📰 Safety deficit
The Kozhikode air crash shows that there can be no compromise on airport infrastructure
•The tragic crash of an Air India Express ‘Vande Bharat’ relief flight in Kozhikode, in which 18 people, including two crew members, lost their lives and many were left severely injured, is a forceful reminder that there are no acceptable risks in aviation. Although an even bigger disaster was averted by the absence of fire in the aircraft, the crash snuffed out the lives of many returning home from Dubai after a long, traumatic separation from loved ones in the pandemic. Many Indians could not quickly return home from countries where they were employed, studying or travelling, although they desperately sought flights back home since March. For those who took that long-awaited trip on August 7, it ended in disaster. There are clear pointers to the dangerous nature of flight operations at Kozhikode airport in the midst of a strong monsoon, even with the availability of an instrument landing system for the “tabletop” runway carved into undulating terrain. There are problems with visibility, a far shorter safety area at the runway end than optimal, and absence of arrester systems that could stop an overshooting plane from falling off the edge, as it happened with this aircraft. Which of these factors, along with the monsoon impact, led to the disaster will become clear with a professional investigation. The Civil Aviation Ministry should make a full disclosure on the technical evidence gathered, the integrity of which will be scrutinised by safety organisations worldwide.
•Apparently anxious to project an image of normalcy, the Ministry allowed the airport to restart flights in a day, while the accident cause was yet to be ascertained. If rainy conditions existed during the landing, as Civil Aviation Minister Hardeep Singh Puri has said, these may persist during the rest of the monsoon. Each flight must, therefore, be considered for a potential diversion to a safe airport nearby in bad weather. Significantly, the admission by the DGCA that the key recommendation of runway extension at Kozhikode made almost a decade ago was not possible due to land acquisition issues — although the facility could still support wide-bodied aircraft — strengthens the view that corners may have been cut on safety. The instance of an Air India Express plane suffering a tail strike in the same airport last year should have led to a full assessment, following up on the recommendations made after the 2010 crash in Mangaluru. Since the visible cause of Friday’s crash was an overshoot, the runway continues to pose a threat. Bad meteorological conditions such as rain and wind, and runway surface problems such as stagnation of water or rubber deposits that contribute to skidding endanger passengers and crew. Every air safety incident diminishes India’s reputation. The Kozhikode crash should lead to a fresh review of all risky airports. Transparent remedial action must be taken immediately.
Development goals must be pursued without breaching environment regulations
•Forecasts of ‘good’ or ‘normal’ monsoons are often beguiling and belie the ominous. This year, the annual floods that upend the Brahmaputra Valley have been followed by intense spells along the Konkan coast and Mumbai, and now Kerala, which until the end of last month recorded a slight deficit. The landslip in Idukki, that has so far claimed 22 lives and rendered several homeless, follows from a continuing spell of heavy rains in Kerala. Most districts have received three or four times more rain than what is normal. Last year too, neighbouring Wayanad saw multiple hamlets wiped out and the year before, the devastating floods in the State forced a debate on the need for new models of development. Landslips, or landslides, in the Western Ghats have a history. Following the 2018 floods, data from the Geological Survey of India showed that Kerala had experienced 67 major landslide events and several minor ones from 1961-2013. As part of a National Landslide Susceptibility Mapping (NLSM) programme, the agency mapped several States in the Western Ghats, North-eastern States, Jammu and Kashmir and Uttarakhand to assess how vulnerable their districts were. Nearly 13,000 square kilometres were mapped until 2018 and 6,000 were to be covered in 2019-20 in Kerala, according to the programme website. Nearly 13 of the State’s 14 districts were prone to landslides and what made Kerala particularly vulnerable was the high population density — over 800 per square kilometre — compared to other States that also faced high landslide risk.
•The objective of the NLSM maps is to help State and district authorities incorporate the risk of landslides into zoning laws. However, just as in the case of earthquake zonation maps, or for that matter, any exercise to scientifically ascertain the risk from natural hazards to a region, these laws are barely implemented in the right spirit. And this is not unique to Kerala. The details might vary but it is now beyond contestation that India is living in a new climate normal. Frequent high intensity bursts of rain will co-exist along with long dry spells. It has emerged from studies of Kerala’s topography that quarrying and the unscientific cutting of slopes into hills aggravates the risk of soil erosion. Operationalising the State’s disaster management apparatus and allocating funds for preparedness are key policy responses, but Kerala also must double down on enforcing regulations and observing zoning laws as well as ensuring that slopes carved into hilly terrain have adequate provisions for draining water. A lack of compliance with such principles is often a key reason why natural hazards end up causing a significant number of avoidable casualties. There is a cost to pursuing development goals without paying attention to environmental constraints.
📰 A new direction for India-U.S. ties
The fresh paradigm should be on how to structure common understanding; China needs to be factored in
•The United States under the leadership of President Franklin D. Roosevelt during the early 1940s once pressed Britain’s Prime Minister Winston Churchill to free India and co-opt India as a formal ally in World War II.
•But Britain firmly and obstinately refused to agree despite the writing on the wall — that Indians had stood up and would achieve freedom sooner rather than later.
•India stabilised after a bloody Partition in 1947, declared its commitment to democracy, fundamental rights, free press and non-violence in a written Constitution which came into force on January 26, 1950.
The UN and China
•India thus appeared to the U.S. as worthy of replacing China in the most important body of the United Nations, namely the Security Council, as a Permanent Member with a Veto in view of the Communist overthrow of the Chiang Kai-shek-led government.
•According to a recent study by Dr. Anton Harder, “Not at the Cost of China: New Evidence Regarding US Proposals to Nehru for Joining the United Nations Security Council” Working Paper #76”, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. Washington, DC, USA, March 2015” (https://bit.ly/3fOXY0N), the author states that the U.S.’s offer for India to join the UN Security Council was conveyed by India’s Ambassador to the U.S. then, viz ., Ms. Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit, Jawaharlal Nehru’s sister.
•In late August 1950, Mrs. Pandit wrote to her brother from Washington DC that: “One matter... in the State Department should be known to you. This is the unseating of China as a Permanent Member in the Security Council and of India being put in her place.”
•“Nehru’s response to his sister within the week was unequivocal: ‘In your letter you mention that the State Department is trying to unseat China as a Permanent Member of the Security Council and to put India in her place.
•‘So far as we are concerned, we are not going to countenance it. That would be bad from every point of view. It would be a clear affront to China and it would mean some kind of a break between us and China.
•‘We shall go on pressing for China’s admission in the UN and the Security Council. India because of many factors, is certainly entitled to a permanent seat in the security council. But we are not going to at the cost of China’.”
•Nehru not only declined the U.S. offer to India to become a UNSC Permanent Member with Veto but instead campaigned for China to take up that seat.
•The U.S. however resisted that campaign till 1972, when in a turnaround the U.S. supported Communist People’s Republic of China and entered into “strategic partnership” in the 1970s onwards with the reform-minded new leadership of Deng Xiaoping.
•Subsequently what China did to Nehru for this generosity at India’s expense is history from which we must learn. No use is served by crying about China’s betrayal or perfidy.
The shift to Pakistan
•In 1953 after India’s tilt to the Soviet Union and China in the Korean war, the U.S. turned to Pakistan as a possible counterweight in South Asia against the Soviet Union and China. The U.S. made Pakistan a member of the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO) and the Central Treaty Organization (CENTO), and liberally gave aid and armaments.
•Pakistan which was no match in military, economic development, and ancient and continuous culture that ensured democracy, began to dream of equality with India in the international domain.
•As a consequence, India had to go to war with Pakistan in 1965, 1971 and 1999, losing precious lives defending our own territory. The U.S. even sent a Seventh Fleet Task Force with nuclear weapons on board to threaten us on the dismemberment of Pakistan.
•The rest is history. We have to learn from our past mistakes. Today there is a new opportunity with the U.S. but it is not on a clean slate.
America’s November poll
•The success of our new bonding with the U.S. will first depend on the outcome of the U.S. Presidential elections this November. The Democratic party rival and Presidential candidate, Joe Biden, has already taken a hostile stand against our government, with the Left wing and liberals in the U.S. highly critical of the Narendra Modi government, such as rubbishing the Citizenship (Amendment) Act passed by India’s Parliament with a two-thirds majority.
•In inner U.S. circles our purchase from Russia of the S-400 air defence missile system and the refusal to agree to America’s request to send Indian troops to Afghanistan have mostly browned off U.S. officials. U.S. policy makers know Indians love atmospherics and melas , but not substantive issues which concern the U.S.
•Therefore, we need to build trust with the U.S. that we will give to the U.S. as good as it gives us, and not give us lectures instead. The U.S. will then respond more than what we concede.
•In 1991 when then Prime Minister Chandra Shekhar told me to find out if we can get a policy-conditions free loan at a concessional interest rate from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), I told him that the IMF would never agree, but since a large size of the voting power in the IMF was directly or indirectly controlled by the U.S., we should placate the U.S.
•Thereafter, Prime Minister Chandra Shekhar spoke to the U.S. that India would agree to a pending American request with the Prime Minister’s Office for permission to refuel their air force planes flying from the Philippines to Saudi Arabia for the first Gulf War when Iraq occupied Kuwait.
•I thereafter told the U.S. Ambassador in New Delhi about this but I said it was conditional on getting $2 billion (1991 prices). Over the weekend that loan arrived and India was saved from a default.
In synchrony
•Today, thus, the new or fresh paradigm should be on how to structure India-U.S. understanding and which is in sync with common India-U.S. perspectives. For this structuring we must: first realise that India-U.S. relations require give and take on both sides.
•What India needs to take today is for dealing with the Ladakh confrontation on our side of the Line of Actual Control by China. Obviously, India needs U.S. hardware military equipment. India does not need U.S. troops to fight our battles against China on our border.
•Third, the U.S. needs India to fight her enemies in the neighbourhood such as in Afghanistan. It is my view that India should send two divisions gradually to Afghanistan and relieve U.S. troops to go home.
•India needs the support of the U.S. and its ally, Israel, in cyberwarfare, satellite mappings of China and Pakistan, intercepts of electronic communication, hard intelligence on terrorists, and controlling the military and the Inter-Services Intelligence in Pakistan.
•India needs the U.S. to completely develop the Andaman & Nicobar, and also the Lakshadweep Islands as a naval and air force base, which the U.S. can share along with its allies such as Indonesia and Japan.
•India must be firm in two areas which are not amenable to give and take. One is that economic relations must be based on macroeconomic commercial principles. Free, indiscriminate flow of U.S. foreign direct investment (FDI) is not in India’s national interest.
Look at technologies
•Thus, India needs technologies such as thorium utilisation, desalination of sea water, and hydrogen fuel cells, but not Walmart and U.S. universities to start campuses in India, as proposed in the new National Education Policy draft.
•Eighth, the U.S. must allow India’s exports of agricultural products including Bos indicus milk, which are of highly competitive prices in the world.
•FDI should be allowed into India selectively from abroad, including from the U.S., based on the economic theory of comparative advantage and not on subsidies and gratis.
•Tenth, tariffs of both India and the U.S. should be lowered, and the Indian rupee should be gradually revalued to Rs. 35 to a dollar. Later, with the economy picking up, the rupee rate should go below 10 to the dollar.
•The other firm constraint is that India should not provide the U.S. with our troops to enter Tibet, or be involved in the Hong Kong and Taiwan issues because there is always a possibility of a leadership change in China, as what happened when Deng Xiaoping replaced Mao Zedong’s nominees in 1980. Thus, China’s policy changed very favourably towards India. In the cases of Tibet, Taiwan, and Hong Kong, we have made explicit agreements. In the case of Tibet, two formal treaties were signed by Nehru (1954) and A.B. Vajpayee (2003).
•In the last point, in the long run, India, the U.S., and China should form a trilateral commitment for world peace provided Chinese current international policies undergo a healthy change.
📰 Bringing nuclear risks back into popular imagination
Awareness of the horrors of nuclear weapons needs to be revived given public apathy and political complacency
•‘Little Boy’ was dropped on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945 at 0815 hours. This was followed three days later by the dropping of ‘Fat Man’ on Nagasaki, at 1101 hours. The two nuclear bombs vaporised around 150,000 people who were going about their morning business; 130,000 others succumbed to burns, radiation sickness, and other ailments that the collapsed health system could not treat. Few, then, understood why their skin erupted wounds that would not heal, hair fell off in clumps, and stomach churned with pain and nausea. Several hibakusha , or survivors of the atomic bombings, have recounted how an ordinary day turned into one where they wished they too had died in that instant flash.
Buried under
•The purpose of recalling these horrors from 75 years ago is to ensure that nuclear armed states do not forget the real nature of nuclear weapons. Human memory is short and often preoccupied with the immediate. Currently, the socio-economic-health emergency posed by COVID-19 and the growing geopolitical tensions between major powers owing to their abrasive behaviour seem to be consuming us all. But nuclear risks are lurking just below the surface, and they are growing.
Dangers of unintended use
•Among the risks of nuclear use, the highest likelihood is that of inadvertent escalation due to miscalculation or misperceptions. It is less likely that adversaries will launch pre-meditated, deliberate nuclear attacks because each understands that a splendid first strike is impossible and that nuclear retaliation cannot be escaped. Of course, the severity of the damage would depend on the number and yield of weapons used. But studies indicate that use of even a fraction of the weapons held in medium-sized arsenals would cause a massive human tragedy and have long-term repercussions for food and water availability, agricultural output, climate change, migration, etc.
•Possibilities of unintended use are exacerbated by many factors: stressed inter-state relations, unchecked strategic modernisation as arms control arrangements wither and nations hedge against each other; adoption of nuclear postures that peddle the benefits of ‘limited’ nuclear war; and emergent technologies creating new anxieties. Advancing capabilities of cyberattacks on nuclear command and control, blurring lines between conventional and nuclear delivery, induction of hypersonic missiles capable of high speed and manoeuvrability, incorporation of artificial intelligence in nuclear decision making are new developments that threaten to create unknown risks. As capabilities grow and inter-state trust diminishes, chances of stumbling into nuclear war are not insignificant.
The Cold War and after
•However, these risks are not part of our collective popular imagination today. During the Cold War, citizens of affected nations were made to undergo regular nuclear drills. As sirens blared, everyone had to rush to bunkers created in homes, schools, hospitals, etc. There were guidelines on what to equip these nuclear shelters with so as to be able to sustain lives in case mushroom clouds went up. Several works such as novels, movies and TV documentaries depicted life “the day after”. These graphic depictions kept nuclear weapons and their highly destructive nature alive in the consciousness of the people. Public pressure translated into civil society movements that demanded action from political leaders to engage with the subject of risk reduction through unilateral, bilateral or multilateral measures.
•The end of the Cold War pretty much brought down the curtains on nuclear weapons for the common man. The perceived sense of danger of nuclear war receded and nuclear strategies went back to being dictated and driven primarily by security conclaves. Over the years, technological advancements and growing hyper-nationalist tendencies have shaped strategic discourse in a manner that is largely devoid of popular participation. But, this connect is important to temper national choices and create the much needed checks and balances.
•General awareness of the horrors accompanying nuclear weapons, therefore, needs to be revived since a high level of public apathy and political complacency have brought us to the threshold where the risks remain high but the desire to address them is low. In fact, one does not see a shared desire for nuclear risk reduction among nuclear armed states. Drunk on their faith in deterrence, there is a tendency to use strategies of nuclear brinkmanship and ambiguity that actually add to the risks. There is also a display of confidence in being able to manage and control risks. However, umpteen war games have shown that it is impossible to calculatedly climb the escalation ladder. Any nuclear use between nuclear adversaries would cause a humanitarian disaster.
A media campaign
•In order to get nations to understand this, it is necessary to expose leaders and societies to the full range of physical, economic, social, political, health, environmental, and psychological effects of nuclear weapons. This could be most effectively done through use of popular media. Just as the fight against COVID-19 is being won through global high intensity information dissemination about various facets of this highly contagious disease, a similar information campaign about the destructive potential of nuclear weapons is needed. This will help on three counts: compel leaders to rationalise their weapon requirements; force nations to find ways of reducing nuclear risks; and gradually pave the path towards elimination of nuclear weapons.
•Recalling the horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki through events all year round on its 75th anniversary is an opportunity to bring nuclear risks back into popular imagination and into the political agenda. Creative media can help by tapping available modern means of mass communication to create stories with identifiable characters and situations that tug at the heart and instil a larger respect for humanity.
