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Correspondent

23 August 2024 at 4:29:04 pm

Faltering Flight

The tragic death of Wing Commander Namansh Syal during an aerial display in Dubai has pierced the celebratory haze around India’s rising aerospace ambitions. The Tejas Light Combat Aircraft, meant to headline India’s growing prowess and self-reliance, instead nose-dived into the ground during a negative-G turn. A grief-stricken Indian Air Force (IAF) and a shocked nation now face questions that go beyond a single aircraft or accident. While the IAF has launched an investigation, the symbolic...

Faltering Flight

The tragic death of Wing Commander Namansh Syal during an aerial display in Dubai has pierced the celebratory haze around India’s rising aerospace ambitions. The Tejas Light Combat Aircraft, meant to headline India’s growing prowess and self-reliance, instead nose-dived into the ground during a negative-G turn. A grief-stricken Indian Air Force (IAF) and a shocked nation now face questions that go beyond a single aircraft or accident. While the IAF has launched an investigation, the symbolic damage is immediate. For a country keen to advertise indigenous capability, the incident could hardly have come at a worse moment. With 38 aircraft in service, nearly 200 more on order, and a growing role in India’s future fighter fleet, the Tejas had become a poster child of self-reliance. The Dubai crash has now dimmed that glow, even if temporarily. Airshows, by design, flirt with risk. They are spectacles meant to compress an aircraft’s capability into minutes of daring manoeuvres. Even the best training cannot eliminate the fact that these displays operate on the razor’s edge of performance envelopes. History is full of grim reminders: the Mirage 2000 crash during Air Force Day rehearsals in 1989; the 2019 Surya Kiran mid-air collision; the Polish F-16 that crashed during a barrel roll this August; and the Spanish EF-18 that nearly flew into a beachside crowd after a momentary loss of control. That the Dubai accident occurred in such a setting is therefore tragic, but not unprecedented. What distinguishes this incident is the aircraft involved. The Tejas project has been haunted by delays, cost escalations and shifting requirements since its inception in the early 1980s. The aircraft finally entered service only in the 2010s, and fresh concerns were raised recently over delayed engine supplies for the upgraded Mk-1A variant. Critics of India’s defence R&D ecosystem will find easy ammunition in these events. And yet, the aircraft itself deserves a clearer appraisal. By global standards, the Tejas has an exceptional safety record. It suffered no hull loss during development which is a rarity for a single-engine fighter and only one catastrophic failure since induction prior to Dubai, both circumstances in which pilots survived through ejection. In comparison, Pakistan’s JF-17 has endured multiple crashes, Sweden’s Gripen lost several prototypes to fly-by-wire glitches, and France’s Mirage family encountered repeated developmental accidents. Tejas’s delta-wing design and quadruple-redundant flight control system remain robust and admired by pilots who fly it. India’s aviation missteps lie not in engineering talent, but in systemic underinvestment in research and a long history of state-led programmes that promised more than they could deliver. In 1961 India flew Asia’s first modern jet combat aircraft, the HF-24 Marut, only to abandon the momentum that could have made it an aviation power decades before China. The Dubai crash should not derail India’s indigenous aviation drive. Instead, this is the moment to confront structural weaknesses. India’s aerospace destiny lies not in retreating from risk, but in reforming the institutions that shape it.

Shinde facing political vulnerability amid poaching wars

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Mumbai: Deputy Chief Minister Eknath Shinde is facing a profound political vulnerability, one that is strikingly reminiscent of the internal pressures he experienced before his seismic 2022 revolt. As local body elections grip Maharashtra, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the senior partner in the ruling Mahayuti alliance, is aggressively pursuing an expansion agenda that directly targets Shinde’s Shiv Sena faction, creating acute friction and forcing Shinde to seek intervention from the central BJP leadership in Delhi.


The escalating tension came into sharp focus recently when a majority of Shiv Sena ministers, barring Shinde himself, boycotted a state cabinet meeting. This unusual display of collective dissent was a clear protest against the BJP’s alleged poaching of local corporators and functionaries—a campaign spearheaded by the state BJP unit, particularly in the crucial Kalyan-Dombivli area, the stronghold of Shinde’s son, Lok Sabha MP Shrikant Shinde. For the Shiv Sena, this activity is a direct violation of "coalition dharma," threatening to undermine the very base that Shinde fractured from the Uddhav Thackeray-led Shiv Sena (UBT).


Following the cabinet no-show, Shinde quickly engaged in damage control. After a local-level meeting with CM Devendra Fadnavis, Shinde took the matter to the national level, meeting Union Home Minister Amit Shah and BJP national president J. P. Nadda. The message conveyed to the BJP top brass was one of restlessness and a warning - such aggressive, localized competition not only demoralizes Shinde’s workers but also risks giving the Opposition, the Maha Vikas Aghadi, an undue advantage. Shinde’s objective was not just to secure a no-poaching pact, but to re-affirm his political significance and the commitment of his ally to the partnership.


The root of this discord lies in the BJP’s uncompromising drive for consolidation. For the BJP, the local body polls, spanning hundreds of municipal councils and nagar panchayats, are not merely about maintaining the Mahayuti's majority; they are about replacing allies’ influence with their own infrastructure. The party operates with the long-term goal of becoming the undisputed single force in the state. From this perspective, every local leader or worker defecting from the Shiv Sena (Shinde) to the BJP is a strategic gain, even if it causes short-term friction. The high command, while assuring Shinde of its commitment to the alliance, is unlikely to fully curb the state unit's expansionist tendencies, which are often rationalized as responding to organic growth or local ticket disputes.


For Shinde, this presents a severe leadership crisis. His political identity and the legitimacy of the 2022 split were built on the premise of securing power and protecting the interests of the original Shiv Sainiks. If his faction’s candidates and local leaders perceive that they are better protected or rewarded by directly aligning with the dominant BJP, Shinde’s control over his own legislature and organizational base will erode.


The key lieutenants who followed Shinde in 2022, primarily motivated by the desire to remain in the corridors of power, are now caught in the crossfire. They are unlikely to quit the power they gained by aligning with the BJP, but their future now depends less on Shinde’s political capital and more on their direct utility to the larger party. These dynamic forces a direct allegiance shift, turning Shinde’s most trusted followers into potential regional players who might bypass him to deal directly with BJP leaders.


While a temporary “no-poaching” agreement has been announced—a political necessity to calm the waters ahead of the local voting—the underlying philosophical conflict remains unresolved. The current situation exposes the inherent fragility of the Shinde-led Shiv Sena as a junior partner in an alliance led by a behemoth committed to eventual hegemony. Unless Shinde can translate the Central leadership’s assurances into real, protected territory for his party workers on the ground, the ‘pre-2022 situation’—a deep-seated anxiety about the loss of identity and influence—will continue to haunt the Mahayuti alliance, signalling potential instability as Maharashtra heads towards its next major electoral test.

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