Apropos of your editorial, ‘Split decisions’ (IE, November 27), India buys defence items from the private sector abroad. Even most of the Russian facilities have been privatised. However, there is strong antipathy to our own private sector’s participation in defence. The monopoly public sector has failed to keep up with the technology and has largely failed to deliver. We must learn from the West how to organise defense production and development through strong competition among several private sector companies for innovation and new product development. There should be two or three HALs and maybe two or three private companies competing for aircraft development and production of the winning design. — Kailash Joshi, On e-mail Your editorial indicates what really ails our weapons procurement and development programmes. There is no point in blaming the services for changing the requirements during the course of the development cycle. The users obviously want the best of both the worlds, since it is they who have to fight wars that have become highly technology driven. Similarly no useful purpose is served by holding only the development and production agencies to account for the long delays. They, at times, have to master new technologies by trial-and-error which is time consuming. On the face of it, there seems to be a lack of co-ordination, or shall we say even mistrust? The only way out is total integration of procurement and development programmes. All major weapon system developments should be under the direct charge of the service headquarters who could ensure proper co-ordination, testing and timely completion of projects. — Raghubir Singh, Pune Bad precedent Although the Supreme Court acquitted Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J. Jayalalithaa in the Tansi land scam, it still asked her to “atone” and answer her “conscience”. This clearly shows that the apex court has its reservations about the involvement of the Tamil Nadu CM in this scandal and only let her off owing to lack of evidence in this regard. In such a scenario, instead of closing this case, the highest court of our country could have not only rapped the investigating agency on its knuckles for its shoddy work but could have either appointed its own investigating team like the SIT to thoroughly probe Jayalalithaa’s hand in this scam or could have transferred this case to some other state to ensure justice, as it has done in some other cases pertaining to the Tamil Nadu CM. The exoneration of Jayalalithaa sets a bad precedent. — V. Rajesh, On e-mail Don’t disturb us This has reference to the challans filed against the Badals by the Punjab vigilance department. I would say the Badals should have full faith in judiciary and argue their case in the courts. Mere rhetoric won’t do. We, the people are no fools that we will unquestioningly agree with whatever the Panjab government says. The Badals mustn’t disturb Punjabis further through rasta rokos and the like. The Tansi case has shown that mere vendetta cases don’t stand the scrutiny of law. — Sandeep Kanwar, Patiala Only rhetoric? Pakistan began sponsoring terrorism in 1989, that is, 14 years ago, to snatch Jammu and Kashmir from India. Our leaders should ask Pakistan whether they have finally changed their tactics as they failed to do this in 14 years. — Sagar, On e-mail
