by
S Kamat
as
Aam Admi
Issue: 271 Date: 04.03.2019
Contents:
1. Imran Khan Speaks With Forked Tongue
2. Bailing Out IL& FS And Jet Airways
3. Pulwama Attack Response Handled Badly
Imran Khan Speaks With Forked Tongue
Imran Khan, the Pakistani Prime Minister immediately after the Pulwama terror attack and seeing the reaction within India, both of the government as well as the public had called for restraint. A dose of this medicine he should have taken before Pulwama by restraining the Jaish e Mohammed who are operating under his watch and whose past nefarious activities he is surely aware of. That is, of course, if Imran was interested in peace. He is again not practising what he preaches by conducting an air attack on India yesterday, 27th Feb 2019 within just a couple of days after he called for restraint. Is sending warplanes to attack Indian military targets a sign of Pakistani restraint? By simultaneously seeking talks to end the present conflagration one cannot say there is any seriousness to the offer since it seems a just a ploy to buy time so that the Pakistani armed forces are able to plan out the next steps to attack India. One can safely tell Imran that you speak with a forked tongue and that the time for talks is over and that Pakistan needs to give up its terror agenda once and for all. Postscript: Since the time of writing this Pakistan has returned the pilot they had captured after his MIG-21 fighter jet had crashed after a dogfight near the LoC. There are signs of de-escalation of the conflict which are good signs since no one wants a war which means needless loss of lives. But Pakistan continues to use its artillery to shell across the LoC resulting in civilian deaths which is definitely not 'restraint' on Pakistan's part. Thus Imran should translate his words into action first before taking the mantle of advising India.
Bailing Out IL& FS And Jet Airways
Bailing out IL& FS out of their financial crisis with public money and the same thing being planned for Jet Airways where some Rs. 500 crores of public money will be given to them with or without Naresh Goyal being at the helm of affairs there or not, is completely out of turn and irresponsible to say the least. The IL& FS group of Cos. has some Rs. 85-90,000 crores of liability to the banks and the public and has been categorised as 'too big to fail' which has led the big lenders and investors like SBI and LIC to come forward to fund the group and this without going to the NCLT which would have been the proper procedure. One does not understand why banks and financial institutions continue to fund these companies until the liabilities hit the roof leading to instability and then the companies topple over. While all this was going on these companies continued to pay their directors and top management fat salaries which is the case with IL& FS. The question to be asked is what were our regulators like SEBI, RBI and others doing? There does not seem to be any EWS - Early Warning System in the regulation mechanism to control indiscriminate lending. In the last few years we have seen Mallya, Nirav Modi, Choksi and many lesser culprits take unfair advantage of the prevailing leaky financial system. It is time that we put a stop to this. The Jet Airways case is somewhat similar and bears a striking resemblance to the plight of Mallya and Kingfisher Airlines of a brand that was leading in its field and set the pace in the industry, which upon facing competition from me-too upstarts started to overstretch itself in new directions like overseas operations and found itself in difficult operational and financial straits. Now Jet Airways is a private operation and was full well aware of their business environment and its likely pitfalls. So where is the question of public money being given to them? A similar question had come up when Mallya had lobbied for a bail-out for Kingfisher Airlines citing the spurt in cost of aviation fuel and prevailing adverse conditions in the airline industry then, but he had been negatived - so why should Jet Airways be given a governmental or public crutch. While on the subject of funding of losses one should look at the fact that bank losses, both PSB and private, because of the NPA's are being borne by the public through taxation in case of PSB's and for private banks through the stock markets which impact is again on the public shareholders, so there needs to be a fair measure of accountability that these operations should have to the public. Thus the government could well consider legislation to have a certain number of directors on the boards of these banks from their account holders and/or citizens from the public which will at least make the public aware of the bank operations and also get advance information of any adverse operations or wrongdoings by the management of the banks.
Pulwama Attack Response Handled Badly
India has yet again played into Pakistan's hands over the Pulwama attack by taking a jingoistic position of 'faux' aggression boxing itself thus into a corner and allowing Pakistan to control the narrative by saying that it would retaliate if India were to attack. By its pugnacious response Pakistan has assumed the position of the victim with India being the aggressor. Though one must admit that the mobilising of international support by our government against Pakistan on the plank of terrorism has been effectively organised forcing it to act against Jaish e Mohammed and its related arms. However, the initial sabre rattling within India has again isolated the Kashmiris making them the recipient of attacks across the country particularly the community of students who for pursuing their education are spread out across the northern part of the country. Where we claim that we want to integrate Kashmir with the country, we have involuntarily added yet another wound in the alienation agenda. In the face of terror attacks we need to be more deliberate and circumspect about out our response. Being obtuse only precludes our options for seeking retribution for the Pulwama and similar other attacks. What needed to have been done was to acknowledge the Pulwama attack and the JeM claim for the attack and commenced the exercise of international diplomacy like we have done. On retaliation it was best to keep mum and play the victim card to its fullest extent while parallely exploring options for a counter-offensive against terror camps in both PoK and Pakistan. Lulling Pakistan and the terrorists into thinking that as usual India would not attack back, we should have examined which are the most easy and convenient terrorist camps to strike and launched a surprise attack catching the enemy in a less prepared position. What we have done now with the blood-boil dialogues and threats of retaliation is that Pakistan has pulled back its terror apparatus and is getting battle-ready to defend itself in the eventuality of an India attack. The Pulwama attack has also been used by the Brahma, Vishnu and Mahesh of the BJP i.e. Narendra Modi, Amit Shah and Arun Jaitley in no particular order, to ratchet up the nationalism agenda as a poll plank for the upcoming elections. Notice that the Devi in the equation, Nirmala Sitaraman, though being Defence Minister has been unusually quiet with nary a squeak nor a tweet (not the social media kind) from her. The BJP diktat is probably that once the Holy Trio have exhausted the topic then the others can speak on it. Like in a classroom - speak when you are spoken to or speak when you are asked to speak. Yet again the crocodile tears scenario is being enacted. For all his words of being sad about the attack and the loss of lives of the jawans therein, the Prime Minister went about his routine with a business as usual approach as is reported on the day of the attack in the Corbett Park and inaugurating the next day the Vande Bharat Express train from Delhi to Varanasi. As a mark of respect to the dead Narendra Modi could have avoided participating in these events.
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