VISAKHAPATNAM, Jan 8: Arunachal Pradesh Governor BD Mishra, who is on a two-day official tour of Andhra Pradesh, inaugurated a national seminar on disaster management, organised by Andhra University here on Monday.
Speaking on the topic, ‘India’s security’, the governor said military preparedness has a big role in national security.
Citing various attacks on India since its independence, and the proxy wars by Pakistan from 1988 to date, he said “it is of utmost importance that the people of India think, talk, debate, discuss, prepare and practice counter measures to all perceptible threats to the security of the nation.”
Providing a vivid description of security threats on the borders, land, sea and air, Mishra said China’s ‘String of Pearls’, religious militancy in Jammu & Kashmir, and the low intensity proxy warfare of Pakistan “have now become multipronged and extremely serious. All these dangers combined with narcotics trade, arms smuggling, money laundering and cyber-driven crimes are critical threat factors.”
The governor said India, which is a “multiethnic, multilingual, diverse culture society,” has an unfortunate history of sub-regional conflicts, homeland demands, militancy, and fundamentalist and extra territorial loyalties keen to break the nation.
Mishra, a former soldier who fought in all the three major wars – the 1962 Sino-Indian war, the 1965 Indo-Pak war, and the 1971 Bangladesh liberation war – and commanded an infantry brigade as a part of the Indian Peace Keeping Force in Sri Lanka, said that for maintaining the nation’s territorial integrity, “a deterrent military preparedness and ‘no aggression first’ are the answers.”
Several top ranking officials of the army and the home ministry attended the seminar. (Raj Bhavan)
