It is India’s 63rd Independence Day and I felt compelled to write something. 2009 has not been a great year so far for India. The Congress may claim it has been a good year for them and the stock markets seem to be doing well but given the two major problems facing the country at present viz. drought and swine flu(which is excessively hyped in my opinion) the party in power has a lot to do. However these are internal problems solutions to which are not too difficult to find. The true challenge is preserving Independence for the whole of India.
Progress often breeds jealousy and it is not unnatural for fast developing countries to want to eliminate competition. It seems to be the case with the fastest developing economy in the world, which openly expressed the desire to break India into meaningless small chunks. This is the latest in a series of actions which have raised tensions between the two fastest growing economies in the world. While it is difficult to predict the future a neutral observer would certainly feel that any country should learn from its mistakes. Luckily most Indians now understand the meaning of “Hindi Chini bhai bhai”. The presence of Highways on the Chinese side of the Kashmir border and the conspicuous lack of them on the Indian side was a cause for alarm post 1962 and still is. Similarly the constant gradual retreat of Indian armed forces in Arunachal Pradesh is also a cause for concern. Of late it certainly seems that India has awoken to the threat of the dormant dragon, especially with the deployment of the Sukhois in Arunachal Pradesh and the inauguration of the first nuclear submarine, but are a handful of Sukhois and a submarine strong enough to protect our sovereignty from the strength of the most populous and disciplined country in the world? One can only hope that the ministers at the top are doing something constructive which does not reach the media, so India can meet any force which threatens its freedom.
If this is a small preview of what is happening on the armed forces front, there is more to fear on the commercial front. IT outsourcing is bread and butter for India. Most business is done online and one wonders what security do India’s online resources have. The newspapers reported that Chinese hackers have been hacking into international sites and making away with confidential data or bringing down important sites. Moreover the newspaper report stated that below the hollow statements made by the spokesperson the country responsible intends to take no action against the perpetrators. I am almost an IT engineer now but have not noticed many Indians with similar capabilities. Moreover the IT infrastructure looks not just shoddy but also pretty fragile to my eye, but then again my eye is probably an untrained one.
Current happenings all over the world only go to show that we cannot take our Independence for granted. I hope that I am wrong when I say that the threat of war in years to come looms large. Perhaps a game of Brinkmanship is all that may result, but then again I have never known any Indian leader to be good at that game. As the country moves into the 62nd year of its Independence it is important that we realize the need for strong decisive leadership just as our realization for economic reforms made us the second fastest growing economy in the world. In the hope that we may always safeguard this Independence,
JAI HIND
Anand's Blog 
Comments on: "Independence day no. 63" (4)
Kudos to u for penning such a nice, well written article!…Though i cannot fully agree with few of ur viewpoints!
First of all, i am yet to come across any comments attributed to China stating that they intend to break India into ‘meaningless small chunks’ !!…Though it might be a secret ambition of theirs!! I wouldn’t be surprised if majority of Indians had same feelings towards China. But i donot believe any nation to be that heady to state such things openly!
I certainly do not believe our Independence is under any physical threat!..Things happen slowly in India, but we will have a solution to deal with terrorism, let it not be lost on you that it is a very difficult problem to solve and any rash decisions might only aggravate the situation. Your reservations on India’s capability of responding to any immediate military threat from China are well-founded.The deployment of Sukhois and commissioning of the first indigenously built nuclear powered submarine are certainly not first or tiny steps towards countering China’s growing military power…Not everything is open to public and printed in papers, how many people knew that the submarine project had been on for close to three decades?..There may be many more kept under the wraps.Presently, we should take pride of having entered a elite club of only six countries to posses such subs. And India has already placed orders for akali class N-Subs with Russia, so we really aren’t found wanting badly on that front!..At this point it is very important to retain our influence over Indian Ocean, and i fully believe that defense ministry and the armed forces understand the gravity of threat should China start control it.They could choke us out of resources by blocking the trade channels, in a similar fashion we can right now! Still, i believe an all out war like a Kargil or 1962 is very unlikely…Times have changed and so have our diplomatic relations with our neighbors.Those are obsolete ways in this Nuclear Age. I think China and India know that any confrontation at this point of time will not be in anybody’s interest…it will simply waste of precious resources, when by we understand that by coming together we can rule the world!!!At this point it is simply impossible to match China’s strength force for force,we need to balance our expenditures intellingently, and some clever piece of diplomacy can save is that much more expense!! It is imperative that India fully focuses on the development front…We have very exciting times lying ahead of us. Surely the infrastructure isn’t up to the mark, but we have a large and young pool of skilled workforce compared to China…We need to be optimistic and work harder towards our dream of being a part of Developed India!
Things sure look gloomy, but it isn’t doom time yet!
Jai Hind!!
China’s desire to “break India into meaningless small chunks” appeared in the newspaper though a cover up was done later. There may never be a war but the Brinkmanship scenario is quite likely, an intense build up of armed forces bordering on war where eventually one country gives in to the others’ demands often without a shot being fired.
India has actually completed 62 years of independence and is entering the 63rd year now.
my apologies. Thanks for the correction.