Letter from an Aam Fauji to Would-be Prime Minister
Air Vice Marshal Manmohan Bahadur,
V M , (Retd)
February 4, 2014
New Delhi
Dear (would-be) Prime Minister!
‘Peace is a period of cheating between two periods of fighting’ wrote American journalist Ambrose Bierce in the nineteenth century.
India’s five wars in sixty years of independence make ita war every decade, a pretty short period of cheating!
And, since our neighbours keep us occupied through ingenious means ranging from outright kinetic action to helping prop-up insurgencies, Indians deserve to know your views on how your government (post the national elections in May this year) plans to address issues of national security; they are as important as roti, kapda, makaan and corruption, which the “aam aadmi” is rightly agitated about.
India, at least modern India, lacks a sense of history and with it follows the fact that we somehow don’t learn from it; some term it as lacking a strategic culture.
But there are so many pressing issues that these arguments cannot hold back a discussion, and as a corollary, leave India’s security issues to knee-jerk reactions post a triggering event.
So, let’s forget the strategic part (which is not correct itself) and talk about dangers staring us in the face.
Let us begin with your strategy to cope with an event that will happen very soon this year and which portends diverse hues of threats for India’s security - the American withdrawal from Afghanistan.
Analysts are talking about a likely move of “unemployed” insurgents to Kashmir, which will upset the gains made so far.
How do you plan to interact with the Afghan government which may be under siege by the Taliban and under coercive threat from Pakistan to toe its line?
The huge economic investments of China in Afghanistan have major security implications and Pakistan is making all attempts to make India irrelevant in Afghanistan’s reconstruction.
China’s flexing of its military muscle on India’s borders and its Eastern seaboard is breakfast news every dayand its feverish militarisation has its zooming defence budget becoming three times that of India’s.
It has obtained naval base facilities in our complete neighbourhood through its “String of Pearls” strategy and very soon will become a two-ocean nation when its road from Sittwe in Myanmar to Kunming gets completed, giving it access to the Bay of Bengal.
The defence industries of India and China were on a par in the mid 1970s after which the Chinese graph took off. Today China’s defence industry has reached the stage of disruptive innovation where truly home-grown armaments, like their J-20 stealth fighter, will enter service.
They are just a few years away from producing a fighter aircraft jet engine, and when that happens we would be leagues behind, possibly still crowing about the Tejas.
What happened to our indigenisation plan based on the much-trumpeted defence offsets?
So dear sir/madam, can we do a China with our defence industry?
Of course we can, if there is a concerted and well-thought-out plan. After all there was the indefatigable T N Seshan, who put all parties “on track” and made sure that the electoral system regained the glory that the founders of the Constitution dreamt about; and recently there was a guy named Vinod Rai too!
Then, what is missing that makes us import 70 per cent of our defence needs, even as our conventional capability continues to dwindle?
It’s a leadership that is sensitive to the fact that rifles, aircraft, ships et al, made indigenously, are as important as nuclear weapons.
In fact, in the nuclearised environment that we find ourselves in, the conventional capability is what gives a country the edge to enhance deterrence.
Our nuclear and space programmes have succeeded because both departments have always been directly under the PM, ensuring that political direction is never missing.
What is missing in the defence sector is understanding and acceptance of the fact that there is a void of similar political stewardship,not the grandiose statements of all political parties and the innumerable committees that Naresh Chandra and Kelkar et al have lent their names to.
Their reports have wasted many reams of paper as we are going to import even the humble rifle for our jawan very soon, what to talk of the MMRCA!
“Vision” is an acute sense of the possible, dear would-be helmsman!
The “aam aadmi” wants to know what your vision to make India get back its strategic autonomy is so that theIndian Air Force doesn’t have to worry about keeping its MiGs flying because the Russians jack up their prices, the Navy doesn’t have to fret about keeping its Sea King helicopters airworthy owing to an embargo on American spare parts (as happened after Pokhran) and the Army doesn’t look around wondering where its next artillery gun would come from.
The people who should worry are the foreign governments and arms manufacturers who are in the driver’s seat in the procurement chain.
They must worry because with your vision our moribund Defence Public Sector Undertakings should start producing “real” made-in-India products.
They must worry about the threat of the Indian private sector displacing them when it starts strutting the made-in-India tag in the world’s arms bazaar.
They must worry that with your vision of synchronising the running of the defence and foreign ministries, our cogent outlook to realpolitik would get us a place on the top table in world affairs.
And now some innate queries -- how do you plan to make the defence forces an attractive career or does one await another Kargil to fire our youths’ imagination?
And pray, what are your views on instilling jointness in the three services, without which all well-meaning plans would not be able to deliver their real punch in the event of a crunch?
Finally, dear would-be Prime Minster, a peep into your vision please, about how a jawan should feel on retirement, after giving his youth and life in the service of the nation!
Today, the “aam fauji”, who is also an “aam aadmi”, appears not too happy.
To paraphrase the visionary Churchill: a jawan is a living being: look after him or he would sulk; if that happens, it would be a telling comment on your vision.
Yours sincerely,
An “aam fauji”
(The author is a Distinguished Fellow at the Centre for Air Power Studies, Subroto Park, New Delhi)
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RELATED PLEASE :
http://ajaishukla.blogspot.in/2014/02/does-military-threaten-democracy.html
Does the military threaten democracy?
Ajai Shukla
4th Feb 2014
Business Standard
Business Standard
At the emotional high point of President Barack Obama’s State of the Union speech last Tuesday, he turned to Sergeant First Class Cory Remsberg, an army ranger seated next to Michelle Obama. The president invoked Remsberg, blind in one eye and riddled with shrapnel from a roadside bomb on his tenth combat deployment in Afghanistan, as a reminder of the price paid to uphold America’s values, Remsberg’s father helped him to his feet. The audience rose and cheered, many cheeks wet with tears.
Two days earlier, on Republic Day, India’s leaders had paid homage to our martyrs.Prime Minister Manmohan Singh drove in a heavily protected convoy down Rajpath to lay a wreath impassively at what serves as a national war memorial. Later, President Pranab Mukherjee, without a flicker of emotion, handed a medal and certificate to Karunam Venkatam, the 67-year-old father of Sub-Inspector K Prasad Babu, an Andhra Pradesh policeman who died last April fighting Maoists. Mr Venkatam, who struggled not to break down, was clearly alone in his personal encounter with a patrimonial, uncaring state.
It is no secret that India’s political and bureaucratic class is oblivious to its armed forces, nor can one expect better from a governing class whose indifference to its starving and undernourished millions has been described in these pages as a crime against humanity. Still, the instinct for self-preservation alone should focus our rulers’ attention on the military’s dire financial and organisational state, which --- appallingly --- is due at least partly to the fear that too much nurturing and strengthening might turn the armed forces into a threat to our own corrupt elites rather than to those ill-disposed towards India.
Several articles in this newspaper (most recently, “Arms acquisitions languish without funds or coordination”, February 3) have highlighted the worrying state of military modernisation. This year the military got just Rs 2,955 crore for new equipment, while Rs 64,680 crore of the modernisation budget went on instalments for weaponry bought during previous years. Next year, there could be even less for new buys.
More funds would be welcome, but India’s fiscal position limits military expenditure. Yet it costs nothing to optimise expenditure by coordinating between the army, navy and air force. With the services competing, as organisations do, to build their respective empires, roles, responsibilities and capabilities are wastefully duplicated. Yet politicians and bureaucrats fear appointing a tri-service chief who could coordinate budgeting and long-term planning to curb wasteful expenditure.In 2001, a group of ministers (India’s strongest version of a committee) recommended appointing a five-star “chief of defence staff” or CDS, who would command all three services. In 2012 a warier Naresh Chandra Task Force recommended appointing a “permanent chairman, chiefs of staff committee”, or Permanent Chairman COSC --- a significantly less powerful, four-star, tri-service chief whose role would be limited to tri-service planning, long-term budgeting and acquisitions.
Yet, senior bureaucrats say they would never allow a tri-service chief, since that would concentrate too much power in the hands of a military commander. An insecure political class, with little knowledge of the military, has unquestioningly internalised the fear that a powerful, tri-service chief would threaten democracy. The last army chief, General VK Singh, bolstered this nonsensical argument by facing off with the government because of his desire for another year in office.
The politicians and bureaucrats miss the point that VK Singh could never have credibly threatened democracy. Army power is distributed amongst six field armies, each headed by a lieutenant general; a successful coup would require support from all six army commanders. There are five operational airforce commands, each with the firepower to stop a coup. The navy has another three operational commands. The idea that a rogue tri-service commander could subvert three service chiefs and fourteen field commanders is incredible and mischievous.
Indeed, the Naresh Chandra recommendation to appoint a Permanent COSC --- a fourth four-star general to supplement the existing three service chiefs --- diffuses, rather than concentrates, military power. Currently, the senior-most service chief, General Bikram Singh, ex-officio chairs the COSC. Appointing a permanent chairman would obviously lessen his power, while strengthening tri-service functioning.
To justify their inaction on appointing a tri-service chief, the last two governments --- the National Democratic Alliance and the United Progressive Alliance --- have both cited the need for “political consultations”.Since 2001, each time the prime minister’s office has enquired about this issue, the ministry of defence (MoD) has truthfully, and deceitfully, reported that there was no consensus. A former top bureaucrat once told me, “Stalling is easy because complete political consensus is impossible. As long as, say, the Khobragade Group of the Republican Party of India has not actively committed support, I can truthfully say we have no consensus yet.”
Stalling tri-service reform is a cynical disservice to every soldier, sailor and airman; to national security; and to those who pay the opportunity cost for our fiscal inefficiency in defence. It is ironic that one of the world’s most ineffective and self-serving bureaucracies, and a deeply corrupted political class, feel threatened by a military that is consistently cited as India’s most admired and respected institution.
Defence Minister AK Antony should see the writing on the wall: if he fails to appoint a tri-service chief in his last days in office, his (probably non-Congress) successor probably will. Mr Antony still has the time to do what is obviously right.
Defence Minister AK Antony should see the writing on the wall: if he fails to appoint a tri-service chief in his last days in office, his (probably non-Congress) successor probably will. Mr Antony still has the time to do what is obviously right.
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