Topic: Rafale deal

Thanks for sharing an insightful article. While it covered & named Former NDA PM and their drawbacks, it also covered the UPA Defense Minister’s attitude. Behind all the noise and chest thumping, its good to know where do we stand and why the need of the hour is a decisive government at centre with guts to take decisions.

I really liked your detailed article.and if what wrote is true then we really need to worry about our pain in the ass neigbour(s).I just feel that you only went against bjp in the article when you could have also pointed out the lapses in congress government.I m not any party supporter.I have used nota in every election I have voted.but’we slept through a decade’ seems like a try to sweep it under the rug to defend or hide congress’s failure.you wrote in detail about bjp government in those years..that was good info.but what about congress ?there failure should be outlined too..from a logical indian to a factivist.

Very useful piece of article. Máster piece Ver rightly pointed out that if we IAF would have superiority and unmatched defence systems PAF would Not have dared to struck in broad Day light. Right introspection and critical review of 27Feb is extremely important as suggested in the article than Just going gung ho over IAF MIg repulsing the strike n shooting down one F16. While 26 Feb was a real show of IAF deception and striking deep into pak territory 27feb clearly belonged to PAF and took the thunder out of our previous night operation. we were Lucky to get away with Just one aircraft as casuality. We Indians cannot choose to look the other way in this regard . Battles r Not Just decided by country size n no of aircrafts or soldiers. Just being 3times the size of Pak does not gurrantee us decisive win .the commanders and the generals should be prepared to effectively thwart the surprise moves of the enemy with right equipments in this digital era. We would like to believe that the political brass and army Will take lessons and should deep dive on the whole scenario to avoid any harakiri in future conflicts particularly in air Warfare .

AND The security forces are claiming for TWO FRONT CONFRONTATION- With both Pakistan and China!! How silly? Chinese manufacture their own planes, AND INDIA IMPORTS EVERYTHING FROM CHINA EXCEPT DEFENCE EQUIPMENTS. Indian’s God’s statues, the lights,diaas,shoes,watches computers, YOU NAME IT AND ITS IMPOTTED FROM CHINA!. The happiness quotent? We are somewhere 145 or 150! The war mongering people on TV, be it poets, Anchors, and participants, these must be sent to the front to fight OhR there must some law to penalise these people AND FAKE NEWS WALAS. Now most of the news are fake.

Once again Shekhar Gupta doesn’t mince words or take sides when it comes to discussing issues. Look at this incident purely from strategy and power-play perspective (Ref. . Robert Greene’s “48 rules of Power”). India is dealing with an enemy that’s formless and lawless (if we ignore the covert institutional support of Pakistan’s deep state). Assuming that the premise for Balakot was to “recreate” India’s response to terrorism by “stirring up the waters to catch fish”, was the plan realised “all the way to the end”. The answer is NO. The capture and release of Wing Cdr Abhinandan hugely diluted the advantage that the Indian establishment was seeking, because the Western Media’s (including BBC) headlines were “Pakistan releases captured Indian pilot”. It all seemed like a joke when that ‘Machiavellian’ video was also played out.

The fact that both Pakistan and China are playing aggressive cat-and-mouse game (especially since 2014), it is high time Indians either acknowledge that they are incapable of building high-tech weapons and therefore shed their squeamishness in buying from the best OR build up the capability. Is latter an option in current circumstances? Perhaps the helpless citizens of India understand this truth, and that’s why Congress has suddenly shifted gears from Rafale to this income for poor tactic.

Finally, you press where it goes wrong. Bravo. And in addition you mention incidentally the issue of pollution of the Ganges! What more can be said?

You are such a lackey for BJP that you are dedicating full energy to support & circumvent Rafael deal.

You are dishonset crooked media person.

You are equating indecision to corruption. Why don’t you constitute JPC to dig all the dirt. The truth will be that UPA delayed the decision and Modi hurried the decision just to favour a company.
Modi cronies have become so shameless to accuse a person for non corruption

Very lucid, well analysed & thought provoking article. I wish Mr S’har Gupta had concluded the article by suggesting some solutions to the unwinding decision making process. If the essence of this article (learning a lesson from past failures, especially if it has a direct bearing on national security) were to be extrapolated, it would invariably point to two distinct outcomes in the near future (i) Decisive say by the uniformed fraternity in procurement and policy matters.
(ii) Faster decision making by the military-politico-bureaucratic machinery.

More such though provoking, unbiased articles please.

Mr. Shekhar Gupta, one of the finest articles from you. Many thanks. The indecisiveness on the part of A.K.Antony is very painful and has caused all the trouble. All he wanted was to keep his own shirt clean and didn’t bother about the country’s defence preparedness. Yes, Yeshawant Sinha & Swami were the habitual trouble makers, but why did Antony heed to them? Had he not any conviction and assertiveness? In spite of this dismal attitude of A.K.Antony, the acquisition process was left in the most corrupt state during his tenure. At the cost of repetition, I quote below form the CAG Report on Rafale:
“HAL did not agree with the man-hours required for the proposed production and raised it to 2.7 times of the French estimates. (This, obviously, made DA’s position as L-1 s untenable). The NDA government referred this to a team/panel to examine the matter .
“The team in its report submitted on 27 March 2015 concluded as follows :
• At the stage of TEC, the proposal M/s DA was not compliant to the RFP with respect to the ASQR, Warrant clause and option clause. The proposal of vendor should have been rejected at the TEC stage itself.
• The acceptance of additional commercial proposal after bid submission date for capabilities, which were already prescribed in the RFP, was unprecedented and against the cannons of financial propriety.
• The final bid of M/s DA, was non-compliant as it was incomplete and not in the prescribed format.
• The L-1 sub-committee had filled up the incomplete entries by culling out figures given elsewhere under different headings of the price bid. While doing so, the members of the committee made certain assumptions. Calculation of L-1 based on incomplete commercial proposal and based on assumptions was incorrect and as such determination of L-1 was faulty and not as per laid down procedure.
Therefore, the committee recommended in March 2015 that the RFP for procurement of MMCRA may be withdrawn. As a result the procurement which started in 2000 had made no progress after lapse of 15 years and in fact failed on twin issues of manpower costs and n-n-guarantee for aircrafts to be manufactured by M/s HAL , as brought out in paras 7(i) and 7(ii) above. “
I may add that bid of makers of Eurofighter Planes was also non-compliant of RFP ! Thus in the end, there was an absurd scenario that no bid was eligible!!!The critics of the Rafale deal want Modi to be arrested for the alleged irregularities. But the damage caused by Manmohan Singh –A.K.Antony duo is far much more than what has been alleged against Modi. India’s bargaining strength was weakened due to unexplained delay on the part of the UPA government and its failure to conclude the contract in 2012. In the interregnum period from 2012 to 2015, Dassualt Aviation (DA) received orders from Egypt and Qatar, whereas India’s need to buy these aircraft aggravated. The dissent note submitted by three members of Indian Negotiating Team (INT) highlights the fact that DA had a very tight production schedule. The inactive and passive tenure of A.K. Antony has cost India very dearly. It caused loss of opportunity, loss of defence preparedness, though it cannot be quantified in monetary terms.

Waiting for Manish Tiwari’s rebuttal..?