The new defence minister must give some thought to defending India against a two-front aggression, says Ramesh Ramachandran
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f Manohar Parrikar wants unvarnished advice, he need not
look beyond the late Brajesh Mishra, who served as the national security
adviser to former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee. Or he could remind
himself of what George Fernandes, who was defence minister in the Vajpayee
Cabinet, used to think aloud about bureaucratic inertia and its impact on
defence preparedness. For, what they said then remains valid today.
In the winter of 2009, Brajesh Mishra sought to impress upon an
audience comprising some of the best minds in the Indian strategic community
that a disproportionate emphasis on economic growth could blindside New Delhi
to the threat posed to it by the possibility of a two-front war with China and
Pakistan. The government-of-the-day’s single-minded focus on achieving and
maintaining a near double-digit annual growth would be rendered meaningless if
it is not able to defend itself from external aggression on two fronts, was his
blunt advice to decision-makers.
Mishra looked at defence preparedness against China, for
instance, in conjunction with acquisition of military hardware and
capabilities. In his estimation, if the gap continued to widen, militarily and
economically, between India and China and it got reflected in Chinese
adventurism or belligerence along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) that
separates the two countries, then it behoved of India to take pre-emptive
measures. The recent skirmishes along the LAC only seem to reinforce some of
Mishra’s concerns.
Another of Mishra’s worries was a perceived lack of defence
preparedness, which he attributed in no small measure to the ghost of the
Bofors scam, which discouraged successive governments from making timely
military purchases. “(Decades) after Bofors, the burden is still on the
shoulder of politicians (and they are) afraid to take decisions,” this writer
recalled Mishra as saying — a view that has been endorsed by some of those who
were privy to the shortage of military hardware during the 1999 Kargil conflict
with Pakistan.
Mishra’s remarks echoed George Fernandes’, who famously said that
the fear of attracting allegations of corruption was to be blamed for the
delays in procurement of military hardware. A Tehelka report (Defenders of the
indefensible, 25 September) quoted Fernandes as saying in 2003, “There is
hardly any official in the ministry who would like to put his signature for
anything that has to be purchased. He would like to postpone it. He would like
to put it off. He would like to do whatever he has to do because he thinks that
is the best way for him to survive.” He amplified the political class’
anxieties by saying that “the court is not going to listen to that and if a
political activist or minister does it, then the man who is his rival or opponent
is not going to accept that. It is a terrible world”.
Former army chief Gen (retd) VK Singh, who is now the
minister of state with independent charge of the statistics and programme
implementation ministry in addition to being the minister of state in the
ministries of external affairs and overseas Indian affairs, had presented a
grim picture of India’s defence preparedness and cautioned the UPA government
to act without delay.
Parrikar’s predecessor Arun Jaitley had sounded a note of
caution, too. He warned the defence ministry apparatus against being “very
defensive” and asked it to shed its conservatism in the acquisition of weapons.
Jaitley sought to make amends for the erstwhile UPA government’s questionable
track record on defence acquisitions by okaying certain key projects worth
several tens of thousands of crores, such as the indigenous development of six
submarines at a cost of Rs 50,000 crore, a Rs 3,200 crore deal for the purchase
of Israeli anti-tank guided missiles, procuring surveillance aircraft from the
Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) and inviting the Indian private sector to
participate in the production of transport aircraft. In the Union Budget,
Jaitley had raised the cap for foreign direct investment (FDI) in defence from
26 percent to 49 percent in order to give a boost to the indigenous
defence-industrial manufacturing base. Jaitley had hoped that not only would
the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) turn into a
manufacturing hub but regular meetings of the Defence Acquisition Council could
go a long way towards speeding up the purchases, besides giving a fillip to
Modi’s “Make in India” slogan.
For his part, Parrikar has said that it would be his
endeavour to fast-track defence purchases. Top on his list could be to take the
multi-billion dollar medium multi-role combat aircraft (MMRCA) project to its
logical conclusion by okaying the purchase of 126 French Rafale jets for the
Indian Air Force. “I have realised that if someone properly heads the defence
ministry, then we need not worry about Pakistan and China. We are strong
enough… we have to build our capability over the next two-three years,” he said
upon his return to Goa after assuming the office of defence minister.
Parrikar attributed the delays in some acquisitions to
vested interests or corruption. For the metallurgist from the Indian Institute
of Technology, Mumbai, restoring the delicate civil-military balance would be
an important task, too.
