The Hijack of IC 814
The botching up of the hijacking drama was never more evident than when the abducted aircraft was stationed at Amritsar for more than 40 minutes, waiting for directives from the crisis management group (CMG). The terms of the CMG, put together in 1987, makes for interesting reading. According to it, the cabinet secretary will take stock of the situation, summon the secretaries concerned who in turn may get in touch with the respective state governments and their agencies. And this is supposed to be crisis management. Says Vikram Diesh, former fighter pilot now with an NGO: "It’s an archetypal bureaucratic document, top heavy, with decision-making lying with people who cannot differentiate between a pistol and a gun. There is no role for the services who deal with these matters."
Predictably, when there was an actual crisis at hand, the CMG was hopelessly out of depth. Its headquarters at Delhi’s Rajiv Gandhi Bhavan, for instance, did not have the telephone numbers of the officials concerned of the Punjab government. It would, therefore, have been really ambitious to expect any scientific analysis of data. There was a virtual cacophony of opinions by easily excitable officials, who probably had not confronted a hijacking, even theoretically. And this while time was ticking away. The CMG headquarters was a telling example of ‘how not to handle a crisis’.
Rajesh Pilot, himself an internal security minister in Narsimha Rao’s government, says that an NSG posse is stationed at the Palam airport just for situations like these. No amount of ‘files’ on the subject can be a substitute for mock exercises on the ground, something the aviation security establishment had not undertaken for the past three years. In the end, cabinet secretary Prabhat Kumar has held his job, as has director (NSG) Nikhil Kumar while the diplomats involved in negotiations remain an unknown entity. The civil aviation secretary, Ravindra Gupta, is well poised to continue. And what about our counter-intelligence operating out of Nepal which has consistently seen and ignored the writing on the wall?
The Kargil Battle
Victory was the last thing that came our way at Kargil. While much has been said and chronicled about the undeclared war, the bottomline is pretty much the same. The K. Subrahmanyam Committee, instituted with much fanfare to probe the intrusions into Indian territory extensively, concluded last week that the report cannot be made public. Why? Because of security considerations. Because sensitive defence information should not be made public. Fair enough. But what about the top army brass of the 15 Corps in Srinagar, for whom keeping an eye on intrusions constituted their most elementary brief. They were blissfully unaware of the presence of Pakistanis and their agents who kept walking in and out of Indian territory.
If this was not enough, the home secretary during those dark days, B.P. Singh, is now India’s representative at the World Bank. raw chief Arvind Dave was promoted as governor, Arunachal Pradesh. His place was taken by A.S. Dullat amid much lobbying and litigation by other officials in the agency at a time when they should have been busy keeping a tab on the borders and beyond to look out for intrusions.
Orissa Cyclone
After thousands perished in one of the worst natural disasters to hit India in recent memory, chief minister Giridhar Gamang was replaced by the Congress high command, not because of the natural cyclone but the political one where it had been decimated in the general elections and was, as a result, trapped in the morass of committed infighting among its top state leadership.The super-cyclone was, at best, a catalyst. While it exposed the non-existent system of relief and local administration in the state, it also suggested the pattern of things to come. Relief, which is the essence of a ravaged state, became a casualty. The special relief commissioner D.N.Padhi, ultimately responsible for state-wide operations, was removed rather unceremoniously from his post right in the middle of rescue operations. The state IAS association in a rare show of solidarity rose together as one man, forcing the government to reinstate Padhi, albeit in a different department. Even worse, three district magistrates, whose districts had been the worst affected, literally abdicated their charge and scampered for safety, leaving the people to fend for themselves. Under the administrative charter, dereliction of duty constitutes the worse possible offence, yet the officers have got away as clean as a whistle.
Dropsy Deaths
Whatever happened to dropsy? The 23 deaths and scores of others taken seriously ill after consuming adulterated mustard oil caught public imagination in August 1998. After several state governments in typical knee-jerk reactions banned the deadly cooking medium, the case is now confined to the dustbins of time and history. And justifiably so. Because any serious inquiry would have pointed to critical irregularities such as there being no quality control and no checks on mustard oil entrepreneurs. While 29 cases were lodged against traders, the officialdom remained safe. The then chief minister Sahib Singh Verma offered minor compensations, but there was never any question of heads rolling.
Charkhi-Dadri
A rarity in the super-jet age. Yet the mid-air collision between a Saudia Boeing 747 and a Kazakh IL-76 which occurred near Delhi caught world headlines. But then public memory is proverbially short. After a while, everyone, including India’s aviation establishment, forgot about it. The government appointed a commission headed by Justice R.C. Lahoti to investigate causes of the crash. The report was submitted duly, but did not particularly hold anyone responsible. Worse, the main reasons for the crash, even today prevail like always. Just as in November 1997, there was no monopulse secondary surveillance radar (MSSR) at the Delhi airport, the most primary radar system meant to separate aircraft vertically is still not in place. And this when it was to have been installed in 1995. In 2000, officials say privately, they have no clue when it would become operational. So until another such accident occurs, the people concerned can live in peace.
The lack of accountability is sure to have sweat over some brows.While BJP general secretary Venkaiah Naidu says that it is not in this government’s nature to carry out motivated witchhunts and look for scapegoats, opposition leaders say the government is hiding behind its own ineptitude. "How can heads roll when this government does not know how to conduct its affairs? It is alright to talk of pro-active policies and issue white papers on ISI, but if one doesn’t know how to handle emergency situations, then everything else becomes rhetorical," says Congress leader Kapil Sibal, who points out that there can never be any question of scalping the responsible because "if you are not familiar with governance, the best way out is to protect everyone. " With the hijack drama still etched on everyone’s mind, the government could come under pressure to hold officials accountable. If the immediate past is anything to go by, the government has a tough task cut out for itself.
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