The strategic initiative displayed by India when it moved its first shipment of wheat to Afghanistan through the Chabahar port has been well established. Bypassing Pakistan changed the narrative of the region. Simultaneously has been the opening of an air corridor between the two countries. All this, while the US increases deployment of its troops, adopts a new strategy for […]
Rex Tillerson, the US Secretary of state arrived, spoke what he was expected to and left. Now it is time to take stock of what this awaited visit meant for India and Pakistan. India was his final stop in Asia as part of his six-nation tour. He spent a few hours in surprise visits, possibly due to security reasons, in […]
Events in the past one year has brought the military, mainly the army, into limelight for all the wrong reasons. While it has continued with its tasks of maintaining national security, dominating the Line of Control (LoC), ensuring a near normal environment in Kashmir thus enabling the government to commence dialogue through an interlocutor, it has been witnessing criticism from […]
The genesis of the article is derived from the vast flow of anti-army chief comments on social media, mostly from the veteran community. This article is not intended to defend any individual or institution or to assuage the support being provided by the veteran community, but to project realities, which are being glossed over. The present army chief assumed his […]
Since the announcement of employing the army to construct three Foot Over Bridges (FOBs) in Mumbai, a discussion has been launched on whether the government decision was right or wrong. Opposition politicians including Captain Amarinder Singh and Omar Abdullah amongst others warned the government against employing the army meaninglessly in roles earmarked for others. The army chief in an interview […]
A recent report of senior decorated veterans being manhandled and pushed away from their protest venue at Jantar Mantar by the Delhi police, was largely ignored by the media. However, social media was abuzz with the news, including videos of police highhandedness. The last time it happened was pre- Independence Day of 2015, when police roughed up aged veterans, even […]
The home minister, Rajnath Singh, recently appointed Dineshwar Sharma as the centre’s interlocutor for Kashmir. He went on to state that Sharma is free to interact with any group or member of the region, which in his view, is a stake holder. Thus, the restrictions placed by the government of not talking to the Hurriyat, which it considered anti-national and […]
Since the announcement by the defence and railway ministers on the army being tasked to construct the Foot Over Bridges (FOB) at Elphinstone railway station in Mumbai and two other places, there has been a flurry of criticism for the government’s decision. The Elphinstone FOB, is being constructed where a recent stampede claimed over twenty-three lives and left scores injured. […]
India has over the decades only modernized its military by importing hardware. It has been the largest importer of military hardware, as its Defence Research and Development Organization (DRDO) maintained monopoly, preventing the private sector from entering the market and itself being a failure in almost all military technologies, less missiles and space. Thus, with dependency on imports, the military’s […]
I had written a fortnight ago, in this column, on the ‘equivalence commission’. It is now back in the limelight, even before the earlier controversy had died. The previous commission formed in 2016, post the MoD issuing a controversial letter degrading military officers rank structure, was tasked to establish equivalence between them and the civil cadre. The commission had internal […]