Need for overhaul
Source: By Harsh V Pant: Deccan Herald
There is a new government in power and there are expectations that it will be able to give India’s moribund defence policy a new direction. These hopes have been heightened by some of the right noises that Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his defence minister Arun Jaitley have been making since assuming office.
The focus on defence in this year’s budget is a welcome change from the perfunctory increases in the defence allocation over the last several years. It underscores that this government remains committed to military modernisation which was losing traction under A K Antony, without doubt the worst defence minister India has ever had.
The attempt to do away with anomalies in pensions paid to ex-servicemen under the One Rank One Pension policy and the announcement of the construction of a war memorial and a museum is heartening and should go a long way in assuaging the concerns of the defence community. The increase in FDI cap to 49 per cent from the present 29 per cent, though welcome, is unlikely to be a game changer. It is a welcome first step but hopefully this will be complemented by other moves to make the defence PSUs in India more accountable.
And ultimately, it all comes down to setting a strategic direction for Indian defence. That’s where the focus should be from now on. The prime minister can start by promptly appointing a full-time defence minister, allowing Arun Jaitley to focus solely on finance. Traditionally, it’s the glamorous issue of resources that tends to garner all the limelight. But the Indian defence sector suffers from some fundamental vulnerability and unless they are rectified, no amount of resources is going to make a difference.
But what has really shocked the nation are the revelations that the main reason why India did not dare use the military option vis-à-vis Pakistan post-Mumbai was the reluctance of Indian army’s leadership to go to war with an inadequate and obsolete arsenal. For a nation that has been one of the world’s major defence spenders over the last few years, having embarked on an ambitious plan to modernize its largely Soviet-era arms since late 1990s, and is acknowledged as the world’s fourth-largest military power.
But the lack of any credible military option against Pakistan has brought into sharp relief the fundamental weaknesses of Indian defence policy. India’s then prime minister Manmohan Singh had declared in his address to the nation in the aftermath of the Mumbai attacks that his government “will go after these individuals and organisations and make sure that every perpetrator, organiser and supporter of terror, whatever his affiliation or religion may be, pays a heavy price.”
He raised the stakes without realising that he doesn’t have very strong cards to play. The nuclear aspect is important because it is part of the reason that elements within the Pakistani security establishment have become more adventurous. Realising that India would be reluctant to escalate the conflict because of the threat of it reaching the nuclear level, sections of the Pakistani military and intelligence have pushed the envelope on the sub-conventional front, using various terror groups to launch assaults on India.
Kargil conflict
It was the Kargil conflict of 1999 that first exposed Indian vulnerabilities as Pakistan realised that India doesn’t have the capability to impose quick and effective retribution. Then Indian army chief had famously commented that the forces would fight with whatever they had got underlining the frustration in the armed forces regarding their inability to procure the arms they needed.
Only because the conflict remained largely confined to the 150-km front of the Kargil sector did India manage to gain an upper hand by throwing the Pakistanis out of its side of the LoC. These crises forced the government to act and India saw a rise in its defence acquisitions for a while. But soon the old mindset took over and political compulsions overshadowed the nation’s defence requirements.
When the UPA-II came to power in 2004, it ordered investigations into several of the arms acquisition deals of the previous government. A series of defence procurement scandals since late 1980s have also made the bureaucracy risk averse, thereby delaying the acquisition process. Meanwhile, India’s defence expenditure as a percentage of the GDP had been declining and large part of the money was being surrendered by the defence forces every year given their inability to spend due to labyrinthine bureaucratic procedures involved in the procurement process.
Pakistan has rapidly acquired US technology over the past eight years under the garb of fighting the ‘war on terror’ while the modernisation of the Indian army has slipped behind a decade. Given the public outcry after the Mumbai attacks, the government did take some short-term measures. But the underlying vulnerabilities of the Indian defence policy remain in place.
Unless effective institutions are put in place to impart long-term strategic thinking to defence and security issues, India will continue to face similar problems that it had faced in the past. It was hardly any surprise, therefore, that after the terrorist attacks in Mumbai which were as grave a national security failure as some of the previous crises such as the Kargil fiasco, the Indian strategic elites returned to the same old debates about what kind of institutional reforms are needed to prevent such tragedies from recurring. Moreover, the temptation after every crisis is to have new structures, if only to demonstrate that ‘action’ is being taken, but the existing national security organisations remain under-funded and understaffed.
It’s not clear if the new ones will be any more effective in the absence of an overarching institutional overhaul. The Modi government has once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. It should seize the moment and re-define the contours of Indian defence policy.
There is a new government in power and there are expectations that it will be able to give India’s moribund defence policy a new direction. These hopes have been heightened by some of the right noises that Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his defence minister Arun Jaitley have been making since assuming office.
The focus on defence in this year’s budget is a welcome change from the perfunctory increases in the defence allocation over the last several years. It underscores that this government remains committed to military modernisation which was losing traction under A K Antony, without doubt the worst defence minister India has ever had.
The attempt to do away with anomalies in pensions paid to ex-servicemen under the One Rank One Pension policy and the announcement of the construction of a war memorial and a museum is heartening and should go a long way in assuaging the concerns of the defence community. The increase in FDI cap to 49 per cent from the present 29 per cent, though welcome, is unlikely to be a game changer. It is a welcome first step but hopefully this will be complemented by other moves to make the defence PSUs in India more accountable.
And ultimately, it all comes down to setting a strategic direction for Indian defence. That’s where the focus should be from now on. The prime minister can start by promptly appointing a full-time defence minister, allowing Arun Jaitley to focus solely on finance. Traditionally, it’s the glamorous issue of resources that tends to garner all the limelight. But the Indian defence sector suffers from some fundamental vulnerability and unless they are rectified, no amount of resources is going to make a difference.
But what has really shocked the nation are the revelations that the main reason why India did not dare use the military option vis-à-vis Pakistan post-Mumbai was the reluctance of Indian army’s leadership to go to war with an inadequate and obsolete arsenal. For a nation that has been one of the world’s major defence spenders over the last few years, having embarked on an ambitious plan to modernize its largely Soviet-era arms since late 1990s, and is acknowledged as the world’s fourth-largest military power.
But the lack of any credible military option against Pakistan has brought into sharp relief the fundamental weaknesses of Indian defence policy. India’s then prime minister Manmohan Singh had declared in his address to the nation in the aftermath of the Mumbai attacks that his government “will go after these individuals and organisations and make sure that every perpetrator, organiser and supporter of terror, whatever his affiliation or religion may be, pays a heavy price.”
He raised the stakes without realising that he doesn’t have very strong cards to play. The nuclear aspect is important because it is part of the reason that elements within the Pakistani security establishment have become more adventurous. Realising that India would be reluctant to escalate the conflict because of the threat of it reaching the nuclear level, sections of the Pakistani military and intelligence have pushed the envelope on the sub-conventional front, using various terror groups to launch assaults on India.
Kargil conflict
It was the Kargil conflict of 1999 that first exposed Indian vulnerabilities as Pakistan realised that India doesn’t have the capability to impose quick and effective retribution. Then Indian army chief had famously commented that the forces would fight with whatever they had got underlining the frustration in the armed forces regarding their inability to procure the arms they needed.
Only because the conflict remained largely confined to the 150-km front of the Kargil sector did India manage to gain an upper hand by throwing the Pakistanis out of its side of the LoC. These crises forced the government to act and India saw a rise in its defence acquisitions for a while. But soon the old mindset took over and political compulsions overshadowed the nation’s defence requirements.
When the UPA-II came to power in 2004, it ordered investigations into several of the arms acquisition deals of the previous government. A series of defence procurement scandals since late 1980s have also made the bureaucracy risk averse, thereby delaying the acquisition process. Meanwhile, India’s defence expenditure as a percentage of the GDP had been declining and large part of the money was being surrendered by the defence forces every year given their inability to spend due to labyrinthine bureaucratic procedures involved in the procurement process.
Pakistan has rapidly acquired US technology over the past eight years under the garb of fighting the ‘war on terror’ while the modernisation of the Indian army has slipped behind a decade. Given the public outcry after the Mumbai attacks, the government did take some short-term measures. But the underlying vulnerabilities of the Indian defence policy remain in place.
Unless effective institutions are put in place to impart long-term strategic thinking to defence and security issues, India will continue to face similar problems that it had faced in the past. It was hardly any surprise, therefore, that after the terrorist attacks in Mumbai which were as grave a national security failure as some of the previous crises such as the Kargil fiasco, the Indian strategic elites returned to the same old debates about what kind of institutional reforms are needed to prevent such tragedies from recurring. Moreover, the temptation after every crisis is to have new structures, if only to demonstrate that ‘action’ is being taken, but the existing national security organisations remain under-funded and understaffed.
It’s not clear if the new ones will be any more effective in the absence of an overarching institutional overhaul. The Modi government has once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. It should seize the moment and re-define the contours of Indian defence policy.
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