Suhail A Shah

Anantnag, April 24

Four militants, a soldier and a policeman were killed in a day-long encounter in Tral area of Pulwama district, 50 km south-east of Srinagar, on Tuesday.Police said the militants belonged to the Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) and their identities were being ascertained. Sources in the police said two of the slain militants were believed to be Pakistan nationals, while the other two were locals, one of them a constable’s son.The slain Army man has been identified as Sepoy Ajay Kumar of Sirmaur, Himachal Pradesh, and the policeman as Constable Lateef Ahmad Gojri from Tral.The encounter began early morning in the forest area of Laam in Tral, where security forces had initiated a search operation following a lead.“While the search was on, the militants opened heavy fire on our men, leaving an Army man injured,” a senior police official said. “The jawan succumbed to his injuries later.” After the initial fire, police sources said, the militants took cover in the dense forest. There was a lull for a few hours. The security forces then employed helicopters and para-commandos to track down the militants.“Once the militants were located, the exchange of fire resumed,” the police official said, adding that four militants and one policeman were killed during the fresh firing.The operation ended with the retrieval of the slain militants’ bodies, which were sent for medico-legal formalities. Meanwhile, clashes erupted in main town and Batpora areas of Tral soon after the operation started. The clashes continued for a while before heavy deployment of security forces brought things under control. The area remained shut throughout the day.The residents awaited the arrival of bodies of the local militants. All roads leading to Tral had been sealed and mobile Internet suspended in the area.

Washington, April 20

US President Donald Trump has ordered government agencies to expedite and expand arms sales abroad, including exports of advanced drones to reinforce allied armies, the White House has said, a move expected to be helpful to countries like India.Trump has also established a new administration policy on the export of American-manufactured unmanned aerial systems (UAS), White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders said.The move is expected to be helpful to countries like India, a ‘major defence partner’ which is seeking to purchase large number of armed and surveillance drones from the US. Trump signed a national security presidential memorandum approving a new Conventional Arms Transfer (CAT) policy, Sanders said. — PTI

Around 1,500 civilians have been killed in the bombardment by Russia and the Syrian government, but many more — and the Islamist fighters opposing the regime — would have died without this secret underground warren.

Robert Fisk

ALL battles and bombardments share their secrets one by one. Eastern Ghouta is no different. Why the sudden, savage bombardment of these Syrian towns and villages more than three weeks ago? Why the wasteland of homes and streets — and how did so many of the civilians survive, along with hundreds of Islamist gunmen? You can do no better that start your enquiry in a frontline dugout near Arbeen, on the old and now war-smashed international highway between Damascus and Aleppo. It is protected by oil barrels of solid concrete, an iron roof, a rocket-propelled grenade launcher, a couple of rifles and a rusting motorbike, presumably to carry messages when the lines were cut. “Twenty mortars a day,” one of the Syrian soldiers says, rolling his eyes.And now it is over, he hopes. But — aside from the oil lamps and the cups of ‘mutta’ tea what catches your attention is the absence of a single trench.The soldiers sport beards like the French ‘poilu’ in the Great War a hundred years ago. But they dig no trenches. Not a single communications alleyway winds through the dirt and mud on either side of the dugout to give the running messenger cover from those mortars. Maybe the motorbike increased their chances. The lattice of trenches and revetments — dug so deeply a century ago by the Brits, French and Germans — has never caught on in Syria.Thus, Syrian soldiers were shocked to find how safe their enemies were. These tunnels of great stoneworks — for they were carved through the living rock, supposedly by Palestinians on loan from Hamas, men who had spent years hacking tunnels between Gaza and the Egyptian desert — have become a familiar part of the Syrian war. In Homs, the makers carved their names on the walls like Victorian railway builders, and in eastern Aleppo. These tunnels carry inside them the necrology of ideas, the ideological martyrs’ cemetery of their makers’ minds. They are deep and dank and  moist. But they are safe.So here comes the latest little secret of the Ghouta war. The Syrian aircraft — so often blamed for the indiscriminate nature of a bombing campaign which, according to many reports, has killed 1,500 civilians in eastern Ghouta — were old. But the Russian aircraft were also old Sukhoi 24s. A Russian source says: “The bombs we used in Ghouta were not ‘smart’ bombs with full computer guidance. Maybe some. But most had a variable of 50 metres off target.” In other words, you can forget the old claim of “pinpoint” accuracy which Western armies also like to adopt. These Russian bombs launched against eastern Ghouta had a spread pattern of 150 feet each side of what the pilots were aiming at; which means a house instead of an anti-aircraft gun. Or one house rather than another house. And anyone inside.But these blockbusters, it seems, couldn’t bust any blocks. The tunnels were never breached. That’s why they were built. They were bomb-proof. And thus the Russians and Syrians fired more and more bombs to break them. The Islamist groups in Ghouta did not have barracks or dugouts, for they lived in the tunnels, ate in the tunnels, fought, briefly, in daylight outside the tunnels, and then dragged their mortars back inside. A fighter wishes to pray: he can take the tunnel to the mosque. He needs surgery? He can be taken between those glistening walls to the hospital. He needs to move to a new battlefront, he takes a mile or two walk across town. Underground.The Syrians paid for their advance. In one short battle, at least 20 of them were killed. During another, five men emerged from the ruins, all dressed in Syrian army uniform and carrying weapons, well shaved, saying they were “coming across” to the Syrian lines. Several Syrian soldiers captured years ago were still held hostage by Islamists in underground cells. But the ‘Nimr’ units, while they knew the uniforms were real, looked closely at the faces of the men wearing them. “They could see they were newly shaved, that they weren’t so tanned on their chins as on the rest of their faces, and they realised they were Jaish al-Islam men dressed in Syrian uniform who had just removed their beards,” the eyewitness added bleakly. “They killed them all.”So why the ferocity of the bombardment? That Russian source believes that the Russian president wanted to end the Syrian war, especially the Ghouta conflict, before his election. But this proved impossible. Syria doesn’t fit the familiar ‘quagmire’ of Vietnam legend; it is a vast terrain of captured and recaptured and re-recaptured towns and villages, which moves with the power of the antagonists. The Russians can pick and choose their battles. This increases mobility. But it doesn’t create the exit home.There are streets in Ghouta, incredibly enough, whose buildings are still standing relatively unscathed. They were spared during the bombardment because their inhabitants said they wanted to stay in their homes and would not resist the Syrian army. Thousands of Syrians in Ghouta have thus not joined the refugee buses nor accompanied the women and children travelling with their jihadi menfolk to Idlib. They are still living at home.You might not think this, staring over the miles of wreckage, grey, powdered, roof upon pancaked roof. But then you wouldn’t imagine the tunnels either. The Syrians were amazed at them. So were the Moscow military men guarding the Russian Centre for Reconciliation inside Ghouta. That’s where the convoys are put together on paper and lists and buses numbered for evacuation, where the Islamist groups bargain for freedom with or without weapons, for ‘reconciliation’ or for a temporary Russian presence in their streets – even for local authorities run by Islamist political groups instead of by armed men. The Syrians have spotted the trick in this one, of course. Try to take back the land from the ‘local authorities’ and the Islamists will spring mushroom-like from the ground again, along with their weapons. And perhaps from undiscovered tunnels.

‘There are tunnels everywhere’

An eyewitness who entered the ruins after Syrian assault units burst through the tunnels towards Douma said, “I have never seen so many tunnels. They had built tunnels everywhere. They were deep and they ran beneath shops and mosques and hospitals and homes and apartment blocks and roads and fields. I went into one with full electric lighting, the lamps strung out for hundreds of yards. I walked half a mile through it. They were safe there. So were the civilians who hid in the same tunnels.”

By arrangement with Independent

There are heroes and there are heroes. So goes the popular perception of bravehearts. In the military sense, heroism is often an event, an episode or a happening quite often unplanned but sometimes planned as well. This is when there is an opportunity; a chance to do something unexpected; something out-of-the-box; something extraordinary either individually or in a buddy pair, sub-team or team action. The soldier gets involved in a manner led by gut instinct, grit, enterprise, cold courage tested almost always against impossible odds. Such a braveheart is led by selflessness and unit/country-first ideals… always and every time.So, there are heroes and there are heroes. By implication, this means that some heroes rise above heroism itself. When they do, they need to be respected, admired; placed on an altar where only the finest examples of humanity belong: deathless heroes. I was proud to come across one such person: Brig NS Sandhu, MVC.Then Lt Col NS Sandhu was in command of 10 Dogra in the climacteric Battle of Dera Baba Nanak (DBN) during the 1971 Indo-Pak war. This 3 Cavalry veteran of the Battle of Khemkaran (1965 Indo-Pak war) had, as a Major, delivered a gritty performance during that battle (his ‘C’ squadron destroyed 14 Patton tanks) which saved Punjab for India. As CO of 10 Dogra, he handled the enormously complex challenge of capturing the strategically important DBN Bridge as only a high-grade war veteran could — with admirable presence of mind, courage, coolness and situational awareness.Everything that could go wrong went wrong but Lt Col Sandhu was that kind of person who brought order to a convoluted battlefield situation rapidly spiraling out of control. He did this on a pitch-dark night amidst elephant grass (sarkanda)-driven disorientation of vital battlefield force-multipliers; accurate enemy ground fire and artillery fire. He did the right thing — he took charge leading from the front. He handled the amorphous battlefield situation with the instinct of a seasoned veteran instead of ‘taking counsel of his fears’; an escapism which the iconic British-Indian General, Bill Slim, had learnt to avoid while assiduously converting ‘defeat into victory’ in Burma during World War II.Narinder Sandhu too achieved spectacular success despite casualties to his officers/men and he himself getting wounded. It came as no surprise when the DBN Bridge was captured by 10 Dogra on the misty morning of December 6, 1971. Equally unsurprising was the award of Maha Vir Chakra to Lt Col Sandhu for his exceptional leadership.This was a straight-legged narration of the officer’s heroic acts in two successive wars, but we were talking about a bit more; about deathless heroism, remember?November 22, 2016 was a day which the young Research Team members of the Directorate of Defence Services Welfare, Punjab, are unlikely to forget in a hurry. On this day, Brig NS Sandhu was host to the Research Team at his gracious, well-appointed home in Chandigarh. The association of young researchers with this real life hero goes back to the time in early 2015 when the Punjab State War Heroes Memorial and Museum research work began with initially raw research rookies on board. He was one eagerly awaited veteran who always met them with a smile, encouraged them with kind, motivational words, leaving them spell-bound.The meeting on November 22 was therefore planned as a brief ‘get well sir’ visit to check on their mentor’s health which, they were aware, had been under severe stress and scrutiny.Dressed in a French grey jacket-and-black-trouser combination with a peach pocket square and attitude to match, Brig Sandhu was waiting on his lawn with a smile that matched his jaunty pocket square. Expecting to find him bed-ridden and surrounded by tubes and catheters, the Research Team was far too shocked to ask about his well-being because the inquiry seemed so irrelevant. It was only later that the young researchers learnt, albeit reluctantly, from their deathless hero how he had combated grave health-related adversity without losing his infectious smile, composure or equanimity.There are real life heroes after all… and a few of them are deathless.

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, March 31

The Indian Army has formalised a procedure that will allow Indian private companies to work on existing weapons and equipment to suggest modifications and improvements.These companies will be allowed to work on ‘in-service’ equipment. The Vice-Chief of the Army will be approving the authorisation for handing over the service equipment. An advisory support committee will assist him.The equipment can be handed over for a year, extendable by six months, said the new protocol.The companies can modify, upgrade and even provide substitution of whole equipment or its sub-assemblies.The idea is to see that private industry and the academia gets access to military equipment to help in innovating the design, integrating additional systems and developing new variants.

Pakistan’s vulnerability to US­led sanctions is apparent from its struggle to stave off a default
Debt-ridden Pakistan is very vulnerable to Western sanctions, yet it is unclear whether US President Donald Trump’s administration is willing to squeeze it financially in a way that could help reform its behaviour. Washington also seems reluctant to strip Pakistan of its status as a Major Non-NATO Ally (MNNA) or target its military for creating transnational terrorists.

The main driver of Pakistan’s nexus with terrorists is its powerful military, whose generals hold decisive power and dictate terms to a largely helpless government. With the military’s rogue Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) rearing terrorists, Pakistan has long played a double game, pretending to be America’s ally while aiding its most deadly foes that have killed or maimed thousands of US soldiers in Afghanistan. Pakistani forces only target terrorists that fall out of line or threaten Pakistan itself.

The recent media attention on the multilateral Financial Action Task Force’s planned action against Pakistan obscured that country’s success in preserving its status for another two years under the European Union’s preferential trading (GSP+) programme. Pakistan is the number one beneficiary of the GSP+ programme, which grants Pakistani exporters, especially of textiles, tariff-free access to the EU market in exchange for the country improving its human rights and governance. In effect, GSP+ rewards a sponsor of terror whose human-rights record has only worsened.

Trump’s suspension of most military aid to Pakistan is unlikely by itself to force a change in the behaviour of a country that counts China and Saudi Arabia as its benefactors. Only escalating American pressure through graduated sanctions can make Pakistan alter its cost-benefit calculation in propping up militant groups that have helped turn Afghanistan into a virtually failed state, where the US is stuck in the longest and most expensive war in its history. The US failure to take the war into Pakistan’s territory has resulted in even Kabul coming under siege.

Yet, swayed by geopolitical considerations, the US has long been reluctant to hold the Pakistani generals accountable for the American blood on their hands. Indeed, Washington for years funded the Pakistani military and turned Pakistan into one of its largest aid recipients.

Even when the US, after a 10-year hunt, found Osama bin Laden holed up in a compound next to Pakistan’s main military academy, it did not abandon its carrots-only strategy. Such an approach has only helped the military tighten its grip on Pakistan, thwarting any movement toward a genuine democratic transition.

Worse still, the US has dissuaded India from imposing any sanctions on Pakistan. If anything, India has been pressured to stay engaged with Pakistan, which explains the secret meetings the national security adviser has had with his Pakistani counterpart in Bangkok and elsewhere. The recent launch, with US backing, of the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) gas pipeline project illustrates why it is difficult for India to impose even diplomatic sanctions on Pakistan.

To be sure, the Trump administration is searching for a new strategy on Pakistan. Yet it is an open question whether it will go beyond the security aid suspension, which excludes economic assistance and military training. Aid suspension in the past has failed to change Pakistan’s behaviour.

With Washington loath to label Pakistan a state sponsor of terrorism, it must at least strip that country of its MNNA status, an action that will end its preferential access to US weapons and technologies and deny it the financial and diplomatic benefits associated with that designation.

To force Pakistani generals to cut their nexus with terrorists, American sanctions should target some of them, including debarring them and their family members from the US and freezing their assets. Among the half a million Pakistanis living in the US are the sons and daughters of many senior Pakistani military officers.

Pakistan’s vulnerability to potential US-led sanctions is apparent from its ongoing struggle to stave off a default. Despite China’s strategic penetration of Pakistan, the United States is still the biggest importer of Pakistani goods and services.

US financial and trade sanctions extending to multilateral lending, as well as suspension of military spare parts, can force Pakistan to clean up its act.
To end Pakistan’s double game on terrorism, Washington will have to halt its own double game of rewarding or subsidising a country that, in Trump’s own words, has given the United States “nothing but lies and deceit”. To address a self-made problem, it is high time for US policymakers to put their money where their mouths are.

Satya Prakash

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, March 13

The Supreme Court  today extended the March 31 deadline for mandatory linking of Aadhaar with bank accounts, mobile phone numbers and various services/welfare schemes till its Constitution Bench delivered its verdict on the validity of the Aadhaar Act and the 12-digit unique biometric identification number.The top court had on December 15, 2017, extended the deadline for linking of Aadhaar with mobile phones and opening of new bank accounts to March 31. The deadline is also applicable to Central and state government schemes.(Follow The Tribune on Facebook; and Twitter @thetribunechd)On Tuesday, the Bench also ordered that the government cannot insist on production of Aadhaar number for issuance of passports under the Tatkal scheme.The five-judge Constitution Bench, headed by Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra, is hearing petitions challenging the constitutional validity of the Aadhaar Act. Last week, it indicated that it would extend the deadline in view of confusion in banks and financial market at the end of the financial year.The Centre, too, had said it was ready to extend the March 31 deadline but wanted the court to wait further. Last week, the top court had ordered the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) not to make Aadhaar mandatory for enrolment of students appearing in NEET 2018 and other all-India examinations. 

Adviser to Delhi CM quitsNew Delhi: VK Jain, Adviser to Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, has resigned citing personal reasons and family commitments. The move came days after he was questioned by the police in connection with the alleged assault on Chief Secretary Anshu Prakash. Jain was present when the alleged incident took place. PTI

Incendiary remarks by political and RSS leaders harm the Army’s secular traditions. We have regiments where soldiers of all faiths live and fight together. The leaders are ignorant of military ethos.

Gearing up: RSS men take part in a Path-Sanchalan in Ahmedabad recently. Reuters

The RSS is the BJP’s standing army, mobilised to win elections and bulldoze the opposition. While it might have requisitioned Ritu Beri to modernise RSS’s battle apparel, it is far from being a fighting force. Instead, it distorts the image of the Army. Take the several mindless statements, including an incendiary one, made by national leaders which have undermined the idea of India, image and integrity of the Army and even politicised it. Mohan Bhagwat, the RSS chief and Prime Minister Modi’s mentor, said that while the Army takes six to seven months to mobilise, the swayamsevaks are ready to go in three to four days. There were other insinuations in his statement: RSS could be a volunteer army in six to seven months to “help” the regular Army. Being a non-secular Hindu civilian organisation, such a force can have no place in the Indian Army. Rather, it better stick to its forte of helping the BJP win elections. Lt-Gen Danbu, Chief of Northern Command in Kashmir, said the Army does not recognise a soldier by his religion.The Indian Army is stitched together as a fighting force because it is professional, apolitical, secular and under civilian political control and, therefore, the last bastion of our Constitution and democracy. The most outstanding trait of the Army is that it is secular and derives its soul from the secular composition of the country. In regiments, soldiers take their oath of allegiance putting their hand on the Tricolour, Gita, Guru Granth Sahib, Quran and Bible. In all-India regiments under one roof or a tent, are a temple, gurdwara, mosque or church. You will not find this conjugation of religions anywhere in the world. So what the RSS can learn from the Army is that while one can be a blue-blooded Hindu and nationalist, one can also be a secular patriot. This is what will make the RSS truly all-India.On Muslims, the statement made by BJP MP Vinay Katiyar, which has not been contradicted so far, says: “Muslims should not live in India and should either go to Pakistan or Bangladesh.” Such statements do immeasurable harm to the Army’s secular traditions because there are regiments where Muslims, Hindus and other faiths live and fight together.  While polarisation may win votes for the parties, it will severely politicise the Army and damage its organisational cohesiveness, not to mention the fatal damage it will do to the internal security of the country.The redoubtable Praveen Togadia, chief of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, once very close to PM Modi when he was Chief Minister of Gujarat, is reported to have said that stone-pelters in J&K should be “bombarded”. This would imply carpet-bombing. He advocated the breakup of Pakistan into five parts. Neither idea has an iota of prudence or sense: both are urgings neither feasible nor implementable. India is facing considerable difficulty keeping together J&K in our possession as we have lost the local support of people. Stirring the pot across the border in PoK with an army of RSS volunteers which can be transformed into soldiers in six months, as claimed, will not be easy. But the idea first came from RSS pracharak, former Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar, famous for his remarks after the surgical srikes that it was he who instilled the Hanuman spirit into the Army. Can he do it with the RSS? Though, his original idea was different — to catch a terrorist, use a terrorist.Thus, it is clear that our political leaders and those from social organisations like the RSS do not comprehend the changing nature of war, especially cross-border terrorism which our soldiers confront 24×7. Pakistan got a bloody nose in the three and a half wars it has fought, so now it is using a low-cost, high-yield proxy war to compensate for its inferiority in conventional military strength compared to India. When Bhagwat, Togadia, Katiyar, Owaisi etc make absurd comments about the Army and the country, it is time to educate them about military ethos, war and deterrence on the one hand and the idea of India on the other.The National Defence College’s central theme is the general education of defence, diplomacy and conflict avoidance. A decade ago, a special capsule run for Members of Parliament was strangely discontinued. It should be resumed immediately. Besides visiting forward areas, elected representatives of the Parliament should spend 24 hours at or near a forward post on the LoC to gauge the heat and living conditions of our soldiers. Representation of the military in the Parliament is miniscule. Instead of wasting nominated seats on filmstars and cricketers who skip the Parliament in any case, professional veterans from the services, instead, will bring the realism of LoC into the House. Bhagwat is spot-on about one thing, though: that the Army is not combat-ready. And, it is underequipped as per the report of BJP’s Gen BC Khanduri’s Parliamentary Standing Committee on Defence. Bhagwat is Modi’s mentor. He can tell him that the military in the defence budget in 2018-19 has got a raw deal — the lowest ever as percentage of GDP (1.49) when China has four times as much. This year, that is why after the defence budget, talk in South Block was that Modi’s priority had altered from Jai Jawan Jai Kisan to just Jai Kisan.‘Five of seven soldiers killed in Sanjuwan were Muslims’Take the case of the recent Sanjuwan terror attack on a battalion of the Jammu and Kashmir Light Infantry in Jammu which bore the brunt of the terrorist attack. “Five of the seven soldiers killed in the attack were Muslims. No one is pointing this out. While Muslims are being called Pakistanis, and their loyalty doubted, we are also sacrificing lives,” said All-India Majlis e Ittahadul Muslimeen chief and Member of Parliament Asaduddin Owaisi.

Just do it: The Captain has got a shot at fixing things, he must seize it.

Nirmal Sandhu

It is budget time and also the time to question old certainties and make an honest effort to retrieve Punjab’s sinking economy. One year is enough for making political noises about past blunders. Now is the time to correct them. The state can do without another business-as-usual budget. The Punjab leadership keeps knocking at the door of the Centre for help. The easiest thing to do is to fling all the blame towards the Centre. Parkash Singh Badal has been doing that for years and politically profiting from “Central discrimination” before inviting a humiliating defeat by tying the state to an unreasonable Rs 31,000-crore loan on the Centre’s terms. A Central bailout is unlikely because of Punjab’s limited relevance in the political calculations of Narendra Modi and Amit Shah. During his recent Chandigarh visit, Niti Aayog’s Dr Rajiv Kumar reiterated Delhi’s message — clearly, bluntly and publicly: stop asking for funds. “You can leave the country’s food security to us”. There is a message in the snub.  Every budget presents the leadership a choice: use the taxpayers’ money to bribe voters in the hope of a favourable verdict in the next election or take hard, unpleasant decisions for long-term gain. Both Badal and Capt Amarinder Singh have so far chosen the path that suits them more than the state. They seem to be in politics to leverage power, not to unsettle a beneficial arrangement. The result is they have continued with absurdities experts disapprove of. Free power is the single big blunder that has (1) hurt Punjab’s agriculture, (2) depleted Punjab’s water resources by encouraging paddy cultivation, (3) added to farmers’ production cost by forcing installation of submersible pumps, (4) drove the state to rely on private power companies which dictated own terms, (5) curtailed industrial activity during the paddy season and (6) consumed resources that could have been used to modernise power plants and enhance generation capacity, and thus save jobs lost in shutting down unviable plants. Abandoning the age-old wisdom — teach fishing to a man instead of giving him a fish — they have made Punjabis freebies dependent.The damage caused by state neglect, diversion of resources to meet demands of vote politics and patronage of the private sector is not limited to power. It extends to public transport, education, health and highways with consequences of public sector jobs shrinking or disappearing and costs rising for all. Waiting for a waiver, farmers have stopped repaying loans. The Congress can take credit for adding cooperative societies and banks to the list of institutions turned dysfunctional by politics of appeasement.Every economic pundit has said a loan waiver is no solution to farmer distress. Yet this government, which has raised a battalion of advisers, has ignored this sane advice. There is no effort to look beyond the set framework. In recent years, Punjab has not thrown up a single big idea to solve any of its serious problems. Haryana is promoting sports and offering secured price for vegetable growers. Himachal Pradesh is known for its single-minded devotion to human development. Madhya Pradesh gives deficiency payments to farmers selling produce below the MSP. Telangana pays a flat subsidy of Rs 4,000 per acre every sowing season. There is little hope the coming budget will be any different. We have policy-makers who tend to shut the door when an opportunity arrives. The Chief Minister can go to Mumbai to woo private investment, but when Canada’s Prime Minister, with all the goodwill for Punjabis arrived, he had no economic agenda to talk of. Instead, he produced a list of nine wanted men and revived a dead issue called Khalistan. He could not get over the slight Canada dealt him by denying a visa.  North India in general and Punjab in particular can benefit from increased trade with Pakistan and countries beyond, but none of the Punjab leaders have cared to counter war-mongering by BJP foot soldiers. Trade is the best answer to terror and that requires greater opening up to Pakistan. But the Captain seems busy figuring out how on earth he tied himself in knots with those outrageous election-time promises on the advice of a clever poll strategist.“Politics is about promising, disappointing and managing disappointment,” says Prof Stephen Holmes of New York University. Holmes may not have heard of Capt Amarinder Singh but what he says sums up the Punjab CM’s practice of democracy. The Captain has spent one year reminding people how big a mess the Badals have left behind. The Chief Minister’s sense of surprise at the state’s Rs 2.08 lakh crore debt seems manufactured since all state debt figures, including Uday bonds, state guarantees and loans of public sector enterprises, have been in the public domain. In a TOI interview (February 27) he said: “The growth rate of the state in 2006-07 (when he was the CM) was 10.18%, which was higher than the all India average of 9.57%. By 2016-17, it had fallen to 4.20% of all India average of 7.5 per cent”. The Hindu report “No fresh taxes in Punjab Budget” (March 8, 2006) mentions Punjab’s likely growth rate at 5.5 per cent — almost half of what the Captain claims. This reminds one of what American politician-diplomat Daniel Patrick Moynihan has said: “Everyone is entitled to his own opinion but not to his own facts”.Cost-cutting has started in Punjab but at the wrong end: closure of rural schools, bare minimum fixed salary for teachers, winding up of “suvidha kendra” and shutting down of power plants. Taxes, power tariffs and bus fares have gone up. There has been little sacrifice at the top. Hoping for a cut in wasteful government expenditure is like expecting a royal to live like Gandhi.Capt Amarinder Singh says he will retire once Punjab’s finances are put in order. That means no getting away from the lure of power. Why would he make himself politically redundant by seriously working for fiscal improvement? He praises Badal for memorials while his Finance Minister points to the absurdity of spending Rs 2,000 crore on memorials and denying Rs 20 crore to Panjab University.The budget offers a chance to the ruling political operatives to change the perception of being anti-change. It is time to go back to the basics: water, air, soil, education and health. The declining quality of water, air and soil has enormous ramifications for human health and family budgets. Substandard education has made youth unemployable. The budget can fund a credible rescue plan for each of these areas. It is time to move from extravagance to productive use of resources.

nirmalssandhu@gmail.com

Smoke billows from the hills after shelling by Pakistan in Rajouri. File photo

Amir Karim Tantray

Tribune News Service

Jammu, March 6

In all, 10 soldiers and a Border Security Force (BSF) jawan have been martyred along the Line of Control (LoC) in J&K since January 1 this year.Also, Pakistan violated the ceasefire agreement over 400 times. In two months, three more BSF jawans were also martyred along the 198-km-long International Border, which falls only in the Jammu region.The violence has spread from the Akhnoor sector of Jammu district to the Tangdhar sector of Kupwara district, thus involving a major portion of the LoC, which has caused great inconvenience to the people living nearby.Though the month of January and first two weeks of February witnessed shelling and firing on the LoC in the Jammu region only, but thereafter places such as Uri and Tangdhar falling on north of Pir Panjal in the Kashmir valley also witnessed exchange of heavy artillery.Meanwhile, the Pakistan army targeted particularly Akhnoor, Sunderbani, Nowshera, Bhimber Gali, Krishna Ghati and Poonch sectors along the LoC in the Jammu region and Uri and Tangdhar sectors of the Kashmir valley.The Army has been claiming that Pakistan army resorts to unprovoked ceasefire violations along the LoC every time, which most of the times is aimed at facilitating infiltration and at times giving cover fire to their Border Action Team members. However, the Army has responded to the violations and has caused extensive damage to the Pakistan army.

official data reveals…

• According to the government, the Pakistan army violated the truce agreement 351 times till February 21 this year
• After February 21, the Pakistan army continuously violated the agreement and the number has gone beyond 400
• Three more BSF jawans were martyred along the 198-km-long International Border, which falls only in the Jammu region