Many Indians from its proverbially stupid politicians to its ignorant and chauvinistic pundits have been ridiculing China’s economic progress and its rapid military buildup, while India’s prime minister crawls submissively and grovels at the feet of America and China at the bidding of his Italian mistress. The destructive rivalry between the stupid BJP and the Nehru family worshiping Congress, which have ruled in turns with the bribery bought support of various regional and linguistics based minor parties lacking integrity, honesty, decency or patriotic fervor, has led India to ruin, slavery and dependency. There has been a conspicuous absence of any foresight, planning or strategy in over sixty years of Indian independence. Compare that with a mere 30+ years in which the sagacious vision of Deng, which has catapulted China into a country with the second highest GDP in the world, the largest exporter and the third space faring nation after the US and Russia.

India has opted for empty bragging rights, hyperbole without substance as in the writings of Kalam, our scientist and former president and the DRDO clan. India acquired the technology of building modern submarines from Germany’s HDW more than a decade ago, but let the knowledge lapse because sundry Indian politicians and bureaucrats had accepted bribes. The same problem occurred with the Bofors artillery. Thus India is unable to manufacture its own planes, helicopters, tanks or artillery without sourcing key components from foreign suppliers at exorbitant prices without acquiring the necessary technology. The DRDO mostly assembles imported parts into finished products and even screws up in this simple job by ordering less than powerful engines, as in the GE404 for the LCA or lack of AIP for the Scorpene submarines.

China has no aircraft carriers yet, but it bought the shells of the old Soviet Varyag, Kuznetsov, Kiev and one from Australia to study and learn how to construct one by reverse engineering. India bought aircraft carrier hand me downs from UK and Russia and had to pay exorbitant renegotiated prices and accept delayed delivery. In the wars with Pakistan in 1965 and 1970-71, India had to sequester and hide its aircraft carrier in port as it did not have adequate anti-submarine warfare capabilities and ancillary support vessels to protect its carrier from Pakistani submarines, planes or missiles.

The cost of a carrier battle group consisting of a large carrier, its attack planes, helicopters, electronic warfare and watchdog planes and  its support ship, chaperone destroyer, frigate and submarine is approximately ten billion dollars. Its annual operating costs are 100 million dollars and yet a million dollar cruise missile can damage and cripple it completely.

This is why China’s thinking leaders have held off on having aircraft carriers and have honed their skills in developing anti-ship ballistic missiles with a speed of ten Mach (speed of sound) which can be guided by its bevy of satellites to effectively neutralize the US superiority of large nuclear powered aircraft carriers. To further combat the US carriers, China has used its money more effectively by building quieter hunter killer diesel submarines and boasts of having the largest submarine fleet amongst all nations. China has also built up its foreign exchange reserves and holds the US in debt bondage. In case these strategies don’t suffice to deter the US, it has developed its expertise in electronic sabotage to cripple the C4I ( communications, intelligence electronic networks) on which the US war fighting capabilities are dependent. It has fired a shot across the bow by destroying one of its own satellites by a missile to warn the US that it can destroy US satellites and cripple its ability to fight a war.

The US in the meantime, betrayed by the insatiable greed of its corporate chieftains, who have sold the future of the country for immediate pecuniary benefit, just as Jagat Seth, Amichand, Mir Kasim and Mir Jafar did in eighteenth century India, to the East India Company, has morphed from a dethroned leader into a castrated bully now willing to make any and all alliances with any factions to maintain its privileged status. It now cozies up to tyrants of Jordan, Egypt, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Kazakhstan and makes alliances with kleptocrats and genocidal military elites of Honduras, Colombia, Indonesia and sundry African states.

India is finally waking up to the military threat posed by China and its collusion and clandestine support of Pakistan’s nuclear and military ambitions, as the recent decision by China to provide Pakistan with two new nuclear power plants. The US failed to object to this in spite of Pakistan and A. Q. Khan’s past history and still for desperate needs of its own survival and hegemony continues to arm and aid Pakistan to the detriment of and dangers to India.

Prime minister Manmohan Singh is blind and oblivious to all threats, immersed in his native stupidity and slavish allegiance to Sonia, but some of his colleagues have seen the light and are on the verge of signing another ten billion dollar deal to build state of the art advanced submarines with transfer of technology, to counter the threat of Chinese and Pakistan’s military buildup. Quiet hunter killer submarines are the most cost effective mechanisms for denying control of the seas to a stronger, richer and technology more advanced adversary. This is the first and only ray of hope in India’s future and I hope the beginning of a transformation similar to the one in the history of evolution when soft bodied slugs and worms first developed a inner skeleton consisting of a bony spine.

China, as usual, has smartly sought alternative routes of safe energy supply by building gas and oil pipelines from Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan and Russia, which are beyond US or Indian threats (straits of Malacca) and has purchased or negotiated deals for energy and raw materials with nations of Africa, South America and even Canada and Russia. It is also building an energy transit route (pipeline) from the Pakistani port of Gwadar in Baluchistan along the Karakoram highway to the province of Sinjiang, China to avoid the bottleneck and pirates at the Straits of Malacca.

India, subservient as usual, has refused to do a gas supply deal with its natural ally Iran, to knuckle under to its newest master America. This kind of act of extreme self-abnegation “harakiri”, even a desperate beggar like Pakistan refused to perform.