To remind myself if the previous year had ended on a better note, I looked up the December issue of 2022. Déjà vu would be an understated term to describe the closure of 2023. Despair, much worse than last year, hangs over the horizon. We seem to be hurtling down the bottomless pit of human cruelty. Grace has taken flight. And there seems to be nothing to reassure the world that eventually the spirit of kindness, tolerance and empathy will triumph. But life goes on. And hope is intrinsic to the act of living. So, hope is what we cling to.
However, scarcity of hope is not the only reason why there is sameness to this end of the year. The present issue celebrates the Indian Navy Day, commemorating navy’s imaginative and bold attack on the Karachi harbour during the 1971 war. Both the planning and the execution of the attack was stuff war movies are made of. Surprising that no one in the navy has ever thought of supporting a movie made on the attack that left the Karachi harbour burning for days. Perhaps, unless it is jingoistic, it is not nationalistic enough!
Or maybe the navy has come a long way from the time when ideas were both fierce and fearless, not tethered to rhetorical slogans or sycophantic abbreviations. Or maybe the enormity of the threats has overwhelmed the service, forcing it to hitch on to someone else’s bandwagon. Whatever be the cause, the effect is that the navy of today is high on profile and low on capabilities. As the FORCE cover story brings out in a series of articles in this special issue. From appreciation of threats to capability-building, the navy is severely short on ideas. One hopes that this is a temporary lapse and not a chronic condition.
The navy ensemble in the December issue enumerates the threats faced by India in the maritime domain, navy’s efforts at the modernisation of its aviation arm, sustenance of its long-distance deployments, creating a deterrence at sea and building interoperability with friendly foreign navies. There is also an update on Chinese Navy’s nuclear submarine-building programme.
In addition to the navy specific articles, the December issue also has a report on the Dubai Air Show, a commentary on space as the new war domain, India’s dithering on the Israel-Palestine conflict and the update on military reforms anchored around theatre commands. Then there are the regular sections on industry, military and paramilitary services and books. Read, and ruminate. May the coming year bring a gust of happy tidings. Or, at least, hope.