The Service Headquarters function as attached offices to the Ministry of Defence, working under archaic and outmoded rules of business

It is an accepted fact that when a government faces crises over which there is a public clamour or which is causing embarrassment, it resorts to establishing a committee to examine the issue which delays the decision making and once the urgency dies down, public memory being short, then the issue is buried quietly. Quite often even the observations on committee’s recommendations by various agencies are orchestrated through media so that the uncomfortable reforms are held in abeyance. This has been experienced so often that it is no surprise that the key reforms recommended by the Kargil Review Committee on February 23, 2000, and subsequently the Group of Ministers (GoM) on February 26, 2001, remained unaddressed. The two key reforms not implemented are, the lack of integration of the Ministry of Defence (MoD) with service professionals and the non- establishment of the post of a Chief of Defence Staff (CDS). In the meanwhile, in the past decade or so, many more problems have cropped up which have adversely affected the operational readiness of the armed forces for future conflicts. The silver lining is that a new government has taken over and the dynamism of the new Prime Minister is well known and therefore even in the defence sector we expect some urgently needed reforms to take place if we have to face future defence challenges confidentally. We are also fortunate that the Defence Ministry has been given to a senior and a highly versatile Minister who can bring about the urgently needed reforms.

Naresh Chandra Committee

By mid-2011, the large number of legal complaints in the various courts against the MoD on pay and allowances discrepancies, defence procurement scams, deteriorating civil-military relations and the increasing threat perception from our adversaries China and Pakistan, led the UPA II to establish the Naresh Chandra Committee (NC), a 14-member task force on national security on June 21, 2011, to suggest ways to revamp of defence management in the country. The main objective behind the constitution of the committee was to contemporise the Kargil Review Committee’s Report. Besides, the task force was also asked to examine the state of country’s border management.

The Committee submitted its report to the government on August 8, 2012. The Prime Minister Manmohan Singh turned it over to the National Security Council (NSC) Secretariat for processing its recommendations and presenting them to the Cabinet Committee on Security. Manoj Joshi, a well-known journalist who writes on strategic and security issues and who was member of the NC, had this to say in his article “Shutting His Ears to Change” on November 22, 2013, in Mail Today: “This writer was a member of the task force, but has had little or no official information on its status since then. But the bureaucratic grapevine suggests that the report is on its way to meet the fate of other similar endeavours: get shelved.”

The salient recommendations of the Naresh Chandra Committee included a large number of issues and among them were the two issues affecting the efficient functioning of the Services and the MoD namely, appointing a permanent Chairman of the Chiefs of Staff Committee and promotion of synergy in civil-military functioning to ensure integration, to begin with, the deputation of armed services officers up to director level in the MoD and then progressively up to joint secretary’s level which had been also recommended by the earlier Arun Singh Committee on Defence Expenditure. Even the Standing Committee for Defence of 14th Lok Sabha had ‘strongly’ recommended the change in MoD staffing patterns to ensure armed forces were “intrinsically involved in national security management and apex decision-making process”. The recommendations were rejected by the MoD and the Government.

The Inefficiency of the MoD

The inefficiency of the MoD in the past few years can be visualised from the letter written by General (Retd) V.K. Singh, the former Chief of Army Staff (COAS), to the Prime Minister on March 12, 2012, which was deliberately leaked to the media. It highlighted that the mission reliability of mechanised vehicles was poor, the artillery was obsolete and inadequate, air defence was antiquated, armour was unreliable due to regular barrel accidents caused by mismatch between indigenous barrels and ammunition, night-fighting devices were insufficient, aviation corps helicopters needed urgent replacements, and holdings of all types of missiles, anti-tank and specialised ammunition was critically low. Thus pointing out the lack of preparedness to fight and win wars on the battlefields of the 21st century. Thanks to an indifferent Defence Minister and an uncaring bureaucracy the situation still remains more or less the same.

Anit Mukherjee wrote an interesting piece in The Hindu on July 17, 2012, bringing out the ills of the MoD and the Services. He wrote: “Most informed analysts know about the deficiencies stemming from higher defence mismanagement, but the leak of General V.K. Singh’s letter to the Prime Minister made this public. The other controversies around civil-military relations revealed the crisis of confidence and trust deficit between military officers and civilian bureaucrats in the Ministry of Defence. Union Defence Minister A.K. Anthony admitted as such when he referred to the ‘bitterness’ between them.”

Reforms Needed

While many reasons can be attributed to above state of affairs— including the controversies over the past Pay Commissions, structural problems that exist at the national level, inefficiency if Defence Public Sector Units (DPSUs), inability of our R&D to provide modern weaponry to our armed forces, inability to fast track weapon procurement arising from quaint and archaic rules and regulations and mind sets in the bureaucracy and the military along with logic defying rules of business.

We feel that the major reforms needed are as under:

• Integration. The integration of the Ministry of Defence with the Service Headquarters. The latter function as attached offices, working under archaic and logicdefying rules of business. There is no representation of the uniformed community in the Ministry of Defence. Thus it lacks professional competence in the business in which they are placed. Cross attachments are vital for efficiency.
• Rules of Business. The current Rules of Business names the Defence Secretary as the person in charge of operational readiness of the armed forces. This is an outlandish rule and needs to be amended at the earliest. A collective responsibility involving the Defence Minister and Service Chiefs must be established. This should lead to additional financial powers for the three Chiefs and their accountability.
• Theatre Commands. Within the services the absence of theatre commands with joint staff in which the services themselves are integrated for planning and conduct of operations along with an ineffective Chiefs of Staff Committee have led to a system of planning for operations, service wise. The so-called operational “jointness” practised by the Services, is operationally inefficient and encourages single service planning, a culture which prevails till today.
• Higher Defence Structures. Successive governments have neglected to reform the higher defence structures and their linkage to the National Security set up of the country. The Chiefs of Staff of the three services function outside the national security planning structure.
• National Security Strategy. The lack of a well articulated National Security Strategy is another area of concern. This compels the services to establish their own concepts and doctrines in this regard which may at times contradict the national security policies.
• Revamp DRDO and its 50 labs, five defence PSUs, four shipyards and 39 ordnance factories. Encourage the private sector to enter arms manufacturing in a major way. India, embarrassingly, still imports 65 per cent of its military hardware and software.
• Procurement Procedures. Refine the cumbersome arms procurement procedures to fast-track acquisitions and reduce corruption. Projects for new submarines, howitzers, fighters, helicopters, night-fighting capabilities, air defence weapons and small arms acquisitions have been stuck for years due to politico-bureaucratic apathy.
• Infrastructure in the East and Mountain Strike Corps. Ensure faster raising of the new Mountain Strike Corps as well as hastening of military infrastructure like the long-identified 73 strategic roads and 14 railway lines, helipads and advance landing grounds, along the Line of Actual Control to counter China.
• Create New Commands and Boost Andaman and Nicobar Command. Boost force-levels and infrastructure at Andaman and Nicobar Command, apart from creating three new tri-Service commands for space, cyber and special operations.
• Nuclear Triad. Complete India’s nuclear weapons triad by faster induction of nuclear submarine INS Arihant and its follow-on sister ships with long-range missiles. Land and air legs are already in place with Agni ballistic missiles and fighter-bombers.
• Defence Budget. Hike budgeted defence expenditure to at least 2.5 per cent of GDP, instead of letting it wallow around just 1.7 to 1.9 per cent, for adequate military modernisation and requisite deterrence against both China and Pakistan. Cut the flab in the armed forces, improve the teeth-to-tail ratio.

Conclusion

It seems that our MoD is not willing to accept any change. They wish to retain their powers, perks and privileges. They seem quite happy with the inefficient, incompetent, and wasteful system that has developed since independence and is still prevailing. Reforms suggested by the Kargil Review Committee or later the Naresh Chandra Committee have been similarly rejected on frivolous grounds and it is unfortunate that the political hierarchy has been accepting this negative approach of MoD towards National Defence. We hope that Modi government shows firmness of resolve to institute the long pending reforms in the MoD.