2. Pokhran: Once we had a blast in the arid wastes of Rajasthan and Buddha Smiled, our formulators of strategy were too busy feeling good and patriotic to worry about any future machinations of the Pakis. That's they all thought that they had the ultimate deterrent to another conflict in the sub-continent. The Chagai reply should have made them think a bit, but that was too much to expect, right? Rather more fun to bask in the spurious glory of being a nuclear power.

3. The Pakistan cricket team: They drubbed India in the Asian Test Championshio match and the one-day series that followed and the Pakistan Army got mightily jealous of Wasim Akram and gang. So they had to do something to upstage the cricketing upstarts.

4. George Fernandes: Our Defence Minister. He spent his time dealing with the more important issues relating to national security like scalping the poor former Chief of Naval Staff Admiral Vishnu Bhagwat. But you can't really blame him for not having paid attention to those irritating intelligence reports coming in from Kashmir. After all, there were more important matters at hand, like providing support to pals like those insurgents trying to destabilise regimes in regimes elsewhere.

5. Sonia Gandhi: Hey, this really mattered. The Government had to defend the country against the depredations of the Italian intruder, who was trying to infiltrate our body politic. So it lined up its biggest guns to try and shoot her down. So who really cared if there were about a 1000 Pakistanis trying to get into Kargil, Drass and Batalik. None of them were trying to become the Prime Minister of the country!!

6. Jayalalitha: The Government was desparately trying to take cover from the volley of missiles launched by the Southern bombshell. That really kept them pre-occupied and the forces were placed on alert to warn them of any sign of anti-national activity (read withdrawing support) from Poes Garden.

7. Murli Manohar Joshi: They kept Joshi stashed in Delhi, ensconced in his seat at the Human Resource Development Ministry. Intelligence operatives claim that India's best defence against any crossborder threat would have been send the former Bharatiya Janata Party president on another mission to hoist the Indian flag in Srinagar. The last time he did so, they say, the ISI and Pakistan Army were so busy rolling around in hysterical laughter that they couldn't think up any diabolical schemes.

8. The Defence Ministers' Club: This exclusive body was busy but not in trying to arrive at a consensus strategy to keep the sanctity of our borders preserved. They had other plans to hatch. So there we had George Fernandes, Sharad Pawar and Mulayam Singh Yadav cosying up to each other and regularly exchanging notes. So what keep them so involved? Yadav was obsessed with sinking the Congress even if it meant crossing over to the BJP camp, even palling with Bal Thackeray. And Pawar, better recognised for his horizontal position whenever Sonia Gandhi arrived on the horizon, suddenly stood up for his rights. Interesting that Pawar's discovery of an ethical position conveniently coincided with the tantalising hints from the saffron camp about supporting a certain Maharashtra strongman from Baramati for the Prime Ministership. In the process, the Government lost a golden opportunity at conferring with a noted expert on issues relating to taking over of large expanses of land and of putting that knowledge to good use in Kargil.

9. Yashwant Sinha: There was no way that the Government could acknowledge the possibility of a conflict, even a warlike situation. After all, our Finance Minister had made no such provisions in his Budget. And he would have found it impossible to further juggle with figures that already defied the laws of economic logic.

10. Mickey Mouse: Doesn't' have anything to do with the conflict but the super rodent's inclusion in this list imakes as much sense as the Indian Government's inability to ward off a definitely pre-emptable ``war-like situation'' that has already claimed the precious lives of more than 170 Indian soldiers.