We have come a long way since last May. The Indians haven't. So, who has drawn the right lessons?

Militarily, last May, Islamabad hammered New Delhi. The war was won pretty much the first night when we shot down their Rafales like hunters shoot fattened partridges. The Indians never really recovered from that aerial bludgeoning. A year on, '6-0' remains the headline of the war. The rest is fine print.

But fine print too has lessons. The Indians understood – though are yet to acknowledge – the humiliation of their air force was not an accident, but an outcome of bad leadership, bad policies, and bad employment of good equipment. The Indian air chief should have been fired. Or he should have resigned. The fact that he is still in uniform, and still pretending his jets were not shot out of the dark sky, goes to show the level of professional and moral degradation within the Indian high command. It is, frankly, embarrassing.

It took the battered Indians a while to recover from the shellshock. They responded with missile strikes on various bases. Independent and credible accounts of the four-day war suggest these missiles did do some damage, but nowhere near what the Indians crow about. The lesson for us is to beef up our air defences. I am sure that lesson has translated into concrete action this past year.

Even at that time, there were some in Pakistan who advocated that........

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