Republic Day

Yesterday was 26th Jan 2010 - our Republic Day. I still remember when I was a kid, this was the most important celebration for me; even more than Diwali or Holi. Reason - I loved seeing smart army jawans marching, loved the display of Tanks, fighter planes, naval ships and was owe struck by the air display.

All this made me feel proud of my country and more than that gave me a feeling of security that my country is capable of defending itself, no one can do us any harm.

But now I don't even bother to have a passing look at the TV when republic day parade is in progress. I really feel all this is a facade. We are wasting our time and money on it.

This change in my opinion started around 10 years back. I was totally taken back by attitude of successive Indian governments (of any party) in response to attack on Indian people by terrorists. Every one knew that it was Pakistan which was launching all these terrorist attacks but no government bothered to give it a suitable response. We had numerous blasts, thousands of people being killed but the response that we got from government was a warning to Pakistan and at the most stopping any engagements with them for few months. Even the provocation of attack on our parliament was not enough for our government to give Pakistanis a befitting response. Army was mobilized by the BJP government but they were kept on border as decoration pieces. They did not have the balls to use them.

So what is the point in having third largest army in the world if you don't have the guts to use it to protect your citizens. Let apart using the army for military response, our government doesn't even use them in their diplomacy with Pakistan. After Mumbai attacks, governments made it a point to repeatedly say that military option is not on the table. That is, you are telling your enemies before negotiations that you don't have the balls to respond militarily. So then what is the use of keeping such large armed forces if you are not ready to use it in any way. It is a white elephant for us. Instead India should come under military umbrella of USA(anyhow India still runs to US after every major terrorist attack by Pakistan). This will spare us billions of dollars that we spend on our armed forces. We can use it for uplifting millions of poor people of our country.

It is really ironical that on one hand we have country like America which after single terrorist attack on 9/11, waged war on two countries thousands of miles away and on other hand we are not able to handle even one country despite our military advantage over it.

Its a SHAME.