The anemic and incoherent National Security leadership in India

Weeks in and out, we see that the defence procurement of India is in shambles with ad-hoc buys and eternals delays being the default option with most procurements. Apart from this, there is absolutely no clarity on some of the critical futuristic big platform capabilities with disagreements and various perspectives from different offices still playing out either behind closed doors or sometimes out in the open media.

Let's start with the third aircraft carrier for the Indian Navy that is discussed to no ends by veterans, journalists and defence enthusiasts on social media. There's a lot of doublespeak and/or mismatch between the Navy, the office of the CDS and the government(advised by NSA). "We are very clear that air power at sea is required. If you are a nation that has aspirations and wants to be a $5 trillion economy and do not want to be tethered to the shores...aircraft carriers are absolutely essential," Admiral Karambir Singh said. That's a very interesting statement to make. Cause, usually such a statement would flow from a National Security strategy document framed by the political leadership. The CNS could very well be making a rational statement but it definitely doesn't seem to have the civilian political leadership on board on such a strategy/assessment. Even the CDS doesn't seem to agree with the assessment. Ofcourse the CDS, being the first to occupy the office, comes from a purely Army background without joint command experience and may not have the right appreciation of the maritime domain in IOR to jump to such a conclusion.

Experts have been predicting that #aircraftcarriers will outlive their utility since as early as 1945. Yet, here we are with most naval powers still willing to invest in it in 2020 https://t.co/Fa4GuFItDm

— Firstpost (@firstpost) February 18, 2020

The Navy Chief, the CDS, the NSA and the cabinet need to sit across a table and discuss. The Navy seems to want something the govt doesn't seem to have the will and need to develop and actualize even after 10 years down the line. This mismatch between intentions, capabilities and funding isn't new to India but it does rather broadcast to the outside world how incoherent, rudderless and unprofessional our leadership is, when it comes to national security, secure interests and project power in our area of influence. The question that is being asked and debated in capitals in the region is, how much can India step up in reality to fulfill its obligations and/or secure its interests in the region.


Also both the govt and the CDS have spoken of a refocus towards the continental borders, where we might be facing a 2 front war, in a constrained budget environment. So it increasingly looks like the govt not necessarily disagrees with the Navy's perspective but isn't ready to accept that assessment, as that would force it to fund the third aircraft carrier and a whole host of naval power projection capabilities. This zero sum game is being played ruthlessly and we saw the CNS and CDS shadow boxing through the media.

IAF chief contradicts CDS Rawat, says plan is to buy 114 foreign fighters under Make in India besides LCA Tejas https://t.co/CD2tWGkKAk

— Snehesh Alex Philip (@sneheshphilip) May 18, 2020

The misunderstanding about MWF and MRCA 2.0 between the CDS and the IAF Chief is the second case in point. While the CDS made a statement in May 2020 that the IAF decided to go with the 83 LCA Mk1A instead of the MRCA 2.0 as an indigenous option, the IAF chief was quick to clarify that these are two different procurements and that the MRCA was absolutely necessary to fill certain important gaps in capabilities of the IAF air combat segment. While the LCA Mk1A and the MWF are expected to play a significant part of the future IAF fleet, the IAF leadership seems to not give up on the MRCA fighter. Here it doesn't help that the IAF has been less clear with regards to the MRCA in light of the existing domestic programs that have kicked off. 

It's been more than 3 years since the changes to the institutions of National Security structure have come about with the formation of the Defence Planning Committee(DPC) under NSA Ajit Doval. It includes the Chiefs of Defense Staff, the three Service Chiefs, Defence Secretary, the Foreign Secretary, Expenditure Secretary, Principal Secretary in PMO . The mandate of the DPC included preparing a National Security Document, a capability development plan apart from improving defence manufacturing ecosystem in India.

Where do we stand today? 

The National Security Strategy document is yet to see the light of day. The long term capability development seems more to be run from the Finance ministry than from the Service Headquarters. The NSA and the RM obviously had empowered the office of CDS with wide ranging powers to conduct deep reforms. While the CDS has been successful in bringing about some reforms in functioning, administration and focusing on jointness with regards to logistics, the big ticket reforms still are in the back burner. Not to talk of the big theaterization start-stop drama and the subsequent turf wars that played out over the last month or so. The leadership that was expected from the office of CDS to resolve these issues amicably has clearly been AWOL for multiple reasons. 

From a funding perspective, usually in a list of 10 priorities between the services, we would expect any govt of a sovereignty hawk nation to prioritize and fund atleast 6 of them. But it seems that we might be forced to cut even priority 3 & 4 for the sake of priority 1 & 2 and that speaks of the dire budget situation we have put ourselves in. This is due to a variety of reasons including a relatively poor performing economy, inability to cut down on some welfare schemes and an overall lack of will to take long term bets in terms of capability development. In such a funding anemic environment, the service chiefs are forced to fight it out for capex, to take care of their services' needs. There is only so much efficient one can be with respect to cutting costs and beyond a point it starts to eat up actively into future capability developments for the sake of today's emergencies. 

It is time the national security leadership of the country, stops deciding the strategy, posture and spending on capability development based on the "budget realities" and rather push for primacy of spending on national security albeit in a creative way(separate indigenous capex budget is a start) that can contribute to the economic growth of the nation as well as to the comprehensive national power of the nation. Second, the National Security Strategy document has to come out for everyone to understand what the government has in mind. Only when the government puts ink on paper can the services come out with what's needed to execute the strategy laid out by the national security leadership, and also hold the government of the day to account to fund adequately for the objectives and strategy laid out by the government itself. Else, no amount of political rhetoric, courage and bravery of the soldier on the ground, cries of "regional power" in various fora are going to help us secure our ever expanding interests without big compromises. 

FISITA - 2018 Where is the Indian automotive industry going?

I had the opportunity to attend FISITA - 2018 Automotive World Congress in Chennai on 4th and 5th of October. For those who don't know, the World Congress is one of the largest forums for automotive engineers, executives and professionals to discuss, interact and exchange ideas on emerging trends. 

The theme of this year's event in Chennai was "Disruptive technologies for affordable and sustainable mobility". 

I had the chance to attend couple of technical sessions, a policy discussion on future of electric vehicles in India and the exhibition. Right off, let me say that the event was well organized and had some technical presentations from professionals and academics from across the world. As expected, the presence of domestic automotive companies was dominant. 

Coming to the technical sessions, here is where the wheels come off, with respect to the quality of research and development in the country. Many of the papers, in the session I attended, lacked rigor, depth and little that advanced pre-existing knowledge. I was disappointed that some of the results presented were textbook stuff taught to final year college students in the west. I've attended two editions of the SAE World Congress annually held in Detroit and presented in one of them. I'm sure none of these papers would've passed the peer review stage. I wouldn't entirely blame the engineers. The computational power, type of manpower and the capital that foreign OEMs deploy for product development is order of magnitudes greater than their Indian counterparts. The investment that companies pour in R&D is abysmal in India. 

Moving on to the electric mobility session, focus of the panels were on policy framing and integrating foreign technologies to domestic market. The talk on policy framing is very much welcome. Indian  govt still lacks a coherent understanding of India's needs and a vision for sustainable mobility for the masses. In the absence of high quality human capital, OEMs, policy makers and suppliers in India depend on critical technologies and inputs from outside and tend to design their electric vehicles and the architecture around these technologies. This leads to a mismatch between what is required and what is developed for the market. There was the knee-jerk comparison with China, an EV market that is 20 times larger, couple of order of magnitude more mature with thrust on all areas from encouraging domestic R&D and high end manufacturing, investing in american tech industry to a robust well capitalized policy that puts EV front and center on their mission ahead. 

Coming to the exhibition, it was a nice opportunity for Indian and foreign suppliers and OEMs to interact, learn about each other and explore business opportunities. BMW, Toyota, GM and a bunch of other industry behemoths brought in their concept technologies to display and experience. IIT Madras had some cool development stuff to show. There was obviously the overall upbeat mood that this market provides exciting opportunities in the medium term and everyone wants a piece of the pie. Students from local engineering colleges had the opportunity to display and share their projects and also experience the future of the industry. The disappointing aspect was the lack of thirst amongst Indian companies to capitalize on the opportunity to build a robust homegrown ecosystem. They seem to be happy to invest less, import necessary technologies and build a solution for the short term. 

Lack of human capital, lack of industry-academia research ecosystem and lack of a vision for Indian companies to look beyond the Indian market and into the global markets is keeping our industry couple of decades behind the state of the art. A broken domestic policy that focuses primarily on manufacturing and the jobs it creates doesn't help them either. 

The degradation of Kosasthalaiyar - A story from the skies

The Chennai floods of 2015-16 were devastating to the State Capital Region(SCR) and saw unprecedented flooding of large swathes of the city. In its aftermath, the attention of the civil society rightfully turned on the water bodies in the SCR and its mismanagement. In the recent past, the degradation of Ennore creek and the Kosasthalaiyar river has gained increasing focus in social media and the amonngst the general public. A lot of accusations and counter accusations have been made on the State and Union governments and the various private industries that have cropped up in the region. In this blogpost, I use satellite images of the past 24 years to understand the degradation of this region.

1. Geography

Ennore Creek geography Sat Image credits: Digital Globe Inc

First I would like to layout the geography of the Ennore Creek through this satellite image taken in the month of Sept 2017. 

a) L&T Kattupalli is the shipbuilding yard and container terminal belonging to L&T.

b) NCTPS stands for North Chennai Thermal Power Station (not to be confused with Ennore Thermal Power Station).

c) NTECL (Thermal Power Station of NTPC Taml Nadu Energy Company Ltd).

d) Fly Ash Dump (S) Southern side ash pond closer to NTECL.

e) Fly Ash Dump (N) Northern side ash pond west of Coal and Iron ore terminal.

f) Ennore Port (has multiple coal handling berths, liquid terminal berth, general purpose cargo berth and a container terminal under construction by Adani group.)

g) Coal terminal is operated as Chettinad Coal Terminals led by Chettinad Group.

h) Iron Ore terminal is operated by SICAL led consortium (is envisaged to be converted to a coal terminal).

2. 1994 

I start with the year 1994 when the entire region is mostly untouched by large scale industrial activity. In this image, we can see that the Kosasthalaiyar meanders in parallel to the Ennore coast. The only type of activity seems to be salt pans all over the place in the backwaters and creek. It is unknown as to how the salt pans affected the river flow. They definitely seem to have slowed the river near the mouth. The salt pans though would've definitely acted as buffer during floods and high tides.  

Ennore Creek 1994 Image credits: Google Earth

3. 1997

At this point in time, in the Ennore creek region, the only major industrial activity up and running was the NCTPS. We can see a large ash pond created by the side of the river and fly ash partially deposited on it. The Ennore Port is nowhere to be seen. It is important to note that the first phase of the NCTPS was operational in 1994 and fully completed in 1996.

Ennore 1997 Image Credits: Google Earth

4. 2004

By 2004, satellite images show that the initial phase of Ennore port is complete with captive coal berth for NCTPS and fly ash deposits expanded to another pond. It is important to note that these ponds are mostly on former salt pans and not necessarily on the river itself. Some soil/fly ash deposits could be seen on the Kosasthalaiyar river banks west of Ennore port. This could either be dredged material from port quay or fly ash or simple soil dumps to level land. What is also apparent here is the formation of sandy beach stretch due to the breakwaters.

Ennore 2004 Image Credits: Google Earth

5. 2010

By 2010, new coal and iron ore terminals are under construction smack right through the salt pans and the banks of the Kosasthaliyar river. L&T kattupalli in the north is also under construction. L&T's centre seems to be on barren land, away from the river and not on any water body at the outset. I couldn't draw further conclusions. The coal & iron ore terminals and the associated conveyor belt and rail access definitely pass through the Kosasthalaiyar river banks and at places, over it. We can also see that the fly ash in the Fly ash pond(N) has expanded.

Ennore 2010 Image Credits: Google Earth

6. 2011

By 2011, the state of affairs in the Ennore port region are clear. A HPCL bottling terminal is under construction on reclaimed salt pans south of coal terminals. The associated liquid terminal in Ennore port could also be seen. Construction of NTECL plant south west of it is underway. Fly ash area in the North stays similar.

Ennore 2011 Image Credits: Google Earth

7. 2013

By 2013, two stages of NTECL are under operation alongwith NCTPS. General Cargo(Ro-Ro) berth constructed on barren land in the northern part of port can be seen. Interestingly, fly ash content area goes down in the north ash pond. The breakwater of L&T creates a sandy beach stretch between it and Ennore port.

Ennore 2013 Image Credits: Google Earth

8. 2015

By 2015, fly ash content in north ash pond goes up again. In both 2013 and 2015 images, some soil/ fly ash deposits seen west of NCTPS along Kosasthalaiyar river banks. Rail and road access to expanded Ennore port is provided over these deposits (red circle). 

Ennore 2015 Image Credits: Google Earth

9. 2017

In 2017, fly ash deposit region in the artificial lakes in the north have again expanded. Some deposits seen along Kosasthalaiyar river west of NCTPS. Construction of container terminal(by Adani Group) at Ennore Port is fully underway. At this stage (phase-1), the container terminal by itself doesn't seem to encroach the river. The berths for the terminal are being developed by dredging north western shore of the Ennore port.

Ennore 2017 Image Credits: Google Earth

The master plan of Ennore Port though suggests industrialization and development all through the region around the river and the creek. It is to be seen as to how the buffer between the river, the creek and the port are preserved.

A couple of images related to NTECL. 

In 2005 the land where NTECL is to come up on, has salt pans and an artificially pond for fly ash deposits could be seen. 

NTECL 2005 Image Credits: Google Earth

 In 2016, the same region, NTECL is complete, fly ash could be seen being deposited on the Fly Ash(S) pond now(first image). 

NTECL 2016 Image Credits: Google Earth

Here, I have tried to simply see and interpret the satellite images. The creek even in its original form itself required continuous rehabilitation to protect local ecology and livelihood of the villagers. While, development and industry is welcome, on sensitive areas like this, it is imperative that pollution control and environmental protection measures are carried out to the hilt. With continuous destruction over the past two decades, it has become unidentifiable. I have deliberately avoided attributing blame on individuals, political parties or private players. This neglect seems to have gone through multiple state and union governments with entrenched corrupt bureaucracy and in favor of multiple private players.

What also seems to be apparent is that a sweeping accusation on every industry public/private in the region is also unwarranted. A satellite imagery expert says "Max saving is done by the breakwaters constructed by the L&T and Ennore Port. They have huge potential and really do stop sea waves from harming or damaging the coast". The Ennore stretch is known for its sea erosion issues and this might actually help in reducing its impact. He also concurred on the huge positive impacts of pucca houses that would've come via employment to locals which is necessary to protect from harsh effects of storm and gales. What seems to be missing is the higher priority that needs to be accorded for environmental protection for these projects and huge capital expenditure to use advanced technologies to find innovative solutions. 

My Independence Day thoughts

Some thoughts on India's development processes while celebrating 70 years of independence.

The single most important thing we can do to make India better is to stop assessing it's development metrics as a monolith. With respect to economics, human development, industrialization, health and sanitation, education, employment etc, our variances are very vast! We should stop looking at indices like national GDP growth rate, IIP, gross food grain production, overall budget of healthcare etc. Not to forget the single most useless number, national consumer price index (CPI), that is being used as an inflation monitor by RBI. These numbers hold little value when variances are so large.

The 4 slabs of GST rates is not just an outcome of political shadow boxing, but ground realities of the vast systemic economic differences that exist in our country. We ought to go down to district or panchayat level indicators & indices with respect to healthcare, inflation, education, GDP, sanitation, unemployment figures to understand local effects. We ought to analyze the demography through the prism of class, income and economic condition and study the indices of each segment separately not just geographically.

The number of people who get missed by margins of error in even state based indices could run into millions, offset by few high value data points. E.g., A flash transporters strike may not affect a well stocked reliance fresh store that has good food storage facilities but will affect the street vendors in the same area. This in turn affects the corresponding consumer class in that area.

So, let's hope that our macro policy makers and people in general move beyond single point measures  to more sensible ways of measuring national development indicators that takes into account the diverse variances of the country. 

Of NEET, Patidar & Jat protests, Bhim Army and the fundamental responsibilities of the State

Protests have been erupting across the country on various issues over the years. We've seen the Jat and Patidar protests for reservations in the last couple of years as well as the Bhim army swarming the National capital as well as parts of western UP and Gujarat. Tamil Nadu, moreover, for the last year seems to be in an eternal state of protest for one reason or the other. What ties the suicide of a laborer's daughter in TN, who fought against NEET, to the protests against land acquisition for nuclear power plant in Jaitapur? What ties the Patidar protests in Gujarat and the Jat protests in Haryana to the BJP's landslide victory in UP? The answer to this in my opinion seems to be two fold.

1. The fundamental role of the state is rapidly evolving post May 2014. 

2. The unheard aspirations of huge rural demographics and the information asymmetry that was prevalent earlier is no more with the emergence of social media. 

When PM Modi's BJP was elected to power in May 2014, there was no second questioning about the mandate being a vote of an aspirational India to upward mobility in life. Things like, corruption, appeasement politics of UPA etc were just the final mile mandate converters. But the question lie as to what this aspirational India wanted. The narrative that dominated mainstream media during the campaign period and the early days of NDA-2 was that of a nation making use of it's favorable demographics and economic fundamentals to enable upward mobility and assert itself in the world for it's interests. 

For the first time, economic and foreign policy institutions and think tanks started studying India under Modi as a different animal. The word in vogue was 'Reforms'. Us, the urban educated middle class and upper class wanted reforms to make the govt get rid of it's non performing sectors, reduce massive leakage and mindless subsidies in places where possible and overall, provide a platform for us to compete with the best across the world. Globalization showed us what the world has achieved and what we can if we concentrate on efficient resource and energy allocations. Aadhar linked subsidies, cut in subsidies for petrol, gas, kerosene etc disinvestment in sick PSUs were all results of this. From changing to NITIAayog as a policy based enabler at the centre to rapidly passing environmental clearances for large capital projects across the country, the govt was fulfilling its understood mandate as an enabler of job creation and economic growth. Apparently, this was just one side of the story. 

For the first time in 68 years, the union govt saw it's primary role as an enabler of opportunities rather than an ensurer of welfare for the under privileged. The amount of subsidies in the govt's budget sharply went down. Land acquisition from small owners increased and the instances of big industrialists moving into traditionally untouched spaces (physical and service related) of the underprivileged increased rapidly. While this was seen as minor side effect by the urban dwellers, it hit right through the heart of rural masses. The masses of heartland India didn't necessarily vote for this. They wanted a nanny state, albeit cleaner, in varying degrees. They wanted welfare that was guaranteed by UPA through legislation but never properly implemented. The anti establishment sentiment came from throwing out the obnoxious Lutyens insiders who just sang melodies of welfare and social justice but never understood and implemented it cleanly. The Jat and Patidar protests started when they saw that the role of govt being an enabler was well short of their expectations of a handholder. The bahujans of our country saw the aggregation of state resources away from large scale welfare to privileged sections of society, (who saw themselves as better placed to enable wealth creation and growth) as completely against the ideals of social justice. This explains the farmer suicides, TN methane project protests, the NEET protests, the Bhim Army and JNU protests. 

The urban demography missed this aspect of the 2014 mandate. BJP didn't see it until it lost sorely against the Lohiaites in Bihar and learnt it's lesson. In UP, it shifted decisively to populist politics and the selection of Yogi Adityanath, though had us confounded, resonated well with the rural demography and is the result of this class politics. 

This leads us to a fundamental question. What should be the role of the state in India? Is it's role to ensure social justice and redistribute state's capital and resources to reduce inequality and give opportunities to the millions of underprivileged people? Or is it's role to allocate resources to that sections of society that will maximize output and quality and therefore enable and reward the better performers(whether that is by talent or privilege)? We are at an inflection point where there are millions and millions of people in the aspirational middle class who want the govt as an enabler and yet there are millions and millions of people who depend on state's welfare and affirmative action to move up in life.

It is this question that is being debated and fought on multiple fronts across the country. From the compulsion of Aadhar for subsidies to the forcing of NEET exam on a state. From the large scale allocation of infrastructure projects along the geographical commons (sea coasts and forests) to the conception of Smart cities. From increasing railway ticket costs to providing subsidies to airlines for regional connectivity. The proliferation of social media has decreased the information asymmetry between urban and rural dwellers in India to a large extent and therefore we are going to see more and more protests to this definitive U-turn from welfare politics to free market politics. 

I just hope that each side understand the place and needs of the other to better come up with solutions.

This post is dedicated to the departed soul Anitha who wanted our society to have this debate and fought for it right through the corridors of justice in SC.

The farce called Transfer of Technology

Imagine 50,000 years ago, in a small village, a feud breaks out between a bunch of neanderthals. Every man gets hold of a stone made weapon and begins to sharpen it to attack his opponent. There is one man who doesn't know how to sharpen or make a weapon off a stone. He is confused whether to attack with the blunt stone or not. His instinct says it will not kill his opponent. He looks around and tries to improvise by just imitating the action that the others are doing with their stones. He doesn't know whether he could make the weapon better by tying the stone to a stick to make it a spear. Such a neanderthal is never going to win a battle. His weapon is only as good, if not worse, as he could imitate from the other opponents. 

This is the problem that India has been facing from independence with regards to our country's air combat systems.The famous charade about India's technological prowess is "We have the indigenous technology to send a satellite to Mars but can't develop a fighter jet on our own". It is true and there is only one reason for this. We never knew what we wanted and therefore we never tried. From 1947 till this date, we have never asked the question to ourselves "How do we want to project our air power better than what is best out there?". Our question has always been "What are the air combat systems used the world over and which would suit us best?". And therein lies the fundamental difference between the nascent success of our space programme and the absolute failure of our defence programme.

The idea of "Transfer of Technology" being touted by politicians across the aisle as a success, is a cause as well as symptom of our failing research and development eco system. Since we never knew what we wanted with or for our Air Force, we have always tried to "match up" to the state of the art systems that was available over the decades. In the 60s, when the Mig 21 emerged as a successful fighter jet, we wanted it. Nothing wrong. The idea of a single engine supersonic fighter becoming the backbone of our Air Force was a good vision. It was even better when we acquired the technology to manufacture it locally and we built 650 of them over the decades.

The question is, what did we do after it? A visionary Air Force would've come up with it's own needs, it's own ideas of new concepts for future combat systems. A visionary HAL, having acquired a supersonic aircraft manufacturing technology, would've spent decades understanding the technologies that went into it rather than simply manufacture it blindfolded to the specs.  (The USAF has already specified what kind of future bomber it wants 2 decades from now and has started working on the experimental technologies with Northrop Grumman)Neither the Indian Air Force nor HAL (the only a/c manufacturer) wanted to explore, question and research on the next step in air combat technology. Instead, they looked up to the superpowers to see what the next technology would be. Once the next step came in, the same Transfer of Technology, license mfg cycle followed.

This has been judiciously done for almost all air combat systems. The Sukhoi 30 MKI (air superiority super maneuverable), the Rafale (medium range nuclear strike heavy fighter bomber), the upcoming FGFA PAK-FA(stealth fighter) are all examples of another country/air force inventing next steps in air combat technology and us trying to acquire them. The idea of stealth fighter came from west and we are only co-developing it after three different companies have already done it. We continue to attempt to match/acquire the level of military technology whose agenda and benchmark is being set by someone else. Our fledgling missile programme too started with reverse engineering Russian ballistic missiles and then further developing related technologies from it. Even in such a mature area, ideas of MIRVS and Hypersonic missiles came from the superpowers. The only solace is we are neck and shoulder with them in terms of pace of research and development.

That is why Transfer of Technology is never going to be of any use to India. We don't want to think ahead with the acquired technology. We don't spend time on pushing the frontiers of ideas. We as a country, as a culture, as a civilization have lost the capability to innovate, to think beyond the best. From our air combat systems to transportation systems to e-commerce retailing we are trying to only recreate an idea already proposed and developed by someone else.

Boycott of PK and some fundamental questions

Banning of PK is a retrograde step. It is against freedom of expression. I do not want to see it removed from theatres. Now coming to similar cases, so was banning of Vishwaroopam in TN and The Da Vinci Code in a lot of states when they released. How was that not against freedom of expression? The then TN govt said it cannot control law and order if Vishwaroopam releases. I respect "Emadhu islaamiya sagotharargalin unarvugal". At the end, the final version was cut to satisfy 5.5% of TN population(or actually a dozen ppl). 

Some serious questions arise out of these incidents.

1. As much as minorities have emotions to tend to, don't majority have too?
2. Does the state react to people's sentiments or to the degree of violence that stems from people sentiments?
3. If a state can't assure law and order, why wasn't it removed and Governor's rule imposed? (btw this goes to states if banning PK too)
4. Does 5.5% of population voting as a block becomes more politically significant than 80% of population that votes variably according to it's subgroups?
5. If the above is true, does one fundamental right exercised once in five years have the potential to hold in hostage the other fundamental rights of the majority through the rest of the years?


By this I do not mean to hurt my friends who follow other faiths.
I do not want their sentiments to be hurt also.
I do not want them to see being marginalized in the society.
I do not want to see them being stereotyped as 'those who vandalize if not respected'.

But I want them to understand, that the above factors have been created by few individuals who declare themselves to be representatives of their groups.
I want them to understand that if they do not shun these individuals then the whole community gets the blame.

To the Hindu far right (Bajrang Dal, Hindu Maha Sabha, VHP),
Can you guys please stop acting as if you are living in the 9th century?!
We know what to take out of a movie seriously and what to be left at the theatre hall.
A majority of this country's population was born after the Constitution of India came into existence. We live in The Republic of India and not Hindu Rashtra.
We grew reading our Preamble and Fundamental rights. 
Democracy and pluralism are the two best things that could've happened to India.


To the moral high ground liberal main stream media analysts,
You guys are anyway hopeless and
1. Your minority appeasing commentary confounds me to this day.
2. The idea of crushing the majority to compensate for something that happened in the past is the worst thing to happen in a secular democracy.

The fact that we will be wishing all our friends a happy 2015 in couple of days and yet still haven't figured out how to be a plural tolerant society is a shame on us.