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Around 2:30pm each day, the sentries near the large sandstone Ashoka lions on the first floor of South Block stiffen to attention. Arun Jaitley has entered his wood-panelled office in room 134 after a short drive from the finance ministry office in North Block. This daily change of guard, when the finance minister segues into defence minister, has been a ritual for more than 100 days. The trouble is that the challenges before the defence ministry are full-time. Just as they are for the country's armed forces, currently carrying out an unprecedented humanitarian relief operation in flood-ravaged Jammu and Kashmir.
"The defence ministry requires undivided attention," says former defence secretary Ajai Vikram Singh. "The present arrangement is unfair to both ministries and the person in charge."
The ministry's spectacular drift over the past decade has seen a muddled policy to buy arms, a stunted capability to build them domestically and a shortage of critical equipment. India's aspirations for a seat at the UN Security Council are unleavened by the fact that for three straight years it has been the world's largest net importer of defence equipment, sourcing arms worth Rs.83,458 crore or nearly 60 per cent of its needs from four P5 nations. China, which the armed forces see as a major military strategic threat in the foreseeable future, meanwhile, went from being the world's largest arms buyer to the fifth-largest arms exporter.
Jaitley is not a plodder. Defence ministry officials say he is quick to grasp complex issues and takes swift decisions. His ministry recently raised foreign direct investment (FDI) to 49 per cent in the defence industry, pending for over a decade, and has a nuanced policy on dealing with defence firms which sets aside his predecessor A.K. Antony's sledgehammer approach of blacklists. There are early signs that his Government emphasises boosting domestic defence production: Jaitley has thrown open to Indian industry a contract to make 197 Light Utility Helicopters worth more than $1 billion, which the Ministry of Defence (MoD) earlier planned to import.
In the coming months the defence minister also needs to fix the defunct defence industrial complex which, despite massive investments, does not yield results. The Ordnance Factory Board alone consumes Rs.1,200 crore each year and is hugely inefficient. It charges the MoD Rs.1.4 crore to overhaul an Infantry Combat Vehicle, instead of Rs.20 lakh it should cost. The reliance on external sources is complete. India has just two indigenous defence platforms which it has designed and built and can offer for export: the Pinaka multi-barrel rocket launcher and the Akash surface-to-air missile system.
Import dependence disrupts preparedness. An IAF official grimly notes how India's joint project with Ukraine to upgrade more than 100 An-32 transport aircraft has hit a rough patch-five An-32s sent to Ukraine for modernisation are stranded there because of ongoing tensions with Russia. Ukrainian factories also supply the IAF's primary long-range missile, the R-27 for Sukhoi Su-30s and MiG-29s and gas turbines that power most of the present frontline Indian naval warships.
At the core of India's military mess lies the inability of the defence ministry to perform a critical role: lay out a modernisation blueprint. The defence ministry has been unable to bridge the gap between the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) which designs weapons, the public sector undertakings that produce them and the armed forces which require them. It has failed to prioritise acquisitions; the system currently encourages a first-past-the-post procurement method.
The fault could lie in the lack of a comprehensive national security policy which meshes foreign, economic and defence policy objectives and guides a modernisation programme. Defence planning, instead, flows out of a slim document called the 'Raksha Mantri's Operational Directives' issued every five years. These directives guide all hardware acquisition and shape India's defence posture. The directives are, however, collated from recommendations from the armed forces themselves.
The only vision statement, the 15-year Long Term Integrated Perspective Plan of the three armed forces, is a hardware shopping list. It leads to an inter-services scramble to prioritise arms purchases-the emphasis is on platform replacement rather than capability planning. Individual services function in silos. Coordination among them is hampered by the absence of a full-time chief of defence staff (CDS) as recommended by the Kargil Review Committee in 2001. The CDS is yet to be appointed but his staff, more than 300 service officers who make up the Headquarters Integrated Defence Staff (HQ IDS), is already in place. Critical reforms suggested by the HQ IDS have been ignored by the services. These included a Logistics Command, which could procure supplies for all three services. Service brass are quick to approve reports that expand their empires and swift to reject those that suggest reducing their turf.
Nearly 60 per cent of the Rs.2.2 lakh crore defence budget is spent on manpower costs, leaving only 40 per cent for the services to urgently buy helicopters, submarines and combat jets. Even so, a sluggish acquisition system means it takes the defence ministry nearly eight years to get any weapon system through competitive bidding. Delays in DRDO project are so legendary that Prime Minister Narendra Modi recently admonished their "chalta hai" (anything goes) attitude. "The world will no longer wait for us."
The only one waiting, it would seem, is the Indian soldier. For comfortable combat boots, lightweight bulletproof vest and a reliable assault rifle. A systemic inability to provide a modern infantry combat kit sees the soldier tucking a one-litre packaged water bottle into his bandolier- his belt has no loops to hang the small military-issue bottle.
Read more at: Modernisation freeze and policy drift over the past decade is aggravated by a part-time defence minister : Cover Story - India Today
"The defence ministry requires undivided attention," says former defence secretary Ajai Vikram Singh. "The present arrangement is unfair to both ministries and the person in charge."
The ministry's spectacular drift over the past decade has seen a muddled policy to buy arms, a stunted capability to build them domestically and a shortage of critical equipment. India's aspirations for a seat at the UN Security Council are unleavened by the fact that for three straight years it has been the world's largest net importer of defence equipment, sourcing arms worth Rs.83,458 crore or nearly 60 per cent of its needs from four P5 nations. China, which the armed forces see as a major military strategic threat in the foreseeable future, meanwhile, went from being the world's largest arms buyer to the fifth-largest arms exporter.
Jaitley is not a plodder. Defence ministry officials say he is quick to grasp complex issues and takes swift decisions. His ministry recently raised foreign direct investment (FDI) to 49 per cent in the defence industry, pending for over a decade, and has a nuanced policy on dealing with defence firms which sets aside his predecessor A.K. Antony's sledgehammer approach of blacklists. There are early signs that his Government emphasises boosting domestic defence production: Jaitley has thrown open to Indian industry a contract to make 197 Light Utility Helicopters worth more than $1 billion, which the Ministry of Defence (MoD) earlier planned to import.
In the coming months the defence minister also needs to fix the defunct defence industrial complex which, despite massive investments, does not yield results. The Ordnance Factory Board alone consumes Rs.1,200 crore each year and is hugely inefficient. It charges the MoD Rs.1.4 crore to overhaul an Infantry Combat Vehicle, instead of Rs.20 lakh it should cost. The reliance on external sources is complete. India has just two indigenous defence platforms which it has designed and built and can offer for export: the Pinaka multi-barrel rocket launcher and the Akash surface-to-air missile system.
Import dependence disrupts preparedness. An IAF official grimly notes how India's joint project with Ukraine to upgrade more than 100 An-32 transport aircraft has hit a rough patch-five An-32s sent to Ukraine for modernisation are stranded there because of ongoing tensions with Russia. Ukrainian factories also supply the IAF's primary long-range missile, the R-27 for Sukhoi Su-30s and MiG-29s and gas turbines that power most of the present frontline Indian naval warships.
At the core of India's military mess lies the inability of the defence ministry to perform a critical role: lay out a modernisation blueprint. The defence ministry has been unable to bridge the gap between the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) which designs weapons, the public sector undertakings that produce them and the armed forces which require them. It has failed to prioritise acquisitions; the system currently encourages a first-past-the-post procurement method.
The fault could lie in the lack of a comprehensive national security policy which meshes foreign, economic and defence policy objectives and guides a modernisation programme. Defence planning, instead, flows out of a slim document called the 'Raksha Mantri's Operational Directives' issued every five years. These directives guide all hardware acquisition and shape India's defence posture. The directives are, however, collated from recommendations from the armed forces themselves.
The only vision statement, the 15-year Long Term Integrated Perspective Plan of the three armed forces, is a hardware shopping list. It leads to an inter-services scramble to prioritise arms purchases-the emphasis is on platform replacement rather than capability planning. Individual services function in silos. Coordination among them is hampered by the absence of a full-time chief of defence staff (CDS) as recommended by the Kargil Review Committee in 2001. The CDS is yet to be appointed but his staff, more than 300 service officers who make up the Headquarters Integrated Defence Staff (HQ IDS), is already in place. Critical reforms suggested by the HQ IDS have been ignored by the services. These included a Logistics Command, which could procure supplies for all three services. Service brass are quick to approve reports that expand their empires and swift to reject those that suggest reducing their turf.
Nearly 60 per cent of the Rs.2.2 lakh crore defence budget is spent on manpower costs, leaving only 40 per cent for the services to urgently buy helicopters, submarines and combat jets. Even so, a sluggish acquisition system means it takes the defence ministry nearly eight years to get any weapon system through competitive bidding. Delays in DRDO project are so legendary that Prime Minister Narendra Modi recently admonished their "chalta hai" (anything goes) attitude. "The world will no longer wait for us."
The only one waiting, it would seem, is the Indian soldier. For comfortable combat boots, lightweight bulletproof vest and a reliable assault rifle. A systemic inability to provide a modern infantry combat kit sees the soldier tucking a one-litre packaged water bottle into his bandolier- his belt has no loops to hang the small military-issue bottle.
Read more at: Modernisation freeze and policy drift over the past decade is aggravated by a part-time defence minister : Cover Story - India Today
