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E-mail from readers the world over'The Government of India lives in its own world of make believe'
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Mon, 10 Jan 2000 07:40:59 -0800 The new millionaires of India have done a lot more than the older millionaires who continue to build temples when people need toilets. Nandan Nilekani, your work and your positive actions are worth emulating by other industrialists. If every big industry in Mumbai, Pune, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Calcutta built and maintained toilets for the public then the public will not have to share the railway tracks with the trains. It is a shame that we do not have clean streets, we elect the corrupt and crooked to our political offices. The poor have to help India by practising birth control. India cannot be built by frail coalition governments who are caught in their day to day survival. India has to be built by the youth and the successful, we need the government and the public to enforce the laws to have a clean and safe environment for the present and future. When you are angry dig a ditch, then plant a tree and nurture it.
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Thu, 6 Jan 2000 14:02:14 -0500 I'd like to see Pakistan brought down. Every Indian and every neutral person should know for a fact that Pakistan is responsible for this. I would like to see if the Indian government has any back bone left at all to take yet another blow of this sort from Pakistan. Proxy War is Pakistan's MIDDLE NAME. I consider Rediff as one of the better Indian websites and the more the Pakistani position is undermined, the more pressure we apply in turn on our government to take action against such acts rather than follow the Gandhian principles. Good job.
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Tue, 4 Jan 2000 12:11:01 -0800 Before meeting the prime minister we need to remove the meddling bureaucrats who poke holes into every project. The more laws, the more sieve one creates for corruption. India needs to target IAS/IPS/IFS officers who have been fearless in doing their jobs and make them the guardian angel of the IT implementation. The IT industry should be the focus of all kinds of concessions so that the industry can grow in India and not in the Silicon valley of America. We have the brains to do it and now we need the tools to make it happen in India. Telecommunications, roads, housing, electricity, potable water supply, clean toilets and plenty of trees will help. There is plenty of finance available locally and internationally for viable projects. Ordinary Indians can help by voting the corrupt out of their positions, the judiciary can help in expediting cases against corrupt politicians and bureaucrats. Corruption and population will be the two factors that will impede India's future growth. India needs to have laws to defend the intellectual property rights and to fight terrorism in an offensive manner.
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Sun, 09 Jan 2000 21:41:25 +0530 Very exciting news! Why are they not coming to Bangalore, the Silicon Valley of India? GDR Krishna
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Fri, 7 Jan 2000 07:51:58 -0800
It is a brilliant article by the well respected defence analyst.
I have a few questions that I feel hold the key to holding our government accountable for its actions. ? The answer to future peace is not in being happy with the release of the passengers, it is in being able to carry out a brutal self-appraisal of our systemic failures and our low expectations from the government. India needs to move towards a more open-information and merit-based mindset. Ranjeet
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Fri, 7 Jan 2000 22:28:04 -0500 (EST) The article is very nicely written, no doubt about it. But I would like to ask one thing. Did Prof Brahma Chellaney personally try to suggest some solutions at the time when the country was passing through the trauma of hijacking? Did he at least try to talk to the PMO or something like that? If yes, then he has the full authority to write like this. If he has not tried and has just watched TV and interviews, then it is not right to comment like this. If everybody sits idle at the time of the crisis and then comments bitterly on that, how is it going to solve our own problems? These intellectuals should do something when it is needed. Jidda K
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Fri, 07 Jan 2000 22:27:56 -0800 Dear Prof Chellaney, Absolutely outstanding. I just wonder when we would replace someone like Jaswant Singh as the foreign minister!
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Wed, 12 Jan 2000 14:21:09 -0500 Hi Rediff, I admire your work. I like the no-nonsense style of the articles written by good writers. I do accept that the rather abrupt finish to the articles is not something I enjoy but have learnt to live with. As for the article I quote above -- Why flog a dead horse? The hijack was a miserable attempt by the terrorists and they achieved their purpose if the release of their brethren was their objective. It is one thing to try and make an objective analysis of this issue and another to succeed in it. But has anyone paid any attention to what Captain Saran had to say about keeping the plane in Amritsar? Further, anything that we had done, or did, would not have made any difference to the terrorists. Say, they were on a suicide mission and actually did blow up the plane. And on Indian soil. We would have only ourselves to blame. By being on international territory, at least we ensured that such a move would only discredit the Taleban in their attempt at being recognised. Our plane was safe(r) in Afghanistan than in India. I was a budding journalist in my past life and understand the every day struggle with opinion and facts and the 'twain shall never meet' curse too. I only ask that you move on as all the people on the flight. We need articles motivating the others, not casting aspersions now that the people are safe. We learn from our experiences and should take pride in what we do. Our people are much stronger by this and we will endure more if necessary. Once again, I would only say -- Please move and see if you can motivate the powers that be to embark on a move that will stall such terrorist acts. Maha
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Sat, 8 Jan 2000 19:18:29 EST Very well said about the situation during the Indian Airlines hijacking. Those babus in dhotis in Delhi are useless. They lack courage and above all vision to make India what it can be. Few militants have been pounding us in our Kashmir for the last 10 years and still we are unable to flush them out. Leaders in USA used to do this in 18th and 19th century against all odds and we in 20th century still behave like farmers waiting for miracles. Look at USA, in 200 years it has become a superpower and we Indians with all our civilized ways for 5000 years are still living in dumps or like they say in USA about Calcutta... the garbage city of the world. We need new and young blood in Delhi to take this country forward but like in cricket or olympics we cannot find few, proud and mighty men out of a billion people to tackle the problem. We should wait for Lord Krishna to come down to India with Arjun and his four brothers and then maybe we can come out of the dark shadows. Our education system is wrong. In USA a 16 year old kid can tackle most of the hardship or can go in any part of the world and be a man and in contrast comes this skinny Indian with a PhD to USA with his mouth open and is struggling from day one. Doordarshan is a joke. They often have reporters who can't speak English properly and are unable to report news the way CNN or BBC can. So what's the point of hiring such people? Why can't they find some with personality and who have a good command of the language so my American friends do not have to ask over and over again, "What did he say?" Yet Doordarshan does not realise what kind of impression it creates for India in USA. No wonder they call us people from the garbage country.
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Sun, 9 Jan 2000 07:19:40 -0800 (PST) What an analysis! After listening to all the other amateurish nonsense masquerading as columns on this and other news magazines, this article was such a relief. As I read this article, it occurred to me that, thanks to people like the good general, who were once at the helm of decision making, India has become a relatively more mature state that can look at issues dispassionately and make sane decisions. "India may still not be a hard State but thank god, it is now a mature soft State" You've outdone yourself. I look forward to your future articles on this and other matters.
M L Raghavan, PhD
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Mon, 10 Jan 2000 01:26:23 EST "Down. The Crisis Management Group. It took more than 48 hours for the country's Crisis Management Group to come to grips with the problem, by which time the plane had landed and taken off from Amritsar, Lahore and Dubai. The CMG might as well be called the Crisis Muddling Group. Made of bureaucrats and assorted representatives from the IB and police, the group has muddled through from crisis to crisis, from the Babri Masjid to Orissa. Since when have babus been able to manage a crisis? It is the country's misfortune to have an Intelligence Bureau without intelligent people, a CBI, which cannot investigate and a police more known for bungling than solving crimes. The only people who might have provided some expertise, the Armed Forces, were excluded. Much was made of the endless cups of tea, the oily samosas and the stale sandwiches which the group consumed during their non-stop vigil of eight days. If these people cannot manage their own logistics how can they be expected to manage a crisis? " Admiral J G Nadkarni on hijacking episode. Dear Editor, It is this unpreparedness to deal with crises that caused trouble to India time and again. Even when all indications are there, Nehru chose to live in his own make believe world and India paid a heavy price losing vast the Himalayan frontier to China. And things have not changed much since then. Even though there are ample warnings about coming events and an intensifying proxy war, the Vajpayee government too ignored and let the plane fall into enemy hands. And what is more alarming is slow pace in response to hijacking as it unfolded and missing an opportunity in Amritsar. If this is how a crisis is handled, one wonders about the stated doctrine of abstinence from first strike with nuclear weapons. Let us say Pakistan launches a surprise nuclear attack on India. Can we count on the Crisis Management Group to meet with samosas and tea to come to grips with the situation and advise the government on time? The US and USSR lived with each other with nearly hair trigger response in a matter of 20 minutes of any such surprise attacks. We can be assured that such a thing does not exist in India's arsenal. Instead like Nehru even to date, the Government of India lives in its own world of make believe resting on its laurels it won so far after Pokhran II and Kargil. But the favourable international or world -- read US and Western -- opinion is no match to deal with deadly Pakistan's schemes. India should stop adopting such moral postures -- no first strike, no declaration of Pakistan a terrorist state by GoI, we want a prosperous and strong Pakistan, etc. The leaders should abandon 'Panchsheel' mentality to come to live in the real world. The US with its overwhelming nuclear arsenal never made such asinine declarations, about not being the first to strike. But somehow our leaders be it MK Gandhi, JL Nehru or now AB Vajpayee do not seem comfortable unless they give comfort to the enemies with self destructive fasts, pacts or declarations. Sooner we abandon such proclivity for suicide, the better it is.
Sincerely,
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