The drift to a national security state

Some time ago, I was struck by a small news item tucked away inside the pages of a prominent daily. It said the Ministry of Home Affairs had opposed the increase in the Foreign Direct Investment cap for broadcast and the print media from the current 26 to the proposed 49 per cent, saying this could affect national security.

According to the news item, “The MHA said big foreign media players with vested interests may try to fuel fire during internal or external disturbances.”

What is remarkable about this attitude is the presumption that Indians, who have lived through multiple crises and voted in numerous elections, are in need of the MHA’s protective services when it comes to exercising their judgment. Besides infantilising the citizens of this country, the MHA’s attitude is a manifestation of the national security state that we are becoming. 

Curbs on rights

Such a state is one which tends obsessively to look at challenges through the prism of national security. It builds up a vast apparatus of military and police forces and arms itself with legal and extra-legal powers that end up curbing the rights of its citizens, all in the name of national security.

The ongoing spat between the Intelligence Bureau and the Central Bureau of Investigation over the Ishrat Jahan extra-judicial killing is another manifestation of this development. The IB’s argument seems to be that it is the guardian of security in the country, and hence should somehow be exempt from the operation of its laws, even when it comes to serious issues like extra-judicial execution.

On the other hand, the armed forces say that they need the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act (AFSPA) if they are to operate against domestic insurgents. This would have been a reasonable demand, given the spread of insurgency to many parts of India. But instead of indemnifying its personnel against accidental killing, as the Act intended to do, the Army has been using the legislation to prevent action in incidents of deliberate killing such as the case relating to the murder of three villagers in the Machil sector in Kashmir in 2010. Other agencies, too, now vie for rights similar to the IB. They want powers to snoop into the private lives of Indians as comprehensively as the Stasi once did in East Germany and they see nothing wrong with it. You see, they are guarding our national security.

Of course, the Indian national security state has not emerged out of nowhere. Its roots lie in the massive covert assault the country underwent at the hands of Pakistan in the 1980s and 1990s. To counter it, the state raised new forces, adopted new intelligence tactics, laws and procedures. Unfortunately what we have seen since is an expansion of those powers even though the worst has long been past, at least insofar as the country’s internal security challenges are concerned.

Punjab is a case in point where, in the years 1991-1992, the writ of the State ran in many areas only during the day time. Militancy in Kashmir has declined sharply and today, insurgents’ actions appear to be token reminders to people that they are still around. In the north-east, too, the ULFA is in disarray and the Naga ceasefire continues to hold. Even the Maoists, who once appeared menacing, are now finding the going tough. Yet, there is no effort to refine the tactics, restructure and retrench forces or alter the nature of powers, given the changed circumstances. This is clear from the mule-headed insistence that AFSPA continue to operate in Kashmir, even though the ground situation there has changed dramatically.

As for external security, few will doubt that Pakistan’s war-making capabilities against India have actually deteriorated because of the growing internal challenges that Islamabad faces and the steady accretion of combat power by the Indian military. It is true China’s growing military capabilities pose a significant challenge to India. In recent years, New Delhi has been aware of this and has significantly raised the budgetary provisions for upgrading the northern border infrastructure and the forces committed to its defence. But China’s challenge is as much through its economic prowess as its military capabilities. 

Ever-increasing budget

While the emergence of the national security state poses challenges on the issue of privacy, human rights and personal liberties, there is another aspect that should not be forgotten — expenditure. Every challenge comes up with a new bureaucratic response in terms of new plans, organisations, forces and equipment. Somehow, the older and obsolete ones never seem to go away. So we end up with an ever increasing budget and institutions devoted to national security. The relentless growth of the paramilitary and armed forces has been one manifestation of this. While civil police forces remain patchy and ill-equipped, India’s paramilitary and army has grown astonishingly — from 430,000 in 1988 to 670,000 in 2004. Currently they stand at 850,000 and could go up by another 100,000 in the coming years.

Instead of reorganising and retraining the security apparatus to adjust to the changing nature of threats, our efforts have been to simply add layer upon layer of personnel and equipment. India could reduce the size of its armoured force but this continues to remain a huge component of its army that has little practical use. Along with this are forces such as the 60,000 personnel of the Rashtriya Rifles set up to tackle the insurgency in Kashmir.

Just how things have worked is apparent from what happened to the Parliament House following the December 13, 2001 attack. Until the 1960s, a city transport bus would actually let passengers alight near the front entrance of the building. Today, the guardians of Parliament have shut off roads adjacent to the Parliament House and sections of roads nearby. The perimeter of the Parliament House is covered by a CCTV system and an electrified fence; within, there are four layers of security, courtesy the Delhi Police, the CRPF and ITBP and personnel of the Parliament Security Service, the last-named entity being set up after the 2001 attack on Parliament. This arrangement is giving way to a new Parliament Duty Group made up of two battalions of CRPF and the PSS, equipped with high quality assault rifles, hand-held thermal imagers and so on. Personnel who guard the entry to the Parliament House have a variety of gadgets to disable rogue vehicles, in addition to providing radio-frequency identification of registered vehicles. But, typical of static security systems, Parliament’s security is oriented to fighting the last intrusion better than it is to deal with the next attack which could come in an unexpected fashion, such as one where a toy aeroplane landed on the grounds in 2009. This fortress has, in effect, denied access to the citizen, while not quite ensuring that it is secure. 

Exaggerated protection

Is a national security state more secure? The Parliament House’s security offers an apt illustration. First, despite the multiple layers of security at huge expense, there have been several breaches of the system over the years. Second, the exaggerated protection being offered is for a small elite of political leaders, while the public is left to fend for itself. This is despite the key lesson of internal security, that the leaders can only be as safe as its ordinary citizens are, and that the first and best line of defence against terrorists is good intelligence, which in our case is an entirely different matter.

Ensuring national security is an important attribute of a modern nation-state. But as the erstwhile Soviet Union realised, the threats to the state these days do not come from orthodox sources. And looking at India with its nuclear weapons and huge armies, it is even more difficult to believe that any combination of external and internal threats can actually pose an existential challenge to the nation. Indeed, the real threat is not that we will be overwhelmed by adversaries, but that our obsession with national security will sink the India that we cherish. 

The Hindu August 3, 2013

The row over Modi's visa is a needless controversy

The report that a US forensic expert has authenticated the signatures of 65 Members of Parliament who had written to President Barack Obama to deny a visa to Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi is the latest development in a needless controversy.
At one level it is reveals the battle lines of the coming general elections. At another, it tells us that there will be no holds barred in the campaign.
Naturally, the stakes are high for all those who will be in the contest, but they are immeasurably higher for the Bharatiya Janata Party which lost the 2004 and 2009 elections. A loss in the 2014 elections could well become a KO.

Oddity

Given the focus on the 2014 elections, Narendra Modi is surely too busy to visit America anyway

So far, this year at least, the stepping of the party and its mentor the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh has been faultless. They have managed to get their most energetic and charismatic figure Narendra Modi to the centre-stage as the BJP's election campaign chief, a promotion that will almost certainly see him as the declared or undeclared candidate of the party for the post of prime minister in the 2014 general elections.
The visa controversy is a bit of an oddity here. Both those who are seeking a visa for Mr Modi, and those who are opposing it, are way over the top in pursuing the issue. Given the momentum towards elections, Mr Modi is unlikely to go gallivanting to the United States in the coming months. On the other hand, if he does become prime minister, the US is unlikely to deny him a visa.
Indeed, given what the US says about the centrality of India to Asian geopolitics, the Americans are more likely to lay out the red carpet for him. This is more so because he is perceived to be an economic liberal, rather than the closet socialists that the UPA turned out to be. Even so it was unseemly for BJP president Rajnath Singh to declare at a press conference in the US that he would "appeal to the US government to clear US visa to the Gujarat CM."
Though it would be unfair to heap the entire blame on Singh. He was merely reacting to what he felt was the enormous pressure that is being put on the issue on behalf of Modi by NRI organisations, mainly of Gujaratis, who have proved to be the most fervent Modi supporters.
Equally it is not right for MPs to petition a foreign government to deny a visa to an Indian national. In any case, the right to grant or reject a visa application is jealously guarded by states as an attribute of their sovereignty.

 

Lobbying

While the fact of lobbying is not unusual in the US, it is definitely inappropriate for Indian parliamentarians to participate in the process. It manifests a low self-esteem or an inferiority complex. Subsequently, many of the MPs, including Sitaram Yechury of the CPI(M) denied that they had signed the petition. And now, the forensic expert suggests that they are being somewhat economical with the truth.
When the US denied Mr Modi a diplomatic visa in 2005 on the eve of his visit to the US, the wounds of Gujarat were still fresh. The US embassy said that it acted as per a section of the US Immigration and Nationality Act, which prohibits anybody who was 'responsible for, or directly carried out, at any time, particularly severe violations of religious freedom' from entering the US. They also revoked an existing B1/B2 visa that had been granted earlier.

Since then, while Mr Modi says that he has not applied for a visa, the issue has come up often, with groups of US lawmakers arrayed on both sides of the controversy.
Now, the situation is different. Though many believe that he should accept moral responsibility for what happened in his watch as the chief minister, legally he is clear since various investigations into the Gujarat pogrom have taken place and Mr Modi has not been personally indicted in any of them.
So it was not surprising that the US reaction to the visa controversy was to say that if Mr Modi applied again, his application would be "considered to determine whether he qualifies for a visa, in accordance with US immigration law and policy".

Hypocrisy

Over the years, the US has welcomed many a leader who has violated religious freedom. We can think of the successive Chinese leaders who prevent the free practice of religion in China, or the many Pakistani leaders who are party to a system which marginalizes Shia Muslims, Hindus and Ahmadis.
International politics rather than law or policy will also play a key role in a future Modi visit to the US. There is certainly an element of the hyperbole in Obama's declaration that the American relationship with India is "a defining partnership of the century ahead" . But it contains more than a grain of truth.
For the US an economically and militarily strong India offers the biggest counter-weight to the inexorable rise of China. India by itself cannot offset China, but the equation looks different when it is combined with the strengths of Japan, Southeast Asia and Australia, and America's own considerable capacities.
Earlier this year, envoys of various European countries met him in New Delhi. Last year, the UK High Commissioner James Bevan to New Delhi met him in a highly publicized meeting in Gandhinagar. In 2011, the US Ambassador Timothy Roemer travelled to Gujarat, a state that had been off limits for US envoys since 2002. However he did not meet Modi at that time.
So, at the end of the day, what will matter is realpolitik: If Mr Modi and his party win the election, they will be welcomed by the US.
Mail Today July 31, 2013

Unfamiliar Territory

Last week, Border Security Force personnel guarding a section of the railway being built to link Jammu to the Kashmir Valley fired on a crowd of protestors at Dharm Sharti village near Ramban, killing four and injuring a dozen. The circumstances around the case are murky.
 Some allege that the BSF desecrated a Koran, others claim that they walked into a mosque wearing shoes. Another account says that a local Imam’s brother was detained by a BSF ambush party the evening before and following an argument over his identity papers, a crowd attacked the BSF camp, leading to the firing. The BSF had handed over its security responsibilities to the Central Reserve Police Force since 2005 so it is surprising that the force at Ramban was allegedly conducting “ambushes” and detaining people. The BSF’s task there was to specifically guard the railway project. This is a matter that requires some investigation.

Valley on fire: Though BSF was not trained it took on the militancy frontally

The incident has caused widespread protest in Kashmir and once again brought into focus the atrocious record of the BSF in Kashmir, for which the responsibility must rest with the Union Home Ministry. When the force was moved into the Valley in the wake of the uprising that began in January 1990, it had never participated in a law and order operation, at least for a sustained period of time. However over the next decade and more, the BSF was, in addition to the Indian Army, the key paramilitary force involved in combating the Kashmir insurgency.
From the outset, there were charges of serious human rights violations against several BSF units and personnel. The Union Home Ministry did not provide the force with any guidance and simply threw it into the turbulent waters of Kashmir and expected it to learn how to swim. Led by its Inspector General Ashok Patel, it built up its intelligence wing, the G-Branch, by turning around captured militants. Some of the “turning around” involved use of torture. The force’s Papa II detention centre became dreaded for what went on inside them and to date there has been little or no accounting for what happened there.
Given the circumstances the BSF did a remarkable job and even though it was not trained it took on the militancy frontally. But its record will forever be tainted by the excesses of some of its rogue personnel and the failure of its senior officers and the MHA to try and remedy the situation.
While in the case of the Army, there were several officers and men who were sentenced to prison terms for human rights violation. There has been virtually no BSF official who has been punished for his actions which ranked among, if we may say so, world class atrocities. Among these were incidents of arson that killed hundreds in Lal Chowk in Srinagar and the Bijbehara massacre of October 1993 that led to the deaths of 31 people. In 1996, all twelve persons who faced a court martial for the Bijbehara incident were acquitted. More recently in 2010, a BSF commandant was accused of ordering the shooting a 17-year old boy for no reason other than that he and his friends shouted slogans against the BSF.
The sad fact is that the BSF procedure, unlike that of the Army, has failed to convict a single person for the human rights excesses carried out in the two decade period the force was deployed in Jammu and Kashmir, except in the case of the rape of Mubina Gani in 1990.
As part of the reform of the security system suggested by the Group of Ministers in 2002, the BSF was designated specifically as a “border guarding force” and tasked to look after the India-Pakistan border and the India-Bangladesh border. In the latter case, the force once again got into trouble. On one hand, there have been charges of its complicity with cattle smugglers, and on the other, it has been accused of using excess force against Indians and Bangladeshis. According to a Bangladeshi human rights organization, so far this year, 15 people have been shot on the border by the BSF and many more have been abducted and tortured, an Indian outfit has claimed that more than 1,000 people, mainly Indians have been shot on the border by the BSF in the last decade. Some of the claims are, no doubt, propaganda, but the reports of the past decade are too insistent to be completely untrue.
Primary blame for the BSF’s predicament must rest on the Ministry of Home Affairs. They were never raised as a counterinsurgency force, yet, in 1990, they were pitched into Kashmir. Even as a border guarding force, the BSF was originally viewed as a trip wire for the India-Pakistan border, one that would act as a screen against any Pakistan army thrust into India and was thus equipped and organized like the Army. But the India-Bangladesh border is a very different place with lots of human movement back and forth, and requires a force which has a great deal of tact, as well as integrity. Unfortunately, both have been in short supply where the BSF’s record is concerned.
Mid Day (Mumbai) July 23, 2013

India is not responsible for the mess in Afghanistan

Tempers in India have been ruffled by some recent writings associated with the Brookings Institution which suggest that the road to peace in Afghanistan goes via Kashmir.
The director of the institution's intelligence project, Bruce Riedel's 2013 book Avoiding Armageddon, has said that Pakistan has created its jihadist infrastructure to fight India directly in Kashmir and indirectly in Afghanistan. Indian "flexibility" in Kashmir was therefore, the key to game change in South Asia.
Then there was the essay by our own William Dalrymple, written for the Brookings Institution, where he stated: "The hostility between India and Pakistan lies at the heart of the current war in Afghanistan."

Shifting blame: President Barack Obama meets Afghanistan's President Hamid Karzai, left, and former Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari 

Stephen Cohen, the Brookings premier South Asia expert has taken up the India-Pakistan issue in his recent book Shooting for a Century, but takes a different tack which is not germane to this argument.
With retreat staring it in the face, the US is being offered various options by analysts and scholars. The India-Pakistan one seems convenient, but it misses its target by a mile. There is no special India-Pakistan rivalry in Afghanistan. There may be one imagined by Islamabad, but the reality is that geography prevents New Delhi from any substantive involvement in Afghan affairs.
That is why, the Indian effort which was mainly related to infrastructure and social development in the past decade was an adjunct to that of the US and ISAF's security operation, and with that security being withdrawn, India is confronted by a major dilemma.

 

As a friend of Afghanistan and a strategic partner of its government, New Delhi remains committed to the economic and social development of the Afghan state. But that does not mean that, for the sake of keeping the US happy, it can cheerfully endorse its emerging policy of striking a deal with the Taliban, through the dubious instrumentality of the Pakistan military.
Beginning with the Bonn and Berlin conferences of 2001 and 2004 respectively, we were told that the mission of the western forces was to transform Afghanistan. The state would have a new constitution, an elected government and its policies would be in line with the best practices of democratic countries of the west.

Developments

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry has held multiple meetings with Pakistan's army chief Ashfaq Pervez Kayani this year

In 2013, the democratic project is being blithely abandoned. The west says it needs to withdraw, and must do so in good order. Therefore it has changed its order of priorities - placing the need to leave Afghanistan in 2014 as number one. To that end, it is willing to sup with the Taliban devil, and forget Pakistan's betrayal. And it wants the rest of the world to applaud the move.
The problem for India is that the west's new road to Kabul is via Islamabad. The Doha talks have been facilitated by Pakistan, as indicated by the numerous meetings US Secretary of State John Kerry and the special representative for Afghanistan James Dobbins have had with Pakistan army chief Ashfaq Pervez Kayani this year.
Pakistan, as we know, virtually created the Taliban and the outfit has served as its proxy in maintaining its influence on Afghanistan. The Taliban of today is even more amenable to manipulation by Islamabad than it was before.
It is important to be familiar with a bit of history. Pakistan did not have much influence in Afghanistan till the rise of the Taliban.
Actually relations between the two countries have been quite indifferent, to use a polite word, since the creation of Pakistan.
Conventional wisdom assumed that it was the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan which triggered Islamabad's support to the mujahideen; the reality is that Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was supporting Afghan Islamists against Kabul well before that event.
Pakistan's Afghan policy, dictated as much by attitudes in Kabul, has never really been related to India. Following the defeat of the Russians, the Pakistanis had a free hand in Afghanistan. And what a mess of it they made.
The end result was the rise of the medieval Islamic Emirate of Mullah Omar and the homicidal al Qaeda.

Folly

Pakistan bears a great deal of responsibility for what Afghanistan has gone through in the last two decades. Now the US, once again, wants to hand over its destiny to Islamabad. Considering the blood and treasure that Washington has already expended in the last decade, this is foolhardiness of a high order. But that is imperial hubris for you.
Till the Soviet invasion, Indian interests in Afghanistan were essentially those of a friendly near neighbour. But following the invasion and the American-led jihad, things changed.
Designated as the lead player in that jihad, Pakistan saw it as an opportunity to get its own back on India. Parts of Afghanistan under mujahideen control were used to locate training camps for terrorists. Besides a concern for the fate of the Afghan people, New Delhi worries that with Pakistan in the driver's seat, Afghanistan will once again become a training ground for terrorists.

Responsibility

Even so, New Delhi is unlikely to play the spoiler. The ball is really in the American court and it remains to be seen just how they will pick up the one that the Taliban have dropped in Doha. In the end, what will matter is the leadership in Kabul and whether it can keep its nerve against the psychological games being played by its mentors - the US and EU - as well as the Taliban.
The Afghan National Security Forces appear to have the will to fight, and if they are supported they can give the Taliban a run for their money. The responsibility for the future lies firmly with the US and EU, who messed up the war and now seem to be determined to mess up the peace efforts as well.
No amount of analytical jugglery can shift the onus to countries like India, whose role in Afghanistan may be important, but is still secondary.
What India and other countries leery of the Taliban need to do, is to push the US and the EU to adopt a policy that will benefit Afghanistan in the long run, rather than be tailored for their immediate need to exit.
Mail Today July 22, 2013

India walks the Chinese tightrope

Two important back-to-back visits to China - the first by the National Security Advisor Shivshankar Menon and the second by the Union Defence Minister AK Antony - mark the latest moves on the Sino-Indian chessboard. The first, which took place on June 28-29, on the occasion of the 16th round of Special Representatives talks on resolving the border dispute, was described as "productive, constructive and forward looking."
The second, between the defence ministers of the two countries between July 4-6, was seen as being "cordial and friendly."

Indeed, going by the official statements that marked the two events, some would imagine that the two countries were truly "natural strategic partners", as claimed by Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi at Bandar Seri Begawan, Brunei, earlier this month after his meeting with his Indian counterpart Salman Khurshid.

Chessboard

The reality is somewhat more complex. Because we have also witnessed Beijing's curious move on the Depsang plains in April, on the eve of their prime minister's visit to India. And just hours before Antony was due to land in Beijing, Major General Luo Yuan, a well-connected People's Liberation Army officer was breathing fire against India at a meeting of the All China Journalists Association.
What we have is a big power game in which Beijing sometime talks and acts tough with India, but at the formal level expresses a desire for friendly relations. Now New Delhi has also decided to enter the spirit of the game and adopt a friendly face towards China at the formal level, even while shoring up its military capacity and expanding its circle of friends in the Asia-Pacific region.

Beijing: Defence Minister A K Antony with his Chinese counterpart Gen Chang Wanquan

 This is something it has learnt from Beijing which, on the surface, makes friendly noises towards India, even while pursuing a policy of undermining its security, usually via Pakistan.
Critics may not agree with this, but China remains the best managed area of India's foreign policy. This has been evident in the past months, when diplomacy saw off the Chinese transgression into Indian territory in Ladakh, and the outreach to Japan rattled some nerves in Beijing.
In their talks, the Special Representatives continued their discussions on a framework for a resolution of the Boundary Question, which constitutes the second step of a three-stage process. It is acknowledged, though, that the framework agreement is a difficult hurdle as it will be the key agreement that will translate into the border line.
The third stage will be the actual delineation of the border on the maps and its demarcation on the ground. The SR talks were initiated in 2003, made quick progress and, by April 2005, there was agreement on the political parameters and agreed guidelines of the border settlement.
However, thereafter the talks stalled and have not been able to close the second stage. Many explanations have been put forward for this, but the most obvious one is that the Chinese have balked at moving forward because of the growing closeness between India and the United States, marked by the Indo-US Nuclear Deal of 2008.

 

Atmospherics

As for the defence ministers, their aim was to improve the overall atmospherics of Sino-Indian military to military relations which have seen many ups and downs since the Chinese denied a visa to Lt Gen BS Jaswal, India's northern army commander in 2010 and New Delhi retaliated by breaking off all military-to-military links. Thereafter there was some breaking of the ice following the visit of the Chinese defence minister Liang Guanglie in 2011.
During the Antony visit, the two sides restored their military-to-military ties by working out the future course of bilateral joint exercises and exchanges. They also agreed to conclude negotiations on the new Border Defence Cooperation Agreement (BDCA) as early as possible. The Chinese are seeking a freeze on the military situation on the border, but this is not acceptable to India because of the decade plus lead that the Chinese have in building up their military infrastructure in Tibet.
Apparently the two sides have worked out a broadly acceptable text which could be formalised into an agreement later this year.

Settlement

Curiously enough, parallel to the Depsang incident were trends suggesting that the Chinese are also interested in accelerating the efforts to arrive at a border settlement. This was evident from the decision to accelerate the process of settlement, arrived at by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and the new Chinese President Xi Jinping in March, when they met for the first time at the sidelines of the BRICS Summit in Durban and where the Chinese leader was quoted as saying: "China and India should improve and make good use of the mechanism of special representatives to strive for a fair, rational solution framework acceptable to both sides as soon as possible."
This was followed by Chinese premier Li Keqiang's meeting with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in New Delhi when the SRs were asked to look into the Depsang stand-off and the BDCA. The Sino-Indian border issue is a complex one and it is not likely to be resolved in a hurry, not in the least because India currently lacks the political ambiance where a notional loss of territory, which is bound to happen in any settlement in relation to Ladakh, will be acceptable.
Equally difficult is the challenge of predicting Chinese policy. Even now it is difficult to figure out just why the Chinese behaved the way they did in Depsang.
In the meanwhile, New Delhi seems to be shaping a policy which seeks to push the envelope of engagement with China, even while maintaining special ties with the US, Japan and the Asean to offset the pull of Chinese power.
The trick is in maintaining the balance between the two ends and it can only be effectively done if India can restore the momentum of its economic growth and meet its military modernization goals.

Mail Today July 11, 2013

Antony's term as defence minister has been mired in scandals and missed opportunities

A K Antony has been the longest serving defence minister of the country. Sadly, we cannot say that he has been the best. Brought in to signal the need for integrity in defence purchases, and to speed up the delayed modernisation of the armed forces, his term has been one of failure and missed opportunities.
The VIP helicopter scam represents only the tip of the iceberg of the corruption that continues to dog defence deals. 




Defence Minister A K Antony

As for modernisation, the Antony term has seen a further slippage in the Scorpene submarine project and an inability of the Army to push through the urgently needed artillery modernisation, to name just two of the key projects that remain mired in delays fostered by the defence ministry.
Relations between the armed forces and the civilian bureaucracy remain poisonous and break out into periodic spats, the most spectacular one being the V K Singh age issue.
In such circumstances one would imagine that Antony would be an enthusiastic supporter of reform and restructuring of his ministry.
But far from it. He maintained a reputation for indecisiveness and caution and, according to news reports, he has tamely followed his bureaucracy to block the significant proposals made by the Naresh Chandra task force on defence reform.
This has manifested itself most clearly in the opposition of the ministry to the creation of the office of a permanent chairman of the chiefs of staff committee (COSC). 

Committee

The committee which laboured for a year, comprised of former service and intelligence service chiefs and was chaired by a person who had himself been Defence and later Cabinet Secretary.
To term the recommendation of the committee on the permanent chair for the COSC as "unwarranted" can only be termed as self-defeating impertinence.
Actually, according to news reports, the MoD has declared that not only is there no need to appoint a permanent COSC chairman, there is no need for any reform anywhere, period.
In a way this sums up the arrogant self-certitude of the bureaucracy and hearkens to Lord Kelvin's famous 1900 statement that, "There is nothing new to be discovered in physics now."
Across the world, joint functioning or integration of the various arms of the services has been the trend since the time of World War I.

 

Modern war, it was soon realised, could not be fought by individual services efficiently. In the 1950s most countries appointed Chiefs of Defence Staff (CDS).
In India, the Group of Ministers which looked into defence reforms after the Kargil war suggested that a CDS post be created, along with the integration of the armed forces headquarters with the Ministry of Defence.

Scandal: The VIP helicopter scam represents only the tip of the iceberg of the corruption that continues to dog defence deals

However, this was sabotaged by the bureaucracy which raised all manner of objections to the proposal. They did create a tri-service Integrated Defence Staff, but being headless, its influence has been sub-optimal.
Then, in an act of blatant chicanery, the babus relabelled the service headquarters as Integrated Headquarters of the Ministry of Defence (Army/Navy/Air Force) and declared that integration had taken place.
They were able to do this by playing up to the fears of the politicians that the CDS would be a "super general" and so powerful that he could threaten the system with a coup.
Coming in a country where the last military coup probably took place in 185 BC when Pusyamitra Sunga overthrew the Mauryan dynasty, this is a bit rich.
Their actual concern, however, was that the new organisation would cut into the power that the civilian bureaucracy wields by manipulating the Transaction of Business Rules in its own favour, a power that is wielded in an inexpert, incompetent and corrupt manner. 

COSC

The Naresh Chandra Committee took all the contrarian views into account and by recommending a permanent chairman of the chiefs of staff committee emphasised that the new general would be a coordinator, rather than a commander.

In its view, there was an urgent need for a high ranking officer who would assist the government in drawing up a national security doctrine and national security strategy and provide single point advice on issues that concern more than one service.
The permanent Chairman COSC would also be the key functionary in the nuclear command chain. In the decade following the nuclear test of 1998, India has steadily built up its nuclear arsenal.
It will soon have a ballistic missile carrying submarine to anchor its arsenal, as well as long range missiles.
Developments in Pakistan and China suggest the need for a much tighter nuclear command chain than has been the case till now. 

Crisis

Equally importantly, he would play a key role in integrating the three services, a process that needs to take place in the coming decades, if India is to have a credible military force.
Already, the cost of maintaining the armed forces has become hugely expensive. There is need to integrate the training, logistics, acquisition and some war-fighting functions of the three services to obtain the biggest bang for the buck.
This can only be done with a specialised institution which will focus on promoting that integration beginning with helping generate the annual, the five year and long term integrated plans for the three services.
There was a time when the smaller services-the Navy and Air Force-were leery of a figure like the Chief of Defence Staff.
But now they have realised the importance of the appointment and it is no surprise that in the briefings to the Naresh Chandra Committee, they strongly supported the creation of CDS-like figure because they accept that if India has to have a credible military posture in the coming decades, it needs such a figure.
It is simply not possible to go on with the haphazard coordination that the country has gone along with for so long to its own cost.
It is an unfortunate fact that India usually commits itself to reform after it is hit by a crisis. That is why the two periods of reform and restructuring followed the 1962 defeat at the hands of the Chinese and the Kargil war.
We don't know what the next crisis will be like, but you can be sure that if we do not change the way we do things in relation to our defence system, we will be the losers. And we will know who is responsible for it.
(The writer was a member of the National Security Task Force chaired by Naresh Chandra)
Mail Today June 24, 2013