- Nepali Youths: Recruitment in Indian Army
- Putin’s Stalled Ukraine War
- Legacy of Mikhail Gorbachev: A Great & Good Man
By Shashi P.B.B. Malla
Nepali Youths Service in Indian Army
After India’s independence from the British Raj in 1947, there was a tripartite agreement between the U.K., Nepal and India regarding the continued recruitment of Nepali youths in the British and Indian armies. This established Nepal’s “special relationship” with the U.K. and India.
The existing Gurkha brigades in the British-Indian army were divided between India and the U.K. in the ratio of 6:4.
Nepali youths were recruited into the British-Indian army right from the time of the Anglo-Nepalese War of 1814-16 and the British Gurkhas have served with distinction in Britain’s many wars and military expeditions.
Later, Britain indirectly recruited Nepali youths for the Singapore police.
However, the Nepalese recruited in Singapore and the British Gurkhas have not been given a fair deal. They are still hoping for equal treatment.
India’s New Agnipath Scheme
There is no doubt that Nepali youths recruited into the Indian Gorkha Brigades have been treated in an equitable manner.
They have served with valour and distinction, and many have lost their lives in India’s various wars with Pakistan and China.
India has now created a new situation for itself and Nepal by its “Agnipath” scheme. It wants to change the prevailing general system of recruitment unilaterally.
It will now recruit uniformly – in India, as well as, Nepal – for only four years; after which only 25 % percent will be retained and the rest will be given a golden handshake – INR 1.7 million.
This will have enormous financial savings for India in the defence sector. But for the Nepali youths, service in the Indian Gorkha brigades will no longer be economically or socially viable. The ex-servicemen will no longer have the privilege of receiving pensions – a major attraction of military service previously.
Every year, we will have jobless Nepali youth returning to their villages, and then “militarized” roaming the countryside or towns. We will be inviting a grave security challenge, according to Army Brig. Gen. Suresh Sharma (TKP/The Kathmandu Post, Sep. 03).
Nepal Government’s Serious Challenge
The government is now faced with a serious long-term challenge and cannot decide lightly or quickly. After all, it is not only the fate of the Nepali youth at stake, but also the future of our country.
This caretaker government has no authority to make a lasting decision without a thorough consultation of all stakeholders, including all ex-servicemen’s associations. The best it can do is kick the can down the road until after the parliamentary elections.
We cannot, and should not, accede to India’s wishes, just because it is convenient – an ideal solution for them. We have to look first and foremost at our own national interests.
There are now other employment opportunities galore in foreign countries. However, we should look at long term solutions and not concentrate on sending untrained workers, but those with various levels of training and expertise.
Our so-called leaders should formulate a new plan for reforming and re-vitalizing the labour sector for young people.
We must also step up vocational training in all sectors – agriculture, horticulture, forestry, health, electrical, mechanical and civil engineering, etc. Perhaps, the Police and Army can be trail-blazers. Affirmative action must be key with girls being especially promoted. Their numbers participating in UN Peace Keeping Operations must be radically increased.
Politics is the art of the possible, and those who want to make ‘politics’ their profession should aspire to get things done on a positive note, and not think of it as a gateway ‘to get rich quick’ by all means.
A shining example of such a dynamic aspiring politician is Dr. Pranaya Sumsher J.B. Rana, the parliamentary candidate for electoral constituency No. 5 of Kathmandu, who has already contributed much to society.
The coming elections should, therefore, be one of personalities and not of political parties.
A new vision for the labour market also means re-energizing our diplomatic/economic relations with key countries – the United States and Canada in North America; the UK and Germany in Europe; Qatar and the UAE in West Asia; Singapore and Malaysia in South-East Asia; Australia; and Japan and South Korea in East Asia.
India and China are special cases as the newly published book: “Gaida’s Dance with Tiger and Dragon” (Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, Nepal, 2021), attests.
This also means that we must have top diplomats – highly educated, well-versed and experienced ambassadors and counsellors/first secretaries (economics) – in these vital countries (at least for us). They will push trade, economic development and job opportunities to the maximum possible extent and such diplomatic postings are not for the faint hearted, party hacks or those seeking to have a nice time or making a fast buck!
Sooner, rather than later, our ‘Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ (MoFA) must also be re-organized and revamped in consideration of a re-orientation, perhaps with also a change of name: ‘Ministry of External Affairs & International Cooperation’. Logically, within the ministry a new division for ‘International Cooperation’ headed by a director-general or joint secretary must also be established.
Putin’s Ukraine War
The U.K.’s Ministry of Defence has alleged that Vladimir Putin’s stalled invasion of Ukraine shows that his military has lost the ability to conduct “large scale, complex operations” (Evening Standard, Sep. 2).
British defence chiefs stressed that more “heavy fighting” had been taking place between counter-attacking Ukrainian forces and Russian military units in the south of the country, including near the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant.
The U.S., U.K., Ukraine and their allies are also fighting an information war against Russia. Thus, their respective reports about the armed conflict need to be treated with caution, as do claims from the Kremlin which often appear even more lopsided and selective.
UN Inspection of Nuclear Plant
Meanwhile, United Nations experts crossed into Russian-held territory in Ukraine to access the safety of Europe’s biggest nuclear energy plant to access physical damage to the facility, where both sides warn of possible disaster.
An International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspection team braved intense shelling to reach the Zaporizhzhia power plant last Thursday. Russia and Ukraine say they fear a Chernobyl-like catastrophe due to indiscriminate shelling they blame on each other.
Russia captured the plant early on in the now more than six-month-old war, and areas to the south are now the focus of a major Ukrainian counter-offensive.
Kyiv accuses Moscow of using the facility to shield its forces, a charge Moscow vehemently denies, while rejecting calls to withdraw its troops.
After touring the plant, IAEA-chief Rafael Grossi said his inspectors were “not going anywhere”
Grossi and other members of the team left for Ukrainian-held territory but five IAEA inspectors remain at the plant, according to Ukraine’s state nuclear company.
The inspectors will access physical damage to the plant, ensure its safety and security systems are functional and evaluate the condition of staff, the IAEA says.
Grossi said they would submit a report on their findings.
Ukraine’s New Offensive
Ukraine has launched an offensive in recent days to recapture territory in southern Ukraine, mainly further down the Dnipro river in neighbouring Kherson province.
Both sides have claimed battlefield successes in the new Ukrainian advance to recapture territory in the south, although details have been scarce so far, with Ukrainian officials releasing little information about their onslaught.
Ukraine’s southern command spokesperson said last Friday that Ukrainian troops had destroyed ammunition depots and pontoon bridges to hamper movement of Russian reserves.
Moscow has denied reports of Ukrainian progress and said its troops had routed Ukrainian forces.
Ukraine’s general staff on Friday said Russian forces had shelled dozens of towns, including Kharkiv in the north and Donetsk in the east.
More than seven million people have fled Ukraine, thousands have been killed and cities and villages have been reduced to rubble in what Kyiv and the West call Russia’s unprovoked war of aggression.
Death of a Great & Good Russian
Mikhael Sergeyevich Gorbachev, a towering statesman of the 20th Century died last week at the age of 91. He was the last leader of the Soviet Union.
A hopeful moment in Russian history dies with the former Soviet leader.
Gorbachev was a fascinating personality, who succeeded in ending the terribly perilous and unpredictable Cold War, but tragically failed to save his own enormous country from collapse.
For this reason, he is remembered more fondly abroad than at home. For all intents and purposes, Russia has rejected the brand of democracy he sought to promote during the twilight years of the Soviet Communist empire.
Gorbachev Could Have Taken a Harsher Road, like Putin. But He Wanted Better for His Country
But as Daniel Fried at the Atlantic Council [former director at the US National Security Council] writes: Gorbachev “could have drowned the forces of national independence – in Poland and elsewhere in Central Europe in 1989 and in the Baltics in 1991 – in blood;” he could have “summoned the dark power of Russian fascism, as we see Vladimir Putin doing against Ukraine” (Aug. 30).
But he chose another path than Stalinist violence and mass repression. He wanted to make the Soviet Union a better place – more honest, more open, more decent.
Gorbachev was a reformer, not a revolutionary like Poland’s Lech Walesa. He recognized the rot – political and economic – that was corroding the Soviet system by the 1980s and wanted to save the USSR by reforming it.
As a visionary, he also saw the international dimension of his domestic strategy and sought a better relationship with the West and especially the United States. In contrast, Putin is seeking to re-establish his version of the Soviet system and has fallen flat on his face – extreme rot has again set in!
Gorbachev reached out to presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush.
He detested from crushing Poland’s Solidarity movement when it swept into power in 1989 and from re-invading Czechoslovakia [like crushing the “Prague Spring” under Alexander Dubcek in 1968] when dissident Vaclav Havel became its president and from using the 300,000-plus Soviet troops in East Germany to buttress the harsh Communist regime.
Unfortunately, he was on a mission impossible. Soviet Communism could not be reformed and the Soviet empire could not be preserved or even prolonged.
But for Putin, who is on the wrong side of history, the end of the Soviet Union was “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century.”
With his unprovoked war on Ukraine, Putin has brought untold misery on Ukraine, his own Russia and people all over the world. He is the very personification of evil. He and his cohorts are now threatening nuclear blackmail.
Gorbachev was Smart & Learnt from his Mistakes
Alexander “Sandy” Vershbow, former deputy secretary general of NATO and US ambassador to Russia, writes that Gorbachev rose to power as a loyal functionary in the Soviet system, but showed the world and his own people that a different kind of country was possible (Atlantic Council).
He strove to establish a more open and democratic system that places the freedom and welfare of its own people ahead of maintaining a repressive empire at home and in Eastern Europe.
His place in history will be undisputed – his pivotal role in peacefully ending the Cold War, unifying Germany, and significantly reducing nuclear and conventional weapons.
Without Gorbachev, Reagan wouldn’t have won the Cold War
Thom Shanker, senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, concedes that US President Ronald Reagan by himself would not have been able to end the Cold War.
Gorbachev himself was decent and gracious about Reagan’s contribution: “He had the foresight and the wisdom and the commitment…and start changing relations with the Soviet Union. We had the same wish, and we were able to do that.”
He was the essential partner, basing his new thinking on Soviet policy around the idea that cooperation with Washington, not confrontation, was the key to pushing ahead with his reforms at home.
Shanker concludes that in the end, Gorbachev’s decisions amounted to a strategic Kremlin retreat from Eastern Europe and led to the eventual implosion of the Soviet Union. This was Gorbachev’s doing, not Reagan’s.
Putin is attempting to turn the clock back – an impossible undertaking, like that of Sisyphus in Greek mythology.
Gorbachev supported a peaceful end to the Soviet Empire
Gorbachev did rise up through the Communist Party hierarchy of the Soviet Union. However, upon coming to power as General Secretary, he recognized that the system was not functioning at all.
He genuinely believed that through glasnost [openness] and perestroika [restructuring], he could reform the dysfunctional and failing economy and eliminate the brutal repression of the Communist system, according to Paula Dobriansky [vice chair of the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security].
His policies were intended to advance “socialism with a human face”. However, instead of salvaging the Communist system, triggered democratic revolutions at home and Eastern Europe. [this is a cautionary tale for democratic socialists/social democrats who would ally themselves with diehard Communists, like the Nepali Congress].
Gorbachev will always be remembered as having supported a peaceful transition and an end to the Soviet empire, including the historic re-unification of Germany and dismantling the Berlin Wall.
The writer can be reached at: shashipbmalla@hotmail.com
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