Wednesday 28 March 2012

Tumour in Uniform

The poor guy can do nothing right....not even his birth date!!!! And he is the general of the worlds second largest standing army.The honest guardian of the frontiers of the worlds largest democracy seems to have no ammunition left.

The folks with plenty of ammunition are of course our dear politicians...some bay for blood ,not of the defence minister,but of the General.He cant write letters without getting them leaked out to the media.Well look at it this way...he writes to his vertical..does not get a response , so he escalates  - normal corporate behavior.What else could he do to awaken a sleeping bureaucracy? If he had been born 1000 miles to the west of Haryana, he would have taken a more proactive approach.The idea of leaking letters would seem rather tame to our neighbours in the east and west. Whistleblowers are not even conceived in the land due north of India :)

Okay so what is alarming??? That the defence forces do not have all that they should have had??Well what is new?Wars in the subcontinent have been fought on grit, raw courage and tactical victories on the ground.Or sentimentally, on the prayers of billions, for a land that has never played the role of an aggressor.

The common people will be no more alarmed by these observations than they have been with the sale of 2G spectrum or the Devas deal.This will in no way reduce the respect for the armed forces or appreciation for their sacrifices - indeed they manage much like every other Indian - with much less than they should have.

We have a silent Prime Minister and a silent Defence Minister, we have a General crying for action of some kind to prevent the cancerous growth in the last institution which commands our respect.

The minister may be well meaning, but we would never know what he means unless he speaks or acts.

The minister at least can always find solace in the fact that India has never made any claim to be the land of the free,home of the brave :)

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