Issue
Vol 20.4 Oct-Dec 2005 | Date : 06 Jun , 2011
India’s Internal Security Environment, 2020
India is a rapidly developing country with a GDP growth of seven percent. It has a huge reserve of technical manpower and strong liberal political culture, a youthful population more than half of which will be below 30 years of age in 2020. It also has strong and apolitical armed forces. Our present concerns, which may persist in future are as under:-
- The present rate of population growth is 1.6 percent. It is imperative to bring it down to one percent by 2020-2025.
- The political culture in the country has deteriorated over the years. Communalism, sectarianism, regional parochialism, and sub-nationalism are on the rise. There is growing criminalisation of politics and a culture of ‘vote banks’ has taken root. Politicisation of the bureaucracy and the police, is well-established. The Armed Forces have, so far, been able to remain insulated from politics. Unless these evils are overcome, in 2020, we may have a nation whose internal security environment will be extremely unhealthy.
- Distributive justice with regard to sharing of revenues and the fruits of development is an imperative, if radical left movements, currently active in the country, are to be eliminated by 2015 or so.
- The separatist movements in the North-East and J & K must be amicably resolved.
- Black money and drug trafficking must be put to an end as they not only ruin the economy but also corrupt the youth.
Attention to the above areas of concern will enable India to achieve desired internal security by 2020. Let us now identify the threats and challenges India is likely to face in 2020.
Threats and Challenges to India : 2020
Military Threats
- India is not likely to face a military threat from the USA or China because of its strength, both military and economic.
- A medium level military threat may arise from Pakistan if it fails to make adequate economic and political progress, or, its leadership passes to radical elements, or, the country as such, fails and lapses into a state of anarchy.
- Bangladesh may pose a very low level threat if it decides to encourage demographic ‘aggression’ by using its over-sized armed forces in support.
- Threats of non-state groups armed with WMD could become a reality. They could be acting on their own initiative or, at the behest of a sponsor nation. This dimension of WMD would warrant war-like response from us.
Challenges. Apart from military threats, a number of non-military challenges may have to be faced by our Army in the 2020 time frame. These are as follows: –
- Human resources of appropriate quality may get drawn to the more lucrative civilian sector. The terms and conditions of service and satisfaction levels of personnel, must be made more attractive. We should also enroll more short service personnel than regular cadres to reduce pension liabilities and for better career management of officers.
- Funds allotted to the Armed Forces should be sustained at a level of three per cent of GDP for at least 12 to 15 years so as to ensure requisite modernisation and making good existing shortfalls.
- Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) must be upgraded qualitatively and top quality scientists should be inducted into it. Rightfully, their expectations of pay and research facilities will be high. These must be met.
- Private sector participation in defence R & D and development of complete systems by them, must be facilitated. Government should fund their defence research projects and give them guarantees of sizeable orders to encourage their partnership with the DRDO.
- Scientific and technical manpower will be eagerly sought by other countries. To overcome this ‘brain-drain’, we should improve the working conditions and research facilities in our country.
- The IT driven revolution in military affairs requires that the Army ‘manages’ these changes in a systematic and smooth manner. We need to create an integrated force working in an ‘unified battle space’; seamless communications; extensive exploitation of IT with excellent ‘cyber security’; top quality space based and terrestrial surveillance systems and fully operationalised C4I2 systems. This convergence of various technologies and capabilities will bestow the forces with much enhanced force-multiplier benefits through Network Centric Warfare (NCW). We have a long way to go in this regard.
- Internal contingencies of various types could retard or block the Army’s effort to achieve optimal development in the next 15 years. We need to be prepared with suitable contingency plans to overcome these ‘drag’ factors.
Extreme Contingencies. In the unlikely event of our prognosis being grossly in error, the following extreme contingencies could occur :-
- The USA, in a bid to prevent China from superseding her as the superpower, provokes China to a war with possible use of nuclear weapons.
- China, in frustration with the US-India Axis and to teach India a lesson, may declare war on us.
- Pakistan may join China in the war against India, or, allow to be used as a proxy to support China in a ‘holding’ mode.
Rate this Article
Please wait...
LOL
nice joke indian army !
you can’t hide by your crimes – 1994-1996 – 1998 Remember your officers were involved in raping Kashmir Womens.
Remember 1984 operation Blue Star – Killing innocents Sikhs and attacked the Sikh Shrine
you are a joke indian army – your training is weak.
That’s an excellent and analytical write up sir, hope our politicians and bureaucrats whose vision are limited just around their pockets wake and realize in time!