Arm the Services

All through the painfully protracted and unquestionably nastiest election campaign, there was just one speech that expressed some concern for national defence and security. It was delivered by Narendra Modi, then the Bharatiya Janata Party’s prime ministerial candidate and now a strong and decisive Prime Minister.

This makes it rather ironic that he has not yet appointed a full-time defence minister but has entrusted the vital portfolio of defence to finance minister Arun Jaitley as an “additional charge” for the time being. Not a man to dilly-dally, Mr Modi must have some serious reason to delay the decision.

However, so great is the importance of the ministry of defence (MoD) and so urgent its tasks ahead that the Prime Minister should live up to his reputation of overcoming all obstacles and give the country without further delay a defence minister with a grasp of complex security issues and a high enough stature to be able to deter those who love playing ducks and drakes with national security.

Let us face it.

Our security system does not merely have some deficiencies and gaps that can be rectified and filled by a few minor reforms.

The bitter truth is that everything about the national security system is in the deepest possible mess, be it management of higher defence, the military’s virtual exclusion from the decision-making process, lack of inter-services coordination, the shocking shortage of weapons, equipment and ammunition needed by the three armed forces because of the inadequacy of domestic defence production so shameful that 67 years after Independence we have to import 70 per cent of the military hardware we need.

Nothing short of a thorough overhaul of the system would do.

What lends a sharper edge to this lamentable situation is that despite its total inaction, even the Manmohan Singh government was not unaware of the urgent need for national security reforms.

Indeed, it had appointed a Task Force, headed by Naresh Chandra, a former Cabinet Secretary who had earlier served as defence secretary, to suggest what should be done.

For two years from May 2012 onwards, the Task Force’s recommendations were before the government. It did precious little about them. A few days before its departure, however, the

Congress-led Cabinet took it upon itself to reject the Task Force’s main recommendation that needs to be spelt out in perspective.

In all mature democracies the three defence services are integrated and function under a Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) or chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff. In this country there has been constant opposition to this concept by both the politicians and the IAS-dominated civilians of the MoD, who have been lording over the military.

At one time, especially when the military took over in Pakistan and Burma (now Myanmar), there was a fear of the “man on the horseback” here, too. Its persistence today is absurd because Indian democracy is firmly established and the Indian armed forces are manifestly apolitical.

As far back as 2001, it seemed imminent that India would at last opt for the CDS. The Kargil Review Committee, headed by strategy guru, the late K. Subrahmanyam, had recommended this and a Group of Ministers, presided over by L.K. Advani, had fully endorsed it.

Yet, the then Prime Minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee, held up a decision after consulting former President, R. Venkataraman, and former Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao, both of whom had earlier served as defence minister in Congress governments.

During its intense labours, the Naresh Chandra Task Force also discovered that a recommendation to install a five-star CDS might not be acceptable. So it suggested a “step in the right direction”: have a four-star general, admiral or air chief marshal as a permanent chairman of the Chiefs of Staff Committee with a fixed tenure of two years, instead of the most senior of the three chiefs briefly chairing the committee in addition to running his own service.

The Task Force had also recommended that the permanent chairman of COSC would not interfere with the operations of the services, each of which functions separately, but would look after all inter-services matters, including the Strategic Command. As some kind of a parting kick, however, the previous government rubbished this sensible suggestion.

My original intention was to request the incoming defence minister to reverse this unwise decision of the ousted government on his/her first day in office. But that would be pointless. Why start with an intermediary step?

The case for integrated services under a CDS is foolproof. So let the new defence minister appoint one within the first 30 days rather than 24 hours.
Within about six months the imperative of integrating the headquarters of the three services with the MoD should also be completed. This would put an end to the nonsensical pattern of each Service Chief commanding his Service and doing little else.

The Service Chiefs should be a part of the government, participate in decision-making, and cease being mere heads of the MoD’s “attached offices”. Wars must be fought by tri-Service Theatre Commanders.

To borrow words from Admiral (retired) Arun Prakash, a former Navy Chief and a leading strategic analyst, the military has to be “unshackled” from the bureaucracy.
There is urgent need also for rapid strides in defence production. This requires a bigger role not only for our own private sector but also foreign direct investment in our defence industries.

However, the proportion of FDI should be decided flexibly from case to case. The much hyped 100 per cent FDI, which the defence minister is considering, would be needed in very few cases.

Finally, the previous government had grandiloquently announced acceptance of the long-neglected legitimate demand of serving and retired officers and men for “equal pension for equal rank” but did not implement it.

Happily the President’s address to Parliament indicates that this would soon be done.