Subhash Chandra Bose: A question of, by, and for the conscience of the people of Bharat.

Do not we the people of Bharat would like to enlighten ourselves with a book telling us about the post-1945 life of Subhash Chandra Bose but no conjectures of the same and guess what; the book is published by and endorsed by the government of Bharat? With this in mind let us traverse the realities.

The personas that have fought for the freedom of their respective countries have always been used by their descendants to reap international mileage and public support at home.

The political history and present state of affairs of any country shows how the present politicians use the past politicians to convince people that if the people lhad liked the past politicians then they have to love the present politicians because the present politicians are the replication of the past ones.

We find that our Subhash Babu and I will not use the title Netaji because Subhash Chandra Bose may be a leader to the world but to us, he is our Father, son, and brother respectively, and at the highest level, our Martyr and henceforth I shall call him as our Babu.

We find that Subhas Babu was eccentric, he was eccentric and unconventional to the  Congress propagation of independence through the prism of non-violence however Mr. Gandhi did direct the Bharatiya Soldiers to fight for the British in the second world war and also directed out of rhetoric to Jews and Britishers that let Germany slaughter even your women and children.

Subhas Babu lived, as he is not living today, a life of adventure, adventure for sake of Bharat not for his pleasure. Now, we do not have any official declaration on his life post-1945 even after the finding of the Mukherjee commission that Subhash Babu did not die in a plane crash. Yes, many files have been declassified but they do not draw a convincing picture of the post-1945 life of Subhas Babu.

Our Babu has become a subject matter of many films namely Bose: Dead/Alive and Gumnami and such films have negated the plane crash theory and even made our Babu remain alive till 1985. I do not want to delve into what is termed as conjecture about the life period of our Babu post-1945. Instead, I ask the following questions:

Why shall not the post-1945 life of Subhas Babu, if any, be declared by the government? The government says such disclosure will affect the sovereignty, integrity, and foreign relation of Bharat with other countries.

Now, why not then does the government defines what kind of consequence regarding sovereignty, integrity, and foreign relation will follow post-disclosure?

We have the official secret Act which prohibits the government's servants and citizens to disclose secret information not permitted by law for disclosure but such disclosure is been prohibited for anti-typing, therefore you cannot disclose the information of our Bharat to our enemies.

So, therefore does not such non-disclosure by the government show that the information about the post-1945 life of Subhas Babu is a piece of information that we do not want our enemies to know?

Now does such non-disclosure also show that our enemies are interested to know about Subhas Babu for destroying us?

Who are those enemies?

Or

Will the brand of Congress and Gandhi be in jeopardy if the post-1945 life of Subhas Babu is disclosed as they were the influencers in India when the alleged 1945 plane crash happened and the alleged demise of Subhas Babu/Gumnami Baba took place in 1985?

One may argue that if that be so, then the BJP party in power would have disclosed the post-1945 life of Subhas Babu exposing the Gandhi family and the congress.

The answer is that such disclosure will affect the brand of the Mahatama of Gandhi which the BJP also sells to spread peace and secularism.

 Therefore it appears that disclosure of the post-1945 life of Subhas Babu will be detrimental to the image of Bharat. But should not we expose that Bharat which suppressed her most valiant freedom fighter? Should not Bharat be punished who made the life of Subash Babu deleterious?

If Subhas Babu has lived after 1945, then he had lived with Pain. It is alleged that Gumnami Babi used to say his coming to the Public will be detrimental to Bharat. However, the record shows that our Subhas Babu has not been declared a war criminal by the allied powers.

The Right to Information Act gives u the right to know however at the same time it upholds the Official Secret Act thereby allowing the government to hide information from the public.

I am been told we shall not dig out the past which can affect our present. Yes, it appears that the post-1945 story of our Babu will affect our present and perhaps may be detrimental to the same but cannot we inform our present of the falsities of the past?

We have to decide, the Bharatiyas have to take a decision. The game of majority prevails in the Parliament and we shall call upon the parliament that we will not physically harm anyone after getting the true state of affairs of Subhas Babu's life but we shall inform our present about the true National life of our Past.

Social Justice that I understand includes the Right of the People living in the society to know the history of the society which I argue can be upheld if a social engineer like Subhas Babu is been made known to the public page by page and inch by inch. Mind u the INA comprised people of every sex and religion.

‘Democracy conceives the rule of the majority but sometimes it forgets to emphasize the conscience of the majority and here in the case of Subhas Babu, the conscience of we the people of Bharat wants to know not like the phrase the nation wants to know’.

Views expressed by the writer are personal.  

The next great war may come out of some damned foolish thing in the South China Sea or the East China Sea. Alliances are as old as civilisation. Older, actually: almost every hunter-gatherer band that anthropologists have studied, from the New Guinea highlanders to the Yanomamo in the Amazon, made alliances with other groups to try to protect themselves.

But they often also ended up fighting people they had no quarrel with. ‘The enemy of my enemy is my friend’ is the usual logic that the alliances are built on, but people tend to overlook the fact that alliances also mean that ‘the enemy of my ally is my enemy too.’

Right now, the various regional alliances that already exist seem to be consolidating into a single all-embracing alliance system. It was that kind of system that made the First World War happen, and we probably don’t want to see that happen again.

Only three years ago there was only one big alliance in the world: the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), founded in 1949, victorious in the Cold War, and more recently an alliance in search of a new role. Almost everybody in Europe and North America belonged to it.

Apart from that, the United States had bilateral alliances or alliance-like arrangements with a number of countries in the Middle East (Israel), East Asia (Japan, South Korea and perhaps Taiwan) and Oceania (Australia and New Zealand).

Three of the world’s biggest countries, China, India and Russia, had no military alliances worth talking about. Unless you think that the China-North Korea, India-Bhutan and Russia-Armenia alliances count.

It was, in other words, a loosely-coupled world: something could go really bad in one part of the planet, and countries in other regions would not necessarily be dragged into it.

The shift began with rising concern in the Asia-Pacific countries and the United States about the irresistible rise of president-for-life Xi Jinping to supreme power in China. The response to that was the Quad, formally the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue: the US, India, Australia and Japan.

Founded in 2017, it began as just a talking shop, but after bitter clashes between Indian and Chinese troops on the Himalayan frontier in 2020 India came fully on board, participating in the first joint naval exercises with the other three Quad members in 2020.

Then came AUKUS, an alliance uniting the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia, with the initial task of arranging for Australia to get a fleet of nuclear-powered attack submarines. It was transparently designed to challenge China’s territorial ambitions in the South China Sea.

This pretty well completed the architecture for an ‘Indo-Pacific NATO’ whose members would account for about a third of the world’s GDP. The original NATO members account for about 45 per cent of global GDP (although the US and the UK are being double-counted in this reckoning).

While China’s more belligerent style under Xi certainly accounts for the speed at which a counter-balancing alliance took shape in the region, the equal and opposite reaction to this enterprise was the announcement of a “no limits” partnership by Xi and Russian President Vladimir Putin, in early 2022. All this happened before Russia invaded Ukraine again in February of last year (having done it once already in 2014).

You can see how everybody was reacting in large part to moves by the other ‘side’, and why Xi backed off quickly from his ‘no limits’ partnership with Russia once he realised how obsessed Putin was with his Ukraine legacy project.

Nevertheless, the game is now afoot, and it will be hard to stop. Germany announced that it was doubling its defence budget last February; Japan said it would do the same last month. China is rapidly expanding its armed forces despite a failing economy, and Russia’s growing derangement is hard to ignore.

All the planners and analysts insist that they have it under control. We shouldn’t worry that we are living through a high-speed replay of the creation of the entangling alliances that dragged everybody into the First World War. This is a different time.

My problem is that I can’t see what is so different about this time. Outside the specific and well-contained war in Ukraine, there are no great issues of principle at stake, and none of the great powers is planning to destroy or subjugate any of the others. (Ukraine is not a great power, so that doesn’t count.)

Count Otto von Bismarck, first Chancellor of the newly united German Empire, remarked in 1878 that “One day the great European War will come out of some damned foolish thing in the Balkans.” As it did, in 1914, once all the alliances were in place.

The next great war may come out of some damned foolish thing in the South China Sea. Or the East China Sea, for that matter.

Gwynne Dyer’s new book is The Shortest History of War, Article Courtesy The Pioneer

Propelled by the need to return to fiscal consolidation path and targeting fiscal deficit as a proportion of GDP at 5.9 percent for the financial year (FY) 2023-24 (against 6.4 percent for FY 2022-23), the Union government is keen to rein in major subsidies. It wants to slash fertilizer subsidies from the likely actual of around Rs 250,000 crore during the current FY to Rs 140,000–150,000 crore during 2023-24.

Does it have measures to deliver? Is it merely banking on a drop in international fertiliser prices?

Fertilizer subsidy is payments made to manufacturers or importers to cover the excess of the cost of production/import and distribution (or cost of supply) over a low maximum retail price (MRP) they are directed by the Union Government to charge from the farmers. The subsidy on each ton of fertilizer produced (or imported) and sold is nothing but the difference between the cost of supply and MRP.

When multiplied by the total quantity of fertilizer sold in a year, it gives aggregate subsidy payments, as reflected in the budget.

Even as fertiliser sales are primarily demand-driven (this in turn, depends on the weather, area sown under different crops, fertilizer use per hectare and so on), the other two crucial factors are MRP and the cost of supply. As for MRP, given the massive political ramifications of any hike and a spate of assembly elections during 2023 followed by general elections in 2024, the government won’t dare to bring about even a small hike, forget a steep jump needed for slashing the subsidy by over Rs 100,000 crore.

As for the cost of supply, India is overwhelmingly dependent on imports. Nearly 50 percent of India’s requirement of di-ammonium phosphate (DAP) is imported, whereas in the case of muriate of potash (MOP), our import dependence is 100 percent. Similarly, all phosphoric acid and the bulk of ammonia (raw materials or RMs used in the making of DAP and other non-urea fertilisers) are imported. About one-third of the urea demand is imported. Even for the balance of two-thirds supplied domestically, India depends on the import of natural gas (NG) for at least 1/3rd of its requirement.

Of the total potash imports, India draws close to 50 percent from Russia and Belarus. Russia, Belarus and Ukraine together account for 20 percent of our phosphoric acid imports. Additionally, India gets around 15 percent of its ammonia imports from Russia which also supplies 10 percent of our NG imports. Nearly 60 percent of Indian DAP imports come from China and Saudi Arabia.

In the case of urea, over one-third of Indian imports come from China. The war following military action by Russia and sanctions imposed on it by European countries and the USA has resulted in disruption in supplies from the region and a steep increase in price of both fertilisers as well as RMs used in their production. All of these cost escalations were absorbed by the Centre by increasing subsidies during 2022-23 even as MRPs of all fertilisers were kept unchanged.

Given the unfolding geo-political and military situation with NATO countries getting increasingly entangled in the conflict and Russia and Ukraine showing no sign of scaling down hostilities (forget ending), there seems to be no end to the war at least till the end of 2023.

Therefore, any relief from the current tight global supply and elevated fertiliser prices is highly unlikely. The government has been trying to diversify sources of supply, for instance, buying more of MOP from Canada, Israel, Jordan, etc., or more of DAP from Saudi Arabia and Morocco. But, these efforts have only helped in ensuring adequate supplies but not much relief in securing lower prices.

Meanwhile, Chemicals and Fertiliser Minister Mansukh Mandaviya has led delegations to major supplier countries seeking long-term agreements. These are welcome moves but the timing isn’t apt. When the global supply-demand scenario is tight, India is unlikely to secure good price deals, notwithstanding some concession over the prevailing high price in lieu of our committing to buy long-term.

In regard to NG, the government is working on a couple of initiatives such as “incentivizing companies that contract fuel at better prices”, idea of an aggregator for procuring the fuel on behalf of fertilizer producers and buying NG from gas exchanges.

Since 2015, the Centre has been running a system of pooling NG to supply all urea plants connected to a national grid at a uniform delivered price (UDP).

Even as individual units pay as per their respective weighted average delivered cost, the pool operator, viz. GAIL India Limited, notifies the UDP at the beginning of every month. A unit that pays less than UDP has to deposit the differential amount with the pool, whereas another unit that pays more gets the difference from the pool.

Under the scheme, the ability of a urea manufacturer to purchase gas at a lower price is not rewarded, just as there is no disincentive for others who buy at a higher price. Hence, any talk of “incentivising companies that contract fuel at better prices” is laughable.

The idea of an aggregator procuring fuel on behalf of Indian fertiliser producers is appealing as consolidation of demand enhances the negotiating power with global suppliers. But then, GAIL India Limited, in coordination with the Department of Fertilisers (DoF), is already doing this by assessing the deficit in supply from existing sources vis-à-vis the projected demand and importing LNG to plug it.

Buying NG from gas exchanges won’t help either. This is because the quantity traded at the exchange is miniscule. The government is also pinning hopes on Nano liquid urea or urea in the form of nanoparticles. It provides nitrogen to plants in liquid form as an alternative to conventional urea. A 500ml bottle of nano urea is equivalent to a 45kg bag of conventional urea. While, selling the latter for Rs 242 requires subsidy support of Rs 2,758, the former is available to farmers at the same price sans subsidy.

A 45kg bag of conventional urea contains 46 percent ‘N’ or 20 kg (45×0.46), whereas a 500ml bottle of nano urea has 4 percent ‘N’ or 20 grams (500x.04). Yet, the two are treated as equal. Can a mere 20 grams in nano urea deliver what 20 kg in conventional urea does? Nano urea could solve India’s fertiliser subsidy conundrum if only miracles happen!

To conclude, the initiatives taken by the Government are unlikely to make a dent on subsidy on the desired scale. An outgo of Rs 140,000 crore-150,000 crore during 2023-24 seems to be beyond reach. During 2020-21, the budget estimate (BE) for fertilizer subsidy was Rs 70,000 crore but the actual was Rs 138,000 crore. During 2021-22, BE was Rs 80,000 crore but the actual was Rs 162,000 crore. For 2022-23, BE was Rs 105,000 crore but the actual is likely to be Rs 250,000 crore. If for 2023-24, the finance minister keeps BE at Rs 140,000-150,000 crore, we will only see a repeat of the past.

India can break away from this trend only if the Government pursues major reforms such as urea decontrol and direct benefit transfer (DBT) of subsidy, which can force suppliers to cut costs, stop leakages, and farmers to improve fertilizer efficiency.

ALAS! None of these is on the radar.

Article Courtesy The Pioneer: (Uttam Gupta: The author is a policy analyst)

India and Japan have common objectives in forging military agreements beyond military exercises and trade

China poses an active threat to the countries of the South China Sea and the Indian Ocean. By avoiding contact warfare, it wishes to avoid heavy casualties and the associated international repercussions, especially the tag of a 'war initiator'. Hence, its strategies of wolf warrior diplomacy and salami slicing aim for a fait accompli, i.e., situations in which the revisionist power can revise the current system without a direct confrontation.

Xi Jinping's ‘China Dream’ encompasses "informatised local wars" with disruptive technologies of artificial intelligence (AI), unmanned systems, and directed-energy weapons. Thus, adopting an 'Integrated Network Electronic Warfare' blends computer network attacks and electronic warfare. This dominance is seen as a force multiplier in the capabilities of the PLA.

For this purpose, China has adopted a leapfrog approach in making advancements in non-kinetic physical directed energy weapons (DEW), which could be a future game changer. A plethora of DEW platforms, such as targeted high-powered lasers and wave emitters or particle beam waves, enhance Beijing's electromagnetic warfare capabilities. DEWs can disable the satellite sensors and jam automated signal and communication systems.

Washington's Defence Intelligence Agency Report, Challenges to Security in Space (2022), assessed that Beijing owns "multiple ground-based laser weapons of varying power levels to disrupt, degrade, or damage satellites that include a currently limited capability to employ laser systems against satellite sensors". Thus, it has the capability to produce reversible and non-reversible effects against the space systems of its adversaries.

Beijing's Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR) satellite fleet, which has doubled since 2018, stood at 250 systems in 2022. These satellites allow the PLA to monitor and map the maritime and terrestrial bodies in the Indian Ocean, the South China Sea and the Korean peninsula. At an international level, Russia and China are leaving no stone unturned in implementing their "no limits partnership" and jointly continue to develop and test their ASAT weapons in their military exercises. Given the technological developments related to the PLA, East and South Asia's overall balance of power has been disturbed.

In East Asia, Japan is trying to stand up against the Chinese threats to what it calls "the most severe and complex security environment since World War II". It understands that it is becoming crucial to counter China at two fronts simultaneously, i.e. first, to counter its naval expansion along with its numerical superiority, and second its expanding scope of electromagnetic warfare.

Consequently, the change in Tokyo's strategic stance on Beijing from an economic partner to an active military threat has given the leadership strategic clarity of its security requirements and policy formulation. By 2026, Japan intends to deploy Lockheed Martin's Tomahawk and Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff missiles at several bases. On the other hand, it is also going ahead with its military-civil integration with Mitsubishi Heavy Industry, aiming to develop a surface-to-ship guided missile.

Moreover, Japan has contemplated a possible Chinese electromagnetic attack that can disable power grids and other critical military assets like jet aircraft even before hostilities are initiated. It has incorporated the new technologies under "multi-domain defence force" for "cross-domain operations". For its immediate need, Japan has plans to deploy an Electronic Warfare unit to Yonaguni, Okinawa prefecture, to enhance its analytical and data collection capabilities.

From an international political perspective, Japan has rapidly moved beyond the partnership domain and entered formal institutionalised security cooperation. Thus, it is no longer in the stage of a 'reluctant realist'. The foundations laid by late PM Shinzo Abe are now reaping fruits which make Japan more secure and allow it to stand up against the Chinese threat.

Two crucial developments last year are much appreciated. First, Japan and Germany agreed to set up a "legal framework to facilitate joint activities between Japan's Self-Defence Forces and the German military". With agreements in place for intelligence-sharing mechanisms and promoting transfers of defence equipment and technology, interoperability between Japan and Germany would be a welcome step.

Second, Japan signed a bilateral security agreement with Australia that encompasses "practical cooperation and interoperability" in the emerging domains. These areas include intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance… advanced defence science and technology, defence industry and high-end capabilities".

Although 2023 has just begun, Japan is already in action. The recent Japan-UK Reciprocal Access Agreement for "cooperative activities" will expand the narratives of a "free and open Indo-Pacific", thereby having profound consequences for the region. Also, the US-Japan agreement for "exploration, science, and research" in deep space has provisions for joint activities between the two countries in various areas such as space operations and technology, space transportation, safety and mission assurance.

Against the above backdrop, there are important messages for India, as it also faces an aggressive China on the land and in the maritime domain. A possible Sino-Pak collaboration, apart from challenges from the sea, can make the situation for India worrisome. Thus, it is time for India to come out of its reluctant approach and initiate dual-use critical technologies agreements with credible partners like Japan, France and Germany.

India should not be left behind in institutionalising multi-faceted security agreements. Although there are unsaid similarities in the objectives of Quad and the AUKUS, a very different approach shouldn't make the geographical contours of Quad more vulnerable to the Chinese threat. Needless to say that Galwan and Tawang skirmishes have demonstrated that the future of the India-China relationship does not seem to be stable at all, thereby posing multiple tactical as well as strategic challenges for the country.

India and Japan have common objectives in forging military agreements beyond military exercises and trade. Various dimensions of security agreements, such as joint research and production of technologies in the electromagnetic spectrum, increase the interoperability between the two forces, apart from developing cyber offensive mechanisms that can bring stability and peace in the Indo-Pacific order.

China, in future conflicts, will provoke either of the two countries at one point in time and would naturally expect stability at the other international border. Thus, it becomes essential to frustrate China in its own game; hence, Indo-Japan defence relations need to be boosted.

(The author is Associate Professor in Central University of Punjab, Bathinda)