In need of fundamental overhaul

 
The year gone by has not been a particularly exciting one. All it did was to confirm to us just how dysfunctional the United Progressive Alliance government had become. The year to come, 2014, promises better things. That is not only because we believe that things can’t be worse than they are today, but because it comes with a general election which promises to shake up things in the country as they have not been shaken for some time now. Modi’s upsetting the BJP hierarchy and Kejriwal’s defeat of Shiela Dixit could well be a forerunner of a greater churning in Indian politics in the coming year.
Cynics will no doubt argue that given the way life really works, it is more likely that after some sense of upheaval, things will be back to what they were, a country of elephantine proportions doesn’t change its ways easily. That complexity is probably most visible in our economy. Many of us hope that some miracle will somehow restore high growth and banish inflation next year. But that is easier said than done. Surely, some change will come through the better business climate within the country and abroad, but economists warn that there are problems with what is called the trend growth rate. India needs a fundamental overhaul in its governmental system if it is to see sustained economic growth in the coming decades.
So far, in its liberalisation processes, the government has always the crucial bit of residuary powers in its own hand, in other words, even the shift from government control to regulation has not been an honest one. These were manifested in the scandals of the past couple of years, relating to land, spectrum, iron ore and coal allocation, as well as the arbitrary functioning of the tax regime.
Actually, if we could venture a solution, we would say that the most important reform that any government could carry out is to dismantle the antiquated IAS-led bureaucracy and replace it with some other, more efficient and responsive form of governmental management. But none of this can be done in a matter of one year, so we may see a spurt of growth next year but for long-term sustained growth, there is need for deep, even revolutionary reform, which is next to impossible in the era of coalition governments.
In foreign and security policies, too, we are not likely to see any fundamental change in 2014. One reason for this is that change here is controlled by external factors over which we have little or no control. But another reason for this is that the key instrumentality of the government —the armed forces — are in no shape to play their role in the process. What we mean is that should India wish to take a tougher posture with regard to Pakistan and China, to the extent of being willing to go in for a localised confrontation, it will be handicapped because its three services suffer from shortages of key equipment and the higher management of security in the country is obsolete and shoddy.
The situation with Pakistan could deteriorate, but it is unlikely to go beyond pinpricks on the Line of Control. This, however, does not include any situation that may arise out of another high-profile terrorist attack from Pakistani jihadi groups. Actually the public mood is such that no government in New Delhi would find it easy to stave off pressure to take some military action in response.
In 2001, following the attack on the Parliament House and 2008 after the Mumbai attack, the government seriously examined the possibility of a retaliatory military strike, but did not give the final order because the services were simply not ready for a longer drawn out war.
That is why, there is so much concern over Chinese behaviour, generally across the world, as well as in our region and, more importantly, our borders.
The new Border Defence Cooperation Agreement seems to be working, but, to be blunt, will do so till the Chinese decide otherwise. The imbalance of power between China and India is increasing by the day and, for the present, Beijing is preoccupied with its confrontation with Japan. But things could change and we could be affected.
On top of all this, we have landed in a new mess in our relationship with the United States. Whatever be the rights and wrongs of the Devayani Khobgrade issue, what is certain is that relations between India and the US have suffered a major setback. Many in India do not realise the important indirect role that the US plays in India’s security as the global hegemony. For example, the security of the oil sea lanes, through which 70 per cent of our petroleum products come from the Persian Gulf, depends on the US. In the event of a conflict or tension, it is the US which uses its muscle to keep the sea lanes open. The same, of course, could be said about sea lanes elsewhere, for example in the South China or East China Seas where we have seen an alarming escalation of tension between China and Japan.
Clearly, year on year analyses are not too heartening. Indians need to realise that the time has come for decision-making and thinking which is multi-year, though not in the Five Year Plan kind of a way. What is needed are steps that go beyond partisan approaches and election-cycles aimed at providing the desperately needed transformation of the way India manages its governmental system. Steps that will impact across this decade and the next.
Mid Day December 24, 2013

Prepare for war in the East China Sea

On December 5, a Chinese naval vessel tried to force a U.S. warship to stop in international waters in the latest instance of the growing Chinese tendency to flex their muscles.

This incident comes hard on the heels of the situation in the East China Sea region, where Beijing had declared an Air Defence Identification Zone (ADIZ) on November 23 which included the Japanese-controlled, but disputed, Senkaku/Diayou islands.

Some alarming analysis suggests that the Chinese may not be above seeking a limited conflict in the region. 

Incident

According to US officials, the guided missile cruiser USS Cowpens, was confronted by Chinese warships in the South China Sea near Beijing's new aircraft carrier Liaoning.

What appears to have happened is that the US ship had been deputed to tail the Liaoning, which had been carrying out manoeuvres in the East China Sea as part of Beijing's effort to brow-beat Japan over the Senkaku/Diayou islands.

A Chinese navy vessel hailed the Cowpens and ordered it to stop. The ship refused and continued on its course because it was in international waters.

Thereupon a Chinese tank-landing ship came directly into the path of Cowpens and stopped, forcing the American vessel to sharply change course.

The incident took place about 100 nautical miles from the Chinese coast. China's Exclusive Economic Zone, which has been defined under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Seas (UNCLOS) goes out 200 nautical miles into the sea.

The US has not ratified UNCLOS, which China, Japan, India and most of the world have, but it says that it generally observes its rules.

As part of these it insists on the unfettered movement of not just its merchant marine, but warships, in the EEZ.

 

However, China has strongly opposed this interpretation noting that naval vessels' military aircraft by definition do not undertake "innocent passage."

The Chinese have bridled at US intelligence and surveillance ships that keep track of Chinese maritime activity.

US intelligence-gathering ships like the USNS Impeccable and Victorious have faced Chinese harassment regularly over the past few years.

In this instance, there are some who believe that the Chinese may have deliberately staged the incident as part of a larger strategy against Japan and the US. 

Dispute: Chinese troops recently apprehended five Indian nationals along with their cattle inside the Indian territory in the Chumar area, a remote village on the Ladakh-Himachal Pradesh border

Two days after the Chinese announced their new ADIZ, the US sent two unarmed B-52 bombers to fly through the zone.

However, it has advised its civilian aircraft to observe the ADIZ and give prior notification of any flights they plan through the ADIZ. 

Strategy

The Japanese have declared that they will not recognise the ADIZ and for their part, the Chinese have in recent days sent in their Su-30 and J-11 fighters, along with their KJ-2000 AWACS aircraft, to show that they intend to monitor the airspace they have declared as part of their ADIZ.

In 1981, when Deng Xiaoping began China's opening to the world, he also enjoined the Chinese to follow what is called the 24 character strategy in its foreign and security policies: "Observe calmly; secure our position; cope with affairs calmly; hide our capabilities and bide our time; be good at maintaining a low profile; and never claim leadership."

Conversations with Chinese thinktank officials reveal a certain candidness about Beijing's changed global posture which, of course, has implications for India.

They say that the era of the 24 character strategy is over. Indeed, they acknowledge that, as of 2012, they have become more assertive. 

Interests

However, observers say that the shift began at least five years before that in 2008 when the Chinese government ordered its marine service to begin patrolling the maritime areas claimed by China.

In 2009, it asserted its expansive South China Sea claims when it submitted a map to the UN along with the U-shaped Nine Dash line that comes down to the coast of Brunei.

In 2011, a Chinese ship cut the cable of a seismic survey ship. In 2012, it created a new administrative zone around the city of Sansha to have jurisdiction over the Spratly and Paracel islands.

This was also the year when the Chinese issued a new passport with the map including the ridiculous Nine Dash claim.

The Chinese say that their interests in the East China Sea are what bother them the most because of their proximity to the Chinese heartland.

The South China Sea, they insist, is not a problem area of the same dimension. Beijing's unambiguous goal is to isolate Japan, divide the ASEAN and befuddle the United States.

The tough stance on the Senkaku/Diayou is part of this, and the recent tour of the ASEAN by Xi Jinping and Li Keqiang showed the extent to which the Chinese are willing to go to befriend the region, minus the Philippines.

Even that old and formidable adversary Vietnam is being wooed by Beijing.

As for the United States, its stand on supporting the regional nations is less than clear. It insists that it is neutral when it comes to the maritime disputes, but maintains that it will stand by its treaty allies like Japan and the Philippines in the event of a conflict.

The developments in the East China Sea have important implications for India because we, too, have a major border dispute with China and we have also seen a shift in Beijing's border management policy since 2008.

China has been quick to say that its ADIZ only has implications for its maritime borders, but who is to say that such a maneuver could not be attempted against us?

Actually, what China is doing in the East China Sea is what it did in the Himalayas in 1962: Create and, indeed, push "facts on the ground" which compel the other side to back off, or undertake a confrontation which could lead to war.

India handled things badly then; hopefully the Japanese and the Americans will be more deft.

Mail Today December 17, 2013

AAP's arrival signals urban discourse in politics

Every general election shifts the national paradigm a bit. The Lok Sabha election is at least four months away, but the shifting has already begun with the recently concluded assembly elections in five states. The outcome has thrown up several pointers to the shift; it is up to us to make what we can of them.
First, it marks the rise of urban politics. The stunning success of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) signals the arrival of the urban discourse into national politics. This implies the breakdown of identity politics of yore.
For example, Mayawati, she of the iron-clad Dalit vote bank, had two seats and a 14 per cent vote share in 2008 Delhi assembly elections. This time her BSP drew a blank.
The key to this urban constituency is its burning desire to move up in the world and its refusal to take things lying down.
Whether it is price rise, an incident of rape, police high handedness, people in cities are quick to take to the street and express their views. At the same time, they want better education, better transport, cleaner environment, jobs and reasonable healthcare systems.
They do not have the fortitude, or shall we say, the fatalism, of their rural cousins who have, till now at least, been fobbed off by endless promises.
Of course, whether such a polity emerges, depends on whether the AAP can replicate itself in the other urban centres of the country. They would be well advised to focus on the urban areas rather than countryside in the short time available till the general elections.
Rahul Gandhi’s ability to replicate the AAP effect in the Congress is debatable, principally because he seems to lack a fire in the belly. Without that you cannot really carry out transformational politics.
Second, this marks the end of indiscriminate welfarism. The real Congress-killer was the sustained inflation in the country for the past three years, in particular food inflation, manifested most recently through the volatile prices of commodities like onion and tomatoes. This, in turn, arose from the government’s inability to curb fuel and fertilizer subsidies. And, indeed, pay out huge sums as support prices for wheat and rice, whereas they should have undertaken policies to encourage agriculture to be more profitable and sustainable.
Third, and linked to this, people want real change, not merely a promise of one. The Congress party had, somewhat disingenuously, gone on a spree of passing legislation promising anything and everything to everyone. Beginning with the Right to Information Act, they took up the Right to Education, the Rural Employment Guarantee Act, and were building up towards the mother of all acts, a promise of subsidised food to most of this country’s massive population. Along with this were promises of low-cost housing, free medicine, and so on.
Many of the schemes did not really work and the subsidies did not reach the intended recipients. What people would really prefer are policies that provide them education of a quality that equips them for real jobs and policies that create them. The self-esteem that comes with standing on your own feet is something that the welfarist Congress party has never understood.
No one would argue against the need for the state to ensure health, education, nutrition and gender equality for those who lack them. The issue is just how this should be done. Some argue that growth must have primacy, because only then you can have the resources to invest in subsidies and welfare schemes. Others counter that without a healthy and educated populace, there will be no growth.
The issue really is balance, and this is where the Congress has failed, because it did not use its 10 years in power to seriously promote manufacturing and investment in the country, the only way in which the huge demand for employment can be met. Indeed, the UPA undertook policy measures that scared off investment, and on the other hand, it squandered a huge amount of resources on welfare schemes that had little yield in terms of enhancing growth.
Fourth, it marks yet another step in the regionalisation of our politics. It is clear now to the Congress party, that in a country of the size of India, you can only function if you have strong regional straps.
Raman Singh, Shivraj Singh Chouhan, Vasundhara Raje and Narendra Modi are proof of this. In this context, Narendra Modi’s call for a debate on Article 370 should be taken seriously and linked to an earlier perspective of the BJP, as expressed by Atal Bihari Vajpayee, that such an article should define the relationship of all the states of the Union with the Centre.
Fifth, the outcome cannot really be seen as a definite statement of the electorate in the upcoming Lok Sabha elections.
The BJP got the advantage of the deep anger of the people against the Congress party, but, while Modi was one channel of this anger, so was the AAP.
Despite Modi’s efforts, the party’s performance in Delhi and Chhattisgarh was less than emphatic. As it is, it has done well, spectacularly so in Rajasthan and MP, in an area where it was already a major force.
There has clearly been a Modi effect in the assembly polls, but but whether or not there is a Modi wave in 2014 will depend on just how the BJP uses the momentum it has now gathered.
Mid Day December 10, 2013

On the evening of this day, 42 years ago, Pakistan Air Force fighter aircraft launched a surprise attack on some 11 Indian airbases triggering the third India-Pakistan war.
The military outcome was a historic victory for the Indian Army, which succeeded in capturing the capital of the erstwhile East Pakistan, Dhaka, and taking more than 90,000 Pakistan Army  personnel  prisoner in just 13 days.

  

The political consequences were even more portentous, a new nation - Bangladesh - was created.
And an embittered Pakistan embarked on the path of making nuclear weapons, a development which has permanently altered the geopolitics of the region.
Past and present
The events of the time still resonate today. This year some half a dozen Jamaat-e-Islami leaders, who collaborated with the Pakistan Army in acts of genocide then, have been convicted and sentenced to varying terms of imprisonment and even death.
This year has also seen the publication of two significant books on the subject - Gary J. Bass's The Blood Telegram: Nixon, Kissinger and a Forgotten Genocide and Srinath Raghavan's 1971: A Global History of the Creation of Bangladesh.
Bass's book brings out the various facets of US policy towards the event, principally the manner in which the administration willfully ignored evidence of the large-scale killings that took place in the erstwhile East Pakistan because of their bias against India and a desire to protect Pakistan which was acting as a channel for Henry Kissinger and Richard Nixon's opening to China.
Raghavan's study has shown how the key steps towards the creation of Bangladesh must be seen through the prism of global and regional politics.
In his view, India's decision to delay intervention from March 1971, when the crackdown began, to December 3, when the Pakistanis attacked, was a grievous strategic error that led to much loss of life and property and suffering.

Over time, many myths have come to be associated with the events. One reason for this is that the government of India still refuses to issue an official history of the war, though a draft readied for publication was put up on the Times of India website in 2001 by this writer.
This has been cited by many scholars, but the fact of the matter is that this is not formally the official history.
Revelations
Nevertheless, this history does reveal that the war did not quite begin on December 3 with the Pakistani air attack, but had actually began much earlier when Indian forces were ordered to make a limited push into the erstwhile East Pakistan from mid-November onward.
India had no plans of liberating Bangladesh as such. Army Headquarters' Operational Instruction No 53 of August 1971 saw its tasks as defending Sikkim and NEFA (Arunachal) against the Chinese, contain the Naga and Mizo insurgenciesand "destroy the bulk of the Pakistani forces in Eastern Theatre and occupy the major portion of East Bengal…."
The capture of Dhaka, which would involve the total defeat of the Pakistan army was not envisaged till December 9 and was the product of the quickly evolving "facts on the ground" created by individual commanders like Lt Gen Sagat Singh and exploited by the eastern command chief of staff, Lt Gen JFR Jacob.
But if India had splendid success in the east, its performance in the western theatre was less than stellar.
Unlike the east, in this theatre, there was near-parity between Indian and Pakistani forces in terms of armour and artillery. It is true that the forces there were asked to maintain a defensive posture, but limited offensives were part of the plan and carried out.
But even they were poorly executed and yielded few results.

After the war, the two sides traded territory they captured in Jammu & Kashmir, and the ledger shows that we came off worse, losing the important salient of Chamb.
Perhaps the failure that India would rue took place in the north. Here, in the Partapur sector where Siachen is located today, an attack by the Ladakh Scouts succeeded in moving 22 kilometres along a mountainous terrain in Arctic conditions prevalent in winter.
Failures
This success/failure was linked to the failure to capture the key objective of Olthinthang north of Kargil.
Had Indian forces managed to push beyond Turtok and capture Thang, the subsequent Pakistani adventure in Kargil in 1999 or the threat to Siachen would have been infructuous.
There were larger failures, too, in the western front - notably the inability of our main offensive in Shakargarh to take wing.
Likewise the war in the Rajasthan sector had an element of a farce in the manner in which the Indian and Pakistani offensives came unstuck, especially that of the hapless Pakistanis at Longewala.
The work of historians never ends. New material and newer perspectives provide the impetus for a fresh approach to something that happened a long time ago.

But for ordinary folk, history plays itself out in the shape and dynamics of contemporary events as is happening in the relationship between Bangladesh and India today.
Few will disagree, that while in terms of wars and alarums, the 1971 war may have been a short historical event, its larger development - the creation of Bangladesh - is something that has had lasting consequences, for the better or the worse.

Mail Today December 3, 2013

November 26: India no safer today than it was 5 years ago

On the anniversary of the Mumbai terror attacks of 2008, it is not surprising that the first thoughts that come to mind relate to the safety and security of the country. The obvious question to be posed here is: Are we safer today than we were five years ago? Sadly, the answer will be no.
There are two ways that you assure security — through deterrence or defence. The former implies the ability to inflict so much pain on the perpetrator that he desists from attacking you. The latter, on the other hand, means creating structures and systems which will ensure that the perpetrator is not able to launch an attack on you.
On both counts we remain wanting. Far from being able to punish the Lashkar-e-Taiba and its ISI masters, we witnessed the expansion of the footprint of the outfit across the polity of Pakistan via its front organisation, the Jamaat-ud-dawa (JuD). Confronted with the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, the deep state of Pakistan has encouraged the pro-establishment radicals like the JuD/LeT to create a Difa-e-Pakistan Council, which groups some 40 religious and radical political outfits under its umbrella. Anyway, after the hue and cry following the Mumbai attack, the LeT has remained low-key and the ISI has worked on the alternate strategy of encouraging the Indian Mujahideen to do its dirty work. The advantage here is that all its foot soldiers are Indians, while its leadership, also comprising of Indian Muslims, resides in Pakistan.
India is unable to deter Pakistan as such because it is a nuclear weapons state. The simple truth is that in 2001 and in 2008, India was, in fact, deterred from undertaking military retaliation against Islamabad because of nuclear weapons. Somehow, we have not been able to find the space for combat between the use of conventional and nuclear weapons in a manner that can deter Islamabad.
Anyway, since 1991, New Delhi has a policy of not undertaking tit-for-tat terror strikes against Pakistan. Islamabad will periodically hint darkly at Indian involvement in strikes on its soil. It says that India is supporting Baloch nationalists and even the Pakistani Taliban. But India is doing nothing of the sort.
Most likely, it is funding some of the separatist organisations in Pakistan. But this is a far cry from actually planning, training, arming and launching strikes against civilian targets in the other country. Indeed, Indian policy since the mid-1990s and through the course of several governments, United Front, Congress or BJP, has been to engage Islamabad in a dialogue to resolve all outstanding issues.
What about shoring up defences at home ? Here, too, the record is mixed. As a result of the Mumbai fiasco, which also involved a failure of intelligence, the government finally gave a green light to the Multi Agency Centre (MAC), a clearing house of intelligence relating to terrorism run by the Intelligence Bureau (IB). But whether the MAC actually delivers the goods is something we don’t really know.
Several measures have been taken to strengthen coastal security such as putting up special radars and creating a new coastal command under the navy.
States have also set up the maritime wings of their police forces, though not many are really functional. The biggest problem with regard to preventing a boat-load of terrorists slipping through is the lack of an effective transponder system through which the authorities are able to keep track of India’s vast fishing fleet.
The biggest weakness remains the state-level police forces and intelligence systems. The politicisation of the police makes it difficult to create a professional force which will think more about doing its duty, rather than making money through various dubious activities. The IB and R&AW will be only as effective as the ground intelligence we are able to capture, and here, sadly, little or nothing has been done to make sure that there is an effective intelligence network that goes down to the thana level.
At the heart of the challenges is the inability of the Union government and the State governments to work together in a common cause. Even though the police is headed by all-Indian Indian Police Service officers, we often find that once they are in the state, they fight tenaciously for the their turf which, in any case, is decided on by even more short-sighted politicians. For an effective counter-terrorist organisation, we need a seamless setup.
There was a time when the Union government believed that you could resolve the problem by throwing money at it — radar stations, interceptor boats, new organisations, weapons and equipment galore.
But today, we are in an era when money is short. Last week, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said as much at the combined commanders conference in New Delhi.
He called on them to seriously look at the various recommendations made by task forces appointed by the government to enhance our national security capability. In particular, he called on them to take up the challenge of “establishing the right structures for higher defence management and the appropriate civil-military balance in decision-making that our complex security environment demands.”
More important, instead of saying what politicians usually say, that the government will not skimp in spending for the country’s security requirements, Dr Singh delivered a blunt message that “we will have to exercise prudence in our defence acquisition plans and cut our coat according to our cloth … While we must take into account the capabilities of our adversaries, we have to plan our long term acquisition on the assumption of limited resource availability."
Mid Day November 26, 2013

The UPA seems determined to ignore vital defence reforms

In July 2011, the government of India set up a task force to examine the processes and procedures related to national security in India and come up with recommendations to fix the problems and plug any gaps that emerged.Chaired by former Cabinet Secretary Naresh Chandra, the task force's aim was to deepen the reforms in the national security system begun by the group of ministers (GOM) in 2001.


Status quo: Defence minister A K Antony appears reluctant to act on any recommendation for reforming the country's national security strategy

In May 2012, the committee submitted its report to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who turned it over to the National Security Council Secretariat for processing its recommendations and presenting them to the Cabinet Committee on Security.
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 may soon meet the fate of other similar endeavours: getting shelved.
Power
The reason for this is plain: The ministry of defence thinks there is no need for change, leave alone, horror of horrors, an overhaul.
At first sight this may appear to be counter-intuitive; after all the sorry state of our defence modernisation is an open secret.
Last year, the serving Chief of Army Staff wrote a letter to the Prime Minister pointing to shortages of vital equipment. The Air Force chief regularly bemoans the declining numbers of his combat force and the delays in the Navy's submarine and shipbuilding programmes are no secret.
The goal of the civilian part of the ministry appears to be singularly focused on how to retain its power and privileges.
For this reason, the only public information of the Chandra Committee recommendations came through a leak of a portion of the report by the MoD itself.
Their grouse, according to the media leaks, was apparent - they did not want changes in the way the system is run.
Inefficient, incompetent, and wasteful, yes, but the command ought to rest firmly in the inexpert hands of the IAS fraternity.
The Chandra Committee, on the other hand, was suggesting reforms - first of the manner in which the armed forces were run, and secondly, of how the ministry itself was functioning.

Integration: The need for joint planning in India's defence community is crucial given the exponential rise in the cost of weapons systems

In the case of the armed forces, following the GOM report of 2001, the committee suggested a chief of defence staff (CDS)-like figure, a permanent chairman to the chiefs of staff committee, to promote integrated planning and organisations in the armed forces, as well as an expert defence bureaucracy to staff the MoD by cross-posting military officers to key bureaucratic positions.
These were minimalist suggestions, but vital. Most armed forces in the world operate on an integrated principle where planning an execution of combat operations is done through joint planning and command.

 

That is why the GOM of 2001 recommended the beginnings of tri-service organisations and a CDS to head them. The need for joint planning is crucial given the exponential rise in the cost of weapons systems.

Currently, each service puts up its own demands and the Ministry of Defence has little or no expertise to prioritise them.
The Long Term Integrated Perspective Plan (LTIPP) or five year defence plans have little integrity.
Take for example the case of the Mountain Strike Corps which has been approved by the government recently.
It will require capital expenditure of Rs 90,000 crore (plus another Rs 30,000 crore for ancillary units), yet it does not figure in the 2012-2027 LTIPP which was approved with great fanfare last year.
To get a perspective on this, consider that in the period 2009-10 to 2013-14, which includes the period of high economic growth the country spent something like Rs 300,000 crore in capital acquisitions.
Priority
The Army, of course, is not the only claimant here. The really capital intensive services are the Air Force and the Navy, whose need for modernisation is dire. India needs new combat jets, submarines, ships, transport aircraft, artillery guns, helicopters and a host of other equipment in the next ten years. But what should be the priority?
At present, there is simply no machinery to do this since each service feels its needs are the most important and the MoD lacks any expertise to pronounce on the issue. But the MoD does not want another senior military figure because they think that the Defence Secretary and his IAS colleagues will be somehow diminished.
Well, considering the current state of India's defence setup, they ought to have already been indicted for gross incompetence.
Resistance
In view of this, the National Security Adviser Shivshankar Menon had pushed for the setting up of the Naresh Chandra Committee.
Another group headed by Ravindra Gupta, was simultaneously asked to to look at the issue of defence manufacturing and indigenisation.
But after the committees, comprised mostly of former government and military officials, had done their work, they find that there are no takers within the government for their advice.
But that should not surprise. Bureaucratic resistance to reform is a given whenever there is talk of reform. What does surprise, however, is the spinelessness of the UPA II ministers who tamely allowed their bureaucrats to manipulate them into a paralysis. As long as P Chidambaram was there, the Home Ministry was supportive of reform, but with Sushilkumar Shinde at the helm, the do-nothing school prevails.

As for the Defence Ministry, the less said the better. AK Antony is happiest when he does not have to take any decisions whatsoever.
This clearly suits his bureaucrats who have so far successfully blocked the passage of the Naresh Chandra Committee report to the Cabinet Committee on Security.
Whether the CCS itself has the political gumption to tell the babus where to get off or not, remains to be seen if and when the report reaches them. But going by the record of the UPA II, there is not much hope.
As for the PM, he has now given up on his political colleagues and is totally dependent on bureaucratic advice.
It is not too difficult to guess what that advice is: Do nothing, there's nothing broke and there is nothing that needs fixing.
The problem is that not that the national security system is not broken, but that it is rapidly hollowing out from within. 

Mail Today November 21, 2013