Ever since he became prime minister, there has been speculation about the relationship between
Narendra Modi's government and the US. Modi's personal relationship with the US has not
been happy. In 2005, not only was he denied a diplomatic visa to the
US, but the normal B1/B2 visa issued to him earlier was also withdrawn
under a 1998 US law which bars entry to foreigners who have committed
"particularly severe violations of religious freedom". This was done at
the behest of a number of US Congress members and NGOs who campaigned
against him because of the issues arising from the massacre of Muslims
in Gujarat following the Godhra killings.
But in the months
leading up to his historic sweep of the Lok Sabha, Modi made several
statements indicating that he would put national interest ahead of any
supposed personal pique in relation to the US. In one interview he
termed India and the US "natural allies", in a formulation that had been
first made during the prime ministership of Atal Bihari Vajpayee. Modi
also noted that it was Vajpayee who laid the foundation for a new era of
partnership with the US, so "we will build upon that and take it
forward".
Given his personality, no matter what he says, Modi is
not likely to forget the slight of the US visa denial easily. But, no
matter what he may feel or believe, it would be difficult for Modi to
ignore the US. As of now, it remains the world's most formidable
military and economic power - one that can harm us, if it chooses, but
also help us, if it wants to.
Actually, Modi's personal issue is
just one aspect of the poor relations between India and the US in the
past couple of years. A lot of work needs to be done in
Washington and New Delhi to undo the era of bad feelings.
The
process seems to have begun in right earnest in a succession of American
visits, beginning with that of influential Senator John McCain,
followed by that of Deputy Secretary of State William Burns. There have
been a number of other visits by lower-level delegations from the
departments of defence and commerce, as well as a slew of think tanks.
Now, Modi has accepted an invitation by US President Barack Obama for an
official visit to Washington in September. Officials are emphasising
that this is a special event and not a byproduct of his visit to New
York to attend the UN General Assembly.
Like China did in the
early 1980s, India needs to exploit the opportunity of good relations
with the US to become a stronger economic and military power. Indeed, as
a decisive leader, Modi could well transform the relationship with the
US and enable it to reach its full potential. The Chinese are also aware
of this and are wooing New Delhi frantically. But as long as the border
dispute between the two countries remains unresolved, there is a limit
to which Sino-Indian relations can grow.
Mail Today July 15, 2014
Sunday, August 31, 2014
Thursday, August 21, 2014
How central planning has groomed China
Traveling
to China is always a somewhat depressing experience for an Indian of my
generation. That is because till my middle-age, both were what was
unfashionably called underdeveloped countries and today it would seem that
China is another planet.
In 1990,
China’s GDP was roughly the same as India’s and parts of its infrastructure,
such as its railway system, were considered inferior. Today, China’s GDP is
around $9 trillion and India’s is $2 trillion.
Last week
when I rode the high speed train travelling at 300 kph from Shanghai to
Beijing, the extent to which China had pulled away from India hit home again.
While China is evolving with central planning, the Modi govt is planning to do away with the Planning Commission. Pic/PTI
The
railway station was little different from the Shanghai Hongqiao International
Airport terminal next door. The train was, of course anything beyond what you
get in India. On the 1,500 km track from Shanghai to Beijing there were no
signs of the distressing poverty an urban squalor you see in India.
This
brings me to the main subject of this column which is the talk about how the
new Modi government is planning to do away with the Planning Commission. The
body is viewed as being archaic talking shop used to park loyalists.
But just
what sophisticated central planning can do is visible in China. Despite talk of
increasing marketisation of the Chinese economy, there should be no doubt that
the Chinese miracle is a product of careful and sophisticated central planning.
The
Shanghai-Beijing train or the modern terminal are not a stand-along prestigious
project, but part of a system that covers or will cover most of China. Indeed,
the ambitious Chinese want to build high-speed trains around the world.
Planning
is afoot for trains connecting China with Europe via Central Asia, Iran, Turkey
and Bulgaria and to Singapore via Laos, Thailand and Malaysia. A proposal to
fund a line in India was turned down by the Planning Commission last year
because it would not be economical. Already there is regular freight train
service between China and Europe.
The
railway technology was acquired in the 1980s and early 1990s from France, Japan
and Germany and “indigenised”. Being relatively unsophisticated, the Chinese
quickly mastered it and are now major players in the high-speed train markets,
displacing those very countries that initially supplied it technology.
But it is
not just by the metrics of railway construction that China is defined. With
just 2/3 the arable land as compared to India, China is by far the larger
agricultural output. China was not an exporter of fruit in 1990, whereas today,
it is the largest producer and exporter of apples.
Indeed,
the Chinese variety of the Fuji apple is the super-star of Indian markets,
outpricing the products coming from the US or New Zealand and our own Himachal
and Kashmir. China may not be an innovator in the scale of the US, Germany or
Japan, but it is getting there.
In the
area of IT, China has produced companies like Alibaba and its rival Tencent
which are world class. Alibaba is bigger than Amazon as an online retailer.
Indeed, in Internet, the Chinese have created their own universe and are now
blocking western companies like Google.
As a
result I could neither access Gmail, nor use the search engine in my week in
China. Reports are that the next target is Microsoft. Chinese products like
instant messaging app WeChat have now gained popularity abroad.
All this
has come through central planning, not of the stodgy Soviet/Indian style, but a
sophisticated and agile one that China has pioneered. A lot of this has its
origins in a plan drawn up based on a letter received by the Chinese supremo,
Deng Xiaoping on March 3, 1986. This plan, called 863 Program (in the Chinese
style, 86 is for the year and 3 for the date).
The gist
of the letter from top nuclear weapons and missile scientists was that China
risked being left behind if it allowed its science and technology to be overly
focused on military issues. What it needed was a broad thrust across several
key science and technology fields.
As a
result of this, big money, in terms of billons of dollars was pumped into
laboratories, universities and research institutes in fields ranging from
biotechnology, information and communications technology, to deep sea research,
lasers and robotics. In 2001, clean energy was added to the list.
The
programme, reviewed periodically not only by Chinese, but also foreign experts,
has provided China with its space capsule Shenzhou, the deep submersible
Jiaolong, Longson processor and thousands of patents. In addition to this,
there have been important spinoffs for the military like the hyper technology
vehicle.
Of
course, these efforts have been supplemented by cyber-theft and espionage on a
grand scale, but that should not diminish the effort and investment that has
gone in projects that aim to make China a high-tech power.
In this
period, India also sought to do what China did. In the Rajiv Gandhi government
(1984-1989), mission areas were selected and fields like supercomputers and
telecom were targeted through agencies like CDAC and C-DOT, and mission areas
identified for oilseeds, water, immunisation, literacy and so on. But these
programmes imploded with the Rajiv government.
An
important difference has been the political stability and continuity provided
by the authoritarian Chinese system, and the lack of focus of the Indian one.
The difference is actually less with regard to the system, but more the
leadership that was provided, both at the political, as well as the mission
level.
Most of
India’s S&T bureaucrats have proved to be as shoddy as the politicians who
led us. I need not take names, some are still around.
There
were important exceptions like Verghese Kurian, who enabled India to become a
“milk” power. But in most other areas we have lost our way because of the
inability of the political system to provide the right kind of leadership to
the country.
Mid Day
July 8, 2014
Gandhis cannot stabilise the Congress
In the UK,
from where we inherited our Westminster parliamentary system, a party
chief who leads his or her party to defeat in a general election,
routinely resigns from its leadership thereafter.
In
the US, a defeated candidate can, very, very rarely, claw his way back
to the top, as Richard Nixon famously did in 1968, after having lost to
John Kennedy in 1960.
There is no such alternative before the Grand Old Party, the Indian National Congress in India, because the leaders of the party – Sonia and Rahul Gandhi – own it, lock, stock and barrel.
So, a Manmohan Singh must fade away and a P V Narasimha Rao be forgotten. But the Gandhis cannot go away.
As proprietors, the family feel that they have no alternative but to retain control and ride out the current setback.
Denial
But things are no longer what they were in 2004, for three reasons.
One, Ms Sonia Gandhi is not in the best of health.Two, the failure of UPA II has proved that the surrogate model of leadership does not work. And three, the promise that Rahul, the heir, exuded at that time has proved to be an illusion.
We now know that Mr Gandhi is not only a commitment-phobe, but also not
particularly good at leading a political party and garnering votes.
Despite some early promise, Rahul Gandhi has proved poor at garnering actual votes
But
this is not what Sonia and Rahul believe. Like the Bourbons of old,
they have learnt nothing and forgotten nothing. And probably for the
same reasons – they live in a gilded cage dependent for their
information of the external world on courtiers who pass off as advisers
and party colleagues.
If there were any reasons to think otherwise, they have been put to
rest by two post-electoral decisions taken by the high command viz Sonia
and Rahul Gandhi.
First, to appoint Mallikarjun Kharge as the leader of the Congress
party in the Lok Sabha, and second, to make A K Antony, now reviled as
the worst defence minister the country has had, as the head of a two-man
committee to review the outcome of the general elections.
Ironically, according to one media report, Rahul Gandhi had based his
2014 election strategy on a report written by the same A K Antony in
1999.
Given his track record, you can be certain that the last people that
Antony will find culpable for the 2014 election debacle will be the
Gandhis – mère et fils.
Actually,
the party's head-in-the-sand attitude became clear the moment it
appointed Kharge as the leader of the much-depleted party in the Lok
Sabha. He may be a well-known leader and a Dalit, but is he prime
minister material?
Ineptitude
After all, the traditional role of a leader of Opposition is to be the
prime minister-in-waiting. David Cameron, for example, was elected
leader of the Conservative Party in December 2005, and simultaneously
took over as the Leader of the Opposition in the British Parliament.
So when the party formed a coalition government in 2010, after winning
the majority of the seats in a hung parliament, it was natural that he
became prime minister.
It was clear from the statements and comments surrounding the decision,
that Kharge had been appointed because Rahul Gandhi was reluctant to
assume the leadership of the party.
If
there was one clear lesson for the party in the outcome of the general
election, it was that the surrogate leader model does not work.
And now once again we have surrogates – Antony for the review, and Kharge for the Lok Sabha.
Given
the scale of the disaster which has befallen the GOP, surely the
proprietors – the Gandhis – had the duty to tell their stake-holders
what went wrong themselves and provide the leadership needed to set
things right.
In the last couple of years, the political ineptitude of the party is
becoming more and more apparent. One manifestation of this is the
attempt to square the circle – make a family proprietorship look like a
modern meritocratic corporation.
Rahul Gandhi's half-baked attempts to democratise the party have run up
against the reality of the feudal nature of the party. His
primary-based selection of candidates flopped because the conditions in
which this can happen are simply not available in India.
As for the elections, the failure to stitch up effective alliances with
smaller parties like the Apna Dal in UP or the LJP in Bihar have cost
the Congress party dearly.
Contrast
Advisers like Ahmed Patel, Ghulam Nabi Azad, Digvijaya Singh and
Madhusudan Mistry still have the ears of the Gandhis, while current
plans seem to suggest that the satraps – Tarun Gogoi in Assam,
Prithviraj Chavan in Maharashtra, and Bhupinder Singh Hooda in Haryana –
will pay the price.
This
is exactly the kind of management style that crates a problem, since it
does not allow for the emergence of a credible leadership in the
states, and minus this, the Congress can't get regional vote-catchers.
Since their central vote-catchers – Sonia and Rahul – have also proved to be flops, the party faces oblivion.
The incompetence with which the party is being run is in sharp contrast to the Modi machine.
Prior
to Modi's ascendancy, both the Congress and the BJP vied with each
other on the score of a dysfunctional leadership. But in the past year
we have been given a lesson on what a well-oiled and led political
machine can achieve.
The
Modi victory was not just the victory of the BJP, but a paradigm shift
in the manner in which politics are to be conducted in the country.
The Congress party needs to sharply step its game up. But it is showing no signs of doing that.
Mail Today June 24, 2014Sunday, August 03, 2014
Modi shouldn't do away with EGOMs
Last
month, in a bid to break with past practice, the new Narendra Modi government
abolished all the Group of Ministers (GoM) and Empowered Group of Ministers
(EGoM) because it said there was need “for greater accountability and
empowerment” for the government as such.
The
reason, probably, was that the previous UPA government had run riot with the
GoM and EGoM concept and, what was once seen as a tool for quick
decision-making, became, instead, a means of slowing it down, if not choking it
up completely.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi feels that he does not need the GoM and EGoM format because he does not head a coalition government. Pic/PTI
During
the UPA-I and II, there had been scores of GoMs and EGoMs, most of them headed
by Pranab Mukherjee, A K Antony, P Chidambaram and Sharad Pawar. The EGoMs, in
particular, were given with the authority to take decisions, making subsequent
discussion and approval by any cabinet committee, presided over by the prime
minister, a mere formality.
They were
a useful device and helped decide many contentious issues, including the plan
for restructuring Air India, the amendments to strengthen India’s anti-rape
laws following the Delhi gang rape in 2012, the allocation and pricing of
natural gas, and so on. However, towards the end of the UPA tenure, they became
a means of postponing decisions.
Ironically,
the GoM innovation was pioneered by the NDA-I government of Atal Bihari
Vajpayee. Among the more successful uses of the format was the report on
“Reforming the National Security System” released in May 2001 by a GoM headed
by L K Advani, and comprising External Affairs Minister Jaswant Singh, Defence
Minister George Fernandes and Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha.
This led
to the first comprehensive bid to reform the national security system since the
1960s. Its recommendations were based on the work of four Task Forces, on
Intelligence, Internal Security, Border Management and Defence.
The great
advantage of the process was that the report passed swiftly through the Cabinet
Committee on Security, since it was drafted by three of its four members, the
fourth being Prime Minister Vajpayee. In contrast, a report by a specialist
Task Force headed by Naresh Chandra in 2012 has gotten lost into the miasma
that was the UPA-II government.
Prime
Minister Modi should, perhaps, ignore the UPA experience and draw a lesson from
the experience of the country whose decision-making prowess he so admires.
Recently, for the first time, the Chinese media revealed that there were at
least 18 “leading small groups” in their system, which are the equivalent of
our EGoMs, and party boss and President Xi Jinping heads four of them.
China
watchers have pointed out that this concept of “leading small groups” have been
a feature of the Communist Party’s governance of China. Such groups have
existed since the mid-1950s, and are featured in the work of the party, the
government and the military.
There
were some surprises when it was revealed Xi presided over the Leading Small
Group for Financial and Economic Affairs and Premier Li Keqiang was the deputy
leader, and that the group which also had Vice Premiers Zhang Gaoli (also a
Politburo member), Liu Yandong, Wang Yang and Ma Kai; the director of the
Central Policy Research Center, Wang Huning; the director of the party’s
General Office, Li Zhanshu; central bank governor Zhou Xiaochuan; the ministers
of water, housing, land resources, and industry and information technology; and
representatives from foreign affairs and the military. Till now, many believed
that dealing with the economy was the primary responsibility of the prime
minister.
The Third
Plenum held last year led to the creation of three more leading small groups
which are headed by Xi — one on Internet network security and information
technology, the Central Military Commission’s leading group for deepening
reform on national defence and army leadership, and the leading group for
comprehensively deepening reform. Of course, Xi is also the head of the
National Security Commission which was set up earlier this year.
An
example of how this works is evidenced by the fact that the key foreign policy
player in China is not the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, but the Foreign Affairs
Leading Small Group (FALSG), which is chaired by Xi and comprises people like
State Councillor Yang Jiechi, who is the special representative for talks on
the border issue with India. Wang Yi, the foreign minister, is not a member of
this group, whose composition is secret, but it almost certainly includes
senior PLA generals and security officials.
All this
tells us a great deal about how China is governed and the unprecedented
consolidation of authority in the hands of Xi Jinping. Prime Minister Narendra
Modi obviously feels that he does not need the GoM and EGoM format because he
does not head a coalition government. Unstated is the reality that Modi is
clearly the numero uno in the government, and that his word will prevail
without much difficulty in the various Cabinet Committees.
But, the
Chinese experience points to the usefulness of institutionalised coordination
groups within government systems to cut through bureaucratic red-tape that
inevitably accumulates in systems of countries as big and complex and China and
India.
Mid-Day
June 24, 2014
Modi's defence forays
Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visits out
of New Delhi last week have emphasised the new government's
understanding of India's Grand Strategy. In some ways, it marks a continuity with the policy of past governments, but in important ways it presages a departure.
The
visits – to commission the INS Vikramaditya in Karwar and to the
kingdom of Bhutan – are connected through an understanding of that
strategy.
It has three elements: the
need for India to live in conditions of peace and stability in which
economic growth can take place and make the life of every Indian better;
the importance of establishing India's primacy in its own neighbourhood
before making extra-regional commitments; and third, and most important
in the current context of flux in the world order – anchoring India's
foreign policy in a strong national security posture.
Indigenisation
In his remarks at the function, Modi not only called on the Navy to
fulfil its traditional role in keeping sea lanes open to commerce, but
also promote self-reliance and indigenisation in the defence
manufacturing sector.
It may be
recalled that as Chief Minister of Gujarat Modi has long supported
indigenisation and has even offered Gujarat as a platform for defence
R&D and manufacturing.
Significantly,
Modi added that Indian-made arms and equipment "should also serve as
protectors for small nations across the world."
In other words, India must emerge as a net security provider in its immediate region.
As a former Chief Minister of Gujarat, Modi is also familiar with other
things maritime and has self-consciously promoted manufacturing based
on SEZ's close to ports.
Gujarat's
coastline of 1600kms is the longest among Indian states. It also hosts
ports, such as Kandla, Mundra, Dahej, as well as smaller ones like
Pipavav, Jakhau, Porbander and so on.
Gujarat
has also been a pioneer in encouraging industry based on proximity to
sea lanes of communications, such as the Jamnagar oil refinery.
If
the visit to Bhutan seemed a puzzle, take out a map of India and see it
again. Bhutan lies adjacent to two of the most sensitive parts of the
country - the Siliguri corridor and the Chumbi Valley.
The
former is the narrow neck of Indian territory that lies between Nepal
and Bangladesh, with Bhutan on its northwest. It is just about 35kms
wide at its narrowest point.
The Chumbi Valley is that part of Tibet that lies between Sikkim and Bhutan and is proximate to the Siliguri Corridor.
China
has claims with Bhutan on its eastern, central and western flanks and
the two countries have undertaken over 20 rounds of talks to resolve
their differences.
Strategy
In terms of bare
bones, the Navy's 2009 maritime doctrine describes as areas of "primary
interest" the immediate waters around India, the littoral reaches of the
Arabian Sea and Bay of Bengal, the straits leading into the Indian
Ocean and the sea lanes that criss-cross it.
From the purely military point of view, a maritime strategy involves
four elements – sea control, power projection ashore, presence and
strategic deterrence.
As long as I
have spoken to Indian Navy leaders, I have heard the word "balanced
Navy" for their vision what the Navy should be all about. Which means a
Navy which can exercise sea control through fleets built around aircraft
carriers.
Power projection involves
the ability to use the sea to make strikes on targets of coastal or
land-locked straits as well as in physically taking control of choke
points.
The emphasis is on building all four elements of maritime strategy. As the record will show, with mixed results.
India's
inefficient public-sector navy yards are unable to keep up to the
required pace of construction – the time they take to build a warship is
sometimes three or four times longer than those of comparable yards
abroad.
For example, most modern Shivalik class, which were contracted to be built within 60 months, took 112 months to be built.
The
Scorpene submarine which was to be delivered in 2012 will start
arriving in 2016. In the meantime, two of ten Kilo-class submarines we
had acquired from Russia are out of commission.
A project to acquire a new class of 75I submarines has been hanging
fire for the past decade. The first Indian designed aircraft carrier –
the new Vikrant – has been delayed till 2018.
Ironically,
India has a number of private sector yards dying to get into business –
Pipavav Defence Systems, L&T, ABG shipyards and so on – but they
are given the crumbs of the table of naval construction because of an
indifferent attitude of an alliance of bureaucrats and public sector
unions.
Reassertion
As for presence, India is reasonably well off in the Indian Ocean. It
has helped countries like Mauritius, Seychelles and Mozambique in
maintaining security. It has a strategic presence in Maldives and
Madagascar and ties with almost all the littoral countries.
Presence
is important in maritime strategy. But to consolidate yourself, you
need something more – a flourishing economy, maritime assets like ports
and merchant ships, an open trading system and secure sea lanes.
China
is using economic, military and diplomatic tools to gain influence over
coastal states and small islands in the Indian Ocean and is using its
investments and aid to consolidate its strategic positions and secure
the approaches to these positions.
In
his initial visits and statements, Modi's footing has been quite sure
and firm. The Indian Ocean is as important as the subcontinental land
mass for India's security and well being. To secure both, the government
has an agenda of reform and restructuring that are needed to enable
India to emerge as a security provider for its smaller neighbours.
Mail Today June 17, 2014
Monday, July 21, 2014
Defence is important, but the economy must come first
After the
smart salutes and displays, Union Defence Minister Arun Jaitley must now
be snowed under with the long lists of demands from the armed forces. The army wants its mountain strike corps, artillery guns, attack helicopters. The
IAF remains fixated on the Rafale fighter, as well as Airbus tankers,
Apache attack helicopters and Chinook heavy lift helicopters.
The
Navy wants to move faster on the aircraft carrier construction, Project
75 I submarines, Project 17A frigates and 15 B destroyers besides
wanting more multi-role helicopters, and corvettes.
It
is an irony, of course, but Jaitley's main job - and, indeed, his
principal duty as the Union Finance Minister - is to get the country's
economy ticking at high speed again.
So my suggestion: The government should freeze all new defence
acquisitions for the next six months. This will help stabilise the
fiscal situation.
But
more importantly, it could provide space to begin a comprehensive and
much-delayed reform of the country's national security machinery.
Needless to say, acquisitions required to keep existing systems going should not be affected by the freeze.
The
six months should be used to conduct a Strategic Defence Review, which
should determine just what the government wants its armed forces to do.
In other words, before arming, the government must clearly define its goals.
In 2010, Stephen Cohen and Sunil Das Gupta outlined India's predicament
in their book, "Arming without aiming" which brought out the multiple
problems confronting the Indian armed forces, who have functioned
without effective joint planning, and political guidance for a long time
now.
Left to themselves, each of the three services cater to each and every
eventuality. But being able to fight any and every challenge is a luxury
even the US can no longer afford.
To
start at the very beginning: India is today a nuclear weapons state
with an estimated 100 warheads, sufficient to ensure that no foreign
power, not even the US, can militarily bully or overwhelm us.
Though
we have serious issues with both Pakistan and China, nuclear weapons
capability in each of the three countries makes the chances of an all
out war between them low.
In such conditions, what kind of conventional capabilities should the country acquire and over what time frame?
This
is an important question, since we are talking about spending hundreds
of thousands of crore rupees over the next decade in which we also
desperately need to spend the money to enhance India's economic
capacity. No one has applied his mind to this issue, since there has
been no governmental effort to review the situation.
That
is why the first priority of the government is to call for a
comprehensive Strategic Defence Review (SDR), which should be steered by
the top ministers of the government through the National Security
Adviser and the National Security Council machinery, which includes the
Strategic Policy Group of key secretaries, and military and intelligence
chiefs.
Such
an exercise could, for example, come up with the finding that we do not
need a mountain strike corps, and that the country's objectives
vis-à-vis China could be better and more economically met through other
means, which could include a naval strategy, or the enhancing the
quality and mobility of existing mountain divisions.
That would straight away lead to a saving of at least Rs 100,000 crore over the next five years.
Likewise,
it may result in the finding that the Air Force cannot afford the 126
Rafale fighters, or that India does not really need some of the big
ticket items like heavy lift C-17 aircraft right now.
There
is need to re-prioritise the expensive items in the services' wish list
in a manner that will not strain the economy, without necessarily
increasing the vulnerability of the country.
In any case, remember, we are a nuclear-armed state.
Because
there has never been an SDR, the armed forces have simply built layer
upon layer of capabilities, without any of the layers being particularly
effective since India lacks the wherewithal to support them.
Thus, the pre-nuclear age army plan called for massed tank attacks to cut Pakistan in two. But this is not going to happen now.
So,
do we need the massive holdings of Main Battle Tanks? The army will say
yes, since Pakistan also has them. But wouldn't it be a good idea to
negotiate a mutual reduction of such tanks, which are not going to be
used anyway?
Then,
take the huge armies of paramilitary that we are adding to each year.
Is it not time to start putting serious money into enhancing the quality
of the state police forces?
Do
we need the Rashtriya Rifles now? They were raised in 1993 when we had
our backs to the wall in Kashmir. Today, the situation has changed
completely. J&K Police officers have repeatedly stated that they no
longer need CAPF or the RR.
The
SDR exercise is not aimed at reducing defence expenditure. It is to
right-size the force structure based on the needs of the country.
For
example, the Indian Air Force today is focused on fighters, but it has
never had a long range bomber, nor indeed sought one. This SDR could
well come up with a different answer. Similarly, the SDR could suggest a
stepping up of India's naval capabilities which have been seriously
neglected in the past decade.
Conducting
a Strategic Defence Review is one aspect of the exercise through which
we will take aim at our objectives. The second, and equally vital part
of it is to empower our armed forces.
This
does not mean better and more equipment and personnel. It means firm
political guidance that will clearly set out what the country expects
from their armed forces, not in vague sloganeering terms, but through a
detailed document worked out through careful study.
Mail Today June 10, 2014
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