CISF, which marks its raising day on 10 March, guards critical infrastructure like airports & nuclear facilities & corporates such as Reliance, TATA & Infosys.
Delivering the 12th R. N. Kao memorial lecture in New Delhi, Vohra stressed on India's need for a holistic national security policy as well as ministry.
The graduation is meant to bolster the legacy and legitimacy of Sheikh Hasina's Awami League, even as the real-world preparedness lagged behind the glossy narrative.
Indonesia delegation led by Defence Minister Sjafrie Sjamsoeddin visited BrahMos facility & met with top officials & undertook a detailed briefing on the missile system.
It is a brilliant, reasonably priced, and mostly homemade aircraft with a stellar safety record; only two crashes in 24 years since its first flight. But its crash is a moment of introspection.
In the Modi regime, the words Nation and Interest have now turned irrelevant !
These two words stand belittled as these have ironically been replaced by a sheer
selfish politics of five Ps -POWER, PELF, PARTY, PLOYS, POPULISM !
The governance and politics in the four and a half years of NaMo rule has infact
been reduced to a child’s play and a fun as decisions are being imposed recklessly
without any thought, vision, planning and preparation to redress the grievances of
the masses of the nation !
So far as National Interest is concerned it has been left to Mr.Shekhar Gupta to see to
it because for the duo of NaMo-Amit Shah winning polls is the only and only interest
as well as religion !
Their thinking and decision-making act reminds me of a time tested phrase :
” Fools rush in where angels fear to tread ” !
The culture of working only in the policy domain without necessary statutory backing is fraught with the danger that the entire edifice may be simply rendered redundant by the next govt or demogogue. CCS is the essence of Indian Cabinet form of govt. This has been rendered defunct in a sustained and deliberate manner…
Where is the check for this sort of continued madness?! Only with the voters?! Sad. I wish the other pillars were effective in bringing about a more consistent and constitutionally compliant approach.
Factually Cabinet Secretary isn’t Constitutional Post. It can be considered equivalent to Constitutional Post since Attorney General and LG Delhi ranks 11th along with him in table of precendence.
Modi is clueless and shooting in dark hoping that Doval ???? may hit the target.
Too much dependence on anyone may backfire resulting in redundancy in the system.
Ajit Doval with all power (without responsibility) in his hand, whenever he meet with a failure, can easily blame or will shift the burden on the subordinates.
Few Indians would be able to name the Cabinet Secretary. A fixed two year term, more often than not an extra couple of years by way of extensions. Three intervening batches miss their shot at greatness. Would not mind the new arrangement at all. The real test would lie in results delivered. First visible in our troubled neighbourhood.
I don’t see what the fuss is about ….. our national security apparatus is ossified and dysfunctional and the PM is doing something to shake things up. The heart of the problem is coordination and control of multiple sprawling bureaucracies – foreign ministry, defense, policing, intelligence and so on – and this looks like a mechanism to improve that. The criticism seems to be rooted in ruffled bureaucratic feathers, hurt egos (IAS vs IFS vs IPS vs Armed forces nonsense) and not in logic. Let’s give this a chance and see …. things don’t have to stay the way they have been since the Raj.
The most cringeworthy thing about the episode was that tweet response from IPS association. Reeked of a sense of entitlement and the tone was “how dare you question us?”.
We had gone to great lengths to ensure that we don’t end up becoming a military dictatorship. Seems like we have overcorrected for it and are now oblivious to the dangers of being a police-state!
I saw nothing cringeworthy or reflective of a sense of entitlement in the IPS Association tweet. Rather, they had merely reacted in a measured way – drawing attention to Doval’s record – to Mr Gupta’s statement that for the first time an IAS officer would report to an IPS officer. It is the statement from Mr Gupta that is cringeworthy and mischievous … it seems to suggest that the IAS has an automatic entitlement to primacy in any governmental set up. Doval is no longer a serving officer – he is there because of his position as NSA, not as an IPS officer. It is also wrong to characterize the nature of the relationships within this new group as “reporting” relationships ….. all members are heads of their respective organizations, and the NSA is the senior figure. At this level of government, it is expected that people have the maturity to work together collaboratively and not remain stuck in the rut of who-outranks-whom, bureaucratic backbiting and so forth. And if the Cabinet Secretary has to report to the NSA, an IAS officer to an IPS officer then so what? Things should work on merit and logic, not caste.
“…And three that the notification is signed not by the relevant officer in the Prime Minister’s Office or the cabinet secretariat, but by a joint secretary in the National Security Council..”
By getting the above notification signed by a junior bureaucrat Modi ji thinks he can rescind it any time.
Mao had said, “power flows from the barrel of the gun”. By this notice Modi ji has brought the power-centre closer to the gun, taking it away from CCS which had few civilian cabinet ministers as its members. This way Modi ji thinks he has the gun. It may not be obvious yet that even Ajit Doval has no gun… The gun is in the hand of those who actually have the gun, as simple as that! I do not remember it fully now, but I don’t know why the Iskander Mirza Ayub Khan story is coming to my mind!
God is being very kind to our country, believe it or not. If you can not read between the lines, don’t ask me to read between the lines. Even I can’t. Has that become a kind of national creed or what — passing the buck?! The buck can boomerang. Again don’t ask me to read between the lines.
Well worded and precise. but is any one there lisiting. Our institutions are going through testing times. Whos going to bell the cat and when are we leave it to time only.
The title of your article took me by surprise because I thought you have become a part of it, the organization you have described. Ha ha. Any way criticism has lost it s sting and majority government has its own antidotes. Only one question : whose brain child is this ? Some group of not so knowledgeable has been working on it and must have been pushed from Nagpur (?). So after getting rid of Planning Commission, UGC etc this is the new victim. Will this go the same way as NITI ayog which as pet an article in your Print has not given any importance by own brother ane. ?
Apt questions, sir, like always.
Prof PK Sharma, Freelance Journalist,Barnala (Punjab)
In the Modi regime, the words Nation and Interest have now turned irrelevant !
These two words stand belittled as these have ironically been replaced by a sheer
selfish politics of five Ps -POWER, PELF, PARTY, PLOYS, POPULISM !
The governance and politics in the four and a half years of NaMo rule has infact
been reduced to a child’s play and a fun as decisions are being imposed recklessly
without any thought, vision, planning and preparation to redress the grievances of
the masses of the nation !
So far as National Interest is concerned it has been left to Mr.Shekhar Gupta to see to
it because for the duo of NaMo-Amit Shah winning polls is the only and only interest
as well as religion !
Their thinking and decision-making act reminds me of a time tested phrase :
” Fools rush in where angels fear to tread ” !
Prof PK Sharma, Freelance Journalist
Pom Anm Nest,Barnala(Punjab)
The culture of working only in the policy domain without necessary statutory backing is fraught with the danger that the entire edifice may be simply rendered redundant by the next govt or demogogue. CCS is the essence of Indian Cabinet form of govt. This has been rendered defunct in a sustained and deliberate manner…
Where is the check for this sort of continued madness?! Only with the voters?! Sad. I wish the other pillars were effective in bringing about a more consistent and constitutionally compliant approach.
Factually Cabinet Secretary isn’t Constitutional Post. It can be considered equivalent to Constitutional Post since Attorney General and LG Delhi ranks 11th along with him in table of precendence.
Modi is clueless and shooting in dark hoping that Doval ???? may hit the target.
Too much dependence on anyone may backfire resulting in redundancy in the system.
Ajit Doval with all power (without responsibility) in his hand, whenever he meet with a failure, can easily blame or will shift the burden on the subordinates.
Few Indians would be able to name the Cabinet Secretary. A fixed two year term, more often than not an extra couple of years by way of extensions. Three intervening batches miss their shot at greatness. Would not mind the new arrangement at all. The real test would lie in results delivered. First visible in our troubled neighbourhood.
I don’t see what the fuss is about ….. our national security apparatus is ossified and dysfunctional and the PM is doing something to shake things up. The heart of the problem is coordination and control of multiple sprawling bureaucracies – foreign ministry, defense, policing, intelligence and so on – and this looks like a mechanism to improve that. The criticism seems to be rooted in ruffled bureaucratic feathers, hurt egos (IAS vs IFS vs IPS vs Armed forces nonsense) and not in logic. Let’s give this a chance and see …. things don’t have to stay the way they have been since the Raj.
The most cringeworthy thing about the episode was that tweet response from IPS association. Reeked of a sense of entitlement and the tone was “how dare you question us?”.
We had gone to great lengths to ensure that we don’t end up becoming a military dictatorship. Seems like we have overcorrected for it and are now oblivious to the dangers of being a police-state!
I saw nothing cringeworthy or reflective of a sense of entitlement in the IPS Association tweet. Rather, they had merely reacted in a measured way – drawing attention to Doval’s record – to Mr Gupta’s statement that for the first time an IAS officer would report to an IPS officer. It is the statement from Mr Gupta that is cringeworthy and mischievous … it seems to suggest that the IAS has an automatic entitlement to primacy in any governmental set up. Doval is no longer a serving officer – he is there because of his position as NSA, not as an IPS officer. It is also wrong to characterize the nature of the relationships within this new group as “reporting” relationships ….. all members are heads of their respective organizations, and the NSA is the senior figure. At this level of government, it is expected that people have the maturity to work together collaboratively and not remain stuck in the rut of who-outranks-whom, bureaucratic backbiting and so forth. And if the Cabinet Secretary has to report to the NSA, an IAS officer to an IPS officer then so what? Things should work on merit and logic, not caste.
“…And three that the notification is signed not by the relevant officer in the Prime Minister’s Office or the cabinet secretariat, but by a joint secretary in the National Security Council..”
By getting the above notification signed by a junior bureaucrat Modi ji thinks he can rescind it any time.
Mao had said, “power flows from the barrel of the gun”. By this notice Modi ji has brought the power-centre closer to the gun, taking it away from CCS which had few civilian cabinet ministers as its members. This way Modi ji thinks he has the gun. It may not be obvious yet that even Ajit Doval has no gun… The gun is in the hand of those who actually have the gun, as simple as that! I do not remember it fully now, but I don’t know why the Iskander Mirza Ayub Khan story is coming to my mind!
God is being very kind to our country, believe it or not. If you can not read between the lines, don’t ask me to read between the lines. Even I can’t. Has that become a kind of national creed or what — passing the buck?! The buck can boomerang. Again don’t ask me to read between the lines.
Well worded and precise. but is any one there lisiting. Our institutions are going through testing times. Whos going to bell the cat and when are we leave it to time only.
The title of your article took me by surprise because I thought you have become a part of it, the organization you have described. Ha ha. Any way criticism has lost it s sting and majority government has its own antidotes. Only one question : whose brain child is this ? Some group of not so knowledgeable has been working on it and must have been pushed from Nagpur (?). So after getting rid of Planning Commission, UGC etc this is the new victim. Will this go the same way as NITI ayog which as pet an article in your Print has not given any importance by own brother ane. ?