Tomorrow: Fight At The Top

Tomorrow, an exclusive LiveFist report on the ugly battle of professional egos at the top echelons of DRDO.

11 thoughts on “Tomorrow: Fight At The Top”

  1. Before you write this piece, I was wondering if you could give me the name of ANY company where atleast 3 change of guards has taken place and no professional egos ruling the roost has taken place.

    Is that not there in your present/past and future companies? Name one govt institution which doesnt have it? Hell, even the army for all its professionalism saw bickerings in 1960’s and recently saw how others egos come to haunt DEAD people(Manekshaw)?

    So am I saying it is good? I didnt say that. But welcome to the real world from the dream world you are in.

    Ravi

  2. Are you doing a piece which says Mr. X is stopping from Mr.Y from doing this becoz of ego. Then Please dont. I would appreciate if you could talk of what projects are stopped in what phases and what could “also” be the reasons for the blocking apart from ego and then whether the reasons are genuine, whether it was a case of simply the other part of top brass prioritizing something else which they feel is more important? With limited funds in hand, do you believe that these priorities are right. In short, I am asking for attention to detail, instead of generalization.

    Ravi

  3. >> In short, I am asking for attention to detail, instead of generalization.

    You hit the bull’s eye. I was saying this from day one i started commenting here. I was waiting to see how Shiv realised what we were commenting in this piece and you busted the tigger, anyway.

    When We/I see so much vigour in targetting DRDO, whereas so much things are happening in other sectors, why i see no blogs from these major journo’s/bloggers, dont know.

    For example, there is suicide case of young women capitain. reason murmured is issue with higher officers. did anyone of these blogs made any cursory statement abt this. Or, did they try to find out want went wrong for a captain who was trained to face odds by the army given her life so cheaply ?

    As one said, DRDO is like J&K Raido station tower for target practice by Pak artillery to Indian journo’s. Probably, they are honing their skills, who knows..

    Joe

  4. ravi and jo, i agree with both your points, but i think it is ironically typical of the drdo mentality that you both criticise the story even before it has been presented — and your (ravi) criticism is that ego battles happen in all organisations. is that a reason that an ego battle in drdo should not be exposed? definitely not, IMHO. how can you say something should not be written about drdo sinmply because the same is not said about the same thing happen in other places. that notion reeks of the very obfuscation that the media accuses drdo of. secondly again IMHO, ego battles in an organisation like drdo should be looked at much more seriously than other agencies that you talk about. they have huge commitments to the country, and the fate of programs or projects should not be hijacked by personal animosities especially at the top echelons as aroor says he will write about. many can guess who he is talking about, but will have to see whether it is the same one. and lastly, i think the professional personal battles at the top of the mod, armed forces have been saturatedly reported for years, so there is no question of no attention being paid to them. example, vishnu bhagwat, army successions etc.

  5. “avi and jo, i agree with both your points, but i think it is ironically typical of the drdo mentality that you both criticise the story even before it has been presented — and your (ravi) criticism is that ego battles happen in all organisations. is that a reason that an ego battle in drdo should not be exposed?”

    Anon, thats not what ravi and Jo are saying. They are saying that this is a targetted approach by Shiv on DRDO. If its happening everywhere but you are selectively reporting only from one organization then in essence you have an agenda. If Shiv was neutral along with reporting DRDO problems he would be reporting similar problems for others too. So he is welcome to report these issues in DRDO as long he reports others too.

  6. twees, i agree. but if i remember correctly aroor has written about battles of succession etc in the army and iaf as well. recently he did quite a nice column on fali major’s succession and the underlying emotions of it. i agree that he has singularly targeted drdo but my humble opinion is that fact shouldnt remove from the issue at hand, if at all there is an issue. anyway guess we have to wait and see what he dishes out for us this time!! i am young and have been with drdo for three years now (and was definitely irked by aroor’s series in express, which had quite a few loopholes), and i know what egos in the organisation can do for morale. believe me, it is as ugly as it can get, because here jobs are secure and professional egos are inflated to epic proportions, much to the frustration and anger of people around who just want to work sincerely and go home at the end of the day. if what i am predicting aroor will write about is correct, it is a hot and flaming topic of debate and discussion within drdo for the last three to four months and involves the battle between sa to rm and one of the CCs. let us see.

  7. anon,

    First..you havent grasped my post fully.

    I’m all ears to the story. But, given the precedence,what i’m saying is “dont beat around the bush and pass ur opinions as final verdict, but give something in details with proper facts”

    Second thing is there are so many important things happening around to worry abt and which needs immediate media attention. ex. as i said, suicide of a women captain. No reason, why she commited suicide. All i heard is issues with senior office. Issues means what…2. Sivraj patel stating Pakistan is not to blame for the terrorism in India. Wht to say, dont know, one has to laugh or to cry hearing this..a biggest joke of this century…So wht i am saying is give attention to important things.

    I’m taking exceptions to two things in your post.

    1. “typical of the drdo mentality” : what makes you to say this..Why ur unnecessarily coining an epithet. How you come to the conclusion that it is “drdo mentaility” and tell us what is that “drdo mentality”

    2.“it is as ugly as it can get, because here jobs are secure and professional egos are inflated to epic proportions, much to the frustration and anger of people around who just want to work sincerely and go home at the end of the day.”

    I dont know who u r..All i can say is, ur statement implies, u dont have much exposure to industries.

    Joe

  8. giving an ex of wht i’m trying to say..

    >>professional egos are inflated to epic proportions

    dont give opinion abt whether the proportion is epic or not. leave that one to us by giving proper facts..if ur mentioning it as epic then explain how it is so with facts. otherwise, it look like story written by school-goers and not from a professional.

    Joe

  9. Dear anon,

    You are putting words in mine and Joes mouth without we saying them. I atleast never said dont do the piece. I asked him only to not take a particular line of approach. There is a big difference. If you cant see it…. I am stopping because I dont want to call you names.


    they have huge commitments to the country, and the fate of programs or projects should not be hijacked by personal animosities

    Dont you have commitment to them? Dont you have the commitment not to slander them without proper facts. Shiv himself agreed that he did a 10 piece “research” paper on drdo without a single word directly from them. and do you support that?

    sorry Shiv, for the above, but its a fact. I am sick of people who call for their rights without the duties. These people ask for commitment to them, but a slight question about their commitment, they completely run off.

    Shiv,
    All I am asking is there are two kinds of approaches which are professional.
    i) Give the facts, no comments nothing. No talk of how the drdo is bad etc. i.e. in other words say, that I have incomplete facts and so I cannot make a judgement.
    ii) Give the facts, give comments. Now every single bit of research should be in your hand. I hope you understand that there is a difference between a journalist and a spy analyst.

    For Eg: Dont say Arjun’s not operationalised in 20 odd years. There are different phases in a project. I will talk about only one phase- the requirement study phase. When was the requirement study done. How long did it take. Did the army take a good look into the future and decided on it? Did the drdo take into consideration their level of expertise. Talk about when the funds were agreed/issued finally by the Govt. Were the amount of funds assured/released at various stages actually represent the level required or just enough that the research already done was not thrown away but no new research can be done? Were there any major changes in requirements later and if so what was the effect of the changes made to the overall project. How much of work had to be thrown out and how much work was added? The above questions whenever requirement changes have to be asked again. Mind you these are only a few of questions required for analysing only the requirement phase of arjun. You can easily understand the level of questions required for design phase and for other phases. Instead of analysing/ reporting these, shiv says simply arjun has to be the longest running tank project ever. Yaaaa,…….

    if one simply passes the judgement before even a single witness comes to the stand… there will be statements like the above.

    Unfortunately as much as I see his blog, Shiv passes the judgement first and then tries to fit in facts.

    The difference between a great person and ordinary person is attention to detail without disturbing the final aim.

    Ravi

  10. i think it is ironically typical of the drdo mentality that you both criticise the story even before it has been presented

    For your information, anon, I dont work in drdo. As much as I know, none of my relatives are/were in drdo. So the question of “drdo mentality” or whatever it is has not touched me.

    Ravi

  11. i am young and have been with drdo for three years now

    Read this part later, so some comments in previous post might not be applicable to you, if both the anon comments were made by you.

    Yes, a huge ego battle might be going on. I am not disputing that. I am asking Shiv only to delve deep into it and not just scrape the surface.

    Ravi

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