Downsizing is happening, it’s an inevitability. Purely because of the freeze in recruitment for 2-3 years during Covid the IA is ~100k smaller (they’ve only taken in a fraction of their intake prior to 2020). Since 2016 Parrikar was banging on about ‘cutting the fat’ and the current CDS and COAS are on record of talking about right sizing the IA to improve the tail to tooth ratio
It has to happen, spending >90% of their budget every single year purely on pensions and salaries is never going to allow for any real modernisation or mechanisation. As it stands the PLA’s CAPEX is maybe 15-20X the IA’s
The commies figured this out a long time ago
In the last few years, the PLA has downsized its military by retrenching three lakh troops under the military reforms initiated by President Xi Jinping. But it still remained the world's largest military with two million personnel in the ranks.
m.economictimes.com