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A decision taken on the spot at a district airport can shape national security for decades, argues former Special Chief Secretary KBS Sidhu in a new open-source anthology
India’s security can no longer be left to any single ministry, service or agency, because a choice made by a district administration, a bank or a software vendor can ripple out into a national crisis.
That is the argument of Geography Determines History; History Determines Geography, a 269-page collection of writings by KBS Sidhu, IAS (Retd.), former Special Chief Secretary, Punjab, released today as a free PDF.
KBS Sidhu draws on his own experience as Deputy Commissioner, Amritsar. In the spring of 1993 he dealt with two hijacked aircraft that landed at Amritsar within four weeks, and neither was allowed to take off again. Six years later IC-814 was allowed to leave the same airport, and the Kandahar exchange followed.
The book’s 49 pieces, subtitled Tactical Choices, Strategic Consequences: A Geostrategic Compass for India, from the Indus to the Internet, cover: the Indus Waters Treaty and the case for abrogation by statute; Operation Sindoor and the Mecca Accord; the India–Pakistan air balance and India’s turn to the sea; the TAPI pipeline; drugs and gangsterism in Punjab; a new section on digital sovereignty, chips and cyber security.
“Geostrategy is now multidisciplinary,” KBS Sidhu writes in the preface. “Unless one sees snippets and kaleidoscopic images from every quarter, one cannot really understand the world we are living in.”
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