A Nation’s Fatal Ingratitude 6,000 Indian soldiers fight in the minus 50 degree bitter cold of the Siachen Glacier. A callous Ministry of Defence is now giving them flimsy gear that’s fit only for minus 10 degrees, finds NEHA DIXIT
ON MAY 26, five days after he began his second innings as defence minister, AK Antony made a firm statement. He said that if the ministry found malpractices in any defence deals, it would declare them null and void right away. Clearly, Antony, who had cancelled two such deals in his last tenure, is still struggling to unearth the alleged goldmines for defence dealers. Meanwhile, the wheeling and dealing continues unabated. In a two-month-long investigation, TEHELKA discovered that top officials in the Ministry of Defence (MOD), including the Master General of Ordnance (MGO), have laid the foundation to jeopardise the lives of as many as 6,000 soldiers posted in Siachen, the highest battlefield in the world. It all started with an easy compromise of rules to accommodate a tainted but favoured company. In August 2006, the MOD floated a proposal (TEHELKA has a copy) to invite tenders to procure 53,480 sets of Goretex suits (jacket and trousers) for the soldiers in Siachen. Known as Extreme Cold Weather Clothing System (ECWCS), these suits help soldiers survive at 22,000 feet above sea level, where temperatures fall below minus 50 degree centigrade. These suits are three-layered and are designed to provide insulation and shield the body from cold wind, snow, rain and flying debris. However, the most unique feature of these suits is that the third, most important layer is made of Poly Tetra Flouro Thylene, known as Stretched Teflon in common parlance, a technology patented by the US brand, Goretex. This special membrane helps body sweat evaporate to prevent it from freezing and sticking to the soldiers’ bodies and causing frostbite. Frostbite is one of the most common reasons for soldiers to die in the freezing glaciers of Siachen – it’s reported that at least 90 percent of Siachen’s soldier deaths are not caused by bullets, but by sub-zero temperatures in the glacier. Sources say that roughly six soldiers die because of the extreme cold every month. Proper equipment and cold weather clothing is, no doubt, as important for the health and safety of the soldiers as is their military training. The US army and NATO forces have adopted Stretched Teflon, which is the only known technology to perform optimally in minus 50 degree centigrade temperatures. Traditionally, the Indian army too has been using this technology, and purchased these suits last in 1999. What is also crucial is that the MOD proposal floated in August 2006 laid down no technical specifications, making space to approve and reject tenders randomly. First, a South Korean firm, Wonryong, was shortlisted and its samples were tested. In January 2007, the Directorate General of Quality Assurance gave some army specifications for the product, which the South Korean firm said were “technically impractical in nature.” This error was acknowledged by the ministry and was later changed. On June 3, 2008, the Additional Director General of Quality Assurance sent a letter to the MGO’s office advising it to place an order for 5,000 units. However, the letter was reportedly lost and the tender was cancelled for “inconsistent sample specifications”. In August 2008, a new request for the proposal was issued in which the South Korean company was not asked to respond. Meanwhile, it was decided at the MOD that the MGO would be delegated some financial powers to facilitate quick decisions on items of urgent need. The extreme weather clothing fell under such a category. To facilitate the expanded role of the MGO, the original order for 53,480 suits was downsized to 27,000. This contract, worth US$ 7,795,035 (Rs 37.4 crore) was awarded by the MGO, Lt Gen SS Dhillon, to an American mail order firm called Black Diamond. TEHELKA has a copy of this contract that shows how rules were bent to create an order that was sharply in contrast to what was originally demanded by the MOD in 2006. The motive — to throw open a back door for Black Diamond to bag the contract.
Among the numerous violations, the most grave is that Black Diamond is allegedly using a technology that has no track record of being effective in temperatures as low as minus 50 degree centigrade. The Stretched Teflon that is the primary element that keeps off the cold has been replaced by Poly Urethane, commonly known as PU coated technology. PU is applied like paint onto fabric, in most cases nylon, on both sides. Till date, there is no track record of the PU technology being used below minus 10 degree centigrade anywhere in the world. It has not been attempted for a good reason — the PU coating cracks in temperatures below minus 10 degrees centigrade, which allows water and air to get inside the clothing. Air and water immediately lower the body temperature, which can turn fatal in exceedingly sub-zero temperatures. Top sources in the textile department at IIT Delhi confirm that PU coating is a non-breathable coating, which means that when there is sweating during any vigorous physical activity, there is no evaporation. Instead, the sweat turns into ice, leading to frostbite. It is crucial to note that the agent who negotiated the deal with Black Diamond was the same person who represented an Italian company a few years ago. The company had come under the scanner two years ago for providing faulty snow boots to soldiers in Siachen, which was exposed by the India TV channel. SIACHEN IS one of the toughest areas in which Indian soldiers perform their duty — battling not just the enemy, but also the inhuman weather in the endless glacier. Oxygen in the air is 30 percent less than normal, as a result of which soldiers have to wear an oxygen mask at all times. Frostbite, snow blindness, pulmonary and cerebral edema take a huge toll on the soldiers. Due to high altitude, soldiers lose their appetite. Even when hungry, not much stays edible for too long — oranges freeze to the hardness of baseballs and potatoes cannot be dented with a hammer. Soldiers invariably end up losing up to 20kg of their weight in just a three month tenure. According to official figures, 670 soldiers have lost their lives in the glacier till date due to cold weather. However, a retired major general posted in the glaciers some years ago suggests that up to 20,000 soldiers have died due to cold weather since April 1984, when the post at Siachen was established. When the unbearable cold does not lead to death, it causes acute disabilities — after a single posting at Siachen, several soldiers suffer hearing, eyesight and memory loss for the rest of their lives.
The Indian Army, on its part, patently justifies these debilitating difficulties by saying that it pays an extra Rs. 7,000 extra per month as ‘Siachen allowance’. A serving captain asks, “What is the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) doing about this? We are ready to give our lives for the country, at least we should not be provided faulty clothing.” Violations multiply. While inviting tenders, the MOD had clearly stated in its 2006 proposal that responses are invited only from ‘Original Equipment Manufacturers,’ which Black Diamond is certainly not. On its website, the company states that it only operates as a retailer and sources its products from other manufacturers. Posing as an American journalist, when TEHELKA called Black Diamond, Bill Crouse, one of the directors of the company said, “We do not manufacture anything. We are merely providing these suits to the MoD on their special request.”
This ‘special request’ that the MOD made was to a company that is not a manufacturer. Worse, the contract only mentions the name of Dalian Airport in China, a transit point from where the goods are to be brought to India. It conveniently omits the place or factory where the three-layered suits supplied by Black Diamond are actually manufactured. Also, when Goretex, the patent holder, was charging US$ 570 per set and the Korean company US$ 248 per set for the Stretched Teflon technology, Black Diamond quoted US$ 289 per set for a technology that has never been used below minus 10 degree temperatures. The consignments have not started arriving in India, although the first batch was supposed to arrive in April 2009. When TEHELKA contacted the Directorate General Quality Assurance, Brigadier Ajay Gehlot, he refused to answer any questions. “This is a matter of national security. I have nothing to say,” said Brigadier Gehlot. Despite repeated attempts to contact them, the DRDO and the current MGO, Major General Vijay Sharma, refused to meet this reporter or answer any queries. Lt Gen SS Dhillon had signed the contract with Black Diamond on January 28, 2009, three days before he retired. This is also when the contract was downsized from 54,000 suits to 27,000 suits so that the contract could be accommodated under the new financial powers of the MGO. When Lt Gen Dhillon was contacted, he said, “All that I can say is that we do not take major decisions 15 days before we are supposed to move from a posting.” Lt Gen Dhillon has now been appointed a member in the Armed Forces Tribunal created to expedite trials of pending cases against army officers. WHILE VARIOUS quarters of the MoD keep mum, this deal, along with a couple of recent incidents in the last few years, raises serious concerns about the role of the MGO with regard to the welfare of soldiers in Siachen. In October 2008, the Comptroller Auditor General (CAG) released a report saying that soldiers in Siachen were issued “partly torn” and recycled special clothing for the winters due to its untimely procurement. His report stated that the “Army Headquarters had failed to ensure timely procurement of Special Clothing and Mountaineering items used in operational areas like Siachen, resulting in stock-out levels of these critical items being as high as 44 to 70 percent… Such a practice of recycling special clothing items is not desirable on grounds of hygiene, operational suitability and overall morale of the troops.”
A national user survey conducted by the CAG revealed that 50 percent of divisions or regiments were not satisfied with the quality and fitting of the clothing supplied. The major reason for dissatisfaction among users was related to a mismatch in trousers and shirts and their inappropriate sizes, poor quality of clothing with a problem of quick fading of colour, low usage-life of boots against the prescribed shelf life, and lack of water-proofing in caps. Blaming the Army’s MGO for the shortages between 2002 and 2007, the 2008 CAG report says that besides shortages, imports are being made by the Army without proper quality requirements. The audit reveals shortages in crucial items, including sleeping bags, socks, jackets, gloves, boots and even snow goggles. The biggest deficiency the Army faces is in gloves, with barely 30 percent of the required stock available. This means at any given time only three of every ten soldiers in Siachen can protect their hands from fatal frostbite, commonly known to course through the body starting at the extremities (fingers and toes). Two years ago in 2007, the CAG had noted that about 10 contracts worth Rs 49 crore were placed by the MGO, out of which items worth Rs 29 crore were rejected either on ‘receipt inspection’ or by the end users, the soldiers.
When TEHELKA contacted Defence Minister AK Antony, clearly enumerating all the malpractices and the violations in the deal, he requested for an “official” complaint to which he would respond. Evidently, the remoteness of those laying down their lives in harsh conditions is feeding the apathy of those sitting in Victorian bungalows in the warm centre of the country. At a time when the MGO is tainted by a large number of controversial deals, Antony’s first priority in his second tenure should be to tame this wild beast unfit to even provide adequate clothing to its soldiers. Every iota of information must be paid heed to without hiding in the comfortable defence of the official and the unofficial. WRITER’S EMAIL | |||||||||||||
From Tehelka Magazine, Vol 6, Issue 27, Dated July 11, 2009 |
Monday, July 6, 2009
A Nation’s Fatal Ingratitude
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
National Defence Academy
National Defence Academy Generation Next is born at a Bajrang Dal camp in Delhi. TUSHA MITTAL looks in at how the young are being inspired into violence. Photographs by SHAILENDRA PANDEY A LOUD WHISTLE pierces the early morning silence at the Saraswati Bal Mandir school in West Delhi. A steady stream of young boys in white shirts and khaki half-pants filters down to the grounds. Yoga will begin sharp at 4:30am. Karate, judo, nose punches will follow. At first glance, one could mistake this for a boys’ summer camp. But a closer look, and something else emerges. There are lathi pyramids, hoops of fire, gunshots and lessons about the different stages of war. The boys must learn to jump through flames if their houses are set on fire by “terrorists, Muslims, illegal immigrants,” must know a gun intimately to use it for maximum impact. On their arms and foreheads are bright orange bands with red imprints. For Sandeep Yadav, 15, the son of a garment shop owner in Sarojni Nagar, the orange brings motivation and a sense of belonging. “It charges me up to fight,” he says. For what? “To protect Bharat Mata.” From what? “Akraman” (Attack). By whom? He stammers. The English. The Australians. The Christians. The Muslims. Probe his newly acquired worldview further and this surfaces: “Hindu girls should not wear sleeveless clothes. That is what Bharatya sanskriti (Indian culture) teaches us. And if a Hindu girl marries a Muslim, her head should be chopped off and the Muslim man’s too.” Welcome to the training camp of the Bajrang Dal, the youth sect of the rightwing Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP). It is a weeklong camp held annually to “instill courage within the Hindu youth and awaken them to their patriotic duties,” says Ashok Kapoor, Bajrang Dal Delhi convenor. “We prepare people to fight on the ground when the need arises,” adds Shailendra Jaiswal, state co-convenor. “We choose them selectively. They must be Hindus and in touch with our local party workers,” he says. The official age is 15 to 35. The 2009 camp concluded in June saw 100 participants. Most come from some right-wing background (their parents are Bajrang Dal workers, neighbours of workers, or perhaps they attend the morning yoga classes held by the VHP in their colony). Yet, this is their first introduction to the Bajrang Dal. Conversations with these children reveal not only how the Dal views itself, but how it systemically indoctrinates its future foot-soldiers. This camp is only the launchpad for a much longer journey. Through the year, other camps with the larger mentor organisation RSS will give the young tribe a chance to hone “intellectual concepts” — the focus will shift from physical training to a more lucid sculpting of the mind. Already, the first dents have been made. Ask Vineet Kumar, 14, barely four feet tall, the son of a sports garments factory worker, what is the Bajrang Dal? With a voice not yet cracked, he answers in phrases – “Ram Setu, Ram Janambhoomi, Amarnath yatra, hartal, and chakka jam.” According to him, “Pakistani terrorists” were trying to shut down the Amarnath Yatra but the Bajrang Dal rallied every child in Jammu and Kashmir on the streets to protest. At the camp, Vineet learnt a new word he likes to thrust at every opportunity: Virodh (resist) — that is what he wants to do when he grows up. Ask what he will virodh against and his eyes wander, trying to distill the stew of textbook answers fed to him. THERE WERE speeches: “Be weary of six M’s,” the boys were told from a booming microphone. “Muslims, Missionaries, Marxists, Lord Macaulay, foreign Media and Maino [UPA President Sonia Gandhi’s middle name].” The warning of an apocalypse: Kalyug is upon us. The Muslims are taking over the country by converting Hindus, by pretending to be Hindu and marrying our women. Hindus will soon be extinct. Already the Muslims exceed Hindus in India. We must remove the mullahs from our country. They kill our Gau Mata; each cow has 2,300 devis inside her. (“We can’t trust Muslims, they don’t even spare our cows, why will they spare us?” says Anil, 14, the son of a vegetable vendor in Delhi.)
There were revolutionary songs: Hindu ke hit par janamu, hindu ke hit par mar jaau (Live and die for the well being of Hindus). Ho jayo tayar sathiyo, arpit kar do hazar balidan (Get ready comrades for a thousand sacrifices). Slogans: Shastro mao jayathe! (Long live the arms!) CDs with proof: how the police beat up Dal workers trying to save the Amarnath land. And when the young brigade was inspired enough, there were chants: Ram Ram chilayange, mullhe kate jaayenge. (Screaming Ram’s name, we will cut the Muslims). And lawyers to explain to the boys how they can avoid criminal charges. No surprise that when the Guru asked, “How we will remove Muslims?” the boys said in unison: “We will cut them up!” And finally, there was advice for life: What should you do if your house is attacked and you have no weapons? Use motorcycle chains. Bring out the gas cylinder. Encircle the house with oil and light it on fire so the terrorists can’t enter. What should you do when Muslims move into your area? Find out their background. Start up a friendship but don’t invite them home. Ask the women if they have been forcibly married. Report to the police if they have. “The Muslims in my lane are nice,” says Vineet. “They don’t force their wives to wear the burqa and they allow their children to play. But other Muslims cut up their wives and children if they step out of the house.” In their modest Badarpur home in South Delhi, Vineet’s mother listens in shock. “I didn’t know this is what they teach,” says Kumari Devi, wavering on whether she’ll send him again next year. But it may not matter. Her son has already found his mission in life — Hindu Samaj Seva (social work) — the way the Bajrang Dal defines it. WRITER’S EMAIL | |
From Tehelka Magazine, Vol 6, Issue 25, Dated Jun 27, 2009 |
Sunday, June 7, 2009
Slaughter House Files
Slaughter House Files Ajmal Kasab and Abu Ismail could have been thwarted. Transcripts of police officers’ frantic calls from Ground Zero on 26/11 reveal a story of terrifying — almost criminal — official chaos. HARINDER BAWEJA reconstructs that apocalyptic night
THE EVENTS of that night are only too well known, they are etched in the nation’s conscience. That night, on 26/11, terror unfolded, step by step and went something like this — ten well-armed terrorists got off a dinghy and walked ashore in the posh Gateway of India area and broke up into pairs. Trained to navigate the high seas and wage high-tech urban jehad, each pair had been tasked to separate locations. The first bullet rang out at Colaba’s popular Leopold Café, just after 9.30. Yes, the events of that night are only too well known, but the truth is not. Police call log records accessed by TEHELKA reveal the utter chaos that also unfolded, step by step. Mumbai, of all places, has been struck by terror once too often, beginning with the multiple blasts that exploded in quick succession in March 1993. For the record, the financial nerve centre has fifty commandos who have been trained by the National Security Guards, but that night, no one thought of tasking them. For the record, the Mumbai Police also has a standard operating procedure that is supposed to kick in under the command and control of the Commissioner of Police but that too failed. The police transcripts — each phone call, each walkie talkie communication is recorded — reveals a chilling story. One of the pairs, Ajmal Kasab and Abu Ismail, walked into the teeming Chattrapati Shivaji Terminus (CST) and went about their business of spraying death. Platform number 13 was full of passengers and the duo felled 37 people before they walked out of the Terminus and towards the Times of India Building. Within minutes, they had entered Cama Hospital.
Mumbai was under attack and the police control room was buzzing. At precisely 22.29 pm, the Azad Maidan police station (barely a stone’s throw from Cama) called South Control (Mumbai Police is divided into regions and zones) and, as per the call log record, this is what was conveyed: “Two terrorists from CST are walking towards Azad Maidan”. The messages kept coming: 22.38 pm: Azad Maidan to South Control again: They are walking in the lane towards Special Branch 1 office. 22.39 pm: Beat Martial to South Control: Can see suspicious looking persons with bags on their backs. 22.40 pm: Have you got my message that there are two suspicious people. 22.54 pm: Peter MRR to Control: There is firing in the TOI lane. 22.59 pm: LT Marg 1 to Control: Terrorists have reached Cama.
Ironically, Kasab and Ismail had even walked into the Azad Maidan police station compound and tried to enter the residence of Brijesh, a Deputy Commissioner of Police. The pair had gone about their business with little resistance at CST and appeared emboldened. They had, in fact, walked all the way from CST to Cama without any resistance. It is clear from the log that the Control Room was aware of their movement from 22.29 —when Azad Maidan alerted their bosses — to 22.59, the precise minute that Kasab and Ismail had entered Cama. Thirty long minutes during which they were being tracked but not intercepted.
Mumbai Police officers acted on their own, but clearly with no command or control to guide them. One such officer was Sadanand Date, Additional Commissioner of Police, incharge of Mumbai’s Central Region. The terror attacks were not taking place in his jurisdiction but he contacted Control after he received word from the Worli Division. He immediately sent an SMS to the Additional CP (South) and the Joint Commissioner of Police (Law and Order). He was asked to go to CST and Date was soon on his way. READ DATE’S account — gleaned from the transcripts and the 26/11 charge sheet — carefully. It captures the chaos and rigor mortis that the senior officers were seized by. What Date experienced that night is both callous and harrowing. Kasab and Ismail reached Cama at 22.59 and Date arrived at 23.05. He had been asked to go to CST but after leaving home, he went to the Malabar Hill police station and got a carbine issued. He asked for bullet proof jackets for his team but none were available (only he and his operator had bullet proof vests). While on their way to CST, Date met police inspector More who informed him about the firing at Special Branch 1 and learnt that the terrorists had entered Cama and had taken patients and nurses hostage on the fourth floor. As he entered Cama, he saw two dead bodies at the front entrance and the watchman told him that the nursing staff on the fourth floor had been desperately calling for him. Date told his operator to inform the Control room about the situation. He then proceeded to the sixth floor of the multistoried building in the Cama compound and threw a metal object towards the terrace where Kasab and Ismail had taken position. The minute the object was thrown, there was a burst of fire from the terrace. Date and his team took positions in the passage of the sixth floor and called Control to update them about their position and the firing. At 23.19, the first call for reinforcements was sent out. Date thought he could pin down the terrorists on the terrace till the reinforcements arrived. Now read the police log carefully and find out what happened after the first call for reinforcements at 23.19.
23.19: Firing going on in Cama hospital. Send commandos immediately. Central Region sir is present. Control: Noted. 23.20: Firing going on, on the sixth floor. Help quickly. 23.20: Central region walkie talkie sends out a desperate message: Make arrangements for bullet proof jackets. Control: Noted. 23.23: Two-three blasts have taken place. Help immediately.
23.25: South Control to Control: Firing going on, on sixth floor of Cama. Need reinforcements. Send the nearest striking (team). 23.26: Shortage of striking at Cama. 23.27: Send striking to Cama, running short of men. 23.28: (Date is now desperate. He and his men have been injured) Central Region walkie talkie sends out an SOS: Heavy firing. We are all injured. Need help. Please send reinforcements. So, what was happening on the sixth floor where Date and his team had taken position?
Soon after Date took position in the passage of the sixth floor, the terrorists lobbed a grenade. One officer and two men were badly injured and Date’s right eye blacked out after a splinter injury. Date’s operator was not in a position to fire so Date took his carbine and fired. Reinforcements did not arrive but retreat was not an honourable option because women and newborn babies were stuck on the fourth floor. At 23.25, Date asked his operator and the injured men to go down for medical help and also asked them to convey the message for reinforcements. Sub Inspector More and PC Khandekar could not be sent down because they lay unconscious on the floor. Date and Kasab/Ismail exchanged fire for another 25 minutes and Date was hit again and his left leg badly injured. It was now around midnight. The pair lobbed one more grenade at Date’s direction and crossed the landing between the sixth and the fifth floor. There are many critical questions that the Mumbai Police need to answer. QUESTION 1: Why did the reinforcements not arrive? If the calls for help had been heeded, Kasab and Ismail would not have been able to leave the terrace of Cama Hospital. ALITTLE MORE on Date, first. After he saw the two terrorists leave, he sent an SMS to the Joint CP (Law and Order) and to the DCP Zone V at 00.00 hours informing them about the departure of the assailants, that they had automatic weapons and grenades. He also gave the exit route the terrorists had taken and called for help, saying he needed to be evacuated as he was injured in the eye and in the left leg. Khandekar and More too needed to be evacuated. They still lay unconscious on the floor. Date waited from 00.00 to 00.45 hours but neither did he get a reply to his SMS and nor did anyone come to his aid. He finally called the assistant commissioner of police, Central region, who came and took him to hospital. Khandekar and More died. Nobody from the South region came to the aid of the injured and the dead. Nobody even sent reinforcements. While Date was battling Kasab and Ismail, Karkare, Kamte and Salaskar had come towards Cama. They had not been sent as reinforcements for Date, but had come after they — like Date — had learnt that firing was going on at Cama. Kamte had, at first been asked by Mumbai Police Commissioner, Hasan Gafoor, to come to Hotel Oberoi, and was then asked by JCP (Crime) Rakesh Maria — who was manning the Control room — to go towards Cama. Karkare went to CST and from there, by foot, towards Cama. Salaskar’s movements have been detailed by Arun Jadhav in the charge sheet. (Jadhav survived to give a first hand account of what happened to Karkare, Kamat and Salaskar. He was in the same car as them when Kasab and Ismail opened fire, killing all three officers in one go.)
According to Jadhav’s statement, he was informed of some firing in Colaba at 21.45 by his colleague Alak Noor, who also asked him to call Salaskar. Salaskar then told Jadhav to get weapons issued and come to Colaba Police Station. He took a carbine and 35 rounds and reached the police station. Salaskar and Noor were already there. They got to know from the Control room that some persons were walking towards Special Branch office, after firing at CST, and that they had entered Cama. The three of them got into a car and went towards Cama, where they met up with Kamte and Karkare, who had taken up positions there. They were all at the rear gate of Cama.
Soon, they saw an injured policeman walking towards them. Just then, they were fired on, from the Cama terrace and, according to Jadhav, Kamte returned the fire with his AK 47. The injured policeman told them that an injured Date was on the 6th floor and that others too had been injured. Karkare, Kamte and Salaskar had a quick discussion and decided to move towards the front gate — they knew Kasab and Ismail would try and escape from the front. (While the entire Cama compound has many exits and entries, the multistory building on whose terrace Kasab and Ismail were on had only one exit/entry — a front gate). Before they could start walking — under cover — towards that front gate, they noticed a Qualis police jeep which belonged to the nearby Paidhuni police station. Salaskar sat in front on the driver’s seat, Kamte to his left and Karkare on the back seat. Jadhav and three others got in from the rear on the two slim seats at the back. While the Qualis was making its way towards Special Branch 1, information came from the Control Room that the two terrorists had taken shelter behind a red car in the nearby Rang Bhawan lane. Kamte told Salaskar to go towards the lane. But, before we go into the details of what happened in the lane, it is important to recount what happened when Karkare, Kamte and Salaskar were at the rear side of Cama. It is clear from Date’s statement and the call log record that Kasab and Ismail only left the Cama terrace at about midnight, when Date sent out the SMS.
Before that, at 23.20, to be precise, ATS Chief, Karkare (code named Victor on the Motorola wireless channel) sent out an urgent message: 23.19, Victor to Control: We are at Cama hospital. There is firing going on here. Blasts are taking place. Three or four grenade blasts have taken place in front of us in the last five minutes. It is essential to encircle. We are next to Special Branch office. Send a team to the front of Cama Hospital and tell them to co-ordinate, so there is no cross firing. Prasad (JCP Law and Order, who was also in the Control room with Maria) will be there. Tell him to speak to the army and send commandos. Control confirms what Victor has just relayed and asks, “Sir, in front of the building, right?” Another SOS is sent after a few minutes. 23.28, Victor to Control: ATS and Quick Response Teams, Crime teams are on the side of Special Branch. We need to encircle Cama. Ask Prasad to request the army. 23.30: Noted. Reinforcements had not come to Date’s rescue. They did not come to the rescue of Karkare, Kamte and Salaskar. QUESTION 2: Why was the front gate (the only exit Kasab and Ismail could possibly take) not encircled? QUESTION 3: Why were a full forty minutes wasted? (When IC 814 was hijacked from Kathmandu, the Crisis Management Group failed to prevent the plane from leaving Amritsar. That proved to be a costly mistake, for the plane was eventually flown to Kandahar and the passengers were secured only after three terrorists were traded in their place.)
Kamte had told Salaskar to drive towards the Rang Bhawan lane after receiving information from Control that the terrorists were hiding there. The Qualis was barely 100 to 150 meters away from the red car, when a burst of fire came in its direction. According to Jadhav’s statement, “Suddenly, there was a burst of fire at our car from the right hand side. I saw two persons with AK 47s. Karkare Sir, Kamte Sir and Salaskar sir also started firing. I got a bullet on my left hand and shoulder and my carbine fell from my hand and I couldn’t pick it up.”
THROUGH THE volley of fire, Kamte — in an act of supreme bravery — got off the car and fired in the direction of the bushes. Kamte hit one target and succeeded in injuring Kasab, who got a bullet on his hand. To continue with Jadhav’s statement, “The two kept firing and Karkare sir, Kamte sir and Salaskar sir also got injured. Firing stopped after a while. The taller one (Ismail) came to our car and tried to open the back door but it didn’t open. I pretended to be dead. The person next to me had fallen on top of me. Soon after, the front door opened and the car started moving. The taller one drove the car and it was speeding on Mahapalika Road and I realized that Karkare sir, Kamte Sir and Salaskar Sir were not on their seats. They stopped the car behind Vidhan Sauda (Assembly) and got off the car. Again, I heard the sound of firing.” Unknown to Jadhav, Karkare, Kamte and Salaskar were thrown out of the Qualis. Salaskar was still alive when taken to the hospital, where he was declared dead at 01.05. QUESTION 4: Could Salaskar have been saved if he had been taken to the hospital on time? 00.19, South Control to Unknown walkie talkie: Public is saying that a police vehicle has been hijacked. 00.25, Control to Abal mobile: Qualis car has been kidnapped. 00.40, South Control to Peter LT Marg: Send reinforcements to Special Branch 1 lane. There, 2 / 3 persons have been injured. I think it is Kamte Sahib. Send reinforcements immediately. Nobody came to the rescue of Karkare, Kamte and Salaskar till at least 00.40. The ATS chief, the ACP (East region) and an encounter specialist lay on the road for at least forty minutes. Reinforcements had not come earlier and now, no ambulance was in sight. By 00.25, Jadhav — according to the call log records — had sent a wireless message from the Qualis saying, “From Rang Bhawan lane, a Qualis car has been kidnapped after firing at Salaskar Sir, ATS Sir and East region Sir. Now, the terrorists have left the car near State Bank of Mysore, Mantralaya. The families of the policemen who laid down their lives in the call of duty — and with no response to any of their SOSs — are distressed and disturbed. Vinita Kamte wanted to understand the circumstances in which her husband, Ashok Kamte died. She was tired of answering the question as to why all three senior officers were together and decided to seek answers from her husband’s senior colleagues, but realised, soon enough that she was being misled. It was, with difficulty, she says, that she even got the JCP (Crime), Rakesh Maria to issue a press statement acknowledging that it was her husband who injured Kasab. Vinita told TEHELKA, “I told him that it was absolutely fine if it was not Ashok who injured Kasab, but if it was, then I am not going to let you share that bullet with anybody.” She had found out from eyewitnesses that Ashok had come out of the car and fired. Kasab’s interrogation confirmed the fact that one officer in uniform got off the car and fired. Kamte was the only one in uniform that night.
She also wanted to see the log details of her husband’s calls but despite writing to Commissioner of Police Hasan Gafoor, Vinita Kamte got no reply. “I was being told different stories. Instead of being gracious, they were only misleading me.” Vinita then filed an RTI application with the help of her advocate sister Revati Dere, but Rakesh Maria, in a telltale response, wrote to the Information officer saying, “Reject the application under Section 8(h) {impeding the process of investigation}. QUESTION 5: Why is a Joint Commissioner of Police trying to mislead the families? Quite clearly, both the Mumbai Police and the Maharashtra government are trying to cover up the truth of 26/11, as has been made clear from the call logs. Maria, when contacted, said he was in London and Commissioner of Police Gafoor has “no comment.” The state government set up a two-member committee headed by former home secretary Ram Pradhan in December 2008, to probe the role of the state government and the Mumbai Police. While submitting the 100-page report to the Chief Minister, Ashok Chavan, Pradhan virtually gave a clean chit to both. He told the media, “During his visit to Mumbai after the terror attack, Union home minister P Chidambaram apologized to the citizens of the state; this itself indicated lapses from the Union government.” As for the role of the Police, Pradhan said, “Forget the Mumbai police, no police force of the country was prepared to face the warlike situation.” According to V Balachandran, the second member of the committee, “We checked logs of 5,000 calls made to the control room and the response as well as action taken by the control room staff was satisfactory.” The report has not yet been tabled in the Assembly — where the Opposition is staging walk-outs over the ‘clean chit’ — but both Pradhan and Balachandran have made it amply clear through their responses to the media that no responsibility has been fixed. The report will clearly not be the last word on 26/11, for Vinita Kamte says she will go to the extent of knocking on the doors of the court, after inspecting her husband’s call records. Kavita Karkare, too, has responded to the Pradhan committee report, telling the media in Mumbai that “the committee’s findings will not help fight terror. There was no co-ordination between the Intelligence departments, the Coast Guard, the Police and the state government. But the committee is not admitting this and I know they will never admit to or find out any lapses in what has happened on 26/11. Otherwise, I would have never lost my husband.” Mr Chidambaram, hope you are reading this. The committee has used your apology to bury some essential truths. You have promised to shake up the internal security apparatus — that’s another reason why we hope you are reading this. Are we prepared for the next attack, if even, reinforcements are not sent on time? WRITER’S EMAIL | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
From Tehelka Magazine, Vol 6, Issue 23, Dated Jun 13, 2009 |
Saturday, May 23, 2009
Eating The Cake And The Cherry
Eating The Cake And The Cherry YSR has shot back to power, thanks to strategic moves and a massive PR exercise, says AJIT SAHI
SHORTLY AFTER the second and final round of balloting for the Lok Sabha elections in his state ended on April 23, Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister YS Rajasekhara Reddy travelled to New Delhi and met Congress president Sonia Gandhi. “32,” he told her, according to a senior party leader. That was the number of Lok Sabha seats he promised the party would win in his state. And then, he proceeded to the cool environs of Shimla for a short but much needed break from politics. As it turned out last week, Reddy’s Congress won 33 of the state’s 42 constituencies — four more than in 2004 — giving Andhra Pradesh the distinction of sending the largest number of Congress MPs from any state to the 15th Lok Sabha. YSR, as he is widely known, also won 158 of the Assembly’s 294 seats, becoming the first Congress CM in three decades to get a successive second term. Incidentally, he is also the state’s only CM to ever complete a full five-year term. What makes the win unique is that YSR, who will be 60 years old in July, successfully sidestepped a massive campaign alleging corruption, launched by his key rival, former Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu’s Telugu Desam Party (TDP) and its four-party alliance. The TDPled ‘Grand Alliance’ had even presented President Pratibha Patil with documents to back claims that the chief minister and his son, YS Jagan Mohan Reddy — who, too, has been elected an MP — were involved in illegal land and corporate deals, including the Satyam scandal. But the voters didn’t buy that. “Everyone accepts that corruption is natural,” says political commentator K Sree Lakshmamma in the central town of Guntur. “People voted for YSR’s development work of the last five years, ignoring the charges of corruption.” “YSR was focussed on bringing in development right from the start,” adds Amar Devulapalli, chairman of the Press Academy of Andhra Pradesh in Hyderabad. “Two crore people have benefited from his schemes; the voters didn’t want to disturb his government.” Much of YSR’s famous victory is attributed to his all-round personality, that of a crafty politician, who deeply values and rewards loyalty, and a no-nonsense administrator. YSR began on a high after becoming CM in 2004, crushing Naxal insurgents that had been entrenched in Andhra Pradesh for decades and had killed thousands of police and paramilitary, after talks with them broke down. A medical doctor who once treated the poor for free, YSR’s welfare sops included selling rice at Rs 2 per kg, ensuring free medical treatment to BPL (below poverty line) families at ‘corporate’ hospitals, supplying free electricity to farmers, a pension scheme for widows, waiver of farm loans, and a highly subsidised housing scheme named after former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. YSR also announced a four percent reservation for backward Muslims.
WHEN FILM star Chiranjeevi launched the Praja Rajya party (PRP) last August, triggering speculation that he could challenge YSR, the chief minister immediately began a comprehensive PR campaign publicising his various welfare steps, the most notable being the massive irrigation projects worth over Rs 1 lakh crore to provide water to some ten million acres of agricultural land. In fact, YSR chose the route of launching welfare schemes — which have totalled 26 — to not only trip up the opposition but also wean away legislators from a rival within the party: state Congress president, D Srinivas, who has lost the Assembly election. Predictably, more than 180 of the Congress candidates that fought the Assembly elections are YSR loyalists. This has ensured that his base within the party remains strong, even after some 14 ministers lost the election, as did the Assembly speaker. After a former ally, the Telangana Rashtra Samiti (TRS), which wants a separate state in the Telangana region of northwest Andhra Pradesh, quit the Congress-led alliance in 2006, YSR launched several welfare schemes in Telangana. “We wanted voters to move away from the TRS,” says a Congress leader close to the chief minister. YSR’s focus on Telangana paid off as the TRS won only 10 of the 46 Assembly seats it contested there. The Congress won 50 seats. In the coastal regions, YSR called off a 1,000-km industrial corridor when protests by villagers, who claimed that they were being forced to part with their land, threatened to balloon into a controversy. This was a smart political move, because many of these villagers belonged to the numerically significant Hindu Kapu caste. Chiranjeevi, who is a Kapu, failed to get the caste to vote en masse for the PRP. Instead, they voted for YSR. YSR’s son Jagan, who also campaigned dedicatedly across the state, launched a huge publicity campaign through his newspaper and TV news channel, both named Sakshi. As the state’s two biggest newspapers — Andhra Jyothi and Eenadu — ran news exposing government corruption, Sakshi took on the opposition and highlighted the government schemes. All throughout, YSR ensured that he kept party bigwigs on his side. He shrewdly obliged three ministers in Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s previous government, S Jaipal Reddy, D Purandareswari and Panabaka Lakshmi, by giving them new constituencies from where each of them won. A smart strategist, YSR launched on a month-long election tour covering more than 20 districts in the state, working 18-hour days, until long after his key rivals — Chiranjeevi as well as Telugu film actors Junior NTR and Balakrishna of the TDP — were beginning to wind down. Indeed, YSR’s achievement is being hailed all the more because he humbled two giants — former CM Naidu whose TDP ruled the state for three terms during 1983-2004, and Chiranjeevi, whose PRP was widely expected to mount a massive challenge.
Naidu’s loss is more overwhelming because he stitched up a pre-election alliance with three former Congress allies: the TRS, the Communist Party of India-Marxist and the Communist Party of India. That the PRP would undercut the Congress and not the TDP was the biggest miscalculation most people made, including Naidu,” says commentator BV Chalapathi Rao, a politics professor in Sri Venkateswara University in the temple town of Tirupathi. Actually, the TDP and the PRP ended up undercutting each other, thereby benefitting the Congress tremendously. A close look at the numbers reveals that in as many as 25 Lok Sabha seats that the Congress won, the combined votes of the TDP-led four-party alliance and the PRP exceeded the Congress votes. In at least 17 of those seats, the opposition jointly polled more than a lakh votes over the winning Congress candidate. Indeed, although the final Lok Sabha tally read Congress 33 and the TDP-led alliance 8, the vote difference between the two sides was only a fraction over one percent. But a winner-takes-all system that doesn’t care how the vote is split ensured that the Congress ‘swept’ the state and YSR emerged a hero. WRITER’S EMAIL | ||||
From Tehelka Magazine, Vol 6, Issue 21, Dated May 30, 2009 |
The Hour Of The Untamed Cosmopolitan
The Hour Of The Untamed Cosmopolitan Bred on radical diversity and an epic culture, the voter makes a reckoning of Narendra Modi, Prakash Karat, Mayawati and the politics of excess ASHIS NANDY, Social Scientist AFTER ALMOST two decades, in many ways, the election of 2009 was a normal election. No overriding consideration drove the voting across the country. Diverse configurations in diverse places determined the fate of different candidates and parties. Different regions had different logic even within a given state. Still, underlying the diversity there were some common themes.  First, I think people were looking for ways to lower the temperature of politics. High-pitched politics has reigned in our polity for nearly 15 years now. My suspicion is people were a bit tired of this. For example, the past two elections showed that in Uttar Pradesh, only one percent of the electorate was interested in Ram Janmabhoomi. The BJP probably played down the issue this year because their internal assessment showed the same thing. Except in West Bengal, nowhere did the election involve an emotional arousal of the kind we have come to routinely expect. There are reasons for this. In our society, we live with radical diversities — diversity that is not based on tamed forms of difference. The US is a perfect example of tamed diversity. You get every kind of food and dress and cultural activity in America. You think you are very cosmopolitan if you can distinguish Huaiyang food from Schezwan food, or South Korean ballet from Beijing opera, or Ming dynasty china from Han dynasty china in a museum. This is diversity that is permissible, legitimate, tamed. Radical diversity is when you tolerate and live with people who challenge some of the very basic axioms of your political life. Like most of South Asia, Indians have an old capacity to live with such diversity. A powerful example is Sajjad Lone contesting the election this year. Nobody objected that a secessionist wants to take an oath of allegiance to the Constitution. Everyone spoke of it glowingly. I consider that a tolerance for radical diversity. In such a society, all excesses are ultimately checkmated. In India, we live in a country where the gods are imperfect and the demons are never fully demonic. I call this an ‘epic culture’ because an epic is not complete without either the gods or the demons. They make the story together. This is a part of our consciousness, and ultimately, I think it influences our public life. People go up to a point with their grievance, then get tired of it. They realise that to go further is a dangerous thing because it destroys the basic algorithm of your life. They say, enough is enough, let us go back to a normal life. This election represents something of that consciousness. We probably need this kind of interregnum in politics. They have a soothing effect on our public life. This is what most Indians feel. The second underlying theme is that people were searching for a sort of minimum decency. Negative campaigns, excessively personal attacks, hostile slogans — all of this seemed to upset the voter. When the BJP and the Left targeted Manmohan Singh, making him the butt of jokes and accusations, Singh became a hero for the very qualities people joked about. His weakness, his absence of a political base, his susceptibility to pressures of the Congress high command — instead of looking like liabilities, these things suddenly began to look like a marker of a genteel type of politics. I think that paid dividends. Contrasted with their shrill opponents, Sonia and Rahul Gandhi’s conduct too paid dividends. (I asked a waiter at the India International Centre in Delhi what he felt about the election results. “It’s been very good,” he said. Was he a Congress supporter, I asked him. “It’s not that, sahib,” he replied. “That Sardarji is a good man. He is educated, he is not a thief, and he is a newcomer to politics. Still, they got after him, calling him weak and scared. Who can enjoy watching that? I am just happy that this election result has shown there is a god watching above.” I quote the waiter verbatim because I think the idea of “a god above” might have been a consideration with many other people as well.) THE THIRD and interlinked theme this election was the voter’s desire to bring down the arrogant. The way Mayawati has lost, in what was once thought an inelastic support base, points to something very significant. Many people did not like the way she threw her weight around; her ostentation; the dozens of statues she is erecting in her likeness, her assumption that even if she did nothing to serve it further, history was waiting for her. Others did not like Narendra Modi. Yet others, Prakash Karat. Arrogance of style. Arrogance of ambition. The arrogance of neglecting the people. All of this was punished by the voter. Narendra Modi has marginalised all possible opposition within the BJP, and sidelined the RSS, Bajrang Dal and VHP. They cannot really muddy things for him easily anymore. He is a man looking for power and he has used and discarded them. He has a solid support base in West Gujarat and among middle-class Gujaratis, so there is no question of him fading away, but this election doubts have been planted about his capacity to emerge as a pan-Indian leader. He was billed as a star campaigner for the BJP, but the Indian voter has sent back a strong message scaling him down.
Controversial leaders rarely make it to the top job in India. Modi is determined not to talk of communities, determined not to apologise or even make a gesture towards the Muslim community to atone for the sins of Gujarat 2002. His refrain is that he is the leader of five-and-a-halfcrore Gujaratis, implying he is also the leader of Muslims. But this election should teach him some lessons in humility and modesty. It should give him some access to the language of politics in India. He will learn his lesson. Indian politics has taught humility to lots of people from Indira Gandhi to Mayawati. It will teach humility to Narendra Modi also. Unfortunately, there is a big similarity between Prakash Karat and Narendra Modi — however unpleasant that thought might be. They are both men who do not understand the wisdom of accommodation and cannot stomach the dilution of ideology. Like Modi and Mayawati, this election has scaled down the arrogance of Prakash Karat, but the debacle of the Left Front points to a deeper malaise. IN BENGAL, the party had been in power too long. In a society like ours, when any political party is on an ascendant, all gangs, thugs and extortionists gravitate towards that party. In UP, this mafia element was first attached to the Congress; then it moved to the BJP; then the SP; then the BSP, mirroring their rising political graphs. In Bengal, 32 years into power, all anti-social elements had become entrenched within the CPM. The party’s coercive might was enormous. In village after village, people from other parties were prevented from campaigning. That arrogance and control has not loosened very much, but it has started to crack. In the long run, I think Prakash Karat has done a lot of good to Bengal. These three decades of continuous rule had rotted the system to the core. If you miss power once in a while — however bad the Opposition may be — it keeps people and parties on their toes. (For instance, I believe it is good the BJP got a shot at winning power at the Centre one time. Not only did it limber up the Congress, it also allowed the BJP to get a sense that it can come to power if it gets its formulas right. This is very important to keep the rabid fringe like VHP, Bajrang Dal and Shiv Sena in check. When you have legitimate power, you don’t have to use street power. You rein them in because it’s counter-productive and you want respectability.) But criminality and arrogance is not the only reason for the Left Front’s rout in Bengal and Kerala. The trouble is, their kind of Leninism has not survived anywhere in the world except in Cuba, Bengal and Kerala. Chandan Mitra would add tartly, “And the People’s Republic of Jawaharlal Nehru University.” This ideology has such an Edwardian ring to it, I am surprised it even captivated so many in India. The point is, this sense of a vanguard of the proletariat, this whole position is protected by middle-class activists. This is why despite 32 years in power, the truth is that the kind of revolutionary changes in social structures that have swept across India have not even touched West Bengal. Everything there is still controlled by the upper castes, and in some senses, it is the most casteist society in India. West Bengal is one state in India, for instance, where you cannot even dream of having a dalit chief minister. In contrast, in south India, the whole thing has opened up. So much new energy has been released. But has Bengal produced an AR Rahman? Or his guru, Illayaraja? Genius flowering from the bottom of society. Such release of energy from the non-brahminic castes has absolutely no parallel in Bengal.
There is little hope that the churn of this defeat will bring in any fresh thought into Marxism in Bengal. It cannot, because this is the last remnant of a colonial culture. That is why our Marxists are locked into their textbooks. That is why they haven’t picked up anything from Latin American Marxism or European Marxism, that is why there has been no new indigenous innovation. In such an intellectual world, rethinking comes through only two things: death and retirement. Once people start retiring and dying, a new generation will come in. Then it will be easy. They will just not bother with what has gone before. Ideas like this die out of neglect and carelessness, not through dramatic confrontation. The other important trend this election has thrown up, is the return of support to larger national level parties. One could read this as the start of a significant course correction. With the extreme proliferation of smaller parties and interest groups, perhaps the fragmentation of electoral power has stopped yielding dividends. Voters have realised it is best to allow larger parties to come to power at the Centre. The interesting thing is, though the pitch has been scaled down, one cannot read this election result as a post-Mandal era of politics. Many of the Congress’ traditional vote banks — the dalits and Muslims in UP, for instance — had moved away from the Congress to more ‘specialist parties’: the dalits moved to the BSP, the Muslims to Mulayam Singh. In Bihar, they moved towards Lalu. The attraction of these parties was that, being smaller, they were much more captive to the demands of their vote base. In a large, national party like the Congress, others’ demands checkmated your demands. Ironically, the movement back towards the Congress is a sign that the specialist parties like SP and BSP have become too big and bloated with ambition, and so less responsive to their vote banks. In effect, the Congress is now the new small party trying to build a new support base. People feel it might be more responsive to their needs. There are other reasons why it would be premature to read this election as a post-Mandal era. In India, except in very small, modern, urban pockets, the unit of mobility is not the individual; the unit of mobility is caste. The lowest common denominator for any party decision on their choice of candidates is caste — all other considerations of aptitude and intention come after that. In fact, we cannot reach a post- Mandal era of politics yet because entering politics from the periphery is still a very crucial instrument in Indian politics.
Some of the parties lay less emphasis on it because their constituencies have arrived in the mainstream. The Marathas, Patels, Vokkaligas, Lingayats, Jats. Yadavs too talk less about it because they have just arrived. Perhaps, with Nitish Kumar, Kurmis too will feel more secure. But there are still hundreds of communities who are not well represented. Now that the big communities have organised themselves and reaped the benefits, the smaller ones want a slice of the pie. Just as the Kammas emerged in the 1970s and 1980s through NTR, the Kapus have emerged this election through Chiranjeevi. These are much smaller communities. Earlier, they would have voted under larger umbrellas. Now they think they can carve out a smaller, more targeted domain or space in the political arena. Recently, the Gujjars began to lobby violently for Scheduled Tribe status — as if a mere Parliamentary decree can turn a group into a tribe. This sort of misuse, battles for quotas, unreasonable demands for affirmative action, and other forms of vote bank wheeling-dealing will continue to happen. But in the long run, all of this will be good for India. As representations in the system give different communities larger space, everybody’s stake in the democratic system will increase. In the long run, there will be so many crosscutting configurations, the problem will take care of itself. There is a big difference between caste groups angling for 35 or 40 Lok Sabha seats like Mulayam or Lalu, and a caste group contesting for eight or ten. Chiranjeevi, for instance, just has four or five seats. The scale is going down because we have already accommodated a lot of people. The next generation will not face this. They will inherit a much more inclusive world. FINALLY, a last word on arrogance. The Left parties may have been defeated this election, but the leftist impulse is intact in our society. In fact, it is an imperative. It would be a big mistake if the UPA saw this victory as a mandate for unbridled liberalisation. Some care for the bottom of the society, some belief that the poor should be a priority focus is vital for this society to survive and retain its idea of itself as a humane society. You cannot pay Rs 12,000 for a meal for two people in a five-star hotel and come out and throw Rs 10 to a boy competing with a dog for the garbage and think you have done your duty. Neither can you wait 200 years for the so-called trickle down effect that never comes. It is no accident that the real factor that won the UPA this election is its NREGA scheme and loan waiver for farmers. Even if 90 percent of this money is pilfered, it permeates into the countryside. Not all of the corruption is in Delhi and Bhubaneswar. A lot of the siphoning happens lower down the chain. Even those who rob, must spend. This boosts the local economy. This pays electoral dividends. India’s poor always vote. That is India’s best checkmate for arrogance. | |||
From Tehelka Magazine, Vol 6, Issue 21, Dated May 30, 2009 |
Subscribe To
Posts
All Comments