Evolution of Indian Strategic Thought-1

[g.sarkar]

http://www.telegraphindia.com/1121007/j ... HGgUa7M_KQ
BJP makes amends with Mishra tribute
- Gadkari at prayer meet for Vajpayee aide
RADHIKA RAMASESHAN AND OUR BUREAU
"New Delhi, Oct. 6: Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s foster family was keen to ensure that at least in death, the BJP was appropriately respectful towards Brajesh Mishra, the former Prime Minister’s most trusted aide.
BJP president Nitin Gadkari didn’t let the family down today. But by then, more than a week had passed since Mishra’s death on September 28, and at least one BJP leader had to face some soul-searching questions in front of others from a person close to Vajpayee.
Gadkari showed up at a prayer meeting organised today by Mishra’s son and daughter for their father, Vajpayee’s national security adviser and principal secretary. Gadkari spoke at the meeting, although he had interacted with Mishra just once when the current BJP president was a minister in the BJP-Shiv Sena government in Maharashtra.
Gadkari’s part-personal-part-formal tributes to the departed soul partially filled a void caused by the BJP’s largely hostile equations with Mishra.
Namita and Ranjan Bhattacharya, Vajpayee’s foster daughter and son-in-law, had personally asked Gadkari over and requested him to speak.
The presence of two former officials from Vajpayee’s PMO, Kanchan Gupta and Ashok Tandon, at the prayer amid the pristine ambience of the Chinmaya Mission helped undo some of the imbalance that marked the BJP’s approach towards Mishra both in his life and his death. Gupta and Tandon are part of Gadkari’s core team.
Gadkari’s presence and address acquired more significance because of the BJP’s perceptibly cavalier response to Mishra’s passing.
The BJP chief had issued a pithy condolence message three days after Mishra’s death and on the day of the funeral, describing him as a “veteran diplomat and an able administrator”.
There was no allusion to the fact that for years, Vajpayee’s national security adviser had headed the BJP’s foreign cell and crucially influenced and shaped its foreign policy perspectives at a time the international community had started regarding the party as a serious national player.
In contrast, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Congress president Sonia Gandhi expressed their condolences hours after Mishra’s death........
At the core of the BJP-Sangh’s indifference to Mishra in death and dislike for him in life was the fact that he had surprised them by proving that for the six years Vajpayee had ruled, he could govern fairly well without their advice or intervention.
The Sangh and the BJP were stunned when one of Vajpayee’s first acts as Prime Minister was to conduct the Pokhran nuclear tests. The detonations quickly invited sanctions from the West. However, not only were India’s relations with the US restored later, they soared to a new high.
Mishra’s ability to straddle the space between the BJP’s “nationalist” politics and the complexities of diplomacy silenced the RSS and the BJP for a long time.
To the BJP, a party nurtured on an uncompromising anti-Congress and anti-Nehru-Gandhi ideology, Mishra’s ability to steer Vajpayee on the path of bipartisanship and coax out the Congress’s help during crunch times in Parliament and outside was unpalatable.
When, for instance, Mishra ensured that Sonia led a delegation to a UN conference on HIV/AIDS and got her first big international exposure as Opposition leader, then health minister C.P. Thakur was miffed. Mishra didn’t care.
It was such gestures that saw a bigger line-up of non-BJP representatives than those from the party at today’s prayer. They included Delhi chief minister Sheila Dikshit, Nationalist Congress Party MP D.P. Tripathi and Janata Dal (United) president Sharad Yadav.
A bit out of place in a gathering that was full of former and serving Indian and foreign diplomats, bureaucrats, industrialists (Sunil Bharti Mittal was spotted), with a sprinkling of non-BJP politicians, the safari-suited Gadkari placed his one tete-a-tete with Mishra in the context of one of his pet themes: the Mumbai-Pune express highway, whose construction and completion he had commissioned as then PWD minister.........."
Gautam

[ramana]

Sushupti

Quote:
{Windbag's rule was dynasty rule by proxy}


If it was so there would never have been the 1998 tests. INC and its fellow travellers would never have conducted the tests. Notwar Singh tried his best to undo the tests many times as the MEA.

So please don't go one one track crusades at people who are dead. Especially when its wrong premise.
The nuke tests are one enduring legacy that the BJP can claim and the fact that they didn't and couldn't stake the claims shows how brefit of their own unique contribution!


Brajesh Mishra quit IFS in 1982 after differences with Mrs Gandhi on the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. If he hadn't he would have retired as MEA secy which is the crowning ambition of every IFS entrant.

India defied the system/norm/consensus when:LBS ordered the IA to cross the IB in 1965, Mrs G ordered the 1974 PNE but did not carry thru with the weaponization, and BJP ordered the 1998 tests and then declared weapon state.
The dilli-billi (DB) gang always rushes to say ji huzoor to the West whenever India asserts her interests.
DB has full component in INC, BJP, civil services and armed forces.

[ShauryaT]

BK will not mince words. This is his perspective on BM's legacy.

Leave security to experts
By Bharat Karnad 06th October 2012 12:00 AM

Brajesh Mishra’s death last week triggered fulsome and well deserved eulogies from his foreign service colleagues and persons who had worked with him during the Bharatiya Janata Party-led coalition government, 1998-2004. There is no question but that he was the steel in Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s spine and, to mix metaphors some more, the drive-shaft propelling policies. Without him, Vajpayee would have easily lapsed into his natural, easy-going, mushiness where foreign and national security policies are concerned. As both principal private secretary (PPS) and national security adviser (NSA) to the PM he wielded the main levers of government. It was his personal closeness to Vajpayee which ensured that everybody up and down the vast Indian government apparatus knew that when he spoke it was a prime ministerial decision or directive.

However, Brajesh was curiously defensive, even sensitive, about his personal relationship with Vajpayee, perhaps, because it owed less to his equation with him or his own accomplishments than to the gratitude the BJP leader felt he owed Brajesh’s father, Dwarka Prasad Mishra, one-time Congress chief minister of Madhya Pradesh. When I once asked him about it, Brajesh brusquely diverted me from the subject. What I suspect is the truth is this: Vajpayee once contested the Lok Sabha seat from Gwalior and, as a friend, D P Mishra ensured he had no worthwhile Congress opponent in the general elections. When later, Mishra pater fell out with Indira Gandhi, Vajpayee invited him to join the BJP, but professing loyalty to the Congress, he declined. It was around the time that Vajpayee became the minister for external affairs in the Janata government post-Emergency, and sent Brajesh on a prize posting as permanent representative to the United Nations headquarters in New York in 1979. Once he became PM, Vajpayee appointed Brajesh PPS-cum-NSA, again as IOU to the son for his father’s political benefaction. It is another matter altogether that Brajesh proved an effective vizier.

Many of the things done by the BJP government are wrongly attributed to him. For instance, the decision to conduct nuclear tests and to weaponise was not remotely Brajesh’s, but mandated by the BJP election manifesto. The priority the issue accorded was the party’s as well, with a mighty assist from his predecessor P V Narasimha Rao egging Vajpayee on. However, Mishra efficiently coordinated the efforts of the various arms of the government to realise such goals. However, the strategic payoffs from the breakthrough Shakti tests, in terms of rocketing India, thermonuclear weapons-wise, into the rank of strategically impregnable nations, never accrued. This was because of the astonishingly strange and perverse decision announced by Vajpayee in his suo moto statement in Parliament on May 28, 1998 imposing a ‘voluntary test moratorium’.

It was an especially egregious decision as the fact that something had gone wrong was known almost immediately after the S-1 test on May 11, meaning the decisive weapon, which the Vajpayee government was all set to ballyhoo, had achieved only a small thermonuclear burn. However, the need to keep up pretences led to declarations by such as R Chidambaram, then chairman of the atomic energy commission, that the hydrogen device delivered exactly the yield it was supposed to. Supportive statements by the then head of DRDO, A P J Abdul Kalam, who as a rocket engineer, had no business pronouncing on matters he had no expert insights into, compelled the field testing team in Pokhran, which was processing telemetry data and collecting site-evidence at the time as prelude to analysing the under-performance of the hydrogen bomb design, to fall in line. It eventuated in Brajesh approving and Vajpayee announcing the fateful moratorium decision. This was precisely the wrong decision when more open-ended testing was required to obtain a credible thermonuclear arsenal as was advocated by other equally reputable stalwarts of the nuclear programme. At this point things become a little murky. Brajesh should have compelled Chidambaram to face P K Iyengar, A N Prasad, and others who had expressed doubts about the fusion test and sought new tests, but he didn’t. Indeed, he flatly denied he had anything to do with the moratorium decision, telling me that Vajpayee made such decisions as he felt strongly about without consulting him. (This is there in my 2008 book India’s Nuclear Policy).

The problem is this: On all really controversial decisions by the BJP government, Brajesh put the onus on the prime minister. Brajesh also held he had nothing to do with the rhetorically useful but impracticable principles such as the ‘No First Use’ Vajpayee announced in Parliament, and constrained the National Security Advisory Board group drafting the nuclear doctrine. Had Mishra been more familiar with nuclear weapons development and strategic deterrence history and literature, decisions such as this and to publicise the draft-doctrine wouldn’t have been made.

These developments emphasised the late K Subrahmanyam’s advocacy for separating the posts of NSA and PPS, and filling the former with persons with proven expertise in strategic military matters. The irony is that had Subrahmanyam been made NSA, his decisions would have coincided with Brajesh’s (as the former’s writings before and after the 1998 tests indicated).

Subrahmanyam’s case though is still valid because it is better for an NSA with a thorough grounding in the strategic military field to arrive at decisions the generalist Brajesh did via a generalist’s partial knowledge. His inability to muster any technically elaborate explanations for any of his nuclear deterrence-related decisions, was passed off as part of his gruff nature. Brajesh was, however, right in reining in the over-enthusiasm attending on the opening to the United States affected by the Jaswant Singh-Strobe Talbott ‘strategic dialogue’.

The issue Subrahmanyam didn’t raise is the monopolisation of the NSA post since then by retired foreign secretaries who invariably end up, at a minimum, micro-managing the Ministry of External Affairs, as many of their successors would honestly attest, but otherwise are unable to push military and defence decisions because they don’t know enough and in any depth and detail to carry conviction with the others with hands on the wheel.

Leave security to experts

I think it is a real issue, with no CCS position and the NSA invariable being in MEA/IFS hands, higher level defense and security planning and even interior security matters suffer.

[Suppiah]

The priority the issue accorded was the party’s as well, with a mighty assist from his predecessor P V Narasimha Rao egging Vajpayee on.

A mighty interesting snippet...if this is correct, PVN has done a great favour to the nation...

[ShauryaT]

The priority the issue accorded was the party’s as well, with a mighty assist from his predecessor P V Narasimha Rao egging Vajpayee on.

A mighty interesting snippet...if this is correct, PVN has done a great favour to the nation...

It is quite well known that in 96, PVNR told ABV that he could not pull the trigger and he should if he can. But in 96, ABV had only 13 days and hence had to wait.

[ramana]

And didn't get the confidence vote. He had to resign before it was counted.


So now the test moratorium is being blamed on Brajesh Mishra (now dead) and ABV (who cant talk) while those who provided the inputs are safe!

The impasse is because it was left to the experts who were specialists in their field but not the overall objectives.


NFU is an Indian interest as the objective is to deter usage of nukes while retaining the conventional edge.
So regardless of who is in charge it would be a desired condition.
Besides the limited number of tests won't support a First Use doctrine statistically speaking.

[ramana]

Three good tributes in Hindu

Old Fashioned Patriot Shivshankar Menon

very nice tribute.

I do not know whether Brajesh Mishra would have approved of the outpouring of sentiment and nostalgia that his passing away has evoked. But I am sure that he would have understood it, and may even have sympathised with it. For beneath his gruff and sometimes forbidding , demeanour, there lurked a fundamental kindness and decency, tempered by a wry and acerbic sense of human frailty.

He was the quintessential realist, untrammelled by ideology and preconceived notions, who took the world as he found it, in not very good or appealing shape, and worked it to his country’s purposes. For above all things he was a patriot, of the old-fashioned kind, with a strong sense of the national interest and the national purpose to build a strong and prosperous India, which would enable us to control our own fate.

In this quest he was tireless. But his was no unthinking nationalism, no take-no-prisoners and the devil-take-the-hindmost kind of patriotism. In the Foreign Service, and later in the world, his negotiating skills were legend. Many of us here have stories about his negotiating skills. Having watched him negotiate with the Chinese during a secret visit in November 2000, and with Tariq Aziz in Islamabad in 2004 before the Vajpayee visit, I asked him over an evening drink how he negotiated. His reply was, as always, simple, practical and direct. “Always give the other man something to take away from the table. As little as possible, but something. Otherwise he has no interest in doing what he has promised you.”

Achievements

In each of his diplomatic achievements, whether re-engaging with the major powers after the 1998 nuclear weapon tests, building the strategic partnership with the United States, or reaching out to Pakistan in 1999 and 2004, or the free trade agreement with Sri Lanka in 2000, this was the principle he followed.

As someone whose job was created by Mishra, I am also acutely aware that we owe the present shape of our national security structures in very large part to his energy, and that of his collaborators. He built to last. When these structures were reviewed after 10 years by a Task Force, they actually suggested more of the same rather than a radical restructuring.

That so much was achieved in such a short time by him is truly remarkable, and tribute to the partnerships he built, with Mr. Vajpayee, with K. Subrahmaniam, and with countless others, of all ages and across party lines. The relationship with PM Vajpayee was truly unique and the true root of much of his achievement.

Of course there will be regrets at his passing. For the un-drunk bottle of whisky that I had saved for his recovery from surgery. For the unwritten book that I pressed him for, until he said that he would not write a book that was not honest and that there were truths he could never reveal. And most of all for the advice that we had got used to relying upon.

But instead of regrets today, let us give thanks for his productive life, a life that was lived well, and by his own demanding standards. Let us also be grateful that he enjoyed the ultimate blessing — that he passed away with the same dignity with which he lived his life. That, I think, is how he would have wanted to be remembered.
(Shivshankar Menon is the National Security Adviser.)

Man who was Bharat Sarkar

By Gopal Krishna Gandhi

Again a fitting tribute on the other sides of Brajesh Mishra

Man who was ‘Bharat sarkar’
Gopalkrishna Gandhi

Brajesh Mishra’s political intelligence and diplomatic experience together translated into unmatched influence over the Vajpayee government

Life grudges courtesy. Death nudges it.

Brajesh Mishra, on crossing over, has received the praise many held back when he was with us.
The Prime Minister’s thoughtful and sincere tribute to the former National Security Adviser restores one’s faith in the future of civility in politics. It also gives us a definition of an ideal public servant and, more specifically, a role-model of an NSA.

During the five years that Atal Bihari Vajpayee was Prime Minister, his safari-suited Principal Secretary and National Security Adviser was, after the charismatic PM himself, the nearest that anyone came to embodying ‘Bharat Sarkar’.

Facts are facts. Hard facts are harder facts.

A poet in politics, Prime Minister Vajpayee thought lyrically and spoke in what sounded like free verse. If such an intellectual aesthete’s stewardship of the country could see India become a nuclear weapons state and, at the same time, make strategic moves for a composite dialogue with Pakistan, then the verser had to have had a grammarian helping him. And that was Brajesh Mishra.

The signet of power needs an indelible inking pad and a very sharply chiselled and firmly fonted seal pressing on it. Vajpayee and Mishra together made the imprimatur of the State. True, the Cabinet had a powerful Home Minister, a very visible Defence Minister and an articulate Foreign Minister. Yet, if the magnetic field of Atal Behari Vajpayee’s government had one single lodestone charging the terrain and holding it together, that was Brajesh Mishra.

The then Principal Secretary to the Prime Minister and NSA was and was not an official. He had his politics but did he belong in Deen Dayal Upadhyay Bhavan? As a quintessential member of the Indian Foreign Service, he was rehearsed in diplomacy’s book of scores but his mind was no singing prisoner of a cuckoo clock.

As NSA, Brajesh Mishra had a certain weight of political intelligence and a height in terms of diplomatic experience. The two together translated into influence, impact. And so when he held the position of Principal Secretary to the Prime Minister and National Security Adviser, one that no one had combined in himself earlier, he was already a non pareil. To that he added another plus, which came from the Prime Minister’s total and unwavering trust in him. The Brajesh Mishra impact over the NDA government and, by extension, over the India under NDA could well be called his BMI — Brajesh Mishra’s weight in credentials divided by his height in metres of impact squared.

His former colleagues in the Indian Foreign Service either liked him to the point of looking up to him or they resented him for his supreme self-confidence which could seem arrogant if not offensive. One former diplomat who had an ease of equation with Mishra without sharing his political predispositions was the Nehruvian 10th President of India, K.R. Narayanan. Three reasons can be identified for President Narayanan’s high comfort level with the NSA. First, his seeing a desirable equilibrium at work between Prime Minister Vajpayee’s lyrical idealism and the NSA’s prosaic pragmatism. Second, his seeing the NSA’s Patelesque resoluteness as that of a patriot and not that of a warmonger. Third, the President’s intellectually arrived-at respect for the office of NSA as a lightning conductor on the edifice of the state and its deeply grounded lodestone.

Brajesh Mishra’s departure, amid widely-expressed cross-party admiration for his work as NSA, is a natural occasion for us to reflect on the office of the NSA, whether conjoined to the office of Principal Secretary to the Prime Minister, or otherwise. In times when the nation engages in fluctuating negotiations with neighbouring governments — two of which are nuclear weapons states — with belligerent anti-India elements and opposition groups in some of those countries, dangerous non-state adversaries with possible collaborators within India, cyber-intrusions both insidious and overt, and several forms of restive and open violence working within the country, the nation needs a security pivot outside the multi-member, multiparty, multiplex of the Cabinet.

The Prime Minister, for many a year to come, may neither be able to afford to be a Chamberlain nor risk affecting a Churchill. He will, by the logic of our geopolitical circumstance, have to quest patiently for conciliation while keeping the guard against shocks high. He will, also, need to be an unflagging and earnest idealist in the matter of universal disarmament while knowing all that deterrence entails. Only a bold NSA can suggest some form of unilateralism along with a universalist approach towards a nuclear global zero.

Fortunately, even incredibly, the NSAs who have succeeded Brajesh Mishra have combined calm intellection with no-nonsense realism. One does need to watch him ‘from the inside’ or too closely to see that our present NSA does not conflate security with paranoia, nor political intelligence with a craving for intercepts. More pertinently, that he becalms posturers, sabre-rattlers and mood-jitterers among political and non-political entities, while keeping our security nodules on the qui vive.

The Prime Minister of India and the NSA form a twosome-ness that is distinct, exclusive. It is in the trust that one reposes and the other receives in the confidence of their consultations transacted in the white heat of emergencies, that suraksha lies. Whether the Prime Minister acts as a Chamberlain or a Churchill, the NSA has to be a Chanakya. But in the sense of being versatile, not just clever.

The secured chamber of security planning needs to open a window. And that is the window of sharing our security policy’s broad trajectory with the country. Security planning need not be an Eleusinian mystery, a secret doctrine involving rites known only to the initiated. Not in the alert and open-eyed Republic that is India. There was a touch of the elusive and the mysterious about Brajesh Mishra. This did not strengthen his BMI. If his great contribution to India’s security method is to be systemically strengthened, it will have to rise above some of our first NSA’s own masterly elidings.

(Gopalkrishna Gandhi is a former Governor of West Bengal)

and

Understanding the obligations of ruling India


Harish Khare

Brajesh Mishra was convinced that only a Centre able to practise secular values and respect the country’s plural traditions could pursue a robust strategy vis-à-vis Pakistan

The year was 2002. Two days after bloody riots erupted in Gujarat, I got a call late in the evening from an Ahmedabad-based officer of the Indian Police Service. The policeman simply said: “Sir, I am embarrassed to make this call. I am told that a local BJP legislator in Mehsana district is planning to undertake a massacre of Muslims tonight. And I am ashamed that there is no one here who will listen.” The police officer gave me the name of the village and taluka where the BJP “leader” had invited the village for a feast before the mob could be worked up to march on to a nearby village with a large concentration of Muslims.

Overwhelmed by the enormity of the imminent crime, I rang up my friend Brajesh Mishra. Fortuitously, Mishra picked up his mobile. I simply narrated to him what I had been told from Ahmedabad. He heard me out, noting down the sketchy details, and said: “Let me see.” Next morning I got another call from the police officer, who was obviously relieved and said: “Sir, I do not know what you did or to whom you talked; within two hours, an army posse reached the spot, rowdies were made to stay put, and their bloody plans sabotaged. Over 100 lives were saved. Thank you.”

A few days later, when I went over to the Prime Minister’s Office to have my weekly tea with Mishra, I thanked him profusely. With becoming dignity and gravitas he observed: “Those of us who have the good fortune to work in this office for the Prime Minister of India can never become indifferent to the obligation of social harmony.”

Golden principle

Suddenly it was clear that the man who wore two hats — the Principal Secretary to Prime Minister and National Security Adviser — was laying down the golden principle for administering India. The state can never abandon its neutrality nor become ambivalent about social harmony. In that moment, Brajesh Mishra revealed himself to be a keen student of P.N. Haksar, another practitioner of enlightened statecraft who served another Prime Minister, Indira Gandhi, with great distinction.

Haksar had presciently spelled out a vital link between internal cohesion and our national security: “Secularism or its failure affects vitally social cohesion in our society, without which we cannot discuss our security. The fundamental basis for ensuring security of any state is its inner unity, cohesion and coherence of the society. A society which is torn between conflicting religions is bound to be an easy prey to internal forces of disintegration and external forces of destabilization.”

Although Narendra Modi, the Bharatiya Janata Party’s mascot, had managed to notch up an impressive victory in the 2002 Gujarat election by positing a Mian Musharraf-Madarsas-Muslims linkage, Brajesh Mishra (as well as his boss, Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee) was profoundly unhappy. It was clear to him that if the BJP had any long-term hopes of ruling the country, surely the Modi prescriptions and slogans were totally unhelpful. Those were the heady days of the post-9/11 war on terror. Indian statesmanship demanded that the polity be spared the debilitating polarisation of a civil war.

{So this the perennial fear of the dilli-billi crowd of compromisers.}

Mishra was convinced that only a Centre able to practise secular values and respect our country’s plural traditions could conduct superior diplomacy and pursue a robust strategy, especially vis-à-vis Pakistan. And, he was equally convinced that an amicable solution to the Kashmir problem could be attempted only from a higher secular moral ground. The political discourse would have to be detoxed of its Gujarat-centric delinquencies.

It is possible to argue that it was only after the Gujarat carnage that the Vajpayee-Mishra duo embarked on seeking some kind of reconciliation with Pakistan, an effort that culminated in January 2004 in Islamabad. Mishra was painfully aware that the Advani-Modi faction had so precipitously damaged the social fabric throughout the country that our national security had become vulnerable. Sensible statecraft demanded engagement with Pakistan.

The second principle that Mishra believed in was that those who were fortunate enough to get the privilege of governing — or hope to govern — this country do not have the luxury of pettiness. History is witness that whenever a Prime Minister allowed his pique to get the better of sane impulses, the outcome has been a morally and politically inferior response. On a number of occasions he would hint how Prime Minister Vajpayee was under pressure from the NDA hotheads to use the state’s coercive instruments against political rivals; and, how he was able to help the Prime Minister ward off the sangh parivar’s efforts at dirty tricks. He once pronounced: “A Prime Minister of India has an obligation to decency and decorum.”

Like Haksar, Mishra was a great believer in centralisation of resources and power in pursuit of national ambitions and purpose. Just as Haksar helped Indira Gandhi accumulate power of oversight and co-ordination in the Prime Minister’s Office, Mishra helped Vajpayee restore the aura and authority of the PMO. Though Mr. Vajpayee’s circumstances were vastly different from those of Indira Gandhi, Mishra was aware of the toll that two years of the United Front government had taken of our national will. The wobbliness in the PMO had to be corrected and that is precisely what he achieved.

In his autobiography, My Country, My Life, L.K. Advani unwittingly reveals how efforts were made by him and others to cut Brajesh Mishra to size. The Kargil Review Committee Report was flaunted to argue that Mishra should not combine two roles — of Principal Secretary and National Security Adviser. Mr. Advani plaintively notes how Mr. Vajpayee stood by Mishra: “We repeatedly urged the Prime Minister to bifurcate the two posts held by Brajesh Mishra. Atalji, however, had a different view and did not implement this recommendation. It was, of course, the Prime Minister’s prerogative to do so. In my view, the clubbing together of two critical responsibilities, each requiring focused attention, did not contribute to harmony at the highest levels of governance.”

Command structure

Presumably neither Mr. Advani’s suggestion nor Mr. Vajpayee’s rejection of it was personal. At issue was a certain notion of a command and control structure that should be available to the Prime Minister of India. I remember vividly that within a few weeks of the UPA government coming to power in May 2004, Mishra told me crisply and precisely: “If you have any influence with the new crowd of our new rulers, please tell them to dismantle the disastrous trifurcation in the PMO.” The Manmohan Singh government had experimented with a three way division of Mr. Mishra’s responsibilities — a Principal Secretary (T.K.A. Nair), a National Security Adviser (J.N. Dixit) and a Security Adviser (M.K. Narayanan).

Mishra would have violently disagreed with Mamata Banejree who recently decreed that “India cannot be governed from New Delhi.” Inherent in Ms Banerjee’s formulation is an emasculated and enfeebled Centre. Mishra’s, on the other hand, hinged on a national mobilisation, not a fragmentation of political power; on a pan-Indian vision, rather than a region-centric calculus; and, on a summoning of our best civilisational instincts and traditions, rather than the sangh parivar’s shoddy feudal animosities. The Mishra-Vajpayee duo rescued the exercise of power from the BJP’s preference for pettiness and provincialism. It was a six-year long struggle between the two approaches and the balance perhaps tilts slightly against the Vajpayee-Mishra team.

Once the realisation dawned on the country that the BJP was not inclined to abide by the Vajpayee-Mishra approach, it was only a matter of time before the NDA was voted out of power.

(Harish Khare is a veteran commentator and political analyst.)

THis Harish Khare is using BM's tribute to fire his own pot shots.

I strongly believe now more than before that the PS-NSA has to be combined for its the polciy execution power of the PS that anchors the NSA's analysis powers in reality.
Otherwise its a bunch of file pushers hanging on.

[RamaY]

From BK's mouth...

Many of the things done by the BJP government are wrongly attributed to him. For instance, the decision to conduct nuclear tests and to weaponise was not remotely Brajesh’s, but mandated by the BJP election manifesto. The priority the issue accorded was the party’s as well, with a mighty assist from his predecessor P V Narasimha Rao egging Vajpayee on. However, Mishra efficiently coordinated the efforts of the various arms of the government to realise such goals. However, the strategic payoffs from the breakthrough Shakti tests, in terms of rocketing India, thermonuclear weapons-wise, into the rank of strategically impregnable nations, never accrued. This was because of the astonishingly strange and perverse decision announced by Vajpayee in his suo moto statement in Parliament on May 28, 1998 imposing a ‘voluntary test moratorium’.

Goes hand in hand with my post in assembly thread... Thank you source!

Just my CT on P2 tests.

Sometimes when one is determined to do what you too want but carefully avoided to do all along, then it is better you orchestrate it in such a manner that the entire responsibility (or blame) falls on your opponent. Make sure that you facilitate it.

Who made sure that all the required infra in place, such as secretly prepared shafts, weapons/models, instrumentation and what not, so that BJP can test, if it wants, within the first month of it coming into power?

Sri BM is a member of the Flemingo club, IMHO, which is beyond INC and BJP, and Sri BM might or might not even be aware of it

I am not surprised if this Flemingo club let certain impressions and perspectives left untouched for they ensure it's secrecy while achieving its objectives.

[ramana]

Most of the tributes to Brajesh Mishra show there is an underlying concern being expressed, about the job of the NSA and how its not meeting the high expectations he set forth. Something to ponder and benefit from.
I would say this is the most open discussion on the roles and responsiblities of the NSA so far.

[ramana]

RamaY sorry to pour water on your hypothesis, but PVNR very clearly put orders in place in Dec 1995 that the establishment will be ready to conduct tests one month after political go ahead. That same one month was the duration when ABV gave the go ahead to RC & APK duo and they reported back exactly one month later saying they wee ready.
The three-four shafts were dug since early 1980s and two more were added by Deva Gowda and I.J. Gujral. Sno flamingos or birds. Only hard headed realists in a sea of wishy-washy WKKs.

Meanwhile x-posting...

America's weakness over situations like Afghanistan is threefold - and it is not unique to America.

(1) A complex consumption pattern in any civilization makes it vulnerable to resource constraints, especially the main source of eneregy that drives the tech of the level of the civilization. For Romans it was slave labour, and for Americans cheap oil. Growth trends ususally exhaust such primary resources, within the initial perimeter of the civilization, and hence further growth is only maintainable by extracting that primary resource from ever expanding outside territory.

Given the tech level, there will soon reach an equilibrium between the external people learning their power [as source of labour for Roman empire and as source of oil for USA] and the civilization's coercive power to extract the resource [for some time the control can be maintained by superior military tech, but with humans that is always a temporary advantage. Defeated quickly learn to copy.]

Over time the advantages of coercion will be lost, and the ex-dominated will roll back the civilization.

(2) A civilization that has been successful for some time in monopolizing resources of a significant portion of the globe, will coerce and destroy centres of opposition and lead to "peace", in which business and mercantile profit extraction becomes concentrated in the elite of the civilization and their non-local allies. Gradually this leads to the psychological alienation of the mercantiles from the original roots of the civilization, and development of trans-civilizational values as supreme. This is the result of a compromise between the need to enhance profits, and the idenity of the civilization. After some time, the civilizational identity becomes less important than the profits of the mercantile class.

Over time this means a loss of determination to protect the civilization. If you are no longer sure of what is most important after monetary profits, you cannot focus your energies on concrete steps to protect what is most important.

(3) Most complex civilizations inevitably evolve philosophically towards egalitarian and fairness principles, as a result of success in satisfying basic needs of humanity. When growth and expansion at the cost of others ceases, the large elite class that had been increasing in size, loses places to accommodate upcoming elite ambitions for power. The disgruntled and marginalized elite use philosophical principles [which could only be built upon a certain level of societal consumption fueled by exploiting externals], that go against the coercive strategies behind succes sof the civilization in the first place - as weapons in internal power struggles.

It was such search for "humane" memes that led to elite Roman sponsorship of early Christianity, and communism in early modern colonialist Europe, and is now leading to "secularist=pro-islamic/diversity" creeds in the west.

The humane values evolved by a civilization almost always is used by a combination of internal ambition and external opportunism to paralyze the coercive powers of the civilization, and ultimately allows the civilization to be destroyed.

Afghan's source of strength is a brutalized slave society ideologically complemented by slavery-justifying theology - sort of the same way the Russians managed to fight back Hitler under Stalin. What has defeated the west against Afghans, especially USA, is the failure to use coercion against the right institutions - in this case the slave ideology maintainers of the mullahcracy. Afghans do understand coercion - it just has to match their expected levels of brutality that they inflict on others. If selective brutality is imposed on the mullahcracy, and targeted elimination of their institutions and Afghans left alone as long as they don't try to help out the mullahs - Afghans will betray the mullahs and Afghans are very very very much bribable - its a false Kiplingian propaganda that Afghan loyalty to the clan/guest/ protected is beyond betrayal at the right price.

Bji, For starters can you trace the evolution of the modern Indian state using the framework you have here? Please start with after 1857 and use analogues.

[ramana]

Looks like the Global trends 2030 report is available for GOI.

Here is a op-ed based on a speech by Lata Reddy the DyNSA.


India and its future challenges

India and its future challenges

The draft report on “Global Trends 2030” has identified certain game-changers relating to international economy, technology, climate change, energy security and sustainable development

Latha Reddy

The draft Global Trends 2030 report, which is likely to be released after the US Presidential elections, will attract a considerable amount of attention as the new Presidency comes into office. The report outlines mega trends and a number of game-changers. By 2030 India and China will grow at a scale and pace not seen before. The question of what India’s approach, values and vision will be is of relevance to our future.


{If this is a report by GOI why do they ahve to wait for US Presidential elections! By what stretch of imaginatiion do they think they should hold it back? Revise it in case Romney gets elected? In which case they are saying Golbal Future trends from Indian prespective are dependent on US elections?}

The historical vision of the nation as laid out by India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru sets the tone for today’s discussions about the future. Nehru was the first to see the strategic space that the Cold War opened up for the emergence of a third voice, much against the wishes of the superpowers. And he chose to use it not for his personal glory or for a narrowly defined national interest. He used it to promote world peace and create the peaceful environment that India’s transformation required. And most importantly, Nehru gave India a sense of destiny.

Developments in the Af-Pak region after the withdrawal of the US/NATO forces in 2014 will be on India’s radar

{Doesnt this remark seem out of place? Maybe it should be later in the speech.}

Strategic autonomy

We in India are clear that our goal is to transform India. It is this focus that has made India consistently avoid external entanglements and restraints on our freedom of choice and action. Strategic autonomy as is practised today was and remains the essence of the policy of non-alignment. If we have sought strategic autonomy, it is to be able to pursue this goal without distraction or external considerations.

India is in an exciting transition. A nation constituting one sixth of humanity is undergoing an economic and social transformation on an extraordinary scale. It is taking place in a democratic and federal framework; in the midst of growing political pluralism and social diversity; and, in the context of a continuing debate on equity, opportunity and sustainability.

Internal stability and prosperity lie at the heart of India’s vision for the future. We need at least another 15 years of 9-10 per cent growth, if we are to accomplish the task of abolishing poverty. So, while India is already a major economy in terms of size and ability to influence prices and supply and demand in certain markets, it will remain a country with overwhelming domestic priorities for an extended period of time. This will certainly be true for the foreseeable future.

For these goals to be achieved, India needs a peaceful periphery, collective and secure access to natural resources, and an enabling international environment. India is more than willing to contribute to the betterment of the international situation, to shaping the contours of the global order, to promote global public goods, even as it actively pursues its own interests. One of these important interests and areas of our immediate focus must also be the integration of our neighbourhood through increased connectivity.

We are conscious that we are living in an interconnected world, where our security is shaped by many events outside national borders and by situations of shared vulnerabilities, the primary being threats emanating from terrorism. Given the strategic uncertainties of the world in 2030, we must develop the means to defend ourselves. Whether this capacity will include our becoming a net provider of security in the Indian Ocean and beyond will depend on to what extent we can effect India’s own transformation.

{As noted above India's transformation is nbased on a peaceful peripehry etc. I don't see a plan to bash on regardless and ensure a peacefuel peripehry etc. Above plan is dependent on goodwill of the competetiors. I see no remarks about making sure the competetiors don't get to mess in India's neighborhood.}


The rise of Asia

Forecasting the future is a tricky business, but present trends do indicate that the rise of Asia - particularly China and India - is a fact that cannot be wished away. The draft report of the Global Trends 2030 also points in this direction. The dramatic shifts in the balance of power as a result of China’s military modernisation will obviously have implications for global and regional security and provoke responses from other major powers depending on their geo-political considerations.

The India story has also been impressive. In 1947, the average Indian lived for 26 years and only about 14 per cent were literate. Today our average life expectancy is 68 years (WHO figures), with women’s life expectancy exceeding that of men by three years, and 2/3rds of our population is now literate. Our economy has also done well in the last several decades.{Only two to three decades} Its fundamentals remain strong, and we hope to surge forward in spite of the current slowdown. While we need to work harder on our developmental and economic goals, there is reason to take pride in our progress, and be optimistic for the future.

The second aspect that will drive global developments is energy production and utilization. Countries will work to ensure access to energy sources. In this, coal, oil, renewable energy as well as extraction of shale gas resources will naturally be relevant. Then, there will be linked issues like the melting of Arctic icecaps, the opening up of opportunities for new shipping routes, and the exploration of oil, gas and mineral deposits.

Technology is developing at a rate faster than can be comprehended. The consequences of this in the domains of space and cyber space, and proliferation are of particular concern. Just as the world had to learn new rules and ways of thinking about nuclear weapons, we are now at the beginning of doing so for outer space and cyber space, both of which are increasingly critical to our daily lives, economies and futures. Advances in technology and discussions about what is called the Revolution in Military Affairs, though interesting and important, may not fully explain the revolutionary changes taking place as a result of increasing “connectivity” and “complexity” in a globalized world. One example of such complexity is the nexus we can see between climate change, rising sea levels, and the resultant migration that could lead to conflict. This would demand a different mindset for accurate predictions of likely implications, and also to find effective policy solutions.

Strategic initiatives

Coming to India’s responses to such developments, as a nation, India has consistently shown tactical caution and strategic initiative, sometimes simultaneously. The record bears this out. Non-alignment itself, in fact, was an act of strategic courage

On our external relations, since 1988 we have made considerable and steady progress in our relations with China. The list of our other strategic initiatives is impressive - the Indo-Soviet Treaty, the India-Sri Lanka 1987 Agreement and the FTA, the India-US civil nuclear cooperation agreement, and so on. But equally, initiative and risk taking must be strategic. That is why it is important to peg our goals and use our power to our immediate and overriding aim of domestic transformation. In other words, our condition, and the state of the world, require us not to seek hegemony, or domination, or expansion, or strategic depth. None of these serve our basic interest, even in a defensive sense. Being a bridging power, or a swing state might, in certain circumstances. For example, in the case of piracy from Somalia, which threatens the trade routes, we would seek to build coalitions to deal with the issue. There could be other similar scenarios in the future too.

{She is IFS and should be familiar with Balance of Power strategy etc. Seeking coalitions for squatting a bug is not BOP}


‘Reverse Engine’ scenario

I was struck by the three postulates in the report, firstly the ‘Reverse Engine’ scenario, according to which the US will draw inward, constrained by its mounting fiscal problems; the second scenario of ‘Fusion’ which suggests that the developed and growing powers could work together to ignite a technological revolution to rebuild their economies; and the third scenario of ‘Fragmentation’, which visualizes a world in which there is absence of widespread political will to solve global problems. The scenario of ‘Fusion’, which is the middle path, is the most likely outcome by 2030. Similarly, the game-changers identified in the report are thought provoking, whether relating to the international economy, global governance, interstate and intrastate conflicts, technology, climate change, energy security, sustainable development, and, finally, from an American perspective, what will be the role and influence of the US in the new international order.

For a better tomorrow

Proceeding from the present and moving into the future requires some clarity on where we stand today. Just as India has premised her future on the transformation of society for a better tomorrow, it appears that the international order will have to work towards a new system of governance.

As Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh pointed out in his remarks to the XVIth NAM Summit in Tehran: “We need new instruments of global governance to confront cross-cutting and trans-national challenges through coordinated global action. These (challenges) include international terrorism, proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, the menace of maritime piracy, the growing threat to cyber security, and the growing challenge of pursuing ecologically sustainable development, while ensuring energy, water and food security.”

Given the scale of these challenges, our present and future are interlinked by our ability to handle the crisis of the present. Only this capacity and capability will give us the means to achieve a more just and equitable world order. Meanwhile, policy planners such as ourselves will continue to look to the strategic community to construct scenarios and “alternate worlds” for us so that we are, so to speak, ahead of the curve, forewarned and forearmed.

{Now we see why BMji wanted to combine policy implementation and analysis. Here the policy maker is asking the analyst to give her alternate futures. She should sit with the analyst while he creates the scenarios for she has to implement them. Being forewarned is not sueful if one palsn to do nothing. In my view all three tyopes of scenarios could coexist at same time in different fields. Its never all or nothing}


There are a number of issues that are likely to continue to engage us in the future. Developments in the Af-Pak region after the withdrawal of US/NATO forces in 2014 and the prospects for instability, or, alternatively, unprecedented regional cooperation, will probably be a priority area. The increasing radicalisation of Pakistan, the possibility of conflict in West Asia provoked by rival geo-political interests, the potential for maritime clashes in North East Asia due to competing nationalisms, and developments in the Indian Ocean and South China Sea are some of the other areas that will be closely watched. These should be carefully analysed in any strategic thinking in India about the future.


{All the above are things that will disturb the tranquility in the periphery that India seeks as per her above speech. Again she is giving guidelines and not hope that the govt is actively seized of these issues and is working on them.}

The writer is India’s Deputy National Security Adviser. The article is excerpted from a speech delivered at an interaction organised by the Observer Research Foundation on October 3.

Shyam Saran had made his famous speech in 2009 and said "Linear thinking does not envision the caterpillar transforming into a butterfly."

Sadly I see linear thinking on display here.
Maybe she cannot reveal what is the real plan to her audience.

[ramana]

is this the report she is talking about?

Global Trends 2030

I thought it was the late K Subramanyam report.

maybe she was referring to some US publication which would be after the US elections.

One pet peeve of mine is that Indian elite talk about US things as if its their own concerns!

[ramana]

One nugget about the 1998 tests aftermath related to Brajesh Mishra and France:

K.P. Nayar writes:

http://www.telegraphindia.com/1120206/j ... 098135.jsp

In addition, spread across India’s entire political spectrum that includes much of the Opposition, is a firm conviction that India would not have come out unscathed from the decision to conduct the 1998 nuclear tests if it were not for the steadfast backing that President Jacques Chirac — and Nicolas Sarkozy after him — offered India in an hour of great need.

.....
Levitte is diplomatic adviser and “Sherpa” to Sarkozy, who made amends for the temperamental mistakes during his President’s first visit to India as chief guest during Republic Day celebrations in New Delhi and organised a second trip that turned out to be one of most productive and substantive visits by any head of state to India.

Levitte was senior diplomatic adviser to Chirac too when Brajesh Mishra, the then principal secretary to Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, flew to Paris as his first stop abroad seeking diplomatic support after the Pokhran II nuclear tests. Mishra found such support in Paris before he extracted reluctant support from Moscow.

Soon afterwards, Levitte became French permanent representative to the UN in New York where he led, along with Russia, a split among the five permanent members of the Security Council on the issue of punishing India through sanctions on the nuclear issue. Later he was ambassador in Washington.

[ramana]

Dated but important article

Helping Hand

HELPING HAND
- The most important person in New Delhi is not the PM
Diplomacy: K.P. Nayar

Returning to India after nearly a year’s gap, it seemed like a good idea to find out who is the most important person in the national capital’s corridors of power at a time when the United Progressive Alliance government is in a state of perpetual paralysis or stumbling from one misstep to another. The answer was not difficult: Naresh Chandra, former cabinet secretary, governor and later ambassador to the United States of America.

“Important” is not to be confused with the “powerful” in New Delhi. Powerful men and women are aplenty all over the country, starting from Rahul Gandhi to Mamata Banerjee, but important persons are fewer.

In the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government, the most important person was, without any doubt, Brajesh Mishra, the prime minister’s principal secretary, who later served concurrently as national security adviser. It was to Mishra that everyone went for decisions for six continuous years. Mishra was important because he could find solutions to vexing problems within the government and ensure that his solutions were carried through, but there was little that he could do in terms of resolving political problems in spite of being Vajpayee’s eyes and ears.

Naresh Chandra is much less important than Mishra in the present-day set-up in New Delhi in that sense. In part, that is because Chandra holds no office and has no post within the Indian State which would enable him to directly push through anything he may want to. Actually, Chandra’s importance, for that reason, is all the more impressive because he is critical to the present-day state of affairs in New Delhi in spite of what would be a clear handicap for most others who may find themselves similarly placed.

........

On Raisina Hill, the seat of power in New Delhi, Chandra has become the man for all seasons. His latest brief, unannounced and hugely under-reported, is to bail out the defence minister, A.K. Antony, who is facing mounting criticism for allegedly allowing the country’s defence preparedness to slip under his watch.

It is to Antony’s credit that from the day he took over as defence minister, he has waged a relentless campaign against corruption in defence purchases and other areas in his ministry. But those who know Antony are not surprised that in the process, he has created a gridlock in military acquisitions because of his obsession for transparency.

Those whom he has deprived of commissions, bribes and fancy junkets have prodded others, including sections of the media, to accuse Antony of making India weak by holding up the modernization of the army.

It is also to Antony’s credit that he has belatedly recognized that there is some merit in such criticism even though much of the motivation for these complaints is not altruistic. The defence minister was alarmed when he was told the other day that he had blacklisted so many foreign suppliers for corrupt practices that the only technology now available to Indians in some sectors is from companies which still use the know-how of the 1960s.

So sweeping has Antony’s blacklisting been that every firm that is a leader in one area or another in cases of some critical defence needs is out of the competition for bids with his ministry. After some deep introspection, when his ministry dominated front page news in an unflattering light for months, Antony has concluded that his primary responsibility as defence minister is to protect the country and guarantee its security, and not to fight corruption at every turn.

So, Antony has now turned to Chandra, who will soon seek a balance between the need for probity in military acquisitions and the urgency of getting the best equipment as quickly as possible.

A year ago, a task force was set up under Chandra’s leadership to examine defence preparedness as a follow-up to the Kargil review committee’s report on that brief conflict with Pakistan. Since Chandra is already engaged in that work, it has been possible for Antony to quietly entrust him this additional and much more sensitive job of untangling the mess created by the ban on an unacceptably large number of international defence producers.

As part of his task force responsibilities, Chandra has further been requested to examine the case for a chief of defence staff, who will be the “first among equals” made up of the three service chiefs. The case for such a post has been enhanced by the unsavoury controversy about the date of birth of General V.K. Singh, the army chief.

Chandra has taken on another task that has defied previous attempts: the revamp of India’s intelligence. Additionally, in the last one year when he has headed the national security advisory board, Chandra has changed not only the composition but also the substance of this board.

To start with, he advised Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who chose Chandra as the NSAB’s head in early 2011, not to pack the board with Indian foreign service officers. Singh promptly cut down their number from seven previously to two in the current board.

Chandra was behind the induction of an industrialist for the very first time into the board. But most important of all, he saw the need to have representation from a region where national security is most at risk: the volatile Northeast.

His lasting contribution to the demands of present-day national security will be that by the time his chairmanship of NSAB is over, Chandra will have transformed what was earlier an ivory tower talking shop on foreign policy into a solid forum dealing with more urgent domestic threats. Earlier, he was tapped by the government after a series of corporate scandals to head a reform panel on corporate governance. No wonder Naresh Chandra is the man for all seasons in New Delhi.

BTW he was the Ambassador to US during the tests and was part of the team that socialized the "India is in a tough neighborhood" message of Brajesh Mishra. Before that he was the Cabinet Secy!

[abhishek_sharma]

The foreign policy hand: K Shankar Bajpai

[member_23677]

Looks like the Global trends 2030 report is available for GOI.

Here is a op-ed based on a speech by Lata Reddy the DyNSA.


India and its future challenges

India and its future challenges
<sic>

Shyam Saran had made his famous speech in 2009 and said "Linear thinking does not envision the caterpillar transforming into a butterfly."

Sadly I see linear thinking on display here.
Maybe she cannot reveal what is the real plan to her audience.

Pretty pathetic roadmap if this is the final document... A real "2030" plan should atleast include these topics:

1. Integrating Pakistan,Afganisthan,Bangladesh and Srilanka back to India/Bharat and get back the Indian Subcontinent
2.Securing important external security bases by using Intelligence and military
3. Having a firm influence on decision making of Arab countries (atleast major ones)
4. Becoming a "second option" to chinese agression, that is if china survives in the present form
5. Expanding the reach of military and it's operations
6. Hard Power is as important as soft power and a way to maintain both must be found. Only having a strong soft power makes us look "girly"
7. Increasing the reach of Intelligence, both external and internal and having a much better police force.
8. Reforms in Judiciary and special laws for terrorists and terrorist suspects without a provision for appeal
9. Bharat's version of "patriot act", where stupid separatist mobs can be neutralized
10. Having a better collection data on Bhartiya history and archaeology

[ramana]

The foreign policy hand: K Shankar Bajpai

The Foreign Policy Hand
Brajesh Mishra was the vital link between politics and diplomacy

The tributes paid to Brajesh Mishra are particularly merited for being hard-earned. Pushing through sensible policies is nightmarish in our present politico-administrative environment, but it was not much easier then. His sense of India’s strategic needs was refined by his experience of how the world actually works, distinct from our Indian insistence that it must work the way we imagine. His exceptional effectiveness derived greatly from being able to negotiate the labyrinths of domestic politics, and especially from the complete confidence of his chief: his voice was heard as the PM’s own. Such assets still need the ability to get things done, which in turn depends on the degree to which the vast, creaky government machinery responds to leaders. Brajesh had the advantage of the surpassing weight Atal Bihari Vajpayee carried within his party and nationally. Also, by combining the two posts, he was better placed as principal secretary to get our bureaucracy to heed what he recommended as national security advisor (NSA).

Though uniquely combining the titles, Brajesh had predecessors who had also played both roles, notably P.N. Haksar and P.N. Dhar, the two principal secretaries who were also key advisers on what are called national security matters today. Government heads always feel the need of a personal expert to supplement — if not supersede — inputs on foreign affairs and related security concerns from the ministries directly responsible. Remember Krishna Menon’s controversial performance as grey eminence to Nehru; more happily, although not entirely without controversy, Indira Gandhi turned frequently to G. Parthasarthi. Such extra-official advisors cannot be excluded, but, granted the need for one, it is best to have properly established arrangements. Not only an NSA, but a significant support apparatus, is now universal practice — indeed, we need to expand ours.

But no matter how large or expert, no organisation can serve its purposes if the total politico-administrative environment is unreceptive, not to mention adverse. The Vajpayee/Mishra combination faced the same problem: the coalition may have been less difficult to manage, or the management more skilful, but there were rivalries and whimsies galore, as is our Indian way. The fiasco of the Indo-Pakistan summit at Agra is the most incredible example of personal brainwaves overcoming good judgement. Not even this top combination was able to control internal factional or egotistical pressures. But yesterday’ s aberration is becoming today’s daily danger.

A disturbing new danger is local leaders inflicting themselves on foreign policy. Democracy is inherently handicapped in the conducting of foreign policy. Public opinion, real or supposed, now adds difficulty, and federal systems must be sensitive to regional sentiments. America, for instance, cannot deal with Cuba without deference to voters in Florida, or with Mexico ignoring Texas. But India is now deprived of essential flexibility, with parochial politics in Kolkata ruining relations with Bangladesh, in Chennai with Sri Lanka. More generally, the political equations and atmosphere in the country as a whole have become so destructively paralysing, the dog-in-the-manger attitude prevails even over major issues on which there is no essential difference.

India is not the only democracy in the world; others must manage, and have somehow minimised, similar obstacles. Nor are we unique in the poisonous relations that develop within all power structures. When someone said former British home secretary Herbert Morrison was his own worst enemy, foreign secretary Ernest Bevin promptly growled “Not while I’m alive, he aint!” And the viciousness with which American president’s are attacked makes our infighting look tame. But despite major gridlocks, other democracies manage distinctly less messily than us. Perhaps because we have leapfrogged through the processes of democratisation so rapidly, we have not developed the infrastructures of statecraft and functioning habits, which the others had centuries to do. Mechanisms that are protected from the worst interference in the sober, balanced handling of our international concerns are essential, as is the readiness to risk the howling now automatic for all government initiatives. Hardly any foreign policy issue changes a single vote, and while nobody wants to add sticks to be beaten with, governments can afford to ignore our now constant hulla. Fortunately, no parliamentary system requires prior legislative approval of international engagements. Legislatures can vote governments out post facto, and obviously governments must make advance judgements on the acceptability of decisions, but previous concurrence would make diplomacy impossible.

India faces greater challenges to its security than most larger powers, far more than is in our public consciousness. Just because nobody is going to invade us tomorrow does not mean we can take it as carelessly as we are prone to. The minimum prerequisite for better functioning is an agreement among our major political parties to eschew cheap one-upmanship. In the last year, Brajesh and a half a dozen of us old hands had desperately racked our remaining brains to devise a scheme to urge some political leaders to cooperate on at least four or five specific national imperatives. Without him, it is beyond us. Maybe others will seek to pay our debt to him and to India.


The writer is former ambassador to Pakistan, China and the US and secretary, Ministry of External Affairs Ministry

Looks like the later tributes have an angst about the current setup and seek to probe why Brajesh Mishra was so effective. There is left handed complements streaming in now.

And even in his death he has made the establishment think about national security.

Great man.

Need to see what K.P. Nayar of Telegraph will write.


I know people won't like this but there is a major difference between the earlier Principal Secys like Haksar and Dhar and Mishraji.
The earlier ones were Secys for Indira Gandhi who had Parlimentary majority and didnt have too much internal squabbles of coalitioin government.
And it was during their term that she imposed Emergency.

Mishraji's job was tougher and more choppy with the coalition govt, different centers of power, external pressures after the tests and TSP invasion and multiple terrroist attacks on Lok Sabha and Kaluchak.



i wsih Bajpaiji writes another op-ed about those four-five national imperatives so that a new consensus can be built around them.

[krisna]

It is said that PVN and ABV were the right men in the wrong parties!!
But both were visionaries for India.

mainly defence projects have not been interrupted by any PM for over 2-3 decades.
They have gone under radar. Budgets have not been revelaed.
IIRC PVN wanted to xplode the bum but cia found out, hence kept in abeyance for future tests.
This was acheived by ABV. of course BJP manifesto also said the same.
The debacle of cia not to find out the bum xplosion was a major embarassment. said to be the cia's worst phuck up of the decade in this part of the world.

[ramana]

A useful article on the need for planning from US prespective

Time for Planning? If not now when?


Carl Builder and James Dewar

[nakul]

India needs to develop its own doctrine for strategic autonomy: NSA

India needs to develop its own doctrines to truly seek broadest possible "strategic autonomy", National Security Advisor Shiv Shankar Menon said today and advocated the reading of Kautilya's 'Arthashastra' for broadening the vision on issues of strategy.

"Much of what passes for strategic thinking in India today is derivative, using concepts, doctrines and a vocabulary derived from other cultures, times, places and conditions," he said here.

Menon was speaking at a workshop on Kautilya, organised by the Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (IDSA) under its Project on Indigenous Historical Knowledge.

Terming the Arthashastra as a "text of its time and place, Mauryan to Gupta administration," he said "Kautilya's book is more than just a power maximisation or internal dominance strategy for a state. He has an almost modern sense of the higher purpose of the state and of the limits of power".

Describing India's supposedly incoherent strategic approach as a "colonial construct", the NSA insisted that "some of the problems in international relations and strategic studies that we think we are dealing with for the first time have been considered by great minds in India before."

The country should "use the past to learn ways of thinking about these problems, improving our mental discipline, as it were," he said.

Arthashastra is "serious manual on statecraft, on how to run a state, informed by a higher purpose, clear and precise in its prescriptions, the result of practical experience of running a state. It is not just a normative text but a realist description of the art of running a state," Menon added.

[ramana]

Chanakya is being studied seriously by US eperts.
A lot has been written by a scholar at Occidental College.

I have Chanakya neeti app on Android on my phone and the Shyama Sastri translation in pdf also.

[nakul]

It was popular in business circles in India for strategic thinking & asset, risk management. The westerners do not possess the context in translated formats. I hope our people do it in the original & unaltered text. Some things cannot be translated.

[ramana]

When the West makes up their mind to do something they do it fully.

Angelo Codevilla has very good understanding of the context and has applied it to Western situations.

[nakul]

They have been studying our scriptures for hundreds of years. Yet the essence still eludes them. One can have said to fully understood something when s/he is capable of producing something similar, if not better. The less said about indologists the better.

Anyway, my concern is not the west. The pappi jhappi with the west was not to our interest anytime in history. West includes anything beyond our borders in the western direction. If only Prithviraj chauhan knew this

"As soon as the fear approaches near, attack and destroy it."
-Chanakya

[shyamd]

Speaking Notes at Workshop on Kautilya - Kautilya Today

Amb. Shivshankar Menon, National Security Advisor
October 18, 2012

It is customary on such occasions to say how delighted one is to come to a meeting and how appropriate its subject is. Today, for once, I mean it in full measure. I am truly delighted to be here at the workshop on Kautilya organised by the IDSA. I must congratulate Director Arvind Gupta on this initiative.

I have three reasons to be so delighted. You forced me to read Kautilya again, and that gave me great pleasure. Secondly, the conference enables us to reconnect with the rich Indian tradition of strategic thought. And thirdly, it could contribute to the evolution of our own strategic vocabulary and thought.

Let me expand on that.
1. On Reading Kautilya Again

The Arthashastra meets one essential criterion for a great book. It bears reading again and again. Every time you read it you learn something new and find a new way of looking at events. But it is a very different sort of text from the Bhagwad Gita. This is not a book that you keep on your bedside table and turn to for daily inspiration. This is a serious manual on statecraft, on how to run a state, informed by a higher purpose (or dharma), clear and precise in its prescriptions, the result of practical experience of running a state. It is not just a normative text but a realist description of the art of running a state.

Reading the text again now, I was struck by how evidently Kautilya himself, (if indeed the author of the Arthashastra was one man and not a historical composite), is clearly the product of centuries of evolved strategic thinking. He cites several previous authorities differing views on many issues. Bharadvaja, Vishalaksha, Parasara, Pisuna and others are mentioned often. Kautilya argues with them, while presenting their views before his own. Sadly, what we know of many of them is limited to what Kautilya tells us.

Equally, Kautilya’s is only one voice, and the Arthashastra is probably meant to be a normative text, describing how the state should work. Ashoka’s imagining of the state’s place in the world, judging by his inscriptions, and his practice do not bear out what the Arthashastra says. Other Indian texts have different points of view, for instance the Buddhist Nikaya texts, on statecraft and defence. The Arthashastra and Kautilya are therefore one of several approaches to statecraft in Ancient India. It is also a text of its time and place, Mauryan to Gupta administration, and should be read as such.

I was also struck by the fact that Kautilya’s is more than just a power maximisation or internal dominance strategy for a state. He has an almost modern sense of the higher purpose of the state, and of the limits of power.
2. Reconnecting with Indian Strategic Thought

We are afflicted with neglect of our pre-modern histories, and many of us believe orientalist caricatures of India. India’s supposedly incoherent strategic approach is actually a colonial construct, as is the idea of Indians somehow forgetting their own history and needing to be taught it by Westerners who retrieved it. The version that they “retrieved” was a construct that was useful to perpetuate colonial rule and, after independence, to induce self-doubt and a willingness to follow.

Reading Kautilya and the other indigenous texts is one way to give the lie to these theories.

The other is to consider strategic practice in India over the ages. One only has to think of the Mahabharata, (our own Warring States period slightly later), the histories of the Deccan, Kerala, and Bundelkhand in medieval times, (to pick a few examples at random), and what we have undergone in the sixty-five years since independence, to see continuity in Indian strategic practice. Fortunately younger Indian historians are now working on these subjects with unblinkered minds. I have just read a book by Jayashree Vivekanandan called Interrogating International Relations (Routledge, 2011) which analyses Mughal grand strategy. It strengthened my faith that our scholarly tradition is alive.

But as a general rule, today our theory has yet to catch up with our rich historical praxis.

Reading Kautilya (and other texts like the Shantiparva of the Mahabharata) one is reminded that this was not always so. One is also reminded of the rich experience in our tradition of multipolarity, of asymmetries in the distribution of power, of debate on the purposes of power (where dharma is defined), of the utility of force, and of several other issues with contemporary resonance. In many ways it is India’s historical experience of poly-centric multi-state systems, plurality, and of the omni-directional diplomacy and relativistic statecraft that it produced, that is closer to the world we see today. (In contrast, the single-sovereign, universalist, and hierarchical statecraft and diplomacy of traditional China is easier to explain and attractive in its simplicity but fundamentally different.)

Let me be clear. I am not trying to idealize the Indian past. There is a risk here that the analytic tradition becomes the historical tradition, that we confuse cause and effect, and that imageries become the reality that they were intended to reflect. All I am saying is that some of the problems in IR and strategic studies that we think we are dealing with for the first time have been considered by great minds in India before. We are the poorer for ignoring them. We can, instead, use the past to learn ways of thinking about these problems, improving our mental discipline, as it were.

Besides, states behave in ways that cannot be entirely explained by rational calculation or logic. (If they were they would be predictable.) Studying strategic traditions and cultures gives us a better understanding of why this is so. And where better to start than with oneself. A little self-awareness cannot hurt.

Let me give you an example of what I mean. When we in India call for a plural, inclusive and open security architecture in the Indo-Pacific we are well within a tradition and culture of thought which was relativistic, idea driven and omni-directional. Other traditions, which are more hierarchical, claiming universal validity, find these ideas hard to understand. (And we are shocked when they do not espouse what to us are our eminently sensible views!) Friends tell me that Chola, Pandyan and Oriya manuscripts and inscriptions are early examples of what the free flow of goods, ideas and people could achieve -- the ancient version of the open, inclusive architecture that we speak of today.
3. Creating our Own Modern Strategic Vocabulary

Some of you will groan and say, “There he goes again on his hobby horse”. But let me explain why this is important.

To be honest among ourselves, much of what passes for strategic thinking in India today is derivative, using concepts, doctrines and a vocabulary derived from other cultures, times, places and conditions. This is why, with a few honorable exceptions like the home-grown nuclear doctrine, it fails to serve our needs, impact policy, or to find a place in domestic and international discourse.

Jawaharlal Nehru made a beginning towards creating modern Indian strategic thought. But his work was incomplete, even though it was taken forward and developed by others like K Subrahmaniam. Besides, the world has evolved rapidly since Nehru’s time.

There is also no question that we live in a world that is different from Kautilya’s in terms of technology and experience,. But human responses are still similar, as is the behaviour of the states that humans create and run. That is why reading Kautilya helps us by broadening our vision on issues of strategy.

It will, naturally, take time and practice for us to develop our own strategic vocabulary and doctrines. This will require patience, but must be done if India is to truly seek the broadest possible degree of strategic autonomy. After all autonomy begins in the mind. As I said earlier, fortunately the younger generation of Indian scholars shows signs of doing the necessary work and are thinking for themselves.

Strategic doctrines and cultures are not built in a day. I was, therefore, happy to see that this workshop is part of a broader Indigenous Historical Knowledge project by the IDSA. May I also suggest that this workshop be the first of a series that builds upon the beginning that you are making here? I assume that future workshops and work in the project on Indigenous Historical Knowledge will also cover other Indian thinkers and themes.

With these words, let me wish you and your workshop every success.

[ramana]

In the MB, diplomacy can be learnt in the Rayabharam episodes.
Shantiparva gives statecraft from an ideal prespective.
Kanik Niti gives alternate statecraft
Narada niti also gives statecraft.

[ramana]

Two IDSA papers/insights/comments

Corruption in Adminsitration:Evaluating Kautilya

ISSUE BRIEF
Corruption in Administration: Evaluating the Kautilyan Antecedents
Share on printShare on facebookShare on twitterMore Sharing Services Tarun Kumar

October 12, 2012
Corruption is not a recent phenomenon. It has precisely been defined as a deviant human behaviour, associated with the motivation of private gain at public expense1 and, as such, has persisted for centuries. Corruption promotes illegality, unethicalism, subjectivity, inequity, injustice, waste, inefficiency and inconsistency in administrative conduct and behaviour. 2 It destroys the moral fabric of society and erodes the faith of the common man in the legitimacy of the politico-administrative set up.

There are several references to the prevalence of official corruption in ancient India. 3 But the text that provides an elaborate description of the menace is the Arthashastra of Kautilya. This sophisticated and detailed treatise on statecraft is essentially prescriptive or normative in nature, belonging to a genre of literature that suggests what the state ought to be and not what it really was. Nevertheless, one should realise that norms are prescribed only when digressions or abnormalities exist. This confirms the fact that corruption was rampant enough in ancient India to necessitate expert advice on how to tame it.

Kautilya4 was a sagacious minister in the Kingdom of Chandragupta Maurya (324/321‒297 Before the Common Era). He expressed his views on a range of issues including state, war, social structures, diplomacy, ethics, and politics. He believed that “men are naturally fickle minded” and are comparable to “horses at work [who] exhibit constant change in their temper”. 5 This means that honesty is not a virtue that would remain consistent lifelong and the temptation to make easy gains through corrupt means can override the trait of honesty any time. Similarly, he compared the process of generation and collection of revenue (by officials) with honey or poison on the tip of the tongue, which becomes impossible not to taste. 6 Based on such sweeping, albeit questionable, generalisations about the nature of human beings, he prescribed a strict vigil even over the superintendents of government departments in relation to the place, time, nature, output and modus operandi of work. 7 All this is perhaps indicative of widespread corruption in the Kingdom’s administration at various levels.

Corruption is so obvious, and yet so mysterious. Even Kautilya reflected serious concerns about opacity in the operations of the world of the corrupt. Illegal transactions were so shrouded in mist that he compared embezzlers to fish moving under water and the virtual impossibility of detecting when exactly the fish is drinking water. 8 He also noted that while it is possible to ascertain the movements of bird flying in the sky, it is difficult to gauge the corrupt activities of government officials. 9

During Mauryan times, superintendents were the highest officials, a position they received for possessing the desired ‘individual capacity’ and adequate ‘ministerial qualifications’. 10 Given the general emphasis of Kautilya on observing ethics and morality in relation to the functioning of a state, it seems the selection process would have involved not just a scrutiny of the educational attainments but also the right kind of aptitude for the job including traits of honesty and impartiality. This shows that despite the greatest care taken in recruiting officials, corrupt persons made their way into the system.

Kautilya was a great administrative thinker of his times. As he argued, too much of personal interaction or union among the higher executives leads to departmental goals being compromised and leads to corruption. This is because human emotions and personal concerns act as impediments to the successful running of an administration, which is basically a rule-based impersonal affair. Similarly, dissension among executives when team effort is required results in a poor outcome. 11 Kautilya suggested that the decline in output and corruption can be curbed by promoting professionalism at work. The superintendents should execute work with the subordinate officials such as accountants, writers, coin-examiners, treasurers and military officers in a team spirit. 12 Such an effort creates a sense of belonging among members of the department who start identifying and synchronising their goals with the larger goals of the organisation, thereby contributing to the eventual success of the state.

Kautilya provides a comprehensive list of 40 kinds of embezzlement. In all these cases, the concerned functionaries such as the treasurer (nidhayaka), the prescriber (nibandhaka), the receiver (pratigrahaka), the payer (dayak), the person who caused the payment (dapaka) and the ministerial servants (mantri-vaiyavrityakara) were to be separately interrogated. In case any of these officials were to lie, their punishment was to be enhanced to the level meted out to the chief officer (yukta) mainly responsible for the crime. After the enquiry, a public proclamation (prachara) was to be made asking the common people to claim compensation in case they were aggrieved and suffered from the embezzlement. 13 Thus, Kautilya was concerned about carrying the cases of fraud to their logical conclusion.

The Arthashastra states that an increase in expenditure and lower revenue collection (parihapan) was an indication of embezzlement of funds by corrupt officials. 14 Kautilya was sensitive enough to acknowledge the waste of labour of the workforce involved in generating revenues. 15 He defined self enjoyment (upbhoga) by government functionaries as making use of or causing others to enjoy what belongs to the king. 16 He was perhaps alluding to the current practice of misusing government offices for selfish motives such as unduly benefitting the self, family members, friends and relatives either in monetary or non-monetary form which harms the larger public good.

Kautilya was also not unaware of corruption in the judicial administration. He prescribed the imposition of varying degrees of fines on judges trying to proceed with a trial without evidence, or unjustly maintaining silence, or threatening, defaming or abusing the complainants, arbitrarily dismissing responses provided to questions raised by the judge himself, unnecessarily delaying the trial or giving unjust punishments. 17 This shows that there were incidents of judicial pronouncements being biased, favouring one party to the detriment of others. In an atmosphere of corruption prevailing in the judicial administration as well, Kautilya perhaps wanted to ensure that the litigants are encouraged and given voice to air their legitimate grievances. He expected judges to be more receptive to the complaints and be fair in delivering justice.

Kautilya prescribed reliance on an elaborate espionage network for detecting financial misappropriation and judicial impropriety. Spies were recruited for their honesty and good conduct. 18 They were to keep a watch even over the activities of accountants and clerks for reporting cases of fabrication of accounts (avastara). On successful detection of embezzlement cases, Kautilya advocated hefty fines to be imposed apart from the confiscation of ill-earned hordes. If a functionary was charged and proved even of a single offence, he was made answerable for all other associated offences related to the case. 19 Since taxes paid by the people are utilised for their welfare, any loss of revenue affects the welfare of the society at large. This is precisely the reason why Kautilya explicitly argued that the fines imposed should be “in proportion to the value of work done, the number of days taken, the amount of capital spent and the amount of daily wages paid”. 20

The threat of fines being imposed and subsequent public embarrassment do deter judicial officials, to some extent, from resorting to corrupt practices. But Kautilya was proactive in laying down traps to catch public functionaries with loose morals and inclination to resort to bribery or seek undue favour. The strategy he prescribed was for secret agents to take a judge into confidence through informal channels and ask him to pronounce judgments favouring their party in return for a payment. 21 If the deal was fixed, the judge was treated as accepting the bribe and prosecuted accordingly.

Interestingly, Kautilya also dealt with the concept of whistleblowers. Any informant (suchaka) who provided details about financial wrongdoing was entitled an award of one-sixth of the amount in question. If the informant happened to be a government servant (bhritaka), he was to be given only one twelfth of the total amount. 22 The former’s share was more because exposing corruption while being outside the system was more challenging. But in the case of bhritakas, striving for a corruption free administration was considered more of a duty that was ideally expected of them.

Kautilya also warned at the same time about providing wrong information or not being able to prove the accusations. He advocated either monetary or corporal punishment for such informants so that the tool could not be misused for settling personal scores and harassing genuine officials. If an informant himself were to backtrack on the assertions he made against the accused, Kautilya suggested the death penalty for him. 23 This provision was not only draconian, but would have effectively discouraged whistleblowers. While such provisions would certainly make people think twice before levelling accusations, the threat of capital punishment was too harsh to help people root out the corrupt.

In an atmosphere of all round corruption, honesty becomes a virtue and not a desired duty. Kautilya argued for advertising the cases of increase in revenue due to the honest and dedicated efforts of the superintendents by giving rewards and promotions. 24 Bestowing public honour creates a sense of pride and boosts the motivation and morale of honest officials. They act as role models for ideal youngsters who wish to join the administration and serve the state.

Kautilya also proposed a number of measures to avoid cases of corruption arising at all. Several positions in each department were to be made temporary. Permanency for such positions was to be reserved as an award granted by the king to those who help augment revenue rather than eating up hard earned resources. 25 Kautilya also favoured the periodic transfer of government servants from one place to another. 26 This was done with the intention of not giving them enough time to pick holes in the system and manipulate it to their advantage.

Kautilya wrote that “dispensing with (the service of too many) government servants...[is] conducive to financial prosperity”. 27 This is not only because of the reduction in expenditure on salary but rightsizing the bureaucracy also results in faster decision making and the transaction of government business without unnecessary delay and red tape. This effectively reduces the scope for bribery in particular and corruption in general.

It is interesting to note that the superintendents could not undertake any new initiative (except remedial measures against imminent danger) without the knowledge of the king. Kautilya, therefore, laid emphasis on some kind of an accountability mechanism. Apart from using the services of spies for unearthing cases of fraud, Kautilya also talked about an intra-departmental, self-scrutinising mechanism under the headship of chief officer (adhikarna) to detect and deter imminent cases of corruption. 28

The Arthashastra of Kautilya thus shows that the ancient system of governance and administration was quite contemporary in operational guidelines when dealing with corruption. It also quite convincingly demonstrates that corruption is not an exclusive feature of modern times alone. The fact that the menace has survived and thrived through the ages speaks volumes about its endurance. Governments of all historical eras have recognised its illegality and devised legal instruments to tackle the problem, but they have not been able to overcome its spread as well as acceptability in society. If corruption has persisted through centuries, what is it that has stopped administrative systems from eradicating it?

Was Kautilya right in his generalisation that ‘humans are fickle-minded’? The majority would disagree. Interestingly, however, even Kautilya, despite having such an understanding of human nature and behaviour, never used it to justify corruption. Rather, he realised its inevitability29 but chose to remain positive and committed to root it out in the administration through elaborate and strict measures. This is the real significance of the Arthashastra as far as the issue of corruption in contemporary times is concerned.

Notes are in the link.


One Hundred years of Kautilya's Arthsastra

One Hundred Years of Kautilya’s Arthasastra
Share on facebookShare on twitterShare on emailMore Sharing Services P. K. Gautam

September 21, 2012
Event: Fellows' Seminar
Time: 1030 to 1300 hrs
Chair: Dr S Kalyanaraman
External Discussants: Ambassador K P Fabian, Professor Navnita Chadha Behera and Col VMB Krishnan
Internal Discussants: Mr. Saurabh Mishra and Ms. Nupur Brahma

The central argument of this paper is that Kautilya, the ancient strategic thinker of India, has been neglected and not been given his due in the Indian strategic thinking. It seeks to revive the study of Kautilya’s Arthasastra and establish it in the contemporary security studies. The paper examines the discourse that has evolved through the last 100 years, since the Arthasastra was first discovered and translated. The paper attempts to find out the answers of the questions raised on the strategic culture in India as some academicians even go to the extent of declaring an absence of strategic culture in India. The paper tries to document and deal with almost all the scholarly controversies related to the Arthasastra during this period and relates a whole tradition of political and strategic thinkers (makers of the kingly science) like Manu, Brihaspati, Sukra, Parasara, Vysas and Chanakya as recognised in the Panchtantra.

The difficulty in studying Kautilya and his times are due to the cartographic gaps, poor state and progression of maps and the controversies about the age and identity of the author. The contemplations about the age of the work vary between 4th century BCE and 3rd Century ACE. There are different views about the authorship of the Arathasastra as well: One holds that Kautilya was a single person who wrote it by himself and the other claims it to be a compiled “work by authors under the rubric of Kautilya.” A few scholars find the traces of all strategies and diplomacy within the Arthasastra while others allege that its importance is magnified and overstated.

It is interesting to note that Kautilya’s four upayas (devices)—sama, dana, bheda, danda—to achieve the goals of diplomacy have a remarkable similarity with Morganthau’s sections in his realist theory about divide and rule, compensation, armaments, and alliances. The paper discusses Kautilya’s theories of the seven elements of state (prakritis), six measures of foreign policy (sadgunya), the circle of states (rajamandala), the kinds of conquest (vijaya) and war (yudha).

Countries of Southeast Asia have also been influenced by the Kautilyan concepts of mandala, cakra and chakravartin. In 1929, Herbert H. Gowen traced how in course of time niti or the old Indian rulers as embodied in treatises, became a system coveted and adopted by foreign potentates. The spread of the Indian ideas took a long route through nitisastra, panchtantra, Hitopdesa, Qalila and Dimnah and Beast Fables to pass into Persia, Arabia, North Africa, Spain and Provence.

The paper elucidates nine reasons for the neglect of the study of Kautilya:

A-historic nature of the Indian civilisation and oral tradition,
Lack of proper battle accounts available from Indian sources and over-reliance on Greek and Graeco-Roman sources,
Absence of holistic teaching and education and domination of a western discourse,
Kautilya’s suspended status between schools of nationalists and Marxists,
Lack of policy focus and absence of serious study in think tanks,
Lack of language skills and preservation of texts,
Kautilya not being a soldier like Sun Tzu, Clausewitz, Jomini or Liddell Hart,
Interpretation by antisocial elements and narrow mindedness,
Misunderstanding brahmin scholars, over exaggeration of brahmanism and perception of male chauvinism.

Misconceptions exist about Kautilya and his statecraft. Kautilya is looked upon as Machiavellian which distorts the correct picture. The difference between Machiavelli and Kautilya is regarding the subject matter of their works and methodology. The former was narrower limiting himself to the unification of Italy, leaving the questions of economy aside, while the latter had a holistic view of the vijigishu: consolidating the empire in almost the entire Indian subcontinent.

Condemnation of Kautilya as an unethical teacher is due to the ignorance about his work. The image of Chanakya as a cunning brahmin is stereotypical in nature. Some scholars consider Kautilya’s work as immoral and repudiated by the Indians themselves while Lankavatarasutra refers to Kautilya as rsi and Somadeva refers him as nyayavid. The reasons for such diverse image might be in the imaginations of some playwrights influenced by their contemporary contexts. The paper finds Kautilya too serious a business to be left to linguists or historians alone. Most of the work on Kautilya lies in the category where the scholar does not read the text but keenly quotes from what some commentator had said superficially.

Misquoting Kautilya does more harm than good. One main reason for him being misunderstood is the use of Kautilyan terms as a simplistic jargon. The paper gives instances of misunderstanding and misrepresentation of Kautilya. Blanket use of the mandala makes it the most misunderstood term as people contemplate and extrapolate it to any extent they want. It is also said that the matsya nyaya and the mandala theory of Kautilya’s Arthasastra are the two evils.

Researching Kautilya is a level playing field for all as it is not limited to historians only. There are no classified documents or files to be consulted and unearthed. This knowledge lies scattered across the domains of archaeology, philosophy, linguistics, history, political science and religious texts. Public perception about Kautilya is based mainly on folklore, mythology and limited on readings and research.

This paper suggests that the Kautilya moment has now arrived. The care and preservation of ancient archives is essential. The science, politics and statecraft of the Arthasastra need to be preserved and practiced in ways in which Indian classical music has survived and thrived. There is a need for state patronage, sponsorship and financial backing for the study of Arthasastra. Research and training for this purpose must be undertaken and encouraged at all the levels.

Major points of discussion and suggestions to the author:

Under the influence of Gandhian values and Nehru’s, thought there was no space for Kautilya to make his mark.

Kautilya is also considered a part of the Indian philosophical system. As the Indian ways of knowing the reality has a non-dualistic mode of thinking, Kautilya goes beyond matsya nyaya. He elucidates how to deal with realpolitik while actually looking at the norms and tries to give ways where anarchy can be overcome.

It is difficult to understand Kautilya because military history and historical sociology are not taught in the Indian universities at all. A problem of language exists in the study of Arthasastra as the strategists are disconnected from Sanskrit. We also need to maintain a critical space with regards to the Anglo-American influence while keeping in mind that we generally impose ipso facto the modern jargon and terminology on ancient contexts.
Kautilya’s work should not be taken as the Bible. Reading of original translation is must to avoid distortions and we should read Chanakya not only because we aspire to become a great power but also because the world would be a more peaceful place by understanding him.

As we generally restrict ourselves to the Indian heartland while digging into the history of Indian strategic culture, the outlook (caricature) of Kautilya also inhibits his acceptability.
We need to know more about how the Arthasastra was followed in Kautilya’s time. Arthasastra requires a rereading in the context of modern state and democracy.

Report prepared by Saurabh Mishra, Research Assistant IDSA.

The comments are immature and unbecoming of Fellows of IDSA.
With such people no wonder its in the doldrums.

If they want they can visit GDF where we have extensive discussions.

[nakul]

Why India does not have a vibrant strategic culture

Manmohan Singh bemoans its absence. In the halcyon days of his first term, Singh, attempting to change the strategic outlook of this giant nation, was often heard complaining, "We must develop a strategic culture in this country."

He joins a large number of Indian intellectuals who decry our apparent lack of ability to plot out India's "strategic thought" or even plan a "grand strategy".

To a casual observer, India's actions — or lack thereof — often appear to be a result of who the government spoke to last, or based on ad hoc considerations that undermine India's interests. What makes this outlook interesting is that foreign analysts writing about India, seem equally clear that India does not have a vibrant strategic culture.

[ramana]

Why India does not have a vibrant strategic culture

Manmohan Singh bemoans its absence. In the halcyon days of his first term, Singh, attempting to change the strategic outlook of this giant nation, was often heard complaining, "We must develop a strategic culture in this country."

He joins a large number of Indian intellectuals who decry our apparent lack of ability to plot out India's "strategic thought" or even plan a "grand strategy".

To a casual observer, India's actions — or lack thereof — often appear to be a result of who the government spoke to last, or based on ad hoc considerations that undermine India's interests. What makes this outlook interesting is that foreign analysts writing about India, seem equally clear that India does not have a vibrant strategic culture.

This is all humbug. Strategy is to accomplish goals or vision.
The sad thing is the INC-DIE vision is to be a Gungadin of the Anglo Saxon West. Whenever they deviate they reach a morass.

What strategy do you need for being a water-boy? Avoid being shot and thats the story of last sixty years.
Those who complain of India not having a strategy are those who have a different vision than the INC and the DIE who support them.

[nakul]

^^^

MMS is a babu. Babus like to implement plans not make them. I wonder whether the task of making one is proving to difficult for him. He would love to have someone chart the course for him so that he can walk it. Decision making is not his forte. He is going by the American game plan.

[ramana]

I often hear MMS is a babu. Did he write the IAS an get selected? Or was he an appointed one by the INC? If the later he is no babu.

[nakul]

His method of selection will not change his mindset. A PM is supposed to be a statesman & an independent thinker with the country's best interests at heart. He is what he is. His ability to follow plans were seen very well when he executed the nuclear deal.

[Rony]

Deducing India's grand strategy of regional hegemony from historical and conceptual perspectives. by Manjeet Pardesi Singh

This paper seeks to answer if a rising India will repeat the pattern of all rising great powers since the Napoleonic times by attempting regional hegemony. This research deduces India's grand strategy of regional hegemony from historical and conceptual perspectives. The underlying assumption is that even though India has never consciously and deliberately pursued a grand strategy, its historical experience and geo-strategic environment have substantially conditioned its security behaviour and desired goals. To this extent, this research develops a theoretical framework to analyse grand strategy. This framework is then applied to five pan-Indian powers - the Mauryas, the Guptas, the Mughals, British India and the Republic of India - to understand their security behaviour.

The whole thesis can be downloaded from the above linked site.


AND


Interrogating International Relations: India's Strategic Practice and the Return of History by Jayashree Vivekanandan

The book interrogates the disciplinary biases and firewalls that inform mainstream international relations today, and problematises the several tropes that have come to typify the strategic histories of post-colonial societies such as India. Questioning a range of long-held cultural representations on India, the book challenges such portrayals and underscores the centrality of context and contingency in any cultural explanation of state behaviour. It argues for a historico-cultural understanding of power and critiques IR’s tendency to usher in a selective ‘return of history’.

Taking two contrasting case studies from medieval Indian history, the book assesses the success and failure of the grand strategy pursued by the Mughal empire under Akbar. The study emphasises his grand strategy of accommodation, defined by the interplay of critical variables such as distance and the vast military labour market. The book also looks at his conscious attempt to indigenise power by projecting himself as the personification of the ideal Hindu king. This case study helps to contextualise the many critical transitions that occurred in international relations: from medieval empires to the modern state system, and from an indigenised, experiential understanding of power to its absolute, abstract manifestations in the colonial state.

[nakul]

Manjeet Pardesi Singh's work seems like a POS. He uses Thapar's work to prove his points. Some of the leftist thinking has seeped into his work. The usual cliches are India as a country did not exist prior to British rule, there is nothing unifying India, Kautilya was not a person etc. He seems to be the kind of writer that Nehru would appreciate.

[ramana]

I am wary of the RNI work where ever it is published.

[RoyG]

IDSA Kautilya Program

[youtube]v-ASBmrOFng&list=PLrR2OTOrNPrhiTv3m5lhklOzTAXtqrFMk&index=1&feature=plpp_video[/youtube]

[youtube]jorov4MYvys&list=PLrR2OTOrNPrhiTv3m5lhklOzTAXtqrFMk&index=2&feature=plpp_video[/youtube]

[youtube]PRSJX-5uxpQ&list=PLrR2OTOrNPrhiTv3m5lhklOzTAXtqrFMk&index=3&feature=plpp_video[/youtube]

[youtube]RqlbLonBkzY&list=PLrR2OTOrNPrhiTv3m5lhklOzTAXtqrFMk&index=4&feature=plpp_video[/youtube]

[abhishek_sharma]

The search for a nuclear umbrella: Inder Malhotra

Having decided against a nuclear bomb, Shastri embarked on a quest for nuclear guarantees from the US and the Soviet Union

HAVING stemmed the tide of popular demand for going nuclear to meet the Chinese challenge and mollified his critics somewhat by agreeing to a quiet exploration of a peaceful nuclear explosion, Lal Bahadur Shastri embarked on a “half-hearted, diffident and ultimately futile” search for nuclear security guarantees from the United States and the Soviet Union “against possible nuclear threats from China”. Significantly, the derogatory adjectives about the prime minister’s initiative were penned years later by one of his most trusted and respected confidants, L.P. Singh, then Union home secretary, who rose to even higher positions afterwards. Singh knew that Shastri had acted without the benefit of consultation with his cabinet colleagues or even of bureaucratic analysis. Other critics of the quest were harsher in their comments.

The most curious feature of the exercise, however, was that although Shastri always talked of nuclear security guarantees by only the two superpowers, he never approached either Washington or Moscow. His lone international interlocutor on this subject was his British opposite number, Harold Wilson, whom he visited in the first week of December 1964. Apparently, he presumed that Wilson would take up the matter with the US and the Soviet Union.

Evidently, the news of Shastri’s search was leaked by British sources because it first appeared only in London newspapers. The Indian PM, the report said, was seeking a “nuclear shield” for his country. Agitated Indian journalists understandably sought clarification. Shastri told them that he had indeed raised the guarantee issue but firmly denied having used the expression “shield”. Indeed, he claimed that he had “merely floated the notion” to Wilson.

Wilson’s version was that Shastri had “not actually requested protection against possible nuclear blackmail”, and that he, Wilson, hadn’t made “any commitment”.

Later, when many in India protested that the PM’s idea would compromise India’s basic policy of non-alignment, Shastri declared that he did not seek protection for India alone, but for all non-nuclear nations. “The central point”, he emphasised, “was the responsibility of the United States and the Soviet Union to prevent the spread and use of nuclear weapons, preferably by eliminating all nuclear arms”.

While Shastri’s search for the superpowers’ guarantee for nuclear security was still under discussion, the Congress held its annual session in January 1965, at which the PM and the Congress leadership were again taken by surprise because the sentiment for an independent Indian nuclear deterrent against China was still very strong. Advocates of building the bomb argued that, at the Cairo Conference of the non-aligned, Shastri had been unable to persuade a single Asian or African country to send a mission to China to impress upon it not to produce nuclear weapons. Nor had any non-aligned nation criticised China (see ‘The Chinese bomb’, IE, October 1). Under these circumstances, how could the government be sure that others would give it the guarantees it wanted? Bibhuti Mishra, general secretary of the Congress Parliamentary Party, was blunt. He said that India’s prestige had suffered because of the 1962 war and was now “plummeting” because of the aftermath of the Chinese nuclear test. If Indian leaders saw fit to increase the overall defence budget to deal with China, he saw “no reason not to extend the same logic and produce nuclear weapons”. Warming up to his theme, Mishra added that the public wanted India to not lag behind China in nuclear capability, and that if the government did not move accordingly, “the people would remove us from power”.

In the end, however, Shastri, again helped by Morarji Desai and Krishna Menon, the staunch anti-nuclear duo, “steamrollered” their pro-bomb colleagues, powered largely by the authority of the prime minister’s office. How this was done is very interesting but, strangely, was reported only by The New York Times. “Each delegate who had proposed an amendment to the official resolution was asked publicly and individually to withdraw it. Most of those present did so. Those who failed to reply were regarded as having done so.”

Soon thereafter, attention was diverted from nuclear policy to unexpected and grim developments. In the last week of January, the southern state of Tamil Nadu went up in flames over the official language issue, with repercussions across the country. Hardly had the situation been brought under control, though the language issue was still unresolved, when Pakistan started an armed conflict in the Rann of Kutch, a marshy plain shared by India and Pakistan. The complexity of this dispute and how it was handled would have to be discussed at an appropriate stage. For the present, it would suffice to say that shortly after a ceasefire was arranged in Kutch — through the mediation of Wilson, who had become rather close to Shastri by this time — there followed the bigger 1965 war for which the Kutch operation was clearly a rehearsal.

Busy coping with these grim challenges, India failed to notice that by simultaneously continuing its senseless search for nuclear security guarantees it was producing just the opposite result. Two days after the Chinese test in October 1964, US President Lyndon Johnson had offered non-nuclear countries like India America’s “strong support”, in case they were faced by any threat of nuclear blackmail. But a year later, he had rejected all suggestions by members of his administration for “helping our friends threatened by China”. The White House, the State Department and the Pentagon had all agreed on a strict policy of nuclear non-proliferation. The NPT followed and was to be India’s bane and pain until the 2008 Indo-US civilian nuclear agreement. To a limited extent it still troubles us.

Shockingly, no Indian policymaker paid any attention to President Charles de Gaulle’s decision to make France a country with nuclear weapons and to his argument that no nuclear power would unleash a nuclear war for the sake of someone else’s security.

Our search for nuclear guarantees continued right up to 1967 when two top officials, both named Jha — L.K. Jha, secretary to Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, and Foreign Secretary C.S. Jha, required to travel from one world capital to another — realised that they were on a wild-goose chase.

The writer is a Delhi-based political commentator

[ramana]

The real handicap was the scientific community which was/is long on talk and short on deeds. All along in the fifties they used to say how quickly they could assemble a bomb but when the push came to shove the PM had to run from pillar to post to get the security which should have come from inside.

The community had to "self prune" to get rid of big talkers (no names) and peaceniks(Sarabhai types) and LBS had to authorize the PNE program which was ordered by Mrs Gandhi.

[Atri]

[Agnimitra]

^^^ Atri ji, thanks. Very good overview.