RANCHI: Param Vir Chakra winner Lance Naik Albert Ekka’s septuagenarian widow could hardly walk in her Jharkhand village as old age, ill-health and working in the fields till a couple of years ago had taken a toll on her knees.
HT PHOTOParam Vir Chakra awardee Albert Ekka’s widow, Balamdina Ekka, (centre) with army men in Agartala.On Sunday, Balamdina Ekka hobbled up the stairs of Tripura Sundari temple to offer prayers, took a boat ride in the Rudrasagar Lake and adored every corner of the historic Neer Mahal in Tripura escorted by dozens of Assam Rifle soldiers.
“I can see my Albert everywhere, in the hills, lake and temple. I am happy that I could visit this place,” she said over the phone from Agartala.
When nobody thought she would be able to get out of her native village of Jari, she defied age and physical impairment to relive memories of her husband, the Ranchi’s brave heart who died fighting for the country in the 1971 IndiaPakistan war.
Lance Naik Ekka of the army died in the Battle of Hilli. He was posthumously awarded the Param Vir Chakra, India’s highest award for valour in war.
In Tripura for the past two days, Balamdina’s boundless energy and excitement have surprised family members as well as army officers from Jharkhand accompanying her in the trip. The widow demanded that she be taken to every place her late husband went to when he was posted there.
The primary purpose of her journey is to visit her husband’s grave after 45 years of his death and bring sacred soil from the place of his burial.
Ever since she reached Agartala on Friday evening, where the Assam Rifles rolled out the welcome carpet, her excitement and energy abruptly multiplied.
Son Vincent Ekka and daughter-in-law Rajni Ekka are equally excited. “The mere sight of army jawans thumping their boots and saluting us in honour is overwhelming. Now we know how great the sacrifice of my father was,” Vincent said.
The two slides in Indian stock markets over the past week have only served to underline what has become increasingly evident: Our economy is strongly integrated with the Chinese one, and there is no escaping the impact of a slowdown in what was until recently the engine of global growth. So hapless Indian investors catch the mother of all colds when their northern neighbour sneezes, and there is little to suggest that their sniffles will die down anytime soon. For, the Indian companies in which they invest are battling several fallouts: Poor demand for their products in China due to slow growth and a weaker yuan, the prospect of dumping of Chinese goods in India, and higher costs of servicing dollar debt due to downward pressure on the rupee.
The yuan has fallen nearly 6% since August, exacerbating a trade imbalance. Steel plants are prominent on the nonperforming asset list of Indian banks and the current situation is likely to make things worse. Global commodity prices have tanked due to a fall in Chinese demand and a combination of tepid offtake and oversupply has kept crude oil prices low. This is a big silver lining for crude importer India, on the face of it, but the underlying message is disturbing: Economic growth in some key export markets is unravelling. The falls in Chinese stocks are also disturbing for another reason. They suggest that the totalitarian regime is struggling to come to grips with financial markets, and that markets are not fully reflecting what is happening in the economy. In July the Chinese market regulator had said people who owned more than 5% in a company were prohibited from selling stocks for six months, the reason being that the markets had been falling “irrationally”. As a result, over 1,000 companies had stopped trading. In the first week of January, partly owing to the rumour that the ban would be lifted and partly because of the weak manufacturing data, the markets in China fell hugely, wiping out $2.5 trillion of wealth. Then followed a second round of devaluation of the yuan and its ripple effect: The shaving off of $194 billion from the wealth of the world’s 400 richest people. The market injection of $20 billion by the Chinese authorities could not do much to improve the situation.
The rupee has fallen sharply against the dollar, but Indian exports are still struggling because other currencies such as the euro have fallen further. India will have to come to grips with the fact that in an integrated world, much is beyond its control and it needs to focus on the things it can change: Slashing red tape, boosting investments and generating jobs. The next big opportunity for action is next month’s Budget.
WHEN Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif called up Prime Minister Narendra Modi to commiserate on the Pathankot air base attack, it was a déjà vu moment. The same effusiveness was in full play about seven years back when the Mumbai attacks had rocked India. The then Pakistani President Asif Zardari had even offered to send the ISI chief to discuss the extent of culpability of rogue officers in the military while top Lashkar-e-Taiba commanders, including its ideologue Hafiz Saeed, were jailed and a special anti-terrorist court set for their speedy prosecution.This was unprecedented in Indo-Pak cooperation on terrorism. The offers yielded little because the Pakistani military’s strategy of using militants in Afghanistan and India at that time kept their intelligence agencies busy from exerting a similar counter-pressure.Three years after the Mumbai attacks, Pakistani public perception of its military’s prowess took a beating when US marines came and killed Osama bin Laden, and then, half of Pakistan’s maritime surveillance fleet got decimated in the Mehran air base attack that exposed the involvement of men in uniform.There was a window of opportunity in 2011 but the Zardari-controlled Pakistan People’s Party’s was unable to deliver on its promise to swiftly prosecute the Mumbai attack masterminds. Is it different now? Can Nawaz Sharif act on his promise given to Narendra Modi? Just over a week before the Foreign Secretaries of both countries are slated to meet in Islamabad, New Delhi seems to have taken the Pakistan Prime Minister on his word and added a few conditions of its own. One of them appears to be the arrest of Jaish-e-Mohammed chief Masood Azhar of the Kathmandu-Kandahar plane hijack notoriety who has remained unprosecuted for the crime for 16 years.The state of play in Pakistan that encouraged Nawaz Sharif to make the “assurance” looks more promising than during Zardari’s tenure as Pakistan President. Nawaz Sharif’s third-time ascension as Prime Minister is unprecedented in the annals of leadership turnover in Pakistan. This was the only occasion when a democratic government completed its mandate of five years in office and gave way to another of the same make. The consequent ebb in the political clout of the Pakistan military has led to the democratic government getting a firmer handle on the tools of governance and policy making than its earlier predecessors.But the Indian Government could be indulging in an over-optimistic reading of tea leaves in the Pakistani security apparatus when National Security Adviser Ajit Doval crafted a stern message of take it or leave it to Nawaz Sharif. In a signal via the media, Doval claims that India has handed over all evidence, including phone intercepts, mobile phone numbers of the handlers behind the Pathankot attack, along with their names and locations. All of this again sounds familiar. India had gone through exactly the same drill after the Mumbai attacks. The then civilian government in Pakistan, a couple of shades more secular than Nawaz Sharif and therefore less complicit with radical groups, tried hard to deliver. The other side strove equally hard to thwart this attempt. When all else failed, the lawyer prosecuting the seven masterminds of the Mumbai attacks was shot dead. His successor also died mysteriously. The rapid-fire conclusion by Indian media commentators detected the ISI’s hand.It is not as straightforward and uncomplicated. A large section of Pakistan society is radicalised and tends to subscribe to the methods and philosophy of the radicals. This is mainly due to the unwillingness of all governments, both military and democratically elected, to change the intensely feudal and crony dominated arrangement at the top and intermediate layers. This setup has rarely allowed the subaltern to join them in governance and policy making, leading them to view the radicals as some sort of a revolutionary force that could give them deliverance from perpetual political subjugation by the landlords-cum-industrialists from Raiwind (the Sharif clan), Larkana (the Bhutto family) and several like them who get co-opted in Central Cabinets.The era of socialist and Left activism, the main drivers for resolving this structural problem and providing a solution, is over. India has continuously accommodated the less deprived by tools such as reservations and should understand this flaw better than the Europeans and the Americans who undertook other means, including domination of resource-rich nations, to keep their citizen satiated. Neither Pakistan nor India can ever resort to this technique perfected by the West for over four centuries. It is the Pakistani elite’s incapacity to effect changes in the system that draws its youth to the aesthetics of violence and self-destruction.India’s security managers in New Delhi’s South Block could take heart from the halving of terrorist attacks in Pakistan last year as compared to the previous year. Yet the country continues to host, often against its interests, a medley of violence-addicted groups who have the ability to turn the clock back on the current spell of sociability between the two Prime Ministers. For example, Pakistan marked the end of the year with the murder of its top anti-terrorism manager in Punjab and a blast that killed 29. Both were suspected to be the handiwork of groups operating independently of Pakistani military and intelligence agencies. Much like the Mumbai attacks, they were assisted by some former military officials who had branched out after Pervez Musharraf’s post 9/11 U-turn on using militant groups in Afghanistan. Some militant groups also began attacking their former mentors in the military after Musharraf’s ceasefire with India in 2004 had bottled up the Kashmir channel.If the bonhomie between the two establishments is for real, Doval’s conditionalities should maintain the pressure on Islamabad-Rawalpindi to keep in check India-focussed vendors of violence. But it will be unrealistic to expect a total cessation. Instead the leaderships of India and Pakistan need to turn their attention to policies that produce economic deliverance for their people. For India that would mean shorter trade routes for its merchandise exports into Central Asia and Afghanistan.For Pakistan, it should translate into access to energy and increase in the domestic investment rate to wean it from perpetual dependence on foreign aid which makes it susceptible to tutoring from the benefactors. Nawaz Sharif is best placed to deliver near-total peace with India. Not only is the international opinion ranged against military takeovers, Nawaz Sharif is a major beneficiary of the Zardari government’s annulment of a Constitution provision authorising the President to remove the Prime Minister. But India must move on multiple fronts with Pakistan. Holding it accountable only to the metric of terror will be insufficient and impractical.
HT Correspondent
KAMALJIT SINGH/HTArmymen at Pandher village after reports of two suspected terrorists hiding in sugarcane fields, in Gurdaspur on Thursday.NEW DELHI: Talks between the foreign secretaries of India and Pakistan slated for January 15 seemed to be on thin ice as New Delhi on Thursday linked the event with “decisive and prompt” action by Islamabad on the deadly terror attack at the Pathankot airbase.
The foreign ministry stated the position without setting a deadline for Pakistan, even as Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif discussed the terrorist strike at a high-level meeting in Islamabad. He was reportedly briefed about the status of a ban on the Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM), which is suspected to be behind the attack.
On Thursday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi told his cabinet colleagues that bilateral talks would not resume until Islamabad took action against the terror group and he had made this clear during a phone call with Sharif. “Action is a must. We are going to be very strict about it,” Modi was learnt to have said at the meeting.
Indian security agencies have identified five key figures from JeM who were involved in the conspiracy and New Delhi wants Islamabad to act against them. The terrorists under the scanner are the group’s chief Maulana Masood Azhar, his brother Rauf Asghar, Maulana Ashfaq Ahmad, Hafiz Abdul Shakur and Kasim Jan.
Unlike in the 26/11 Mumbai attacks case where it remained in constant denial, Pakistan has not rejected India’s assertions about the role of the terror outfit in the Pathankot attack.
“India wants peaceful ties with all neighbours, including Pakistan but will not countenance cross-border terrorism. Actionable intelligence was given to Pakistan. Ball is in Pakistan’s court now,” ministry of external affairs spokesperson Vikas Swarup told reporters on Thursday.
He, however, parried questions about the possibility of the talks being cancelled, maintaining that India was not fixing any deadline for Pakistan to respond, nor was it “foreshadowing” the talks.
“Prime Minister Narendra Modi spoke to Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, who assured us a prompt response… India now awaits a prompt and decisive action,” said Swarup. “Eight days remain for the foreign secretary-level talks between the countries; let’s see what happens in the days before January 15.”The meeting Sharif chaired in Islamabad was attended by his national security adviser, Naseer Khan Janjua, foreign secretary Aizaz Chaudhry and foreign policy chief Sartaj Aziz.
Janjua, according to sources, briefed them about his discussions with his Indian counterpart, Ajit Doval.A brief statement issued after the meeting by Sharif’s office only said “issues pertaining to national and regional security were discussed” but did not give details.
Pakistan has condemned the Pathankot attack and said it wants to build on the goodwill created by a December 25 meeting between Modi and Sharif when Indian PM called up his Pakistani counterpart from Kabul and took an impromptu decision to fly down to Lahore on the latter’s invitation.
GURDASPUR: Security personnel, including an Israel-trained SWAT team, spilled into the fields and byways of Punjab’s Pandher village on Thursday to flush out two suspected terrorists, with the authorities fearing an attack on a key military facility days after a terror siege at the nearby Pathankot airbase.
Sources confirmed that government forces were prepared for an offensive a day after locals reported seeing two men in military fatigues acting suspiciously near the army cantonment in Gurdaspur district. When confronted, the men took cover in a sugarcane field, witnesses said.
Punjab Police deputy inspector general (border range) Kunwar Vijay Partap Singh said: “We are not taking any chances. Aerial surveillance and troop movement is on.” “A drone helped locate their location and by Thursday afternoon, the army and police teams took position,” a police source said.
Soldiers concealed themselves on rooftops, behind trees and at a brick kiln as armoured vehicles rolled into the village in the afternoon. A helicopter had conducted surveillance sorties earlier in the day. By night, the sugarcane field spread over 30 acres was lit up by searchlights.
Pandher village is nearly 20km off the India-Pakistan border and about a stone’s throw from the Tibri military cantonment. The facility is not far from the Pathankot air force station that saw a four-day long counterterror operation in which six terrorists were killed.
Govt betrays nervousness in Pathankot bulletins
Patriotism was the emotion of the moment as our soldiers battled foreign intruders on the premises of a premium defence establishment in Pathankot over the weekend. The national mood was entirely in keeping with the developments. In hindsight, however, one can discern instances where those at the helm of steering the security operation too seemed to get carried away by the need to respond to the heightened emotions. Both the government and the media did well to give out as few operational details as possible; a lesson from Mumbai, perhaps. But the government made a few attempts to sound as if they were on top of the situation when in reality the various agencies were themselves perhaps not sure of what was happening.Because of the very nature of such operations, clarity on the exact ground situation cannot be expected till all is over. Union ministers in their tweets and senior officers of the security establishment (a few in bullet-proof jackets at a press briefing) made statements that later proved premature. All of this unnecessary confusion caused by ham-handed communication made the security forces seem inept, when that may not have been the case. The electronic media was equally caught up in the patriotic fervour, repeatedly broadcasting long clips of mourning of bereaved families of soldiers. All of this affects the national mood, which is quickly reflected in social media. And the present government is acutely sensitive to what goes on in the virtual world.The Defence Minister has referred to certain “gaps” in the security response to the attack. The government now needs to show confidence in being able to acknowledge wherever the lapses were so that appropriate remedy may be applied. The NDA government has the advantage of nationalistic credentials and the security of numbers in Parliament. That should give it the confidence to remain silent when there is nothing to be said and only give facts when it does speak. The media management of the government has been shown lacking once again. Hope the decisions it takes are not in response to the gallery.
IAF BASE ATTACKED
Vijay Mohan,Tribune News Service,Pathankot, January 6
While the rationale of employing the National Security Guard (NSG) on a military installation to deal with a terrorist attack is a topic of intense debate in the security circles, the first-ever joint operation could possibly see the armed forces and the NSG working together in the future.Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar said during his visit to the Pathankot air base that he has asked the Army and the NSG to conduct regular training together. Joint training, according to an officer, translates into joint operations being undertaken further down the road.The armed forces, all branches of which have their own Special Forces to undertake extraordinary missions, function under the purview of the Ministry of Defence, while the NSG comes under the administrative control of the Ministry of Home Affairs.While the Army and to some extent the Navy’s Marine Commando Force have been undertaking anti-terrorist operations, they have never jointly engaged the same adversary. The last time the armed forces and the NSG operated simultaneously was during the terror strike in Mumbai in 2008, but they were deployed at different sites.Parrikar had claimed that the NSG was deployed at Pathankot because it was “better trained” to deal with terrorist situations, a remark that has not gone down well in the Army fraternity, considering that the Army has been involved in counter-insurgency and counter-terrorist operations for decades and its Special Forces and well trained and highly experienced in this arena.The NSG has two functional groups: the Special Action Group (SAG) and the Special Operations Group (SOG).‘Terror activities up in BJP rule’Raising these questions, ex-Home Minister and senior Congress leader Sushil Kumar Shinde alleged that terror activities escalated whenever there was a BJP government at the Centre.
NEW DELHI: A delegation of ex-servicemen from Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh and the National Capital Region on Sunday met finance minister Arun Jaitley and submitted a memorandum seeking corrections in the One Rank One Pension (OROP) notification.
PTI PHOTOEx-servicemen during a protest outside finance minister Arun Jaitley’s residence in New Delhi on Sunday.Their protest on the issue entered 203rd day on Sunday.“A five-member delegation met the finance minister and told him that the actual OROP has not been granted. The notification has serious flaws and we requested him to rectify them and grant the actual OROP,” Gen Satbir Singh (retd) said.“The minister has assured us that he will speak to the defence minister about our demands,” he said. About 100 ex-servicemen also protested outside Jaitley’s residence and then moved to Jantar Mantar.“For last six months, ex-servicemen are protesting at Jantar Mantar demanding OROP which has been passed by both Houses of Parliament. But the government has been neglecting our demands time and again. It is our request to give us the real OROP,” Arif Ali Khan, one of the protesters, said.Lieutenant Kameshwar Pandey (retd) said, “We feel cheated as this is not the real OROP. A proper parliamentary procedure must be followed to make any amendments. We just want the government to refrain from such manipulations.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3weyTD4gFKY
http://Corruption in Army-Santosh Bhartiya
GURDASPUR: As many as 41,052 youths from four districts, including Gurdaspur, Amritsar, Pathankot and Tarn Taran will be recruited as jawans and for other different trades in the army during the recruitment rally to be held at the Tibri Military Cantonment, 5 km from here from February 1 to 12. Gurdaspur deputy commissioner Abhinav Trikha said here on Thursday that youths from Khadoor Sahib tehsil would be recruited on February 1, Tarn Taran tehsil on February 2, Patti tehsil on February 3, Baba Bakala and Ajnala tehsils on February 4, Amritsar tehsil on February 1 2 and 5, Dera Baba Nanak and Batala tehsils on February 6, Batala tehsil on February 7, Gurdaspur tehsil on February 8 and 9, Pathankot tehsil on February 10 and 11 and Dhar Kalan tehsil on February 12.
n a first, a 76-member French Army contingent takes part in R-Day parade
New Delhi/Bhopal/Chennai, January 26The nation is celebrating the 67th Republic Day on Tuesday amid elaborate security arrangements. President Pranab Mukherjee unfurled the national flag and took salute of the parade at Rajpath in the national capital.During the function, President Pranab Mukherjee conferred the country’s highest peacetime gallantry award Ashok Chakra to Lance Naik Mohan Nath Goswami posthumously.For the first time in the history of Republic Day parade, a 76-member French Army contingent took part.Military prowess and achievements in different fields, country’s diverse cultural and social traditions were showcased during the parade.Earlier, Prime Minister Narendra Modi paid tribute at Amar Jawan Jyoti to the martyrs, who laid down their lives in the battlefield for the country. The heads of the three services of Armed Forces also paid their homage at Amar Jawan Jyoti.Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh unfurled the national flag at his residence in the national capital.Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) president Amit Shah hoisted the national flag at the party headquarters in New Delhi.In Madhya Pradesh, the main function was organised in Bhopal. Governor Ramnaresh Yadav hoisted the tricolour and inspected the parade at the Lal Parade ground in the state capital. Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan unfurled the national flag in Ratlam district headquarters.Different programmes are being held across the state to mark the occasion. A Bharat Parv programme based on songs, dances and poetry will be organised in all the districts this evening to remember the contribution of martyrs. Union Minister for Parliamentary Affairs M Venkaiah Naidu hoisted the national flag in Hyderabad. Minister of State of Labour Bandaru Dattatreya and other leaders were also present there at the celebrations.In Tamil Nadu, Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa unfurled the tricolour in Chennai. Governor K Rosaiah and other government officials were also present.In view of recent terror attacks in Paris and at the Pathankot air base, stringent security measures have been taken to avoid any untoward incident. — ANI
