When calamity strikes, it does not discriminate. This was on ample display when floods ravaged Kashmir.
A rare video footage of Maoists purportedly showing the rebels conducting a 'commando-style' training to gun down helicopters, used to ferry security personnel and VIPs in Chhattisgarh's worst insurgency-hit Bastar region, has been recovered by the police.
'The range of purchases throw a light on India's threat perception as also its perceived role of being a stabilising influence in the region,' says Brigadier S K Chatterji (retd).
Jaitley can make his innings -- notwithstanding its likely length -- to be a watershed tenure, or just add to the image of the MoD drifting rudderless, says Brigadier S K Chatterji (retd).
Nirmala Sitharaman has a God given opportunity to orchestrate a transformation in India's defence capabilities. One hopes she has her own counsel and does not overly let the PMO run her ship, says Group Captain Murli Menon (retd).
'She has to get the funds, cut through bureaucratic flab, speed up modernisation, ensure planned acquisitions stick to timelines, make organisational changes and ensure the military is capable of performing the task that it is given,' says Brigadier S K Chatterjee (retd).
Besides weakening the Maoists' lethal capacities and reducing violence, it is essential to ensure that governance is improved, so that those prone to sympathising with, or supporting, the Maoists would, in the long run, realise the needlessness and futility of doing so, says P V Ramana and Raj Bala Rana.
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