by T K Arun

Get off The Old Cycle

Knowledge of imminent hanging, we know, concentrates the mind wonderfully. The US move to halve its troop deployment in Afghanistan should have a bracing effect on the thought process of Indian defence. But you’d rather bet on sighting Santa Claus at night.

President Donald Trump’s ‘America First’ abdication of global leadership was always set to make China’s rise easier. The Syrian and Afghan troop withdrawals are just the latest examples of how this would happen. What it means for India is that it has to rely evermore on its own capacity to project force for securing its strategic autonomy.

No Ghee To Forgo For Guns

India has been expanding its soft power in Afghanistan, helping it rebuild, riding on the hard power supplied by the US and its NATO allies, which help the Afghan army keep the Taliban at bay. Pakistan and its backer, China, stand to gain the most from the Taliban takeover that would follow Trump’s move. India would have to wind up its efforts or commit men and materiel to guard its reconstruction efforts. That calls for expanded military expenditure.

Trump might prove a temporary lapse of sanity for US policy. Or he might not. In any case, India has to do more to emerge as a counterweight to China in Asia. India’s effective rise alongside China’s is a necessary and sufficient condition to ensure that China would stick to its promise of a peaceful rise. That calls for India to beef up its defence expenditure.

With a government that struggles to raise 17% of GDP as taxes — less than half the OECD average — and spends just about 1% of GDP on public health, India has serious constraints on diverting funds to defence. But defending strategic autonomy is as big a priority as it gets.

India has to allocate more funds to defence, especially to capital expenditure, while paring expenditure that does not add to combat capability — India must improve the tooth-to-tail ratio of its forces, in the jargon.

How this should be done is to be worked out by the armed forces themselves. For example, three separate services under different commands would appear to be outdated and unsuited to modern warfare.

An integrated fighting force capable of deploying fast and attacking hard, whether from land, sea or air, contingent on the challenge at hand rather than on how the forces are organised, would be ideal. Integrated command has the added attraction of culling a proliferation of senior ranks. Political will would be essential to drive such an overhaul, but its contours will have to be worked out by professional soldiers.

But some things are obvious even to rank outsiders.

Batman should be a caped crusader fighting crime, not the world’s most expensive dog walker, cook, shoe polisher, chaperone/driver to the officer’s wife/daughter/their friend. Orderlies in the defence forces and the police are a disorder India must get rid of. If our troops can carry 60 kg of stuff on their back while on the march, our officers can pull their own weight without using expensive soldier material as nannies with an expansive job description.

Getting rid of the servile culture in the forces would save vital funds on salary and pensions, besides professionalising the serving ethos.

Bigger Bang For Every Buck

Reform the service period. Make soldiering a lifelong career only for officers. The rest can serve relatively short periods, undergoing training that would get them a decent job in civilian life and convert them into a fighting reserve that can be mobilised at short notice, should the need arise. How short the service period can be would depend on what is the shortest period in which the returns on training imparted on soldiering can be recouped.

If someone joins the army at 18 and leaves at, say, 26, having acquired skills that would make him/her a valued member of the civilian workforce, the state can drastically reduce its pension outgo on soldiers, while always having a young, energetic fighting force at the ready.

Reform pensions. Instead of shortchanging soldiers on one rank, one pension (OROP), and forcing veterans to continue their sit-in protest in the Capital, the government should grant serving soldiers true OROP, while making all future recruits to the armed forces part of the National Pension System, linking their pension to the contributions they make while serving, rather than to the salary at the time of retirement, on par with those who joined the civil services after January 1, 2004.

But the biggest saving would be made in indigenous manufacture of kit. It is a shame that India is the world’s largest defence importer. Defence production is precisely the kind of advanced manufacture that Indian industry must get into. Offsets and technology transfer are, of course, an obvious route. Hindustan Aeronautics makes and exports BrahMos missiles with Russian technology.

If defence presents India’s startups with a list of precise deliverable, much as US DARPA does, startups would deliver, and scale up. Leaders of the armed forces should spend their energy in working out how to indigenise procurement than in controversial public speaking.