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Chaturanga

~ statecraft, strategy, society, and Σοφíα

Chaturanga

Tag Archives: United Progressive Alliance

Indian Defence in the Doldrums

28 Fri Mar 2014

Posted by Jaideep A. Prabhu in India, Security, South Asia

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

AgustaWestland, AK Antony, artillery, Cyber Command, defence, DK Joshi, India, indigenisation, INS Sindhurakshak, INS Vikramaditya, insurgency, Israel Aircraft Industries, israel Military Industries, Ordnance Factory Board, Rheinmetall, Scorpene, SP Tyagi, Space Command, Tatra, Tejas, terrorism, United Progressive Alliance, UPA, VK Singh

If anyone ever wanted a patron saint for incompetence, they need look no further than India’s defence minister, AK Antony. Ostensibly given the portfolio by the United Progressive Alliance in October 2006 because of his clean image, the country’s defence preparedness has plummeted to rock bottom during Antony’s tenure. By presiding over an era marked by policy inertia, procurement paralysis, and administrative fumbling, the UPA has brought India’s defence preparedness to its lowest point since October 1962.

Policy

In the past five years, the Indian military has emerged as the largest importer of weapons. The failure to develop indigenous manufacturing and research is partly due to little support by the Ministry of Defence to private firms wishing to enter the defence sector, low research & development budgets, and the inability to recruit the best talent.

The heavy reliance on imports has left defence procurements at the mercy of the exchange rate. Several of India’s acquisitions have had to be put on hold due to the sudden spike in the rupee-dollar rate last year, and the uncertainty has wreaked havoc on budgets as well as preparedness. As a result, modernisation of India’s armed forces is also lagging behind; the Air Force is still flying MiG-21s, the Tejas is yet to be produced in significant numbers, the contract for France’s Rafale has not yet been signed after two years of negotiations, and half of India’s Sukhois are undergoing repairs at any given time.

The Navy has had its own share of modernisation problems, including delays in the deployment of the indigenously built nuclear submarine INS Arihant, troubles with the boilers of the newly inducted aircraft carrier INS Vikramaditya, and the loss of the recently refurbished diesel submarine INS Sindhurakshak.

The crash of the Indian Air Force’s latest acquisition, the Rs.1,000-crore C-130J Super Hercules raises questions about training and maintenance in Antony’s army. The IAF’s pilot-to-cockpit ratio is already the lowest among India’s foes and India has had trouble with training aircraft as well as flight time given to each pilot.

In addition to indigenisation, modernisation, and training, Antony’s MoD has done little to develop a military of the future. Fewer states engage in large-scale warfare with tanks and infantry across open plains as they used to even 50 years ago. The Indian Army has done little to develop new doctrines for fighting low-intensity conflict, insurgencies, or terrorism. Coordination between what exists in the name of cyber operations, intelligence gathering, and special operations remains weak.

Procurement

The most visible failure of the UPA government has been in procurement. The AgustaWestland helicopter scandal may have garnered the most media attention because of the most high profile of its suspect list, but several other scandals have also rocked the UPA government: the Tatra trucks scam, the Ordnance Factory Board scandal, and the Rolls Royce flam to name the most recent. Antony’s policy to immediately freeze any transaction at the slightest hint of corruption has denied the military much-needed equipment and ammunition. The blacklisting of any firm involved has turned away some of India’s major partners such as Israel Military Industries and Rheinmetall.

The PA’s policy of blacklisting firms also has ripple effects in India’s suppliers network: for example, putting all contracts with Rolls Royce on hold will have implications on India’s purchase of the US-2i ShinMaywa from Japan as the aircraft relies on four Rolls Royce engines. A more obvious problem with the UPA’s strategy is that it leaves the military desperately short of munitions as was the case with the Barak missile. Worse, some of the accusations have been found to be false or the Central Bureau of Investigation could not find any evidence of wrongdoing after a thorough investigation such as in the Scorpene deal allegations. These procedures add years to the procurement timeline during which time the Armed Forces are vulnerable and costs go up.

Administration

One might argue that structural changes in defence take time. Yet that does not answer for the UPA’s lehargy in implementing administrative reforms in the armed services designed to improve chain of command, efficiency, and flow of information. Despite ten years at the helm, the UPA has made little movement on the recommendations of the Kargil Review Committee and Antony has effectively ignored the Naresh Chandra Review Committee’s report. Furthermore, proposals to streamline the bureaucracy and involve the military in decision-making, such as the creation of a Joint Chief of Staff or the integration of the service headquarters with the MoD, have been resisted. As a result, the military is not just under the civilian control of the minister but also the poorly informed civil service bureaucracy.

A critical improvement Antony could have pursued is the simplification, transparency, and swiftness of the defence procurement process. Even without scandals, the laborious and labyrinthine procurement process can take years, be it assault rifles or aircraft carriers. Over $100 billion of hardware purchases has been stalled for a decade and resulted in the degradation of the military’s fighting capability. As one naval officer described the situation aboard some of India’s seafaring vessels, “it is like treading in a minefield.”

Although India’s defence budget has technically risen under the UPA, factoring in inflation and exchange rates – since over 70% of the equipment is imported – the rise is barely enough for salaries, pensions, and other fixed costs, leaving little for modernisation or R&D. The Army’s desperate appeals for artillery have gone unanswered as has the Navy’s urging to acquire six more submarines.

Civil-Military Relations

The relations between the military and their civilian masters have reached a nadir under the UPA. Delhi’s fear in January 2012 that a coup was taking place just before the Republic Day parade indicates the gravity of this problem.  While the loss of three senior men in uniform – General VK Singh, Air Chief Marshal SP Tyagi, and Admiral DP Joshi – was not entirely of the UPA’s doing, one wonders if the defence minister could not have done more to handle matters in-house, at least in the case of the general and admiral. Antony’s excessive reliance on the civil service and his personal indecisiveness has endeared him to the military either.

* * * * *

Admittedly, India’s defence woes stem from decades of negligence and a lack of strategic thinking. To expect that to be overturned overnight is too big an ask. However, the UPA has been in power for a decade, long enough to start implementing a chain of reforms that could move the country in the right direction. Despite the umpteen signs of trouble brewing in the armed forces, the UPA retained its defence minister, who by the way, has held the post for longest. The price of this step-motherly treatment was seen upon the Chinese incursion into India in April 2013 and in the many wasted opportunities when India could not field a military option even if desired. Given the force levels and combat readiness the UPA has brought the Indian military to, its only hope of victory is that India’s neighbours are in a greater state of disrepair. The supreme irony is that it is in a corruption-saturated UPA decade that AK Antony showed us honesty alone is not enough.


This post appeared on Daily News & Analysis on March 31, 2014.

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Why I Am Angry With The BJP

27 Tue Aug 2013

Posted by Jaideep A. Prabhu in India, South Asia

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Bharatiya Janata Party, BJP, Food Security Bill, FSB, India, Marx + Cow, National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, NREGA, socialism, Swapan Dasgupta, United Progressive Alliance, UPA, welfarism

The remains of the economic Right were laid to rest yesterday as the Bharatiya Janata Party, supposedly India’s right-wing party, supported the Food Security Bill and continued its decade-long custom of deference to the Indian National Congress. For a party that advertises itself as a party with a difference, little of this difference has been seen in the last ten years. Other than the lively and intelligent attack on the Indo-US nuclear deal by Arun Shourie and Yashwant Sinha between 2005 and 2008, India’s principle Opposition party has been absconding from its role for almost a decade and it seems, outsourced its duty to citizenry.

The BJP’s position on the FSB has been most disappointing to many of its fellow travellers. Despite the severe opposition the bill has generated from many learned quarters, BJP President Rajnath Singh declared that his party does not oppose the bill. Nonetheless, other party members were reluctant to give up their 15 seconds of limelight: Yashwant Sinha opposed the bill on grounds of affordability and Murli Manohar Joshi on grounds that the coverage was not enough! Finally, Sushma Swaraj also extended her and the Party’s support to FSB despite the BJP’s amendments being defeated.

Putting the BJP in a worse light, the FSB had been moving towards a parliamentary vote for the past four years. It is another mark of resignation that the BJP did nothing to make its case to the people and thereby create an air of hostility to the bill. When D-Day came, the Party’s strategy was to hope that parliamentary disruptions would punt discussion until the next session!

It is not that the message of development and governance cannot be sold to the masses. However, it requires a confidence of purpose and intellectual clarity that few BJP leaders have shown. In his speech at the Shri Ram College of Commerce earlier this year, Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi demonstrated how the idea of growth and prosperity could be packaged with simple anecdotes for the general electorate. It would be a self-defeating exercise if the BJP were to pull out PowerPoint slides and an arsenal of economic jargon, but as Albert Einstein is credited with saying, if you cannot explain an idea simply, you have not understood it yourself. Even farmers and village blacksmiths understand rent, food prices, and clean water if you care to explain it to them.

The BJP’s pro-business reputation varies depending on whether it is in power or in Opposition. A few months ago, the BJP objected to the opening of the country to foreign investment in retail. This discontent to the initiative smacked of political opportunism given that the Party had supported it while in power. Beyond political points, these volte-face decisions betray a deeper philosophical confusion. The agglomeration of swadeshi cultural nationalists with free marketeers and opponents of socialism has left the organisation in turmoil. To be fair to the BJP, its short stint in power was marked by economic liberalisation; what the INC tries to steal credit for in 1991 was done out of necessity while what the BJP did in 1998 was out of choice. Unfortunately, none of that vision has been seen in the last ten years.

The BJP’s silence – in fact, appropriation of bad UPA legislation – is felt acutely in another economic boondoggle: the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act. Rather than oppose another disastrous welfare scheme, the BJP actually promised to expand it to cities. This repeated fear of challenging the INC and populism hurts the BJP and the general Right cause in many ways. For one, it prevents the mainstreaming of the notion that it might be a good idea to be independent of government entitlement programmes and work for a living. There is a standard refrain in India that everyone is a socialist at heart. How could they be anything else, especially if government after government tells them that India’s “unique” problems can only be addressed by massive state intervention?

The political profession is much like advertising – a little substance and a little bending of the truth to make people want your product. Too much of the former may make your issue harder to sell and too much of the latter will only be fodder for a functioning Opposition. If the BJP is indeed a centre-right party opposed to socialism, it needs to explain to the electorate why economic black holes like the FSB, NREGA, or Universal Health Care (UPA-III?) are bad for the economy and hence ultimately bad for the people. The failure to challenge an out-of-control rights discourse reflects a lack of intellectual vitality to connect with the new India.

Whatever its history since 1947, today’s BJP has a large following among the upwardly mobile who are worried about the economic stagnation welfarism has brought the country. If the BJP keeps following the INC down a path of welfarist suicide, then it gives no reason for voters to come out and vote for them. What’s the difference if the only argument is whether grain should be subsidised at ₹1 or ₹3?

By playing the INC’s populist game for short-term optics, the BJP hurts itself in the long run; the INC can now always point out that the BJP ultimately supported the FSB in parliament and is as responsible for India’s coming economic woes as it is. Each time a “half-baked” scheme is supported, an opportunity to plant seeds of doubt about the socialist enterprise is lost. As it stands right now, in Swapan Dasgupta’s succinct phraseology, the BJP’s economic platform is simply Marx + Cow.

If the BJP wins in 2014, it will not be because Indians have accepted the BJP as a superior choice over the Congress; it will be an anti-incumbency vote, against the UPA more than for the BJP. For those who see Modi as a glimmer of hope in India’s darkest decade, it will be a vote for him. If Ashoka Road is wondering why, despite so many UPA scams and mismanagement, there is no BJP wave, it needs look no further than its own record in Opposition.


This post appeared on Daily News & Analysis on August 27, 2013.

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