"Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower," Steve Jobs.

And how well these words describe the man himself. For a man who takes home an annual salary of $1, it is surprising that Jobs regularly is in the list of the world's rich and powerful.

In his resume, Jobs says his objective is to look for a fixer-upper with a solid foundation. "Am willing to tear down walls, build bridges, and light fires. I have great experience, lots of energy, a bit of that "vision thing" and I'm not afraid to start from the beginning."

Born in Green Bay, Wisconsin to Joanne Simpson and an Egyptian Arab father, Jobs is the chief executive officer of Apple Computer and Pixar Animation Studios. Jobs was adopted by Paul and Clara Jobs of Mountain View, Santa Clara County, California.

Jobs lives with his wife, Laurene Powell and their three children in Silicon Valley. He also has a daughter, Lisa Jobs from a previous relationship.

Here is Steve Jobs' Commencement address at Stanford University where he speaks about the highs and lows of life, how to counter challenges and how to fight the odds to come out victorious. Jobs delivered this speech on June 12, 2005.

I am honoured to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world.

I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. No big deal. Just three stories.

The first story is about connecting the dots.

I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?

It started before I was born.

My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption.

She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife.

Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl.

So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: "We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?" They said: "Of course."

My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers.

She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.

And 17 years later, I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition.

After six months, I couldn't see the value in it.

I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out.

And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK.

It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made.

The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.

It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5 deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple.

I loved it.

And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on.

Let me give you one example: Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in thecountry.

Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed.

Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this.

I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great.

It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating.

None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me.

And we designed it all into the Mac.

It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts.

And since Windows just copied the Mac, its likely that no personal computer would have them.

If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do.

Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college.

But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.

Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards.

So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future.

You have to trust in something -- your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever.

This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

My second story is about love and loss.

I was lucky -- I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4,000 employees.

We had just released our finest creation - the Macintosh -- a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired.

How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well.

But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out.

When we did, our board of directors sided with him.

So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.

I really didn't know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down -- that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me.

I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologise for screwing up so badly.

I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me -- I still loved what I did.

The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.

I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me.

The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything.

It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.

During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife.

Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world.

In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I returned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple's current renaissance.

And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.

I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it.

Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick.

Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did.

You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers.

Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work.

And the only way to do great work is to love what you do.

If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle.

As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on.

So keep looking until you find it.

Don't settle.

My third story is about death.

When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right."

It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?"

And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life.

Because almost everything -- all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure -- these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important.

Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose.

You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas.

I didn't even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months.

My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor's code for prepare to die.

It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you'd have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months.

It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.

I lived with that diagnosis all day.

Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor.

I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery.

I had the surgery and I'm fine now.

This was the closest I've been to facing death, and I hope its the closest I get for a few more decades.

Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept:

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there.

And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new.

Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.

Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma - which is living with the results of other people's thinking.

Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition.

They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation.

It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch.

This was in the late 1960's, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras.

It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.

Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue.

It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age.

On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous.

Beneath it were the words: "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish." It was their farewell message as they signed off.

Stay Hungry.

Stay Foolish.

And I have always wished that for myself.

And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.

Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

Thank you.

Over 50% of petrol prices are made of taxes!!!

India’s bureaucratic albatross

The following article is by Tavleen Singh taken from Indian Express.

Tavleen Singh

Every time I deal with Indian officials I become so depressed that I almost need therapy. As a reckless optimist and a proud Indian, I keep hoping that I will one day go into a government office and notice the changes that are necessary if India is to drag herself out of poverty, illiteracy and corruption. Having just last week had dealings with officials in various government departments, I can only report the opposite. Our officials remain untouched by technology, modernity, national interest or higher ideals. So I endorse from the bottom of my heart a new report that concludes that our bureaucrats are the worst in Asia. The report is the result of a survey of 12 Asian economies done last year by the Political and Economic Risk Consultancy based in Hong Kong, and although bits of it have found their way into Indian newspapers, there has been not nearly as much fuss as there should have been about a report that shames India.

The report blames India’s ‘suffocating bureaucracy’ for us falling behind countries like Vietnam, Bangladesh, Bhutan and Myanmar in providing our people with minimal standards of healthcare, sanitation and education. Examine just the sad fact that 43 per cent of Indian children under the age of five are underweight compared with 20 per cent in Vietnam and 14 per cent in Bhutan and you understand what we are up against. It is not because of a shortage of funds that millions of Indians are forced to live in conditions of shameful poverty and degradation. The Government of India spent Rs 4 trillion on various poverty alleviation programmes last year. The report points out that if even half this money had been distributed among our estimated 60 million poor households, they would each get Rs 80 a day and so rise above the poverty line. Our own Planning Commission pointed this out more than a decade ago but because there has not been the smallest attempt to get our babu-log to work more efficiently, nothing has changed.

The result is that our bureaucrats and the army of petty officials that work under them have remained mired in systems that make the simplest procedure into a long and difficult thing. One of the offices I had to deal with last week was the Regional Passport Office in Delhi. It was hell. There were queues for coupons that allowed you to join queues to enter the building, that led you to other queues that led to a maze of windows behind which sat bored officials. There was no system. If I had not had the help of a guide, I think I may have queued for days, as others do, and taken months to get my ‘tatkaal’ (at once) passport. My English brother-in-law did not even need to go to the British High Commission to renew his. He filled his form online and in three days he had his new passport.

Indian government departments have computers today and access to the Internet, but they seem not to understand that this should put an end to filling endless forms. And, other useless procedures. If things are bad in Delhi, it is hard to even begin to describe how bad they are in the provinces. I have been into provincial government departments and provincial courts in which they are still using ancient typewriters. Then, there are the filthy working conditions that get filthier in our state capitals. Rotting garbage, stray animals, dusty furniture, wires hanging everywhere and mountains of waste paper. The general impression is of a country falling to pieces and not one that harbours dreams of becoming an economic superpower.

The reason why this column bangs on and on about the need for urgent administrative reforms is because without them we can do almost nothing else. It is not just civilian government departments that are mired in 18th-century systems, but even those that deal with national security. Bad governance is a pernicious, pervasive disease. If you want proof, all you need to do is spend five minutes observing procedures in your nearest police station. That is all the time you need to discover that it is not just the absence of modern weapons that handicap our police when they are dealing with Islamist terrorists. It is incompetence enforced by convoluted and confused procedures.

Having covered governance and politics for more than 20 years, it is my humble view that India could become an economic superpower with clean air and water, magnificent new cities and a healthy, literate population, if we could make our officials do their jobs properly. Dr Manmohan Singh knows this and has been talking about the importance of administrative reforms since the first press conference he gave after he became Prime Minister in 2004. Why does he do nothing about it?

LIFE-CYLE

Just exactly as if you are landing a spaceship from another galaxy, your soul enters your body and lands here on Earth. Perhaps you come from out of nowhere, out of nothingness.
Or else you had a previous existence somewhere, in another realm or in this realm, and you have forgotten it.
Perhaps you land here of your own free choice.
Or some cosmic force some karma beyond you causes you to land on this planet; and you have no choice. No matter. This is Earth. You land and stay for a while.



You come here to do certain specific things.
You may have one task or many. Your tasks may be obvious to you or you may need time, effort, maybe struggle even to clarify your tasks.
You may never quite even clarify your task until the moment your time in this body ends.
You may work on your task for years before you realize, “This is my task.”
The tasks you came to perform may take the whole of your life or be done in an instant.
You may be aware you are performing your life task while you do it.
You may perform your task quickly, hardly noticing anything special, unaware you are doing the task you came to do while you do it.
Your task may be so easy, obvious and natural, you never even wonder, "What is my task?"
Your unique blend of talents and interests may lead you to your task and you just do it.
Or, your task may be a constant, unpleasant struggle you fight every step of the way.
Your task may be noble and wonderful and gain you recognition, rewards and honors.
Or, it may be simple, totally unnoticeable by anyone else.




You will be born with a powerful innate desire to remain alive. You will do almost anything to continue living. At some point you may discover some limits, and allow your life to end.




Every thought you have, every action you take, every feeling you perceive is an experience.
Experiences are neither good nor evil. Some experiences are short, some are long.
Some experiences will be fun, others will be excruciating.
Sometimes experiences seem interconnected, sometimes they seem random.
They are simply experiences.




Your experiences will come to you through four modalities: physical, emotional, mental and spiritual.
Your body will give you physical messages of sensation, movement, pain and pleasure.
Your emotional mechanism’s feelings will attract you and repel you in different directions, sometimes conflicting.
Your mind’s thoughts will make logical inferences and judgments about your experience.
Your soul’s intuitions will guide you to realize the deepest subtleties of your experience and its meaning.




Some of your experiences will be difficult. They will bring you pain and suffering.
You may wish with all your heart that some experience did not come your way.
You may find joy in the challenge of an experience, even when the pain is most severe.
Each difficult experience is a challenge, an opportunity to continue.




You will have the experience of choosing or selecting. More than one viable option will lie before you.
You will experience weighing the advantages and disadvantages of each, as best you can.
You will perceive yourself picking one and letting go of the other.
Some experiences of deciding will be very difficult; others scarcely worth noting.
Your decisions will have consequences.
The consequences of a choice may be significant or trivial.
The ultimate consequences of a choice may be very different from their first appearance.




You will experience a process of change in yourself.
One moment you may be paralyzed with fear of what lies ahead; the next moment you will feel confident and knowledgeable having walked through the fear.
The change may come gradually with no clear moment or division.
Whether the outcome you receive is what you were hoping for or very different, you will grow through each experience.




You will experience stages in your life. You begin as a single cell and grow until you are born as a small infant. You continue to grow through the life-cycle for as long as you survive: childhood, adolescence, young adulthood, adulthood, maturity, super-maturity, elderhood, and frailty.
You may not live through all of the available stages. Each segment contains physical, emotional, mental and spiritual growth experiences unique to itself.
Stages may end and begin suddenly, or segué into one another gradually.
As you conclude a stage you may feel relief or remorse that it is over.
Once you move through a stage, it is over; you cannot go back.




You will receive assistance through this process. You will find various teachers and mentors
who will share their experiences and help you read the signposts along your way. You will have birth parents who will be your central guides; or you will find surrogates for them. If you do not find another person to be your guide, you may find you can look deep within to find guidance.




You will find diverse modes through which to exchange information with other beings. You will learn spoken and written languages.
You will find ways to communicate with your body. You will communicate many things through your actions. You will discover a variety of visual, auditory and tactile arts through which to express your thoughts and feelings.
You may also discern very subtle, almost unnamable communications which can be the most powerful.




Every experience requires abilities. You will master diverse skills for an endless array of available activities.
You will have innate talents for some skills; they will come to you so easily they seem automatic.
Others will require many hours or even years to master; even after much practice, you may never become proficient at them.




You will participate in games at every stage of life.
You will play with others or by yourself in a variety of contests.
Some games will be fun; some will be deadly serious. Some games will be highly competitive; others will be totally noncompetitive.
You may compete individually or as a team, against others or only against yourself.
Some games will offer physical or material rewards or acclaim from others if you are successful at them.



You will study diverse subjects, each of which attempts to explain some details of how the world works. You may study them in a school or by your own investigation.
You will acquire minimal knowledge of some, and you will dive deeply in others.
You will learn aspects of mathematics, geography, physics, sociology, economics, biology, astronomy, anthropology, history, engineering, the arts, chemistry, philosophy, and religion.




You will be inclined to produce something or to provide a service for which you receive compensation.
Your work will earn you the food and shelter you need to survive and less essential things for your enjoyment.
You may work many long hours each day or a much smaller time segment. Your work may be an important component of your life task. Or, your work may ensure your physical survival or comfort, allowing you to fulfill the tasks you came here to do.




You will find a group of individuals to which you feel connected, either by birth, or by affinity.
You will experience a bond with the other members of this tribe or with the tribal entity itself.
You will be subject to the rules your tribe makes.
You will have a position within the tribe based on your birth or your talents. Your position will affect your activities within the tribe and throughout your life. You may find you are a part of more than one tribe or that your tribe is part of a tribal confederation.




You will find deities to which to attach your greatest fears and devotions.
You may have one god or many. You may learn about your god or gods from others or you may experience them yourself. Your gods may be attached specifically to your tribe or they may claim a wider domain. Your gods may be projections of human experience or they may be something beyond human experience with a reality all their own.




At certain special moments of your life you will mark transitions: you will sing, you will dance, you will talk to your gods, and you will do special rituals to celebrate.
You may celebrate alone or in a group.
You will celebrate those moments when you or someone in your tribe passes from one stage of the growth process to another.
Special good times and special bad times call for celebrations. Repeating seasons of each year ask for celebrations as well.




You will be drawn to certain individuals with whom you will share some of your experiences more closely. You will experience strong connections with some of the friends you find. Some will remain friends for a short time, while others may remain close to you for long periods.




You will be drawn to bond strongly with a partner. Like friends, mates may remain for short or long periods of time. Your mate may be your closest, special friend or a friend with whom you share a set of experiences. You may have one mate for your lifetime or more than one mates at different times.




You will earn rewards for your work or in payment for your other activities. Some wealth will have material value which you can exchange for physical objects or services you desire or which your tribe convinces you, you desire.
Other types of wealth are more subtle and not exchangeable. You will decide which types of wealth you will pursue and how vigorously to pursue each of them.




You will exert control through your physical being, your wealth, your office, your abilities, your personal energy or your facility for managing other people.
With this power you will make some things happen the way you want them to happen.
If your power is great enough, others will do what you would like them to do, even if it is not in their own best interest.




You will experience delights of the senses. Food, touch, music, aroma, nature, movement, art and dance will intensify your enjoyment of your time here.




You will feel an intense yearning of your body to touch another person most deeply. The intensity of that touch may take the experience beyond the body, to bond closely with the other person or to procreate, to make the life-cycle begin anew.




You will experience the urge to create your own space where you spend most of your time, where you belong, where you experience roots. It may be in the place of your origin or you may feel compelled to travel elsewhere to create it. You may wish to share your home with those closest to you.




You will express yourself or create something existing independently of yourself. What you form may last for generations or for only a moment. The content of your expression may take physical form or it may reach out through other media.




You will feel the urge to show others whatever you have earned, whatever you have created, whatever you have learned, whatever you have become. You may wish to display it publicly, to have others to view it. Or, you may display it privately just for yourself or a few others.




As your experiences broaden, you will become familiar with experience itself. You will recognize its ebb and flow, and you will become more comfortable with its changes. You may experience the desire to share this wisdom you accumulate with others.



You will do things your tribe decided was forbidden or others told you is wrong. You may do some things that something within you says you should not do. You will test some of the limits by lying, cheating, stealing, or doing other things that may cause pain. You may get caught by those in power and you may have to pay a penalty.




You will participate in the birth process and the child rearing process. You may give birth to a child. You may take a central role in guiding a child through life’s stages. You may experience parenting as bringing whatever you create into existence.




You will feel impelled to share some of what you learn through life’s experience with others. You may teach in a classroom or through any mode of communications available to you.

You will experience the need to let go of some things. You will discharge waste from your body, from your physical surroundings, from your emotional apparatus, from your mind and from your spirit. You will seek ways to discharge your wastes in a manner that is safe for yourself and your environment.




You will experience disease, pain, or sickness in yourself, in those around you or even in the whole planet.
You will feel the urge to find remedies and treatments, emotional support, and focused energy to aid in the healing process.




In some activities, you will not reach the goal you desired. You will feel pain at your failure. At times, the pain of failure will become very severe.




Everything you have is impermanent. Things you work for and you value will not remain with you forever. People close to you will die. You will feel pain with loss.




At times your emotional mode will become extremely highly charged. You will be moved to cry, either in pain or in joy or in some mixture of both.



You will experience the urge to connect intensely in physical, emotional, mental and spiritual modes.
Your love toward other beings, nature, gods, or life itself will draw you very close to the other, to identify with it most intimately or to lose yourself in it.




You will become comfortable with the diversity among other beings. You will experience accepting other beings exactly as they are, in their own unique perfection, exactly as you would like them to accept you as you are.




You will go through fundamental alterations in the quality of your experience either spontaneously or as a result of prayer, meditation, ritual, song, or special foods. You will experience great love, wisdom, serenity, or connection to a god or nature.
Experiencing altered states of consciousness will affect all of your other experiences.
You will experience yourself transformed into a different being.



The limits of your experience will expand to include intuition or a transcending of this realm or a oneness with something much greater than yourself.
You may experience yourself leaving your body or knowing things before they occur.
You may experience powerful synchronicity. You may lose your sense of yourself as an independent being and experience yourself as one with the infinite wholeness of the universe.




You will experience the urge to pass on the tale of your lifetime.
You may tell your story to those most likely to remember it or you may transmit it in some other artistic form.



You will leave your body. Everyone else will experience your body becoming lifeless and begin to decay. You will no longer be present in this plane in your physical form, but some aspects of your emotional, mental and spiritual modes may continue to be experienced by others.




Your emotional, mental or spiritual modes will enter some sort of afterlife. You may be aware of your continuity between this lifetime and the next realm or you may not.
You may experience reincarnation into the body of another being and begin another lifetime.
The nature of your next realm may be determined by your activities and experiences in this lifetime. The nature of the next realm may be extremely subtle and indescribable.




Those who knew you will recall who you were, what you did, what you gave and the qualities you manifested.
If you physically parented another, your genetic material will continue within them as well.
Others’ remembering you will continue to affect them directly and the whole planet indirectly in subtle and not so subtle ways.

The Return of Malthus

For those of you who are hearing of this gentleman for the first time, he was the 19th century scholar who postulated (the Malthusian Theory), that nature will keep producing population growth, until it creates a resource crunch, which will then create a series of natural calamities, decimating the population and setting off a new cycle.

Intuitively, he found a lot of adherents, because in the old, pre-industrial, deflationary economy, this was actually true; till man learnt ‘systematic innovation’ and started to create new professions and economics became a tool in his hands to achieve progress.

After 1850, the world learnt about inflation, monetary policy and the Industrial Revolution, which created the modern era. Thereafter, the ‘natural limits’ to any constraint started to shift outwards, until 150 years later, we have started to believe that even a desperately poor country like India has a hope of beating the Malthusian Theory.

After Japan, it became the done thing to argue that human ingenuity would be able to beat all known (resource) constraints. You could have a tiny island nation with almost no natural resources, and the dubious distinction of having a quarter of all known natural disasters, which could grow to be the most productive nation in the world, by all known measures of savings and wealth accumulation.

As always, we Indians learn the wrong lessons. We extrapolated this to tell ourselves that our huge population would never hit a resource crunch, and that our own ingenuity would always delay the onset of Armageddon.

We forgot that every time man beat the Malthusian clock, then it was because he had a lot of time to see the threat and react to it.

This time, global warming will set off a series of events that might not give us enough time to react. If the current El Nino effect turns out to be a regular affair, how many years of 60 per cent monsoon deficits can we survive?

The current monsoon deficit may well turn out to be the most comprehensive, countrywide drought that we have seen in the last 100 years. We have been following coal-based energy usage, refusing to give up our right to pollute, with the “dog in the manger” attitude that it was the West that had done the most damage till now. But the worst affected will be us; the frail, weak uptick that we have seen these last 10 years, will be over-shadowed by what follows.

If we have three monsoon failures in a row, do we have the desalination industry that will produce enough clean, potable water to quench an entire nation’s thirst? How quickly do we have communication systems to create a culture of rain harvesting, water conservation/recycling etc.? No doubt, Israel has beaten all limitations to agricultural productivity, but how quickly can we duplicate those achievements?

In the short run, we will need to quickly create a market for water. There is no way you can tell a population that something has suddenly become precious, without putting a price to it.

The reason this will not happen is this: Mamata Banerjee/The Left/The BJP will politicise the issue. Just as any concessions given to the Kyoto negotiations is seen as a sign of weakness. I am very sure that no national consensus on water will be built, until it is too late.

This time, the consequence will not be economic, but humanitarian. Geopolitical think-tanks have postulated that India will be one of the worst-affected victims of global warming, with an estimated 100 million people dying.

If 2009 is to water, what 1991 was to forex, then we have the same man-in-charge. The PM hopefully has the same understanding of this problem that he had of the forex crunch. Certainly, he has the mandate to move swiftly on this issue. He just needs to tick off the following policy prescriptions:

* Get off your high horse on the Kyoto negotiations. It makes no sense to defend our right to pollute just because the West had done so;
* The country that gets off the ground first, on ‘alternate energy’, will see technological leadership in one of the most important pillars of economic progress in the current century — clean energy. The solar mission, if it is serious, is a step in the right direction. It needs to be followed up with the development of a quasi-fiscal investment market that subsidises the excess capital cost of solar energy, leaving enough space for cost-led innovation;
* Then focus on the clean energy applications. The first would be a full commodity market in water: just make water enormously profitable to everyone;
* Create a panel of IDFC-like nodal investment institutions, whose bonds have 200 per cent weighted tax-free deduction, i.e. for every Rs 100 subscribed to the bonds, you get Rs 200 as deduction (far better than raising the taxable limit). That provides a 70 per cent subsidy to the capital cost of solar power, which the institution channelizes as debt to the sector. Set high debt norms with long paybacks for eligible projects.
* Now let a thousand flowers bloom. Include the desalination industry in this panel of clean energy users. Create a pseudo-market in “water paper”, where credits are given to those who recycle industrial (waste) water, converting it to agricultural-grade clean water. This should create millions of recycling units, mostly based on solar applications, a variant of the solar water heating systems that have been so successful in rural areas;
* Promote the same ‘water paper’ to create a micro-irrigation industry, through which farmers can buy entitlement to water through the adoption of micro-irrigation techniques. Target subsidies through a small set of producers, where the leakages would be less;
* The first step is to create a sense of crisis, before a real one is created (I hope I have not spoken too late). The current monsoon may be typical of many more to come, and we will need a typical Dhirubhai Ambani overkill: create a giant capacity, 100 times the water needs of Delhi, then get to work at making it dependent on clean energy, maybe solar.

The problem with a product market for water is that the (commodity) prices will be very volatile, with prices collapsing during a good monsoon. So it has to be an investment-led market, not a product-market, i.e. the capital cost would be contributed through a market instrument, similar to the timeshare industry, or the one-time premium insurance products. If all sides of the industry are left open to market pricing, then there would be enough space for innovation to create a spectacular winner. A company that either reduces the cost of the project, or which can reduce the cost of capital, or which can extract other operating efficiencies, will find itself at the top of the industry.

“The cost of communication will go to zero”, said Ambani to a new recruit in 1989, when asked about the next big thing for the ‘90s. For the new millennium, Reliance should have been working at taking the cost of energy to zero. Certainly, if it can take the cost of water to zero, it would have made every Indian its customer: another Dhirubhai dream.

There is more greatness for anyone interested. A company that sits at the heart of all Indian energy usage is bound to be the next Reliance (if it isn’t Reliance itself). 80 per cent of the energy used in India’s villages, goes into water management. Think of the economic potential that will get unlocked by someone who takes that out.

10 Ways To Get Rich By Warren Buffet

With an estimated fortune of $62 billion, Warren Buffett is the richest man in the entire world. In 1962, when he began buying stock in Berkshire Hathaway, a share cost $7.50. Today, Warren Buffett, 78, is Berkshire's chairman and CEO, and one share of the company's class A stock worth close to $119,000. He credits his astonishing success to several key strategies, which he has shared with writer Alice Schroeder. She spend hundreds of hours interviewing the Sage of Omaha for the new authorized biography The Snowball. Here are some of Warren Buffett's money-making secrets -- and how they could work for you.

1. Reinvest Your Profits: When you first make money, you may be tempted to spend it. Don't. Instead, reinvest the profits. Warren Buffett learned this early on. In high school, he and a pal bought a pinball machine to pun in a barbershop. With the money they earned, they bought more machines until they had eight in different shops. When the friends sold the venture, Warren Buffett used the proceeds to buy stocks and to start another small business. By age 26, he'd amassed $174,000 -- or $1.4 million in today's money. Even a small sum can turn into great wealth.

2. Be Willing To Be Different: Don't base your decisions upon what everyone is saying or doing. When Warren Buffett began managing money in 1956 with $100,000 cobbled together from a handful of investors, he was dubbed an oddball. He worked in Omaha, not Wall Street, and he refused to tell his parents where he was putting their money. People predicted that he'd fail, but when he closed his partnership 14 years later, it was worth more than $100 million. Instead of following the crowd, he looked for undervalued investments and ended up vastly beating the market average every single year. To Warren Buffett, the average is just that -- what everybody else is doing. to be above average, you need to measure yourself by what he calls the Inner Scorecard, judging yourself by your own standards and not the world's.

3. Never Suck Your Thumb: Gather in advance any information you need to make a decision, and ask a friend or relative to make sure that you stick to a deadline. Warren Buffett prides himself on swiftly making up his mind and acting on it. He calls any unnecessary sitting and thinking "thumb sucking." When people offer him a business or an investment, he says, "I won't talk unless they bring me a price." He gives them an answer on the spot.

4. Spell Out The Deal Before You Start: Your bargaining leverage is always greatest before you begin a job -- that's when you have something to offer that the other party wants. Warren Buffett learned this lesson the hard way as a kid, when his grandfather Ernest hired him and a friend to dig out the family grocery store after a blizzard. The boys spent five hours shoveling until they could barely straighten their frozen hands. Afterward, his grandfather gave the pair less than 90 cents to split. Warren Buffett was horrified that he performed such backbreaking work only to earn pennies an hour. Always nail down the specifics of a deal in advance -- even with your friends and relatives.

5. Watch Small Expenses: Warren Buffett invests in businesses run by managers who obsess over the tiniest costs. He one acquired a company whose owner counted the sheets in rolls of 500-sheet toilet paper to see if he was being cheated (he was). He also admired a friend who painted only on the side of his office building that faced the road. Exercising vigilance over every expense can make your profits -- and your paycheck -- go much further.

6. Limit What You Borrow: Living on credit cards and loans won't make you rich. Warren Buffett has never borrowed a significant amount -- not to invest, not for a mortgage. He has gotten many heart-rendering letters from people who thought their borrowing was manageable but became overwhelmed by debt. His advice: Negotiate with creditors to pay what you can. Then, when you're debt-free, work on saving some money that you can use to invest.

7. Be Persistent: With tenacity and ingenuity, you can win against a more established competitor. Warren Buffett acquired the Nebraska Furniture Mart in 1983 because he liked the way its founder, Rose Blumkin, did business. A Russian immigrant, she built the mart from a pawnshop into the largest furniture store in North America. Her strategy was to undersell the big shots, and she was a merciless negotiator. To Warren Buffett, Rose embodied the unwavering courage that makes a winner out of an underdog.

8. Know When To Quit: Once, when Warren Buffett was a teen, he went to the racetrack. He bet on a race and lost. To recoup his funds, he bet on another race. He lost again, leaving him with close to nothing. He felt sick -- he had squandered nearly a week's earnings. Warren Buffett never repeated that mistake. Know when to walk away from a loss, and don't let anxiety fool you into trying again.

9. Assess The Risk: In 1995, the employer of Warren Buffett's son, Howie, was accused by the FBI of price-fixing. Warren Buffett advised Howie to imagine the worst-and-bast-case scenarios if he stayed with the company. His son quickly realized that the risks of staying far outweighed any potential gains, and he quit the next day. Asking yourself "and then what?" can help you see all of the possible consequences when you're struggling to make a decision -- and can guide you to the smartest choice.

10. Know What Success Really Means: Despite his wealth, Warren Buffett does not measure success by dollars. In 2006, he pledged to give away almost his entire fortune to charities, primarily the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. He's adamant about not funding monuments to himself -- no Warren Buffett buildings or halls. "I know people who have a lot of money," he says, "and they get testimonial dinners and hospital wings named after them. But the truth is that nobody in the world loves them. When you get to my age, you'll measure your success in life by how many of the people you want to have love you actually do love you. That's the ultimate test of how you've lived your life."

UPA will cost India economic superstardom

The current global crisis is potentially an inflection point that marks the transition from an Anglo-American dominance to an Asian dominance in world economic affairs.

Certainly, there is a startling turnaround in the fact that China holds $2 trillion in US Treasury securities and therefore lectures the Americans about running their economy -- it feels like only yesterday when the shoe was on the other foot.

Another indicator is China's aggressive fire-sale purchases of commodities, including oil, copper, iron ore, et cetera from all over the world. 'Have money, will buy' is China's mantra.

But where is India in this 'Asian century'? Alas, India has once again fumbled a golden opportunity to rise to economic superstardom.

Given the profligate spending of the United Progressive Alliance and its self-proclaimed galaxy of economic geniuses, India now sports perhaps the highest deficit of any country: about 13 per cent, a far cry from the 5 per cent that the UPA has been promising us all along.

Yet again, the Congress has successfully brought India back to the verge of the 'Nehruvian rate of growth' of 2-3 per cent, which is an economic crime against humanity, imposing abject poverty on 250 million people.

After sixty years of Congress misrule, India has most of the world's poor people, and some of the worst health and nutrition indicators, even worse than much poorer sub-Saharan Africa. This is truly a crime and a national shame.

It is evident that India's wonderful 'hybrid economy' gives the country the very worst of, both, capitalism and communism. For, when the world was going through a capitalistic feeding frenzy, India, not being sufficiently open to trade and capital flows, did not benefit. In contrast, China, taking full advantage of its World Trade Organisation accession, amassed a singular fortune, and uplifted large numbers of its poor.

So India didn't grab that opportunity. One would think, then, that the obverse would be positive -- that is, when the excess leverage hit the fan, isolated India would not be affected very much. To some extent this is true: since India is a tiny trading power (accounting for perhaps 1 per cent of world trade in goods), the precipitous decline in demand from the West has not affected India anywhere near as much as it has hit China.

That is India, a slow and steady tortoise to China's flashy hare. In fact, this is why commentators are crowing about the alleged virtues of the dirigiste Indian State and its (usually deadening) hand on the levers of the economy.

In comparison to the formerly-lionized-and-now-reviled Alan Greenspan's laissez-faire Federal Reserve in the United States, so the theory goes, the virtuous Reserve Bank of India has been able to protect India from Anglo-American buccaneer investment bankers.

If only that were more than a half-truth!

The reality is closer to the way Pay Commission reports are implemented in India -- only one half of the recommendations is implemented. Pay Commissions routinely suggest a) reducing headcount, b) increasing working hours, c) tying salary increments to productivity, and d) increasing base salaries substantially. Of course 'a', 'b', and 'c' are ignored, and only vote-winning 'd' is implemented at large cost to the taxpayer.

Similarly, it is true that Anglo-Americans were unable to dump toxic mortgages on the Indian banking system. Unfortunately, India's politicians, including an alleged 'Dream Team' of economics mavens, have done the dastardly deed entirely on their own through almost Rs 200,000 crore (Rs 2,000 billion) of deficit spending, which will result in crushing inflation with a vengeance in the near future.

This in the name of programmes for the 'common man': such as the NREGS (National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme), the waiver of farm loans, and the windfall for bureaucrats.

Rs 70,000 crore (Rs 700 billion) for the NREGS, which, if we had truth-in-advertising, should be renamed 'National Employment Guarantee Scheme for Party Cadres', because 95 per cent of the funds ended up in their pockets (I quote Rajiv Gandhi who said 20 years ago that 90 per cent of the funds were pilfered en route, and surely they are more innovative now).

Rs 70,000 crore for the waiver of farm loans, most of which went to rich landlords already flush with untaxed agricultural income that has led to a boom in consumption in villages. Rs 30,000 crore (Rs 300 billion) spent on the corrupt, do-nothing bureaucracy. All this is money that the Congress printed out of thin air.

Not to speak of the billions-worth of counterfeit currency introduced by the friendly neighbourhood printing presses in Karachi.

One ocean-going container full of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes from Pakistan -- by all accounts very good copies -- was seized at the Cochin port, which means hundreds of other containers could have gotten through.

Thus, even though there is a deflationary trend -- especially in real estate after the bubble burst, and it too had been propped up the same unaccounted-for money in the politician-civil servant-criminal nexus -- the long-term prospects are of raging inflation, as this Rs 200,000-plus crore chases limited goods.

Interestingly, the US is heading down the same path by announcing that it will inject $1 trillion in the system via Fed purchases of long-term Treasury securities. In other words, they too printed money. The reaction was swift -- the dollar tumbled, naturally.

Lost in all the hoopla about India's inflation coming down to 0.44 per cent recently is the fact that 12 per cent inflation for months has imposed a high-water-mark pricing on practically every manufactured good. Prices have gone up by 50 per cent in many cases; they have stubbornly remained there, and the chances of them coming down are nil.

In India, peculiarly, prices go up, but they never come down. This must be a 'feature' of the chimerical 'hybrid economy'. The only things that have come down are agricultural commodities like grain, and post-bubble real-estate.

Thus, once again, India has managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. China will go on to make it the 'Chinese century', and India will always have unrealized potential.

India's curse, (noted economist) Jagdish Bhagwati once observed, is its clever economists. This has been proven with a vengeance in the last five years.

2 Major-Generals face corruption charges

NEW DELHI: In yet indicator of the declining standards of probity and discipline in the armed forces, two Major-Generals from the Army Ordnance Corps (AOC) are now in the dock for their alleged acts of commission and omission.

Both the Maj-Gens are facing courts of inquiry (CoI), which will establish whether there is enough prima facie evidence to try them through court martial, in separate cases.

The first, Maj-Gen Anand Swaroop, officiating commandant of College of Materials Management (Jabalpur), is facing charges of irregularities in purchase of items for a unit headed for a UN peace-keeping mission.

The second, Maj-Gen S P Sinha, ordnance chief at the Western Army Command at Chandimandir, in turn, is accused of irregularities in purchase of general stores for ordnance depot at Choeki. Both officers, on their part, have refuted the charges against them.

This comes after the case of yet another senior AOC officer, Maj-Gen A K Kapur, who is facing a CBI probe after raids led to the discovery of property worth around Rs 5.3 crore in his or his family's name in late-2007. The CBI, however, is yet to file a chargesheet in the case.

With the three seniormost AOC officers facing corruption charges, even if they have not been proved so far, the post of director-general of ordnance services at the Army HQ continues to remain vacant.

Both AOC and Army Service Corps (ASC) have been embroiled in such controversies in recent years, with senior officers jostling for top posts, often levelling accusations against each other.

The ASC, for instance, witnessed a bout of controversy some time ago with two Lt-Gens, S K Sahni and S K Dahiya, also having to face legal proceedings. The names of Sahni, Dahiya, four Maj-Gens, nine Brigadiers, a Navy Commodore, two Commanders, a Lt-Commander, an IAF Group Captain and a Coast Guard DIG had figured in a list of 21 senior officers facing corruption charges tabled by defence minister A K Antony in Parliament.

The corruption charges ranged from selling military liquor in civilian markets to financial bungling in purchase of cereals, petrol and the like in the armed forces.

A Maj-Gen had faced the music for even sexual harassment last year. The court martial against Maj-Gen A K Lal, who was removed as commander of the strategically-located 3 Infantry Division at Leh in September 2007 after a woman officer accused him of "misconduct'' and "misbehavior'', held that he should be dismissed from service.

Many of these officers, including Maj-Gen Lal, however, have appealed in high courts against the court martial verdicts against them.

India a sponge protecting US: Ashley Tellis tells US Senate

On a hearing held on January 28, 2009 by the US Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs summarizes the testimony of Ashley Tellis, strategic affairs expert and an influential policy adviser, as follows:

QUOTE:
India has become the "sponge" that was protecting the United States and the West from the terror campaign of Lashkar-e-Tayiba and is absorbing most of the blows unleashed by terrorist groups in Pakistan.

LeT, which has been blamed for the Mumbai attacks, remains a terrorist organisation of genuinely global reach and represents a threat to regional and global security, second only to Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda.

Tellis, a Senior Associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, made these remarks while testifying before the Senate committee on homeland security and governmental affairs on Wednesday on the November 26 terrorist attacks in Mumbai and their consequences for the US.

"India has unfortunately become the sponge that protects us all. India's very proximity to Pakistan, which has developed into the epicenter of global terrorism during the last 30 years, has resulted in New Delhi absorbing most of the blows unleashed by those terrorist groups that treat it as a common enemy along with Israel, the United States, and the West more generally," he said.

Tellis said the Barack Obama administration should keep Pakistan's feet to the fire and ensure that Islamabad makes good on its promises to take on terrorist groups.

Washington should also demand more of Islamabad precisely because the LeT threatens to become a significant global terrorist threat, he said, adding, the US should insist that Islamabad roll up and eliminate the entire LeT infrastructure of terrorism that currently exists inside of Pakistan.

Tellis also termed India's response to the Mumbai attack as inadequate and suggested that New Delhi should set up a body on the lines of America's national counter-terrorism centre and take US help.

Tellis said since the launch of the global war on terror post 9/11, Inter-Services Intelligence's assistance to LeT has become more recessed but it has by no means ended, even though the organisation was formally banned by then Pakistans president Pervez Musharraf on January 12, 2002.

Throwing light on LeT's links with Pakistan's Inter Services Intelligence, Tellis said the terror group has received strong financial, material, and operational support from Pakistan's powerful spy agency -- including from its field stations in Nepal, Sri Lanka, and Bangladesh -- because of the growing conviction within the Pakistan military that the war against India could never be won if the hostilities were to be confined only to Jammu and Kashmir issue .

While India has occupied the lion's share of LeT attention in recent years, he said the organisation has not by any means restricted itself to keeping only India in its sights.

LeT was from the very beginning a preferred ward of the ISI, enjoying all the protection offered by the Pakistani state, he added. Even when Pakistan, under considerable US pressure, formally banned LeT as a terrorist organization in 2002, the LeT leadership remained impregnable and impervious to all international political pressure.

Tellis said it would be a gross error to treat the terrorism facing India, including the terrible recent atrocities as simply a problem for New Delhi alone.

In a very real sense, the outrage in Mumbai was fundamentally a species of global terrorism not merely because the assailants happened to believe in an obscurantist brand of Islam but, more importantly, because killing Indians turned out to be simply interchangeable with killing citizens of some 15 different nationalities for no apparent reason whatsoever.
UNQUOTE.

To watch and listen to the hearings. please click: http://hsgac.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?Fuseaction=Hearings.Detail&HearingID=4bad8b13-1ed8-4ea4-8ed7-0c020c6205f4

(It takes some time for the video to start).

For the text of Ashley Tellis's prepared testimony. please click: http://hsgac.senate.gov/public/_files/012809Tellis.pdf

Poonch pooh pooh

This operation is symbolic of an unlearning nature of the Indian army. Unfortunately, nothing will change even now.

The operations against terrorists in the Mendhar forest against militants got over with an egg on the face of the Indian Army. One JCO and one soldier was killed with the weapon of the JCO sieged by the militants. Neither a single militant was captured nor was a dead body found in the area.

Best of the armies encounter failures but the really great ones draw the right lessons from those experiences. An experience of over four decades in counterinsurgency in the North East, nearly two decades fighting Islamist insurgents in Kashmir and more specifically, a similar experience with Mast Gul and gang at Charar-e-Sharif 13 years back should have prepared the army better to handle such situations.

The reactions to this incident will be the most obvious. The army will try its level best to find some scapegoats — sack the Brigade Commander, crucify the local battalion commander and full stop. Things will get back to the usual after that pretty soon. The prevalent culture in the services will not allow any in-depth study of the incident, quick dissemination of the lessons to other units in COIN operations, introduction of new tactics and induction of latest equipment or weaponry to prevent such incidents in the future. The unintended message to junior and middle ranking officers from all this is to follow the proverbial eleventh commandment — Thou shall not get caught.

If the internal mechanisms in the army are failing, then the external entities are doing no better. The highly voluble veterans community which was so strident on the pay commission issue will not even point out this weakness of the Indian army. The ignoramuses in the mainstream media, will continue to treat army like a holy cow and brush this incident under the carpet.

This downhill slide of a professional force, which is hell-bent on drawing its strength solely from the past and is blithely unconcerned about its future, will continue till a military tragedy of calamitous proportions strikes the nation. Then there will be many queuing up to lambast the defence services. By then it will be too late for constructive criticism, one that seeks constant improvement and betterment of the Indian Army.

SUPPRESSING INDIAN HISTORY

The anniversary of Ayodhya has come and passed. Once more, many of India's intelligentsia felt that the destruction of the mosque has signalled the end of a certain tolerant India, for which secularism was the unifying factor and has planted a dangerous seed of Hindu "nationalism" in India's psyche. Yet, one should remember that the Hindu 'fundamentalists' did not kill a single soul in Ayodhya, whereas the bombs planted a while later in revenge by Indian Muslims with the help of Pakistan, killed more than 350 innocent human beings. In fact, during its long history, Hinduism has been one of the most peaceful creeds in the world, accepting the reality of different beliefs, never trying to convert -even in a non-violent manner, like the Buddhists did in Asia - and submitting itself rather meekly, except for a Shivaji, a Guru Gobind or a Rani of Jhansi, to numerous invasions. The same thing cannot be said about Islam, whatever N. Ram says in Frontline. Many historians, amongst them Will Durant, Louis Frederick, or Alain Danielou, have remarked that the Muslim invaders were so certain that they were doing their holy duty by razing temples and killing Hindus, that they had recorded down carefully and proudly their deeds in their own archives.

Mahmud of Ghazni, for instance, who patronised art and literature, would recite a verse of the Koran every night after having razed temples and killed his quota of unbelievers. Firuz Shah Tughlak, personally confirms that the destruction of Pagan temples was done out of piety and writes: "on the day of a Hindu festival, I went there myself, ordered the executions of all the leaders and practionners of his abomination; I destroyed their idols temples and built mosques in their places". Aurangzeb did not just build an isolated mosque on a razed temple, as Romila Thapar would like us to believe, he ordered all temples destroyed, among them the Kashi Vishvanath, one of the most sacred places of Hinduism and had mosques built on a number of cleared temples sites. All other Hindu sacred places within his reach equally suffered destruction, with mosques built on them. A few examples: Krishna's birth temple in Mathura, the rebuilt Somnath temple on the coast of Gujurat, the Vishnu temple replaced with the Alamgir mosque now overlooking Benares and the Treta-ka-Thakur temple in Ayodhya. The number of temples destroyed by Aurangzeb is counted in 4, if not 5 figures. This is a small excerpt of his own official court chronicles: "Aurangzeb ordered all provincial governors to destroy all schools and temples of the Pagans and to make a complete end to all pagan teachings and practices". Or:: "Hasan Ali Khan came and said that 172 temples in the area had been destroyed... His majesty went to Chittor and 63 temples were destroyed. Abu Tarab, appointed to destroy the idol-temples of Amber, reported that 66 temples had been razed to the ground".. Aurangzeb did not stop at destroying temples, their users were also wiped-out; even his own brother, Dara Shikoh, was executed for taking an interest in Hindu religion and the Sikh Guru Tegh Bahadur was beheaded because he objected to Aurangzeb's forced conversions. As we can see Romila Thapar and Percival Spear's statement of a benevolent Aurangzeb is a flagrant attempt at negationism (the negation of historical crimes). Even the respectable Encyclopedia Brittannica in its entry on India, does not mention in its chapter on the Sultanate period any persecutions of Hindus by Muslims, except "that Firuz Shah Tughlaq made largely unsuccessful attempts at converting his Hindu subjects and sometime persecuted them".

Indian school books seem to have taken their cue from the Encyclopedia Brittannica , as there is hardly any mention of this dark aspect of India's past. But why does India negate its history? We know that Nehru and Gandhi wanted to keep Pakistan within India and wished to avoid the splintering away of Muslim groups. But was it a good enough reason to suppress information about Muslim atrocities during ten centuries of bloody invasions and the massive destruction of Hindu temples ? On the contrary this has only created more terrorism. Denying and suppressing the history cannot keep the harmony. In its place, truth and reconciliation are necessary. Hiding the truth denies sympathy to the victim, civilization and culture. A nation unless, it is ready to face its own history - the Good and the Bad, the Courageous and the Cowardly - can never bloom into its full plenitude. Hidden aspects of its own history sooner or later will surface and bring with them the guilt, anger, regret, which are the necessary ingredients to wipe-off that particular black karma. In Germany, for instance, Germans have been reminded again and again about the atrocities committed by the Nazis during World War II, and that has brought a sense of guilt, which has acted as a deterrent to future atrocities

The Jews have constantly tried, since the Nazi genocide, to keep alive the remembrance of their six million martyrs. This has got nothing to do with vengeance. Do the Jews of today want to retaliate upon contemporary Germany? No. It is only a matter of making sure that history does not repeat its mistakes, as alas it is doing today in India : witness the persecution of Hindus in Kashmir, whose 250.000 Pandits have fled their 5000 year old homeland, or the oppression of Hindus in Bangladesh and Pakistan. To remember, is to be able to look at today with the wisdom of yesterday. No collective memory should be erased for appeasing a particular community. Hiding the facts and justifying past Muslim crimes has led to terrorism in the Indian sub-continent. Muslims were never held accountable. One of the first steps to curb violence is to make one aware of past mistakes. Guilt in the culprit and forgiveness in the victim can put an end to self-righteousness and the kind of terrorism we see today in Kashmir, in spite of India's peace overtures.


FRANCOIS GAUTIER

How Wall Street operates

Once upon a time in a village in India, a man told the villagers that he would buy monkeys for Rs. 200 each.

The villagers seeing there were many monkeys around, went out to the forest and started catching them.

The man bought thousands at Rs. 200, but, as the supply started to diminish, the villagers stopped catching monkeys. The man further announced that he would now buy at Rs. 250. The villagers renewed their efforts and caught more monkeys. Soon the supply diminished even further and people started going back to their farms. The offer rate increased to Rs. 300 and the supply of monkeys became so little that it was an effort to even see a monkey, let alone catch it!

The man now announced that he would buy monkeys at Rs 500 each! However, since he had to go to the city on some business, his assistant would now act as buyer, on his behalf.

In the absence of the man, the assistant told the villagers: “Look at all these monkeys in the big cage that my boss has collected. I will sell them to you at Rs. 400 and when he returns from the city, you can sell them back to him for Rs 500.”

The villagers squeezed together their savings and bought all the monkeys.

Then they never saw the man or his assistant again, only monkeys everywhere!

Welcome to WALL STREET

Why industrialists prefer Modi to Buddha

Industrialists always like to deal with governments that are stable, can take quick decisions and are capable of handling political opposition to any idea or project they support.

Till the Left Front took charge of West Bengal in 1977, industrialists were scared of taking up new projects in that state. Even if the government gave the go-ahead, the opposition political parties, then led by the Left, would manage to obstruct the smooth implementation of projects. Even running projects would be a headache.

All this began to change after the Left Front came to power and Jyoti Basu was sworn in as the chief minister of West Bengal. Industrialists realised that the Left Front at the helm was the best insurance they could hope for against industrial unrest affecting their factories and plants in West Bengal.

There were three distinct advantages. One, the Left Front government in the state was stable, with a huge majority the Left parties enjoyed in the Legislative Assembly. Two, Jyoti Basu was the undisputed leader of the government and he was empowered to take the final decision once he made up his mind. And three, the state was left with hardly any opposition political party of any significance.

So, all that an industrialist in West Bengal had to do was to have a good working equation with the Left Front chairman (who headed the Left coalition, of which the CPI-M was obviously the dominant partner) and Jyoti Basu (who headed the state government). Once the industrialists took care of these two offices, they would not face any problem - either from the government or from the employees' unions, which were invariably controlled by the ruling Left parties.

If industries still did not make a beeline for investments in West Bengal, it was primarily because the Jyoti Basu government did not pursue rapid industrialisation with private capital as one of its goals and, of course, it had to contend with an investor-unfriendly reputation that refused to die easily.

In any case, the first ten years of the Left Front rule saw Jyoti Basu spending most of his energies on land reforms and a sustained battle with the Centre to get more public sector investments in the state and a larger share in central taxes. He achieved significant success in his efforts at land reform and managed to convert centre-state fiscal relations into a national issue, but failed miserably in attracting central investments to the state.

A few years after the launch of the economic reforms by Manmohan Singh in 1991, Jyoti Basu also changed his industrial policy and began attracting private investment for industrial projects in the state.

His successor, Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, built on this industrial policy. It appeared that Mr Bhattacharjee was making some headway in his plan for industrialisation in West Bengal with the help of private capital. If Ratan Tata decided to invest in Singur to produce the world-famous Nano from West Bengal, it was largely because he and his advisors had reckoned that Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee ruled the state like Jyoti Basu.

But what became clear to the Tatas in the last few months was that things had changed in Bengal and these were changes that even Mr Bhattacharjee and his administration failed to recognise and take appropriate remedial measures.

A powerful opposition political party by the name of Trinamool Congress had grown its roots in West Bengal and had won a majority of the seats in the Panchayat elections in Singur.

Worse, Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee failed to act as a chief minister who was in complete command of the situation. His government was stable. Yet he failed to act decisively and quickly to resolve the crisis and face the challenge posed by the chief opposition party in the state. After the Trinamool Congress protests began and disrupted work at Singur, Ratan Tata waited for more than a month before taking the final decision to pull out from West Bengal.

If Tata Motors [Get Quote] has now gone to Gujarat to relocate the Nano project there, it is largely because its chief minister, Narendra Modi, offers those very qualities which industrialists love in a state government. Mr Modi's government is stable, he is known for taking quick decisions and has nothing to fear from any opposition political party in the state. There is no Mamata Banerjee in Gujarat.

Nothing else really matters for industrialists when they have to decide on the location of their projects. The riots in Ahmedabad, Surat and other cities in Gujarat after the Godhra train fire may have been condemned by industry leaders. Minority communities may still not feel safe in Gujarat today. For industrialists, however, Narendra Modi meets all the criteria for choosing his state as their next investment destination.

That is where Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee has lost out to Narendra Modi. Panicked by riots in Gujarat after the Godhra riots, Kutubuddin Ansari, a resident of Ahmadabad, had fled his state and secured a safe refuge in Kolkata.

Narendra Modi lost Kutubuddin Ansari. But that did not come in the way of his convincing the Tatas to set up their prestigious Nano factory.

10 Indian peacekeepers in Congo sex scandal

Fresh investigations into a sex-for-cash scandal involving Indian UN peacekeepers deployed in the Democratic Republic of Congo have revealed that at least 10 soldiers may have had sex with prostitutes. The United Nations code of conduct in Congo prohibits peacekeepers from soliciting prostitutes.

Lifting the lid on their actions, the North Kivu Indian brigade has gathered sufficient evidence to prove the peacekeepers used children to hire Congolese girls for sex in Masisi, an exhausting five-hour drive from Goma.

The UN Organisation Mission in Democratic Republic of Congo (known by its French acronym MONUC) is served by 4,554 troops.

Hindustan Times has learnt that five children have identified the peacekeepers from 1 Jammu and Kashmir Rifles after they were shown photographs of around 100 peacekeepers based in Masisi when allegations of sexual misconduct were made last year.

North Kivu brigade commander Bipin Rawat told HT, “Initial findings confirm their involvement. We have sent our report to the army headquarters in New Delhi and recommended a thorough probe in view of new evidence.”

The peacekeepers involved returned home in April as part of half-yearly troop rotation. Charges against them would be corroborated in India before prosecutions, Rawat said.

The 18,931-strong MONUC, the largest and costliest UN deployment across the globe, is the only mission where troops can be prosecuted for sex with prostitutes. The act falls within the definition of sexual exploitation and abuse.

The investigation conducted by the North Kivu brigade, on the orders of army vice-chief Lieutenant General M.L. Naidu who was here this May, challenges the findings of a previous inquiry by the United Nations' Office of Internal Oversight Services in Congo.

To the consternation of the Indian Army, the powerful UN investigating agency had charged almost 60 soldiers with soliciting sex from prostitutes and some 40 troops with employing child labour earlier this year. Considering the findings of the army inquiry, the rot may not run as deep as the UN agency had made it out. But pre-emptive measures have been put in place to discipline troops.

Brigadier Rawat has formed flying squads to snoop on his men garrisoned in and around North Kivu's capital Goma. Raids are regularly conducted at no-go places such as nightclubs, bars and red light areas. The squads include personnel drawn from the Bangladesh military police.

Troops finishing their tenure have been placed under surveillance as sexual abuse and exploitation usually takes place during the last two months, said an officer. There is evidence to prove that posts held by soldiers provide safe haven for such activities.


http://www.hindustantimes.com/StoryPage/Print.aspx?Id=dba2bd1a-440a-4bc9-a34c-5325b8368282
© Copyright 2007 Hindustan Times

Major general guilty of sexual misconduct

A military court has found a major general guilty of sexual misconduct and awarded him a sentence of dismissal from service.

Major General AK Lal, a former commander of the Leh-based 3 Infantry Division, faced a general court martial (GCM) in Bathinda after a previous inquiry found evidence against him. Captain Neha Rawat of the Corps of Signals had filed a complaint against Lal last September, alleging that he had misbehaved with her while conducting yoga classes at his residence. Lal is the senior-most officer in the army’s history to be awarded such a sentence on charges sexual misconduct.

The GCM, presided over by 10 Corps commander Lieutenant General R.S. Sujlana, delivered the verdict on Saturday. The sentence is subject to confirmation under the provisions of the Army Act. If a higher authority confirms the verdict, Lal won’t be eligible for retirement benefits. Even after the sentence is confirmed, he has the option of challenging it in a high court or the newly constituted Armed Forces Tribunal.

Maj Gen AK Lal faced a general court martial in Bathinda after a previous inquiry found evidence against him.

Automobiles Can Banish Unemployment and Poverty

The Sindur controversy highlights a clash of perceptions. Firstly it tries to resist the increasing trend of marginal agriculturalists leaving rural areas for better urban opportunities. Secondly it reveals the old socialist perception that cars are toys of the elite and do not deserve encouragement.

The Nano is however belatedly making India's economists, planners and politicians realize that the automotive Industry is a huge driver of employment and growth. According to Japan Automobile Manufacturer's Association, automobiles contribute to 21% of Japan’s GDP and are the main engine of its economic growth employing 7.3 million people. According to Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers, the industry already contributes to nearly 12% of India's GDP.

The impact on employment can be seen from the example of Maruti that now directly employs just 5,500 people and plans to make 700,000 cars this year. But the 6,000 trucks needed to deliver them create employment for about 24,000 people. Their 1,500 dealers employ over 75,000 people. Maruti however makes only 20% of the car. They make no steel, castings, forgings, tyres, batteries, electricals, brakes, glass and components. The employment by the vendors, just dedicated to Maruti cars, must exceed 200,000. India’s trucks employ 15 million people as compared to just 2 million by the railways.

Put together, all the makers of Indian cars, trucks, tractors, and 2-wheelers may generate some 3,000,000 salaried jobs. But these salaries create another huge multiplier effect of tertiary employment for the millions who supply these salaried employees with food, clothing, shelter, education, medical facilities, entertainment, etc.

Anyone who has seen the sudden explosion of new townships like Surajpur, near the Honda, Daewoo, Yamaha and Honda plants, Sriperumbudur, near Hyundai's plant or Malaimaraipur near Ford's plant, Bidadi near the Toyota plant can see the quick impact automobiles have on employment and economic growth. Rather few jobs initially went to these towns because modern auto plants wanted educated engineers not skilled workers. But local teashops became hotels and hotels expanded into housing estates. Schools, cinemas, video parlours, groceries, fast food outlets and real estate developers multiplied. Doctors, architects, interior decorators and caterers streamed in. Unlettered locals prospered as masons, carpenters, mechanics and contractors. Prosperity quickly created even more prosperity.

And the impact spreads wider. The people who own and run India's 50 million two-wheelers, 12 million cars and some 8 million trucks and buses need many millions of people to service them in every small town. And these millions of local mechanics having learned technical skills and to work with their hands will never be unemployed. Academic education does not assure jobs but work with one's hands does.

India does not have too many cars. According to the World Bank India today has 12 cars per 1000 people as compared to 19 in Pakistan, 64 in Malaysia, 67 in Turkey, 426 in UK, 543 in Japan and 765 in USA,. So car density is a virtual index of economic prosperity. But more vehicles will need many more highways and much wider city roads and more parking spaces including parking in the basements of all new commercial and residential buildings. With rapid transport new satellite towns can be built near existing ones to decongest them. More highway police will be needed to manage the growing numbers. All these are big job generators.

India is not just a poor country but also a country with a horribly hot and dusty climate where the people should be allowed the comfort and efficiencies of motorized transport instead of the agony of bicycles and bullock carts. Few people realize just how heavily India's autos are taxed. The combined impact of 40% Modvat on components, 16 -24% excise duties, 12% local sales taxes plus octroi in some cities has a cascade effect to almost double the manufacturing costs of indigenous vehicles. In most other countries, there is just one tax like 15% VAT in EU and USA, 8% in Korea and 8 - 16% in Japan (according to size). With similar taxes, A Maruti 800 would probably cost about Rs. 1.20 Lakhs, a Honda City about 4 Lakhs to say nothing about two wheelers and transport vehicles. If this happened, India's automobiles would boom with a huge impact on employment and economic growth.

India’s planners had previously been so obsessed by the vision of automobiles being elitist that they crippled one the greatest generators of employment and economic growth. China who had earlier been a great crusader for socialism learned two decades ago that many objects of elitist consumption were good for the people. While India restricted production and levied huge taxes on bikes, cars, telephones, TV’s, soft drinks, white goods and mobile phones, China let them lead the way to a huge economic revolution. China did not feel that its independence or security was threatened by entry of any multinational. They considered the idea of a foreign company being capable of challenging the great Chinese dragon or its culture as laughable.

But India’s politicians and their bureaucratic `running dogs’, as the Chinese would have put it, had such a love affair with poverty that poverty is what they perpetuated. Taxes instead of being a necessary resource for economic development were greedily sought for creating a bloated bureaucracy and lining political pockets.

Automobiles drove America to prosperity and led the recovery of Germany, Japan and Korea after their wars. Hopefully our planners will belatedly see the light and lead India to a new prosperity. Automobiles transport 80% of all goods and 85% of passengers adding up to some 200 million people who are using the cars, 2-wheelers, buses and trucks every day. Perhaps the next election slogan should be: Tax ghatao, gaari chalao, unatti badhao.

IS SHABANA AZMI A LIAR??

"Four flats in Juhu, and a house in Khandala are what actor Shabana Azmi owns, if some of the prominent people from the film fraternity are to be believed.

Irked by the alleged irresponsible statement by Azmi, who claimed that she was denied a house in Mumbai because she is a muslim, people from the film industry called a press meet at Club Millennium in Juhu on Wednesday.

"It's the worst communal statement made by someone who has multiple houses. There are many societies who do not allow Hindus, but we respect their culture and don't condemn them." said filmmaker Ashoke Pandit.

http://www.dnaindia.com/report.asp?newsid=1184725

Now, either she or he is telling the truth. And if it isn't her, then shouldn't the Income Tax Dept be interested?

Healthcare is a big opportunity in India

While private players are keenly entering this "social" infrastructure sector, innovative measures are needed to improve financial performance.

The last decade has seen a significant increase in private sector participation in healthcare delivery. Existing players such as Apollo, Wockhardt, Manipal, Care Hospitals and Narayan Hrudalaya have expanded aggressively.

New players such as Fortis, Max, Sterling, Global Hospitals, AMRI, Ruby Hall and Reliance, ADAG have entered the sector with plans to establish national and regional presence. International players such as Elbit, Columbia Asia and Parkway have also entered India with plans of establishing a network of hospitals.

These corporate players together operate around 25,000 beds across the country. Healthcare providers have also attracted investments from private equity players such as IDFC, Apax Partners, Actis, Indivision, ICICI Ventures, and Trinity Capital.

My colleague Monika Sood is an acknowledged thought-leader and strategist in the healthcare space. Over a long fireside-chat, she explained to me the dynamics of the private healthcare market.

Healthcare delivery can be segmented into primary, secondary and tertiary care. Primary care constitutes treatment on an out-patient basis. Secondary care refers to hospitalisation for "non-critical" ailments. Tertiary care relates to treatment of critical ailments and requires high-tech and expensive facilities and equipment.

As of now the corporate sector is focused on tertiary care. The opportunity exists because of the lack of adequate facilities, high investment requirement (which becomes an entry barrier for smaller players), higher revenue realisation per patient, less competition from doctor-entrepreneur led facilities as well as an ability to differentiate product offerings.

Five key factors are currently driving private participation in "for profit" healthcare delivery.

Increasing population base - Population growth of 1.7 per cent per annum for the next five years will result in a need for approximately 30,000 new beds every year.

Increasing income - The number of households with income greater than Rs 2,00,000 per annum is likely to increase from 95 million (8 per cent of population) to 404 million (32 per cent of population) by 2015.

Rising insurance penetration - Private medical insurance penetration has increased from 0.4 per cent of population in 2001 to 1.5 per cent of population in 2006.

Increasing incidence of "lifestyle" diseases - Cardiac ailments, diabetes, and the like result in an increased requirement of tertiary care beds.

Increase in the number of senior citizens - Driven by higher life expectancy, from 59 to 63 in the last decade, senior citizens (around 4 per cent of population) constitute around 20 per cent of in-patients at hospitals.

The above drivers are likely to result in an annual increase of 10-12 per cent in the size of the healthcare delivery market over the next five years.

However the financial performance of players has not been very encouraging. Average operating margins have been less than 18 per cent (and declining), and Return On Capital Employed has been less than 15 per cent. This is a key area of concern.

This rather lacklustre financial performance has been due to:

High capital expenditure per bed: Capital expenditure of Rs 50-75 lakh (Rs 5-7.5 million) per bed for tertiary care and Rs. 25-30 lakh (Rs 2.5-3 million) for secondary care, is essentially driven by high cost of land as well as high cost of medical equipment.

Given the importance of location while establishing a new facility, providers are forced to pay a high cost for acquiring land especially in the metros and Tier I cities.

Medical equipment typically comprises 30-40 per cent of project cost. State-of-the art medical equipment is being deployed to attract "star" physicians as well as being used as a marketing tool. Given the large share of imported equipment, providers have to pay dollar prices on par with international players thus increasing capital costs.

Increasing customer expectations have also resulted in an increased spend on hospital interiors and services.

Ongoing capital expenditure: Significant investment is required on an ongoing basis given the high obsolescence of medical equipment.

Limitations on revenue realisation per bed-night: Revenue realisation per bed-night has been limited by increasing competition especially in metros and Tier I cities. For example, the average price increase in competitive markets over the last five years has been only around 5 per cent per annum.

The large share (greater than 40 per cent) of secondary care patients at most tertiary care hospitals also results in low realisation per bed-night. Thus, while the facility has been created for tertiary care (high capex), it is being sub-optimally utilised to offer secondary care (low realisation).

Increasing share of bulk buyers (insurance, corporates etc.) also limits the ability to increase realisation significantly. The limited size of the population that can afford high-end tertiary care also restricts revenue growth.

Increasing operating costs: While most players in competitive markets have not been able to increase prices significantly, their operating costs have gone up disproportionately. This increase has been driven essentially by increasing human resource costs due to a shortage of trained personnel and increasing competition for talent.

At a key tertiary care hospital in Delhi while the revenue has increased by 5 per cent per annum over the last five years, personnel costs have increased by 14 per cent per annum. High costs associated with attracting and retaining "star" physicians (since they continue to be key drivers of patient volumes) have resulted in high fixed operating costs, especially for new players.

High costs incurred on marketing the facility over and above developing a referral network have also increased operating costs for most players.

High gestation period: High fixed operating costs and slow build-up of occupancy results in operating losses in the first few years. Patients have shown a preference for established facilities and physicians and are reluctant to try new facilities especially for critical ailments, thus increasing the gestation period for a new facility.

High capital expenditure, constrained revenue realisation per bed-night and increasing operating costs have resulted in shrinking operating margins (average range 10-18 per cent) and low asset turnover ratios.

Clearly, innovative measures are the order of the day to improve financial performance. Such measures would include:

• Better planning at the time of conceptualisation: Reducing capital expenditure through innovative hospital design, "optimal" selection of medical equipment, phased rollout, right choice of location, specialty-mix etc.
• Leveraging scale to reduce procurement price - for capital equipment as well as consumables.
• Having the "right" doctor engagement model and building an "institutional" brand.
• Focus on untapped opportunities - geographic locations as well as undeserved segments.

The burgeoning Indian market, if handled smartly, offers a challenging opportunity for value creation.

Healthcare, then, would definitely turn out to be a healthy business!

The Indian armed forces also have a lot to answer for

When the sixth pay commission recommendations came out earlier this year, the reaction in the rank and file of the Indian armed forces was strongly negative as it once again felt let down by the political-bureaucratic establishment. The veterans came out on the streets to protest and the Indian army chief was forced to take his case to the President, much to the annoyance of the government.

The issues related to the Military Service Pay, the exclusion of the rank pay from the pay scale of officers leading to a lowering of officers' status, introduction of running pay bands were, among others, issues that caused a lot of consternation within the services, especially as it reinforced a perception that it's all part of a well-established pattern of behavior on the part of their civilian masters.

Such turmoil within the ranks of any nation's armed services should be a cause for concern but in the case of India that aspires to join the ranks of world's major global powers this is a recipe for disaster.

The government has now decided to implement a modified version of the Pay Commission recommendations and the service chiefs seem to have given their blessings to the proposed changes. The navy chief has been quoted as saying that the concerns of the armed forces appear to have been suitably addressed. One hopes these views are shared by the rank and file of the nation's defence forces.

If the top leadership is indeed satisfied with the government's response, then the onus now is on them to give the Indian defence policy a new direction, a trajectory that does justice to India's rising stature in the global inter-state hierarchy. Blaming the government for all the ills afflicting the defence sector seems to be becoming the default position within the ranks of the military, and taking this too far can be really dangerous for the liberal democratic ethos of this nation.

India's armed forces need fundamental reforms, a restructuring that enables them to operate with utmost efficiency in a rapidly evolving domestic and global context. The armed forces can begin by putting their own house in order.

It is true that big macro issues remain beyond the influence of the armed forces as they have to work within the strategic framework set by the civilian leadership. The Indian economy will have to continue to grow at high rates of growth if Indian defence needs can be adequately catered to. High rates of economic growth over the last several years have given India the resources to undertake its military modernisation programme and redefine its defence priorities.

India, which currently has the world's fourth largest military and one of the biggest defence budgets, has been in the midst of a huge defence modernisation programme for nearly a decade that has seen billions of dollars spent on the latest high-tech military technology. This liberal spending on defence equipment has attracted the interest of Western industry and governments alike and is changing the scope of the global defence market.

A country like India does not have the luxury to make a choice between guns and butter and high economic growth is the only solution that will allow it to take care of its defence and developmental needs simultaneously. India's own version of 'revolution in military affairs' will force it to spend much more on sophisticated cutting-edge defence technology and on trained manpower. Without sustained rates of high economic growth, this will become very difficult to achieve as the defence forces will find it difficult to make demands on the government for greater resources.

The other issue is of appropriate institutional frameworks that enable a nation to effectively leverage its capabilities -- diplomatic, military and economic -- in the service of its strategic interests. India lacks such institutions in the realm of foreign and defence policies. While the prime minister laments the paucity of long-term strategic thinking in India, his government has done nothing substantive to stimulate such thinking.

The National Security Council still does not work as it ideally should. The headquarters of the three services needs to be effectively integrated with the ministry of defence and the post of the chief of defence staff is the need of the hour for single-point military advice to the government. The fact that successive Indian governments have failed to produce a National Security Strategy is both a consequence of the institutional decay in the country as well as a cause of the inability of the armed forces to plan their force structures and acquisitions adequately to meet their future challenges.

Yet, the Indian politico-bureaucratic establishment is not the only guilty party here as the Indian armed forces also have a lot to answer for. Their top leadership has shied away from making tough choices about reducing manpower strength; about adjusting the inter-service budgetary balance; and about restructuring the nation's professional military education system. No military anywhere in the world gets all the resources from its government that it deems adequate but an effective military organisation should be able to optimise the use of whatever is at its disposal.

Resources alone, however, will not make Indian armed forces the envy of its adversaries. It is the policy direction that is set by the military leadership and the quality of training imparted to its manpower that will make the difference. The debate on the wide-ranging changes that India's defence set-up needs should have been initiated long back by the armed forces themselves.

The questions that need to be debated and answered include: Do we have a 21st century military in terms of doctrine and force structure? Have the doctrines and force structures evolved in line with the equipments that the nation's resources are being spent on? Do India's command and control processes reflect the changing strategic and operational requirements? Does the Indian military have the capacity to initiate military actions on very short notice and actually conduct military operations that result in something other than a stalemate, something that India might have wanted to do during Operation Parakram in 2001-02 but could not? Have the Indian armed forces got the balance between capital and labour right?

Though high rates of economic growth have given and will, in the future, provide greater resources for defence, the changing socio-economic milieu will also make it increasingly difficult to attract young men and women to the services. As a result the armed forces will have to find a way to strike a balance between growing manpower shortage and the easing of budgetary constraints. The services have no option but to modernise their human resources policy -- recruitment, retention, promotions, exit et al which will make a huge difference to the satisfaction levels of the rank and file.

The armed forces need to do some serious introspection if these issues are to be sorted out before it's too late. It is disappointing to see the service headquarters continuing to resist greater integration and inter-services rivalry continuing to be as vicious as in the past. When the army came up with the doctrine of Cold Start, it found no support for it in the other services. The other services may have had genuine concerns about the doctrine but they have made no attempt to reconcile their differences, underlining Indian operational weaknesses.

The government, meanwhile, can always point to the malaise within the armed forces as an excuse for not undertaking any meaningful defence reforms of its own. India, for example, finds itself in a peculiar position of having a Strategic Forces Command but no CDS, partly because of the differences among the three services.

The debate has got stuck on the issue of the CDS whereas the nation needs to be thinking seriously about integrated theatre commands, allowing the three services to share their resources and enabling a reduction of manpower at various levels. Today's military challenges can not be tackled without a real integration up to the command level.

India desperately needs a defence policy that can do justice to its rising aspirations and its armed forces need to rise to this challenge. It is time for the Indian defence forces to start producing men and women of intellectual leadership and administrative acumen that this time in India's history demands.

The armed forces face a choice: They can keep blaming the political-bureaucratic establishment and do nothing or they can initiate a process of internal reforms forthwith. India's future, in many ways, will depend on the choice that they make.

by Dr Harsh V Pant teaches at King's College London