Veteran ramani's views

From: Kuppuswamy Ramani
Date: Fri, Mar 5, 2010 at 7:15 AM
Subject: re
To: rpchaturvedi@gmail.com


Dear RP,
Hello how are you? I would like to share some thoughts with you. It is regarding retired service officers in their capacity as domain experts unwittingly giving away information which is used to the hilt by these upstarts Defence Correspondents in the TV media and passed on by them as their analysis . Over a period of time they call shots and our experts appear as pedestrians and look for explanations.There was an unfortunate crash of an ac of Navy aerobatics team yesterday. So as usual the press went after it.{ old saying of man biting dog) Notably Head Lines and the other one where that Arnab Goswami Channel. I am against those two upstarts called Aroor and Menon or some one who is at tandem with Aroor I think Shiv. They got hold of one Air Marshall Ahluwalia to give expert opinion in this case.. Here is my lament. These experts from the services are either too gullible or naive. The so called defence correspondent of these channels are too clever. They extract as much technical information/ forces jargon as possible from these experts and wait for something similar to happen on a future date and then reel off their expert opinion and pass it off as their own when rhe next incident happens and possibly put the next expert from the forces in the dock by surprise questions.. There was no requirement for Ahluwalia in this case to get into technical details of flying and saying" we have the platform in terms of aircraft and then we have the man flying it and both ought to have coordination and so on......... The other expert even talked of ailerons and how they come into play in these manoeuvres . Why cant they just say that the aircraft and crew have been well tested and let us wait for investigation. The Air Marshall does not need to prove his mettle/ability to these upstarts. Same thing happened during so called land scam. Our "experts" taught these upstarts DSR and these people quoted it every now and then eg These upstarts will say we know DSR does not permit junior officer to sit in Cof I.............. and the listening public will say wah wah they know about rules in the forces real experts yaar. (Incidentally in the instant case it was AR180 which was not applied and I do not understand how JAG/MG Adm Eastern Command let it go like that. this is entirely different matter). The DSR is a secondary issue. But our" Defence Correspondent" managed to portray themselves as guardian angel and expose corruption and inefficiency in the" Services"

Some how we need to tell these regular experts of ours to keep their wisdom to themselves and talk every thing under the sun except contribute to quarter baked knowledge of these up starts. The idea should be to make the ilks of Aroor and Shiv look foolish every time they talk on defence matters. I feel you are the best person to convey these views in any manner you deem appropriate. I just feel I owe it to the Organisation which is looking after me even today and to my colleagues like you who have held on to cherished value systems .

warm regards
ramani