Perspectives on foreign policy, defence, strategic affairs and governance
Rohan Joshi joins us on INI with The Filter Coffee, a blog “dedicated to raising awareness of issues relating to foreign policy, defense, strategic affairs and governance so that India’s citizens can demand the accountability they deserve from their elected representatives on the pursuit of India’s national [...]
India’s national security reform is in the second stage
Going by most media reports, you will be forgiven for believing that M K Narayanan’s movement to West Bengal as governor has got entirely to do with an energetic home minister winning turf battles and the Congress party president going one up on the prime minister. Or [...]
Mountbatten, Ismay and their outdated legacy
My article in this month’s issue of Pragati, on reforming India’s national security policy, is titled “Start by burying Lord Ismay“.
But who was Lord Ismay and why does he need to be buried? Well, General Hastings Lionel Ismay was a British general and post retirement from the British Army, served [...]
Yes, it was the UPA’s political persuasions that got in the way of fighting terrorists
On June 8th, 2004, the UPA government presented its programme in parliament, in the president’s speech:
My government is concerned about the misuse of POTA in the recent past. While there can be no compromise on the fight against terrorism, the [...]
A seven-point programme for your favourite party’s manifesto
Start fighting the war of minds
1. Project the war for what it is—that the New Jihadis are against everything that India stands for: freedom, openness, democracy and a tolerant way of life.
2. Assure the nation that we will fight—and win—this war. This will bring fence-sitters onto the side [...]
The costs of giving in to separatist demands are exhorbitant
By V Anantha Nageswaran
Pratap Bhanu Mehta has arrived at, in more elegant prose, the same conclusions that Swaminathan Aiyar advocated in the Times of India and Vir Sanghvi did in Hindustan Times.
Dr Mehta asks: “Will (India) live with the permanent rebuke to its democracy that [...]
Well, almost everyone
That a British newspaper should get its readers all excited about China’s ’secret’ submarine in Sanya, Hainan is explicable, for this is the time when the Western world is purposefully discovering the Orwellian nature of the term “peaceful rise”.
Reports, satellite images, and analyses of China’s commissioning of Class 094 nuclear missile submarines (SSBNs) [...]
Time to stop putting the defence rupee in so many different pigeonholes
In our op-ed in Mint, Sushant and I argue that to convert defence outlays into outcomes, it is necessary to consolidate defence expenditure under one head.
Read on…
The guns and butter trade-off
It’s time for India to review its outdated practice of obfuscating the true [...]
The call for a blue ribbon commission
In a piece to be published in a Hindi newspaper, K Subrahmanyam calls for the formation of a non-partisan panel to recommend military reforms, and that “it should be clear to the government and Parliament that once such a commission submits its recommendations there will be no further nitpicking [...]
The solution to officer shortages is military modernisation and liberalisation of education
In our op-ed in Mint, Sushant Singh and I argue that the shortage of officers in the armed forces is not an anomaly, and merely raising take-home salaries isn’t going to solve the problem. First, India needs a capital-intensive army and must allocate more [...]
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