Friday, June 22, 2007

Tawang: Some Indian Plain-Speaking at last, by B.Raman

From his article,

It was the failure of Jawaharlal Nehru and V.K.Krishna Menon and those in India's Ministry of External Affairs who were their advisers to understand the Chinese mind-set, which led to the national humiliation in the Sino-Indian war of 1962. Repeated warnings from the Intelligence Bureau about the large-scale Chinese intrusions into the Aksai Chin area of Ladakh and their construction of a road there were not only ignored, but these disturbing developments were kept away from the knowledge of the public and the Parliament. They fondly believed that they would be able to make the Chinese see reason and withdraw from this region by observing a policy of silence and not articulating our concerns in public. Their fond hopes were belied.

1 comment:

habc said...

awesome interview with Verghese Kurien (Amul)

excerpts

Abolish the post of the Registrar of Cooperative Societies. This post is occupied by IAS officers who don’t know the subject. Also, I have never understood why the Centre’s agriculture secretary should be a man who does not know agriculture. He is an IAS officer. Why should it be so? I think the time has come to abolish the IAS.

Wherever farmers have had cooperatives, there have been no cases of suicides. It has happened only in places where there were no farmer institutions, where farmers didn’t have any say, where they were unable to market their produce and were exploited by middlemen. Wherever there is Amul, there has been no suicide. The solution lies in the formation of cooperatives all over the country. You should not underestimate the farmer’s ability to manage things

It is amazing what India is capable of doing in the absence of the bureaucratic stranglehold. The bureaucracy should become servants of the people. But they won’t change; they won’t let go.