Reclaiming India's position in Indian Ocean

By all accounts Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Indian Ocean sojourn--which took him to Seychelles, Mauritius and Sri Lanka last week—has served to reclaim some of New Delhi’s lost footing in the area.

In the first two legs of his three-nation tour Modi secured agreements to develop islands in Mauritius and Seychelles. India and Mauritius signed an agreement to upgrade sea and air links on the remote Agalega islands, providing India a foothold in the middle of the Indian Ocean. The two sides have been discussing development of North and South Agalega islands for years but there were last-minute hiccups and reservations about actually clinching an agreement. Under the act, India will assist in improving infrastructure for air and sea connectivity to the two remote islands. And for once the Ministry of External Affairs statement wasn’t pulling any punches. It said the new facilities would also "enhance the capabilities of the Mauritian Defence Forces in safeguarding their interests,” hinting at a military benefit at a later stage. 

In Seychelles Prime Minister Modi announced an agreement to develop infrastructure on Assumption island. Of late, India has indirectly helped Seychelles with hydrography, map its exclusive economic zone, provided a Dornier aircraft for surveillance but this is the first time New Delhi is helping in building infrastructure. India’s proactive push is no doubt prompted by China’s aggressive foray in the Indian Ocean and especially its wish to use Seychelles as a resupply port for its ships taking part in anti-piracy operations.
India has long been a preeminent maritime power in the Indian Ocean but for the past decade, its primacy has been increasingly challenged by China. Apart from the strategic requirement of maintaining its supremacy in the Indian Ocean Region, there are commercial reasons that dictate New Delhi’s recalibration of Indian Ocean policy. As Modi said 90 percent of India's trade and oil imports moves by sea and as its economy becomes more globally integrated it would become more dependent on the ocean. "So, the Indian ocean region is at the top of our policy priorities," he said during his tour.

While Seychelles and Mauritius are important in New Delhi’s Indian Ocean diplomacy, Sri lanka remains the pivot around which India’s IOR policy revolves. And Since January, when Sri Lanka witnessed an unexpected change in government, India has made special efforts to re-engage with Colombo. The new regime in Sri Lanka, still somewhat on a shaky ground, has also seized the opportunity afforded by India’s active outreach. Modi received a red carpet welcome as the first Indian Prime Minister to visit Sri Lanka on a bilateral visit in 28 years. 
While he made the right noises about India-Sri Lanka partnership in Colombo, the highlight of Modi’s two-day was his historic visit to the Northern Province, a region once ravaged by strife. In Jaffna, the heart of Tamil-dominated Province, Modi called for an equitable development and respect for all citizens, in what is seen as a subtle signal to the government in Sri Lanka to reduce if not eliminate discrimination against minority Tamils. During his visit to Jaffna, the first by an Indian Prime Minister, Modi handed over 27,000 new homes to Tamils who became homeless during the civil war that ended in May 2009 with the defeat of the dreaded Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). The houses were built with Indian assistance as part of India's efforts to help in the reconciliation process. 

In Colombo on Friday, Modi had reiterated India’s long-standing position that early and full implementation of the 13th Amendment to the country’s constitution done in 1987 relating to devolution of powers to Tamils must be done and if needed and to go beyond its provisions in finding a political solution. In re-emphasised the point in Jaffna while laying the foundation today for a Cultural Centre being built by India.

"Sri Lanka should also progress. Unity, peace and amity are essential ingredients for equitable development where there is respect for all citizens,” PM Modi said.
Modi flagged off a train service in the north-western town of Talaimannar, the closest point to India restored after decades of civil war, completing the reconstruction of the entire Northern Province Railway Line. Another small but significant breakthrough came in the form of the announcement that India will be developing the Oil tank Farm near Trincomalee in Eastern Sri Lanka.  The China Bay Tank farm is the largest one located between West Asia and Singapore and serves as a major fuel supply hub for ships traversing the busiest sea route between the Gulf and East Asia. For years, India wanted to run the facility jointly with Sri Lanka and retain a foothold in this crucial strategic facility but in 2013, Colombo had hardened its stance and refused to sign an agreement to lease the Trincomalee strategic oil storage to a unit of Indian Oil Corp (IOC) and had blocked the Indian firm's plans to set up a bitumen plant in the country. 

But now the two governments have decided to move forward. Prime Minister Modi announced: "We are also focusing on new opportunities. Today Lanka IOC and Ceylon Petroleum Corporation have agreed to joint development of the upper tank farm of the China Bay installation in the Trincomalee on mutually agreed terms." Talking to the media after meeting President Maithripala Sirisena, Mr Modi said: "A joint task force will be constituted soon to work out the modalities. India stands ready to help Trincomalee become a regional petroleum hub."

Currently Lanka IOC, a subsidiary of Indian Oil Corporation, operates 15 storage tanks out of 99 in Trincomalee. The Sri Lankan government had been considering developing the rest to increase its fuel storage capacity. Each of the storage tanks has a capacity of around 12,000 tonnes. Other steps like increasing people-to-people contacts, giving visa-on-arrival to Sri Lankans and starting more direct flights will further boost to the new-found New Delhi-Colombo bonhomie.

(http://www.dnaindia.com/india/report-pm-modi-s-three-nation-tour-reclaiming-india-s-position-in-indian-ocean-2068868)

Vinod Mehta: Reporters' Editor, RIP

My last meeting with him was at friend Ajith Pillai's book launch. 

Ajith, perhaps Vinod Mehta's longest serving journalistic companion (they worked together at Sunday Observer, Pioneer and Outlook across a quarter century), had got Vinod to write the introduction for his book Off the Record and true to form Vinod, his usual now-grumpy-now-cheerful self was the star attraction at the book launch. 

In the two or three minutes that we sat next to each other before the programme began, he asked: "So how's TV doing? A lot of churning, uh?" and proceeded to reveal juicy gossip about a prominent TV journalist. Before I could recover, he had moved on to the stage. That was typical Vinod! He was always curious, always inquisitive and above all, he loved to exchange gossip in and about people in public glare. He was mischievous but never malicious.

A bold and an unconventional editor who went hell for leather if he found a story interesting, Vinod didn't bother too much about the consequences, at least in the initial years of Outlook. I should know. 

In August 1998, a couple of years after joining Outlook, I got a tip off about Operation Leech conducted by the Indian military against Burmese rebels in the Andaman Seas and subsequent decision under then defence minister George Fernandes to stop it . Sitting in Guwahati, I proposed a story, which Vinod dismissed outright. 'Who's bothered about the north-east connection and some bloody operation in Andamans," he quipped. Dejected, I had no option but to move on.

My first big story in Outlook

Then in December that year, Vinod called out of the blue and in his usual brusque drawl said: "You had mentioned something about George and some military operation? "Get me that story." I started to protest: "But that was in August! I don't know if I can do anything now and certainly not from here." "Then fly down there (to Port Blair) or first come here to Delhi. I want that story, no matter what you have to do." Apparently, someone in Delhi's corridors of power had whispered into Vinod's ears the goings on in Andamans and George Fernandes' role in it. So he wanted to get to the bottom of the mystery. 

So just like that I flew to Delhi on a cold January morning in 1999. A week of leg work, some cross checking by Ajith and other colleagues and we had a cracker of a story (see cover). George Fernandes was not amused but to be fair, we waited till 11 pm on magazine closing day for the defence minister's response. It never came. The story was published under my by-line-- 'By Nitin A. Gokhale'--in Guwahati.

I went back to Guwahati. Feranandes, livid with the story, raved and ranted and even enquired from Prafulla Kumar Mahanta the Chief Minister if indeed there was a reporter named Nitin Gokhale based in Guwahati or it was one of Vinod's ways of protecting his source in Delhi! That was Vinod. He didn't bother about reputation. If there was a story to be pursued, he lent full support to the reporter. That he was the ultimate 'Reporter's Editor,' was known but for me the confirmation came in June 1999.

The Kargil skirmish had begun. Ajith (Pillai) was the first one to go the scene of battle but more hands were needed. Going there was far from my mind although I had suggested a story about travelling with troops on a special moving from the north-east to Kashmir as reinforcement. Then suddenly Ajith called and said "take the first flight to Delhi. You are going to Kargil." Dazed, I landed in Delhi at 12 hours notice. There I learnt how Vinod instantly agreed to Ajith's suggestion that I be sent to Kargil since both felt I would be able to deliver. He dismissed grumbling among some of my Delhi colleagues who were eager to report what was our generation's first 'war.'And just like that, I went on to spend 45 days in Kargil, Drass and Batalik and report the skirmish. 

What happened during and after Kargil, is well documented. I had certain inputs about what went wrong in Kargil but Vinod true to his style, said, we will do those stories after the crisis is over. And we did, much to the chagrin of the Vajpayee-led NDA government. Through the crisis, Vinod stood behind me and Ajith like a rock although many friends and well-wishers advised him against annoying the government. "I trust my reporters. If they have a story, and I am convinced about it, I will go with it, no matter what the consequences are," he would say.  Outlook weathered this mini-storm and many bigger ones later, thanks to Vinod's courage of conviction.

Vinod of course was a man of strong likes and dislikes. That he avoided  the capital's elite cocktail circuit is well known. He had his idiosyncrasies too. Often, he would forget faces and names. many a times, in the small Outlook office, he would walk past people like me without acknowledging out presence. Then, suddenly, he would turn back. The conversation would go some thing like this:
"Nitin?" 
"Yes sir!!" 
"What are you doing here."
"You called me to follow that story..." I would say defensively.
"Oh yes. So what's the news?"
"Still trying to get details..."
"Get them fast. Otherwise some one else would do it," he would say gently and move on.

The border killing

Throughout my stint with Outlook, I was based in Guwahati but would often travel outside the region. Apart from Kargil, Vinod's unusual editorial leadership allowed me to cover the Orissa super-cyclone, the Kargil Review Committee's proceedings and stories from Bengal. Initially, like other editors he would not be interested in anything but stories of violence and natural disasters from the north-east. But as I pushed harder, Vinod started giving much more space to non-traditional stories from the region. So we did stories about drought in the region and of a ritual where frogs are 'married off' to propitiate the rain gods, about 'roving' theatre groups in Assam, profiled achievers from the north-east and many more to try and give an all-round coverage of the region. Not many editors would have put this gory picture on the cover of a national magazine when 18 BSF personnel were killed on the Bangladesh border (see cover). But Vinod did.

At Outlook's 5th anniversary party

His eye for detail and insistence on writing simple English rubbed on to many of us who had the privilege to work with him (never 'under' him!). He also insited on good pictures to accompany stories so the photographers were also an essential part of the team and not adjunct to the reporter. In fact, I learnt to visualise a print story much better under Vinod's tutelage. Never a great paymaster, Vinod however spared no expenses in news gathering. When I moved on to TV, he asked me in passing how it felt to work for a medium that wants instant judgement. I told him it is tough and not as fulfilling as print. He smiled and said, "it makes you famous and recognisable. So enjoy it till it lasts." Which is exactly what I did for nine years but have now returned to a saner and less hectic world of writing. Was hoping to catch up with Vinod during the launch of his Editor Unplugged but that was not to be! 


They don't make Vinod Mehtas anymore. 

Sirisena comes calling: An opportunity for India

More than a month after the unexpected turn of political events that witnessed the ouster of a seemingly invincible Mahinda Rajapaksa in Sri Lanka, the new Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena will be in India starting 15 February. As he makes the first overseas trip, the question uppermost in those watching the island nation’s affair is this: Would the new President be able to make a marked departure from the policies followed by Rajapaksa for over a decade both in domestic and international affairs? 

Rajapaksa, who won a famous if controversial military victory over the dreaded Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in May 2009, continued to deny the minority Tamils a fair deal in granting them the much-promised devolution of power after the war ended. A genuine reconciliation between the majority Sinhalas and the Tamils, who mainly inhabit the Northern Province, remained elusive. 

Sirisena’s biggest challenge will therefore be to gain confidence of the Tamils who have voted in huge numbers for him if only to defeat Rajapaksa. That may not be easy though since Sirisena heads a hastily put together anti-Rajapaksa coalition that comprises of chauvinist Sinhala far right parties opposed to any preferential treatment to minorities. 

Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena

 Sirisena has begun well. During his Independence Day address, two prominent leaders of the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) R Sampanthan and deputy secretary M A Sumanthiran attended the celebrations for the first time in over 40 years! More significantly, the new government has made some symbolic gesture towards reconciliation. A Declaration of Peace read out on Independence Day in early February stated, among others, that "As we commemorate the 67th Independence Day of our nation today, we pay our respects to all the citizens of this country, of all ethnicities and religions, who lost their lives due to the tragic conflict that affected this land for over three decades, and for all the victims of violence since Independence."  A Columnist in Sri Lanka surmised: “The breadth of this statement included the rebels who died as well, not only in the LTTE led separatist conflict but in the JVP insurrections as well.”

Meeting the internal aspirations of people and parties that have propelled him to an unexpected victory apart, President Sirisena’s major task will be to but re-calibrate Sri Lanka’s relations with India, in the wake of a decade long period of pro-China policies pursued by Rajapaksa. Foreign Minister Mangala Samaraweera made New Delhi his first stop after taking over. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is also most likely to visit Colombo in March. Incidentally, Modi will be the first Indian Prime Minister to make a bilateral visit to Sri Lanka in over a quarter century! 

China, because of its large strategic and commercial investments in Sri Lanka over the last decade, is very well entrenched in Sri Lanka. The Sirisena-Wickramasinghe combine, is not supposed to be well-disposed towards Beijing. But China cannot easily be shrugged off. Consider this: Between 2005 and 2012, China provided $ 4.761 billion as assistance to Sri Lanka. Of this only two per cent is outright grant while the remaining 98 per cent is in the form of soft loans. By contrast, a third of India’s 1.6 billion dollars assistance programme to the island comprises of outright grants. 

However, only a change of regime will not automatically witness India’s return to a more active role in Colombo. New Delhi will need to reach out to the new dispensation quickly and assure full and unequivocal support.

​ Sirisena will also have to repair ties with Western nations who had ostracised ​ Colombo over allegations of human rights violations. India must also stand with Colombo in its standoff with the West that seeks to punish the country for alleged human rights violations. New Delhi must push for a just probe not coloured by prejudices of the West or driven by calls for retribution against the Rajapaksa brothers. In his defeat, Rajapaksa’s contribution in ending one of the world’s most brutal insurgencies waged by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) must not be forgotten or underestimated.​

http://www.abplive.in/author/nitingokhale/2015/02/14/article501636.ece/Sirisena-comes-calling-An-opportunity-for-India

I do not fear any retribution: Gotabaya Rajapaksa

Gotabaya Rajapaksa, former Defence Secretary of Sri Lanka, former Army officer and brother of former Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa, was largely seen as the driving force behind Sri Lanka's Eelam War IV that decimated the Tamil Tigers and ended an intense, quarter century long civil war in the island nation in 2009. 

Considered a hardliner in the recently ousted Mahinda Rajapaksa government in Sri Lanka, Gotabaya has been accused variously of war crimes, of militarising the Sri Lankan society, of driving Colombo into Chinese arms and much more in the nearly nine years that he headed Sri Lanka's defence ministry.

Gotabaya Rajapaksa (centre) as Defence Secy

Gotabaya, who lived in the US before returning to Sri Lanka in 2005 to help his brother fight the LTTE,  has been under intense pressure from the new Sri Lankan government that is probing various acts of omission and commission allegedly committed by the previous regime. 

Exactly a month after the Rajapaksas lost power in Sri Lanka, Gotabaya agreed for his first detailed interview with me on email. Although one short interview is not enough to understand the man and his action--"I have to be careful these days," he says--here's a short glimpse into his thought process and actions. Excerpts.

Q: You handled the Sri Lanka's security apparatus for a long time. How do you react to the charge that your government has left the country more militarised? That you created a military disproportionate to Sri Lanka's size?

Ans: We did not leave the country ‘militarised’ as you say. Quite the contrary would be true in fact. The Sri Lankan military establishment was expanded during the war to the extent that was necessary to win the war against terrorism. You have to remember that the terrorists that we were up against in Sri Lanka were categorised even by the FBI as the world’s deadliest terrorist organisation. Defeating such an organisation was no easy task. It took an integrated land, sea and air offensive to defeat the LTTE. One of the key requirements was to have enough manpower to hold the territory that the ground forces wrest from the control of the terrorists. We expanded the military for that purpose. But after the war there was no more expansion. Furthermore, after the war, we did not allow any of the anti-LTTE armed groups in the north and east to carry weapons any more. If we wanted to, we could have allowed the anti-LTTE and anti-TNA groups in the north and east to continue to carry weapons on the excuse that there were over 11,000 rehabilitated ex-LTTE cadres around, and therefore weapons were necessary to ensure the protection of the anti-LTTE groups. If these groups had continued to bear arms the whole voting pattern in the north and east would be different. It was we who brought freedom from armed conflict and terror to the north and east as well as the rest of the country. Today people are free to vote for whoever they like because of the achievements of our government.

Q: Have you left the country polarised?

Ans:  I don’t think so. We were in government, so people opposed us and politically motivated people don’t usually say good things about their political opponents. Some say that we left the country polarised. There was no question about the fact that we had to take on the LTTE. But that was not a war against the Tamil people. It was we who liberated the Tamil people from the LTTE. When the Tigers were around where the Tamil people ever able to vote freely at elections? At the presidential elections held in 2010, the Tamil people of the north and east have voted in large numbers for the army commander who served in our government during the war. At the 2015 presidential elections, the Tamil people of the north and east once again voted for the cabinet minister who held the position of acting minister of defence when the president went overseas during the war. That should be sufficient proof that we did not leave the country polarised.

Q: Your critics allege that the President Mahinda and you ran Sri Lanka like a dictatorship with midnight raids, surveillance and intimidation of opposition being a common occurrence. How do you respond to these accusations?

Ans: Sri Lanka was never a dictatorship. We are a democracy and under the government that I served in, we held the most free and fair elections ever held in this country. After 2005 when our government was first elected to power there were elections almost every year. All those elections were free and fair. We lost the 2015 presidential election because the election was free and fair. As for these midnight raids, there may have been night time searches during the war, but never after that. This talk of surveillance and phone tapping is a figment of some people’s imagination. During the tenure of my government, none of the opposition parties were harassed or persecuted in any manner. On the contrary, the president had cordial relations with politicians of all opposition parties. The lines of communication were always open which is why so many members of the opposition joined our party at various times. Even a vociferous critic of our government like Mangala Samaraweera  was on the verge of joining our government when he was having problems in the UNP. That was possible because there was never any enmity between our government and members of the opposition. 

Q: Nearly six years after Eelam War IV  got over, looking back would you have done anything differently?

A: No.

Q: As defence secretary you took a decision to source most of your military hardware from China over the past decade. Was it a conscious move or was your hand forced by India's reluctance to help you?

Ans: All Sri Lankan governments since the war began in the 1980s sourced most of their arms and ammunition from China. That continued under our government as well. When the final phase of the war began in 2006 under our government, India was unable to sell us arms because of pressure from Tamil Nadu. If it was possible to buy weapons from India we would certainly have done so. I explained the situation to Vijay Singh my counterpart in New Delhi at that time. He too agreed that given the situation that Sri Lanka finds itself in, she has no option but to buy arms supplies from whoever is willing to supply them. 

Q: There was a period between 2006-08 when you had an excellent rapport with the Indian establishment but somewhere closer to the end of the war, the relationship seemed to have deteriorated? What really went wrong? If you can elaborate a bit?

Ans: I would say that the relationship with India remained on a very good footing until the war ended and even beyond. In the last few years however India may have misunderstood Sri Lanka’s relationship with China. We have always had excellent relations with China. In the last few years, a number of projects were initiated with concessionary loans from China. I think Indian policymakers misread this as a sign of Sri Lanka drifting into the Chinese orbit. 

Q: How important was India's help in your fight against LTTE?

Ans: India’s understanding of the issues faced by Sri Lanka during the war was crucial. On a mutual agreement we formed groups of key officials on both sides called ‘troikas’ with the external affairs secretary, defence secretary and national security advisor on the Indian side and myself as the defence Secretary, Lalith Weeratunga the secretary to the president and my brother Basil Rajapaksa as the advisor to the president on the Sri Lankan side. The members of these troikas could phone one another at any time of the day or night and Basil kept the Indian side informed about everything that was happening at the ground level in Sri Lanka. India was also aware of the threat that the LTTE posed to India as well. So this understanding helped.

Q: Were you disappointed with India's stand at the UNHCR?

Ans: I feel that India should have stood by Sri Lanka in the UNHRC given the fact that she had a policy of not supporting country specific resolutions in the UNHRC. But given the pressure that Tamil Nadu was able to exert on the Indian central government at that time, I understand that India did not have much of a choice.

Q: How important is India's support and friendship for Sri Lanka?

Ans: India’s friendship and support is very important to Sri Lanka. It is a matter of regret that India appears to have thought otherwise. There have been tensions between India and China for many decades, but Sri Lanka has traditionally had close relations with both nations. Sri Lanka’s relationship with China has always been of an economic nature. The docking of Chinese submarines in the Colombo harbour was only for re-supplying and not for any military purpose.

Q: Do you fear retribution by the new regime in Sri Lanka or even a witch hunt by Western nations now that you are no longer in power?

Ans: I do not fear any retribution from any quarter or Western witch hunts. We knew the risks involved when we took on the LTTE despite resistance from interested nations. We fought terrorism to a finish because that was our duty by our nation. The people of Sri Lanka still appreciate the sacrifices we made and the risks we took. Getting voted into office or voted out of office is a different matter. Churchill too was voted out of office soon after he won world war II but that did not mean that the British public did not appreciate the leadership he had provided during the war.

Q: Is there a possibility that LTTE rump or sympathisers of Tamil Eelam may try and make a comeback in Sri Lanka?

Ans: When we were in power, we were always vigilant about such a possibility. That vigilance has to continue. India too should be on her guard against any attempt by Tamil separatist forces to set up a base in Tamil Nadu. Tamil separatist ideology came to Sri Lanka through Tamil Nadu and Tamil separatism has a much longer history in India than it does in Sri Lanka. India made a bad mistake by encouraging Tamil terrorist groups in the 1980s. India should be careful about sending the wrong signals to the wrong people once again.

Op Sadbhavna has outlived its utility

For over 16 years, the Indian Army has conducted Operation Sadbhavna--as part of its WHAM (winning hearts and mind) doctrine--across Jammu and Kashmir spending something close to Rs 300 crore sanctioned by the Defence Ministry on running schools and orphanages, improving the living standard of the locals by constructing roads and bridges, installing hand pumps and electrifying villages and giving them free medical services. Excursion and education tours have also been organised during this period.

The Indian Army's doctrine of sub-conventional warfare released in 2007 in fact envisaged that Operation Sadbhavna would provide the healing touch during conflict and win over the alienated sections of people in the conflict zones.

FILE PIC: AFP

 The projects, according to a study done by a scholar at the Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (IDSA) are identified and selected jointly with the state administration and the people at the grass root level. The Army actsq as a facilitator and catalyst and actively assists in planning, provides technical assistance, makes available specialized equipment and supervises it.

The scholar, Dr Arpita Anat asserted in 2010 that implementation of the projects under this initiative has had an extremely positive impact on the minds of the local population. Various educational schemes and women empowerment centres have helped in employment generation and transformed many lives. However, a common refrain was that there is scope for improvement in coordination between the Army and civil administration. Dr. Anant’s interface with local journalists revealed that although the initiative of the Army was very praiseworthy, real peace will come only with the resolution of the political problem.

Five years on, my own travels in J&K have convinced me that Op Sadbhavna has outlived its utility and it is time for the Army to end the scheme. The changing dynamics of  on the ground situation in J&K makes it imperative for the Army to step back a little and let the other arms of the civil administration step up to the plate to deliver the basic services to the people.

Since Jammu and Kashmir is in a stage of 'conflict stabilisation,' the Army must consolidate its gains earned during intense and costly CI-CT (counter-insurgency, counter-terrorist) operations it has conducted over the past quarter century and not get distracted by civic action programmes like Op Sadbhavna.

Officially, the Army may not recommend dissolution of Op Sadbhavna but many officers and troops deployed on ground have increasingly felt that the project to win over the local population in J&K is showing diminishing returns over the past three-four years.

While violence may be down and the number of terrorists operating in the hinterland may have decreased dramatically, the demands of the people on the Army have been going up in direct proportion to the normalisation of the situation, straining the Army's limited manpower.

Since the scope of Op Sadbhavna was always small, the Army does not have the resources to meet rising aspirations of the people demanding better lifestyle and living standards. Normally, this should have been the State Government's and not the Army's  responsibility but during the high intensity conflict years the Army was the only contact point for the people in rural Jammu and Kashmir. Now, that bond is proving to be an albatross around the Army's neck.

Keeping everyone happy is becoming difficult and in any case the Army is not in J&K to win any popularity contest. It is time that the Army de-linked itself From Operation Sadbhavana which represented at best a tool for feasible transition to the political process.

Over the years, Operation Sadbhavana had put the organisational, medical, engineering, transport and educational expertise of the Army at the disposal of the people but if prolonged any further it may jeopardize the Army’s primary function of training and deployment for high-intensity conflict.

And that is something that the Army can ill-afford given that Pakistan is unlikely to end its proxy war in J&K any time soon. 

http://www.abplive.in/author/nitingokhale/2015/01/31/article489579.ece/Operation-Sadbhavna-has-outlived-its-utility

The Agni-V canister launch video

Video Courtesy: DRDO

The Army's Kashmir dilemma

The martyrdom of Colonel M N Rai, who died in Kashmir in terrorist firing, has once again opened the old debate on how the Indian Army should conduct its counter-insurgency, counter-terrorist operations under the changed circumstances in the border state.

Colonel Rai, a highly effective commanding officer, heading the 42 Rashtriya Rifles battalion, was killed in indiscriminate firing by two terrorists holed up inside a house in a village near Tral in South Kashmir even as he held back launching an operation after villagers requested him to wait for them to surrender.

Friends and relatives of the two local youth, who were hardcore members of a terrorist outfit, told Colonel Rai that they would prevail on the two men to surrender after the CO reached the village with his Quick Reaction Team following an intelligence tip off.

Even as he held back, the well-armed terrorists came out firing indiscriminately, killing Colonel Rai and a brave policeman, Head Constable Sanjiv Singh on the spot.

Colonel Rai's approach, part of an Indian Army doctrine based on WHAM -- Winning Hearts And Minds -- was correct under the circumstances that have prevailed in Jammu and Kashmir for at least a couple of years.

After nearly a quarter century of intense Counter Intelligence-Counter Terrorism ops bordering on outright war, the Army has seen the tempo tapering off a bit in the past few years, at least in the hinterland.

The 25-year long conflict is in fact going through a stabilisation phase that requires a combination of force and tact in dealing with terrorists taking shelter in populated areas. The handling becomes all the more difficult if the encounter involves local terrorists.

Colonel Rai's colleagues, his subordinates and some veterans say he did exactly what any CO of the Indian Army has done for years in Kashmir: Deal with terrorists/militants in a humane manner.

So when the villagers requested Colonel Rai to wait until they persuaded the two terrorists to surrender, he readily acceded. Little did Colonel Rai know that his trust would be betrayed.

Increasingly, Rashtriya Rifles battalions deployed in large numbers in Kashmir's interiors are faced with this dilemma. On the one hand, there is a need to reduce the Army's footprint and the earlier overwhelming, in-your face presence, and on the other not weaken the CI-CT grid that allows area domination.

Caught between these two opposite requirements, COs and company commanders, often young men with less than five years service, find it hard to strike a balance.

In coming months and years, this dilemma will only become more acute posing a serious challenge to the Army's endless 'No War, No Peace,' existence in Kashmir.

All COs and their superiors are sure to have taken note of the betrayal that killed Colonel Rai. Corrective measures will be taken quickly. And the Indian Army will continue to do its duty without rancour and remorse.

That is what makes the Indian soldier unique

(http://www.rediff.com/news/column/winning-hearts-or-fighting-terror-armys-kashmir-dilemma/20150130.htm)