Whose Defense is it ? The  war is the last thing India needs, but who will defend India?

Political Correspondent

The recent happenings in Kargil spell not only a crisis in the entire country; the last thing that this nation can would wish to see is yet another war on the border with Pakistan. Not only does it spoil the image of the country, it also means that loss in absolutely tangible terms like spiralling costs, security and above all, precious lives. There can be nothing worse than a war on our hands. Almost everybody in this country is agreed on that.

What, however, is appalling is the almost absurd way in which no less than a functionary of the Union Government like the defence minister George Fernandes has sprung to the defence of the Pakistani government saying that the intrusion in the border was the brainchild of the Army in that country and that the neighbouring Prime Minister had no clue as to what was happening. It was, Fernandes said, entriely a gameplan worked out by the Pakistani Army without the knowledge of the Government and that, by corollary, the government had no hand in the operations. In fact, despite the bluster of the Prime Minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee, that he had warned Nawaz Sharif that India would not be seen to be only defending its frontiers in the face of such military activity, the defence minister went on record saying that the Pakistani government had himself admitted as much and that he had no clue to what his Army was up to. While, dwelling on the internal politics, Army involvement or otherwise, of Pakistani should not be our concern given the urgency of our own domestic compulsions, all the right-thinking political parties of this country should come out strongly against Fernandes' statement, which seems to be a defence of sorts of our neighbouring government, giving as it does a clean chit to the Islamabad seat of power.

The CPI(M) has been one of the first parties and parliamentarian Basudev Acharia made the position clear at the all-party meeting convened by the Prime Minister on Saturday, backed by the Congress' Natwar Singh. It is clear now that the Government has come a cropper in handling the situation and that does not make Fernandes' statement any lighter. We understand that the intrusions had been going on for quite for some time now but that the Air Force attacks began only on May 26; what finally takes the cake as far as intelligence and government failure are concerned is that it was the local populace which gave news of the mass scale intrusions to the authorities after which the air strikes. It is shameful that given the order of our information system, such gaps, involving the national security, should be allowed to remain. There should be someone in government and position who should be responsible for the lack of information. The idea is not merely to fix blame; we must remember that there are graver questions and issues involved in this matter. War is not a game and it is definitely not an exercise of children. The sovereignty of the country is in peril and there should be no politicking in the matter. The CPI(M) is convinced that it is right thinking on the part of the government that should settle the issue and a consensus is the need of the hour. All parties must rise above their respective offices and handle this crisis with a sense of importance that it rightly deserves. But first, for starters, the likes of Mr Fernandes should keep their mouths shut.