Indian Defence Review

The Indian Scene

At the receiving end of a vicious geo-political gangsterism, India is obliged to maintain the world’s fourth largest armed forces – even as her millions struggle to live under abject conditions. The situation is exacerbated by her near-total dependence on war-material imported at excruciating costs. Truly therefore, it is obligatory of the nation’s governing establishment to shape her military institution in a manner that not only secures her national interests, but in so doing, make every penny of her defence investments count. Disconcertingly however, the situation is quite the opposite. Let us see as to why it is so.

One, the defence sector in India depicts characteristics long irrelevant, wherein each of its components function in cocoons of their comfort environment, meeting up only when it just cannot be avoided. To illustrate, each of the three services are committed to their own brand of war-doctrine, data networks, information warfare architecture, logistics – nearly every aspect in fact, even the staff duties. Going further, each service is smug in propagating its primacy in national defence, the other two being assigned to peripheral roles! No doubt, in the era of joint warfare this is an absurd disconnect. Besides being a burden on the exchequer, this affliction retards the application of true ‘Revolution in Military Affairs’ (RMA).

Two, not confined just to the services, the instinct of indulgence envelops the entire realm of the Defence Ministry. Thus even if they exist to attend to the military’s requirements, defence research, industry and estates are run according to charters that may not be in consonance with what the armed forces seek; contrarily, in many instances, these venture managers land up undermining the armed forces’ cause! Very well known, this aspect needs no elaboration.

Three, in the comfort era of post-1971 War, the nation’s infrastructural ventures seem to be in oblivion of their mandated strategic responsibilities. Thus irrigation, highways, railways and power projects are planned in isolation from security considerations. This is a lapse that the nation can ill afford.5

Four, the focus being enticed by glamorous range of weapons, equipments and drills, the intellectual aspect of strategising is discussed but rarely; when discussed, it remains shrouded under a cloak of phoney confidentiality. Contrast this with the volume of discussion, debate and experimentation that modern militaries carry out – with professionals past and present participating. Obviously, therefore, introspective and perspective joint strategising, therefore, cannot be expected from the parties so ensconced.

These are debilitating and costly infirmities in our national defence planning. An apex body is, therefore, needed to assist the Government in streamlining the defence policy and to apportion tasks and resources to each of its service components.

Charter of the CDS

Having established that a purposefully mandated institution of CDS is obligatory to tune-in the Indian military structure according to the national objectives within an affordable fiscal regime, we may now venture to consider the major aspects of its charter.

The foremost charter would be the advisory role in the Government’s formulation of the ‘National Security Strategy’, the current ‘Raksha Mantri’s Directive’ having become irrelevant in the contemporary context. Next, it would be to involve in inter-departmental guidance and integration of defence oriented public and private ventures in implementation of the defence policy.

As already discussed, the CDS would be the prime mover of strategising for joint-warfare, formulation of joint war-fighting doctrine, tri-service force-structuring, joint-training and overall force-modernisation. The practice of inter-service cooperation not being enough in contemporary warfare, the CDS would need to foster true ‘jointmanship’ in the nation’s armed forces, cutting down on redundancies and foster a regime of inter-dependency and inter-operability among the three services. It is so that more than the necessity of nuclearisation, there are wider responsibilities that the CDS would need to undertake.

Today, in the absence of that institution, these crucial responsibilities lie unattended, much to the detriment of the nation’s military security.

Affliction of Half-measures

We have seen that defence planning is shaped by complex and incongruous factors, and that requires an apex body of military professionals to perform the role of interface between the abstract theology of military strategy and the nation’s politico-economic compulsions. Truly, that body has to perform beyond prejudice to conceptualise, guide, monitor and control the nation’s military institution as an integral component of the Government’s policy-making establishment. These are the ordinations which impart salience to the case for creation of an establishment of the CDS.

At the Government’s attempts to fulfil the need, confabulations have veered around many options. Needless to state, these are proposals that are in contravention to the fundamental idea, each motivated by partisan inter-service, intra-ministerial turf-protection agenda, duly iced over with wariness of disturbing the comfort of an entrenched, if anarchical, system. One suggestion is to appoint a ‘Permanent Chairman of the Chiefs of Staff Committee’, who behind a facade of equal status but little authority is expected to remain chair-bound in a toothless committee.

Another idea is to occupy the CDS with some pretentious charter of control over such diffused organisations as the Strategic Forces and the Andaman and Nicobar Command, and little else. These are options contrived to undermine the institution of CDS as it had been done to the now defunct Defence Planning Staff and the asphyxiated Integrated Defence Staff, the purpose being to deflect the proposition from challenging the licence presently enjoyed by the military as well as civilian defence bureaucracy. Diversionary urge is also manifested when the issue is mired by the supposed likelihood of, one, the CDS assuming partisan tendencies to override the system, and two, linking it with establishment of integrated theatre commands to the ostensible detriment of single-service independence. No doubt, these protestations are unfounded. If Finance Commission, Planning Commission or various regulatory bodies have not gone off the tangent, there is no scope for the CDS to do so. Further, even when tri-service commands eventually coalesce, the Service Chiefs would remain as celebrated as before, the sole change being that the CDS would fill up the void of a state appointed ombudsman or moderator of armed forces matters.

Pandering to group afflictions over national interests thus, our nonplussed political leadership finds it convenient to freeze the proposition.

Time to Act

It will take years to streamline the archaic system of higher defence management in India. Meanwhile, trapped in the complexities of the geo-political adversities, India’s compulsion of fostering cost-efficient security is rising by the day. However, in a trend converse, our political leadership has not even attempted, let alone succeed, in marshalling the military institution to the requisite level of efficiency. Further, it has been unable to make the fiscal allocations count, adopting instead a simplistic expediency of imposing ad hoc budgetary constraints which further exacerbate imbalance in force-modernisation. In the context of national security, that is a road to disaster.

Institution of a body of military professionals to participate in defence policy-making at the apex level, duly empowered in advisory as well as management roles, is a call of strategic wisdom. This call must be attended to with alacrity; the institution of the CDS being the inaugural step towards that end.