For Their Eyes Only - Positive Impact of Information
For Their Eyes Only - Positive Impact of Information
Author: K Subrahmanyam
Publication: The Times
of India
Date: May 1, 2000
ONE of the great non-events
of the last few months has been the stony silence of our political parties,
media and intelligentsia over the fact that India's nuclear weapons were
not the BJP's creations, but those of successive Congress prime ministers.
Nor is there any reaction to the now established China-Pakistan nuclear
proliferation relationship of last two decades. One commentator argues
that this disproves the allegation that China was the primary nuclear threat.
This view suggests that China was perhaps motivated to supply nuclear weapons
and technology to Pakistan owing to its abundant goodwill and friendship
towards India.
Dichotomous Stand
While our prime ministers
(seven of them from Indira Gandhi to IK Gujral) were perfectly right in
keeping the Indian weapons programme secret, were they justified in keeping
their senior colleagues, party cadres, bureaucracy, armed forces and the
media totally in the dark about international nuclear realities and, consequently,
the security problems faced by India? Our foreign office was making submissions
to the World Court that even the possession of nuclear weapons was impermissible
even as weaponisation was being completed in India. A former foreign secretary
asserted in Geneva that our country did not need nuclear weapons for its
security.
It would be an amusing
exercise to peruse the `investigative' reporting in our media in those
years. A stream of stories were published in some of our national dailies
about Narasimha Rao compromising on our nuclear and missile programmes.
It now turns out that Rao was the prime minister who completed the actual
weaponisation programme. The same kind of reporting was in evidence during
the Kargil war. Among the reports were those about three-storeyed Pakistani
bunkers with colour television sets in them, of miraculous cement which
set in winter at 14-16,000 ft and UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles) which
flew at heights of 16,000 ft.
One of the problems in
this country is that there is a marked reluctance to check and verify information
by those who should make it their duty to do so. I once came across a motto
in an American newspaper office -- ``If your mother says she loves you,
check it out.'' This clearly has little relevance in the Indian scheme
of things. Leading the way is the government which has still to realise
that true, correct and comprehensive information can be a powerful tool
of governance and policy-shaping in this dotcom age.
BJP's Failings
It was obvious to everyone
who cared to know that the BJP government could not have prepared the testing
of five nuclear devices from a sub-kiloton one to a thermonuclear one in
the 53 days it was in office. They involved a thermonuclear device, sub-kiloton
devices and new materials and there was no way of avoiding testing. So
when it is perfectly clear that all these preparations took place well
before the BJP assumed office, why has there been no debate on this issue
in the country? The scientists declared that weaponisation had been completed
and they thanked in public all the previous governments. Those statements
did not lead to meaningful questions in our media. Many columns were devoted
to the fact that weaponisation is yet to be undertaken and that the national
consensus was broken.
Most of these controversies
could easily have been avoided if only the prime minister had been generous
enough to share the platform with all his available predecessors while
making the announcement on the tests and had given them due credit for
their contributions. The politicisation of that announcement, appropriation
of all the credit by the ruling party and the mindless opposition to the
tests by the party which really carried out the weaponisation have created
a pointless political divide. Since then, the ruling party has done nothing
to repair the damage. The primary opposition party has frittered away most
of the credit which was its legitimate due.
So also in the case of
the Kargil conflict. It was a limited war at a brigade level. No doubt
there was a failure of intelligence. But the subsequent action taken by
the 15th corps effectively contained and routed the Pakistani army's Northern
Light Infantry Battalions. Early in June, 1999, after it became clear that
a limited war was being fought, the government could have taken the country
and opposition parties into confidence. However, this did not happen, and
in the void all manners of stories were circulated and many of them undeservedly
gained credibility.
The country is facing
an unprecedented drought. India has a proud record of having avoided famine
deaths over the last 50 years unlike during the British Raj when it used
to be a cyclical phenomenon. While the terrible human misery is being focused
on -- no one can find fault with this -- the government refrains from coming
out with information on how previous droughts were successfully dealt with
and how the present one is proposed to be dealt with. Since, in India,
the government does not encourage the writing of current history by declassifying
documents and no coherent accounts of previous natural calamities or for
that matter wars are available, the young journalist in a rush has no time
or inclination to do any research or checking. He or she can only report
current misery or hearsay.
Partisan Interests
The political and bureaucratic
establishment unfortunately have been conditioned to use information to
their own parochial advantage and not as a vehicle for the greater public
good. It is not utilised as a tool of good and efficient governance, not
as an instrumentality to enforce accountability and not as a pool of knowledge
which encourages the learning process. The media is sometimes used to plant
stories in the name of investigative journalism, to hurt rivals, to obfuscate
facts and to promote parochial interests.
In mature democracies,
issues like national security and natural calamities are not distorted
by partisan politics. This is not the case in India. The Congress party,
in its long innings in government, never accepted the idea that India is
governed by a Parliament which has both ruling and opposition parties.
The present ruling party appears to be following the example of the Congress
in its information policy. As a result of that, a certain political activism
has come to colour even news reporting. That does not help promote a democratic
culture and attitude. Nor is this in conformity with the realities of the
IT age. A commitment to a supra-partisan information policy by the government,
political parties and the media, at least in respect of national security
and natural calamities is the need of the hour.
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