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MD Nalapat interview in International Herald Leader (May 2 - May 8 edition)

A security memo to India’s new Prime Minister (Sunday Guardian)

MD Nalapat

National security was not a priority for the PM. part from ensuring that Congress president Sonia Gandhi continued to entrust him with the occupation of the most prestigious room in South Block, it is not clear as to exactly what Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's priorities were. Certainly, national security was not on the list. During the 10-odd years that he has been PM, terror networks have sprouted across India, and sleeper cells with their deadly potential have multiplied. A country from where Al Qaeda was absent has now become among the most preferred locations for that organisation, an affinity directly related to the weak monitoring and follow up of (sadly infrequent) leads on terror operations and their attempted perpetrators. That India has thus far escaped serious terror-related damage is traceable not to an improved national security system but because the attention of several such networks is focused elsewhere. Kashmir is no longer the priority it once was, now that more and more from even the extremist community in the Valley has seen for themselves the hell that is life across the Line of Control. The cockpit of operations is Af-Pak, and only when the Taliban regain control of Kabul will the attention of them and their associates return to India, this time not just to Kashmir but the entire country. Indeed, this is the reason why it has to be a security priority for India to ensure that the elected government in Kabul be given the weapons and training needed to defeat the Taliban, a line of action which Manmohan Singh has thus far declined to do, presumably because the Obama administration cannot as yet make up its mind as to whether it wants such muscular Indian involvement or not. The neglect of Afghanistan by Manmohan Singh can be illustrated by the fact that the Ministry of Human Resource Development and the Ministry of Home Affairs have yet to give sanction to a university in India to serve as the mentor for the new University of Afghanistan, a university that will be the mother institution for the entire higher education sector in that country. It is not known as to whether it is the ever-present urge within the ranks of the Manmohan Council of Ministers to tilt to US fiats that is behind such a delay. Certainly, the Obama administration would prefer a US university to be the mentor of the new University of Afghanistan, rather than one located in India. Whatever, the example illustrates the neglect of a comprehensive India-Afghanistan relationship by Team Manmohan. Avoiding the wilful errors in security policy caused by the leadership of a Prime Minister clueless about matters of national security has to be priority for the new PM. He (or she) can make a start by ensuring that every day, he (or she) has, as the first meeting, a session with the heads of the National Technical Research Organisation, Research and Analysis Wing and the IB. Neither the National Security Adviser nor the Home Minister ought to be present at such meetings; else the freedom to give views entirely frankly will be absent. While Sushilkumar Shinde is solely interested in the politics of Maharashtra (just as A.K. Antony is about Kerala) and shows it, in the case of P. Chidambaram, while he was Home Minister and was chairing such meetings, his predilections and contempt for an opposing viewpoint ensured that neither the RAW nor the IB chief could brief him with the undiluted honesty required in such a meeting (in which minutes should not be taken). While Manmohan Singh was too unconcerned to meet his security chiefs except on infrequent intervals, and delegated such essential work to other ministers or to his officials, the new PM should meet the NTRO, RAW and IB chiefs daily for a briefing on the real time situation and possible courses of action. Next, there ought to be a more comprehensive focus on threats. At present, more than 90% of attention and resources is being devoted to standard terror operations, neglecting the risks to security from economic espionage and sabotage, and from cyber attacks. All three need attention, as well as coordination in action. To ensure this, the security system in India needs to shift from overt monitoring to recessed methods that remain as hidden from non-official eyes as are systems operating in countries such as the US and the UK. The sooner databases get linked up and biometric information get collated, the sooner there be a vigorous process of sharing of information and planning of operations, the better will be the overall ability to spot a perpetrator before a bomb gets detonated or sabotage (including on advanced ships or aircraft by sleepers hidden within the services) gets carried out. In such a task, fully domestic IT companies and fully domestic financial entities need to be involved, the way they are in the US and the UK, or indeed in China. The NGO sector needs far more attention as an information and activity source, the way it is in the three countries mentioned. Up to now, the security services have operated as though they were still in the era of the British Raj. The incoming Prime Minister needs to drag this essential function of the state into the 21st century. He (or she) will find within the security agencies several individuals whose competence and dedication remains unmatched, even if they have been neglected for long by successive regimes unwilling to move from a 19th (or in patches 20th) century model to the 21st century version our country needs. http://www.sunday-guardian.com/analysis/a-security-memo-to-indias-new-prime-minister

PM gets ready for NDA win on 16 May (Sunday Guardian)

MADHAV NALAPAT  New Delhi | 3rd May 2014

rders have informally been given in the Prime Minister's Office to ensure that all pending matters get cleared "before 16 May", as on that day, they should "be prepared for a change in government", according to a senior official. He added that "Prime Minister Manmohan Singh wishes to leave with dignity, and to preside over a smooth transition" to what is expected to be a Narendra Modi-led government by the end of the month. Both psephologists as well as politicians are baffled at the speed and strength of the "Modi wave" that is powering the BJP to victory in the 2014 elections. "We are lucky that the Election Commission opted for an unprecedented nine stages for the elections, as this length of time has helped to dilute the potency of the Modi wave, especially in Bihar and in parts of Uttar Pradesh" where there will be late polling. "Had the polls been held within a two-week interval, the BJP would have gained an extra 20 seats, so we should thank the EC for their decision," a very senior Congress strategist revealed. He further claimed that "by the beginning of February, it was clear that we (the Congress) would do very badly, so from then onwards the target has been to reduce the BJP's tally and (thereby) keep Modi out," he added. He gave "full marks to Rahul and Priyanka Gandhi for the way in which both have tracked the progress of the polls and enthused party workers demoralised by the bad reputation of the Manmohan Singh government". Although for the record Congress insiders praise the outgoing Prime Minister, in private they say that he "refused to listen to many suggestions made by Soniaji and Rahulji" and that "he was unable to carry out most of the improvements asked of him by the leadership". Asked why he was not, therefore, replaced, the senior leader claimed that "there was no unanimity on his replacement, as Rahul was not willing to take up the job". He claimed that "the Congress president would have liked Sushilkumar Shinde as PM, but Rahul favoured P. Chidambaram for the job. Also, the family did not want to offend Pranab Mukherjee, as there were indications that he would quit the government if passed over for promotion. By the time PranabDa became President of India, it was too close to the polls for a change in the leadership of the government, so it was decided by the family to continue with Manmohan Singh till the election cycle ended." The insider said that "Rahul and his team initially placed too much emphasis on standard classifications of caste and community, not realising that Narendra Modi had cut through such divisions with his talk of development." Hence, "it was only very late in the game that caste and community factors were made to compete with the message of development. However, we could not beat Modi at his own game". The party leader said that "we ought to have ensured that sentiment prevailed over cold fact, as in the sentimentality department the Nehru family is tops". According to him, "Priyanka should have campaigned outside UP, especially in the west and south, where she could have made a big difference." However, he claimed that "both Soniaji and Rahulji were reluctant to force Priyanka to undergo the strains of campaigning across the country, although she herself was ready". However, "in protecting her, they may have handed over a majority to the NDA", he ruefully ended. Calculations made within the relevant echelons of government indicate that the BJP and its allies will pick up more than a 150 seats in the north of India, while in the west, its tally will cross 60, with around 30 seats coming from the south and 20 in the east. If these calculations prove to be accurate, the BJP and its allies will be within striking distance of a majority on their own. However, should more numbers be required, about a dozen seats are expected to go to independents, including in the Northeast, while Jagan Reddy's YSR Congress is expected to win 16 seats in Seemandhra and the TRS seven seats in Telangana. "Had the BJP done separate deals with Jagan in Seemandhra and with TRS in Telangana, the two combinations would have had almost a clean sweep across both regions," a senior official claimed, adding that "the TDP has brought down rather than boosted the BJP's tally". In the same way, he said that "calculations reveal that B.S. Yeddyurappa has helped the BJP in only two seats in Karnataka but has cost the party seven other seats". Also, "the BJP could have got nine seats in Tamil Nadu (rather than the three now forecast) had it avoided angering specific communities by tying up with the MDMK and the PMK". Another official argued that "clearly the Delhi headquarters of the BJP does not understand the dynamics of the South at all, with both Leaders of the Opposition as well as the party president coming from within the same narrow geographical radius". Given that the in-house experts within the government in the tracking of election results are giving the NDA either a majority on its own or close to the 272 figure, it is perhaps no surprise that across ministries, files are getting cleared and sanitised, so as to ensure that those who have signed on them remain undisturbed by future inquiries. Meanwhile, the Central Bureau of Investigation under Ranjit Sinha has been giving clean chit after clean chit to a roster of cases, in a spurt of activity unusual in its speed and timing. http://www.sunday-guardian.com/news/pm-gets-ready-for-nda-win-on-16-may

Needed: An NSA who advises, not controls (Sunday Guardian)

mong the most consequential of appointments awaiting the attention of the next Prime Minister of India will be the selection of his National Security Adviser (NSA). From the time that Atal Behari Vajpayee chose his confidant Brajesh Mishra for the job, the NSA has played a keystone role in governance, operating under the shadow of the immense authority of the Prime Minister, of course assuming the PM to be independent of "remote controls". Mishra was also principal secretary to the PM, and the joining together of two whole-time responsibilities ensured the neglect of one, which was the NSA's responsibility. While there has been much praise lavished on the Vajpayee era, chiefly because almost any other Prime Minister would appear stellar when compared to the hapless Manmohan Singh, the reality is that several grave failures of both foresight as well as judgement took place during his watch. The most commented upon has been the Kathmandu hijack of an Indian Airlines Airbus by an ISI-backed group, and the subsequent failure to ensure that the aircraft could not take off from Amritsar. Either because of his other responsibilities, or because of poor staff backup, Mishra delayed the taking of decisions which ought not merely to have been taken with despatch, but which ought to have been left to lower levels to sort out. That there was no protocol for dealing with an incident as predictable as the hijacking of an aircraft indicated the lack of sustained and professional attention paid to such contingencies. The laughable nature — if the consequences were not so tragic — of Brajesh Mishra's response to the Kathmandu hijack parallel similar fumbling, notably at Kargil, where a trusting approach towards the Pakistan establishment led to the abandoning of army posts in that crucial sector. Worse, reconnaissance flights along that stretch of the Line of Control (LoC) were apparently discontinued, again in the belief that Nawaz Sharif was sincere in his protestations of peaceful intent. The only Pakistan President in recent memory to have been sincere in his desire to avoid doing harm to India through (usually harebrained) schemes of the military was Asif Ali Zardari, and he was neutered by then US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in favour of the Punjabi establishment in the Pakistan army and their favourite, Chief Justice Iftikhar Choudhury. { The fact that the Indian Army , was able to evict the Pakistan army regulars from the peaks has concealed the fact that the Kargil incursion took place at all was a disastrous failure of the Higher Command. The fact that the Indian Army (as well as an Air Force severely hobbled by the constraints placed on their operation by Mishra) was able to evict the Pakistan army regulars from the peaks has concealed the fact that the Kargil incursion took place at all was a disastrous failure of the Higher Command. Add to the litany of misjudgements the hugely expensive and ultimately useless Operation Parakram, the repeated unilateral ceasefires in Kashmir, and the avoidance of ensuring that intelligence professionals were given the status and responsibilities which they had been denied by "birds of passage" from other services into R&AW or other intelligence agencies, and it would be apparent that while Brajesh Mishra got a good grade as Principal Secretary ("Prinsec"), he failed in his role as National Security Adviser. After him, there have been J.N. Dixit and Shivshankar Menon of the Indian Foreign Service, both outstanding officers, but subject to the occupational trait of placing diplomatic efforts above other activities less overt or even wholesome, but vital in the protection of the national interest. As for M.K. Narayanan, he has always been a policeperson, and displayed this attitude as NSA by giving emphasis to the IPS-laden Intelligence Bureau rather than to R&AW. There is logic in the US system of bringing in those outside the formal processes of government in key posts such as that of the NSA, but in India's cadre officer-centred mechanism of governance, such an innovation seems remote. The fact is that the NSA needs to advice, not control. He or she has to stop himself (or be stopped by the PM) from involvement in operations. Rather, the brief should be to monitor and yes, to advice, leaving it to those directly tasked with operational responsibilities to handle matters within their own spheres. In the words of Nikolai Lenin, the NSA has to accept the maxim of "better less (powers) but better" (in his work). The "Jack of all trades" tradition in the governance system in India needs to get replaced by ensuring that professional brains (who understand the complexities of their craft and what needs to be done to face challenges) get directly involved in ministries such as Home or Defence. Or indeed, in the National Security Council Secretariat. http://www.sunday-guardian.com/analysis/needed-an-nsa-who-advises-not-controls

Ram Madhav dissects Nehru’s China folly (Sunday Guardian)

MADHAV NALAPAT  New Delhi | 26th Apr 2014

The then Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru interacts with soldiers in November 1962. ndia has been afflicted with historians who are little more than publicists for leaders present and past. Reading the many tomes brought out by them on the main lights of the pre-1947 struggles, one could be excused for thinking that these were super-humans, incapable of human error. The many mistakes they made, errors which led to Partition and to the destruction of the potential of the Indian economy, as well as directly to the abysmal level of societal progress recorded in this country to this day, have largely been glossed over or excused as someone else's fault. Whether it be Sunil Khilnani, Amartya Sen or Shashi Tharoor, each has sought to outdo the other in showering encomiums, principally on Jawaharlal Nehru, who is claimed to be the "discoverer of India", or at the least, the "idea of India" by these authors. Ram Madhav is very different from, say, Ram Guha, in that he has neither been the beneficiary of the care and attention lavished by trusts, institutions, academies and governmental bodies pre-fixed or suffixed with the Nehru name, or tasked with the responsibility of ensuring that Jawaharlal Nehru continue to remain embedded in public consciousness as the demigod who brought freedom and democracy to a grateful people. It is a tribute to the success of such propaganda — for there can be no more descriptive word than that to describe the outpourings of what may be termed the "Nehru industry" — that even today, hundreds of thousands of voters in Amethi and Rae Bareli overlook the fact that they remain as poor as they ever were, despite decades of being represented in Parliament by that branch of the Nehru clan that has appropriated the power and the perquisites of such a relationship, courtesy Prime Ministers from Narasimha Rao to Atal Behari Vajpayee to Manmohan Singh. In his Uneasy Neighbours (Har-Anand Publications), Ram Madhav describes in detail the leaps of faith by Jawaharlal Nehru, fantasies which ignored the reality of the hard-nosed Realpolitik practised by Chairman Mao Zedong and Premier Zhou Enlai. He points out startling facts that durbari historians have sought to bury, such as that Nehru insisted on the UN seating the Peoples Republic of China not only as a Member but even as a Permanent Member of the UN Security Council even during the weeks when the PLA was overrunning the pathetic defences cobbled together by Nehru favourite Lt Gen T.N. (Tikkoo) Kaul. Ram Madhav correctly assigns blame also to Vengalil Kumaran Krishna Menon, then the Defence Minister, although the fact is that Menon never dared to challenge a single one of Nehru's edicts, being wholly dependent for his political success on Nehru, whose Fabian socialism so infused the then Defence Minister's own policies that he (correctly) focused on indigenous production of weapons systems, but ensured that these remain the monopoly of the state sector, a ridiculous monopoly which persists to this day. Evidence, if such was needed, that India has been governed since 1947 by either the Nehrus or by a succession of quasi-Nehruvians, with only Narendra Modi emerging as a challenger to such a system of governance. Former Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee sits in a golf cart as he visits the Forbidden City in Beijing on 24 June 2003. REUTERS Ram Madhav gives in detail the facts relating to the 1962 disaster, including the neglect of troops and the huge political concessions given by Nehru to Beijing in the matter of Tibet. However, being an admirer of Atal Behari Vajpayee, Madhav neglects to mention that on his 2003 visit to Beijing, it was Vajpayee who threw away any shred of any remaining card available to India in the matter of Tibet, by giving a formation that adopted the Chinese viewpoint in its totality. This was a Sharm el-Sheik moment in Vajpayee's era that has not been given the attention it deserves, presumably because not only historians such as Ram Madhav but also Nehruvians treat Vajpayee with almost the reverence they show towards the Nehru family. Ram Madhav has done well in highlighting the importance to the trajectory of Sino-Indian ties of Nehru's 1959 decision to welcome the Dalai Lama as an honoured guest, as also any inhabitant who wished to leave Tibet. He has emphasised the contradiction between Nehru's chasing of the holy grail of peaceful co-existence with China and his embrace of the Dalai Lama, contradictions in Nehruvian policies that led Beijing to regard him as a leader bent on disrupting Communist China, even while claiming to be its best friend. Madhav has given a concise summary of the war, although he ought to have focused more on the refusal to use air power by Nehru and Menon, and the consequences of such an error of judgement. He has detailed the valour of the Indian jawan, who has stood by his or her country to the last, although hobbled by a clueless bureaucracy and sometimes by weak leadership in the higher echelons of the services. His sections on such valour are touching and effective. Overall, Ram Madhav follows what this reviewer describes as the "Sardar Patel-Subhash Bose" line in contrast to the "Gandhi-Nehru" line, in his descriptions and in his conclusions. Clearly, China is a country with which India must deal, but this needs to be with clear vision and with a balanced appreciation of risks and possibilites. Ram Madhav has made a welcome and valuable contribution to the all-important issue of a China policy that will ensure that — for the first time since 1947 — it is New Delhi and not Beijing that secures the better deal. Uneasy Neighbours: India and China after 50 years of the War, Har-Anand Publications

http://www.sunday-guardian.com/news/ram-madhav-dissects-nehrus-china-folly

‘Cyprus solution’ inevitable for Ukraine (Pakistan Observer)

M D Nalapat

Thursday, April 24, 2014 - Forty years after the island of Cyprus was divided between a Greek and a Turkish mini-state, with the latter controlling the northern one-third of the republic, another country, Ukraine, is on the way towards a Cyprus-style division. While in the first case, it was the Turkish army that “liberated” the Turkish-majority third of the island from rule by the (Greek-controlled) government in Nicosia, in the case of Ukraine, it is the Russian armed forces that are likely to move in to “protect the Russian-speaking population from fascists”.

A division of the country has become inevitable following the overreach of the European Union and the rest of NATO, who regarded as impossible the possibility that Moscow would respond with force to the alliance’s stratagem to wrest the entire country from the influence of the Russian Federation. When President Vladimir Putin acted the way Washington and its EU partners have on multiple occasions, by using force to secure its interests, there was a collective wail from NATO member-states. Such tactics are reserved for “civilised” people, defined in the “international” media and in “international opinion” as citizens of NATO member-states or countries such as Norway, Australia and New Zealand.

Geopolitical influence rests on three legs, the economy, the military and culture. Of the three, the most important is the economy, for the reason that only a strong economy can sustain a growing military, while a culture is respected much more if the country of its origin is economically strong. The fact that India is still a country of more than six hundred million poor and starving people is the reason why the immense mosaic of culture that characterises it has yet to get diffused across the globe, with the exception of Bollywood, which has managed to penetrate a few countries because of the vibrancy of its offerings. Both the US dollar as well as the Euro are in reality sick currencies, masquerading as healthy because of the dominant position of the NATO alliance in international information-dissemination systems.

However, it is becoming more difficult to conceal the fact that many EU member-states are in effect bankrupt, while the US is avoiding that fate only because its currency is in use as an international reserve. Add to that the fact that NATO member-states have become adept at confiscating assets located within their territories by citizens of target countries, and the continuance of the NATO bloc as the destination of choice for investors in the GCC, Russia, South Asia and East Asia becomes problematic. Only the tardy pace of countries such as the BRICS group in setting up alternative banking and financial structures, or in making each other’s currency freely convertible within the bloc, is ensuring that the lead position of the NATO bloc in the matter of financial flows c.ontinues Should the US and the UK go ahead with an expansion of financial sanctions against the Russian Federation, investors in that country would accelerate the transfer of their holdings from London and New York to safer locations, including in South America, Africa and in selected countries in Asia. Also, such a move would free Russia to retaliate, including by getting deeply involved in West Asia on the side of those forces that are regarded with hostility by NATO.

Should Moscow send some of the sophisticated weapons systems that it has developed to countries such as Iran, that would reduce the potency of the military threat against that country, for it is no secret that the primary objective of any NATO operation is the protection of its own personnel, often at the expense of battlefield logic. Unless an army is ready to suffer losses in manpower, sometimes on a significant scale, that army will find itself hobbled in wartime by tactics intended not for offence but purely for self-preservation. Russian weapons technology, including its missile systems, can be an effective means of retaliation against sanctions imposed by those responsible for the crisis in Ukraine by their punishment of President Viktor Yanukovich for the “crime” of choosing the Russian Federation as the top ally of Ukraine, rather than the EU.

It was from the time that that decision was taken that Yanukovich became a marked man, with the usual clutter of NGOs rising against him. It was not until it was too late that NATO realised that it had made a fundamental error in seeking to gain complete sway over Ukraine, a country vital to the security of Russia’s south western flank. The fact is that Ukraine was always a divided country, its two major groups separated by language and inclination from each other. The ouster of Yanukovich removed any expectation of equal treatment from the minds of the Russian-speaking sections of the country. These now see the Kiev government (with its comic book “prime minister”) as a collection of coup artists, suffused with right-wing hysteria and hate against not only Russia but any of their own citizens who regarded Russian as his or her mother tongue. US Vice-President Joe Biden may wag his finger at Vladimir Putin, but the fact is that Ukraine is now effectively a divided country. Its two groups despise and fear each other, and this situation is only going to get worse in the period ahead. Rather than come with band-aid, it would be far better for all players in the ongoing Ukrainian tragedy to accept the reality of participation, and put in place a mechanism that would facilitate a smooth rather than a troubled process of separation of the two parts of Ukraien, those who are Russian speakers and the rest. Otherwise, ugly incidents will only multiply, and a situation may arise that may tempt some in NATO to send in troops for the protection of the coup leaders who toppled Yanukovich.

Should NATO fall into the trap of sending troops into Ukraine to try and stitch the country together again, it is likely that Moscow would see such intervention as the chance to get even with NATO for its many slights. Just as the US did in Afghanistan in the 1980s,funnel arms and money into the arms of the ISI-selected groups battling against the Red Army (of the USSR), this time around it would be Moscow that sends in assistance to the groups that will spring up to harass NATO as it moves into the country to protect those it has brought to power in Kiev through the use of mobs. Hopefully, wiser counsel will prevail and the extreme step of armed intervention by NATO be avoided. Ukraine is a broken country, and seeking to keep it together will only result in conditions that heighten the risk of a full-scale economic and security crisis in Europe. It is time for a Cyprus-style solution that would ensure the containment of the Ukraine crisis to within its boundaries rather than to the whole of Europe.

http://pakobserver.net/detailnews.asp?id=240488

MD Nalapat interviews Gen VK Singh

Obama quietly reverses Hillary’s ‘get Modi’ policy (Sunday Guardian)

MADHAV NALAPAT  New Delhi | 19th Apr 2014

Hillary Clinton S President Barack Obama has quietly reversed a policy initiated by former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, to "get Narendra Modi" — ostensibly for the 2002 Gujarat riots, but in actuality "for taking stands that may be different from that favoured by the US administration" — in the words of a senior analyst in New York. "Hillary Clinton likes to operate through NGOs, which are given funding through indirect channels, and which target individuals and countries seen as less than respectful to her views on foreign and domestic policy in the target countries," a retired US official now based in Atlanta said. He claimed that "rather than US NGOs, (the former) Secretary of State Clinton favoured operating through organisations based in the Netherlands, Denmark and the Scandinavian countries, especially Norway" as these were outside the radar of big power politics. These NGOs were active in the agitation against the Russian nuclear power plant at Kudankulam in Tamil Nadu, with "funding coming mainly from a religious organisation based in Europe that has close links with France". Incidentally, French companies are in direct competition with Russian rivals in seeking to expand the market for nuclear reactors in India. The senior official, now on a visit to India, claimed that "your (i.e. the Manmohan Singh) government has full details of the religious organisation involved in funding the Kudankulam protests, but is keeping this secret as the organisation has high-level backers" in the UPA. These present and retired officials claimed that "during the tenure in office of Secretary Clinton, several expert teams in the guise of NGOs were sent to Gujarat to try and find mass graves". The purpose was to then take the matter to the Office of the UN Commissioner of Human Rights in Geneva as an example of genocide. "In 2011, some bones were discovered in a Gujarat field by one of the search teams and there was much excitement, but these were later found to be buffalo bones", an official said. The official added that "no evidence whatsoever of mass graves was uncovered in Gujarat despite six years of clandestine searching for them" by undercover experts posing as representatives of NGOs. He added that "five politicians, three from the state and two in Delhi, assisted the search teams, but the information given by them proved unproductive". Finally, "now that Secretary Clinton had stepped down from office, by end-2012 orders were given to stop wasting time on the search for mass graves in Gujarat, much to the dismay of those NGOs who were getting significant funding as a consequence of the search operations". Interestingly, the senior official claimed that because of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's inability to water down the Nuclear Liability Act and Defence Minister A.K. Antony's decision to prefer the French Rafale fighter to its US rival, "orders were given to activate the Khalistan file so as to create embarrassment for Sonia Gandhi and Manmohan Singh". Another official, now retired, claimed that "since 2011, several search teams have been active in Punjab, seeking human remains in suspected mass graves". According to them, "key politicians in Punjab have assisted these search teams and on occasion even provided logistical facilities for them". These officials claim that the recent decision by the US Aviation Authority to ban extra flights into the US by Indian carriers was "directly linked to US displeasure over the strong Indian response to the Devyani Khobragade episode, especially as they had been privately assured by senior officials that the fallout of an arrest would be routine and perfunctory". Another example of misuse of public interest bodies cited was the recent decision by the UK Automobile Safety Authority to classify five India-produced small car models as unsafe, "or exactly the same models that are offering competition to European and US vehicles in the European market". They said that such steps were "protectionism in the guise of safety" and that "the Manmohan Singh government's passivity in responding to such unilateral measures encouraged more of them to get slapped on India". Coming back to the BJP's PM candidate Narendra Modi, these sources say that the Obama administration has dialled back on the hectic efforts by Hillary Clinton to paint the Gujarat CM as guilty of mass murder and even genocide. "This is clear from the latest report of the US Commission on International Religious Freedom, which has sharply scaled back its criticism of the Modi government as compared to earlier reports". According to a senior official, "President Obama does not share Hillary Clinton's confrontational approach and her preference for Sonia Gandhi, and is looking to establish a pragmatic partnership with India should Modi become the Prime Minister". Hence the search "for a US envoy who would be different from (former ambassador) Nancy Powell's Clinton-style hostile approach to Modi, and to find an individual who could be expected to bond with the new PM and his team". According to these sources, President Obama "is alarmed at the steep downslide in India-US ties caused by Hillary-style crusades, and wants the relationship to be even better than what it was under the Bush presidency". Recent remarks by Narendra Modi indicate that the BJP's standard bearer is ready to reciprocate the hand of amity proffered by Team Obama to the BJP's PM nominee. http://www.sunday-guardian.com/news/obama-quietly-reverses-hillarys-get-modi-policy