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08 OPINION THE TRIBUNE

CHANDIGARH | TUESDAY | 5 JUNE 2018

THE TRIBUNE India’s maritime vulnerabilities

established in 1881 A Far Eastern Naval Command will shore up security around Andaman-Nicobar Islands
Pravin Sawhney mindset and concomitant capability

Shillong’s night of arson building here. From a defensive

M
ATCHING the US in mission of FORTRAN, it would have
words and deed, Prime changed to deterrence (with inbuilt
Need to interrupt the narrative against outsiders Minister Narendra Modi offensive capabilities) for FENC to

T
has positioned military
HE Northeast is no stranger to horror stories about treatment diplomacy at the forefront of his Act
meted out to outsiders by self-proclaimed defenders of “our East policy with ASEAN as its ful-
women”, “our jobs” and “our land”. The situation is too horrify- crum. Reading this as India’s walk-
ingly complex as major and minor tribes, besides different racial and back from the Wuhan understanding,
religious groups, jostle for existence and relevance. The long night of China issued a terse warning. “If India
arson in Shillong last week triggered mild consternation in Punjab really seeks military access to the
because the targeted outsiders happened to be Valmiki Sikhs who set- strategic island of Sabang in Indone-
tled there about four decades back. The Sikhs of Shillong lost their sia (which dominates the Malacca
valuables and household possessions, but were fortunately spared any Strait), it might wrongfully entrap
loss of lives, or even injury, unlike the settlers from Bengal, Nepal and itself into a strategic (which includes
military) competition with China and
Bihar who were at the receiving end in the `70s and 80s. Worse, few per-
eventually burn its fingers,” the Glob-
petrators of the earlier rounds of mayhem and murder were booked.
al Times has cautioned.
Besides, ethnic tensions have accentuated in the Northeast ever No one told Modi that like the dis-
since the new government in Delhi decided to take up social engi- puted land border with China, the
neering to gain political supremacy in the region. The still-under- Andaman and Nicobar (A&N) island
wraps Naga accord has set off apprehensions in Manipur, Arunachal chain is India’s maritime Achilles’
and Assam about loss of territory to a “Greater Nagalim”. The move heel against the risen and militarily
to make Hindu religion the basis for citizenship is agitating the bold China. If the People’s Liberation
Ahoms and Bengali Muslims alike in Assam. The expectations of the Army (PLA) could, with its successful
people from the Modi dispensation after it rechristened the “Look military coercion, compel Modi to
East policy” to “Act East” have remained unmet on the crucial liveli- seek peace at Wuhan, it might not be
hood benchmark. In this tinderbox of unmet expectations and grow- long before the People’s Liberation
ing resentment, a minor eve-teasing incident set off the latest round Army Navy (PLAN) does a Kargil, or
of violence against outsiders. worse, in A&N.
The A&N islands are 800 km long.
The new government in Meghalaya has made the right noises and
Only 38 of the 572 islands which com-
taken appropriate measure — Army flag marches and all-party meet-
prise the archipelago are occupied.
ings. This was noted by a Shiromani Akali Dal delegation that visited Given the defensive and surveillance
the city. But the state government must give a free hand to the secu- mandate of India’s tri-service
rity forces to nab the arsonists to serve as a deterrent to any future Andaman and Nicobar Command
mischief. Meghalaya also needs social fixing. Malnutrition and semi- (ANC) which is located here, its limit-
starvation is on the rise, not to speak of joblessness. The incident was ed firepower and air defence assets,
restricted to a small part of Shillong, but points to the warped politi- the abysmal inter-island connectivity,
cal narrative that encourages victimisation of the outsider rather than insufficient infrastructure to support
and sustain naval and air operations,
diligently address the region’s broken social plumbing.
frugal maintenance ecosystem to
assist permanent berthing of heavy
warships and submarines, and with
safeguard India’s strategic interests
in Southeast Asia and the Malacca
Strait by rapid deployment of mili-
tary assets in the region. It would
also have provided logistical and
administrative support to naval
ships which are sent on deployment
to East Asia and the Pacific Ocean,
without looking for operational,
logistics and administrative help
from the ENC in Visakhapatnam.
The government, however, refused
to see what the naval headquarters
had envisioned. It shelved the paper.
The reason given was that while the
forward-based naval command
might not worry China, it was cer-
tain to scare friendly littoral neigh-
NOT ENOUGH: ANC suffers from limited air defence assets and poor inter-island connectivity.
bours like Indonesia, Thailand,
Naval Command (ENC), the ANC valuable experience and intelli- Malaysia, Myanmar and Singapore.
depends on friendly ties with the gence to keep it in good stead in the The unstated reason was that sanc-
Indonesian and Singaporean (which Indian Ocean Region (IOR). Given tioning a new command for the Indi-
are much closer) navies for this. Yet, the fast pace of China’s warship- an Navy would not have gone down
the mission remains half done: ships building and the audacity with well with the other two defence serv-
on round-the-clock mission deploy- which China has moved in to ices, the Army and the Air Force.
ment have limited firepower, with lit- reclaim islands and militarise the They, too, would have sought an
tle possibility of help from the ANC. South China Sea, PLAN’s roadmap equal, if not more, compensation
The problem gets compounded since for the IOR should be obvious, espe- from the government, leading to
most ships do not have anti-subma- cially to the ANC, which straddles internal bickering and an escalation
rine warfare helicopter; it cannot do the western side of the Malacca in the annual defence allocation,
something which is anathema to the
Union Finance Ministry.
Considering the emerging Chinese threat, the Modi government needs The government found an escape
to safeguard India’s strategic interests in Southeast Asia and the route in the 2001 Group of Ministers’
report which recommended the for-
Malacca Strait by setting in order the Andaman and Nicobar Command. mation of a new tri-service — ANC —
. which, unfortunately, was and
much with its SONAR (sound naviga- Strait, commercially the busiest sea remains, nobody’s (Army, Air Force,
tion and ranging) to locate sub- lane in the world, connecting west- Navy and Coast Guard) baby.
marines. ern Pacific with the Indian Ocean Considering that the Modi govern-

Gangsters uninterrupted
the naval reinforcements on the
mainland being 1,200 km away, there
are reasons for PLAN to consider mil-
Punjab has to look beyond police to rein in criminality itary coercion by temporary occupa-
tion of uninhibited islands.
A few more statistics would put the
maritime threat in perspective.
A&N is 163 km from Sabang and 770
km from the coast of Myanmar. The
Kra canal, which China has pro-
north through the Andaman Sea.
Appreciating the vulnerability of
the A&N, the Indian Navy had in
2000 under its chief, Admiral Sushil
Kumar, forwarded a paper to the
ment has since 2016 upgraded the
ANC to a strategic command, it
should first set its own house in order
before flexing muscle in the Indo-
Pacific Region. Instead of giving the

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ANGSTERS in Punjab seem to be taking tips from terrorists. Moreover, while the Malacca mis- posed to build in Thailand as part of Defence Ministry for consideration. Commander-in-Chief, ANC, post per-
Choose targets for their sensational worth, and the effect sion-deployment started by the Navy its OROB initiative, will open into It was proposed that the existing manently to the Navy, which is being
makes it easy to ply their trade. The recent reports of popular in 2016 to support the Act East policy the Andaman Sea, barely 600 km Fortress Andaman and Nicobar contemplated, the need is to name
is steered by the ANC, it is unable to from Port Blair. Since 2008, when it (FORTAN), which was set up by the the ANC under the Chiefs of Staff
singers and actors being attacked or threatened for extortion have
support it even for its operational started its regular anti-piracy voy- Navy in the ’60s primarily for sur- Committee into the Navy-led and-
created a second wave of fear psychosis among people who can be
turn-round, which involves providing ages to the Gulf of Aden, China’s veillance, be upgraded to Far East- owned FENC. Nothing less than this
potential targets, essentially those with heavy cash flow; these fuel, rations and servicing. So, instead PLAN under the garb of innocuous ern Naval Command (FENC). This would help in meeting the emerging
include arhtiyas and doctors. While it is hard to know what exactly is of seeking help from the Eastern sea forays, has gained a decade of would have changed the mission, Chinese threat.
brewing in the underworld at a given point in time, there was a per-
ception of a lull in gangster violence after the killing of Vicky
Gounder. That now seems broken. There have been reports of two
political persons being killed by gangsters too.
After a number of gangsters were neutralised in quick succession
by the state police last year, the Chief Minister congratulated them for
their work. Some figures were given out on the number of gangsters
in the state, and how many had been killed or arrested. There was
An odd twosome defies caste line
hope. But with the apparent resurgence of gangster activity, it seems
the police did not have the complete story. There is obviously a new Brig Gurinder Singh (retd) temperamental, lean Harijan widow caste. Roshni often hurled abuses at ing willingness to mix up with Har-
who owned six acres allotted to her them and often quarrelled with any- ijans and despising the upper-caste,

I
crop of criminals rising, eager to replace those plucked out; and there
WAS in my teens and still too
is no way for the police to know their numbers. That is a problem for young to figure out how they
the government to tackle — to give hope to the disoriented youth who intrigued me. Roshni was a mid-
find few options to channelise their energy and aspirations. dle-aged, outspoken and extrovert
Amidst the stir caused in the entertainment industry of Punjab, who loved her land more than any-
the singers too would not have missed the irony of their music glori- thing, and Bagha Ram, on the other
fying gun and muscle power, mixed with false pride, often casteist, hand, was a quiet, introvert, hard-
and then being stung by the same culture. It is not hard to imagine working man in his mid-thirties.
how today’s gangsters just five or six years back would have come of Every evening, she went to the city
age swaying to pop Punjabi music, fancying themselves as purvey- and returned the next morning.
ors of all they saw. The cycle will continue, occasionally touching fun- They worked, rested and ate togeth-
damentalist activity and politics, till the Punjabi community as well er as if nothing else mattered.
as the government do not come to terms with the reality that breeds Much later did I learn that Bagha
was not a Harijan (as Dalits were
such degenerate behaviour.
known then), but from a Bishnoi
(upper caste) family from a nearby
Thought for the Day village. He was thrown out by his
brothers with one ox as his share in
The important thing about security systems isn’t how they work, it’s how the property. Nowhere to go, Bagha
they fail. — Cory Doctorow was offered shelter by Roshni, a
family during land distribution to
Harijans in the early ’60s. Her chil-
dren and grandchildren were
engaged in shoe making/mending
work and lived in Hisar city, some
10 km away. They did not have any
interest in tilling the land.
With only one ox, the stout Bagha
filled in for the second ox, with
Roshni holding the plough. They
started cultivating the land. Bish-
nois and other upper-caste men
chided Bagha for being a ‘servant’
to a foul-tempered low-caste woman.
Bagha maintained stoic silence, but
he was unforgiving to his own com-
munity for abandoning him.
Harijans, who were looking to
grab Roshni’s land, questioned her
alliance with a man from the upper-
one who questioned her relation-
ship with Bagha. Finally, one day,
when asked by her sons, she boldly
declared her resolve to live with
Bagha for the sake of the land. Lat-
er, they purchased a pair of oxen,
and their jhuggi under a kikar tree
gave way to a mud-plastered house.
Almost 50 years ago, it was
extraordinary for a low-caste widow
to live with an upper-caste man in a
Harijan-majority area. Illiterate
Bagha and Roshni had the stead-
fastness to uphold human values
despite widespread untouchability
and caste and community divide in
those days. Firebrand Roshni had
the tenacity to not only stand up to
criticism, but also question the
morality of such people. By display-
Bhagatji, as Bagha was affectionate-
ly called by few well-meaning peo-
ple, questioned the caste narrative
in the 1970s.
Recently, when the Haryana Gov-
ernment decided to relocate Dalit
victims of Mirchpur violence at
Dandhoor village in Hisar, it
brought back the memories of this
couple. Dandhoor is less than 2 km
from Bagha and Roshni’s land.
They both are long gone, hopefully
their spirit will guide the people of
Dhandoor to accept and absorb the
migrants forced out of their homes.
But I do wonder why must the Dalit
victims migrate? Let the errant ele-
ments and criminals be shifted out
of notorious Mirchpur. Is it not time
to change?

letters to the editor

Leaving out Punjab
In response to the editorial ‘Sin of
omission’ (June 4), you have rightly
castigated the makers of the syllabus
of MA English paper of Panjab Uni-
versity for excluding Punjabi writers
of literary excellence. It is intriguing
that works from Odisha, Karnataka
and Maharashtra have been includ-
ed. Punjabi is the main language of
the region and denying this rich liter-
ature to students is wrong. The gov-
ernment should immediate take
steps to include the rich literature of
Punjab in the syllabus.
JATINDER BIR SINGH NANDA, LUDHIANA
Include Punjabi lit
Punjab University College, Lahore, the
predecessor of Panjab University, was
established in 1870 with the prime objec-
tive ‘to encourage the research and
study of eastern classical languages and
literature’. In the same university, step-
motherly treatment to Punjabi language
is bound to raise eyebrows. Punjabi liter-
ature is rich in cultural heritage and
philosophical dispositions. The works of
the greats like Bulle Shah, Amrita Pri-
tam, Balwant Gargi, Varis Shah, Gur-
baksh Singh Preetlari, unfortunately,
got eclipsed by globalised English lan-
guage and literature. The time is ripe for
necessary rectification by the university
authorities by incorporating translations
of Punjabi language and literature at the
graduate and postgraduate level.
VK ANAND, CHANDIGARH
AAP yields to Cong
This is with reference to the editorial
‘AAP’s reach-out to Congress’ (June
4). The ‘alliance’ of the AAP with the
Congress reflects dirty politics played
by Arvind Kejriwal to meet his selfish
ends. But it is to be understood here
that the Indian electorate is not a fool
to not understand these tactics for
gaining votes. Recently, wherever the
AAP contested, it has failed miserably.
This is because there is no clear-cut
policy of the party, in other states too.
In this scenario, even if the party
reaches out to the Congress, it will not
benefit in the next elections.
SANJAY CHAWLA, AMRITSAR
Why the big deal?
Apropos the news report ‘No surprise
in Pranab’s Nagpur visit, says RSS’
(June 4), why is so much hue and cry
being made around the scheduled vis-
it of former President Pranab Muker-
jee to address the RSS cadre at Nag-
pur? After all, the RSS is not
infectious, rather it is a social organi-
sation. The former President is a free
citizen now and must be allowed to
conduct himself independently.
AKHTAR MAHMOOD, CHANDIGARH
Protest by farmers
Does a single consumer support a
farmer’s demand? After much hard-
ship, what does he get? Farmer is
Anndaata. The media says ‘mixed
response’ to farmers’ agitation. The
media should highlight the genuine
demands of farmers. There should be
fixed minimum wages even for a
farmer. Even if the government was
ready to provide everything free of cost
— seed, fertiliser, power, tools, tractors
— and give an assurance to compensate
losses of every kind to the producer,
even then, no one will be ready to accept
this hardship except the poor farmer.
The Modi government’s assurance of
return of ‘one and a half times’ of a
farmer’s inputs is a gimmick. Who will
calculate this and this will be possible
only twice a year, whereas other trades
make profit on a daily/weekly/monthly
basis after spending fixed hours. Our
sympathies should be with the farmer.
SS SOBTI LADHOWAL, LUDHIANA
Depends on teachers too
If there is will to serve society, ‘com-
mensurate’ results can be achieved by
teachers (‘1.5 lakh kids join lost gener-
ations, yet again’; June 4). The require-
ment of subject specialist teachers for
good results cannot be undermined.
Yet, there have been government
schools where students of class X this
year fared much better even in the
absence of the respective subject
teacher throughout the year. But they
fared poorly in subjects (even ‘easy’
ones) for which they had a full-time
teacher working on a full pay scale for
the entire session. The issue of quality
education is complex. It is the dedica-
tion of a teacher that matters more than
full pay scale, permanent/regular post-
ing, etc. Political will is paramount.
Class XII students are taught by lectur-
ers. There has been no shifting of lectur-
ers from panchayat control to the educa-
tion department. Only some primary
schools were once brought under pan-
chayat control and later handed over to
the department. These primary teach-
ers are qualified to teach only up to class
V. If these primary teachers improved
class XII results, where remains the
need for specialist teachers?
SURINDER KUMAR JINDAL, MOHALI
Get serious about education
Refer to ‘1.5 lakh kids join lost genera-
tions, yet again’ (June 4); the glaring
failures of the PSEB indicate grave
mismanagement and improper poli-
cies. It seems that successive govern-
ments were never serious about the
education of children. It is a fact that
majority of children in state-run
schools belong to lower middle and low-
er-income classes. The state is jeopar-
dising their prospects of a better future.
Adarsh or smart schools are a political
gimmick. What is the use of these new
models when the existing structure
cannot be elevated to a higher level?
ISHAN CHAUHAN, JALANDHAR
Lest the lesson is lost…
Apropos ‘Little girls and little louts’
(June 4), the bold act of the girls was,
indeed, praiseworthy. We should learn
from this incident and mend our messy
ways. The Swachh Bharat campaign has
had negligible impact on people at large.
People are still dumping their house-
hold rubbish in and around vacant plots.
Stopping them from doing so is to invite
a quarrel. Also, railway track is used
extensively and unabashedly for throw-
ing litter. The government asserts that it
gives money to people to construct toi-
lets in their houses, why then are people
still defecating in the open? Only if peo-
ple’s mindset changes, can the desired
results be achieved.
TARSEM S BUMRAH, BATALA
Displaced allottees
As many as 124 bona-fide allottees
were displaced for the dream project,
City Centre Scheme Ludhiana. Plots
were acquired by the then Capt
Amarinder Singh government in 1999,
and since then, we are going from pil-
lar to post to get the plots at the reserve
price with all basic civic amenties. But
we have failed to get a positive
response from the Punjab Govern-
ment. A Special Investigation Team,
headed by a retired judge, should be
constituted to investigate the matter
and give justice to those concerned.
DAVINDER KUMAR, LUDHIANA

Letters to the Editor, typed in double space, should not exceed the 200-word limit. These should be cogently written and can be sent by e-mail to: Letters@tribuneindia.com