CNS Admiral Nirmal Verma retires
Neelam Mathews Aug 11, 2012 I kept this as a weekend read. The grand old man of the Navy will soon be retiring and will be remembered for his candid, forthright, no-nonsense talk. At his final press conference on Aug 7, remarking on a publication that called him reticent, he said: “I ask myself, ‘Is it too late for an old sea dog to learn new tricks?’. …. One thing that I can assure you is that the Navy has not been short of significant accomplishments over the past three years.” Some excerpts: I took over as the Chief of the Naval Staff, nearly three years ago, on 31 Aug 09.Through a nautical perspective, I would say we were then in the close wake of two defining events in the maritime domain; the 26/11 attacks on Mumbai and the sharp increase in Piracy off the Gulf of Aden which was spreading dangerously close to our Lakshadweep and Minicoy islands. In my first message to the Navy I had emphasized the need to focus on both ‘consolidation’ and ‘sust...