Deepening India-US Strategic Ties: Evidences And Repercussions By Maj Gen S.G.Vombatkere (Retd) 22 September, 2010
Venugopalan K M
"Willard's suggestion to " slice away bureaucratic procedures " in military-to-military contacts seeks to further weaken the existing weak link between India's military and its political leadership by taking the bureaucracy out of the loop. This is interference in India's internal affairs and government functioning, and dangerous for India's security. Thus, even in the present scheme of skewed civilian-military relations within India, it must be ensured that the bureaucracy is not " slice [d] away " from direct India-US military-to-military interactions; the elected Executive must urgently get its act together in the interest of national security.."
"Speaking of the Indian military, Lt Gen Vijay Oberoi notes that " Our political leadership is highly uncomfortable in dealing with the military directly and prefers to let the bureaucracy do so." [5]. Thus effectively, the military's contact with the elected Executive is through the bureaucracy, giving bureaucrats a large degree of control that the military resents even while it unhesitatingly accepts civilian control. It is easy to blame the bureaucracy for this, but the historic and on-going failure of the political leadership in maintaining contact directly with the Defence Chiefs, cannot be wished away. (Creation of a Chief of Defence Staff post would overcome the problem, but this has been successfully stalled by the bureaucracy for years notwithstanding the cost to national security)."
"..Indian bureaucrats have been sent on post-graduate study leave to US universities in significant numbers over the past two decades. Also, the World Bank Institute (WBI) conducts global training and outreach programs for " policymakers, civil servants, technical experts, business and community leaders, parliamentarians, civil society stakeholders, as well as other learning institutions such as universities and local training institutes " of ma ny Third World countries including India for, among other things, " public policy formulation ", and "[i] n fiscal 2008, WBI reached some 39,500 participants, 50 percent of whom were government officials " [7]. Thus over the years, WBI has trained several lakhs of key people, and there is little doubt that there are large numbers of Indians among them. Deepening US-India str ategic ties is doubtless influenced by at least some of these decision-makers.
The Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) has been formed to create a national biometric data base, with a Rs.1,950 crore budget for the current year for outsourcing data acquistion to private agencies. UIDAI, estimated to cost Rs.45,000 crores, was created without discussion in Parliament or in the public domain for its technical viability [8]. A similar scheme in Britain was rejected by the British government because it would lay people open to e-surveillance, compromising privacy and civil liberties in the name of national security. No serious security assessment can fail to overlook possible misuse of CISMOA's cyber security strengths to infiltrate into the UID data base for civil and social control. This brings to mind neo-liberal objectives so chillingly pursued in Chile, Argentina, Bolivia, Poland, Russia and Indonesia [9].
India-US strategic ties have their benefits but, as in the nuclear deal and the Knowledge Initiative in Agriculture, the arrangements are heavily loaded in favour of corporate USA and against India. Therefore deepening existing strategic ties in the military arena needs very careful re-consideration. Slicing away procedures in military-to-military dealings at the instance of a foreign power under the guise of deepening strategic relations, and thereby taking the Indian bureaucracy out of the loop - this will please the Indian military, which has always justifiably felt that bureaucratic procedures are cumbersome and restrictive - will cause irreparable damage to national security and democratic functioning. Procedures remain an integral part of the checks and balances essential to the military remaining under civilian control in a democracy; improving procedures in the national best interest is the duty of the elected Executive. Permitting stationing of foreign troops on Indian soil as part of the LSA or any other arrangement will operate decisively against India's security and the morale of India's military and people, compounding the damage and consequent risks. India must maintain and protect its political independence and sovereignty at any cost"--
You cannot build anything on the foundations of caste. You cannot build up a nation, you cannot build up a morality. Anything that you will build on the foundations of caste will crack and will never be a whole.
-AMBEDKAR
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