Home Page of Dr. Saumitra Mohan

Dealing with Terrorism *Saumitra Mohan With the changes in time, the concept of security has also undergone changes. In these times of globalization, when complex interdependence and enhanced multilateral cooperation should have led to greater coordination and enhanced security all round, all of a sudden, the nation-state seem to be experiencing sharp decline in its ability to defend its citizens against all kinds of threats. With the sovereign status of the nation-state having been severely dented due to multifarious factors including the forces of globalization, the monopoly over legitimate use of violence also seem to have been drastically breached. The non-state actors (read terrorists, extremists and militants) all over have operated with impunity, with the Comity of Nations finding itself helpless against their determination to wreak havoc in pursuance of their different agenda. India has often been christened a ‘soft state...

Is bureaucracy the real culprit for all our woes? Saumitra Mohan Many in this country consider the Indian bureaucracy to be the prime suspect along with our political class for India not taking off the way it should have. They feel that because of many ills including the one emanating from our bureaucracy, India seems to have got stuck in a developmental time warp. Now the point is is that really so? Have we verily lost so much because of this behemoth, the formidable steel-frame bequeathed to us by the Raj when it departed from this country? No doubt, bureaucracy is to blame to some extent along with other usual suspects for many of our problems. But no good student of Indian developmental history would and should deny the credit that Indian bureaucracy deserves. True, many of our time twins have surpassed us in the developmental rat race but isn’t it also true that many of them have also fallen by the wayside. We always look at the successful to despise our own...

The Great Expectations Saumitra Mohan Notwithstanding many indicators and indices boding very well, these are, indeed, the testing times for our country. Even though our economy is booming and our stock markets are zooming, we are actually stationed at a crucial crossroads. And where do we go from here shall decide the course of our future. While we never tire of boasting about us having the world’s largest democracy, second largest population, third largest army, fourth largest economy (in purchasing power parity terms), fourth largest air force, fifth largest navy, sixth nuclear country and seventh largest industrialized country, the truth is also that beneath a seeming prosperity and success, we are faced with many systemic maladies which are expressing themselves in various ways. These include terrorist, secessionist and naxalite activism and violence, systemic corruption and institutional degeneration at various levels. We are, today, one of world’s most corrupt countrie...

Reforming the Police and Policing Saumitra Mohan While we have all felt all along the need for a strong, independent and sensitized police force for better enforcement of the law of the land and for protection of the hoi polloi's common civil rights, all this remained pious thoughts only, just nostrums from the rostrums. But many police reforms commissions and committees later, the issue of police reforms has finally caught the attention of our celebrated judiciary and with that of our government. And rightly so. Notwithstanding the fact that we became independent almost sixty years back, we have left our police and policing to be governed by the colonial Indian Police Act of 1861. Even though a lot of incremental changes have been introduced in this Act from time to time but they have been more in the nature of a patch-work and our police organization definitely deserves a better deal, more so in view of the multiple threats posed to our internal security. Ironically, the court’s ...

Lessons from Singur *Saumitra Mohan The Singur controversy in West Bengal is showing no signs of subsiding and settling down. And with the opposition further ratcheting up its the politics of protests and agitations, one really needs to do some thinking as to whether it is advisable to allow the same to continue till the cows come home. With the Opposition not responding to the saner appeals of dialogue and discussion, the agitprop revolving around land acquisitions in Singur and Nandigram is increasingly getting out of hand and is more than a law and order problem now. While nobody denies that the Opposition’s has the right in a functioning democracy to register its voice of protests, but the same should not be reckless and at the cost of the interests of the state. One just has to take a peek at some of the statistics to know as to how West Bengal has been faring in the developmental rat race. Constituting ten per cent of the Indian market, the state today has an annual con...