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EDITORIAL

NOIDA/DELHI

THE HINDU

THURSDAY, JANUARY 7, 2016

The way forward in Nepal

thursday, january 7, 2016

Time for questions

on Pathankot
here is much relief as quiet finally returns to
Pathankot. However, the immediate questions
that need to be asked are about the way the security operation was carried out from the moment a specific intelligence alert came to the Centre about
the possible targeting of the Pathankot airbase. This newspaper has already reported that by Christmas, a foreign intelligence agency had passed on a tip-off about terrorists
planning to attack the base. Was that not treated with seriousness because most intelligence alerts do not mean anything? Is the response a reflection of the poor quality of
general intelligence alerts? On January 1, early morning,
the abducted Superintendent of Police, Salwinder Singh,
reported to the local police that his vehicle had been
snatched. By afternoon, the government at the Centre had
confirmation about the presence of terrorists in Pathankot. What the security establishment did from that moment raises several questions. A meeting chaired by the
National Security Adviser and attended by, among others,
the chiefs of the Army and the Air Force, decided to rush
NSG commandos from Delhi. How did they take that decision, when it was clear that an airbase had to be protected
and terrorists could be anywhere in the district? Does this
reflect the poor thinking of senior members of the security
establishment? Or does it hint at autocratic decision-making in New Delhi without professional participation?
Over the last few days, the government has been making
a desperate effort to defend the course of action that was
followed in fighting terrorists. From informal briefings in
New Delhi to the formal briefing on Wednesday evening
by Lt. Gen. K.J. Singh, General Officer Commanding-inChief, Western Command, the government has been putting up a spirited defence of the operations. Gen. Singh admitted that the first to react to the terrorists were the DSC
(Defence Security Corps) and Garuds, but added that the
second contact was the Army columns. As Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar did on Tuesday, Gen. Singh claimed
that there was total operational synergy, and he justified
the time taken by saying that forces had to be applied sequentially, and not simultaneously, and they were also
careful to avoid a hostage situation and other eventualities. However, all this does not answer the basic criticism
by military veterans and security experts: despite the
Pathankot airbase being at shouting distance from thousands of Army soldiers trained to deal with terrorists, why
were they not even called in to provide perimeter security
to the base? What was the need to send the NSG into a military installation where the Armys para commandos and
quick reaction teams would have been more familiar with
the terrain? Why was the operational command not handed over to the senior-most Army commander on the
ground? The answers should not only inform decisions to
hold those responsible accountable for the mis-step in operations, but also lead to an upgrade of existing protocols.

While media attention has

been focussed on Prime Minister Narendra Modis surprise Christmas rendezvous
in Lahore with Nawaz Sharif
and the terrorist attack at the
RAKESH
Pathankot airbase, significant
SOOD
developments on the Nepal
front have been taking place.
Nepal Prime Minister K.P. Oli telephoned
Mr. Modi on New Years Eve to convey his
greetings for 2016 and informed him about
his governments plans to move forward
with the three-point package while undertaking negotiations with the agitating Madhesi leaders of the Samyukta Loktantrik
Madhesi Morcha (SLMM). In response, Mr.
Modi reiterated the need to find durable solutions to Nepals political problems on the
basis of consensus and conveyed his greetings to the Nepali people for 2016.
Shift or drift?
However, there are subtle changes of position underway. The first sign came on December 21 following the decisions taken by
the Nepali cabinet to address the demands of
the SLMM. The three-point package consists of constitutional amendments on participation in the state organs on the basis of
proportionate inclusiveness and delineation of electoral constituencies on the basis
of population. Demarcation of provinces
was to be undertaken in a three-month period through a political mechanism on the basis of consensus, and other demands including those pertaining to citizenship
are to be resolved through negotiation and
appropriate notification. Nepals Deputy
PM and Foreign Minister Kamal Thapa had
already briefed External Affairs Minister
Sushma Swaraj about this road map during
his visit to Delhi last month.
In an official statement, Indias Ministry of
External Affairs welcomed these developments as positive steps that help create the
basis for a resolution of the current impasse
in Nepal. The statement further urged all
Nepali political forces to now demonstrate
the necessary maturity and flexibility so
that a resolution to the current crisis could
be found. The formal Indian statement has
been followed by an informal easing of supplies, particularly fuel and LPG, by using
border-crossing points other than the Raxaul-Birgunj crossing which remains blocked.
According to the Nepal Oil Corporation,
the sole petroleum importing agency, its
monthly imports were usually in the order of
NPR 7 billion; these went down to NPR 1.5
billion during October-November but have

The Oli government needs to demonstrate an

inclusive approach during the constitutional
amendment process. For India, the challenge is to
give greater political content to its engagement
with Nepal even as cross-border movement of
goods picks up
picked up again and could reach NPR 4.5 billion during December-January. This would
imply that more than 50 per cent of the fuel
supplies are now going through legally, in
addition to the cross-border smuggling activity which has also picked up.
Growing list of demands
However, the SLMM rejected the Oli governments three-point package as inadequate and declared that it fell far short of
their 11-point charter of demands. Originally,
there were four principal demands demarcation of provinces which related to five
districts, Sunsari, Jhapa and Morang in the
east and Kanchanpur and Kailali in the west;
restoring population as the primary criteria

Yadav and Mahendra Rai Yadav visited

Delhi and cautioned that the agitation was
taking the shape of a movement. Unless their
demands were addressed in a timely manner, the movement could take a violent turn
and the demand for separatism would grow.
Their feeling was that the Oli government
was not serious about reaching out and was
keen to push through the amendments and
postpone resolution of other issues. The import of this message was not lost on Delhi.
The SLMM thought that this would make
Delhi tighten the screws and push the Nepali
government towards a comprehensive settlement; instead, worried about greater violence in the Terai with an 1,800-km-long
open border, Delhi reacted differently, and

Nobody thought the Madhesi agitation and the consequent

restrictions on cross-border movement of goods would last this
long. As a result, nobody had a Plan B and rhetoric replaced
communication
for electoral constituency delimitation; proportional representation in government
jobs; and issues relating to citizenship. With
rising political polarisation over recent
months and the inflexible approach adopted
by the three principal parties Nepali Congress, Communist Party of Nepal (Unified
Marxist-Leninist) or UML and the Maoists
the list of demands has grown. It now includes democratisation of the army and other security agencies; restructuring of the judiciary; declaring Nepal a multi-national
state; equal status to other languages like
Hindi and Bhojpuri; a reference to the principle of proportional representation in the
section on Fundamental Rights and the establishment of a constitutionally empowered Inclusion Commission to monitor implementation
of
the
proportional
representation principle.
In December, the four SLMM leaders
Mahant Thakur, Rajendra Mahato, Upendra

as a result, differences have now emerged

within the SLMM. Mr. Mahato would like to
continue with the agitation while others are
uncertain.
Division in the ranks
On December 26, Mr. Mahato decided to
do a dharna at the Jogbani-Biratnagar crossing where truck movement had picked up
and was badly beaten up by the Nepal police.
He is currently convalescing at Medanta
Hospital in Gurgaon. The other three did not
join the dharna and Mr. Mahatos supporters
are miffed that a condemnation of the attack
on their leader took so long coming.
Sensing an opportunity, the Oli government reached out to the SLMM leadership
for a meeting in Kathmandu on January 3.
Mr. Thakur, accompanied by relatively junior leaders, attended. On his side, Mr. Oli
was accompanied by Nepali Congress president and former PM Sushil Koirala, Maoist

CARTOONSCAPE

Think different
on infrastructure
hen the going gets tough, public investment must be stepped up to pump-prime a
slow-moving economy facing uncertain
headwinds of low commodity prices and
faltering international trade. When the going is good, the
private sector would also have a role to play, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley has said, vowing to ramp up infrastructure investments in 2016-17. Ten months ago, in his first
Budget for a full financial year, Mr. Jaitley had scaled up
such investment to Rs 1.25 lakh crore, two-thirds of which
was earmarked for road and railway projects. In the coming year, he has indicated that the priority will be rural infrastructure as the stress in Indias villages after two bad
monsoons has hit demand. This is deterring fresh private
investment, with many firms still struggling with past investment plans that are stuck or have become unviable.
While economists debate whether the government should
stick to its fiscal consolidation road map or scale up public
expenditure to spur the economy, nobody will mind if a
slightly higher fiscal deficit leads to more jobs while creating useful public assets. Low oil and commodity prices offer the chance to build more infrastructure at a far lower
cost, but as Mr. Jaitley said, We must have the intellectual
honesty to analyse our shortcomings and improve them.
So have higher allocations to infrastructure spending
this year helped? Anecdotally, a few signs are positive. Demand for bitumen, a key ingredient for building roads, has
risen, as have enquiries for construction and earth-moving equipment. Paying private contractors to build highways has boosted cash flows and enabled a few to re-enter
the fray for new projects. But all is not well yet. Core sector
performance hit a decades low in November 2015.
Though public investments have started to gain traction,
this is yet to reflect in the performance of investment-linked sectors, rating agency Crisil said, as demand remains
weak in end-user sectors such as real estate, with overcapacity in others. Of course, this is partly the lag effect infrastructure projects take time to show results. Yet, an
honest introspection should reveal the need to utilise public infrastructure budgets more effectively without the
cost- and time-overruns associated with the governments
business as usual approach. Take Indias largest industrial infrastructure project, the Delhi-Mumbai Industrial
Corridor, set up as a special purpose vehicle to shed the
legacy burdens of departmental decision-making. Its
crawling, though all the States along the corridor except
Delhi are run by the BJP. Or the Project Monitoring Group
under the Cabinet Secretariat tasked with resolving
stalled projects, on which not much has been heard in
months. Could the fact that these bodies were left without
a head through most of 2015 have affected performance?
Tapping the Consolidated Fund of India as well as innovative vehicles such as the National Investment and Infrastructure Fund is laudable. Perhaps, it is also time to find a
few good men who can get the job done on the ground,
grant them autonomy and fix accountability for outcomes.

CM
YK

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

A major security lapse
The Pathankot attack is part of a
series of efforts to thwart peacebuilding efforts between India and
Pakistan (Sharif dials Modi after
NSAs confer, Jan. 6). It would be
fitting for both the Prime
Ministers to launch a combined
offensive on the training camps of
terrorists. Where these terrorists
are trained is only too well known.
If Pakistan does not cooperate in
such an operation, India should
target these training camps in
Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, with
the tacit approval of the
international community. We
should ensure that our soldiers
and civilians do not become sitting
ducks.
T.S.C.Bose,
Hyderabad

When a threat perception looms

large from forces across the
border, our political leaders spout
the rhetoric of giving a fitting
reply. But the fact that the
terrorists crossed the border and
engaged the NSG commandos for
over three days exposes our
shallow claims and speaks
volumes about our complacence
in defence preparedness.
R. Prabhu Raj,
Bengaluru

There seems to have been utter

confusion in handling the terrorist
attack. There are professionals in
our defence establishment with
rich experience and expertise.
They are expected to, in a
situation like this, entrust the tasks

leader and former PM Pushpa Kamal Dahal

Prachanda and others. Upendra Yadav and
Mahendra Rai Yadav happened to be out of
town. A week earlier, the Oli government
had set the wheels in motion for the constitutional amendment process by formally tabling it in the Assembly. At this stage, no dialogue was underway with the SLMM to get
them on board and in the debates that followed, Madhesi parties boycotted the proceedings. On January 4, the Assembly concluded its deliberations and after the
mandated period of 72 hours for amendments to be tabled, will begin voting on the
amendments. PM Oli has proposed the setting up of a task force to arrive at an agreed
language for the amendments. Defence Minister Bhim Rawal (UML), K.B. Mahara of the
Maoists and Mahesh Acharya (Nepali Congress) have been nominated by the three
main parties; with the clock ticking, the
SLMM may fracture if individual leaders try
to go it alone in the task force.
Mending fences
PM Oli has been adept at flaunting the
China card. In October last year, there was
much fanfare about China supplying 1,000
metric tonnes of petroleum products to alleviate the shortage. Considering that the annual requirement is closer to a million
tonnes, this is a tiny amount. Also the infrastructure in terms of roads and bridges to the
Tibet border does not permit movement of
heavy tankers and LPG bullets. Nepals attempts at negotiating long-term agreements
with China have not gone very far. However,
Nepali media had carried stories that Mr.
Oli, in a departure from past practice, would
undertake his first foreign trip to China instead of India. The only Nepali prime minister to have done so was Mr. Prachanda in
2008. He, however, insisted that it was not a
bilateral visit as he was going to attend the
closing ceremony of the Beijing Olympics
and his first official bilateral visit would be to
India. Apparently, in the telephone conversation on December 31, Mr. Modi reiterated
his invitation to Mr. Oli to visit India and the
missions have been directed to work out mutually convenient dates at the earliest. However, Mr. Oli will find it difficult to visit Delhi
unless the border situation has returned to
normal and movement of goods and supplies has been restored. If the SLMM agitation
is called off, he can then claim with some justification that his nationalistic posture, together with the anti-India rhetoric, has paid
off. Given the strain Mr. Modis neighbourhood first policy is under on the Pakistan
front, it is understandable that he would like
Mr. Oli to stick to tradition.
How did things reach such an impasse?
The fact is that nobody thought that the
Madhesi agitation and the consequent restrictions on cross-border movement of
goods would last this long. As a result, nobody had a Plan B and rhetoric replaced
communication. With the key players losing
control, the situation went into a tailspin.
The Oli government found it convenient to
stoke Nepali nationalism and deflect attention away from its own incompetence by
blaming India. The SLMMs demands continued to grow with no negotiations in sight
and rising anti-Indianism hardly sat well
with Mr. Modis neighbourhood first
diplomacy.
The supply situation has now eased but
the Oli government needs to offer a healing
hand to the Madhesis to get them on board. If
he fails, he may find it difficult to deal with
the ensuing instability. The Madhesis need
to reach out to the Tharus and Janajatis, the
other marginalised groups. For India, the
challenge is to give greater political content
to its engagement, rebuild trust with the Oli
government, and revive the positive sentiments generated by Prime Minister Modis
visits in 2014.
(Rakesh Sood, the Prime Ministers
Special Envoy for Disarmament and NonProliferation till May 2014, is a former
Ambassador to Nepal. E-mail:
rakeshsood2001@yahoo.com)

Letters emailed to letters@thehindu.co.in must carry the full postal address and the full name or the name with initials.

with the right agencies. If they

have failed to do so, it only means
that information was not provided
on time to the decision-makers.
This exposes the serious lacunae
in our preparedness to face
emergencies of this nature. It
shows that experts were not
involved in decision-making at the
highest level.
Our political leaders should
encourage a free exchange of
views with our military officials to
encourage higher standards of
professionalism in our defence
forces. Any failure to do so would
make the safeguarding of our
fragile
borders
a
difficult
proposition in the days to come.
M.V. Nagavender Rao,
Hyderabad

When a full-fledged infantry

division, besides other Army
units, was available at Pathankot
or close to the airbase, then what
compelled the security agencies to
send the NSG from Delhi to fight
those terrorists? (Deploying NSG
instead of the Army was a
mistake, Jan. 6) Isnt it common
sense that those nearest to the
operation must deal with counterinsurgency operations? It seems as
though India has many security
and paramilitary forces, but
nobody knows who to contact to
coordinate with the different
forces.
Debasish Baruah,
Golaghat, Assam

Neither hawks nor doves

Nirupama
Rao
deserves
appreciation for her insightful

observation that the emphasis in

our relations with Pakistan must
be on keeping the channels of
dialogue open together with
vigilant intelligence and an astute
assessment of Pakistans moves
(Driven by neither hawks nor
doves, Jan. 6). By his spontaneous
engagements with Nawaz Sharif,
Mr. Modi has laid the groundwork
for taking forward Indo-Pak
relations despite terror being
unleashed by non-state actors.
Also, Mr. Sharif might need more
time to convince his army
colleagues that geopolitical and
economic compulsions demand
that the two countries come
closer.
However, the issue of terror will
gain priority at the coming
secretary-level talks in Islamabad.
Pakistan must be told fair and
square that there will be no
uninterruptible dialogue if it does
not permanently stop terror
against India. The U.S., which
urges the two countries to stay the
course on bilateral relations, must
also urge Pakistan to not use terror
as an instrument of state policy.
Kangayam R. Narasimhan,
Chennai

The writer rightly asks why the

Pakistani intelligence and security
forces do not silence the terror
groups that operate and plan
attacks against India on Pakistani
soil. Either Mr. Sharif is helpless or
he is looking the other way, which
obviously means that such
terrorist attacks are being carried
out with his knowledge.
Sincerity of purpose must be a

two-way path. It is time for India

to call a spade a spade.

such charitable organisations,

whose incomes run into crores.

Seshagiri Row Karry,

Hyderabad

H.N. Ramakrishna,
Bengaluru

Crisis and opportunity

The
Lodha
committee
recommendations are a breath of
fresh air for players who have
been treated as mere employees
despite
their
immense
contribution to the game (Indian
crickets credibility crisis, Jan. 6).
It is not only the BCCI but even
some of the State cricket
associations which are corrupt.
The suggestions of the committee
must be considered to put these
associations in order. Since the
advent of the IPL, politicians, film
stars and business tycoons, who
were earlier in no way connected
with the sport, started patronising
the game. Young players began to
be lured with big money and
illegal betting and match-fixing
have come to rule the roost.
Against this backdrop, the
committees sweeping reforms are
welcome.
K.R.Srinivasan,
Secunderabad

Cricket has become the private

fiefdom of a select few. The
suggestions
of
the
Lodha
committee are innovative, and, if
implemented in true spirit, will
restore the credibility of the game.
Betting should be legalised as is
the norm in most sporting events
in the West. The BCCIs claim that
it is a charitable organisation
sounds hollow. The government
should recover all tax dues from

While recommendations such

as asking for transparency in the
BCCIs functioning and for
accountability for its actions are
laudable, the suggestion to legalise
betting will open a Pandoras Box.
Incidents of match-fixing will
proliferate and the situation will
only worsen. The very purpose for
which the committee was
appointed will be defeated.
Keeping the netas and business
tycoons at arms length from the
Boards administration will solve
most of the problems.
P.K. Varadarajan,
Chennai

Saudi-Iran rivalry
West Asia, already in turmoil, is
now seeing escalating tensions
between Saudi Arabia and Iran
(A dangerous escalation, Jan. 6).
Under the guise of protecting their
own sects, both nations are
resorting to violence, but the real
motive is to establish their own
hegemony. The Islamic State has
carried
out
unimaginable
atrocities on women and minority
communities in the region. The
execution of the Shia cleric by
Saudi Arabia and the responses by
protestors in Iran would only
further exacerbate the cruelty of
IS. It is important that both nations
have amicable relations to solve
the Syrian crisis.
Gagan,
Noida, Uttar Pradesh
ND-ND