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1n #Rafale (sigh! Yes, again) re The Hindu, it's much ado about nothing. One IAS clique protesting the hijack of negotiations by another department is natural. Claiming it would undermine negotiations is also a classic bureaucratic trick. Point is 1) the parallel track ... 
2n violated no process & 2) the parallel track achieved a significant price breakthrough. IAS officers put in perfunctory protests in all the time in the fear that a parallel committee (If constituted) will upstage them & show them to be lacking, especially when empowered by the
3n PM and able to bring interdepartmental brute force to the table. At the end we remain with the following conclusions which haven't changed since the controversy started
1) PMO took over negotiations due to the Nuclear component of the deal & gap due to the Sukhois failure
1) PMO took over negotiations due to the Nuclear component of the deal & gap due to the Sukhois failure
4n ..2) This caused significant interdepartmental animosity, which is natural 3) there's was no process violation 4) negotiated price constituted a significant price savings owing to abandonment of certain clauses like paying upfront for 3-4% currency fluctuation & sovereign..
5n ...guarantees. I'd indicated this earlier as well. Good to know N Ram has picked up on a point I made almost a month back. Except through his selective disclosure it's mangled & presented out of context.
6n All up, nothing to get worked up about. If every protest/dissent note in a collegial system were a scam then we'd still be stuck in 1947. Patel' s dissent to Nehru on China would by this yardstick be proof that Nehru was bribed by Chinese intelligence. Obviously its rubbish.
7n unlike Ram's beloved Maoist china where dissent gets you a one way ticket to jail, in india dissent is part of the process. There's no story here except that Ram (finally) got his facts right, (congrats Ram! 150th try?) unlike his
8n last piece that was riddled with massive factual inaccuracies brought out by @KesariDhwaj here opindia.com/2019/01/n-ram-… Now get back to work, there's no story here unless you believe in alien abductions, in which case you need help
9n finally I have to register my STRONG PROTEST with @the_hindu. It's one thing having an editorial line but cropping out photos to avoid inconvenient facts like here where @manoharparrikar clearly instructs the DS MoD to coordinate with PMO (courtesy @ANI) is BLATANTLY UNETHICAL
