Remember the Hype Over the Advanced GE F-414 Engine Deal? Well, the US Delay of Older Variant Has Hit the IAF; Himmler in UP
A newsletter from The Wire | Founded by MK Venu, Seema Chishti, Siddharth Varadarajan, Sushant Singh, Sidharth Bhatia, Pratik Kanjilal and Tanweer Alam | Contributing writer: Kalrav Joshi, with additional inputs by Anirudh SK
Snapshot of the day
July 19, 2024
Siddharth Varadarajan
Remember Narendra Modi’s official visit to Washington last year? Everyone hailed the signing of a ‘landmark’ agreement on the future co-production of GE’s advanced F-414 jet engines that India would use to produce the advanced Tejas Mk-2 fighter. The details were scanty and not particularly encouraging but that didn’t prevent the usual breathless hype about the ‘historic’ deal being a ‘game changer’. As Yogi Berra once said, “it’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future” so let’s look at the present. India signed a deal in 2021 for the supply of 99 earlier generation F-404 engines for the Tejas Mk1A fighter but things haven’t gone to plan. Snehesh Alex Phillips reports:
According to the contract signed between HAL and GE in August 2021, the American firm is supposed to deliver 99 engines starting March to cater to the IAF’s order for 83 LCA MK1A inked earlier that year.
GE is supposed to deliver engines at the rate which HAL is supposed to deliver the aircraft – 16 each financial year, according to the terms of contract. However, it is learnt that GE has failed to deliver even a single engine to the state-run HAL.India raised the delayed supplies in the 2+2 ministerial meeting last November, to no apparent avail, though GE said in January 2024 that it was rushing to meet its Indian commitments. Strategic affairs analyst Pravin Sawhney had warned about India’s proximity to the US in defence matters increasing the country’s vulnerabilities. Well, as a result of the delayed engine supplies, India’s fighter squadron strength will have shrunk from 32 to 29 by the end of 2025. Note that the IAF’s sanctioned strength is for 42 fighter squadrons.
Former foreign secretary Vinay Kwatra has been appointed ambassador to the US and “is expected to take up the assignment shortly”, the external affairs ministry announced today.
Indian airlines, airports and brokerage firms are among a host of MS Windows clients worldwide affected by a faulty update by cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike. The issue has caused flights to be delayed as check-ins at Indian airports had to be conducted manually, and booking processes experienced hiccups. Although Indian brokerage firms said they had issues, stock exchanges were not impacted and the RBI is functioning smoothly. In other parts of the globe, railway, healthcare and broadcast companies were also affected.
As an internet and telecommunications clampdown has effectively cut Bangladesh off from the rest of the world, India’s foreign office has it is “aware of the measures taken” by local authorities and that the situation is “an internal matter of the country”. The websites of some major Bangladeshi newspapers remain unavailable, and a Reuters photographer in Bangladesh reported today that only some voice calls and no SMSs were going through while TV news channels were off the air. Many people died yesterday in intensifying clashes involving the police, supporters of the government and students protesting a controversial quota system. Faisal Mahmood has a detailed story on the issues at stake.
In their ‘general consent’ given to the Central Bureau of Investigation to probe corruption cases against Union government employees in their jurisdictions, the governments of Madhya Pradesh, Odisha and Goa had made an important addition: their consent will henceforth also apply to the investigation of ‘private persons’, reports Arvind Gunasekar. “This change will have a very significant impact on the ability of India’s apex investigating agency… to act against private individuals,” he writes. Given the politicised functioning of the agency, we know what that means.
The Muzaffarnagar police order asking eateries and stalls across the kanwar yatra route to display their owners’ and employees’ names is contrary to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ‘Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikaas, Sabka Vishvas’ assurance, Janata Dal (United) spokesperson KC Tyagi has said. Of course, the BJP is undeterred. The Uttar Pradesh government is doubling down on the hideous order and implementing it across the state– which is aimed at encouraging untouchability of Muslims (but also Dalits) – and the Uttarakhand government has said it too will implement the same requirement.
Narendra Modi’s remarks at an election rally implying that Gautam Adani and Mukesh Ambani may have sent tempos full of black money to the Congress in exchange for not criticising their closeness to the ruling regime in the run up to the elections – a false implication at that – were “an expression of surmise and conjecture or hypothetical questionnaire”, the Lokpal anti-corruption body said while dismissing a petition seeking an investigation into Modi, Rahul Gandhi, Adani and Ambani, Arvind Gunasekar reports.
A Bombay high court bench has the directed police from Kolhapur’s Vishalgad – where an anti-encroachment drive is believed to have triggered an episode of communal violence late last week – to appear before it after it watched videos of the violence that took place, LiveLaw reports. “We make it clear that any structure, we repeat any structure be it commercial or household, should not be demolished [at the Vishalgard fort] at all till further orders. If any demolition takes place, we will come down very heavily on your officers,” the bench was quoted as saying.
“What is this plea? How is it even maintainable? Absolutely misconceived,” a two-judge bench of the Supreme Court said today in response to a plea by two of the Bilkis Bano gangrape convicts to let them out on bail until a decision is taken on their remission pleas, Abhimanyu Hazarika reports. The two convicts were among 11 in the case who were sent back to jail on the Supreme Court’s orders earlier this year, which said the Gujarat government’s decision to grant them remission in August 2022 was illegal.
Upset at the bad press the Ambani family’s monster wedding has generated in India and abroad, the Reliance group is offering hard cash to social media influencers to plug the line that the costly bash is actually great for the Indian economy. One of those whom the company reached out felt this was asking too much and has spilt the beans.
The CBI arrested four students of Patna AIIMS yesterday in connection with the NEET-UG paper leak case. Amit Bhelari cites CBI sources as saying the four are suspected to be among the “solvers” who provided answers to the question paper after it was stolen from a trunk belonging to the National Testing Agency.
Finding that trainee IAS officer Puja Khedkar “fraudulently availed attempts beyond the permissible limit” by “faking” information on her identity, the UPSC issued a show cause notice to cancel Khedkar’s candidature from the civil services exam and filed a police complaint against her. Khedkar had been in the public eye after she was accused of not meeting the criteria for the caste and disability quotas under which she took the central services exam, as well as for using a beacon and a government sticker on her car without permission. Meanwhile, her mother Manorama has been arrested for allegedly threatening a farmer with a gun.
An inter-faith ‘live in’ couple in Uttarakhand facing threats from the girl’s family were told by the Uttarakhand high court that it was prepared to extend protection to them – provided they complied with the state’s controversial ‘Uniform Civil Code’ law that requires unmarried inter-faith couples to register with the authorities. The vires of the UCC law is under challenge in the Supreme Court. Perhaps the latter will hear it after several years.
Cases have been filed against scores of individuals across India for the ‘crime’ of waving the flag of Palestine in public. The complaints mostly originated with Hindutva organisations and the police action is surprising, say experts.
The share of contract workers in India’s formal manufacturing workforce has grown from 23.1 percent in 2002-03 to 40.2 percent in 2021-22, a study by Kulvinder Singh at Ashoka University finds. He cites studies which say amendments in the Contract Labour (Regulation & Abolition) Act across different states eased the regulations required for those employing 50 or more contract workers and virtually universalized contract labour. Also, pro-employer judgments on contract labour have resulted in an increase in the share of contract labourers in the total workers.
Air India has sent a ferry airplane with food and essentials on board to pick up passengers from yesterday’s Delhi-San Francisco flight who are stranded in Siberia, Reuters reports. The crew made an emergency landing in Russia’s Krasnoyarsk airport after detecting a problem in the aircraft’s cargo space. Passengers are in the airport’s international departures area and some have complained of difficulty in accessing food and water.
Judge says Pansare, Lankesh, Dabolkar and Kalburgi murders ‘interconnected’
The killings of Govind Pansare, Gauri Lankesh, Narendra Dabholkar and MM Kalburgi “are all interconnected”, judge Shailendra Tambe of a special court in Kolhapur said while cancelling the bail granted to Virendrasingh Tawade in Pansare’s murder case, while also noting that he was an accused in the Lankesh and Dabholkar murders as well. Judge Tambe also said it was a “grave indiscretion” that “impinges upon judicial discipline and propriety” for the lower court to have released Tawade on bail in 2018. Sukanya Shantha has more on the judge’s order.
Xiaomi largest player in Indian smartphone market after hiatus
With an 18% share in the Indian smartphone market in the quarter ending June, Xiaomi re-emerged as the largest vendor after six quarters, the Canalys market analysis firm reports. The Chinese company shipped 6.7 million units to India in the June quarter, slightly outperforming Vivo and pushing Samsung – which shipped 6.1 million units and claimed a 17% market share – to third place. The numbers suggest that Xiaomi – which is under the Enforcement Directorate’s microscope – “seems to have emerged clear of the impact of their past troubles with the ED and senior management exits”, Canalys analyst Shilpi Jain told the Economic Times.
Who's really filing complaints under Uttar Pradesh’s ‘anti-conversion’ law?
Section 4 of Uttar Pradesh’s religious conversion regulation law says that “any aggrieved person, his or her parents, brother, sister or any other person related to him or her by blood, marriage or adoption” can be behind the lodging of an FIR in the event of an unlawful conversion. But Omar Rashid reports that despite this limiting provision, members of right-wing organisations in the state who are neither the aggrieved nor related to them in the provided ways are the ones behind the registering of cases. He says the inconsistent manner in which courts have interpreted Section 4 has added to the confusion.
The Long Cable
Fascist Habits Die Hard: Himmler in Muzaffarnagar
Badri Raina
A police order in Uttar Pradesh's Muzaffarnagar requires food shops and vendors to display the names of their owners and workers.
During the days of the German Third Reich, Jewish houses and establishments were likewise marked, with the star of David. Thus Herr Himmler has come visiting the gangetic plains where Lord Ram hath his forlorn abode.
The authorities say this is being done to save embarrassment to Kanwaria pilgrims out on their annual yatra, and, believe it or not, to ensure "equal rights" for Hindus. Do work that out as best you can.
Happily, not just the political opposition but the ever-faithful Shia-Muslim leader of the BJP, Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi, have expressed objection to such sectarian profiling as being inimical to constitutional and democratic principles of the republic
This may be the first time that Naqvi has ever raised a voice against any of his party's sectarian doings. Never too late.
It remains to be seen how the two major components of the NDA government, the Janata Dal (United) and Telugu Desam Party react to this most obnoxious requirement, given their secular orientation; should they not dissuade the BJP from taking this course?
The Indian National Congress has dubbed this move as being aimed at an economic boycott of Muslims. They could have said more.
Here is the larger and more sinister point:
Just the other day, the ruling BJP's leader in West Bengal, Suvendu Adhikari, miffed at the losses suffered in the recent parliamentary elections, thundered at a public meeting to say "sab ka saath band karo; jo hamae saath, hum uske saath| (stop saying we are for the upliftment of all communities; let us be only for those who are for us —meaning, of course, those who vote for the BJP.
The enormity of this lies in the fact that this new unabashedly undemocratic and unconstitutional slogan flies in the face of the much-touted brand-promise of Prime Minister Modi, who has sought to draw great capital from the slogan ‘Sab ka saath, sab ka vikaas’, meaning he governs for all without discrimination).
That said, it is also the fact that to this day the country's chief executive has never once lauded any non-BJP ruled state government for anything they have done, only lambasted most, or at heart forgiven those Indians who choose not to vote for the BJP Indeed, under his watch, unconstitutionally, it has been widely propagated that only such states as elect the BJP can expect the bonanza that issues from a "double engine sarkar"
It is a sign of how the character of the state has come to be transformed that this gross abuse of the federal principle and rubbishing of the electorate that remains defiant against the ruling BJP has never come to be castigated as an unacceptable violation of the constitution.
The sentiment behind both the "double engine ki sarkar" slogan and what Suvendu Adhikari has said is plainly subversive of the constitutional order, to wit, that the 60 or so percent of citizens who regularly do not vote for the BJP remain illicit and unworthy of even-handed governance.
An issue that should have been the worrying subject of many seminars, policy platforms, media debates and journalistic push-back has remained a silently accepted tenet of state policy.
This is important to emphasise because the bogey that Muslims alone do not vote for the BJP requires to be exposed if republican verities and rule of law are to be kept in place.
The current unraveling of the Sangh, in state after state, is in the meanwhile another historical proof of how totalitarian regimes and political formations come apart as they lose state power.
Touted claims of discipline come to be seen merely as owing to the glue that such power affords. Once that goes, the knives are out
Meanwhile, another canny reminder of what happens when man wants to be superman etc. has come from the chieftain of the RSS. We mere mortals have often enough rued the new cultism, but coming from Bhagwat now, perhaps heed will be paid.
(Badri Raina taught at Delhi University.)
Reportedly
It is not just at the national level that the BJP is unable to find leaders to head up the organisation. JP Nadda has yet to be replaced as party president despite his term ending and his being inducted as a Union cabinet minister but the situation is even worse in the states. The BJP organsiation has been headless in key states like Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra for a year now. In UP, the challenge is to fine someone acceptable to the Modi-Shah duo and also to Adityanath. Hence the impasse.
Deep dive
Labour economist Santosh Mehrotra and MK Venu unravel the spin the Modi government is putting out to mask the grim unemployment situation. The PM recently cited RBI research to say 7.8 crore jobs were created in three years (which includes the pandemic years!). Dive in.
In fact, “the shrinking of employment in the manufacturing sector was a matter of great concern”, read here.
Prime number: Unknown
We don’t know how much our Supreme Court judges are worth – they haven’t publicly disclosed any information about their assets, says Saurav Das. He asked the Union law ministry under the RTI Act what was being done about a parliamentary standing committee’s recommendation last year that legislation be framed to get apex and high court judges to declare these numbers; it responded by saying it is still awaiting the Supreme Court’s views, 10 months after they were solicited.
Opeds you don’t want to miss
Andy Mukherjee argues that the only way Narendra Modi can generate the kind of jobs India needs is if he uses his third term to tear down India’s protective tariff walls.
A highly-securitised policy towards Pakistan has inherent limitations, writes TCA Raghavan. “The current situation, with downgraded diplomatic relations, no trade — both of which are on account of Pakistani decisions — and no political engagement is seeing a diminishing utility that can only increase.”
There was humour and memes and jokes but “no evidence of anger amongst the people of Bihar over the collapsing bridges,” write Apoorvanand and Neel Madhav, tracing the reluctance of the Bihar electorate to change governments to the role of caste in politics.
Arindam Das and Jean Dreze write about the deep crisis in India’s informal sector which has ensured that real wages have remained stagnant for more than a decade.
The Kanwar Yatra is no longer just about devotion to Shiva or Shiva Bhakti, writes Apoorvanand. “It is about the dominance of a particular type of Hindus, which means oppressing, torturing, or humiliating Muslims in different ways.”
While the West has a chequered record of backing democracy abroad says Sushil Aaron in a review of Robin Niblett’s The New Cold War, “what open societies have, for all their faults, is the capacity for course correction since they allow a wider range of public debate on issues, in ways that autocracies do not.” He believes Niblett “makes a persuasive case of looking at world politics through a democracy lens,” adding that the “prospect of a world led by (a returning) Trump, Putin, Xi, Modi and Erdoğan makes his thesis even more compelling.”
“Internet surveillance has now put the more labour-intensive minders of the past [hired guards who’d follow journalists] out of commission”, Suhasini Haidar says of her experience reporting abroad. But there is still one kind of control that’s even more effective, she writes: “When the media censors itself”.
Jasprit Bumrah is not just the best fast bowler India has ever produced, writes Vaibhav Vats. He “also stands out for his sobriety and self-effacement in an Indian men’s team steeped in individualism and hyper-masculinity, as well as in a political era of unabashed bigotry.”
Listen up
In light of the Hathras crowd crush, some have asked whether we need an all-India law regulating superstition as Maharashtra and Karnataka do. Avinash Patil of Narendra Dabholkar’s Maharashtra Andhshraddha Nirmulan Samiti and Alok Prasanna Kumar of Vidhi Karnataka join The Hindu’s Aaratrika Bhaumik to discuss the matter, including challenges in implementing these laws on the ground, and the tension between such laws and religious rights.
Watch out
Economist Jayati Ghosh has a compelling take on the US, the Global South, China’s subsidy model, debt, inequality and India, Tiger economies.
Over and out
Eighty monsoons ago, the British army won the Battles of Kohima and Imphal, despite a strong offensive by the Japanese and at one point being separated from them only by a tennis court in Kohima. The victories “changed the course of the [second world] war”, Brian Farmer says in this piece on the British effort during the two battles.
Can automated ice stupas help with farming in Ladakh?
That’s it for today. We’ll be back with you on Monday, on a device near you. If The India Cable was forwarded to you by a friend (perhaps a common friend!) book your own copy by SUBSCRIBING HERE.