nachiket wrote: ↑13 Mar 2024 13:16
Best to take anything Bharat Karnad says with a bucketful of salt.
+72
BK is a maximalist and hence gets some mileage by well-meaning maximalist here.
At the same time, BK is very untrustworthy. And he appears to have a big axe to grind. Here is his background:
1. Completed Bachelor's & Master's of *Political Science* from UCB (UC Berkeley) and UCLA (UC Los Angeles), in 1975.
For someone to do political science from premier universities in US indicates that person coming from a very elite background. He is married to Renu Sud Karnad, at one time chairman of HDFC and a graduate of Princeton Univ. US.
2. Ex-VP Ansari launched one of the books of Bharat Karnad. Ex-VP Ansari is a persona non-grata to me and should be to every person who means well for India. For a "strategic expert" like BK, to have Ex-VP Ansari launch his book is a *strategic blunder*.
3. In his latest farticle, BK calls Dr. Chidambaram as a middling scientist. Such name calling is pathetic. Particularly coming from a "political scientist". If a "political science" is a science, then I have an entire fyzics package to sell!
4. It is too rich of BK to go into snide remarks on EAM JaiShankar and others and their families and slyly allege nepotism, without even disclosing his own antecedents! Yes, BK comes from an elite family and we do not know which one, since all traces in public domain has been removed. Married into another elite family, imagine the opportunities one had to Princeton in 1984 or work at a high position in 1978 and reach to the top as chairman of one of the largest mortgage bank in India. For us it-vity types, going to UCB/UCLA for even civil or mechanical or electrical in 1975 meant a dream ticket. Nobody would have opted for Political Science.
5. BK is the last person to comment on the design and efficacy of Nukes, leave alone TN or FBF or missiles. He neither has the background nor the discipline to understand the nuances and identify 2nd and 3rd order outcomes. It is like Darkha Butt gets her way by being bellicose, so does BK gets his way by being a maximalist (like exploding 2 MT or 5 MT nuke).
I do not think BK deserves any space on this forum. And I have cited my reasons above.