India's Untouchables

I studied the "untouchables" in college. They're now call "Dalits," but not much has changed, apparently, and voters are fed-up with campaign promises.

At LAT, "India’s lower-caste Dalits, who helped elect Modi, now threaten to oust him":

Dalit voters say Modi has failed to keep his economic pledges, while others point to growing caste-based violence and a perception that Modi’s government has diluted some legal protections for Dalits. https://t.co/zRBwn7AKzi

— Los Angeles Times (@latimes) May 17, 2019

In 2014, Mukesh Kumar, like much of India’s underclass, had pinned his hopes on Narendra Modi, who became prime minister after his party won elections in a landslide.

Today, Kumar regrets voting for him.

“In five years there should have been so much progress, but nothing has changed,” said Kumar, 26, a municipal sanitation worker who earns about $200 per month sweeping the streets of Varanasi, one of the holiest cities in Hinduism.

“Modi is only building roads,” he said. “What about those of us who are cleaning those roads? We are right where we were, dying in the heat of the sun, burning on the streets.”

Kumar belongs to the Dalit community, formerly known as the “untouchables,” the lowest level of India’s ancient caste hierarchy — and in the last election an important part of the historic victory by Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party.

Though the party, known by its initials BJP, was traditionally seen as catering to upper-caste Hindus and the business elite, it won 40 of the 84 parliamentary seats reserved for Dalits, primarily on Modi’s promises of economic development for all.

Now as Modi seeks a second five-year term in multi-stage national elections whose results are expected Thursday, Dalits are once again expected to play a crucial role.

But here in Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populous state, many Dalit voters say Modi has failed to keep his economic pledges, while others point to growing caste-based violence and a perception that Modi’s government has diluted some legal protections for Dalits.

“In 2014 and through the early part of Modi’s tenure, the BJP was trying to use more inclusive language, saying that Modi cuts across all castes and communities,” said Neelanjan Sircar, a senior visiting fellow at the Center for Policy Research, a New Delhi think tank. “That has significantly shifted, and in the last couple of years there has been noticeable caste polarization.”

India’s constitution in 1950 outlawed caste-based discrimination and enshrined affirmative action for Dalits. But the country’s 200 million Dalits are still often denied access to basic rights such as public water sources and in some areas are still banned from marrying into higher castes or even sharing food with them.

Many are confined to the most menial jobs, such as cleaning sewers by hand, a practice euphemistically called manual scavenging.

In cities and villages, Dalits are often shunted into separate enclaves like the 1,000-person shantytown where Kumar lives, in the Ravindrapuri neighborhood of Varanasi, which runs alongside a newly paved road with recently installed LED street lamps.

The residents of the shanties say Varanasi’s progress has not made it to their doorsteps. They complain of a paucity of jobs, stagnant income, rising prices and a lack of water.

One day recently, just outside the labyrinth of tightly packed, one-room brick homes, five hogs feasted on rotting garbage that had spilled onto the side of the road. A statue of Babasaheb Ambedkar, the Dalit author of India’s constitution, stood a few hundred feet away just outside Ravindrapuri.

In 2014, Modi ran for Parliament from Varanasi, a nod to his Hindu values, and won by a large margin. Soon afterward, he established an office down the road in Ravindrapuri and embarked on ambitious plans to clean the city and the banks of the Ganges River, boost tourism and build new roads.

A partnership with the Japanese government was meant to transform Varanasi into a high-tech “smart city” in the image of Kyoto. Little of that has materialized.

Though Modi is still expected to win comfortably in Varanasi — which votes on Sunday, the last stage of the election — some analysts see his party losing ground in Uttar Pradesh. The state holds 80 of the 543 seats in India’s Parliament, 71 of which the party won in 2014.

Dalits account for roughly one-fifth of the voters in the state, and surveys by the independent Center for the Study of Developing Societies showed Dalit support for the BJP falling from 31% in January 2018 to 22% in May 2018, the most recent month for which figures were available.

The suicides of two Dalit university students in 2016 and 2017 made national headlines...

Still more.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's Disastrous Visit to India

From Ed Driscoll, at Instapundit, "The Gross Cultural Appropriation Sideshow of the Trudeau Family in India."

And at Blazing Cat Fur, "Trudeau Deals With Fallout From Disastrous India Trip."

More, via Iowa Hawk:

The indispensable Tim Blair reviews Canadian Lampoon's Subcontinent Vacationhttps://t.co/SULqN2DYGw

— David Burge (@iowahawkblog) February 25, 2018

The Produnova Vault

This is interesting.

It's called the "vault of death."

At WSJ:

The Produnova vault is a gamble only a handful of women’s gymnasts are willing to make https://t.co/fX092NX1GJ #Rio2016

— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) August 7, 2016

And there's more about India's Dipa Karmakar here, "Assignment Asia: Conquering the 'vault of death'."

New Jersey Tailgaters Cheered Terrorist Attacks on September 11, 2001

Did thousands cheer?

Don't know, but WaPo's Glenn Kessler claimed that Donald Trump's statement that Muslims cheered 9/11 in New Jersey was an "outrageous" lie. Ahem, not so outrageous after all.

Here's Kessler's hit job, at WaPo via Memeorandum, "Trump's outrageous claim that ‘thousands’ of New Jersey Muslims celebrated the 9/11 attacks."

And then see Power Line, "Washington Post's Fact Checker Doesn't Read the Washington Post."

And from Elizabeth Price Foley, at Instapundit, "MUSLIMS IN N.J. CHEERING AFTER 9/11? This is what Donald Trump has asserted, and according to the Washington Post report of Sept. 18, 2001, Trump is right."

@AmPowerBlog really??? He said thousands of muslims and he saw it on TV. No TV images found, no evidence of thousands. or even dozens.

— Glenn Kessler (@GlennKesslerWP) November 23, 2015

#ParisAttacks Show Cracks in France’s Counterterrorism Effort

At WSJ:

French law-enforcement authorities had Hasna Aït Boulahcen in sight long before she surfaced as a suspected accomplice in the Paris terror attacks and died during a police raid. Her phone had been tapped as part of an unrelated drug-trafficking investigation, according to people familiar with the matter.

It wasn’t until days after the Nov. 13 attacks that French authorities learned that Ms. Aït Boulahcen was the cousin of Abdelhamid Abaaoud, a notorious Islamic State operative suspected of directing the terror spree that killed 130, the people familiar with the matter said.

That crucial piece of intelligence, supplied by Morocco, allowed French counterterrorism investigators to track Mr. Abaaoud to an apartment building in a Paris suburb, where Mr. Abaaoud, Ms. Aït Boulahcen and a third person, still unidentified, were killed Wednesday in a two-hour battle with police.

But the late discovery of Mr. Abaaoud’s connection with Ms. Aït Boulahcen has left French investigators stunned, one of the people familiar with the matter said. Mr. Abaaoud, a militant sought for months by French authorities, had a possible accomplice in Paris right under their nose.

“No need to fool ourselves,” a French government official said. “What we have in front of us is a complete failure.”

The intelligence breakdown comes 10 months after the attacks on the Charlie Hebdo satirical magazine and a kosher store revealed a French security operation hobbled by communication troubles among agencies.

As French authorities try again to analyze the cracks in their counterterrorism bulwark, French officials said they needed to better cooperate with allies while improving their capacity to process a welter of information.

The revelation that France was blind to the blood ties between the 28-year-old Mr. Abaaoud, a Belgian of Moroccan origin, and Ms. Aït Boulahcen, age 26, is particularly vexing for France, which has been trying to repair its security relationship with Morocco...

Keep reading.

France Launches First Missions from Aircraft Carrier (VIDEO)

Via France 24:

Mumbai Was Critical Model for #ParisAttacks

In more ways than one.

Not only did terrorists organizations, most likely Islamic State, grasp the tactical significance of Mumbai for terror campaigns, but police and intelligence agencies worldwide seized on the Mumbai attacks to upgrade training and readiness.

A fascinating piece, at USA Today, "Mumbai was big lesson in Paris-style attack":

WASHINGTON — While the dead were still being tallied at multiple terrorist targets in Paris, security analysts were drawing immediate comparisons to coordinated assaults seven years earlier in India.

The Mumbai attacks, carried out by Pakistani members of the Lashkar-e-Taiba militant group at 12 locations across the city, served as a stunning warning to counterterrorism officials throughout the world, including the United States, and exposed the vulnerability of so-called soft targets —transportation centers, restaurants, hotels and sports arenas, among others — to rolling, multiple target attacks.

Within days after the November 2008 attacks, the New York Police Department staged elaborate exercises to mimic the four-day assault, which left more than 150 dead across Mumbai. In Boston, Mumbai commanders were brought to Massachusetts to prepare special bomb and SWAT units for the prospect of coordinated attacks there. And in Seattle, Mumbai is prominently referenced in a vulnerability analysis by the Office of Emergency Management as part of a “maximum credible scenario.’’

The method of attack in Mumbai — the deployment of heavily armed gunmen and the use of explosives, like in Paris — prompted one of the most dramatic reassessments of the terrorist threat since the Sept. 11 attacks, law enforcement officials and security analysts said.

James Waters, chief of the NYPD's Counterterrorism Bureau, said lessons learned in Mumbai have "without question'' heavily influenced how the nation's largest police force now responds to the current threat.

"It (Mumbai) was a watershed moment in counterterrorism,'' said Mitchell Silber, the NYPD's former director of intelligence analysis. "Before Mumbai, the focus of attention was on spectacular 9/11-style attacks or single-target bombings. Mumbai was essentially a raid by teams fanning out across the city. It is so eerily close to what occurred in Paris; it is almost like (the Islamic State) watched the documentary and sought to re-create it.''

Mumbai offered a simplistic yet lethal strategy that, like 9/11, ignited widespread fear.

Directed by a control group in Pakistan, 10 heavily armed gunmen arrived by boat and dispersed to targets throughout the city. Among them: the Taj Mahal Palace and Tower hotel, a local train terminal, a hospital and a Jewish community center.

Casualties mounted, analysts said, as the terrorists succeeded in confusing law enforcement's response.

For U.S. authorities, Mumbai brought into sharp and sudden focus how such a low-cost operation could have such high impact...

More.

India's Narendra Modi Gives Big F.U. to Obama Administration Demands for Climate Change Agreement

Heh.

You gotta love it. Remember Modi was barred from traveling to the U.S. before he became prime minister. Those slights are not easily overcome. Besides, New Delhi obviously couldn't give a shit about giving even the appearance of cooperation on climate change, unlike China, which pocketed unilateral concessions from the administration. O's 0-2 with the big Asian emitters, lol.

At the Los Angeles Times, "Narendra Modi dismisses calls for India to match China's climate goal":

The United States and India sought to put a contentious history behind them Sunday by declaring a new partnership on climate change, security and economic issues, but Prime Minister Narendra Modi rejected calls for India to match China’s commitment to reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

As President Obama opened a three-day visit to New Delhi aimed at underscoring the two democracies’ shared ideals, Modi’s blunt dismissal of a sweeping climate agreement reflected the limits of Washington’s assiduous courtship of the popular new prime minister.

Even as Obama announced “a breakthrough understanding” that could clear the way for U.S. companies to build nuclear power plants in India — potentially reducing India’s heavy reliance on fossil fuels — Modi said he felt “no pressure” from any other country to curtail the South Asian nation’s carbon emissions.

Instead, the U.S. said it would cooperate with India in clean-energy initiatives such as expanding solar power, reducing the most toxic greenhouse gases and making air-conditioners more efficient — without demanding that it slow the rapid growth of its coal industry.

“India is a sovereign country,” Modi said during a joint news conference with Obama. “There is no pressure on us from any country or any person, but there is pressure when we think about the future generations and what kind of world we want to give them.”

It was a rare discordant note at the start of a largely ceremonial visit that the Obama administration hoped would demonstrate U.S. commitment to improving ties with India and would energize a strategic “pivot” to Asia.

The countries renewed a 10-year defense partnership and agreed to expand that collaboration. Modi said the countries would “pursue co-development and co-production of specific advanced defense projects.”

The meeting between the two leaders was rich in atmospherics, with Obama and Modi sharing a warm hug at the foot of the Air Force One stairs moments after the plane landed in New Delhi.

After a summit at the White House in September, this visit — coming sooner than many U.S. and Indian officials had expected — was seen as a signal that both countries want to move past years of often difficult relations.

On Monday, Obama is scheduled to be the first U.S. president to attend India’s annual Republic Day celebration, where he would be Modi’s chief guest at an hours-long parade.

Many U.S. and Indian officials saw Modi’s invitation to Obama as a sign that the Indian leader bore no ill will from a decade-long visa ban imposed by the State Department over his failure to stop religious pogroms in 2002 in the western state of Gujarat, where he had served as chief executive.

Both leaders cited progress on an agreement to provide nuclear power to India for civilian use that has been stalled since a pact in 2005. U.S. officials said negotiators from both countries had resolved issues that had blocked implementation of the agreement — accounting for the nuclear material produced by U.S. companies and liability in case of an accident.

“Today we achieved a breakthrough on two issues that were holding up our ability to advance our civil-nuclear cooperation, and we’re committed to moving toward full implementation,” Obama said. “This is an important step that shows how we can work together to elevate our relationship.”...

The nuclear agreement is just one in a series of steps India must take to reduce its dependence on fossil fuels. Over the next year Obama hopes to help negotiate a global action plan to rein in runaway climate change, but a meaningful agreement would call for a major commitment from India, the world’s No. 3 emitter of greenhouse gases.

Pressure on India increased after the U.S. persuaded China, the No. 2 polluter, to agree in November to cap carbon emissions by 2030.

But as India embarks on a major phase of industrialization, many in Modi’s government believe that building heavily polluting coal power plants, which provide electricity at far cheaper rates than solar and wind power, is the most practical way to speed provision of electricity to the 300 million Indians who lack it.

Modi swept into power in May promising to revitalize India’s slowing economic growth. Since then, Indian authorities have tried to crack down on environmental groups such as Greenpeace that have campaigned against massive coal projects, accusing them of acting against India’s national interests.

But Indian officials have also raised coal taxes to generate money for clean-energy projects and announced plans to boost solar power capacity fivefold to 100,000 megawatts by 2022.

To support that goal, Obama administration officials announced expanded cooperation on green technology, including up to $1 billion in financing from the U.S. Export-Import Bank for clean-energy projects...

Sisters in India Beat Up Three Men for Harassing Them

Via the BBC:

Narendra Modi Victory Heralds New Era in #India

I saw this at Pamela's earlier, "Astounding Victory for Modi in India Election":

The results are in and they are astounding. Magnificent. Narendra Modi did wildly better than even the best projections. The BJP (Modi’s party) won over 50 percent of the seats ALONE, without even their handful of ideologically aligned allies.

Despite what the cretins in the media and the Islamic apologists in the political arena tell you, there is major change afoot. I have been seeing it here in the States, and we see lights of hope and truth beginning to blaze across the world.

And here's WSJ, "Modi Election Win Heralds New Era: Hindu-Nationalist, Pro-Business BJP Candidate Narendra Modi Marks Sweeping Shift."

It's a big deal. The BJP dislodged the Gandhi, Congress Party machine that's ruled india for 60 years.

More at Telegraph UK, "Narendra Modi wins India election with landslide victory."

And video from Euro News, "Dramatic shift in Indian politics with Modi set to win landslide election victory."

India Removes Barricades at U.S. Embassy in Delhi in Retaliation for Diplomatic Row

The BBC reports on the removal of the barricades, which signals state support for attacks on the U.S. mission. I'm sure the symbolism's not lost on the State Department, although history shows the suits at Foggy Bottom don't care much for the lives of diplomats serving overseas.

At the New York Times, "U.S. Moves to Cool India’s Rage Over Arrested Diplomat":

WASHINGTON — Secretary of State John Kerry called a senior Indian official on Wednesday to express his “regret” over an episode in which law enforcement officials in New York arrested an Indian diplomat last week and strip-searched her.

Mr. Kerry’s call to the official, Shivshankar Menon, India’s national security adviser, was disclosed by the State Department in a statement.

The Indian government has complained bitterly about the treatment of the diplomat, Devyani Khobragade. In New Delhi, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh called the arrest deplorable, Indian newspaper editorials expressed outrage, and the police removed barriers meant to protect the American Embassy.

Ms. Khobragade, 39, was accused of submitting false documents to obtain a work visa for a housekeeper, and Indian newspapers said she had been subjected to repeated body cavity searches.

The United States Marshals Service, which handled her detention, said that she had been subjected to the standard detention procedures for “arrestees within the general prisoner population.”

She was thrown in a cell with drug addicts and prostitutes.

Better than being abandoned to the terrorists at diplomatic compound, I guess.

India's Child Slavery Scourge

At Der Spiegel, "Daughters for Sale: Aid Organizations Confront Child Slavery in India":

Millions of Indian children work as slaves in factories, brothels or in the homes of families. Out of poverty and desperation, parents sell their daughters, and human traffickers wait at train stations for runaways and scour for orphans in monsoon-ravaged villages.

On the day that Durga Mala was rescued, she lay crying on the stone floor, where she was attempting to cool her back. She was 11 years old and her skin was covered with blisters, from her shoulder blades to her buttocks. A few days earlier, her owners had poured hot oil over her because they thought she was working too slowly.

Suddenly Durga heard screams and huddled on the floor. Acting on a tip, police stormed the apartment in the heart of Bangalore. When they broke the door down, Durga crossed her arms in front of her chest and closed her eyes. She was only wearing a pair of panties -- that's all the clothing that her owners had allowed her to have. Durga says: "I was ashamed."

One of the men wrapped the small girl in a sheet and brought her to a hospital. Doctors treated her for a number of days. In addition to her burns, she was malnourished, infected wounds covered her fingers and her lips were scarred. "I dropped a glass once," says Durga, "and the woman got angry and pulled my fingernails out, one by one." Sometimes they poked her in the mouth with a needle. Durga was supposed to work, not speak.

It's estimated that millions of children in India live as modern-day slaves. They work in the fields, in factories, brothels and private households -- often without pay and usually with no realistic chance of escaping. The majority of them are sold or hired out by their own families.

According to an Indian government census from 2001, this country of over 1 billion people has 12.6 million minors between the ages of 5 and 14 who are working. The real number is undoubtedly significantly higher because many children are not officially registered at birth -- and the owners of course do their best to keep the existence of child slaves a secret. Aid organizations estimate that three-quarters of all domestic servants in India are children, and 90 percent of those are girls. Although both child labor and child trafficking are illegal, police rarely intervene -- and the courts seldom convict child traffickers and slaveholders.

Continue reading.

And what to say?

India's a developing country with a huge population. Tremendous poverty obviously forces many parents to think of children as burdens and sources of financial remuneration. Hence, parents selling off children to human traffickers, which is something that people would find horrifying in the United States.

Death Sentences in India Gang Rape Case

Do they matter?

See the New York Times, "Many Doubt Death Sentences Will Stem India Sexual Attacks":

NEW DELHI — There was no mistaking the whoop of joy that rose outside Saket District Court on Friday, when word got out that four men convicted in last December’s horrific gang rape and murder had been sentenced to death by hanging. People burst into applause. They hugged whoever was beside them. They pumped the air with their fists.

“We are the winners now,” said a woman holding a placard. Sweat had dried into white rivulets on her face, but she had the look of a woman who had, finally, gotten what she wanted. And it was true: A wave of protests after the December rape have set remarkable changes in motion in India, a country where for decades vicious sexual harassment has been dismissed indulgently, called “eve-teasing.”

But some of India’s most ardent women’s rights advocates hung back from Friday’s celebration, skeptical that four hangings would do anything to stem violence against women, a problem whose proportions are gradually coming into focus.

“I think a lot of people were hugging each other because they thought this evil is localized, and it will be wiped out, and that is not the case,” said Karuna Nundy, a litigator who has argued before India’s Supreme Court. “The sad truth is that it is not a deterrent.”

From the moment it broke, the story of the 23-year-old woman who became known as “Nirbhaya,” or “fearless,” awoke real rage in the population.

Hoping for a ride home from a movie theater, she and a male companion boarded a private bus, not realizing that the six men aboard had been cruising Delhi in search of a victim. After knocking her friend unconscious, they took her to the back of the bus and raped her, then penetrated her with a metal rod, inflicting grave internal injuries. An hour later, they dumped the pair out on the road, bleeding and naked. She died two weeks later of her injuries.

Young men and women, mobilized through social media, joined protests that spread across India, demanding tougher laws and more effective policing.

“As a woman, and mother, I understand how protesters feel,” Sonia Gandhi, India’s most powerful female politician and the president of the governing Congress Party, said at the time. “Today we pledge that the victim will get justice.”

After intensive public discussion of the case, some changes followed with extraordinary speed. Reports of rape have skyrocketed; in the first eight months of this year, Delhi’s police force registered 1,121 cases, more than double the number from the same period in 2011 and the highest number since 2000. The number of reported molestations has increased sixfold in the same period.

The government created a fast-track court for rape cases and introduced new laws, criminalizing acts like voyeurism and stalking and making especially brutal rapes into a capital crime. Scholars have delved into the social changes that may be contributing to the problem, as new arrivals in India’s huge cities find themselves unemployed and hopeless, stuck in “the space below the working class,” as the writer Rajrishi Singhal recently put it in an editorial in The Hindu.

But many were thinking of something more basic — punishing the six (one, a juvenile, got a three-year sentence in August, and the driver was found dead in his cell in March) who attacked the woman in the bus. It was those people who found their way to the Saket courthouse on Friday. Many came like pilgrims, hoping to find closure in a case that had haunted them.

Kiran Khullar arrived in a wheelchair, accompanied by her daughter, 17. “I have come here as a mother,” she said. “I came here only to see these men get the death penalty.”

More at that top link.

And change to India won't come until the culture changes, and it's a sick culture, for example, "‘Two-Finger’ Test for Rape Needs to End, Experts Say."

Contaminated School Lunches Kill at Least 23 Children in India

The costs of "free" food.

At the Wall Street Journal, "Tainted School Lunch Kills at Least 23 Indian Children: Free Food Was Provided Under Government's Midday-Meal Program":

PATNA, India—In a threadbare hospital here, 5-year-old Rashmi Kumari is fighting a powerful poison. "She is a brilliant student," said her uncle as he tried to distract her by asking her to recite poems.

Rashmi is also the only child in her household left alive.

Her cousins, Anshu and Kushboo, died after eating a school lunch now believed to have been contaminated with a pesticide compound, according to a hospital official. The disaster has left at least 23 children dead as of Thursday morning and spotlights the shortcomings in a government school-lunch program intended to feed India's millions of malnourished students.

Initial investigations suggest that organophosphorus, commonly used in farm pesticides, may have been mixed into the rice, beans and potato curry served Tuesday at an elementary school in Gandaman, a village in the impoverished state of Bihar, according to Amarkant Jha Amar, medical superintendent at the hospital.

The students became sick and suffered from vomiting, fainting and foaming at the mouth. More than two dozen victims are still being treated. Mr. Amar said patients are receiving medicine to neutralize the chemical, which is similar to nerve agents such as sarin.

It remains unclear how or where the chemical got into the food. A state-level investigation is under way and the first report is expected Thursday, according to local police and a district magistrate.

Foaming at the mouth? Sarin? What a horrible way to die, and so senselessly tragic.

More, "India’s Problems With Free School Meals."

Elephants Hit by Train in India

At the Guardian UK, "Elephants hit by speeding train in India – video":

Two elephants lie dead on a track after being hit by a speeding train in Jalpaiguri district, West Bengal, eastern India. Two more elephants were gravely injured in the accident, which reportedly happened as a 40-strong herd was crossing the track.

Also at London's Daily Mail, "Four elephants killed when they are hit by a TRAIN speeding through the jungle."

India Launches Long-Range Missile Capable of Reaching China

Well, so much for nuclear non-proliferation during the Obama administration.

At the Wall Street Journal, "India Tests Nuclear-Capable Missile":

India tested its most advanced long-range nuclear-capable missile to date on Thursday, a launch experts say will serve as a deterrent against Pakistan and China.

Agni V, an intercontinental ballistic missile, or ICBM, was launched from Wheeler Island, off the coast of the eastern state of Orissa, said Sitanshu Kar, a spokesman for India's defense ministry.

"It was a perfect launch which took place at 0807 hours," said Mr. Kar. "It has achieved all the parameters and goals set for it." He didn't elaborate, but Indian media is saying it reached its intended target 5,000 kilometers (3,100 miles) out in the Indian Ocean, and was visually tracked along its whole path.

Avinash Chander, chief controller (Missiles and Strategic Systems) of the Ministry of Defence's Defence Research and Development Organisation, described the launch as a "marvelous achievement" in an interview on news channel NDTV. "We achieved exactly what we wanted to achieve." He said the team has "full confidence in the missile capability" and the missile landed "exactly where it was supposed to land. "

The launch of the locally built Agni V is part of India's broader missile-development program, a key aspect of the country's nuclear strategy. Its range of over 5,000 kilometers means it could reach as far as Beijing, Tehran or Pyongyang.

Experts say this makes it the most advanced missile in India's missile inventory. But though a successful test fire is a positive sign, it could take a few more years of tests to make the ballistic missile operationally ready.

Poornima Subramaniam, an Asia-Pacific armed-forces analyst with IHS Jane's, a global think tank specializing in security issues, said by email that Agni V would boost India's strategic position against China while improving its deterrence system against its other regional rival, Pakistan.

"The Agni V can strike targets across the depth of China, potentially freeing up other short- and intermediate-range missiles for use against Pakistan and much of west and south-central China," she added. "While India maintains a no-first-use policy, it views this road-mobile ICBM capability as technologically narrowing the missile gap between India and China."

'The important thing is to ensure the neck snaps and there’s a quick death...'

Well, that's an Althouse-style title for the post, but that's who first came to mind when reading this piece at Los Angeles Times, "India has no shortage of aspiring hangmen." The quote on the "neck snaps" was highlighted at the essay in the hard-copy version, and it still kind of sticks out as so matter-of-fact:

Pawan Kumar is looking for a job. Not just any job; he wants to be India's newest hangman.

Kumar, 50, an apparel salesman from a family of executioners, says it's in his DNA, demonstrating with well-callused hands how to slide a hood over a condemned person's head, grease the noose and wrench the lever so the floor parts like a wave.

He acknowledges that he's never performed a hanging, India's preferred execution method, but says he's witnessed several and practiced using sandbags.

"The important thing is to ensure the neck snaps and there's a quick death," he says.

RTWT.

Stratfor's Reva Bhalla on Yesterday's Mumbai Bombings

Reva Bhalla is interviewed at the Dylan Ratigan show. She's Director of Analysis at Stratfor. It's good:

RELATED: At Los Angeles Times, "Relief and worry after slaying of Hamid Karzai's half brother."

Multiple Bombings Rock Mumbai!

There's a live blog at Telegraph UK, "Reports of at least 20 dead, over 100 injured."

And at New York Times, "3 Bomb Blasts Shake Central Mumbai":

MUMBAI, India — Three bomb blasts shook the city of Mumbai at the height of the evening rush hour on Wednesday, killing at least 20 people in what Indian officials called a coordinated terror attack on the country’s economic capital.

The explosions struck central locations in the city, including the crowded Dadar neighborhood; the Zaveri Bazaar, a well-known jewelry market; and near the Opera House, according to India’s Home Ministry, which said 113 people had been injured.

The attack was the first in Mumbai since militants from Pakistan mounted large-scale assaults on hotels, a train station and a Jewish community center in November 2008, killing more than 160 people.

No immediate claim of responsibility for the Wednesday bombings was reported. India’s home minister, P. Chidambaram, said at a news conference in New Delhi that terror investigation teams had been dispatched to the blast sites.

More at the link. Also, at Toronto's Globe and Mail, "Mumbai blasts a 'co-ordinated attack by terrorists': India's home minister."

Pakistan's Nuclear Posture

Well, it's not all babe-blogging and punk flashbacks around here! [Here, actualy.] I do actually find time to read some professional literature -- although that won't matter to those attacking me as a shitty political scientist! (I'll respond to that later ... idiots!)

Anyway, here's a great piece from the latest International Security, Vipin Narang's, "Posturing for Peace? Pakistan's Nuclear Postures and South Asian Stability." From the introduction:

On November 26, 2008, terrorists from Lashkar-e-Taiba—a group historically supported by the Pakistani state—launched a daring sea assault from Karachi, Pakistan, and laid siege to India’s economic hub, Mumbai, crippling the city for three days and taking at least 163 lives. The world sat on edge as yet another crisis between South Asia’s two nuclear-armed states erupted with the looming risk of armed conflict. But India’s response was restrained; it did not mobilize its military forces to retaliate against either Pakistan or Lashkar camps operating there. A former Indian chief of Army Staff, Gen. Shankar Roychowdhury, bluntly stated that Pakistan’s threat of nuclear use deterred India from seriously considering conventional military strikes. Yet, India’s nuclear weapons capability failed to deter subconventional attacks in Mumbai and Delhi, as well as Pakistan’s conventional aggression in the 1999 Kargil War. Why are these two neighbors able to achieve such different levels of deterrence with their nuclear weapons capabilities? Do differences in how these states operationalize their nuclear capabilities—their nuclear postures—have differential effects on dispute dynamics? ....

To many scholars and practitioners, the world’s grimmest security concerns converge in Pakistan. Pakistan has supported the Taliban, against which the Pakistan Army is fighting a de facto civil war; it supports cross-border terrorism in India, provoking periodic crises in South Asia; and, of course, it has a growing nuclear arsenal. In addition to the risk of inadvertent nuclear use by the Pakistan Army, the arsenal could be vulnerable to malicious elements within the state, whose acquisition of nuclear material or weapons could be catastrophic for regional and international security. Pakistan’s designation as one of the United States’ “major non-NATO” allies cannot obscure concerns in Washington that Pakistan may be the world’s worst security nightmare. Given this nexus of instability, a sober analysis of the pressures and compulsions of the Pakistani nuclear weapons program is of critical importance to South Asian and international security.

It's available in PDF, and while long, it's worth a look.

Narang lays out the evolution of Pakistan's strategic doctrine, which deviates dramatically from the expected predictions of traditional deterrence theory. Especially fascinating is the concept of "catalytic" deterrence, a posture Pakistan adopted to "catalyze" U.S. intervention during a South Asian crisis. The regime in Islamabad would move toward nuclear use amid military confrontations to "signal" to the United States a potentially catastrophic security breakdown. Nuclear mobilization wasn't designed to deter India, but to bring about U.S. intervention: "Pakistan exploited U.S. interests in the region’s stability to impel the United States to intervene on its behalf when its interference in India triggered periodic crises."

There's a summary table on page 45 of the essay. Noteworthy is the theory of why Pakistan's proxy fighting groups (peripheral terrorist organizations like Lashkar) are able to wreak devastating carnage on the Indian state without provoking retaliation against Islamabad. Focusing on "asymmetric escalation," Narang argues that Pakistan relies on a policy of nuclear first use, so that India, while sustaining devastating losses in sub-conventional warfare, hesitates to respond militarily for fear of catatrophic nuclear escalation:

India’s frustration with Pakistan-backed aggression reached deafening heights after roughly a dozen Lashkar-e-Taiba militants executed a precision commando attack on Mumbai on November 26, 2008.98 From the outset, India’s Congress government, and even General Malik (ret.), conceded that its military options to retaliate against Pakistan were again limited, because any meaningful strikes risked uncontrollable escalation, possibly quickly up to the nuclear level.99 India was therefore once more largely restrained by Pakistan’s low nuclear threshold from executing retaliatory airstrikes against suspected Lashkar camps in Pakistan. Former Army Chief of Staff Roychowdhury conceded that “Pakistan’s nuclear weapons deterred India from attacking that country after the Mumbai strikes . . . [and] it was due to Pakistan’s possession of nuclear weapons that India stopped short of a military retaliation following the attack on Parliament in 2001.”

A great piece of research.

More at the link.

Cross-posted from American Power.