Indo-China talks on Border disputes

On August 25, 2009 India and China have resumed the long stewing talks for the border dispute. India's side is being represented by National Security Adviser M.K. Narayanan. From China side, the negotiator is China's State Counselor Dai Bingguo. Here are some facts :

 The dispute and background of Sino-India war 1962:

1. The border which China and India share is a long stretch sectioned into three parts by Nepal and Bhutan which follows the Himalayan mountains between Myanmar & Pakistan.
2. The Aksai chin area was the main issue behind the 1962 war. Aksai chin is at the western end of this border.
3. In 1958, China had published a map showing the Aksai Chin plateau on the western stretch of the border as part of its territory. India had strongly protested this.
4. Another disputed area is Arunanchal Pradesh which was earlier known as North East Frontier Agency.
5. The Indo-China war in 1962 broke out because India objected to occupation of uninhabited Aksai Chin by China.
6. India said China occupied 38,000 square km (15,000 square miles) of territory in Aksai Chin. Aksai chin was considered as a strategic link between the Chinese-administered territories of Tibet and Xinjiang.

The War

1. China attacked on India in June 1962 and was able to advance beyond actual line of control because of its strategic position and thus capture Rezang la in Chushul in western theatre and Tawang in eastern theatre and further.
2. Chinese troops overran Indian military positions in Aksai Chin and Arunachal Pradesh before a ceasefire.
3. China withdrew to pre-war positions behind the McMahon line dividing the two countries along Arunachal Pradesh. The ceasefire line became known as the Line of Actual Control (LAC).
4. The war ended when the Chinese secured the disputed area and unilaterally declared a ceasefire on 20 November 1962, which went into effect at midnight.
5. India had requested for United States air support but did not receive it for 2 days.
6. Meanwhile China had given the ceasefire announcement on 19 November,1962 & the aircraft carrier from United States was ordered back after the ceasefire and thus American intervention on India's side in the war was avoided.

What Was China's Advantage?

1. The Aksai Chin region is a vast desert of salt flats around 5,000 meters above sea level, and Arunachal Pradesh is extremely mountainous with a number of peaks exceeding 7000 meters.
2. According to military doctrine, to be successful an attacker generally requires a 3:1 ratio of numerical superiority over the defender; in mountain warfare this ratio should be considerably higher as the terrain favors defense.
3. China was able to take advantage of this as the Chinese Army had possession of the highest ridges in the regions. The high altitude and freezing conditions also caused logistical and welfare difficulties.
4. Many of 3128 soldiers of India were killed because of not the wounds but the freezing cold.

The Border Problem as of Today:
Both India & China still claim vast parts of each other's territory along the 3,500 km Himalayan border. The Indo China border was never demarcated as the Britishers saw little need to demarcate such a remote area.

What Is India's Claim?
India says Beijing is illegally holding 5,180 sq km of northern Kashmir ceded to it by Pakistan in 1963. India is also concerned about the modernization of Chinese Army and China's military aid to Pakistan.

What Is China's Claim?
China lays claim to 90,000 sq km of land on the eastern sector of the border in Arunachal Pradesh.

What Lesson India Learnt From The War ?
We learned from the war was that we need to strengthen our own defenses. There was a need to shift from Nehru's foreign policy of Hindi Chini Bhai Bhai as we could never anticipate the Chinese aggression. The folly of Jawahar Lal Nehru brutally exposed our weakness and our tacit alliance with the U.S. against China.

An investigation was commissioned by Indian Government which resulted in the Henderson-Brooks-Bhagat Report. This report blamed the High altitudes for India's defeat along with doctrine, training, organization and equipment.

Further Progress:In 1993 and 1996, India and China signed the Sino-Indian Bilateral Peace and Tranquility Accords, an agreement to maintain peace and tranquility along the Line of Actual Control (LoAC). Several meetings of Sino-Indian Joint Working Group (SIJWG) and some of an expert group have taken place to determine where the LoAC lies, however there is little progress till now.

1. On 6 July 2006, Silk Road passing through this territory was reopened which is a milestone in the bilateral relationships.
2. Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh signed an agreement on the "guiding principles" to resolve the dispute in 2005.
3. China had formally abandoned its claim to the Himalayan state of Sikkim.
    
   Source:Wikipedia.
   

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Copenhagen: Basic Instincts

Reading the lines that Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh delivered in the Rajya Sabha on Tuesday and between them, the message is evident. “We have been successful in defending India’s national interests,” he said. “I didn’t go to Copenhagen with the mandate of saving the world or humanity. My mandate was to defend India’s right to develop at a faster rate. For Western countries, it is an environmental issue but for us, it is a development issue.”

Ramesh is articulating what a section of India’s elite fervently believes: that it is entirely in our interests to align ourselves with the United States and other major emitters of greenhouse gases. Hence the unholy alliance of four, which China cobbled together, known as BASIC — Brazil, South Africa, India and China. These are what the US and European Union were targeting in the build-up to Copenhagen as “major emerging countries or economies”, a term which doesn’t figure anywhere in UN negotiations that have been painstakingly proceeding since Bali two years ago.

These four countries are certainly going to be powers to reckon with in the future, in part due to their large populations and natural resources. However, does this mean that they are no longer developing countries? Even China has a per capita income of only $3,000 and as many as 150 million Chinese live below the poverty line. The contradictions between the elites (till recently, exclusively white) of South Africa and Brazil and their majorities are too well-known to bear repetition; by some reckoning, Brazil has the worst class differentials of any society.

Where does that leave India? While there are ongoing debates about how many live below the poverty line — ranging from 50 per cent to 27 per cent — some common sense can help cut through the wrangling. Mumbai is surely one of the richest cities in India: if 55 per cent of its 16 million population lives in slums, they are obviously below the poverty line in not being able to afford decent housing, one of three essentials (roti, kapda aur makaan). By the same token, isn’t the rest of India far worse off than Mumbai’s citizens? The Arjun Sengupta Committee reported in 2007 that 836 million Indians spend no more than Rs 20 a day. The ‘poverty line’ measured in calories should be redefined as the starvation line.

Ramesh and others of his ilk ought to know that it is entirely in India’s interests to align ourselves with G77 — the group of 130 developing countries, with or without China. That is our common future, not the interests of  the 250 million Indians whom New York Times columnist Tom Freidman dubs ‘Americons’, consumers on a US scale within this country, which would include all of us. The right to grow doesn’t only restrict itself to the GDP increase, in which India is admittedly a star performer, but the distribution of that growth. On that score, as the country with some of the world’s most abysmal human development indices — it figures 134th out of 182 countries in this year’s United Nations list, down from 126 in 2008 — it certainly deserves to be reckoned as a very poor country. Indeed, in terms of the absolute numbers of poor, it has the most in the world.

Ramesh’s second thesis only confirms the belief that some sections are seeking to redefine India’s status. He stated: “We don’t want international aid. Let us stop this technology transfer mantra. In the next five to ten years, we will be transferring technology to other countries.”  In recent years, India has sought to project itself as an aid-giving rather than receiving country, at least as far as its immediate neighbours are concerned.

To argue the same in relation to the Copenhagen outcome is totally to deviate from India’s repeatedly-stated position. As
the Kyoto protocol underlines, all countries have a “common but differentiated responsibility” to tackle climate change. Furthermore, as our negotiators have been repeating ad nauseam, even in Copenhagen, India won’t agree to any compulsory commitments without industrial countries first providing funds and technology for this and other developing nations, which are the victims of global warming.

Ramesh’s much-vaunted ‘flexibility’ is one thing, elasticity is another matter altogether. Do we really believe that India has the technological prowess to become an exporter of renewable energy in the near future? We may have the fifth largest installed wind energy capacity, but the technology is imported, as is that for solar power. China may have three of the top ten solar companies, but they have invested billions in such technologies. Meanwhile, will it be impertinent to remind the minister that 600 million Indians have to make do without commercial energy altogether and half of these have no access to electricity? What has prevented the government from providing these most essential forms of energy — a clean stove to cook with, a light to read with, all these 60 years?

Darryl D’Monte is Chairperson, Forum of Environmental Journalists of India (FEJI).

Source:HT.

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Silence of the wolf:Narendra Modi

 

ALL through the recent brouhaha in the BJP, which saw a change of guard at the top, Mr Arun Jaitley’s objections to the party’s shrillness and the expulsion of Mr Jaswant Singh, one man maintained an enigmatic silence. Yet, he has often been mentioned as a leader who can revive the party’s fortunes and whose brand of politics is seen as a more combative version of Hindutva. Even then Mr Narendra Modi chose to take a back seat while his party grappled with the aftermath of defeats in two successive general elections and an uneasy transition to GenNext.

The only event which turned the spotlight on him was his championing of a legislative measure making voting compulsory in local elections. However, the flurry of statements and counter-statements about the controversial step died down as the BJP dealt with more immediate problems such as the assumption of the office of party president by the previously virtually unknown Mr Nitin Gadkari and the government formation in Jharkhand. As a result, there has been no convincing explanation for Mr Modi’s aloofness from national politics at a crucial time when the RSS was suspected to be tightening its grip on the BJP through Mr Gadkari.

Considering that Mr Modi’s name was touted as a possible future Prime Minister by Mr Arun Shourie, among others, on the eve of the general elections, one might have expected the Gujarat strong man to play a more active role. Instead, he chose to behave like a typical provincial apparatchik who has only a minor say in national affairs. Of course, no one places Mr Modi in the ranks of Mr Shivraj Singh Chauhan or Mr Raman Singh or Mr B.S. Yeddyurappa if only because his larger-than-life image cannot be ignored even when he remains in the background. It is also possible that because Mr Modi is aware of the influence which he exerts even when remaining quiet that he does not mind staying put in Gujarat.

However, the deliberate shunning of the limelight may not be without a purpose. If a senior police officer, one of the few who defied Mr Modi during the 2002 riots is to be believed, the Chief Minister confided after the outbreak that the violence had gone out of control. Kuchh zyada hi ho gaya, he is supposed to have said. Mr Modi’s subsequent behaviour also points to a deliberate attempt to distance himself from the carnage which, he undoubtedly realises, has become a permanent stain on his reputation.

Although he has refused to apologise for the disturbances, he has also resisted all attempts to raise the issue at public forums and insisted more than once that he stands for all the people of the state, irrespective of their religion. The post-carnage emphasis on development also underlines a conscious attempt to build a new image of himself, which is different from his earlier hawkish reputation. There are occasional lapses, of course, as during the Sohrabuddin Sheikh episode when he drew cheers from the crowd over the killing of the accused in a fake encounter. But there have been no crude references to the religious backgrounds of Mrs Sonia Gandhi and Mr James Michael Lyngdoh, as in 2002.

But even more significant than these uncharacteristic signs of sobriety is the reason which Mr Modi advanced for his preference for compulsory voting. According to him, such a focus on individuals to ensure that they will have no alternative but to cast their votes will deflect attention from treating them as vote banks. As a result, the parties will have to shed their segmented approach in terms of caste or community and accord greater importance to them as citizens. In a way, this approach of treating society as a composite whole is in tune with Mr Modi’s development-oriented policies, whose rationale is that a higher growth rate will benefit everyone and not particular groups.

For a person whose dubious role during the riots is still being scanned by the Supreme Court and whose attitude towards the refugee colonies housing Muslims was callous in the extreme – he called them child-breeding factories – the turning away of his government’s attention from communities to individuals is difficult to explain. What is more, since most of Mr Modi’s decisions are seen by his detractors to have been inspired by a sinister motive, even the latest move will be regarded with considerable suspicion.

Some may interpret it as the kind of an unofficial census of religious minorities which the Gujarat government initiated after the anti-Christian violence in the Dangs area to identify the members of the community. Since compulsory voting entails the possession of identity cards, it will mean that no one can hide if the law comes into force. As a recent report from Surat said, many Muslims assume Hindu names there to secure employment in diamond units. Such subterfuge will no longer be possible.

Notwithstanding such misgivings, there is little doubt that the proposed law runs counter to the basic objectives of caste-based and communal parties like the BSP and the BJP, to name only two, with their targeting of certain groups and demonising of others. It is necessary to remember that even the BSP realised that concentrating only on Dalits would not take it far and that there was a need, therefore, for a rainbow coalition which included the Manuvadi Brahmins, who were previously excoriated as traditional enemies of the Dalits.

Similarly, the forced moderation of some of the BJP leaders like Mr L. K. Advani in line with the example set by Mr Atal Bihari Vajpayee was an explicit admission that the Hindu vote was not enough for it to gain power. In some respects, Mr Modi’s idea of compulsory voting endorses this inescapable fact of electoral politics where dependence only on a group of voters yields limited dividends.

It is difficult to predict the outcome of elections under the new law. Besides, whether the measure will at all be enacted is doubtful because, first, a consensus may elude the political class. Secondly, civil libertarians may see it as an infringement of basic rights since a person should have the freedom not to vote. And, thirdly, the enforcement of the law in so large a country where people are almost always on the move may be as difficult as the decision on the kind of punishment for the absentee voters. The law courts will also be clogged by petitioners challenging their punishment.

Irrespective of the fate of the proposed law, what is more relevant is Mr Modi’s purpose behind the unusual initiative. It is clear that he wants to project himself as someone different from the average politician who is forever embroiled in ego hassles within his own party and in striking opportunistic deals with other individuals and parties. In contrast to them, Mr Modi apparently wants to demonstrate his intention to rise above mundane party politics and to show that he is concerned with issues which have societal implications. Development is one of them and compulsory voting another.

At a time when the BJP is entering the post-Vajpayee and post-Advani phase when it has no obviously popular front-runners among its current crop of leaders, Mr Modi does not want to be seen jostling for party positions with the Jaitleys and Sushmas and Gadkaris, or presenting different interpretations about the inclusiveness or otherwise of Hindutva, or whether December 6, 1992, was the “saddest day” or shauriya divas, as the VHP’s Mr Ashok Singhal wants it to be called. Yet, as the Chief Minister tries to reinvent himself, he must be aware that the leopard is not known to change its spots. What is more, he cannot be sure that the BJP and, more importantly, the RSS will endorse his idea of reducing the importance of parties at the expense of individual voters. If his intention is to position himself in a way which will enable him to play a larger role in national affairs, he may not find the going easy.

Source:The Tribune.

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The Samajwadi Party’s identity crisis:Vidya Subrahmaniam

Like Amar Singh himself, his official website, thakuramarsingh.com, is frank, bitingly sarcastic and, needless to say, vastly entertaining. The introduction describes him: “Amar Singh is a growing enigma, his force is unstoppable, his will untethered.”

Many of the recent blog entries are devoted to his thunderbolt resignation from crucial posts in the Samajwadi Party. And expectedly, the former SP general secretary socks it to his critics in the party, rebutting their now openly aired charge that he has turned a socialist party into a capitalist party. “Yes I have wealth, and I have wealthy friends,” he tells his former associates, going on to reveal embarrassing details of how in the past the same wealth helped many of them out of their personal crises.

With so much dirt exchanged in public, it was a given that SP chief Mulayam Singh would sooner rather than later accept Mr. Amar Singh’s resignation. The old guard in the party had long cavilled at Mr. Amar Singh’s clout with the supremo. They were at a loss to understand the logic of the Mulayam-Amar association. One was “dhartiputra (son of the soil) Mulayam,” wedded to the austere, socialist ideology of Ram Manohar Lohia. The other was a self-confessed player of high-stakes politics, flamboyant, colourful and utterly unselfconscious about his Bollywood-big corporate connection.

Slowly, almost imperceptibly, Mr. Amar Singh became the face of the party, and then the party itself. Journalists visiting him grew accustomed to hearing the party being spoken of in the first person singular: “I saved the Manmohan Singh government;” “I will not have seat adjustments with the Congress,” and so forth.

Unsurprisingly, once the Mulayam-Amar equations unravelled, Mr. Amar Singh found himself cast in the role of “villain.” SP insiders blamed him for the party’s plunging fortunes, attacking him especially for the erosion of Muslim support. Pundits decried his baneful influence on Mr. Mulayam Singh, a Muslim-OBC (Other Backward Classes) icon seen to have surpassed such previous underclass symbols as Charan Singh and Karpoori Thakur. In the common perception, Mr. Mulayam Singh’s SP was a subaltern phenomenon umbilically connected to the ground, while Mr. Amar Singh’s SP was all glamour and public relations.

It is a fact that the SP’s old guard felt slighted and sidelined in the Amar Singh dispensation. Nor can anyone dispute the overdose of glamour that tended to dilute the SP’s core identity. Yet to juxtapose Mr. Mulayam Singh and Mr. Amar Singh in such black and white terms is to oversimplify their relationship. Indeed, the question arises: Why would anyone suffer a friendship for 15 years if that only brought misery and ruin? In truth, Mr. Amar Singh was a perfect fit for Mr. Mulayam Singh and vice versa. The SP chief commanded a loyal base but was hamstrung by the “homespun” tag. He was shy, inarticulate and uncomfortable dealing with the larger world.

By contrast, Mr. Amar Singh loved the glare of the camera, went out to court controversy and revelled in brinkmanship politics. He raised the SP’s profile, liberated it from its provincial, anti-English upbringing, deployed massive doses of funds, and used his phenomenal network to strike backroom deals. But Thakur Amar Singh, as he calls himself in his blog, was also a keen political animal. He divined that for the SP to beat competition and expand its reach, it would need to end its antagonist relationship with the forward castes. The BJP’s growth showed the way. The saffron party was the first in Uttar Pradesh to use “social engineering” to add OBC castes to its essentially ‘upper’ caste constituency.

In time, the SP’s famous MY(Muslim-Yadav) base expanded to take in sections of Thakurs — and with visible results. The payoff for Mr. Amar Singh was unbridled power without having to contest elections. In the 2007 Assembly election, Mayawati would appropriate the caste-building formula to runaway success.

That the Mulayam-Amar match was mutually beneficial is borne out by two facts. For 15 years, office-bearers put up with Mr. Amar Singh, protesting only after Mr. Mulayam Singh’s son, Akhilesh Singh, took the lead in the revolt against the general secretary. It is doubtful whether Mr. Mulayam Singh would have allowed his long-time associate to go had filial relations not intervened. In the end, Mr. Amar Singh fell by the same process by which he rose to the top in the SP. He sidelined and superseded seniors. Today, the son has sidelined and superseded him.

Secondly, contrary to popular impression, the Amar Singh years were actually productive for the SP. The party was founded in October 1992, and Mr. Amar Singh became general secretary in 1995. The SP strength in the Uttar PradeshVidhan Sabha went up from 110 of 424 seats in 1996 to 143 of 403 seats in 2002. In 2007, the Bahujan Samaj Party overtook the SP, which, however, remained a major force and indeed marginally increased its vote share to 25.43 per cent (+ 0.6 per cent). The SP’s graph was on an upward trajectory in the Lok Sabha, too. Between 1996 and 1999, its seat share went up from 16 to 26 of 85 . In 2004, the party defied the odds to emerge on top with 35 of 80 seats, and though its share of seats and votes declined in 2009, it finished ahead of the favourite, BSP, winning 23 seats to the latter’s 20.

The BSP’s rapid slide in only two years ought to have pumped adrenalin into the SP. Yet this was a time of crisis for the party. The pragmatic politics of Mr. Amar Singh brought Hindutva hero Kalyan Singh into the SP fold. The assumption was that the OBC vote would consolidate in the SP’s favour and it would romp home on a match-winning Muslim-OBC-Thakur alliance.

In the event, the Kalyan factor led to a piquant situation. On the one hand, it brought about a measure of backward caste consolidation, which gave the SP a handsome number of seats in the Yadav-Lodh belt of mid-western U.P. On the other, there was a cost to be paid in the form of Muslim disillusionment with “Maulana Mulayam.”

For years, Muslims had worshipped the SP chief, overlooking his previous association with Mr. Kalyan Singh only because of their emotional attachment to him. But they were unwilling to forgive a second dalliance with the man who oversaw the Babri Masjid’s liquidation and who continued to spew venom against the community.

What next? There is nothing SP insiders would like more than obliterating the Amar era and going back to where it all started. But that is easier said than done. An entire generation has grown up these 15 years. The State’s small towns are bustling affairs, crowded with malls and cybercafés. The SP’s strident opposition to English and computers will alienate the urban voter. At the same time, the departure of Mr. Amar Singh and Mr. Kalyan Singh will mean that it will have to do without the “plus votes” which are now part of every political party’s electoral calculation.

The SP would also be naïve to bank on a happy reunification with Muslims post-Amar Singh ‘purge.’ The community has been taken for a ride far too often for it to blindly trust the SP or any other party. Muslims know that the SP chief actively connived in the Kalyan Singh induction. So he can hardly brush away the Ayodhya warrior as an Amar Singh-imposed baggage. Nor should the SP chief assume that he can balance the Kalyan mistake by inviting the return of Muslim hardliners like Azam Khan. The opportunism is unlikely to be lost on Muslims.

Today U.P. is a battlefield where parties are furiously chasing one another’s vote banks. The Congress’ umbrella Dalit-Muslim-‘upper’ caste formation served the party well for decades and more. The BJP annexed the ‘upper’ castes and looked well settled to stay on top. But in less than a decade, the SP was snapping at its heels. Barely did the SP reach the summit when the BSP came along. Ms Mayawati snatched votes from the BJP and the SP and forged what seemed an unassailable ‘Dalit plus’ combination. But within two years, her carefully built fortress would be breached, with a resurgent Congress voraciously eating into its rivals’ vote bases.

The cycle of vote poaching started in U.P. with the Congress as the victim. Today, the Congress is doing unto others what they did to it. . The rush for the “plus vote” is threatening core constituencies, and parties have to protect their own flanks even as they raid the bases of their rivals. Only the very alert can survive the intense competition, and even those who do will spend shorter and shorter time at the top.

Just how the SP reinvents itself in this challenging situation will be interesting to watch.

Source:The Hindu

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Mumbai attack: Failures Of Command

 The official investigation into the Mumbai attacks shows that poor leadership crippled the police on 26/11.

 

Late last year, Mumbai Police Commissioner D. Sivanandan sat across the table with a small group of senior officials to discuss just what had gone wrong with his force on November 26, 2008 — and what needed to be done to make sure mistakes which cost the lives of hundreds never happened again. Even as the meeting was under way, Mr. Sivanandan’s predecessor made known his views in a magazine interview.

The former Commissioner, Hasan Gafoor, charged several officers with refusing to “take on the terrorists:” notably Joint Commissioner in-charge of law and order K.L. Prasad, Crime Branch Additional Commissioner Deven Bharati, southern region Additional Commissioner K. Venkatesham and Anti-Terrorism Squad Additional Commissioner of Police Param Bir Singh. The officers, Mr. Gafoor said, “did not appear keen on responding to the situation.”

The facts on which he founded his criticism remain unclear. The former civil servant, Ram Pradhan, and the retired intelligence officer, V. Balachandran, who carried out an official investigation of police responses to the November tragedy, noted: “No formal de-briefing sessions were held by the Commissioner of Police with all [or] groups of officers to make an assessment of what went wrong.”

But from the depositions made before the Pradhan-Balachandran committee, we do have some idea of just what happened in the first few hours of the attack — and the key role of Mr. Gafoor’s own leadership in that tragic debacle.

Gross violations
Mr. Gafoor told the committee that he first learned of the firing at the Leopold Café at 9.50 p.m. To him “it appeared like a military-type professional attack.” He “at first wondered whether it was a reaction to the Malegaon arrest [of Hindutva terrorists by the ATS]”.

Even as Mr. Gafoor made his way to the Leopold, he received reports of fighting at the Oberoi and Trident hotels. For reasons that are unclear, the Police Commissioner decided “to stay near that and set up his base of operations.” “On reaching the scene,” Mr. Gafoor told the committee, “he started giving instructions to his officers on his priorities which were pinning down the terrorists, preventing their escape, saving lives and removing [the] injured to the hospitals.” Many — including journalists — saw Mr. Gafoor in the backseat of his bullet-proof car as fighting raged around him.

The Pradhan-Balachandran findings make clear that Mr. Gafoor was guilty of gross violations of standard operating procedures. Plans drawn up by the Mumbai Police in 2006 mandated that Mr. Prasad, with overall charge of the city’s police stations, ought to have taken charge of the control room. Instead, that task was assigned to Crime Branch Rakesh Maria.

Mr. Gafoor himself, the committee said, “should have been in the command centre of the control room, which might have helped in better utilisation of forces.” It noted a “certain lack of cohesion and communication in the internal functioning of the Mumbai Police Commissioner’s office.”

Police officers who testified before the committee appeared to have shared that assessment. Param Bir Singh found himself engaged in fighting at the Oberoi-Trident complex minutes after fighting broke out there. Positioned above the hotel atrium, the Lashkar-e-Taiba assault team was able to repel police efforts to enter the buildings. Later, a bomb that went off in the Oberoi lobby set off fires, making an assault impossible.

Director-General of Police A.N. Roy, Mr. Singh told the committee, helped to develop an alternative response. Mr. Roy persuaded residents of the upmarket National Centre for the Performing Arts Building to evacuate their flats, giving the police a line of fire into the upper floors of the Oberoi-Trident complex. The police position in the NCPA was later to become a key element in the National Security Guard’s final storming of the building. Mr. Gafoor, who parked himself just below the NCPA, does not appear to have had any role in the Oberoi-Trident fighting.

Mr. Roy, the committee recorded, consistently provided advice and assistance to senior officials, even thought he “had no operational responsibility in view of the jurisdiction of the Commissioner of Police in Mumbai.”

Improvised response
For the most part, though, the leaderless force was left to cope with the situation as best as it could. Azad Maidan division Assistant Commissioner Issaq Ibrahim Bagwan battled the terrorists inside the Nariman House, keeping them pinned down till the afternoon of November 27, when the NSG finally arrived. Helped by only a small unit of Maharashtra’s reserve police, he “cordoned off the area and moved out at least 300 people,” the Pradhan-Balachandran report records.

From the evacuated buildings, Mr. Bagwan exchanged fire with the terrorists — an action which likely helped Sandra Samuels escape the building with infant Moshe Holzberg. He received no recorded backup from his Police Commissioner.

Bad leadership also led to the mishandling of the one force which could have facilitated a sharper police response — the ATS Quick Response Teams stationed in Mumbai. The Quick Response Teams were poorly trained. But the men did have some elementary combat training.

However, the committee found, the Quick Response Teams were dispersed over multiple locations, depending on the demands of local commanders — a violation of a cardinal tenet of special forces operations.

Mr. Gafoor’s decision to station himself at the NCPA also cut the Police Commissioner off from critical intelligence flows. Intelligence sources say Mr. Bharati — who earlier served with the Intelligence Bureau — was summoned after the authorities first picked up conversations by the terrorists in the Taj Mahal Hotel and their controllers in Pakistan.

Direction-finding equipment deployed by the Intelligence Bureau in Mumbai suggested, incorrectly, that the mobile phones being used by the terrorists were located along the Colaba causeway. Mr. Bharati was assigned charge of conducting room-by-room searches in the many budget hotels in the area, before communications-intelligence experts were finally able to determine that the phones were inside the Taj.

Later, Mr. Bharati played a key role in the fighting inside the Taj. In tapes obtained by The Hindu, he can be heard attempting to deceive the handlers by claiming to be a hotel waiter who had been handed a mobile phone by an injured terrorist, and asking for instructions — an effort to create confusion in the control room.

For his part, the committee records, Mr. Venkatesham took charge of the evacuation of injured hotel guests and bystanders at the Taj, as well as the task of facilitating the movement of police and fire brigade units.

Many of the targets —among them, the Leopold, the Taj, the Nariman House and area outside the Chattrapati Shivaji Terminus — were in Mr. Venkatesham’s area of responsibility. There was simply no way he could have been present at all these venues.

Ironically enough, Mr. Gafoor — who was transferred to a low-profile post in the wake of the Pradhan-Balachandran findings — could well have a chance to lead the force he failed again. In May, he will be among three officers to take over from Mr. Roy, who currently holds office as Maharashtra Director-General of Police.

Source:The Hindu

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Top 100 Quant Tips and Tricks by IIM Topper!

QUANT THEORY

1) ⁿP_r = n!/(n-r)!

2) ⁿP_n = n!

3) ⁿC_r = n!/(n-r)!r!

4) ⁿC_n = 1

5) ⁿP₀ = 1

6) ⁿC₀ = 1

7) AP A_n = a + (n-1)d

S_n = n/2[2a + (n-1)d]

GP A_n = ar^(n-1)

S_n = a(rⁿ – 1 )/ (r-1)

S∞ = a/(1-r)

9) 1 mile = 1760 yards

10) 1 yard = 3 feet

11) 1 mile² = 640 acres

12) I gallon = 4 quarts

13) 1 quart = 2 pints

14) 1 pint = 2 cups

15) 1 cup = 8 ounces

16) 1 pound = 16 ounces

17) 1 ounce = 16 drams

18) 1 kg = 2.2 pounds

19) 30-60-90 triangle è 1:√3:2 sides

20) 45-45-90 triangle è 1:1:√2 sides

21) a³>b³ è a>b

22) If A than B => not B than not A

23) Zero divided by any nonzero integer is zero.

24) Division by 0 is undefined.

25)

26) The standard deviation is a statistic that tells you how tightly all the various examples are clustered around the mean in a set of data. When the examples are pretty tightly bunched together and the bell-shaped curve is steep, the standard deviation is small. When the examples are spread apart and the bell curve is relatively flat, that tells you have a relatively large standard deviation.

27) n(A U B U C) = n(A) + n (B)+ n(C) – n(A n B) – n(A n C) – n(B n C) + n(A n B n C)

28) n(A_only) = n(A) – n(A n C) – n(A n B) + n(A U B U C)

29) Dividend = Divisor * Quotient + Remainder

30) LCM * HCF = Product of 2 numbers.

31) 1 + 2 + 3 ………………..n = n * n+1 / 2

32) Sum of squares of 1^st n natural numbers = n (n+1)(2n+1) / 6

33) Sum of cubes of 1^st n natural numbers = [n (n+1)/2]²

34)

Squares and Cubes

Number ( x )	Square ( x 2 )	Cube ( x 3 )
1	1	1
2	4	8
3	9	27
4	16	64
5	25	125
6	36	216
7	49	-
8	64	-
9	81	-
10	100	-
11	121	-
12	144	-
13	169	-
14	196	-
15	225	-
16	256	-
17	289
18	324
19	361
21	441
22	484
23	529
24	576
25	625

35)

Fractions and Percentage:

Fraction	Decimal	Percentage
1 / 2	0.5	50
1 / 3	0.33	33 1/3
2 / 3	0.66	66 2/3
1 / 4	0.25	25
3 / 4	0.75	75
1 / 5	0.2	20
2 / 5	0.4	40
3 / 5	0.6	60
4 / 5	0.8	80
1 / 6	0.166	16 2/3
5 / 6	0.833	83 2 / 3
1 / 8	0.125	12 1 / 2
3 / 8	0.375	37 1 / 2
5 / 8	0.625	62 1 / 2
7 / 8	0.875	87 1 / 2
1 / 9	0.111	11
2 / 9	0.222	22
1 / 10	0.1	10
1 / 20	0.05	5
1 / 100	0.01	1

36) Average speed = Total distance / Total Time

1. When equal distances are covered in different speed then we take the harmonic mean

Av Speed = 2ab / a + b

1. Different distances in same time we take AM

Av Speed is = a + b / 2

37) Simple Interest: SI = PRT / 100, A = P + SI

38) 1 Nickel = 5 cents

1 dime = 10 cents

1 quarter = 25 cents

1 half = 50 cents

1 dollar = 100 cents

39) Equilateral triangle, Area = (√3 * a²⁾/4

40) Area of trapezium = ½ (Height * Sum of parallel sides)

41) Arc Length = (θ/ 360) 2 ∏ r

42) Area of sector = (θ/ 360) ∏ r²

43) Equal chords are equidistant from the center.

44) (x+y) ⁸ = ⁸C₈x⁸ + ⁸C₇x⁷y + ⁸C₆x⁶y² + ⁸C₅x⁵y³ + … + ⁸C₂x²y⁶ + ⁸C₁xy⁷ + ⁸C₀y⁸

45) Sometimes we get so involved with the nitty-gritties of mathematics that we start functioning like automatons and stop thinking. Don’t fall prey to this trap. For example, what is the probability that a number amongst the first 1000 positive integers is divisible by 8? Don’t start counting the multiples of 8! The figure of 1000 is a red herring. Use a little common sense. The numbers will be 8,16,24,32…So, 1 in every 8 numbers is a multiple of 8, even if you consider the first million integers. So Probability is 1/8

46) The number of integers from A to B inclusive is = B -A +1

47) Average of consecutive numbers:

Eg from 13 to 77 = (13+77)/2

48) Slope = (change in y)/(change in x)

49) 0⁰ = undefined

50)
 

Graph

51) Sum of interior angles of a polygon with n sides = (n-2)*180

52) Degree measure of one angle in a regular polygon with n sides

= {(n-2)*180 }/n

53) When multiplying or dividing both sides of an inequality by a negative number, the inequality sign reverses.

–x < y => -(-x) > y => x > -y

54) Fraction > (fraction)² for all positive fractions

55) Fraction > √(fraction ) for all positive fractions

56) If n is a positive integer, (n⁶)/2 = √(n¹² / 4)

57) If z₁, z₂, z₃ … z_n are consecutive positive integers and their average is an odd integer => n is odd => sum of series is odd

58) In a triangle with sides of measure a, b and c SHAPE \* MERGEFORMAT , a-b

59) Before confirming try and back solve and make sure that u have answered what has been asked.

60) When the question mentions prime number, remember to think of 2 too.

61) In a triangle, if the sum of two angles = third angle, then it is a right angled triangle.

62) Do not transport information from another statement unless considering both collectively.

63) A-b = odd => a + b = odd

64)

Inequality

65)

66) If a DS question simply asks whether a, b, c and d are consecutive integers; use your brain. It has just asked u to answer if they are consecutive, not if they are consecutive in order.

67) Measure of an angle of a cyclic polygon = 180 – 360/n , where n is the number of sides of the polygon.

68) Sometimes, mistakes might also be committed by simply misreading the statement. Eg

Both Tim and Harry received an acre of land more than Neel => t = n + 1, h = n + 1

Tim and Harry received an acre more than Neel => t + h = n+1

69)

ABC Traingle

Let Triangle ABC be equilateral with each side of measure ‘a’ and AC ^ BD

ð AB = BD = AD = a

ð Ða = Ðb = Ðc = 60⁰

ð AC = √(a² + a/2 ²)

= √3*a/2

ð Area = √3 * a²/4

ð Perimeter = 3a

ð Radius of circle O = a/√3 = AC * 2/3

Radius of circle O’ = √3a/6 = AC * 1/3

Traingle

Traingle

70) Two circles will touch each or intersect each other if the distance between their centers d is such that

R – r £ d £ R + r, where R and r are the radii of the two circles

71) Remainder of less than two means not just one; it also means remainder of zero.

72) Do not make unwarranted assumptions. 12 midnight to 12 noon does not mention what days, and hence you cannot find out the time period.

73) Standard deviation of a set is always negative and equals zero only if all elements of the set are equal.

74) If the difference between the largest and the smallest divisor of a number is X, the number is X + 1

75) Always remember the special watch out cases in DS questions. If the question mentions mean of a set, the mean can be ZERO also.

76) If area of a rectangle is known, diagonal is known, perimeter can be found

a² + b² = diagonal²

a² + b² + 2ab = diagonal²+ 2ab

(a + b)² = diagonal²+ 2*area

77) √(y²) = |y| => y if y is positive, -y if y is negative

78) angle = mod [(60H - 11M) /2 ]

H = value of hour hand
M = value of minute hand
eg, if time is 2:30, then H =2 and M =30

79) Every number raised to power 5 has the number itself as unit digit

80) If a + b + c = Z, than the largest of a, b, and c cannot be greater than the mean of the other two.

81) The rule that one side of a triangle cannot be > sum of other two, only applies to sides, not angles

82) FINALLY, MAKE SURE OF WHAT THE QUESTION SAYS – INTEGER MEANS INTEGRAL LENGTH. And, DIVIDING A WIRE INTO PIECES, DOES NOT NECESSARILY IMPLY THAT THEY WILL BE INTEGRAL LENGTHS. Similarly, that a boat covers a distance upstream in 3 hours, states only the time, even if it has been mentioned that it covers a a distance 12 km downstream in 2 hours.

83) x² = 9*y² does not necessarily imply that x² > y². (Hint : consider x=y=0)

84) When we say multiples between 16 and 260, and inclusive/exclusive is not mentioned, take 16 and 260 to be exclusive.

85) The statement implies :

The hourly wage for each employee ranges from $5 an hour to $20 an hour.

minimum average = (20 + 5 + 5 + 5 + 5)/5

maximum average = (5 + 20 + 20 + 20 + 20)/5

Just mug up these notes and you will be able to crack any MBA exam like CAT,XAT,XLRI,FMS and GMAT.

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