At the millennium's end, it is completely clear that five decades of confrontation between Pakistan and India have led to nothing but misery, deprivation, and war. Apart from draining resources away from the needs of our peoples, the nuclear tests of May 1998 have put the subcontinent under the shadow of nuclear catastrophe. Kargil was a disaster for Pakistan and has worsened our relations with India, as well as further decreasing Pakistan's credibility and support internationally. India has lost much, but Pakistan has lost still more. There is no solution to the Kashmir problem in sight, and economic collapse has been a constant possibility since the nuclear tests. In view of the seriousness of the situation, the Pakistan Peace Coalition calls upon the people and leadership of Pakistan to:
We call upon all people of goodwill in the country to join and strengthen
the Pakistan Peace Coalition. We have reason to believe that a large number
of Indian citizens are also working for the same goal on the other side of
the border. For Pakistan and India, prosperity and progress depends upon
moving away from useless confrontation and towards peace.
Irish Portal, a British civil servant, observed in the early 1940s, "you
must never take land away from people. People’s land has a mystique. You
can go and possibly order them about for a bit and introduce some new ideas
and possibly dragoon an alien race into attitudes that are not quite
familiar to them." But, he added, "you must go away and die in Cheltenham."
That is exactly what the British did on August 15, 1947.
The new nationalism comes into play only when India is at war with
Pakistan. Otherwise, it lies dormant.
On that auspicious day began India’s tryst with destiny and the quest for a
new order. Doubtless, it was a tall order for a post-colonial country to
meet the challenges of governance and nation-building. Yet the silver
lining was that the legacy of nationalism was alive and kicking in a
country bruised and fragmented by colonialism and the horrors of Partition.
What is noteworthy is that nationalism in India and China generated not
only powerful anti-colonial sentiments but also provided a blueprint for
welding an otherwise divided and disparate country into a nation-state.
The chequered path of Indian nationalism, though marred by the estrangement
of many Muslims, had its moments of glory. The degree to which the elites
and the subalterns contributed to its making is debatable. But what is
perhaps less contentious is that the idea of nationalism-howsoever fuzzy,
shifting and ambiguous-fired popular imagination at several defining
moments in the 20th century. In 1920, for instance, when the Mahatma’s
spectacular mass mobilisation strategies paid off while his predecessors in
the Congress were made to look silly. Again, when the same frail man
marched from his Sabarmati Ashram with 78 followers to the shores of Dandi.
This was nationalism, pure and simple, on the move.
In ‘51, Nehru said there was absolutely no reason why India’s infinite
variety should be regimented in line with a single pattern.
The point is not to valourise Gandhi but to make sense of his political
credo. Equally, the point is not to celebrate the Congress brand of
nationalism but to delineate its characteristics. I hasten to add that the
ambiguities of Indian nationalism were its greatest strength. Whether you
invoke Gandhi, Nehru, Patel or Azad, nationalism did lend itself to several
different meanings. This is not something to frown upon, because their
discourses were, after all, anti-colonial in their essence. The evolution
of institutional pluralism, democracy and political stability was not
contingent on a monolithic interpretation of nationalism.
In free India, the finest hour in the tortuous career of nationalism was
perhaps the drafting of a democratic and secular constitution with a
pronounced egalitarian thrust. True, the notion that loyalty to the people
came before loyalty to the party or government-in the 19th century European
sense where nationalism was associated with the idea of popular
sovereignty-did not find favour in India. Yet the urge to clear the debris
of the Raj and to rebuild a new and dynamic nation-state was central to the
post-colonial project. To me, these urges captured the spirit of
nationalism.
Nehru underlined in 1951 that India had infinite variety and there was
absolutely no reason why anybody should regiment it after a single pattern.
This, if you don’t already know, is what secular nationalism is all about.
As its chief proponent after Independence, the country’s first prime
minister pursued not a typically Nehruvian mission, but a goal set by the
Mahatma, by Congress’ secular flank and by the left-wing formations. This
was a modern goal, rational and scientific, and in addition a specifically
Indian one. These values should have been apparent to all and it was
because of this that they were, for Nehru and his colleagues, both ultimate
and the final legitimisation of the secular state.
Three notable developments took place late ‘50s onwards. First, secularism
was assailed in different quarters both as an idea and as a state policy;
second, the historical experience of resistance against colonialism was
forgotten; finally, the ideological edifice of nationalism was undermined
by the aspirations of ‘new’ groups trying to assert their linguistic and
ethnic identities, and by the persistent failure of the state to reduce
socio-economic inequities. As a consequence, nationalism and secularism
became contested terms and were transformed from being anti-colonial to
being ethnic and untutored religious consciousness. Hence the discovery of
new heroes, the invention of new histories and the resurgence of ethnic
movements in Kashmir, Assam and Punjab.
My real concern, therefore, is that ethnic collective consciousness in
India manifests itself in politically violent forms, as signified by the
assassinations of Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi. My other concern is that
ethnic nationalism, though objectified by perceptions of relative economic
deprivation, easily coalesced with religious fundamentalism. This is
exemplified by the murky career of Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale and the
ill-advised policies of several militant outfits in Kashmir, including the
expulsion of Kashmiri Pandits from their homeland. But much as one bemoans
the absence of a countrywide vision anchored in social justice, one is also
wary that the division of our society into ethnic communities will
constitute a complicating factor in ‘nation-building’.
If the politics of ethnicity gained salience in the ‘80s, so did
majoritarianism in the garb of Hindu nationalism. For decades, its
protagonists had waited on the margins of political life to establish the
illegitimacy of the Congress-led anti-colonial movements. Their other
favourite pastime, for which they could draw from the writings of Savarkar
and Golwalkar, was to rewrite the nationalist idea in order to impose a
singular, monolithic Hindu identity and to establish an unbroken Hindu, as
opposed to a heterogeneous nationalist, tradition. The demolition of the
Babri Masjid- undoubtedly hastened by the hot-headedness of the Muslim
secular and religious leadership over the Shah Bano affair and by the
outcry against Mandalisation, was central to the fruition of the Hindutva
project.
More than the mosque’s physical destruction, the ensuing religious
mobilisation by the Sangh parivar signalled a two-pronged attack on the
nationalist legacy. It was directed, in the first place, against Gandhi’s
simple Ram-Rahim approach to the resolution of Hindu-Muslim disputes and
against Nehru’s stubborn insistence on democratic socialism and secularism.
Second, Hindutva as the new mantra of civil society aimed at wrecking the
national consensus envisaged by the Constitution.
In India, the demise of inclusive nationalism has been hastened by, among
other factors, the Hindutva bandwagon. It has, in fact, been replaced by
state-sponsored nationalism that is exclusive and insular. It bears the
imprint of an ideology that seeks to homogenise only a small segment of
society around invented but divisive religious symbols and historical
memories. It is narrow in outlook because the impulse for homogenisation
itself, arising out of the tendency to stereotype or stigmatise the
minorities, rests on misplaced assumptions about the histories of
inter-community relations.
State-sponsored nationalism, orchestrated by the media, comes into play
only when a nuclear explosion takes place, or when the country is at war
with Pakistan. Otherwise, it’s dormant. Actually, what is flaunted as
nationalism on such occasions is nothing but militarism. And once the
booming guns are silenced, it does not take long for the deep-seated
fissures in our polity and society to resurface. It does not take long for
us to forget our war widows and leave our injured soldiers at the mercy of
their relatives. And the eyes that shed tears in middle-class homes for the
dead and wounded soldiers dry up. The stories of demolition, war, floods,
cyclones and disease are over. The stories of life have begun, because the
stories of life never end.
The hollowness of the new brand of middle-class nationalism is illustrated
by our lackadaisical response to atrocities on women, dalits, tribals and
minorities. We care for the soldiers in Kargil, but not for those killed in
Sri Lanka. We build war memorials for our heroes, but take little notice of
those millions who have barely managed to survive in the cyclone-hit
coastal Orissa. We rose to the occasion when Pakistan invaded Kargil, but
we have not responded well to the cry for help from Ersama. Yet our pride
is not hurt. We accept loans from the imf and World Bank but refuse
humanitarian aid from international agencies for the sake of national pride.
How do we travel into the next millennium with this baggage? The ride is
bumpy; the journey hazardous. Yet this country of nearly one billion people
will need to move into the open spaces, equipped with an ideology that
draws upon the intellectual resources of the nationalist movement and, at
the same time, takes cognisance of the world-wide currents of change. "Let
us announce to the world," said Tagore long ago, "that the light of the
morning has come, not for entrenching ourselves behind barriers, but for
meeting in mutual understanding and trust on the common field of
co-operation, never for nourishing a spirit of rejection, but for that glad
acceptance which constantly carries in itself the giving out of the best
that we have."
No one can guess the horror of Ms. Rachna Katyal as she sits aboard the
Indian Airlines plane (IC-814) in Kandahar, Afghanistan. Recently married,
Ms. Katyal was on her way home to Delhi from a honeymoon in Kathmandu when
her plane was hijacked for a horrifying ride across southern Asia. Because
her husband Mr. Rippan Katyal looked too long at one of the hijackers, he
was killed and his body thrown from the plane. A few hours ago, Mr. Katyal
was cremated while his wife was denied permission to leave the plane by
those who still hold it and most of its passengers hostage.
After a period of speculation, reports now confirm that the hijackers
demand the release of Maulana Masood Azhar, a Pakistani who has been in an
Indian jail since 1994. This is at least the fourth attempt by Mr. Azhar's
organization, the Harkat-ul-Ansar, to spring him from jail (a previous
attempt, in July 1995, resulted in the death of several foreign tourists).
Mr. Azhar, a professor at Karachi's Jamia Uloom-i-Islami, came to India on
a Portuguese passport to coordinate the activities of two bands of
extremists. First, those under the command of Sajjad Khan (or Afghani), a
Pakistani with the Harkat-ul Mujahideen, and, second, those with
Nasarullah Mansur Langaryal of the Harkat-ul-Jihad-i-Islami International
(founded in 1980 by the Jamaat-ul-ulema-Islam and the Tablighi Jamaat of
Pakistan with the blessings of the US). The Indian security forces
arrested all three in a fortuitous operation.
New Delhi Television now reports that one of the hijackers is Mr. Ibrahim,
a brother of Mr. Azhar. The hijackers asked for the release of the
Pakistani extremist (along with 160 associates), and their act has once
more raised the question of Kashmir for the world. The Washington Post
offered the following comment: 'Focused as it is on a Kashmiri separatist
leader, the incident again highlighted the trouble that continues to
plague the Indian subcontinent because of the conflict over the majority
Muslim region. Most Indians are Hindus, and controversy over control of
Kashmir has sparked intense border skirmishes with the neighboring Muslim
state of Pakistan" (Howard Schneider, 'Jet's Hijackers Demand India Free
Pakistani,' Washington Post, 26 December 1999).
Once more the US mainstream media fails its readers, but goes along the
grain of US strategy in the region. To say that 'most Indians are Hindus'
and to speak of Pakistan as a 'Muslim state' adopts the kind of ethnicist
rhetoric of the right wing chauvinists in both India and Pakistan. India
is a multi-ethnic state despite the shenanigans of the ruling Bharatiya
Janata Party, and the Islamicists in Pakistan face a civil society
uncommitted to their bigotry. Furthermore, 'controversy over Kashmir' is
hardly the reason for the border war of June-July 1999, since that
violence was fomented principally by the instability occasioned by the
nuclear tests of May 1998. The trials of Kashmir will not be solved by its
absorption into Pakistan or by its formal independence (a position dropped
by most former secessionists).
The US's idea of 'democracy' in such places is to preach Balkanization
along ethnic lines, a racist notion that does not even allow for the
multi-religious and multi-linguistic character of Kashmir. If
Balkanization was a bad word until recently, Madeline Albright and the
State Department seem to have adjudged it to be a worthwhile strategy in
the Balkans itself. The military-feudal government of Pakistan uses
Kashmir as a political wedge with which to create instability along its
border with India. The bourgeois-landlord government in India, meanwhile,
fails the Kashmiri people whose own voice is given no place in the
discussions over its future. While India and Pakistan sit at a table and
talk about Kashmir (in circumlocutions, no doubt), the Indian government
refuses to talk to disaffected and alienated Kashmiris. The Left movement
in India has as one of its principal demands the re-creation of trust
amongst the people and the provision of 'maximum autonomy within the
Indian Union' (from the Communist Party of India-Marxist). Religion is not
as much a wedge in Kashmir as the lack of structures for political power
and socio-economic development in the region.
People such as Mr. Azhar see the Kashmir struggle as an opening for an
Islamic jihad rather than for the liberation of the Kashmiri people
themselves. In 1994, Mr. Azhar told Pakistani Television that 'soldiers of
Islam have come from twelve countries to liberate Kashmir. Our
organization has nothing to do with politics. We fight for religion. We do
not believe in the concept of nations. We want Islam to rule the world.'
While once the Kashmir-based Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front fought for
the development of the Kashmiri people, the Pakistan-based (and latterly
Afghanistan-based) Islamicists fight without a program for Kashmir itself.
Their struggle is already alienated from the people. However, the
hideousness of the Hindu Right produces insecurity amongst many Muslim
youth, some of whom turn to these well-funded Islamicist organizations to
ease their own fears within their own land. This is the tragedy of
Kashmir, caught as it is between the vise of competing, but still
relatively marginal, reactionary forces.
The US now has Mr. Azhar's group on its terrorist list. Those notorious
cruise missiles that struck Afghanistan in August 1998 killed HUA
militants in Khost, as they trained for their various jihads. However, the
activities of Mr. Azhar's group allow the US to further its strategy in
Southern Asia, which is to ensure that the states there remain weak and,
therefore, open to penetration by US capital. On 6 October 1999, Karl
Inderfurth (Assistant Secretary of State for South Asian Affairs) told the
School of Advanced International Studies that US attention was focused on
South Asia for, principally, 'the economic potential of the regionI the
South Asian region is potentially one of the world's largest markets, and
commercial opportunities are growing. Liberalization is improving the
investment climate for US business throughout the region. India is one of
the ten major emerging markets, especially for the high-tech sector.' As
the militants, the right wing and the US officials seem eager to keep the
pot of Kashmir on boil, this will facilitate an active US entry into
matters of state in South Asia (as it latterly has done so). Strong South
Asian solidarity might block the will of the US, and it may even ask that
the Seventh Fleet withdraw from the Indian Ocean and its Diego Garcia base
(on which, more in a separate commentary).
Meanwhile IC-814 sits on the tarmac in Kandahar. The Indian foreign
minister is recalcitrant to negotiate with the hijackers, since 'our
position on terrorism is well-known.' The Pakistanis allege that the
hijackers may be Indian secret agents whose mission is to embarrass
Pakistan. The Taliban asks the UN to intervene, and Erick de Mul of the UN
in Afghanistan frets about the situation. Images of the incident travels
across the world. Reports of dangerous 'Islamic terrorists' revisit the
kinds of stereotypes made common during the 1991 Gulf War. Context
vanishes, as the US media speaks with a mixture of condescension and
concern for the region. There is little concern for the alienated
Kashmiris, for the failure of partition as a solution to the problem, for
the production of more such crises through the failure of capitalist
development that side of the imperialist curtain. The Katyars join a long
line of the victims of the insurgency over Kashmir, one that will continue
as long as the right rules the destiny of South Asia.
Post-test sanctions definitely hurt Pakistan's economy. That is why,
argues Ejaz Haider, strategy is too serious a business to be left to
strategists
New Delhi is indicating it might sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty
before US President Bill Clinton's visit to South Asia. This is a
significant development and throws up the question of how Pakistan's
must respond to it: Should it sign the CTBT before India does or should
it adopt a wait-and-see policy?
An allied question can be: On what basis must Islamabad decide to sign
or not sign the CTBT with or without India signing it? The strategists
would refer to "national security" as the basis for any such decision.
But what constitutes national security? Is it a narrow, piecemeal
concept linked merely to the acquisition and maintenance of nuclear
capability or is it a holistic concept involving a triad of external,
internal and economic security? These questions are important since
Pakistan reacted to India's tests last year without heeding the signals
the economy was giving. After the tests, sanctions made an already
precariously balanced economy keel over. It was only in November 1998
when Washington bailed Islamabad out that the economy could barely stand
up.
The situation is still more or less the same and the country needs a
bailout. Yet, strategists continue to put faith in the primacy of
external security and link it to the maintenance of nuclear capability.
Two different documents throw some light on what Pakistan bargained for
last year when it followed India blindly into the nuclear pit. Their
significance lies in how Pakistan must now factor in economy in any
future formulation of national security policy.
While observing the impact of post-nuclear tests sanctions on the
country's economy the State Bank of Pakistan's annual report for 1998-99
concedes the country suffered an acute balance of payments crisis during
the year because of economic sanctions and other factors such as world
recession. In fact, the SBP report records 1998-99 as "one of the most
difficult years in the history of Pakistan".
This is how the SBP report puts it: "Following the nuclear explosion[s]
by Pakistan in May 1998, the G-7 countries imposed a range of economic
sanctions against Pakistan. The IMF suspended the ESAF and EFF programme
with Pakistan as also the new Official Development Assistance. The pace
and...level of economic activity [was] also adversely affected by a
sharp decline in the private capital inflows and erosion of confidence.
On November 12, 1998, foreign exchange reserves stood at $415 million."
Such was Pakistan's dependence on IMF and ODA assistance that the
situation eased up a little only after the "resumption of inflows of
resources including reactivation of agreement with the IMF [and the]
rescheduling of debt".
The SBP report reveals nothing new. But it is significant for one
reason. It notes the precarious health of the economy on the eve of the
nuclear tests and suggests that this factor was not taken into
consideration by our strategists when they formulated their strategic
doctrine of tit-for-tat nuclear testing last year.
Despite evidence to the contrary some analysts still argue the sanctions
did not hurt Pakistan since it was already under US sanctions when it
tested. Their argument is that the economic collapse was owed to years
of mismanagement and was not the effect of sanctions. This is merely an
attempt to paper over the conflict between strategy and economy within
the narrow paradigm of national security that exists in this country and
that is loath to assign the "economy" its rightful place. At worst, this
argument tries to justify a decision on the basis of a flawed reasoning
by twisting facts.
There is no gainsaying the economy had been mismanaged and was merely
limping along when Pakistan decided to test but that is the whole point.
Economic mismanagement had led the country to a heavy dependence on the
IMF and following the decision to test when "the US-led coalition
withheld IMF support, the resulting collapse of confidence created a
balance of payments crisis and a significant decline in economic
activity".
Contrarily, if Islamabad had decided against testing at the time and in
the manner it did, it could have driven a hard bargain with Washington
with economy being the centrepiece of any deal. Pakistan was barely
afloat at the time it tested. The sanctions deprived it of the crucial
capital inflows it needed to even stay afloat. Without the much-needed
relief in November 1998 it would have sunk. At the time Washington
waived some of the sanctions to offset a complete collapse of Pakistan's
economy, the country's foreign exchange reserves stood at US$458 million
down from US$1.4 billion in May 1998. Even the reserves on the eve of
its tests were in short-term, high-interest commercial loans and equaled
only about six weeks of imports. Experts say the country needed around
US$2 billion in net inflows to avoid loss of reserves. It is difficult
to see how anyone can still justify the decision to test on the basis of
economic logic.
Perhaps the most comprehensive study so far on the impact of sanctions
on India and Pakistan has been done by Daniel Morrow and Michael
Carriere. Captioned "The Economic Impacts of the 1998 Sanctions on India
and Pakistan," the study has been published in the Fall issue of The
Nonproliferation Review.
Morrow and Carriere argue the sanctions had a "marginal" impact on India
and a "significant" impact on Pakistan. Evaluating the broader issue of
whether sanctions can be a disincentive to future proliferation
attempts, they look at the cases of India and Pakistan and contend that
sanctions can be made to work as a significant disincentive. Even in the
case of India whose "foreign exchange reserves of US$26 billion equaled
about six months of imports" - as opposed to Pakistan's US$1.4 billion -
Morrow and Carriere argue the sanctions impacted foreign direct
investment and would also have affected flows of official foreign aid if
the sanctions had remained in place long enough.
However, in the case of Pakistan the Glenn Amendment-related sanctions
as also other multi-lateral sanctions led to a complete collapse of the
economy. The blockage of the IMF funding played havoc with market
confidence, "which affected the capital flows, the exchange rate, and
aggregate GDP growth in Pakistan".
Looking at economic indicators through the year, Morrow and Carriere
establish beyond doubt that sanctions heavily impacted Pakistan's
economy. "New private inflows virtually stopped. Foreign exchange
reserves fell to extremely low levels. In early November, just before
President Clinton waived a number of sanctions on Pakistan and India,
Pakistan's foreign exchange reserves stood at $458 million, a
dangerously small amount. [Given Pakistan's US$10 billion annual import
bill this means import reserves for barely two weeks.] The open market
(kerb) rate for the Pakistani rupee depreciated from Rs. 45 to the
dollar in early May to Rs. 63 in mid-July - a 28 percent depreciation.
By the end of 1998, when most of the sanctions had been lifted, it
remained 16 percent below its pre-test value."
At the time Islamabad pinned many hopes on a relief package from the
Islamic Development Bank (IDB). Emissaries were sent to negotiate a deal
with IDB and foreign and finance ministers made statements - that were
obviously false - that the IDB had agreed to shortly release the rescue
package. Morrow and Carriere say: "The delay on an IMF support package
also thwarted Pakistan's hope of receiving financial support from the
Arab world. A $1.5 billion rescue package, consisting of funds from Arab
private banks and financial institutions and arranged by the Islamic
Development Bank (IDB), continuously delayed throughout the summer and
fall of 1998, as the IDB tied these funds to Pakistan's need to
straighten out its relationship with the United States and the IMF
[emphasis added]. By September 10, 1998, all the IDB was able to offer
was $200 million of its own funds."
The impact of sanctions can also be gauged from the manner in which the
economy, especially the stock market, reacted to positive news following
the July 16 Senate vote on Brownback Amendment. The KSE, which on July
10 had reached an all-time low of 777.26 points, reacted positively to
the news jumping up to almost 7 percent. According to Morrow and
Carriere: "This upward trend continued until the end of the week, when
the market closed 14.8 percent higher than it had started at the
beginning of the week, compared to a 6.8 percent jump in all other Asian
markets."
The KSE also saw a rally during the two weeks leading up to the
September 1998 UN General Assembly meetings on the back of expectations
that UNGA meetings would result in easing of sanctions. The index rose
by 9.8 percent. Later, on November 7, the KSE witnessed a 10.5 percent
rise - the market's sharpest single-day rise since India and Pakistan
tested - after receiving news on the waiver announcement and the
resumption of IMF funding. Morrow and Carriere conclude their
observation on the impact of sanctions on Pakistan thus: "In summary,
because of its prior vulnerability, the Pakistani economy was severely
affected by the withdrawal of IMF financing...and by the indirect
effects of this withdrawal on other capital flows to Pakistan."
Clearly, the essential point in all this is that policy-makers need to
incorporate the factors necessitated by economy into any formulations on
strategy. In fact, it is a misconception to treat strategy and economy
separately. The argument that "survival" comes before "economics" is not
only flawed it is downright perverse because "survival" itself is not a
narrow concept and is essentially linked to the holistic concept of
national security. Therefore, any strategic formulation must consider
economy as a sine qua non of the national security policy. Strategy is
too serious a business to be left to "strategists", especially nuclear
strategists, who have learnt the art of narrowing the concept down to
nothing. There is reason to believe the present government is aware of
this. Pakistan's policies have already allowed India to go on the
offensive while the bomb, for all the fanfare, has failed to put the
brakes on our downwards slide. One hopes the present government's
emphasis on reviving the economy would force it to look at the concept
of national security afresh.
BANGALORE: India will soon deploy an air defence system complete with
radar which can identify multiple targets and lock on surface-to-air
missiles, a defence official said Saturday, reports AFP.
"The radar has been integrated with the weapon system and is undergoing
field evaluation," George Cleetus, director of Electronics and Radar
Development Establishment told a radar conference.
He said the air shield, to detect and shoot down enemy aircraft and
missiles, would be inducted by mid-2000 and deployed around important
cities, nuclear power stations and petrochemical refineries. "The
multi-function phased array radar is called 'Rajendra' (King) and has
been designed for multiple target search and track, multiple missile
acquisition and tracking and command guidance of the missiles," Cleetus
said. He said the radar would activate the surface-to-air Akash (Sky)
missile, which has a range of 25 kilometres (15.5 miles), as soon as it
locates an enemy aircraft or missile.
Sources in the Defence Research and Development Organisation said
'Rajendra' would consist of a radar and a battery of three to six Akash
missiles. "It will help to intercept aircraft or missiles upto a range
of 400 to 600 kilometres (372 miles). Each radar will have the
capability to detect several targets because they are fitted with more
than 4,000 radiating elements," a defence source said.
"The phase-shifters built into the transmitter and the radiating
elements help change the direction of the electronic beam in less than a
millisecond which will help identify aircraft performing stealth
manoeuvers," the source added. He said the radar can also evade jamming
by enemy fighter jets or missiles. "The radar and the missiles have been
tested against airborne targets at different locations and its
performance has been established," the source said. Akash has been
tested 31 times in the past nine years and the missile can carry a
payload of 55 kilogrammes (121 pounds).
India has an ambitious programme to build a full rack of guided missiles
including the ballistic missile series Agni (Fire), which can carry
nuclear warheads. Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee in August said
India would push ahead with its long-range missile projects despite
international opposition, mainly from the United States.
In April, India fired its Agni-II, prompting two ballistic missile
launches by Pakistan. The tests sparked fresh calls for restraint
between the estranged neighbours, which in May 1998 conducted their
first underground nuclear tests.
KOCHI: The naval version of 'Trishul' India's prestigious indegenous
quick reaction short range surface to air and surface to surface missile
was successfully test fired from INS Dronacharya here this evening as
part of its ongoing trials. Dr Siva Thanu Pillai, chief controller,
research and development wing of the Defence Research and Development
Organisation (DRDO) told PTI shortly after the launch that the test
firing of the missile today was to test its anti sea skimmer capability.
Currently on here is the fourth test firing campaign of the missile.
He said the naval version of the missile which had been undergoing
trials for the last several months was today fired against a floating
incoming target. 'the test firing was 100 per cent success' he said. He
said in its anti sea skimmer role the missile could travel just above
the sea surface and destroy any incoming missile either from a
submarine, ship or even from air.
KARACHI, Dec 16: Agosta B-90 submarine, arrived here on Thursday, will
be commissioned in Pakistan Navy fleet on December 21. Agosta B-90 known
as Khalid is the first of the three submarines agreement for which was
inked with a French company, DCN International, in 1994.
During the construction of the submarine Pakistani engineers and
technicians got special training in France. The second Agosta submarine
is under-construction at Pakistan Navy dockyard and will be sailed in
the year 2001.
The third submarine is being built in a special design hall of the
Navy's dockyard which at present is in the form of three modules.
NEW DELHI (NNI): Four KA-31 airborne early warning helicopters costing
55.80 million dollars with tools, spares and ground support equipment
are to be delivered by Russia to Indian navy in two batches, Indian
Defence Minister George Fernandes told Lok Sabha Thursday.
In a written answer, Fernandes said payments to the supplier are to be
made at various stages of production of these helicopters, each costing
13.95 million dollars. As the navy has been operating Kamov class
helicopters since 1981-82, it was not considered necessary to test this
helicopter in equatorial water in advance, he said.
Pinaka: A single barrel launcher of the Pinaka system was deployed on
experimental basis during the Kargil operation, he said, adding a
decision to productionise the system is to be taken only after it has
been accepted by the army.
Terrorists: Government is aware that there was a concentration of
terrorists belonging to various pro-Pakistan outfits opposite Uri and
Poonch sectors during June and July 1999, the defence minister said.
However, there are no reports to confirm the presence of Taliban forces
for intrusion into Jammu and Kashmir, he said.
Howitzer: M/s Celsius of Sweden has offered for field trials of 155 mm
gun mounted on a vehicle on "no cost no commitment" basis but no
decision has been taken in this regard, he said.
Ads: Necessary steps to replace INS Vikrant and Virat have been taken
and the construction of an air defence ship has already been sanctioned,
he said.
He fruther said Russia had indicated that it would refit and modernise
the aircraft carrier "Admiral Gorshkov" at a cost of about 549 million
U.S. dollars, the Lok Sabha was informed today. Complete details are yet
to be worked out, he added.
In addition to considering the offer of the Russians for acquiring the
warship, the government is also taking the necessary steps to arrive at
a precise cost in consultation with the naval headquarters and the
Russian side, he said.
He said necessary steps are also being taken by the government to ensure
the availability of spares, if the ship is inducted into the Indian
navy.
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