Need to Treat Naxalites with Iron Fists, not Kid Gloves

Dr M N Buch, 

Dean, Centre for Governance and Political Studies, VIF

On 11^th March 2014, Naxalites ambushed a Road Opening Party of the Chhattisgarh Police and the Central Reserve Police in Bastar Division of Chhattisgarh killing fifteen policemen and an innocent civilian. This happened in the Jhiramghati area, very near Darbaghati where last year much of the senior leadership of the Chhattisgarh Congress was wiped out in an ambush, which killed twenty-six people, including members of the police escort. Earlier still, when the Collector of Sukma was abducted and held hostage, the Naxalites shot dead in cold blood the two personal security officers of the Collector, one a Muslim and the other a tribal. This region saw the deadliest ambush on the police ever, when 75 jawans were killed in one incident alone. Even at the height of the Nagaland insurgency, this magnitude of casualties in one incident had not been suffered by jawans of the Army or the Police. In the fight against Naxalism, more than 3000 policemen have been killed, about 1500 in Chhattisgarh alone.

The Naxalite dominated districts have the local population, largely tribal, living in remote areas, with poor infrastructure and with considerable poverty. In old Madhya Pradesh, the southern part of which has become Chhattisgarh, there was always the Ryotwari system of tenure, which meant that there were no intermediaries between government and the agriculturist, who was the Bhoomiswami or owner of the land. In 1951 even the intermediaries for revenue collection and management of common lands, the Malguzars, were abolished. In Bastar, later extended to the whole State, the Aboriginal Tribes (Protection of Interest in Trees) Act was in operation and this ensured that the tribes would be protected from exploitation on account of timber standing on their bhoomiswami land, with felling being permitted only under strict control and that, too, only by the Forest Department, with the permission of the Collector. There was also a total ban on transfer of tribal land to non-tribals. In other words, the exploitative Zamindari system which prevailed in neighbouring Telangana, formerly a part of Hyderabad State and then Andhra Pradesh, did not prevail in Madhya Pradesh which, before 1956, included Chandrapur and Gadhchiroli Districts of what is now Maharashtra. As a result of this, whilst Bastar and other tribal areas may have been poor, they were not in ferment caused by iniquitous land tenure. In trying to understand Naxalism, it is important to bear this fact in mind.

Long before Naxalbari, extreme left violence prevailed on a large scale in Hyderabad State in the Telangana portion because the peasants, largely tribal, were mercilessly exploited by the Zamindars. The resistance movement became so violent that in 1943 the Government of the Nizam of Hyderabad banned the Communist Party. When Hyderabad State was taken over by India after the Police Action, Telangana was marked out for special attention in order to restore the rule of law there. V. Nanjappa was appointed Special Commissioner and with great vigour he pursued the extremists and brought the area under control.

When the State of Andhra Pradesh was formed, it embarked on land reforms on the pattern of Madras Presidency and extended them to the Telangana Region. Various rural development programmes were also introduced. However, because the People’s War Group remained active, there was considerable violence. The Andhra Pradesh Police introduced three different tactics to deal with the situation. The first was to substantially increase the police presence in the disturbed region, establish fortified police stations which were impregnable to Naxalite attack and which provided a safe zone from which police counter measures could be launched. Once this exercise was completed, not a single police station in the region was successfully attacked by the extremist. This gave a boost to police morale.

The second measure was to set up a Special Task Force called the Greyhounds. This elite force had an integral intelligence wing, its officers and men were trained in jungle warfare and taught to be self-sufficient while operating in small units. By aggressive patrolling for area domination, by conducting strikes against Naxalite bases on receipt of credible intelligence, the Andhra Pradesh Police was able to restore command over the areas and bring the Naxalites under tremendous pressure.

The third measure was that the Andhra Pradesh Police identified the top leaders of the Naxalite movement, located them and then proceeded to eliminate them. Simultaneously the police also targeted the sympathisers of Naxalism who were playing an active role in giving them strength. Many of these persons were arrested and brought under judicial process. The net result of relentless policing by Andhra Pradesh was that many of the Naxalites fled the State and obtained sanctuary in neighbouring Odisha, southern Madhya Pradesh (now Chhattisgarh) and Maharashtra. In Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra, Naxalism was not home grown, but the foreign elements who came in organised the tribals and because the reaction of the State was tardy and weak, this imported Naxalism soon took roots. The Naxalite leaders were ruthless. Anyone who opposed them locally was liquidated and soon a reign of terror was established whereby the question of resistance by local people was not allowed to rise. In Madhya Pradesh, two officers, L.K. Joshi of the IAS, Commissioner, Bastar Division, through his outreach to the people and A.N. Pathak of the Indian Police Service, through his own leadership, personal bravery and continuous presence in the field, were not only able to keep Naxalism in check but had brought the situation to a stage where Naxalites would soon have been pushed out. At this stage, Digvijaya Singh, then Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh, under the misguided impression that the problem was socio-economic and should be dealt with accordingly, ordered the extra police out of Bastar, thus leaving a vacuum. The Naxalites flooded in to fill the vacuum, all the good work of the past was undone and now violent extremism had a firm base in southern Madhya Pradesh. In 2000, the new State of Chhattisgarh was carved out of old Madhya Pradesh. It was too small, too parochial, too bereft of administrative resources, for handling Naxalism, which the larger State of Madhya Pradesh could have done. Today, despite large scale injection of the Central Reserve Police, large swathes of southern Chhattisgarh are under the total control of the Naxalites. Once again, this fact of territorial loss must be borne in mind if we are to understand the true nature of the problem.

There is a group of activists, whose names are well known but which need not be repeated here, who argue that Naxalism is only a reaction to the traditional and age old exploitation of the tribal people, who are denied access to education, health and basic services, whose lands have been taken away from them and who are even under the threat of having their ethnicity destroyed. It is to protect the downtrodden that the Naxalites are there. Every organ of government is a part of the exploiters and, therefore, the Naxalites are justified in eliminating government functionaries by physical liquidation. Every successful action against the security forces is welcomed by these people, every attempt by the State to restore order is decried and an environment is created in which the Naxalites are heroes and State is the villain. A hero can do no wrong, a villain can do nothing right, or so say these activists.

There is a standard response to every incident, every ambush, in which policemen are killed. Ministers and government functionaries always say that this is a dastardly act of desperation of cowards. The activists laud every ambush as a victory of the people, a natural response of the tribals against exploitation. The fact is that the ambushes are not acts of desperation of cowards. They are deliberate, designed, well planned actions of motivated and highly organised groups of terrorists whose sole objective is to so demoralise the security forces so that the Indian State loses control over territory. One fact of which special notice must be taken is that every single attack by the Naxalites is aimed at killing every single policeman and then to booby trap the dead bodies of the policemen so that rescue parties may suffer injury or worse as they try to recover the bodies. No quarter is given to any policeman, no mercy is shown, so much so that even the basic fundamentals of the Geneva Convention are not followed. No prisoners are taken, no respect shown to the bodies of the slain and all that is aimed at is the disintegration of the police. Has anyone, the sympathisers of the Naxalites, the so called activists, the intellectual mentors of the extremists, ever said a condemnatory word about this extreme violence? However, even legitimate police measures to restore order are immediately condemned by the do-gooders as police brutality and unfortunately even our Courts and Human Rights Commissions fall prey to this temptation to attack the police. It is even more unfortunate that within the government itself, there are so many people, including P. Chidambaram, who refuse to see the true nature of the Naxalite terror and still harbour a feeling that the problem is socio-economic and not one of law and order. It was shocking to hear E. Rammohan Rao, former DGP, Border Security Force, stating on TV that the problem was not amenable to a police solution and that the question must be asked, “What led to the emergence of Naxalism?” At some stage this becomes relevant, but today we are faced with a situation in which law and order has broken down, the writ of government does not run, large chunks of territory are not under the control of government and ruthless murderers are calling the shots. The causes of Naxalism can be gone into later but today the government can have only one objective, which is to regain territory, reestablish the rule of law and restore law and order.

In order to restore governance to the Naxal affected areas, first and foremost the government must understand the nature of the Naxalite movement. The Naxalites do not want development; which is why they do not allow roads to be constructed, they blow up school buildings and do not allow schools to function, deployment of normal civil administration staff is not permitted, trade and commerce are hindered and money is collected through loot. Under these circumstances, the institutions of democracy and of decentralised local government cannot prosper or gain strength. If development and good governance are not the objective of the Naxalites, if the destruction of the security forces is considered the normal method of interaction with government then, by reductio ad absurdum, the only objective of the Naxalites can be the destruction of the Indian State. What is shocking is that even today government refuses to acknowledge that it is engaged in a war, a war which it cannot win unless it acknowledges the enemy to be an enemy and to deal with him as one would be in a war, that is, with no holds barred. The might of the Indian State has to be used to restore the presence of the Indian State in the Naxalite hit districts and let there be no pussyfooting around the problem The very government which established the National Investigating Agency using Entry 1, List 1 of the Seventh Schedule by stating that anything which threatens the State must be treated as an attack on the State and falls within the general definition of Defence of India, cannot simultaneously use Entries 1 and 2 of List 2 of the Seventh Schedule to claim that law and order is a State subject and the Naxalite threat falls within this definition. Now is the time to stop pretending that everything is normal in the Naxalite areas and stating that a slightly higher police presence which, nevertheless, treats Naxalites as fragile objects to be handled with care, can succeed. War is cruel. War may cause collateral damage, but losing the war destroys the nation itself. Can we afford to lose the war?

Undoubtedly government has professionals to advise it on strategy and tactics. Much of the action takes place in afforested areas and here it might be worth recollecting the doctrine whereby Field Marshal Sir William Slim, after being crushingly defeated by the Japanese in Burma, went about the task of laying the foundations of victory and training the XIV Army for this purpose. The nature of warfare in Burma was somewhat similar to that in Bastar in that there are the Naxalites, who know the terrain and are buoyed up by a series of successful ambushes against the security forces who, in turn, are increasingly demoralised as they lose large numbers of men. In Burma, of course, the Japanese were the enemies and it is the British who were on the run and thoroughly demoralised. In his book “Defeat Into Victory”, Slim says, (i) “The individual soldier must learn, by living, moving and exercising in it, that the jungle is neither impenetrable nor unfriendly. When he has once learnt to move and live in it he can use it for concealment, covered movement and surprise. (ii) Patrolling is the master key to jungle fighting. All units, not only infantry battalions, must learn to patrol in the jungle, boldly, widely, cunningly and offensively. (viii) If the Japanese are allowed to hold the initiative they are formidable, when we have it they are confused and easy to kill. By mobility away from roads, by surprise and offensive action, we must regain and keep the initiative”. The police in the Naxal affected areas must operate by the same principles. These include terrain familiarisation, aggressive patrolling, deep penetration into Naxalite areas and bold strikes which inflicts heavy casualties. Unfortunately, today’s position is that the Police still moves in a conventional manner, thus making it vulnerable to successful ambush. In an ambush, the ambusher chooses his ground, generally occupies high ground and then lures the ambushed party into a killing ground which can be enfiladed with fire. In the Jhiramghati incident, a forty-five strong patrol first went to investigate a burning vehicle and then, bunched up as it were, the patrol was subjected to heavy fire. Obviously we have not trained our men to go to ground, to attempt to reach high ground behind the enemy and then to engage the Naxalites on an equal footing. When Narendra Prasad, IPS was commandant of the Thirteenth Battalion, MPSAF in Nagaland at the height of the Naga insurgency, his unit was never successfully ambushed because it followed all the classical steps necessary to ensure the safe movement of troops. The camps of the battalion were so located that they commanded a height and the outposts could intercept any lurking Naga attack. Movement of Road Opening Parties was not only along roads and instead patrols went up on the high ground flanking the road and, by occupying it, were able to prevent Naga ambushers from attacking the road. We need to train the Chhattisgarh Police and the Central Reserve Police in these tactics so that ambushes can be taken on successfully.

Even today the police is armed with light weapons. When the enemy fires from high ground he must be dislodged by bringing heavy ordnance to bear on him. This means projectiles with explosive warheads fired from rocket launchers, armoured fighting vehicles with quick firing cannon of 20 mm or 30 mm calibre and helicopter gunships which deluge the high ground with fire from automatic weapons. Every successful ambush bring hordes of recruits to the Naxalites, every ambush that is broken raises the morale of the security forces. Why is there hesitation on the part of government to train and arm the police appropriately so that it can fight the new war?

Once the Naxalites are on the run, normal civil administration must be quickly established and development programmes accelerated, but in a way in which the local tribal can be both participants and beneficiaries. Till then let the police go on the offensive and, by successful ambush, by aggressive patrolling, by deep penetration into Naxalite areas by parties which are trained and equipped to overwhelm even larger groups of Naxalites and inflict heavy casualties, the Indian State has to carry the war successfully to the door step of the Naxalites. The activists, the media, even the human rights organisations and authorities have to be told very categorically that nothing will deter government from the main objective of destroying the Naxalites . Let this message also go to the Naxalites so that the sensible among them surrender themselves and the fanatics can be isolated and liquidated.

Dinesh Trivedi, DG, CRPF, has angrily stated that he will not leave the massacre of his men go unavenged. How? By brave words? The slog will be hard, but if Slim could rebuild the XIVth Army, then let the Chhattisgarh Police and CRPF rebuild themselves. If even one unit of the two Forces can spontaneously and successfully attack a Naxalite stronghold and virtually wipe out an entire dalam, that would be a start. Are you game, Dinesh Trivedi?  

Russia Looks at Regaining its Space Glory

Radhakrishna Rao, 

Visiting Fellow, VIF

Behind the successful 2013 test flight of Antares rocket –designed and developed by the US private space enterprise Orbital Sciences Corporation— at Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport (MARS) on Wallops Island in Virginia, there was a tale of “Soviet connection.” This two stage launch vehicle meant to help launch cargo resupply runs to the International Space Station(ISS), which will be in operational service till the end of this decade, features in its first stage an improved version of two N1 engine originally developed by the former Soviet Union as part of the strategy to race fast the American Saturn-V programme that constituted the cornerstone of the American manned missions.

Significantly, in early 2014, an Antares rocket carrying a commercially developed cargo ship made its first operational flight to ISS. Antares is also capable of providing low cost and reliable access to space for payloads weighing upto 6120-kg. Interestingly, Orbital acquired an improved version of N1 engine from the US firm Aerojet which had purchased 40 of the N series engines from Russia after the disintegration of the once mighty Soviet Union. ”The Soviet N1 booster had the highest lift off thrust of any rocket built in the history of space exploration,” notes Asif.A.Siddiqi, a US based historian of the Soviet space programme.

Interestingly, Russians could not put N-1 to operational use though it was developed as an answer to the American Saturn-V. As it is, a string of four failures of N-1 mega booster meant that the Russian dream of launching a cosmonaut to the moon went up in flames. Subsequently, the N-1 project was cancelled by a decree of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Russia. N-1 had a massive cluster of 30 engines at its base. Incidentally, the cryogenic engine developed for N-1 ended up as the upper stage of India’s three stage Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV) capable of placing a two tonne plus satellite payload into a geostationary transfer orbit. Under an agreement, Russia made available to India seven cryogenic engine stages for powering the flights of GSLV as a stop gap arrangement till India’s own cryogenic engine stage could take off.

Because of the complex technological challenges involved in the development of a cryogenic engine in late 1980s, Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) decided to acquire the cryogenic engine technology from Russia with the purpose of giving a quickening impetus to the development of GSLV, the first two stages of which are derived from the modules of the highly successful and reliable space workhorse Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV). Accordingly, in 1991, ISRO entered into an agreement with the Russian federal space agency Glavkosmos for the supply of two flight ready cryogenic engine stages along with the transfer of critical cryogenic engine technology. But then in 1992, USA, citing the provisions of the so called Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR), pressurised Russia that was just suffering the pangs of disintegration, to abandon its commitment of transferring the cryogenic engine technology to India. The stand of USA was that cryogenic engine technology has dual use potentials. But the ground reality is that cryogenic propulsion technology is not well suited for a missile system for the simple reason that the cryogenic fuel cannot be loaded on into the missile well in advance.

Under US pressure, Russia watered down the original agreement and as a face saving device decided to supply seven ready to use cryogenic engine stages to ISRO without any technology transfer. This was to enable India carry out GSLV flights till such time as an indigenous cryogenic stage gets ready. Following the denial of the cryogenic technology, ISRO launched its Cryogenic Upper Stage Project (CUSP) about two decades back. The mission objective was to realize a three stage launch vehicle capable of placing 2-2.5-tonne satellites into a geostationary transfer orbit. And thanks to the painstaking efforts of ISRO, the superb technological performance of the home grown cryogenic engine stage was convincingly demonstrated by the successful January 2014 flight of GSLV. Indeed, the flawless GSLV maiden flight featuring an Indian cryogenic engine stage was a slap in the face of the technology denial regime spearheaded by USA.

Evidently, a cryogenic engine stage is highly efficient since it makes available more thrust for every kg of fuel it burns in comparison to solid and earth storable liquid fuel driven rocket stages. A cryogenic stage is technically a very complex system in comparison to solid or earth storable liquid propellant stages due to its use of propellants at a very low temperatures and associated thermal and structural problems.

Meanwhile, Russia’s struggling space programme has projected a new multi billion dollar plan focussed on the development of a replacement for the obsolete and aging Soyuz cargo spaceship by 2020. This US$70-billion plan of the Russian space agency Roscomos also envisages the launch of new unmanned missions to the moon and beyond. Soyuz has remained the backbone of Russian space travel since its development in 1960s.One major setback suffered by the Russian space programme was the failure of the Progress-44 capsule meant to carry supplies to ISS .The Progress-44 carrying more than three ton of food supplies to ISS crew fell back to earth moments after its launch in August 2011, following the failure of a Russian Soyuz space vehicle.

The Soyuz became the world’s only manned link to the ISS following phasing out of the US space shuttle in July 2011. Against this backdrop, the Russian space agency’s outline called for the introduction of an “energy transportation module with a promising propulsion installation that will be ready for testing by 2018.” Roscosmos also said that it intends to “deploy a programme for detailed study of the moon and launch a series of unmanned missions for studying its soil samples.”

In what has been perceived as a major boost to the Russian space programme, President Vladimir Putin told the astronauts on-board ISS in 2013 April that Russia will send manned flights from its own soil in 2018 using a new ultra modern launch complex. Putin expressed the optimism that the upcoming launch pad will help the once pioneering space power explore deep space and the moon .In particular, he drove home the point that he wants the Vostochny cosmodrome to help Russia catch up with other powers in exploring beyond the near earth orbit. ”We are lagging behind the world in some areas. We have developed a noticeable gap from the leading space powers in the technologies of so called deep space exploration,” observed Putin.

Russia is planning to use Vostochny, located in the Far Eastern part of this former Communist empire, for launching a new generation of rockets carrying heavier payloads to rival its current launch site at Baikonur in Kazakhstan, the lease of which has been in contention since the 1991 break up of the Soviet Union. Baikonur cosmodrome in the steppes of Central Asia was the nerve centre of Soviet space launch activities. The first human to go to space, Yuri Gagarin made his pioneering space flight from here. However, the unresolved dispute over the lease terms continue to cast a shadow of uncertainty over its use by Russia.

According to Putin, the first launch from Vostochny will be in 2015 .The site, near Russia’s Pacific coast, was chosen to allow cosmonauts to splash down on water after their mission. “It is clear that in the 21st century, Russia must preserve its status as a leading space power,” said the Russian President. He also announced that the town being built around the new cosmodrome to house its engineers, researchers and their families would be called Tsiolkovsky in honour of the Russian scientist Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, who spearheaded rocket design in early Soviet era. There is no denying the fact that this new launch complex in eastern Amur region would enable Russia to shift much of the launches from the Baikonur cosmodrome. Russia leases Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan for U$115-million annually.

Putin also revealed that Russian space programme will get backed up substantially to the extent of US$52-billion over the next eight years. In 2011, Russia spent close to US$4-billion on its space program. However, the new push announced by Putin will imply that Russian space will get US$6.5-billion per year which means more than50% increase.

Between 2011 and 2013 Russian space programme had to sustain a series of failures and setbacks. Mishaps struck two Soyuz rockets in 2011, resulting in the loss of a military communications spacecraft and a Progress resupply ship heading for ISS. The once formidable Proton launch vehicle, which had come cropper in July 2013 with the three Glonass satellites it was carrying, turning into a ball of flame, however had its successful run in Sept.2013 when it launched a European telecom satellite. The July 2013 failure of Proton rocket was blamed on the placing of three rocket sensors in an upside down fashion. However, one of Russia’s most conspicuous failures was the loss of its Phobos-Grunt probe to Mars launched in 2011 which ended up crashing back into earth rather than coming close to completing its mission of visiting Martian moon. Indeed, this space flop has highlighted the infirmity of the Russian space progamme compared to NASA which in recent years had scored impressive success with its unmanned missions to Mars including Mars rover Spirit.

However, 2014 seems to have proved luckier to Russian space missions. In March this year, a Russian Proton-M rocket successfully launched two Russian telecom satellites. Prior to that in February, a Russian Proton rocket delivered Turkey’s domestic satellite Turksat-4A into its intended orbit.

Looking beyond its failures and setbacks, the Russian space programme has its vision focussed firmly on planetary missions. According to Oleg Ostapenko, Head of the Roscosmos Russian space agency developing technologies for robotic exploration of the moon and Mars is one of the important focus areas of the Russian space programme. The first mission named Luna-25 is slated for launch on the southern polar region of the moon in 2016. The next two missions will include an orbiter probe to monitor the moon in 2018 and a polar lander with a drill to search for water ice in 2019. Subsequent missions are planned to deploy robotic base on the moon and bring lunar soil back to earth for analysis.

Certainly there is no denying the fact that the landmark spaceflight of the Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin strengthened the space leadership position of the erstwhile Soviet Union which had also to its credit the inauguration of the space age with the successful launch of Sputnik in October 1957. But in 1969, the USA took the then Soviet Union by surprise by successfully accomplishing the first human landing on the moon. The former Soviet Union had also proven its excellence in orbital complex technology. It is a tribute to the Russian mastery over the challenging technology of realizing an orbital complex that its Mir space station launched in 1986 continued to be operational till 2001. Incidentally, it was the world’s first and only permanently manned orbital outpost till the construction of ISS in 1998.Significantly, Russia had contributed to ISS with its Zanya module, technologies and expertise to build and operate an orbiting complex.

The plan to extend the operational life of ISS till 2020 has provided Russia an opportunity to boost its income by providing crew and cargo transportation service based on the Soyuz vehicle. As the US reusable space transportation system, the space shuttle, has been grounded, Russia’s reliable space workhorse Soyuz will be the only means of taking international crew to ISS. But then not long back Putin had observed, “Russia should not limit itself to the role of an international space ferry man. We need to increase our presence on the global space market which is roughly worth around US$200-billion”.

The high point of the Russian space programme is that it is developing a futuristic nuclear propulsion system for its proposed interplanetary missions. This is an area where Russia has a certain edge over the USA. According to Dr.Asif Siddiqi, Soviet space activities were essentially driven by militaristic ambitions and not due to the push provided by a well planned and centrally funded organizational set up. His thesis is that the Soviet space programme had an “accidental evolution” not because of the support from the Communist Government in Moscow but because of the vision of a few motivated individual scientists.

Clearly and apparently, Soviets did not have a long term space vision on the lines of the goals set by NASA. From launching Sputnik to sending its first cosmonaut into space, Soviets relied on modified versions of its ICBM (Inter Continental Ballistic Missile). But then the Achilles heel of the Soviet space programme was that the outfit which produced space systems and hardware also worked on missiles and defence devices. This resulted in a diffusion of focus on the space activities. Consequently, without a long term planning and sustained funding, the development of a high performance booster required to realize a manned flight to moon took a serious hit.

Before the break up of the Soviet Union, Russians had carried out a number of tests for developing a reusable space vehicle called Cosmolyot and a heavy lift off Energia vehicle as the most powerful and versatile booster developed anywhere. However, following the political turmoil and economic crisis that accompanied the break up of this mighty communist empire, Cosmolyot and Energia programmes came a cropper. But then the world cannot forget the innumerable space records set by the former Soviet Union which included the launch of the first animal, the first man and the first woman into space. Similarly, the first space walk was undertaken by a Soviet cosmonaut. The first pictures of the moon’s hidden sides were shot by an orbiting Soviet spaceship.

Meanwhile, in an interesting development, researchers of Russian Space Forces are working on developing an unmanned reusable space vehicle somewhat similar to American X-37 orbital vehicle now being developed by Boeing for United States Air Force (USAF). In the ultimate analysis, Russia is working hard to push ahead with its projects meant to reclaim the space glory of Soviet era.

In a major shift in its launch strategy, Russia’s new manned spacecraft will now be launched by means of Angara -5 rocket, originally developed for unmanned missions. The country’s new cosmonaut spacecraft getting ready for its maiden flight test in 2018, which was to have been launched by another rocket named Rus-M, will now be orbited by Angara-5. The Angara rocket will replace the existing launch vehicles including heavy lift off Proton to become the core of Russia’s unmanned launch fleet. Russia’s state space research and production centre Khrunichev is also developing a super heavy lift Angara-7, capable of orbiting payloads of 45 to 75 tonnes and for which there is no equivalent in Russia’s current rocket fleet. The main aim of the Angara family of rockets is to help Russia minimize its dependence on Baikonur cosmodrome. In addition, Angara will help Russia meet its diverse launch needs. South Korea’s Naro-1 rocket uses an Angara RD-151 engine as its first stage. Meanwhile, preparations are on for the debut flight of Angara, considered the first new big rocket since the end of Soviet era.  

Pervez Musharraf, Nawaz Sharif, Pakistan Army, PPP, Missing Persons Case

Sushant Sareen, 

Senior Fellow, VIF

Even though Gen Pervez Musharraf has finally been indicted on five charges of treason by the Special Court constituted to try him, the widespread feeling within Pakistan and beyond is that this is probably as far as the civilian government could go against the ex-military strongman. As the argument goes, having made history - Musharraf is the first Pakistani military dictator to stand trial, it is time for all sides to back-off because the case has reached its ‘logical conclusion’.

For now, it is a win-win for all sides: the Nawaz Sharif government and the judiciary can claim to have made an example of Musharraf without being too bloody-minded and vengeful; the army can pat itself on the back for not having obstructed justice or destabilising the civilian government and at the same time managing to protect its former chief from being humiliated; Musharraf can boast about how he boldly faced the courts – it is another matter that he once virtually ran away from one court and then feigned illness to avoid appearing before the Special Court for weeks. Speculation is rife that within the next few days Musharraf will be allowed to leave Pakistan with either his mother’s hospitalisation or his own health becoming the excuse, to not return ever or at least until a more friendly dispensation assumes power in Islamabad. If indeed he gets out of Pakistan, the civilian government will not only have avoided any unintended consequences emanating from this treason trial, but also have got rid of a somewhat unnecessary distraction at a time when it is confronted with monumental economic and security challenges.

But things are a little more complicated than what the win-win situation would seem to suggest. Even though Musharraf’s exit from Pakistan works for all the players, the problem is not just that someone has to make a call to let Musharraf go, but also that whoever makes this call will also have to take a fall, if not a tumble, for Musharraf. This really is the nub of the problem and unless this is sorted out soon – the window of opportunity to send Musharraf out before the treason trial gathers pace will not remain open for very long – a situation could develop where, despite their reluctance, all the players are pushed by the force and logic of circumstances and their own stated positions in a direction that leads to Musharraf’s conviction and worse.

Until his indictment, Musharraf was placed on the Exit Control List (ECL) which prevented him from leaving Pakistan. The government claimed that removing his name from the ECL could only be done by the courts. But the Special Court has ruled that this is a call that the government has to take, which it is quite understandably unwilling to do. Nawaz Sharif knows that letting Musharraf go at this stage would open him to an unbearable political attack by the opposition parties. Just as Nawaz Sharif and his party used the Guard of Honour given to Musharraf when he quit the Presidency against the PPP, now the shoe will be on the other foot. Sharif still finds it difficult to live down the charge that he ran away to Saudi Arabia after seeking mercy from Musharraf. If he now allows Musharraf to leave, and that too without any mercy petition, he will give his opponents a big handle to beat him with.

If it were up to Sharif, he would like nothing better than to see Musharraf in prison, even hang. According to people who know Nawaz Sharif, he doesn’t forgive easily. It is only on Sharif’s adamance that Musharraf’s trial even managed to reach the stage of indictment. The grapevine is that Nawaz Sharif is keen to see Musharraf get convicted. At that stage, he would magnanimously allow a Presidential pardon after Musharraf appeals for clemency. This way Nawaz Sharif would settle the score. Members of Nawaz Sharif’s party and other observers argue that allowing Musharraf to flee soon after his indictment would set a terrible precedent and example and undermine the quest for rule of law in Pakistan. It will open the door for any person facing serious charges to seek permission to go out of the country on one pretext or another. Therefore, Nawaz Sharif and his team is loath to giving Musharraf his ticket out of Pakistan. But if the judiciary were to do this, then they might have the fig leaf they need and become pragmatic enough to let go of Musharraf.

On its part, the judiciary is also caught in a bit of a bind. It has been trying to project itself as a fearless and independent institution which can no longer be pushed around by either the government or the military. If the judiciary were to allow a man indicted on charges of treason to leave the country, it would severely compromise its credibility. The judges are pragmatic enough to know the limits of their power when it comes to dealing with the top brass of the army. The Missing Persons case stands testimony to this reality – the judges are all fire and brimstone against the army and intelligence agencies in the Missing Persons case but have desisted from taking any stringent action against any top military official. And so, while they would not be averse to see the back of Musharraf, they wouldn’t like to be the ones to make that call and would rather that the government did it. This is the reason why they have thrown the ECL ball in the government’s court.

The Pakistan Army is not very happy to see its former chief being dragged through the courts. Until now the generals have held their peace because this is a situation that Musharraf brought upon himself by returning to Pakistan against all advice, even entreaties, of the army. Even so, they have intervened in their own way to protect Musharraf and save him from humiliation. Initially, bombs would conveniently be discovered near Musharraf’s farm-house and this was used to justify his absence from court. Then he was spirited away to the Armed Forces Institute of Cardiology where he was kept for weeks on grounds of a palpably fake heart condition. Only once he was taken from the hospital to the court, but that too after receiving an assurance that he won’t be indicted. But this subterfuge couldn’t work indefinitely and in recent days had become a cause for embarrassment for the government, the judiciary and even the army. Senior ministers had started making statements about how the army was losing face by protecting Musharraf. The judges were losing face because of the flagrant violation of orders and repeated non-appearance of the accused. With their hand forced, they had to issue non-bailable warrants, which finally forced Musharraf to appear for his indictment.

The point is that the army was no longer in a position to resist the judicial order, unless of course it wanted to enter into an open confrontation with the government and judiciary. The implication of this is that the compulsions of each of the players could force them to adopt a path which leads Musharraf either to the goal or the gallows. The choice before the army at that point will be to either lump it or else move against the government and judiciary, and either destabilise it or overthrow it. The question is whether the army will be willing to risk the stability of the country for just one individual. More importantly, will the army be willing to move back into the saddle for running the state and risk unpopularity among the people only to bail out a former chief? Unless Nawaz Sharif makes a complete hash of things, chances are that the army will find it difficult to overthrow his government because of the treatment meted out to Musharraf. This means that while they may not like what happens to Musharraf, they will find themselves constrained to act against the government to save him.

A lot will however depend on which sides holds its nerves in the tension that will inevitably build up if the trial proceeds beyond the indictment stage. If the government holds its nerve, the army might well be left with no choice but to see Musharraf being out through the grind. On the other hand, if the government loses its nerve, then Musharraf could win his freedom, but have to reconcile to spending the rest of his life or at least the better part of it in exile. It would therefore appear that Musharraf isn’t quite out of the woods just yet. 

The Third Front in Indian Politics: An Assessment

K G Suresh, 

Senior Fellow & Editor, VIF

Introduction

One of the significant developments in the country’s fast changing political scenario has been the rather premature demise of the much hyped 11 party Third Front. After the Jayalalithaa-led AIADMK dumped the alliance with the Left parties in Tamil Nadu within days of its announcement, other key constituents the Samajwadi Party, JD(U) and Left parties decided to contest the elections on their own in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and other states sounding the death knell of the much-hyped initiative.

In the politically crucial Uttar Pradesh. differences arose between the SP and the CPI and CPM over seat sharing, with SP chief Mulayam Singh Yadav rigidly stating that his party would contest 78 of the 80 seats in UP.

While the CPI decided to field candidates in eight Lok Sabha seats, the CPM announced plans to contest two seats.

Meanwhile, addressing the JD(U) state executive committee in Lucknow on March 5, the party’s national president, Sharad Yadav, told state leaders not to have much expectations from the Third Front. In fact, he exhorted party leaders to prepare for the Lok Sabha elections and highlight the failures of the incumbent SP government in the state.

Further, going against the spirit of the non-Congress and non-BJP stance of the alliance, the SP Chief, who took the initiative for stitching the rag tag alliance this time, also decided not to field any candidates against either UPA Chairperson Sonia Gandhi or Congress Vice-President Rahul Gandhi in Amethi and Rae Bareli respectively.

Thus, as of now, in UP alone, the members of the Front will be locking horns in more than 24 Lok Sabha seats.

In a major loss of face in far away Kerala, after decades of being a steadfast ally of the four-party Left Democratic Front, the Revolutionary Socialist Party (RSP) left the CPM-led alliance to join the Congress-led United Democratic Front.

These developments prompted SP scion and UP Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav to state that if at all such a front materialises, it could only be after the election results are out on May 16.

Joining issues, former CPI General Secretary AB Bardhan also admitted in a recent television interview that it was a mistake for the Left front to attempt to forge a third front alliance before the polls.

The proposed joint rally of the 11 non-Congress, non-BJP parties, which was to be held in Bangalore, has also been called off.

It was only on February 25 that top leaders of the Left, AIADMK, Samajwadi Party, Janata Dal (United) and JD(S) had met in Delhi to chalk out a common charter of programme. Speaking after the meeting, CPI(M) leader Prakash Karat had said 11 non-UPA, non-NDA parties will fight the upcoming Lok Sabha polls together to defeat the UPA and stop the BJP from coming to power.

Interestingly, the Third Front also did not have the support of either Trinamool Congress leader Mamata Banerjee, BSP Supremo Mayawati or BJD Chief Naveen Patnaik, all of whom are powerful satraps in their home states. In fact, Mamata is said to be toying with the idea of a Federal Front or a Fourth Front.

What’s more, the most visible critic of both the UPA and NDA, the Arvind Kejriwal led Aam Aadmi Party (which too had taken the outside support of the Congress during its 49 day Government in Delhi), too is not part of either of these alliances.

Backgrounder

Ahead of the last general elections, one saw former Prime Minister HD Deve Gowda taking the initiative for the formation of a Third Front with a massive rally in Karnataka, attended and addressed by several leaders including Prakash Karat, AB Bardhan, TDP Supremo Chandrababu Naidu and BSP’s Satish Chandra Mishra, besides representatives of the AIADMK and the Haryana Janhit Congress.

Ever an aspirant for the top post, the JD(S) supremo goaded all these parties to chalk out a ‘common minimum programme’ but failed to achieve any breakthrough. Mr Gowda was shocked to find that Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati, who had become the rallying point for the new alternative, chose not to concede even a single seat in Uttar Pradesh for his close aide and party secretary general, Kunwar Danish Ali. What’s more, she decided to go it all alone in Karnataka, with her candidates contesting against several JD(S) nominees.

In Andhra Pradesh, the TRS rejected the former Prime Minister’s appeal to accommodate one of his party leaders. In Kerala too, where the Left and the JD(S) have had a historic relationship, the CPI(M) refused to yield important seats demanded by the latter, forcing senior party leader and veteran parliamentarian MP Veerendra Kumar to join forces with the Congress-led UDF.

But then, even as the results were trickling in, one saw the pathetic sight of Gowda’s son and former Chief Minister HD Kumaraswamy entering 10, Janpath, with his face covered, to extend his party’s unconditional support to UPA2. It was not long before that he had deserted the Congress to form a coalition Government in Karnataka with the BJP and later backed out in the name of “secularism”, when he had to hand over the chief ministership of the State to the BJP under the 20-month rotation agreement.

In statements bordering on bravado, ahead of the elections, CPI(M) leader Sitaram Yechury had discounted the possibility of its allies in the so-called Third Front embracing the Congress or the BJP after the Lok Sabha polls.

Yechury had then boasted that regional parties such as the AIADMK in Tamil Nadu and the JD(S) in Karnataka had teamed up with the Left because of pressure from their support base. This, he argued, would not allow them to go over to the BJP or the Congress after the April-May election — unlike in the past.

With the BSP and the JD(S) switching loyalties to the UPA and the TRS walking over to the NDA within days of the poll verdict, an embittered Yechury had to eat his words and state that the post-poll developments have proved that the “cut and paste” alliance was a mistake.

“You are right about BSP, JD(S) and TRS and that is precisely the point that I am making. Our decision is that it was neither credible nor viable and this (deserting the pre-poll alliance) only confirmed that”, the CPI (M) Politburo member said in a television interview.

Subsequently, one also saw the Samajwadi Party along with its arch rival from Uttar Pradesh, the Bahujan Samaj Party led by Kum Mayawati, who had projected herself as the Third Front’s Prime Ministerial candidate in the 2009 polls, together serving as crutches for the outgoing UPA Government after its key allies TMC and DMK walked out of the alliance.

But pushed to oblivion in West Bengal and Kerala, their traditional strongholds, and thereby finding itself on the fringes of national polity, the CPI(M) did not think twice before jumping on to the new Third Front bandwagon, the moment the wily SP leader invited them with his dulcet calls for the revival of the so-called front.

It is but natural therefore that the idea of the Third Front, envisaging a non-UPA, non-NDA alternative at the Centre, has come to be ridiculed by critics as an Utopian concept or at worst a seasonal frog (Barsati Maindak) which appears only during the polls.

The Case Against Third Front

If anti-Congressism was the politically correct stand from the mid-60s to late 80s interspersed with the failed experiments of Janata Party and the National Front coalitions, anti-BJPism laid the foundations of a third alternative. It became fashionable to maintain equidistance from both the Congress and BJP.

Yet, Mulayam Singh Yadav, the present Centre of gravity of the elusive Front, much like his other regional counterparts such as the DMK’s M Karunanidhi and JD(S) supremo Gowda, has always been known for practising the politics of opportunism of the worst kind.

Whether it be taking the help of the BJP to become the Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh, entering into an alliance with Kalyan Singh (only to dump him later), opposing Sonia Gandhi’s foreign origin and then bailing out the UPA when the Left parties pulled the rug from under the ruling party’s feet, the wrestler-turned-politician has always taken advantage of the most unfavourable situations to turn the tide in his favour. Ideology, principles, norms, conventions, coalition dharma etc have all been like tissue paper for him to be used and thrown.

Reflective of double standards, over the years, anyone, including those who had worked closely with the BJP in the past, became secular once they distanced themselves from the saffron party. This so-called non-Congress, non-BJP Front had no qualms about seeking outside support from the Congress as was the case with the Deve Gowda and the IK Gujral Governments, even as they unashamedly claimed to be the third alternative, losing credibility in the eyes of the electorate. Besides, these Third Front Governments also heralded an innings of instability not to talk about their disastrous performance on all fronts. Most of their time was spent on managing the messy coalition and trying to somehow stick on to power.

With both the national parties realising that they cannot form Governments on their own strength, smaller parties in their quest for a place under the sun and to extract their pound of flesh started gravitating towards them, leading to the formation of the UPA and the NDA.

Even the parties which tried to maintain some semblance of neutrality entered into alliances with the two national parties both at the State and the Centre from time to time. From the ‘compulsions’ of running a State to living up to people’s aspirations and escaping the Damocles sword called CBI, these opportunist regional outfits found alibis galore to defend their alliance with the national parties.

With Jyoti Basu missing the prime ministerial bus in 1996 and the CPI(M) repenting at leisure, the Left parties, which have been at the forefront of the Third Front experiments in the past, too could not resist the temptation of wielding clout over Raisina Hill, when they extended outside support to UPA1, under the garb of “keeping communal powers at bay”.

Thus, the Third Front has come to be viewed as the last refuge for desperate power hungry regional satraps wanting to share the spoils of office at the Centre and extract their pound of flesh with the threat of withdrawal of support as their weapon of blackmail.

Conclusion

Except for the Left parties, all others are purely dynastic or personal enterprises, with no inner party democracy whatsoever. They have no principles, ideology, programmes or vision to offer to the people except hollow slogans of secularism, federalism and farmers’ rights – a key reason for their failure to provide a stable Government at the Centre despite umpteen opportunities to prove themselves in the past. The Third Front constituents as also the other Satraps are expected to switch loyalties to one or the other national alliances, once the results are out.

In the past too, wrangling for power and opportunism have been the hall marks of the short-lived Third Front regimes, which carried the seed of instability in their womb itself.

If the 1996 experiment was a flop show and the 2009 attempt a farce, the proposed 2014 Third Front show would be nothing but a fraud on the people of India.

As a political commentator aptly put it, “In the context of India’s politics, a Third Front signifies a group that stands apart from the Congress and BJP. However, by bringing together any one and every one regardless of their history, ideology or even program, who, for various reasons, is opposed to the Congress or the BJP, the core parties of the Indian Left, CPI and CPI(M), might as well be named the Communist Party of India (Electionist), which sums up their ideological and political bases.”

China’s Rising Defence Expenditure and Implications for India

Brig (Retd) Gurmeet Kanwal, 

Visiting Fellow, VIF

While India’s interim defence budget for the financial year (FY) 2014-15 has remained stagnant in terms of the Rupee-Dollar exchange rate and inflation, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) of China has been given a 12.2 per cent increase over the previous year in planned defence expenditure to US$ 131.57 billion (Yuan 808.23 billion).

China’s annual defence expenditure has been growing at double digit rates over the last decade. The latest hike is a clear signal from the new regime led by Xi Jinping and Li Keqiang that China will continue its strident march towards becoming the pre-eminent military power in Asia and that its military assertiveness will continue while dealing with territorial disputes.

Premier Li Keqiang told the National People’s Congress, the government would "strengthen research on national defence and the development of new- and high-technology weapons and equipment" and "enhance border, coastal and air defences... We will comprehensively enhance the revolutionary nature of the Chinese armed forces, further modernise them and upgrade their performance, and continue to raise their deterrence and combat capabilities in the information age."

Chinese analysts often seek to justify the steep annual hikes in the defence outlay as having been “caused by the sharp increase in the wages, living expenses and pensions of 2.3 million PLA officers, civilian personnel, soldiers and army retirees.” However, defence analysts look at the spectacular anti-satellite test successfully conducted by China in January 2007, pictures of an aircraft carrier – the Liaoning – undergoing sea trials, the acquisition of SU-30 fighter-bombers and air-to-air refuelling capability, the development of anti-ship ballistic missiles and a growing footprint in the South China and East China Seas, and cannot help wonder whether a 21st century arms race has well and truly begun.

In the 2004 and 2006 White Papers on National Defence, the Chinese government had stated that additional funds were needed for modernisation of the PLA. The allocation of additional funds for force re-structuring and a qualitative increase in the levels of training is emphasised in both the White Papers, as also rising inflation as a cause of increased defence expenditure. However, nothing in the recent White Papers fully explains the double-digit inflation-adjusted growth in the annual defence expenditure. It is this lack of transparency that has fuelled speculation about an arms race.

Complete transparency in defence spending has seldom been a strong point even among countries that take pride in being liberal democracies. According to the late Air Cmde Jasjit Singh: “All countries try and protect what they consider to be crucial information about their defence capability for understandable reasons; and defence expenditures are obviously part of that information except where democratic states practice greater transparency as part of their liberal ethos, domestic obligations and public oversight, and well established procedures of accountability...” Totalitarian regimes like the one in China lack egalitarian accounting practices and do not have a real grip on all the details of what they actually spend.

China’s actual military expenditure is far higher than the officially published figure. This year it is expected to cross US$ 200 billion. David Shambaugh, a well-known China analyst, finds China’s defence budget the most difficult aspect of the country’s armed forces to research. In his view, “Few areas of China’s military affairs are more opaque and difficult to research than the revenue/ expenditure and budget/ finance domains – but perhaps none is more important to understand.” In response to international calls for greater openness, one Chinese military official wrote: “Transparency is a tool of the strong to be used against the weak.”

David Shambaugh lists several items of expenditure that do not figure in China’s official defence expenditure (ODE): “China’s official defence budget does not appear to include all funds for (1) Chinese-made weapons and equipment production (as distinct from procurement); (2) some RDT&E costs; (3) the paramilitary People’s Armed Police; (4) funds for special large weapons purchases from abroad; (5) funds directly allocated to military factories under the control of the GAD and funds for defence industry conversion; and (6) military aid.”

Ted Galen Carpenter and Justin Logan point out that greater transparency would be in China’s interest: “China needs to recognize that it gains little from opacity in comparison to what it loses… Any respectable observer of the People's Liberation Army knows about China's growing capabilities. We know about the Sovremenny destroyers, the Sunburn missiles and the Kilo submarines. We know about the Sukhoi 30s and the new F-10 fighter. Large-scale hardware acquisition and development is hard to hide.”

On certain parameters, China’s defence expenditure compares favourably with the other major powers. China’s ODE overtook that of Japan ($42 billion) and Germany ($37.5 billion) in 2007, but still lagged behind the United Kingdom ($62.38 billion) and France ($50.78 billion) whose economies are now much smaller than that of China. It is still a small fraction – less than one-fourth – of the United States' annual defence budget of $575.00 billion; not counting the supplementary grants of about US$ 75 to 80 billion sought by the Pentagon separately every year for the ongoing war (s). The United States spends almost half – 48 per cent – of the total defence budget of the world. China, France, Japan and the United Kingdom each spend four to five per cent of the world’s total defence expenditure.