Mohan Bhagwat is right
The army is not ready for war and the defence budget does not inspire any confidence
Mohan Bhagwat, the chief of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), was on the button when he declared on Sunday that, if war broke out, the military would not be ready for at least six to seven months. The RSS chief did not mention that those months would fly past in emergency procurement of weapon ry for the army, probably at usurious prices. And he was laughably naïve in boasting that the
RSS could fill the gap while the army prepared for operations. Yet, Mr B hag wat perceived the worrying lack of defence readiness, even though it apparently escapes those whose primary responsibility is the defence of the country—Prime Minister Narendra Mo di, his defence minister, Nirmala Sitharaman, and her predecessors, A ru nJ a it le ya nd Man oh ar Par rik ar. The situation was no different under the previous government.
That the military is unprepared for war is no secret. Beyond the political bluster, threats from generals and warmongering from television warriors, this is evident from plenty of thoughtful commentary, and from a conveniently leaked letter written in 2012 by former army chief, General V KSingh, to his defence minister, AK An tony,short falls. There is also a less advertised short fall in training and alertness that has gifted adversaries with operational successes like in the terrorist strikes in Path ankot and Uri, and in Jam mu over the weekend. An editorial in this newspaper noted that the government’s miserly defence allocations are not in sync with its tough posture and with a deteriorating security environment. It concluded that Mr Mo di probably does not expect a war.
What are the messages from last fort night’ s defence budget? Seen alongside the last few Budgets, unimaginative incrementalism, with each year seeing broadly the same percentage of funds distributed between services and departments, with the absolute allocation gradually rising in tandem with the 6-10 per cent annual rise in the overall budget. In each of the last three years, the army has been allocated 68-69percent of the services’ budget, with the navy getting about 12.5 percent and the air force 19.5 percent. In the years before that, i.e.2014-15 and 2015-16,the army got only 64-65 percent, with the navy and air force getting an additional 2 per cent each. But the grant of One Rank One Pension (OROP) in 2015 and the implementation from 2016 of the Seventh Pay Commission’ s salary recommendations disproportion ally raised the manpower-heavy army’ s requirement for money, at the cost of the navy and air force. The note worthy point here is that even this unusual shift in allocations was occasioned not by strategic imperatives, but by a perceived political need to raise military pensions and salaries.
Also evident is the government’ s unwillingness to tackle the personnel problem head-on, even though manpower costs are now close to 70 per cent of the military’s total allocation. This reluctance is evident from the exclusion of military pension costs from the declared budget, even though the pension bill isa direct outcome of personnel policies followed by the three services. Excluding pension costs from the defence budget, even though they have almost doubled under the present government from ~605 billion in 2014-15 to ~1,089 billion this year, creates little incentive for the painful shift to a predominantly short-service military where most soldiers serve for five-seven years and then move on without being entitled to a lifetime pension. This government has added simplicity and transparency to the defence budget and factoring pension costs would be another practical and beneficial reform. My chart incorporates pension costs.
In countries that are serious about defence, each service is allocated funds based on perceived security priorities, operational roles in dealing with those threats, and the equipment, training, and manpower needed to discharge roles. However, the unchanging percentages in the service allocations bear no reflections of the security debates and environment changes of recent decades. There is no funding for the changed approach to warfighting in a nuclearised backdrop that has birthed the Cold Start doctrine—lightning strikes by forward deployed armour ed formation stores pond to serious provocation by Pakistan. Nor is there any budgetary recognition strikes. The repeated public affirmations about India taking on the role of “net security provider” in the Indian Ocean, or building up coastal security mechanisms along a highly vulnerable 7,500 kilo met re coast line, is not validated by any increased outlay in the navy budget, which has in fact shrunk by two percent in overall terms; and from over 30 per cent of the defence capital budget in 2014-15 to just 25 percent today. With smaller maritime adversaries like Pakistan increasingly relying on countering India’ s more powerful navy through“sea denial ”, which means laying mine sand priori ti sing submarine warfare, the naval allocations remain gross ly insufficient for India’ s planned response—to buy 12 mine counter measure vessels and 16 anti-submarine warfare shallow water craft, build six new submarines in India. Instead, procurement bottlenecks have forced the navy to surrender billions in unspent money: ~25 billion in 2012-13; ~36 billion in 2013-14; ~53 billion in 2015-16; and ~44 billion in 2016-17.
Similarly, an already depleted air force, which must ur gently conclude a“single engine fighter” contract to replace ten retiring MiG squadrons with fighters that are built in India, has been allocated a capital budget that would barely cover “committed liabilities”, the phrase for installments on purchases in earlier years, like the Rafale fighter. Another major dichotomy is the pittance allocated for“Make” projects, which senior defence ministry officials talk up as locomotives for India’ s defence industry .“Make” projects involve consortia of Indian defence firms coming together to build complex defence platforms with the defence ministry reimbursing 8090 per cent of the development cost. Yet, despite its obvious industrial and technological benefits, the government spent nothing under this head in 2015-16;~2.5 billion in 2016-17;~0.2 billion last year; and has allocated ~1.4 billion this year, a mere drop from the capital budget ocean of ~940 billion.
The government must ensure that defence spending — which will account for 16.5 per cent of government spending and 2.16 per cent of the gross national product in 2018-19, inclusive of pensions — buys bang for this very considerable buck. This will require thoughtless incrementalism to give way to holistic planning and a steady hand at the tiller. With three changes of defence minister in four years, the Modi-government’s entire term will have passed in ministerial learning. The defence ministry cannot afford this game of Musical Ministers.