Indian Defence and its Objections against 3G spectrum

India is a unique democracy, probably as unique as unique could get. A powerful judiciary, a free press, all very good. But will somebody please explain since when has India turned a demo-militia.  You think that is an exaggeration then why is the defence raising objections in commercial policy matters of the country? Will somebody please explain what is the defence’s problem in allowing the country to progress in the new global economy? Why isn’t spectrum being allotted to 3G services as per promises made by the Telecom Ministry?

Liberty, Air, Water and Spectrum – Our birth right

Let’s get this in perspective. Air, water etcetera we all know about. Did you know in the 21st century there is another element added if you wish to survive. The element is “SPECTRUM”.  While over 150 countries don’t have an issue about releasing spectrum for 3G services, the Indian Defence combined with other hurdles have a major issue with releasing spectrum. Consider this not even a dynamic and an absolutely brilliant minister like Dayanadi Maran has been able to get this job done.

Lal Tape Babugiri at its best

Passing the parcel. Guess who gets a gold in that. Your guess is as good as mine.
Can a policy ever be implemented without a committee of ministers, without some PSU’s though privatized (but the same old genes) creating nuisance.

The status so far is the Wireless Planning Coordination (WPC) panel apprised the Telecom Commission on the status of spectrum issues recently (last month). Defence had some objections.  There is also some hindrance from BSNL, MTNL etc. Last year, DoT embarked on a Rs 1,000-crore optical fibre cable project to enable the defence forces vacate spectrum for use by commercial cellular service providers. However, the Ministry of Defence is understood to have informed the DoT that it would require additional time, up to 390 days, to vacate the spectrum (includes 3G spectrum.)  390 days!  Will somebody tell them that 365 days make a year! Maybe 390 is a lucky number for them.

So the big picture is No Spectrum. Defence, BSNL and MTNL are playing passing the parcel. One says it’s because of  BSNL and MTNL’s failure to complete the alternative optic fibre backbone as per requirement. The other also has an argument. Arguments, arguments and more counter arguments. But no spectrum, no 3G services.

Promises are meant to be broken

Maran is an absolutely brilliant minister. This is probably the 3rd time I am writing about him in the last 3 years. He has brought about almost a revolution as far as growth is concerned. But he has hasn’t been able to deliver as far as this issue goes.

Flash back to May 2006. It was reported that the defence ministry will release 45 Mhz of spectrum by the end of last year (2006) for providing 3G services.   It’s a quarter after that deadline. I don’t see anybody using a 3G phone in India.

The Common Man

Who suffers? The common man. A whole economy that will be based on this spectrum policy. Rural India who will get access to wireless education, e-governance and perhaps much more. The young entrepreneurs of small metros who will use this for creating value added services to be sold globally.

The Last Word

Spectrum is our right as the citizens of this country.  3G is a necessity of our time. There maybe minor commercial issues about 3G per se but they are irrelevant as far as release of spectrum is concerned. 3G is required. Period.

An entire new economy will blossom once this comes into effect. It’s much bigger than any of us can imagine. Last year I had written as kids we played games Made in Japan. Kids in Japan will now download and play games made in Almora, in Bareilly and many such cities. The entertainment business is just a small fraction of the opportunities that this will open up. The future is here. Don’t deny our future. In support for releasing spectrum for 3G in India.

Puneet Mehrotra is a web strategist at http://www.cyberzest.com and edits http://www.thebusinessedition.com

Puneet Mehrotra, Hindustan Times , April 04, 2007

Muslims in the Indian army, only 2% ?

Muslims in Army : Hiding what`s well-known 

The reason for the Muslim under-representation in the Indian army, or the Sikh over-representation, is something that lies partly in history, and its public disclosure would harm nobody.

There’s something surreal about India’s debate on Muslim under-representation in the Indian army. If the defence minister says the army has done no head-count of its Muslims, how did the army give an exact Muslim figure of 29,093 last month? The figure is backed by a retired lieutenant-general who says the Muslims are 2 per cent.

Whatever the exact percentage, a huge Muslim under-representation in our army is a fact. So is a huge Sikh over-representation. See the contrast. Sikhs form 1.86 per cent of India’s population but number around 8 per cent in the Indian army. Muslims form 13 per cent of India’s population but are 2 per cent in the army. Why should this truth about Muslim under-representation be suppressed? Or that of Sikh over-representation? But an irrational love of secrecy causes Indian rulers to hide information whose public disclosure would harm nobody.

Just as Muslims are under-represented in the army, so are the Bengalis, Biharis, Oriyas, south Indians or Gujaratis. And just as Sikhs are over-represented, so are the Jats, Dogras, Garhwalis, Kumaonis, Gurkhas, Marathas, Pathans and Punjabis.

The reason for this disparity lies in history. The Indian army’s recruitment pattern was set 150 years ago by India’s 1857 uprising. Traumatised by the rebellion, the British army adopted a recruitment policy that punished the groups which rebelled and rewarded the ones that stayed loyal. Because Muslims of Awadh, Bihar and West Bengal led the uprising, the British army stopped hiring soldiers from these areas.

Also blacklisted from these places were high-caste Hindus whose regiments in Bengal had also mutinied. In contrast, the British raised the recruitment of castes that had stood by the British to put down the uprising. These castes were the Sikhs, the Jats, Dogras, Garhwalis, Kumaonis, Gurkhas, Marathas, Pathans, plus Punjabis, both Hindus and Muslims. Honoured as martial races, they received preferential treatment in army recruitment for the next 90 years. Like any institution, the Indian army’s a prisoner of the past.

Even today, it favours enlisting men from the martial races. Their over-representation in the Indian army is huge. Figures bear this out. Of 2.87 lakh jawans hired by the army in the last three years, a disproportionate 44,471 came from three “martial” states, Punjab, Haryana, and the mountain state of Uttaranchal. So these states which account for 5 per cent of India’s population provided 15 per cent of India’s army jawans.

In contrast, the fewest recruits came from “non-martial” West Bengal, Bihar and Gujarat. These three states account for 30 per cent of India’s population, but they provided only 14 per cent of army jawans in this three-year period. So the Indian army has not only a religion-based disparity in recruitment, but also one based on caste and region. A glimpse of this discrimination was provided by a press release issued by a defence office in Jammu five years ago. Seeking recruits for the Indian army, the press release said: “No vacancies for Muslims and tradesmen.” Meaning that martial Dogras were welcome to apply, but not Hindu business castes like the Baniyas and the Khatris.

About the Muslim under-representation in the Indian army, the reasons are three. One was Partition. Before Independence, Muslims were around 25 per cent of the Indian army and 25 per cent of undivided India. But when India broke up and Muslim soldiers were asked to choose between India and Pakistan, they joined Pakistan en masse. So Muslim numbers in the Indian army dropped so drastically that they were only 2 per cent in 1953, according to India’s then minister of state for defence. Jawaharlal Nehru himself expressed concern that “hardly any Muslims” were left in the army. And Muslim numbers never really picked up in the last 60 years for a well-known reason.

India’s military establishment hesitates to hire Muslims as soldiers because it suspects Muslim loyalty to India. This discrimination is a natural outcome of India and Pakistan’s bitter hostility over 60 years. In similar situations, the same thing happens all over the world. The Israeli army doesn’t trust its Arab soldiers in jobs related to defence security. The Buddhist Sinhalese army under-recruits its Hindu Tamils lest their sympathies lie with the Tamil Tigers. After 9/11, US army recruiters would probably screen a Muslim American volunteer more thoroughly than a Christian American. Thanks to our four wars with Pakistan, the same anti-Muslim animus works here in army recruitment.

Proof of it lies in an enormous mass of documentary and other evidence which expresses distrust of Muslims. Otherwise, why does India have separate regiments for the Sikhs, Jats, Dogras, Garhwalis, Kumaonis, Mahars, the Nagas, even the Gurkhas, but not a single Muslim regiment? This is tragic but it’s a truth which shouldn’t be suppressed. It should be acknowledged and dealt with.

Events have consequences. Muslim under-recruitment in the Indian army is a consequence of Partition. India and Pakistan’s hostility is seen in both countries in Hindu versus Muslim terms. So it’s natural for India’s Hindu army establishment to distrust a Muslim who wants to join as a soldier.

This prejudice itself discourages qualified Muslim youths from applying, which drives down Muslim numbers even more. Another reason for Muslim under-recruitment is the relatively poor education of Muslims. When they try to enlist as soldiers, they are simply out-competed by better-educated Sikh, Hindu, and Christian youths. So Muslim leaders are quite right that Muslim under-recruitment in the army deprives the community of a good, life-long source of employment. It’s a sad situation not so easy to correct.

In life, however, one man’s meat is another man’s poison. The under-representation of Muslims and other caste or regional groups benefits the over-represented ones. The composition of the Indian army is totally askew numbers-wise. West Bengal’s population is eight times that of Uttaranchal. But Uttaranchal provided almost the same number of army recruits as West Bengal last year. Compare a “martial” Punjab with a non-martial Gujarat. Punjab’s population is half that of Gujarat. But it provided four times as many people to the Indian army as Gujarat. The Indian army hired far more recruits in Rajasthan than in Tamil Nadu though Tamil Nadu’s population is higher. Essentially, the Indian army is dominated numbers-wise by Sikhs and Hindi-speaking Hindus of north India. The current status quo suits them perfectly.

Arvind Kala / New Delhi March 04, 2006, Business Standard

www.business-standard.com

Armed forces are not a Holy Cow

Armed forces are not a Holy Cow

It is extremely unfortunate that the government has dropped the move to collate data on the status of Muslims in the armed forces. This follows an uproar over the steps taken by the Prime Minister’s High-Level Committee — PMHC — on the social economic and educational status of the Muslim community headed by Justice Rajinder Sachar to approach the defence forces for such data.

The Bharatiya Janata Party sought the President’s intervention in his capacity as the Supreme Commander of the armed forces to stop this ‘misguided’ survey. Former army officers held dharnas against the ‘divisive’ move, which they believe, would weaken a robustly secular institution. And former defence minister George Fernandes termed the PMHC’s work a ‘seditious act’ aimed at ‘communalising’ the armed forces!

After this, much of the media simply renamed the PMHC the Sachar Committee. The Congress defensively pleaded that its survey would be ‘purely a data-gathering and fact-finding exercise.’ The Prime Minister’s Office quickly distanced itself from the committee. Chief of Army Staff General J J Singh said: ‘It is not the army’s philosophy to disseminate or maintain (community-wise) information’; ‘we are not concerned with the faith or language’ of the people employed or ‘where they come from.’ And the defence ministry, which had sought the relevant data from the armed services, assured them it won’t forward it to the PMHC.

In the heat of emotion, it was all but forgotten that in our Parliamentary system, the President is not the court of last resort. He is the defence services’ Supreme Commander in a figurative sense. He does not possess the executive authority to start or stop a survey. Since then, former Deputy Chief of Army Staff Lieutenant General R S Kadyan has approached the Supreme Court to ask that the survey be stayed. He argues the survey would help to ‘sow the seed of communalism in the defence forces.’

Numerous arguments were advanced by opponents of the move. These old that the very conduct of the survey would tarnish the armed forces’ image as a professional force; that words like caste, creed, religion and reservation are unheard of in regimental messes; that the army is one of the few reliably secular institutions in India, which is fully trusted by the religious minorities — unlike the police or paramilitary forces; it has an enviable record of protecting the lives of the minorities in communally charged situations.

Some of these arguments are undoubtedly valid. For instance, no one can seriously question the army’s secular credentials and its impartial role in protecting the life and property of the minorities when called upon to do so. The Indian Army represents a remarkable achievement. It is one of the few apolitical militaries in the Third World to function fully under civilian control.

And yet, the anti-survey arguments miss one essential paradox: namely, that the army does not fully reflect the rich diversity and plurality of Indian society. It suffers from under-representation of certain ethnic, religious and social groups, and from over-representation of some others, most notably the so-called “martial races” favoured under the colonial system of recruitment, including Sikhs, Gorkhas, Dogras, Jats, Rajputs, etc.

We are an apolitical and secular force: Army chief

Among the under-represented groups are people from the Northeast, Dalits, OBCs, and Muslims. We know from a note sent on January 9 by the army to the defence ministry that in 2004 it had only 29,093 Muslims among a total of 1.1 million personnel — a ratio of 2.6 percent, which compares poorly with the Muslims’ 13 percent share in the Indian population. Similarly, there have been complaints of under-representation from Dalit and Adivasi leaders and smaller linguistic groups.

To demand that their recruitment be increased is not to advance an anti-national, communal or divisive agenda, but to ask for diversity and balance. None other than then defence minister Jagjivan Ram raised the demand for greater Dalit recruitment in 1971.

Indeed, Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s greatest prime minister, who cannot even be remotely accused of a communal bias, noted in 1953 that ‘in our Defence Services, there are hardly any Muslims left. What concerns me most is that there is no effort being made to improve this situation, which is likely to grow worse unless checked.’ This concern was reiterated by Mahavir Tyagi, then minister of state for defence, who disclosed that ‘the percentage of Muslims in the armed forces, which was 32 percent at the time of Partition has come down to two. I have instructed that due regard should be paid to their recruitment.’

The PMHC was not being wayward in asking for information about the recruitment and status of Muslims in the army. It’s vital to collect ‘authentic information about the social, economic and educational status’ of Muslims in different government departments. Without such a data bank, we won’t know whether there is under-representation of different groups, what its extent is, and what its causes might be. Collating such information is also the best way of countering prejudices about ‘minority appeasement’.>

True, such information is relevant not just for Muslims; it is necessary for other groups too. But the PMHC’s brief pertains to Muslims. It was perfectly legitimate for it to solicit information about Muslims. This is in keeping with the National Common Minimum Programme of the UPA, which promised to promote the welfare of socially and economically backward sections among religious and linguistic minorities.

The issue of Muslim under-representation in the defence forces must be situated in context. As MIT-based scholar Omar Khalidi argues in his Khaki and the Ethnic Violence in India (Three Essays, New Delhi, 2003), the army embraced the discredited colonial ‘martial races’ theory which favoured certain ‘Fixed Classes’ like Gorkhas, Sikhs, Dogras and Rajputs in recruitment. Muslims were excluded from these, except for groups such as the Qaimkhani community of Rajasthan and UP, and units like the Grenadiers, Armoured Corps, Bombay Engineers Group and the J&K Light Infantry. It Is only in 1984, after the ‘revolt’ by some soldiers of the Sikh Regiment following Operation Bluestar, that the army adopted a better mix in what’s called the ‘All-India Class.’

Yet, the proportion of Muslims in the army remains under 3 percent. In the case of officers, this may be explained by educational backwardness among Muslims. But this cannot explain the community’s low representation among Other Ranks. We need to know whether this is because of a reluctance of Muslims to join the army, skewed distribution of recruitment, or because of unacknowledged barriers to entry, including prejudices.

General Kadyan’s petition is wrong to allege that if such information is collated, ‘it will create very illogical and unnecessary data which might create… in the mind of the minority communities… a feeling of their being less in number in the defence forces… giving them cause for… fear of the majority community.’ This presumption is fundamentally mistaken. There’s nothing ‘illogical’ about documenting the status of different communities in national institutions. The United States army, for instance, regularly compiles publicly available data on Muslims, Blacks, and other ethnic groups.

More generally, the armed forces cannot be an exception to the concept of citizenship in a multi-ethnic society. Nor can they demand to be shielded from scrutiny just because they perform a role in India’s defence. All citizens have a valid role to play in our national life. Real security derives not just from military defence, but other things including human security, justice, social cohesion and human rights. The armed forces are not a Holy Cow.

A data bank on the ethnic-religious composition of all our public institutions is a precondition for measures to promote the welfare of citizens, including affirmative action in favour of the underprivileged and under-recruited. It goes without saying that this should not take the form of quotas and job reservations. But that’s not an argument against diversifying recruitment or promoting equality of opportunity. There’s no reason why the government cannot unilaterally announce that it will endeavour to recruit more and more under-represented groups without embracing a quota system. A caring-and-sharing society must have adequate room for such measures.

Two other points are in order. In many countries, promotion of inclusive multi-cultural policies and diversity became possible only when they abandoned ostrich-like attitudes and confronted reality. For instance, the British police began an internal evaluation after the race riots of the early 1980s. An extensive survey was undertaken of the ethnic composition of the force and prevalence of race and ethnicity-related biases. This prepared the ground for diversity sensitisation programmes, retraining, and positive discrimination.

Second, there is disturbing evidence that certain Indian security and intelligence-related agencies simply don’t recruit Muslims. These include the Research & Analysis Wing, Intelligence Bureau and National Security Guard. This is totally unacceptable and unworthy of a plural society that aspires to a degree of equity. Even the CIA would be embarrassed if it were to exclude African-Americans. The PMHC should thoroughly probe such institutions. Exclusion, and attitudes that rationalise it in the name of ‘security’, are the surest recipe for alienation of our own citizens. We cannot afford this if we want a minimally decent and self-confident India.

Praful Bidwai, February 27, 2006, Rediff.COM