It’s not a win-win option

The dilemma over military responses to the Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) attack in Pulwama that took the lives of 40 CRPF jawans is not new. India has been there and done that. Following the attack on Parliament House on December 13, 2001, India mobilised its entire army and threatened war for an entire year, but finally called it off.

After the Mumbai strike of November 26, 2008, PM Manmohan Singh sought military options, but was told that they were not quite prepared for the possibility of a larger war that may be triggered by a retaliatory strike.

And now, PM Modi has declared that the security forces have been given a free hand to decide the time, place and the mode of the future course of action, adding that this was an India with a new policy and practice.

What is new, in many ways, is the extent of public anger and the somewhat blatant efforts to make political use of the event.  Modi’s statements indicate that a strike is a question of when, not if.

An important factor that restrained India in 1992 (following the Bombay blasts) or in 2001 and 2008 is absent. The US played a major role in preventing an Indian retaliation, in the main out of concerns over Pakistan. Now, to go by the message being conveyed by the incendiary US national security adviser John Bolton is ‘go ahead’.

So, what will the new policy and action be?

First, the Prime Minister needs to understand that such things cannot be left to the security forces. Military action is, as Clausewitz put it, a continuation of politics by other means. In today’s post-nuclear era, when all-out war is not desirable, it is important to use the military instrument with great care, along with ‘a mix of diplomatic, economic and informational implements’.

More than ever, the present situation demands a careful mix of various means and strong political guidance and control. Just how this works was evident in the Indian response to the Kargil incursions. PM Vajpayee ordered the Army and later the Air Force in, but kept a tight control on them, ensuring a major Indian military and diplomatic victory. Not only were the Pakistani intruders pushed back, but also the international community internalised the notion of the sanctity of the Line of Control that divides the Indian and Pakistani forces in J&K. 

A lesser-known fact is that the Indian Navy took up aggressive positions in the Arabian Sea and threatened to blockade Karachi in the event of a larger war.

In the long term, many options are there, including a stepped-up covert war and even an economic one. India could up the ante in Afghanistan, or for that matter in the UN Security Council. But Modi also has electoral compulsions for quick and kinetic action.

Air strikes are the easiest. An IAF aircraft can launch a Popeye air-to-surface missile with a 340-kg warhead from Indian airspace and it can travel 70 km or so to a target across the LoC. India has longer range options with the air-launched version of the Brahmos missile that can travel 400 km with a 200-kg warhead.

The second option is an overland ‘surgical strike’. Again, to be effective, it must be sufficiently violent. The so-called surgical strikes of September 26, 2016, were not, because Pakistan was able to pretend they never occurred. More important, Rawalpindi was clearly not deterred because its cross-border attacks on India did not stop. Indeed, one took place two months later on Nagrota, the HQ of 16 Corps.

The problem is targets. In the surgical strikes, India took out a couple of huts being used as launchpads and killed their occupants. But using a 200-300 kg warhead for that would be overkill. It is not clear whether we have exact coordinates of larger facilities used by the Jaish. If we do target them, we would have to be sure that they are, indeed, Jaish targets, and then the IAF would have to ensure accuracy, because in the crowded South Asian terrain, a small error could lead to hundreds of non-combatants being killed.

Since the terrorists operate in small groups and stay in scattered facilities, identifying and targeting larger facilities inland and retrieving a commando group without getting entangled with the dense Pakistan army positions would be a daunting task.

Both these options are made with the presumption that India would seek to differentiate between the Pakistan army and the terrorists. Were India be willing to strike at Pakistani military facilities, we would be into an entirely different ball game. Make no mistake, the Pakistan army will retaliate against any deliberate targeting of its facilities.

If New Delhi decides to play that game it could well also order a blockade of Pakistani air and maritime space. India does not have to be able to enforce this directly, but the threat of being sunk or shot down would be sufficient for air and maritime traffic to be severely disrupted. But this would unleash a different dynamic and affect third countries, thus complicating the outcome.

Whatever the choices are, it is imperative that the Modi government ensure that they are tightly controlled and managed by the political authorities. The Army may have the freedom to decide the nature, time and place of the action, but the responsibility for the outcome will rest on the shoulders of those who wield the instrumentality.

Tribune February 19, 2019

China plays heavy metal tunes, world faces music

On the morning of 7 September, 2010, a Chinese trawler collided with two Japanese coastguard ships near uninhabited islands in the East China Sea that are claimed by both countries. When Tokyo decided to detain the fishing boat’s captain, Beijing hit back with a vengeance. It placed an informal trade embargo on all exports of rare earth elements to Japan, its main buyer. China controls 93 percent of this group of 17 minerals, and more than 99 percent of the world’s supply. They are used in making everything from cell phones to electric motors, batteries, aircraft, wind turbines, MRI machines, as well as advanced avionics and control systems of fighter jets.

The Chinese denied the move and lifted the ban within a week. Subsequently, Beijing reduced the export quota of these minerals by 40 percent, resulting in a skyrocketing of their prices. The US, EU and Japan took the case to the WTO which ruled in their favour.

China’s high-powered economic growth has made it a leading producer and consumer of minerals and metals found around the world. As China moves towards a consumption economy powered by a growing middle class, its demand for these elements, especially the rare earths, becomes even more voracious. And Beijing has not hesitated to use strategic minerals as an instrument of foreign policyThe world confronts two inter-related issues — first, Chinese demand could lead to a global shortfall of certain key minerals. Second, China could restrict the availability of minerals, particularly rare earths, of which it is a dominant producer or of which it has acquired control overseas.

The key player from the Chinese point of view is the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), their version of our Niti Aayog. But the similarity doesn’t extend far. Unlike the late unlamented Indian Planning Commission or its successor Niti Aayog, the NDRC has real teeth. Its major task is to formulate and implement strategies of economic and social development, to develop targets and policies, regulate financial structures and monitor the health of the economy.  It is also tasked with maintaining the overall control of important commodities, and formulate plans for the overall imports in relation to agricultural and industrial products and raw materials. It has to work out the utilisation strategies of these materials in relation to national plans, as well as manage the strategic reserves of the country.

While the NDRC provides tactical guidance and supervision, the everyday work is done through the newly established Ministry of Natural Resources and their instruments are the huge State Owned Enterprises (SOE) of the country.

In the last two decades, China established large scale refining and production facilities of aluminium, tantalum, and cobalt. Exploration for minerals within the country has intensified, though not at the level of Australia and Canada. Beijing has also encouraged its companies, especially the SOEs to expand into international markets and invest in strategic resources globally. The biggest investments are in oil, featuring the Chinese giants, the Sinopec, Sinochem, CNOOC and CNPC.

But Chinese companies have also invested heavily in other areas in companies in Australia, Canada, sub-Saharan Africa, Mongolia, Brazil, Peru, Chile, Laos, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Democratic Republic of Congo, Papua New Guinea, Myanmar, etc. According to one estimate, the accumulated stock of Chinese overseas direct investment (ODI) in 2013 was $106 billion, making mining the number two destination for Chinese ODI.

Last year, Tianqi Lithium acquired 24 percent shares in Chile’s SQM company, making it the second largest shareholder in a major producer of a metal that is used in electric vehicle batteries. China sold more than 750,000 electric cars, some 3 percent of the total, in 2017. Beijing wants to up this to 20 percent in 2025 and position China as the dominant player in the electric car market.

The Chinese ascendancy has alarmed the United States which, though, has an abundance of such minerals but has yet become 100 per cent import dependent. This is an outcome of the restrictive US policies in permitting the mining of these minerals.

As China and the US move into a phase of political and economic competition, the world could see an intensification of the battle for strategic minerals. We could see a disruption of the current markets, or temporary shortages or, for that matter, artificial escalation of prices affecting the other parties in the game.

Countries like the US and China plan for such eventualities and maintain specialised reserves to be used in times of crisis. The US has a strategic petroleum reserve and a strategic minerals reserve. China’s State Bureau of Material Reserve is part of the NDRC and has been around for decades. India now has started building a petroleum reserve, but in the strategic minerals game it will have to dig much deeper.

Firstpost February 14, 2019

Deadly Kashmir attack stems from flawed policies

The suicide bomb that killed 44 soldiers south of Srinagar in the northern state of Jammu & Kashmir is the most deadly single attack that Indian security forces have suffered since the beginning of the insurgency in 1990.

Comparisons are being made with the J&K Legislative Assembly attack in 2001 that led to the killing of 38 people. Both dramas saw a suicide bomber ram a car loaded with explosives on to a target. And both were orchestrated by the Jaish-e-Mohammad.

The terrorist group was created by Maulana Masood Azhar, a terrorist released by India in exchange for hostages on board an Indian Airlines flight that was hijacked to Kandahar in 1999 by four Pakistan-based terrorists. Azhar has been based in Pakistan carrying out attacks on Indian targets through Jaish-e-Mohammed.

The main difference was in the Legislative Assembly attack the suicide bomber was a Pakistani, Wajahat Hussain, while Thursday’s bombing between Lethpora and Pulwama allegedly involved a local JeM recruit, Adil Ahmad Dar, who joined the outfit last year.

Despite the deep currents of Sunni radicalism in Kashmir’s militancy, suicide bombings have been rare. But there has been no dearth of Pakistani “fidayeen” or suicide attackers carrying out such missions in the Valley.

The only other local known to be suicide bomber is Afaq Ahmad Shah, a Class 12 student who blew himself in a car while attacking the 15 Corps headquarters in Badami Bagh in Srinagar in May 2001.

Jump in youths joining militants

This incident follows the steady rise of local recruits drawn to militants. From the mid-1990s to 2015, militancy was a Pakistani affair in terms of those fighting in the Valley. But this has changed over the last three years, especially in south Kashmir. At the same time the infiltration of Pakistani militants, mainly from the Jaish-e-Mohammad group allegedly involved in the attack yesterday, continues.

Suicide bombers are usually psychologically vulnerable or young people groomed to undertake such missions by older people highly skilled at their task. Given the three-decade history of violence in the valley and recent flare-ups, there is no shortage of potential recruits for suicide bombing. What is worrying security officials is that people in the state may be grooming terrorist bombers.

The attack near Lethpora, 30km southeast of Srinagar, will compel Indian security forces to ramp up security. Analysts have said it was lucky the attack did not involve more gunmen, as casualties could have been greater because as many as 2,500 army and paramilitary personnel were moving at the time in different buses in a huge convoy.

Jaish-e-Mohammed was also responsible for an attack in Uri, west of Srinagar, that killed 19 Indian Army soldiers in September 2016. But that involved attackers who came from across the border 10km away.

The latest attack could be classed as a militant exercise as it targeted the paramilitary. The distinction is important because the Indian policy in Kashmir describes such acts as terrorism. Elsewhere, however, a terror attack is only one that targets civilians.

A damaged bus is towed away after the deadly attack on the paramilitary convoy in Kashmir on Thursday. Photo: AFP

Has government strategy inflamed insurgency?

Questions are now being asked about the Modi government’s counter-terrorism strategy in Kashmir. The government began ‘Operation All Out’ aimed at finishing the insurgency, but this appears to have reinvigorated the insurgency.

Former chief minister Mehbooba Mufti said the number of local youths joining the militancy dipped to 16 in 2013 from 54 in 2010. But it went up to 66 in 2015 before reaching 88 in 2016, 126 in 2017 and 170 in 2018. Last year saw the deadliest militancy in a decade with 238 militants, 86 security force personnel and 37 civilians killed in the state, according to the Ministry of Home Affairs.

However, government spokesmen insist that the militancy is on its last legs.

The Modi government has a complex problem in dealing with Kashmir. The BJP’s forbear — the Bharatiya Jana Sangh — has strong roots in Jammu and its raison d’etre, as it were, was opposition to any kind of special status for Jammu & Kashmir. That hinders its capacity to enter into negotiations with separatists in the valley.

The second is that in invoking muscular nationalism, the Modi government feels compelled to take a hard line in dealing with militants in the north. The “surgical strikes” in September 2016, in response to the attack in Uri, were shallow events that took out a number of militant launch pads.

But they failed in their primary mission — to deter Pakistan from carrying out similar attacks in the future. Within two months, JeM militants struck again in Nagrota, the HQ of the 16 Corps, killing two officers, five soldiers and three civilians. And the government has done little as Pakistani attacks continued, through to 2018 when the Sunjuwan camp at the outskirts of Jammu was attacked, killing 11 soldiers and one civilian.

The concept of deterrence rests on two legs: first, that an adversary knows that any attack will be met by immediate retaliation and, second, that the deterring party has the capacity to hit back.

The Modi government went out of its way to publicize retaliation through the so-called surgical strikes in 2016, but failed miserably to follow up the action because it seems to lack the capability to follow through. “Surgical strikes” often do not work out like the Bollywood version that Modi has been reveling in of late. There are high risks involved in any operation across the Line Of Control, and with an election looming, this may prove more daunting than expected.

AsiaTimes February 15, 2019

What Are India’s Options, With China Still Vague on Masood Azhar?

The suicide bomb attack that killed around 40 CRPF jawans in Pulwama is easily one of the most serious attacks the security forces have faced in Jammu & Kashmir since the beginning of insurgency in 1990.

Comparisons are being made with the J&K Legislative Assembly attack in 2001 that led to the killing of 38 people. Both attacks seem to have used the same modus operandi – having a suicide bomber ram an SUV loaded with explosives on to the target.

Both attacks have been claimed by the Jaish-e-Muhammad – in the 2001 case the bomber was a Pakistani, while this time it is an Indian, Adil Ahmad Dar.

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The Modi government has two choices in dealing with the situation. It can, like 2016 launch another strike into Pakistan Occupied Kashmir, reminiscent of its so-called surgical strike of 29 September 2016. Or, it can take the somewhat sterile road of diplomacy.

Going the Diplomatic Way

Given the state of India-Pakistan relations, India doesn’t have much diplomatic leverage with Islamabad at this juncture.

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It could, make it an issue with the United States whose President Trump had condemned Pakistan for providing “safe havens” to terror groups and supporting Afghan militants in August 2017. Subsequently, the US cut military aid to Islamabad. But right now, Pakistan is back in Washington’s good graces because the latter is keen to leave Afghanistan and wants Pakistan to play a “responsible” role in the process.

Can India Exert Influence on China?

So we are left with China. For years China has imposed a hold on New Delhi’s efforts to have Jaish-e-Muhammad chief Masood Azhar listed in the UN’s 1267 Committee as a terrorist. Even after the Sino-Indian thaw following the Modi-Xi summit in Wuhan in April 2018, Beijing has continued to maintain its hold on Azhar’s nomination. The JeM has already been listed as an entity as of 17 October 2001, but New Delhi has been keen to list Azhar as a person.

As a Permanent Member of the UN Security Council, China has a veto which it has threatened to use in the event of the name coming up.

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In August 2018, China extended by three months its technical hold on the proposal which has been backed by the US, France and UK to name Azhar as a global terrorist.

In September 2018, China’s foreign minister Wang Yi defended Beijing’s repeated blocking of India’s efforts to list Azhar as a global terrorist. He said that Beijing would support it if all parties “come to a consensus.” In actual fact, all countries in the UNSC except China are ready to list Azhar.

So by all parties he meant India and Pakistan and the likelihood of that happening as of now is remote, considering the use Islamabad has been making of the Jaish to carry out its covert war in Jammu & Kashmir.

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And the repeated high-profile attacks that have been carried out by that outfit in Pathankot, Uri, Nagrota, Sunjuwan camp and now, most recently in Pulwama.

Also Read : CRPF Targeted in Pulwama: JeM Claims Local Man Carried Out Attack

The Chinese minister spoke of the need for “solid facts and proof” and declared that Islamabad would not “turn its back” on “irrefutable evidence.” He went on to declare that China was against all forms of terrorism, and had been encouraging Pakistan in its battle against the terrorists and said that Pakistan had paid a heavy price in fighting the Al Qaida in Afghanistan.

The reset in Sino-Indian ties launched by the Wuhan meeting has not had much effect on the Azhar issue. Modi and Xi met four times in 2018 and ministers from both sides traveled to each other’s countries and held talks.

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The two nations also held the 21st round of border talks between their Special Representatives in the year. India toned down its criticism of the Belt and Road Initiative and CPEC and also committed not to use the Tibet card. Yet, somehow the Azhar issue has remained intractable. It clearly signals the limits of India’s ability to influence China.

Another ‘Surgical Strike’?

So, the Modi government may be compelled to return to its muscular strategy “surgical strike” mode. This is easier said than done.

The real world of cross-border strikes is infinitely more difficult that the Bollywood recreations.

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The “surgical strikes” were carefully thought through and, though they were successful in killing several terrorists, they barely dented the terrorist infrastructure along the Line of Control. In fact, Pakistan was able to convince itself that the attacks didn’t take place at all. The fact that there was no let up in cross-border attacks after the so-called surgical strikes indicated that they had not achieved what India had set out to do – to deter Pakistan from repeating their attack.

This time around, can the government come up with a formula that will work ?

Quint February 22, 2019

MoD Note on Rafale May Not be a Smoking Gun, But Govt Must Clarify

This may not quite be the smoking gun, but it is a definite clue to suggest that such a gun could exist somewhere. In other words, there is a problem with the Rafale deal for which the country deserves a clear-cut explanation.

It is entirely possible that if the government were to come upfront and reveal the details it has so far – somewhat ham-handedly concealing – there would be a satisfactory explanation.

Unfortunately, the information is coming in bits and pieces, some from France, some from The Hindu, some from the government’s own clarifications in response to the charges being levelled against them. This results in a somewhat disconnected picture, which only heightens suspicions.Take The Hindu’s scoop. It reveals a note by the Ministry of Defence saying that “parallel discussions by the PMO (on the Rafale) have weakened the negotiating position of the MOD and the Indian Negotiating Team (INT).”

The then-Defence Secretary Mohan Kumar had added, “RM (Raksha Mantri) may pl see. It is desirable that such discussions be avoided by the PMO as it undermines our negotiating position seriously.” This was on 1 December 2015.

These are strong words. The government’s defence has been that The Hindu has omitted the RM’s note clarifying that the PMO and the French President’s Office are monitoring the issue.

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He said the MOD note appeared to be an “overreaction” and that “Def Sec may resolve issue/matter in consultation with Pr Sec to PM.” This response came on 11 January 2016, more than a month after the Defence Secretary’s notation. Clearly, Manohar Parrikar (the then-defence minister) had not been in any a hurry to set his secretary’s mind at rest.

The other defence of the government, as put out by ‘friendly’ media, is that the note was about a discussion on sovereign guarantees, and not pricing. There are issues here too.

First, there has been no claim that this was about pricing. Then, as for sovereign guarantees, the government has itself admitted to the Supreme Court that it did not get any from Dassault, the manufacturer of Rafale.

Also Read : Rafale Deal Report Incomplete, Motivated: Nirmala Sitharaman

All they have is what the Attorney General told the Supreme Court – a ‘Letter of Comfort’ through which the French government has assured India that Dassault will fulfil the deal.

More important, however, is the question as to why the MOD was bypassed in this negotiation. There is no reason why the PMO could not have included a Negotiating Team representative in the process.

Equally important is the question as to why the Negotiating Team could not negotiate the sovereign guarantee as well. All said and done, the sovereign guarantee, which, eventually, did not come, is very much part of the give-and-take of the price negotiations.

The issue of pricing also comes up now. An earlier report had already noted that three of the seven members of the Indian Negotiating Team had objected to the benchmark price and the so-called design and development costs for the India-specific enhancements.

There are now reasons to believe that the government may have misled the Supreme Court because while it claimed in its note to the court that the Indian Negotiating Team was involved in the process, it had said nothing about any significant PMO role.

But now, as it turns out, the PMO had been playing a covert, if unspecified, role in the process.

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Also Read : PMO Conducted ‘Parallel Negotiations’ in Rafale Deal: Report

Sudhansu Mohanty, who worked as Financial Adviser Defence Services before retiring in March 2016, has pointed in a recent article for The Wire that under the current procurement procedures, there is no role for National Security Adviser Ajit Doval in finalising the terms and conditions of the Rafale contract.

This is true of the PMO as a whole since they were not designated members of the Contract Negotiating Committee (the same INT) under the Defence Procurement Procedure (DPP) 2013. Neither was he (Doval), nor any of them formally co-opted into the INT.

Under DPP 2013, the criteria has been laid out for constituting an INT. Any change in the procedure would have had to have the approval of the Director General (Acquisition). It has, for example, laid out the guidelines for inducting a specialist service officer, but this must be with the approval of the RM.

Appendix B has laid out the typical INT for a particular acquisition. The document does not mention NSA or PMO at any place. The reason is the presumption that once the government has approved a deal, the specific negotiation over price and terms and conditions needs to be done by domain experts.

As we noted at the outset, this may not be a ‘smoking gun’, but it’s pretty close to one. The government has taken the high road claiming that security concerns prevent it from providing key information on the deal. This is nonsense.

Pricing information is not a secret, but the right of the taxpayer who funds the government. What is secret in high performance jets is not their price, their general shape, the engines they have, but the guts of the aircraft, especially the electronics and the materials they may be made of.

But no one has been asking for that information.

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What the public wants to know, in clear-cut terms, is the rationale for the government to have scrapped the old deal and bought the aircraft at a higher cost than had been earlier negotiated.

They want to know whether proper procedures were followed in this process. And now, there is evidence to suggest that they were not. If not, the government needs to give us a clear explanation as to why not.

Quint February 9, 2019

Defence on a Budget

The allocation for defence in the 2019-20 Budget is over Rs 4.31 lakh crore as against last year’s revised figure of around Rs 4.05 lakh crore, a 6.4 per cent increase over the revised estimates. Since the total government expenditure for the coming year is Rs 27.84 lakh crore,  it represents a figure of 15.5 per cent of the Central government expenditure, as compared to that of 16.5 per cent last year.  

With a Rs 210 lakh crore GDP estimate, the proportion spent on defence amounts to 2.05 per cent, which is considered quite respectable. But if, as per the Ministry of Defence (MoD) convention, we count only the revenue and capital expenditures, and minus the Rs 17,000 crore spent on the MoD, we come up with another more alarming figure of 1.4 per cent. It has come down from 2.08 per cent, when the Modi government assumed office in 2014-2015.

Another figure teases out the full picture better — that of capital expenditure. The Rs 1.03 lakh crore spent on the capital outlay of the defence services represents 30.7 per cent of all capital expenditures of the Central government. So, the country is spending one-third of its annual outlay of capital expenditure on defence, which is why it is obviously short-changing education, health, social welfare and infrastructure.

Last year, all three services complained that they were not even provided enough money to pay for ongoing acquisitions, leave alone new ones. The Navy wanted Rs 36,000 crore as capital outlay but was only given Rs 20,900 crore. The Army projected Rs 45,000 crore, but was given Rs 26,813 crore, which would have not even taken care of its ongoing commitments totalling Rs 29,033 crore. The fact that the government has increased the capital outlay by nearly 10 per cent to Rs 1.03 lakh crore means little.

Indeed, before the Budget, there were a slew of announcements declaring that the Defence Acquisition Council (DAC) had approved of a submarine project worth Rs 40,000 crore and okayed Rs 1,200 crore for the Milan anti-tank missile. In December, there was approval for four Talwar class frigates and Brahmos missiles for Rs 3,000 crore; in September, Rs 9,100 crore for Akash missiles and some other schemes; in August, the procurement of 111 utility helicopters for the Navy worth Rs 21,000 crore, and another set of equipment costing Rs 24,879 crore; in June, there was an approval of defence equipment worth Rs 5,500 crore.

Clearly, there is something unreal about these decisions, given the available resources. According to one observer, the DAC cleared  ‘Project 75I’ submarines in January for the third time in the last decade, which has also, uncharacteristically, seen the overall cost of the project coming down in each instance. And, of course, we have the controversial Rafale deal for which we will presumably have to begin payment in 2019-2020.

That all this appears shambolic is not surprising. India’s defence system is in deep trouble and little or nothing is being done about it. Simply put, the system cannot be run effectively unless it undergoes deep reform, which, in the circumstances, can only be carried out by the political class. PM Modi seems to be uninterested in this process; he’s happy to live in a make-believe world of Bollywood achievements. Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman lacks the clout to push through anything.

A country like India has many serious security challenges. It is no one’s case that it should cut defence expenditure. But there is something no Indian should forget — our principal national goal is to end mass poverty and deprivation in the country. Experts will tell you that the poverty rate has halved over the past decade. But that only means people who earn roughly $3 or Rs 230 a day and Rs 6,800 a month. This means that a family must feed, clothe and shelter itself within that amount.

The elephant in the room, too, is well known. The figure of Rs 1.22 lakh crore paid out as defence pensions is nearly one-third of the defence expenditure. No one grudges the ex-servicemen their pensions and their right to OROP. But the government cannot make that as an excuse to underfund the military. Another like amount, roughly Rs 1.25 lakh crore are the pay and allowances of the defence personnel, including the civilians working there.

While there can be huge savings through integration of the three services, reducing headquarter formations, joint logistics, training and housing, manpower cost is the real challenge.

 Compared with other militaries, given the threats we confront, the overall numbers are OK. However, there is considerable room to re-distribute personnel — reducing the Army, enhancing the Air Force, Navy and specialised personnel who can service the new military, which needs to be better networked and supported.

While pay and allowances cannot be grudged, there is need to keep the pension bill low. There is a way to manage this, if there is a ‘whole of the government’ approach. This means insisting on a compulsory stretch in the military for all those wanting government jobs. A five to seven-year service in the armed forces would have an 18-year-old available for recruitment in the civil services, paramilitary and the police at the ages of 23-25.

The Parliament’s Standing Committee on Defence did recommend a compulsory five-year service as a pre-condition for jobs in the Union and state governments. Not surprisingly, the proposal is still doing the rounds of the government.

The Tribune February 5, 2019