[Reader-list] Inedia launches 7 eyes in the sky.......

[Rakesh Iyer]

Dear Rajen

The question not only is of those working in the DRDO, which of course must
be disbanded. But your argument is mainly concerned with the quality of
staff which is working there. If say, instead of the so-called progenies and
relatives of the politicians and powerful people working, we may have
technically qualified and competent professionals for the same, you may
agree to it.

My stand is totally divergent from this. I accept that in today's times,
unfortunately, defence is something each state has to build and look at. But
one must remember the consequences of militarism as well. At a time when
India wants to become a global superpower probably by the end of the
century, thanks to the ideals set by the ex-President Mr. Kalam of making
India a developed nation by 2020, defence lobbies would like to spend ample
amount of resources on missile development and other programs to bring about
outward projection of India as a strong state.

I completely disagree with this projection because of the costs and benefits
associated with it. The strengths of India as a state lie in it being a
democratic, socialist and secular republic, as enshrined in the
Constitution. Yes, our democracy doesn't function as a proper democracy
should on the scale of 100, but we do have regular elections, we do have
governments being voted out and changed without any violence accompanying
it, and we do have reasonable amount of free and fair elections (not
withstanding claims of unfairness in the elections to many constituencies in
India, like the ones for the Home Minister and the Minister of Chemicals in
the present govt.). We are a heterogeneous society with people of different
ethnicities, different religions, different practices and customs (even
within the same religion or region), different castes (and castes exist even
Muslims or Christians, and so does caste discrimination), and many other
differences in views and ideas. And yet we live together.

Not for nothing should we be proud of that Indian Muslims have not gone on
to join the global terror network of Al-Qaeda, though they may have been
brain-washed to attack the state itself by targetting innocent citizens in
the name of 'jihad'. (I say may because many of the cases are yet to be
proven, and yet even accepting that claim for once, that percentage is very
small compared to the total population of Muslims in India, which is the
third largest in the world). And to some extent, the credit for the same
should go to India being a democratic state (as opposed to Pakistan, where
dictatorship combined with theocracy to produce organizations which are now
a bane for the global society itself, such as Al-Qaeda, the
Lashkar-e-Tayyeba and so on).

Instead, some fools would like to believe that power lies in having more
missiles and nuclear capabilities. I believe that not only do these hinder
the freedom of other nations to spend on social programs (by forcing them in
an arms race, somewhat unwillingly), but more-so, they also hinder one's own
capability to spend on issues which require more resources. For example,
India faces tremendous amounts of chronic starvation, deprivation in
nutritional terms, poor literacy and education rates (including enrolment
rates for secondary and college education as well), as well as problems on
health and employment sector.

What's more, in the case of Pakistan, and even China, these capabilities
have not helped us to either attain peace or bully these nations into
submission to achieve our goals. For example, in the case of Pakistan, once
we performed the nuclear tests in 1998, Pakistan actually managed to prove
its nuclear capabilities by performing the tests as a response. Before that,
they didn't have any proof of the same, whereas we had already done so in
1974 to prove ourselves in that field.

And as for China, the nation we were supposedly targetting through the
blasts, it simply chided us by stating that nations should behave
responsibly, and thereby got greater leverage. And most importantly, what
nations like India forget is that China gets greater leverage at the
international scene mainly because they are economically very sound and very
important, which is not the case with India. Of course, why China has
reached there has its valid reasons as well, but India must learn this
important lesson and focus on some of these economic goals as well rather
than making missiles as well (which North Korea does, and thereby gets only
aid from US for its rulers. But North Korea is not democratic, otherwise
such a govt would have been swept away in a wave against it in elections. )

Regards

Rakesh