Kricket, Kargil, Kandahar

C(K)RICKET, KARGIL and Kandahar are three paradigmatic pointers to our proclivity to passivity. Indian cricket has a distinguished calendar handed down from the days of Maharaja Ranjit Singh (in whose memory tourneys are still conducted) and characterised by incontestable strength, indomitable courage and a passionate determination to do the country proud. Success or defeat is part of a game, be it sport, or politics. But what is of growing concern is that we fail to probe the causes of defeat and take apposite corrective steps to cure the malady. We just think of palliatives for instant relief, instead of looking for long- term solutions. We make heroes of men (sports) overnight, without looking into their qualities, such as a high level of competence fired by a competitive spirit, and pull them down the next day with impunity and without qualms on specious arguments of fallibility and failings.

By short-circuiting a team's defeat, eulogising the dynamic effort of an individual player or two (rendered infructuous all the same), no room is left for a genuine examination of the team's deficiencies, offering less or little scope for any discernible improvement. Coordinated endeavour by the team as a whole, guided by a sense of commitment to hit the target is nowhere in evidence. We do not set a target ourselves, but let our opponents do it for us, and in the bargain, we have showed ourselves to be poor chasers, and more often than not the end comes even before we have seriously begun. The glorious, if unpredictable uncertainties of the game are matched only by the incurable inertia of the apex body to induct a sense of cohesion into the players to produce optimum results.

To manage is to direct one's efforts to accomplish a given task. Crisis management comprises, according to Prof.P.V.Indiresan (The Hindu, Jan. 10), three functional qualities - efficiency, fidelity and promptness. Efficiency he says, may be defined as achieving the maximum output from a given input, i.e., the lowest input for the largest output. Fidelity is a measure of how good the output is, rather than how large it is. Though seemingly contradictory, the two are complementary to each other, the one stressing on quantity and the other on quality without compromising either for the other. Promptness is the avoidance of delay. Judged by these factors, it is fairly clear where we had been niggardly, where we had mistaken means for the end and where we had been dead slow to act. We are neither guided by science, nor goaded by instinct. It is time we moved about with the changing trends all around and adopted the requisite strategy with the ball and the bat with improved fielding with a high sense of anticipation.

The Kargil episode sharply exposed our vulnerability on the border despite our brave rhetoric of defence preparedness. The presence of the ISI in several parts of the country is an acknowledged fact, but hardly any determined and serious step had been taken, much less contemplated to deal with it. It was not even so much the failure of intelligence that caught the nation napping, while Pakistani troops were being moved into our territory from across the LoC, providing cover to the advancing militants and mercenaries, as the failure of intelligent perception of a possible penetration of Pak-inspired fundamentalists, under the glow of Lahore odyssey. The lessons of 1962, 1965 and 1971 were lost on our administrators. It is curious how it did not dawn on them that history has a knack of repeating itself more often than it is seen to do. Like the Bourbons of old we have learnt nothing from the past and forgotten nothing, when it is worthwhile to forget non-working hypotheses and purposeless propositions.

The huge price we had paid for our slothfulness and sluggishness in terms of manpower and material resources should generate in the Government a vision of probable susceptibilities in the future and plan adequate action to safeguard our territorial integrity. It is not sound judgment to underestimate an enemy's strength and overestimate our own . The Tashkent Spirit and the Simla accord have not softened Pakistan's attitude to India, although, we on our part had been gleefully going about commending the Lahore Declaration to Islamabad, unaware, if not unmindful, of what was going on behind and through the LoC at Kargil and other points all the while.

Lack of initiative

The one lesson that India should learn from the highjacking of IC 814 from Kathmandu is ``that responses to any situation, however grim it might look, should not be jerky. It is unfortunate that the winner in the latest psychological warfare turned out to be the wrong party. The brutal killing of Rupin Katyal made it dreadfully clear that the hijackers were calling the shots all the time.'' (TheHindu Editorial, January 12)

Precious time was lost and a golden opportunity was missed when the flight landed at Amritsar and stopped over there for about 40 minutes. Quick commando action would have retrieved the situation for the benefit of the passengers and the crew, and made it impossible for the hijackers to escape.

Success in such situations lies in clear anticipation of the adversary's next step and in thwarting it by clear manipulation of a few steps ahead. In every sphere of activity we go with ideas fixed and fail to see what the opponent has up his sleeve. The Kandahar episode marks a stark failure on more fronts than one - administration, diplomatic and political. That three of the five hijackers are in Pakistan having been accorded heroe's welcome, adds insult to injury. The argument advanced by the Government that the situation was explosive and that what happened actually was decided upon in the best interests (personal safety included) of the passengers and the crew cannot be the whole truth. Somewhere some lacuna should have crept in to delay some aggressive action against the intruders, which has to be investigated to prevent such assaults in air in the future.

Pakistan's relationship with India has always been focussed on Kashmir and small wonder there is no deviation from its declared stand through successive governments in that country from the days of Gen. Yahya Khan, who thought fit to undermine the civil administration by assigning to the Army a more than definite role in its governance. The present Chief Executive, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, by pursuing the same stratagem adopted by his two predecessors, Gen. Ayub Khan and Gen. Zia-ul-Haq, has made Kashmir the centre-piece of any dialogue with India, even on other issues such as trade and friendly cooperation in other spheres. In his exclusive interview to (TheHindu), he made his Kashmir-centred agenda unmistakably clear and stated that ``Kashmir is the real dispute'' and that the others were only aberrations, or minor differences. Thereby, he gave a short- shrift to the Simla accord and the Lahore Declaration, trying to rewrite history. The parrot-like cry for self-determination goes against the established doctrine of territorial integrity of countries and runs contra to the principles on which the United Nations was founded.

Para 6 of the U.N. Resolution No. 1514 of 1960 was emphatic on two points. It read: ``Any attempt aimed at partial or total disruption of the national unity and territorial integrity of a country is incompatible with the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations.'' Para 8 added: ``Every State shall refrain from any action aimed at partial or total disruption of the national unity and territorial integrity of any other State or territory.'' As a posterior averment supersedes any anterior proposition in case law, this resolution of the U.N. ipso facto negates any previous opinions which might have been expressed by the world body on this question in different circumstances. This without doubt connotes that the so-called right of self-determination cannot be exercised for the purpose of recession.

The U.N. General Assembly, on December 15, 1974, adopted without vote (which means, on a consensus) an eight-Article definition of aggression. Art. 1: Aggression is the use of armed force against the sovereignty, territorial integrity, or political independence of another State in any other manner inconsistent with the Charter of the United Nations. Art. 3 (g): The sending by, or, on behalf of a State, of armed bands, groups of irregulars or mercenaries, which carry out acts of armed force against another State, of much gravity as will amount to acts stated above, or substantial involvement therein.

That was what happened in 1947 in Kashmir - aggression engineered andabetted by Pakistan. It will be of interest to note in this connection that the Plebiscite front formed in 1954 was disbanded in 1975, following Mirza Afzal Beg's presidential address at its annual meet in 1974, wherein he had stated that there were other ways than plebiscite to resolve the Kashmir tangle.

Abraham Lincoln, Honest Abe as he was affectionately called by his fellow countrymen, who was President of America from 1861-65, held secession as ``the essence of anarchy''. U Thant, former Secretary-General of the U.N., said in 1970: ``As an international organisation the U.N. had never accepted and does not accept and I do not believe that it will ever accept the principle of recession of a part of its member-State.''

Be that as it may, it is imperative that the Government of India steps down from its high pedestal, realising the proud reality, pursue efforts for the restoration of peace between the two neighbours, instead of harping on certain perceived formulations and pre-conceived notions. But in his interview with TheHindu, the Chief Executive has kept the door half open for fruitful bilateral negotiations, which the latter should take on hand. It should not be difficult even to reach some tentative agreement on Kashmir which had been intractable for over half a century. It should not be beyond human ingenuity to devise a scheme by which both the countries come down to brasstacks and evolve a lasting solution, short of recession.

The enormity of the avoidable loss sustained by both countries by adopting antagonistic and confrontationist attitude must be seen as the starting point of discussions to restore normalcy and good neighbourliness for the greater glory of the lands of the Ganges and the Indus. Let the two nations bequeath to their posterity what they had inherited from their forbears sans addition or subtraction.

T. P. RAJAGOPALAN

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