Articles by Gautam Navlakha

(The following are extracts from an open letter sent to the Minister of Home Affairs, Rajnath Singh, protesting against the decision to freeze Greenpeace India’s accounts.)

The floods that overwhelmed Jammu and Kashmir last month were a terrifying natural disaster on their own without the civilian government or the military authorities having to make it any worse. But confused priorities and a lack of preparation and coordination ensured that this happened. The Indian Army plunged into rescue work, and did a creditworthy job, though it is debatable whether its efforts matched the high praise the media showered on it. It was the local people who helped themselves and their neighbours when outside assistance was slow in coming, and they were undoubtedly the heroes in this cataclysm, which was worsened by a history of neglect and an unresolved conflict.

An amazing amount of money is spent on the armed forces, which depend heavily on imports of everything from weapons systems to spares, even as they are increasingly deployed to deal with internal conflicts. This article points out that both the dependence on arms imports and the expansion of the forces to tackle domestic troubles not only push up costs but also jeopardise the country's strategic manoeuvrability. It contends thatit is high time the received wisdom on these matters was closely examined.

A 22-member team of four constituents of the Coordination of the Democratic Rights Organisation (CDRO) undertook a fact-finding into the alleged encounter killing of Mallojula Koteswara Rao (Kishenji) on 1December 2011.

On 12 October Mail Today carried a story on page 3 that the Union Ministry of Home Affairs had last August sent a communication to 30 odd union ministries and agencies, including public sector units, asking them to stop issuing all advertisements to five newspapers of J&K (Kashmir Times, Great