Year: 2013

How AAP upsets the Modi versus Rahul format

A year ago, the media had hyped up a Narendra Modi versus Rahul Gandhi campaign. Modi rose to the bait but Rahul did not. Somehow, the Confederation of Indian Industry roped him in for an hour’s solo performance in April which did not set the Jamuna on fire. Word went out that he would concentrate on building up the party. The December 8 election results must have disturbed India Inc on several counts. The Congress was sinking; BJP did stand its ground in all four states but there was no discernible Modi magic. Upsetting all calculations, AAP came to power in Delhi within a year of being born.

Devyani Case: Unequal strategic partnership with the US

From June to September 2013, the matter just simmered beneath a diplomatic lid, as is normally the practice in espionage cases. No diplomatic mission publically admits of being victims of espionage. In September 2013, the Indian Embassy wrote to the State Department that Sangeeta, who was an absconder, should be arrested and restored to the Indian Embassy as she had violated both the Indian and the American laws, and had stolen cash, cell-phone and ‘documents’. The documents that Sangeeta stole are believed to be very vital to India’s national interest. Also, it needs to be highlighted that the entire Indian officialdom based in New York, including country’s representative at the UN are housed in the same building. For Sangeeta, the building was a mine of information. While the US authorities were engaged in protecting their ‘asset’ by fabricating various legal spins, matters exacerbated due to another development in India. On October 12, 2013 an American vessel MV Seaman Guard Ohio, belonging to the US firm AdvanFort, was apprehended by the Indian Coast Guard for unauthorized presence in India’s territorial waters.

Was Devyani Khobragade's domestic help a Spy?

When the senior officer in R&AW Mr Ravinder Singh was spirited away with his family by the Americans, the then National Security Advisor of India had commented that the issue was not that there was a mole but why was he so important to the US establishment. In the instant case the same question becomes relevant, i.e. why Sangeeta Richard, a domestic help of the Deputy Consul General (DCG) Devyani Khobragade, was so important to the Americans that her family was whisked away to the US two days before the criminal treatment meted out to the DCG by the authorities in that country. Was Sangeeta recruited by the US Intelligence Agencies to gain information of Indian diplomatic mission in the US?

Exclusive details of India’s surveillance system ‘NETRA’

Nearly 24 months ago the Government of India embarked on an ambitious development of an integrated cyber warfare platform to counter the enormous threats and real-time challenges mounted by the elite Chinese Cyber Command housed in the Peoples Liberation Army, General Staff Department -- Third & Fourth. The Indian initiative to counter Chinese cyber warfare is being led by Centre for Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, Bangalore and CERT-In (Computer Emergency Response Team, India) located within the Department of Electronics & Information Technology in the Ministry of Communications & Information Technology, Delhi. Over 200 scientists from CERT-In, CAIR and several bright Indian techie consultants have been working to for two years to set up the Indian Cyber Warfare Command, called the 'NETRA'.

The Security of Aam Aadmi

Whatever the actual conduct, at the core of a political party is its nationalist ideology, which is accepted or rejected by the people during elections, depending the manner in which translates into governance. A political party which does not divulge its foreign policy and security agenda is anti-national. Any political party which relies on country’s instability for growth is anarchist and anti-national. Activism can be national and anti-national, creative and destructive. Negative and anti-national activism destroys concepts of hard work, production and progress. It creates cynicism amongst the populace and negates demographic dividends. This is what the inimical forces are doing to India through their proxies which include terrorist outfits, NGOs and political parties. If the agenda of AAP was purely nationalistic it would have never split from Anna.

Keran intrusion: Three-fold aim of Nawaz Sharif

It is no doubt that Pakistan Army had launched a well planned operation in KERAN. The operation had typical Nawaz Sharif signature for nibbling at the LoC. Therefore, though he makes noise for peace, whenever he becomes PM, he asks his army to straighten the LoC to Pakistan's advantage. His offer must have been so tempting that Manmohan Singh, and Vajpayee before him, could not say no. Therefore Singh went ahead and met him in New York despite a lot of hue and cry in the country. I wonder if the US had a hand in it.

Rafsanjani to mollify Saudis on Iran nuclear deal

Saudi Arabia has in the last few days seen its hold on the GCC countries loosen. To keep himself and his Kingdom in play, Foreign Minister Saud al Faisal, addressing the GCC, suggested that the Kuwait Foreign Minister lead the group to Washington protesting against the deal. Kuwait refused as did the UAE Foreign Minister who, instead, travelled to Moscow to sign different another affidavit. There are two different appraisals of Saudi vulnerability in the context of the deal. First is the power struggle behind the curtains, a fierce war of succession. A regime so divided and debilitated is more likely to acquiesce in the new arrangement of power in the Middle East. But the opposite can also happen. A regime weakened internally is unlikely to be able to resist the ultra conservative clergy.

Possibility of political assassinations?

India is a sum total of its states. Nobody should know it better than an economist prime minister who was expected to dedicate himself to further the cause of nation-building. But the dispensation he leads at the Center began to bribe, promote, reward and subvert corrupt and anti-national elements in the government of the constituent states’ purely for political expediency. As a consequence the economic and security apparatus crumbled. This has been the bane of India under Manmohan Singh. A police officer demanding blackberry phone from a political party will be a scum under any dispensation. An officer who bargains his bail in exchange of some official documents with a predator Central Government that treats some state governments as ‘prey’, will remain a blackmailer all through his career. An IAS officer of a state when sacked for corruption choses to politically scheme with vested interests at the highest levels in the Central Government to wriggle his way out of corruption charges is intrinsically disloyal, even to his family. Treating them as political assets is myopic and no patriotic prime minister should allow it.

Rewarding treason: UPA’s art of governance?

Treason seems to be the practiced art of UPA minions and their cohorts. Even abetting virtual mutiny in the Army is game for them. They did it by planting stories in the media in April 2012 suggesting that the serving Army Chief was engineering a coup to overthrow the Government of India. Governance is at such nadir today because governments at the centre and states have been banishing the wise and promoting the profligates. By rewarding treason UPA government has descended to despicable depths and has made governance a tragedy!

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