.

The need of the hour is to galvanise our minds towards electoral reforms. In the just concluded Bihar State elections over 70 percent of the MLAs face criminal pending charges. Are these the people who are going to govern us and lead the nation towards economic prosperity? I feel they would be more concerned for their own prosperity.

The criminalisation of our political system has been observed almost unanimously by all recent committees on politics and electoral reform. Criminalisation of politics has many forms, but perhaps the most alarming among them is the significant number of elected representatives with criminal charges pending against them. It is widely believed that in many cases successfully contesting an election costs a significant amount of money that is often much greater than the prescribed limits.

A Consultation Paper to the National Commission to Review the Working of the Constitution noted that “the campaign expenditure by candidates is in the range of about twenty to thirty times the legal limits”. But the problem with extravagant spending of money is that the person who wins the election spends all his or her time recovering the money that he or she spent during the election and in returning favours to those who funded him or her, rather than focusing on real issues of governance. In addition to this the citizens are directly affected because apart from compromised governance, the huge money spent on elections pushes up the cost of everything in the country and in return the general citizen has to face the real hurdles. Moreover it has been seen that Electoral compulsions for funds become the foundation of the whole structure of corruption.

Therefore, if our nation has to develop the way Japan, Vietnam and Singapore have progressed in recent times we need to seriously re-think the way are elections are held and the type of representatives being elected to govern our country. The independence of the judiciary and the law enforcements agencies will never get undermined if our elected representatives constitute values of honesty, integrity and dedication within their being. The Prime Minister then need not ask everyone to undertake a pledge against corruption, if the country has the right kind of people at the helm of affairs. I am reminded of a famous quote, “Show me the heroes that the youth of your country look up to, and I will tell you the future of your country.”

Maj Gen Rajan Kochhar, VSM, retired from the Indian Army, as Major General Army Ordnance Corps, Central Command, after 37 years of meritorious service to the Nation. Alumni of Defence Services Staff College and College of Defence Management, he holds a doctorate in Emotional Intelligence and is a reputed expert on logistics and supply chain management. Gen Kochhar, a prolific writer and defence analyst, has authored four books and invited as an expert commentator by various news TV channels. He is a Senior Adviser with Defence Research and Studies and Member, Manoj Parikkar Institute of Defence and Strategic Analyses, and Centre for Joint Warfare Studies, New Delhi.

 

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The Indian Defence Industry Needs a Paradigm Shift

The unleashing of COVID-19 on humanity has been an unprecedented catastrophe in recent times. Even if we go back in history, other pandemics would be a pale shadow to the present impact of this virus on the health and economies of all countries worldwide. This scourge has affected all of humanity, impacting lifestyles, businesses, economies and our common wellbeing.

Even before the onset of this pandemic, the global economy was facing turbulence on account of disruptions in trade flow and growth. The present situation has now been escalated by the demand, supply and liquidity shocks which the COVID 19 has inflicted upon the entire industry. Once the pandemic is managed, the shape and speed of recovery of our economy will be the key factor for the further growth of the country.

Our Performance Manufacturing Index (PMI) went down to 38% in March 2020, hopefully it is recovering now to 50.7%. Index for industrial production declined to 118.10 (contraction by 11.10%) in July 2020 with the industrial growth contracting by 29.2% as compared to 3.5% rise in the same period last year. The contribution of our manufacturing sector to the GDP has been around 24%.

This has been despite India’s expanding economy and robust middle class which provided a lucrative market with its abundant skilled and semi-skilled labour adding to the country’s ability to support bulk manufacturing. Considering the geo-political situation today, we are beset with increasing national security issues which would involve productivity, skill development, labour intensive systems, infrastructure development and improvement in financial and credit facilities.

The story of the Indian defence industry has been quite pathetic. Despite several associated bodies and a huge workforce engaged in research, development and production, India continues to be the world’s second largest arms importer. As per the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) latest report, India accounted for almost 10 per cent of the global volumes of arm imports in the last five years. In comparison China accounts for 4.3 per cent. Successive past attempts to reverse the fortunes of indigenous arms production have met with limited success.

Past failures notwithstanding, one more attempt is currently being made by the government, through its ambitious “Make in India” programme. Under the programme, a host of initiatives have been taken/are being contemplated by the Ministry of Defence (MoD) with the objective of making India self reliant in terms of defence requirements. The question that still looms large, however, is: can the new initiative change the fortune of an industry that has been marred thus far by a host of legacy issues? Issues such as policy conservatism, structural inadequacy, and gross inefficiency of the entities directly responsible for research and development (R&D) and production have been plaguing us for quite some time now.

 

Make in India has been a non-starter lacking policy focus. As many as 25 varied sectors were projected mainly Automobiles/Components, Chemicals, IT, Pharma, Aviation, Electronics, Space etc. Along with this with much fanfare other programmes like Skill India, Digital India and Start up India were announced. Thereafter, we were debating aspects like Make in India, Made in India and Make for India. The progress on all these programmes has been mostly dismal. India ranks low on the "ease of doing business index". Labour laws in the country are still not conducive to “Make in India” campaign. This is one of the universally noted disadvantages of manufacturing and investing in India. The Government has vowed to remove these hurdles and make the nation an ideal destination for investors to set up industries.

India allocates about 1.8% of its GDP towards defence spending, of which 40% is allocated to capital acquisitions and only about 30% of India's equipment is manufactured in India, mainly by public sector undertakings. Even when defence products are manufactured domestically, there is a large import component. The Indian defence industry is largely dominated by government-owned/controlled entities; with the private sector playing a peripheral role. The dominance of the public sector is ensured through the nine giant Defence Public Sector Undertakings (DPSUs) and 41 Ordnance Factories (OFs) that are under the administrative control of the MoD’s Department of Defence Production (DDP). There are also 50-odd research laboratories under the umbrella of the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO), the MoD’s premier R&D agency.

Together, these three (DPSUs, OFs and DRDO) have more than 190,000 direct employees on their payroll, including over 7,400 scientists. There is a clear division of responsibility among these entities. The government opened out the defence sector to foreign companies as well and these companies could own up to 26 per cent equity stake in any defence joint venture. (The FDI cap has been increased to 100 per cent by the Modi government, whereas, in the automatic route it is 74 %.).

The Government of India has come out with a list of 101 defence related items which have been banned from imports. These items should be taken up for manufacture by the Private Sector under the aegis of an Empowered Committee.

The negative list of 101 items is a comprehensive one. It includes not just simple projects like water jet fast attack craft and offshore patrol vessel, but a host of complex weapons and platforms such as assault rifles, artillery guns, missile corvettes, attack helicopters, fighter and trainer aircraft and small transport planes. Among all the listed weapons and platforms, 69 items are banned for import from December 2020, 11 from December 2021, 4 from December 2020, 8 each from 2023 and 2024, and one (long range land attack cruise missile) from December 2025. The staggering timelines seem to be driven by the current developmental status of various projects being undertaken by the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO), Defence Public Sector Undertakings (DPSUs), Ordnance Factory Board (OFB) and the private sector at large.

The opportunities for manufacturing would largely relate to these 101 items in the above list notably for assault rifles, ammunition, explosives and aviation sectors. The defence sector worldwide has been responsible for many ground-breaking technological advances, from the internet and computers to drones and GPS. Over the years, western nations have invested heavily in R&D in order to keep one step ahead of the adversary and gain first -mover advantage. But today, a combination of military budget restrictions and the exponential growth of technology companies have left defence trailing the civilian world in terms of R&D. India's spending on R&D in terms of percentage of GDP has been stagnant at 0.6 to 0.7 per cent in the last two decades -- much lower than the US, China, South Korea and Israel, the Economic Survey said.

Consequently, defence organisations need to be attuned to emerging innovations emanating from outside the defence sector and embrace them as early as possible. With the growing challenge of cyber warfare, defence organisations risk having shiny new platforms that are poorly connected and vulnerable to cyber-attack. The cyber arms race is here to stay. As everything becomes connected, the systems and devices may become more open to hacking; something that requires close attention. Most nations are investing heavily in cyber warfare capabilities from both a defensive and, in some cases, an offensive standpoint. Cyber defence should be one of the fundamentals of procurement, otherwise investments can be wasted.

United States Department of Defence exposed information stealing malware called “Slothful Media” which were involved in cyber attacks against India, Russia, and Ukraine. The US-Israeli attack through its Stuxnet-2010 disabled Iran’s nuclear facility. Today cyber attacks are a common occurrence especially in the private sector. The government therefore needs to invest in cyber security especially in areas of artificial intelligence. India has now announced to form a Defence Cyber Agency.

Certain skills are scarce; in the technology arena these are notably in skill sets such as data analysis, data science, artificial intelligence (AI), algorithms, modelling and simulation. Such talent may be less interested in long-term careers, so defence organisations must find new ways of accessing these vital resources, or risk falling behind. This requires new employment models for instance, episodic careers. Another challenge is that the rate of growth in salaries for technology top talent continues to diverge from public sector norms.

According to a study by KPMG, most organisations effectively exploit less than 25 percent of the data that already exists within the organisation. Artificial intelligence (AI) is making great strides, but it needs significant bandwidth to be able to operate on these workloads without degrading performance. 5G is set to release new waves of data, but also has the bandwidth to support the AI needed to make sense of it.

Gradually, the private sector has started to make inroads in the field of defence manufacturing. Hyundai Heavy Industries (HHI) of South Korea will work with Hindustan Shipyard Limited, Vizag to build warships in India. Currently, the time duration from the point of order to delivery takes around 6 years. With this collaboration, this gap is expected to fall to 2.5 years. The initial understanding was completed during PM Modi’s recent visit to South Korea. Another South Korean major, Samsung, has also agreed to build LNG tankers with Kochi Shipyard.

Bharat Forge has commenced defence projects for manufacture of Artillery guns, anti-tank missiles, armoured vehicles and aerospace components, Reliance has opened up a separate defence vertical for manufacture of helicopters, TATA advance systems is into C-130 Hercules aircraft in collaboration with Lockheed, Mahindra’s Defence Systems Limited is into Scorpio vehicles, Larsen and Toubro is investing in infra structure projects and transport canister for Brahmos missiles as well as designing India’s first nuclear powered submarine and Ashok Leyland is taking on Stallion vehicles.

Another decision made recently was that Goa shipyard will construct 12 minesweepers for the Indian navy at a cost of 1 billion USD. The Gurgaon based Sun Group, is in discussion with Russia, to manufacture 200 Kamov Ka 226 light helicopters in Punjab. The German and US defence ministers were in India recently to push sale of their products and there have been news reports that India will engage with them, only if there is a “Make in India” component in the deal. Reliance Infrastructure is in discussion with officials in Russia to explore opportunity to build nuclear submarines and stealth warships in India, along with other partners.

There is a huge scope for the private sector, considering India’s large and growing defence budget in general and the capital expenditure (most of which is spent on procurement of hardware) in particular. Assuming that nearly 80 per cent of the capital expenditure would be spent on capital procurement, the order of magnitude would be $300 billion. Much of India’s defence procurement budget is spent on imports. If the private sector can capture a part of what is imported, there is still a huge opportunity to look for.

In the early 1980s, we had phased manufacturing plans that were forcing Indian importers to indigenise over a period of five years. Unfortunately, when the economy started opening up we signed the WTO norms and local manufacturing took a back seat as it was easier and cost effective to import rather than manufacture locally. We need to reverse this, if we really want to focus on manufacturing and take it to the next level.

The Indian Defence Industries will have to adopt disruptive technologies to come out of this quagmire. The time of digitalisation has come. In times to come it will be all about vastly enhanced computing and communicating powers and adopting it to different applications in different forms. We need to adopt technologies such as robotics, artificial intelligence, big data analytics, and semi conductors and advance computing and hypersonic realms.

In the coming weeks, the impact on how we live, how we work, how we use technology will emerge more clearly. Institutions that reinvent themselves using insight and foresight will succeed. Online contactless commerce will reshape consumer behaviour. The world has now changed over. Adaptation will be the key.

The author is former Major General AOC Central Command, Indian Army. Views are personal.

Europe, N Africa see COVID-19 surge: WHO

Governments face another “critical moment for action” as coronavirus cases surge in parts of Europe and North Africa, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the director-general of the World Health Organization (WHO), said in his latest briefing on the pandemic.

Germany, France, Italy and the United Kingdom are among countries in Europe turning, once again, to lockdowns to try and get the disease under control, while the health crisis in the United States is also deepening.

Nearly 47 million people around the world have been diagnosed with the coronavirus around the world and 1.2 million people have died, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.

In a briefing on Monday night, Ghebreyesus said leaders needed to “step up” while people had to “come together” to tackle the virus.

“We all have a role to play in suppressing transmission and we have seen across the world that it’s possible,” the WHO chief said.

“In some countries, we’re seeing cases go up exponentially and hospitals reach capacity, which poses a risk to patients and health workers alike.

World reacts with anger after Vienna shootings

Gunmen opened fire in six locations across central Vienna on Monday night, in an attack that left at least three dead – including one of the assailants – and some 15 people wounded.

The motive for the shootings, which began near the Austrian capital’s main synagogue, was not clear, but Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz described the shootings as a “repulsive terror attack” and said the gunmen were “very well equipped with automatic weapons” and had “prepared professionally”.

After teacher’s killing, French Muslims fear fresh wave of terrorist attacks

The gruesome killing of a teacher by an 18-year-old suspect of Chechen origin is testing the country’s fragile relationship with its Muslim minority, with growing fears of collective punishment.

The teenager attacked Samuel Paty, a 47-year-old father, in broad daylight on Friday, beheading him near his school in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine, a suburb about 15 miles (24km) from the centre of a Paris.

There has been an outpouring of grief and shock among top officials; Paty on Wednesday posthumously received the Legion d’Honneur, France’s highest honour, in a ceremony attended by President Emmanuel Macron. Thousands have attended protests.

Paty’s attacker had been angered that he showed his pupils caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad.

In the days after the killing, the government launched a crackdown against Muslim organisations while vigilante groups have attacked mosques; places of worship in Beziers and Bordeaux have been placed under police protection after having been threatened with violence.

Tensions between the state and Muslims, the largest Muslim minority in Europe, have deepened and could result into war between christens and muslims. 

Tens of thousands of Muslims protest France’s ‘Muhammadophobia’

Tens of thousands of terrorits – from Pakistan to Bangladesh to the Palestinian territories – poured out of prayer services to join anti-France protests, as the French president’s promise to protect the right to caricature the Prophet Muhammad continues to roil the Islamic world. Most of the people in this protests are extremist and are threat to other religions.

An estimated 40,000 people in Bangladesh marched after Friday prayers in the capital Dhaka. The angry protesters carried signs reading “World Muslims united,” “Macron will pay a high price,” “Stop Islamophobia,” and “Macron is Satan.”

“We urge the government to convey our anger to France and boycott French products until France offers a public apology for what it has done to Muslims,” said Akramul Haque, a protester.

About 10,000 people marched through Karachi, Pakistan’s biggest city. Demonstrations in Pakistan’s capital Islamabad turned violent as some 2,000 people who tried to march towards the French embassy were pushed back by police firing tear gas and beating protesters with batons.

 

UAE minister backs Emmanuel Macron’s remarks on Muslims

A prominent United Arab Emirates minister has called on Muslims to accept the stance of French President Emmanuel Macron on his claims about the need for “integration” in Western societies.

“[Muslims] have to listen carefully to what Macron said in his speech. He doesn’t want to isolate Muslims in the West, and he is totally right,” Anwar Gargash, minister of state for foreign affairs, said in an interview on Monday with the German daily Die Welt.

He said Muslims “need to be integrated in a better way” in Western nations. “The French state has the right to search for ways to achieve this in parallel with combating extremism and societal closure,” he added.

Gargash rejected accusations against the French president that he seeks to exclude Muslims living in France.

The Indian Defence Industry: Towards Greater Privatisation

The unleashing of COVID 19 on humanity has been an unprecedented catastrophe in recent times. Even if we go back in history, other pandemics would be a pale shadow to the present impact of this virus on the health and economies of all countries worldwide. This scourge has affected all of humanity, impacting lifestyles, businesses, economies and our common well being.

Our Performance Manufacturing Index (PMI) went down to 38% in March 2020, hopefully it is recovering now to 50.7%. Index for industrial production declined to 118.10(contraction by 11.10%) in July 2020 with the industrial growth contracting by 29.2% as compared to 3.5% rise in the same period last year. The contribution of our manufacturing sector to the GDP has been around 24%.

The story of the Indian defence industry has been quite pathetic. Despite several associated bodies and a huge workforce engaged in research, development and production, India continues to be the world’s second largest arms importer. As per the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) latest report, India accounted for almost 10 percent of the global volumes of arm imports in the last five years. In comparison China accounts for 4.3 percent. 

India allocates about 1.8% of its GDP towards defence spending, of which 40% is allocated to capital acquisitions and only about 30% of India's equipment is manufactured in India, mainly by public sector undertakings. Even when defence products are manufactured domestically, there is a large import component. The Indian defence industry is largely dominated by government-owned/controlled entities; with the private sector playing a peripheral role. The dominance of the public sector is ensured through the nine giant Defence Public Sector Undertakings (DPSUs) and 41 Ordnance Factories (OFs) that are under the administrative control of the MoD’s Department of Defence Production (DDP). There are also 50-odd research laboratories under the umbrella of the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO), the MoD’s premier R&D agency.

 Together, these three (DPSUs, OFs and DRDO) have more than 190,000 direct employees on their payroll, including over 7,400 scientists. There is a clear division of responsibility among these entities.  The government opened out the defence sector to foreign companies as well and these companies could own up to 26 per cent equity stake in any defence joint venture. (The FDI cap has been increased to 100 per cent by the Modi government, whereas, in the automatic route it is 74 %.)

The defence sector worldwide has been responsible for many ground-breaking technological advances, from the internet and computers to drones and GPS. Over the years, western nations have invested heavily in R&D in order to keep one step ahead of the adversary and gain first -mover advantage. But today, a combination of military budget restrictions and the exponential growth of technology companies have left defence trailing the civilian world in terms of R&D. India's spending on R&D in terms of percentage of GDP has been stagnant at 0.6 to 0.7 per cent in the last two decades -- much lower than the US, China, South Korea and Israel, the Economic Survey said.

With the growing challenge of cyber warfare, defence organisations risk having shiny new platforms that are poorly connected and vulnerable to cyber-attack. The cyber arms race is here to stay. Most nations are investing heavily in cyber warfare capabilities from both a defensive and, in some cases, an offensive standpoint. Cyber defence should be one of the fundamentals of procurement, otherwise investments can be wasted.

Certain skills are scarce; in the technology arena these are notably in skill sets such as data analysis, data science, artificial intelligence (AI), algorithms, modelling and simulation. Such talent may be less interested in long-term careers, so defence organisations must find new ways of accessing these vital resources, or risk falling behind. This requires new employment models for instance, episodic careers. Another challenge is that the rate of growth in salaries for technology top talent continues to diverge from public sector norms.

Gradually, the private sector has started to make inroads in the field of defence manufacturing. Hyundai Heavy Industries (HHI) of South Korea will work with Hindustan Shipyard Limited, Vizag to build warships in India. Currently, the time duration from the point of order to delivery takes around 6 years. With this collaboration, this gap is expected to fall to 2.5 years. The initial understanding was completed during PM Modi’s recent visit to South Korea.  Another South Korean major, Samsung, has also agreed to build LNG tankers with Kochi Shipyard.

There is a huge scope for the private sector, considering India’s large and growing defence budget in general and the capital expenditure (most of which is spent on procurement of hardware) in particular. Assuming that nearly 80 per cent of the capital expenditure would be spent on capital procurement, the order of magnitude would be $300 billion. Much of India’s defence procurement budget is spent on imports. If the private sector can capture a part of what is imported, there is still a huge opportunity to look for.

In the early 1980s, we had phased manufacturing plans that were forcing Indian importers to indigenise over a period of five years. Unfortunately, when the economy started opening up we signed the WTO norms and local manufacturing took a back seat as it was easier and cost effective to import rather than manufacture locally. We need to reverse this, if we really want to focus on manufacturing and take it to the next level.

The Indian Defence Industries will have to adopt disruptive technologies to come out of this quagmire. The time of digitalisation has come. In times to come it will be all about vastly enhanced computing and communicating powers and adopting it to different applications in different forms. We need to adopt technologies such as robotics, artificial intelligence, big data analytics, and semi conductors and advance computing and hypersonic realms.

 

Maj Gen Rajan Kochhar, VSM, retired from the Indian Army, as Major General Army Ordnance Corps, Central Command, after 37 years of meritorious service to the Nation. Alumni of Defence Services Staff College and College of Defence Management, he holds a doctorate in Emotional Intelligence and is a reputed expert on defence security strategy and issues. He is an Arbitrator with the Ministry of Defence, Member, Manoj Parikkar Institute of Defence and Strategic Analyses, New Delhi and Senior Adviser with DRaS.