“Army chief’s letter bomb” screamed TV anchors when leaked contents of a
letter from the Army Chief of Army Staff General VK Singh addressed to the
Prime Minister reached the media. In his letter he had made ten points to show
that the army’s fighting capability. The Army Chief listed ten points which
have rendered the army ineffective to face threats to national security. All of
them related the lack of timely procurements of armaments and ammunition to the
troops.
The reaction to this national security fiasco in parliament was typical.
Many members including the Right and Left, spent more time on the danger posed
to national security by the leak, than its damaging contents. Some members like
the Rashtriya Janata Dal leader Lallu Prasad Yadav, who was no paragon of
probity, wanted the Army Chief to be sacked summarily for leaking the letter,
without even bothering to find out who did it. His cohorts from UP and Bihar of
the Samajwadi Party and Janata Dal (U) echoed the same sentiments.
Even experienced minister like Vayalar Ravi dismissed the letter as out
pouring of a “frustrated” man, who lost the case to get his date of birth
corrected. Congress party said national security was a sensitive issue and
cannot be loosely discussed. Even the BJP which smells blood in every issue
that affects government performance, only sniffed the peripheries of the issue.
The leak of the letter addressed to the Prime Minister comes at a
particularly inconvenient time for the ruling coalition, which is getting tired
of playing to the whimsical tunes of its regional partners. Only the day
before, it was put on the defensive by a media interview by the Army Chief. In
his interview he claimed he was offered Rs 14 crore bribe by a retired General,
acting on behalf of a vehicle manufacturer to clear 600 substandard trucks
destined for the army. Already the Army Chief had not made him popular
with the ruling coalition when he approached the Supreme Court after his
abortive attempts to get his date of birth corrected failed.
As a result of unholy combination of these controversies, General VK
Singh’s damaging assessment on battle readiness of the army, runs the risk of
not being taken seriously by not only the parliament but also nation. This is
evident from the clichéd assurance the defence minister AK Antony gave in
parliament when the contents of the Chief’s letter triggered a storm in
parliament. He said the government was committed to ensure the safety and
security of the nation.
Deficiencies in army’s weaponry, armament and ammunition have been nagging
ulcers eating into our national security preparedness for a long time. Every
war – from the 1962 war with China to the 1971 war to the Kargil conflict had
glaringly highlighted such deficiencies faced by troops at the battle front.
But beyond appointing committees to go into them we seem to be making no headway
to improve the situation.
Lack of knowledge of matters relating to strategic security and failure to
appreciate the real time needs of ever-changing technology requirements of
modern battlefield make a mockery of our obsolete defence procurement procedure.
For defence procurement the Services concerned has to generate General
Staff Quality Requirement (GSQR) for the item. This takes into consideration
the battle scenario say in the next few years. Once GSQR is projected to
Defence Ministry the first of the 7-step Indian defence procurement process
starts. It is easy to understand why Stephen Cohen and Sunil Das Gupta of
Brookings Institute in their book “Arming without Aiming: India’s military
modernization” call this acquisition method as “convoluted” because enough
opportunities for corruption and delay are built-in the process.
The cumbersome process has been taking anything from five to ten years to
be completed, during which developments in weapon technology make the procured
weapon system out of date, if not obsolete. As these deals involve billions of
dollars the final decision is affected by diplomatic pressure from
manufacturing nations.
Apart from this, after the bitter experience of the Bofors scandal, fear of
allegations of corruption cropping up in defence deals has made the bureaucracy
involved in the process overcautious. This fear in tandem with the Defence
Minister AK Antony, who has sworn to weed out corruption on his charge at the
helm, has seen the black listing of a dozen major armament suppliers of the
world at various stages of the process adding to the delay. Despite the Defence
Minister’s repeated assurances to speed up the process there had been no
visible improvement on the ground.
Previously such delays were affecting procurement of modern missiles and such
sophisticated weapon systems, aircraft and naval ships. However, now Army’s
battle readiness is slowly being crippled as demands for even basic essentials
of infantry weapons and artillery weapons have been pending for over a decade.
For instance infantry battalions are still not equipped with lighter rifles
capable of better performance; we need about two million rifles to completely
re-equip and replenish this basic arm. Similarly Army’s demand for heavy
machine guns has also not materialized.
Strictly speaking, the Chief was pointing out nothing “new” in his letter
to the Prime Minister. Earlier he had made a presentation on the same points to
the Defence Minister; later a similar presentation was to a parliamentary
committee also. Apparently the General shot off the missive to the Prime
Minister as the last resort of an outgoing Chief who wanted desperately to make
a change. And the Defence Minister was aware of the letter.
It is a shame that our defence research and development organization which
has scored impressive achievements in rocket and missile development has not
been able to fill in our requirements in some of the basic weaponry
requirements. A major reason for this is the inordinate delay in developing a
proto type and from proto type to final product.
Indian industry is quite capable of manufacturing many of the weapons and
weapon systems. However, there is a political mental block as manufacture of
arms, ammunition and equipment has been reserved for the public sector. These
public sector units suffer from all the ailments of public sector – highly
unionized workforce laying down norms, poor productivity, perennial failure to
keep up manufacturing schedules, inadequate investment and poor quality of
output. Though much has been said about public-private partnership Indian
industries have not been given their due share in the ever growing defence pie.
According to Ashley Tellis, Carnegie Endowment scholar, Indian defency
policy suffers from internal defence thinking. He says: “civil-military
relations restrain military modernization and this is not accidental but
deliberate.” By and large this appears to be a correct observation, if we
see the parliament’s totally futile reaction of targeting the Army Chief for leaked
letter rather paying attention to its damaging assessment on national security
readiness.
This seeming lack of interest in national security affairs has become part
of the political culture where national security has been treated as a holy
cow, allowed to fend for itself. That is why the response to defence
requirements has been to allocate more funds rather than critically scrutinise
and reform our systems..
After 60 years of independence we should be ashamed to be world’s largest
importer of weapon systems. It is clear there is disconnect between the rapid
progress the country has made in various fields and defence production.
We need to integrate defence requirements with national development, so
that the progress made in science and technology as well as industrial progress
is gainfully utilized to meet the needs of armed forces. In a welcome
step, the union government has constituted the Naresh Chandra Committee in July
2011 to review national security. Considering the competing demands of ever
growing developmental needs, and defence expenditure, it would be worthwhile to
examine this aspect while evolving the security doctrine.
It seems yet another salvo has been fired by the
irrepressible General VK Singh with one more allegation of corruption in high
places. According to the latest media report, the Army Chief has requested CBI
to look into the allegations contained in a letter written by Trinamool MP
Ambika Banerjee in May 2011 alleging widespread procurement scams committed by
Lt General Dalbir Singh when he was the Inspector General of the Special
Frontier Force (SFF). It is significant that General Dalbir Singh, currently
commanding 3 Corps, is in line to succeed Lt General Bikram Singh designated as
the next COAS. The MP is also reported to have named army officers including a
former Army Chief who are alleged to have received crores of rupees in
kickbacks in defence procurements.
It is clear General VK Singh is in a combative
mood. He appears to be determined to root out corruption as best as he could in
the few days he is in service. In the bargain he has antagonised the political
class, in particular the ruling coalition, which is rocked by corruption
scandals one after the other. Some retired Generals are unhappy with Army
Chief’s conduct. They talk of its demoralising effect on the armed forces. They
are forgetting it is time for catharsis in the armed forces. Both the defence
ministry and the armed forces are as much accountable to the people as any limb
of the government. They cannot hide under the garb of secrecy to allow a
corrupt system to go unchecked lest corruption compromises national security.
Political class is unaccustomed to a man in uniform
questioning the validity of their existing systems. This class having built a
cosy set up with existing systems are not going to allow the General’s forays
unchallenged. We can see the storm signals going up for such action; but before
any precipitate action is taken, parliamentarians should ponder over the issues
the General has raised. I have some simple posers to parliament members who got
so worked up because of the General's letter to the Prime Minister:
·
What is the core issue affecting national security?
Leaking of the letter or ilI-equipped army which its chief says cannot perform
effectively?
·
If they sack the General, will it improve national
security? Will it remove the glaring deficiencies and weaknesses he has pointed
out?
Politicians have a bloated self-image as guardians
of democracy. It is good to remember General VK Singh, despite his frontal
assault in true Rajput style, has raised fundamental issues because he values
the democratic system as much as politicians do.
The nation should be careful how it handles the
issue as storm signals are up on national security. It is time for some serious
introspection from all of us.
Courtesy: South Asia Analysis Paper no.4986 dated March 30, 2012
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