Decision Authority Archives - understand-culture

The Agra Draft

At Agra, from July 14 to 16, 2001, Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee met Pakistan’s President Pervez Musharraf. External Affairs Minister Jaswant Singh worked out a joint draft with Pakistan’s foreign minister, Abdul Sattar. Vajpayee called in senior cabinet colleagues to read it. They found that it did not say enough about terrorism, and the summit ended without a joint declaration.

In his memoir of 2008, L.K. Advani, then home minister, wrote: “I noticed that there was no reference to cross-border terrorism in the draft.” Musharraf blamed Advani. Ajay Bisaria, a former Indian envoy to Pakistan, writes that the senior ministers shared one view and that the story of Advani stopping the draft alone is a distortion.

Kandahar

In December 1999, hijackers took Indian Airlines flight IC-814 to Kandahar in Afghanistan. They demanded the release of 36 prisoners, the coffin of a militant and 200 million dollars. A team of Indian officials led by Ajit Doval of the Intelligence Bureau negotiated in Kandahar.

According to the statement of the External Affairs Minister to Parliament, the Crisis Management Group in Delhi received its instructions from the Cabinet and the Cabinet Committee on Security. The government rejected the first demands. In the end it released three prisoners, among them Masood Azhar, in exchange for about 160 hostages.

Thirty-Six Jets

On April 8, 2015, Foreign Secretary S. Jaishankar described the talks on the Rafale fighter as “discussions under way between the French company,” “our Ministry of Defence” and “the HAL which is involved in this.” The talks concerned 126 aircraft under a tender from 2007. Two days later in Paris, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced that he had asked President François Hollande for 36 Rafales, “the ready-to-fly models.”

In May 2015 Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar said: “I have saved the cost of 90 Rafales.”

Who Signs Off

In Indian defence purchases, the size of the contract decides who approves it. In 2016 the Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses described the levels. The Defence Secretary could approve up to 300 crore rupees and the Defence Minister up to 500 crore. “All cases with negotiated cost of INR 500 to 1,000 crore require the approval of the Finance Minister.” Larger cases went to the Cabinet Committee on Security. The figures may have changed since.

Waiting for Delhi

On December 24, 1999, hijackers took over Indian Airlines flight IC-814 and brought it down at Amritsar. The plane stood there for about 45 minutes, according to Sarabjit Singh, then the head of the Punjab Police. Other accounts give 40 or 74 minutes. Then it took off again, and the hijackers flew on.

In Delhi, the government’s Crisis Management Group was deciding what to do. “No one was willing to take a decision and in that confusion no instructions were passed on to Punjab Police,” A.S. Dulat later said. According to ThePrint, officials in the Amritsar control room waited for instructions from Delhi that never came.

The Remote Control

Bal Thackeray, the founder of the Shiv Sena, never held public office. “Whoever becomes chief minister, the remote control will always be with me,” he told the journalist Rajdeep Sardesai in 2004, when asked whether his son Uddhav would be the candidate for chief minister.

The One-Line Resolution

On May 14, 2023, the newly elected Congress legislators in Karnataka met to choose their leader. They “passed a one-line resolution, moved by Siddaramaiah and endorsed by Shivakumar and other leaders at the meeting, authorising Kharge to name the new CM,” The Tribune reported. Mallikarjun Kharge was the party’s national president.

Siddaramaiah and D.K. Shivakumar were the two contenders for the post.

The Slip of Paper

On December 12, 2023, the BJP’s newly elected legislators in Rajasthan met to choose the Chief Minister. Their choice was Bhajan Lal Sharma, a first-time member of the assembly. His name was proposed by the former Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje.

According to Newslaundry, the party’s observer, Union minister Rajnath Singh, had handed Raje a slip of paper that allegedly carried the new Chief Minister’s name.

The Head of the Family

Under Hindu law, a Hindu Undivided Family is headed by a senior member called the karta. The karta, usually the oldest man, makes decisions on economic and social matters for the whole family. The other members are coparceners.

In 2016 the Delhi High Court ruled that the eldest woman of such a family can also be its karta. The court reasoned: “If a male member of an HUF, by virtue of his being the first born eldest, can be a Karta, so can a female member.”

The Mother Decides

After the death of Dhirubhai Ambani, his sons Mukesh and Anil fought for control of Reliance, one of India’s largest business groups. On June 18, 2005, the split was announced by their mother, Kokilaben Ambani. The dispute had drawn her out of her role as a homemaker.

“I have today amicably resolved the issues between my two sons, Mukesh and Anil,” she said. Mukesh took Reliance Industries. Anil took the energy, finance and telecommunications companies.