Procurement a priority for Defence Minister

Delays in decisionmaking, combined with the risk averseness of the bureaucracy, has had a debilitating effect on the war fighting abilities of the forces. The prime minister, too, accepted this when he said the result of the India-Pakistan dogfight in the

After cheerfully crossing the road on Raisina Hill to move from the Home Ministry in North Block to the Defence Ministry in South Block, Rajnath Singh now faces a gamut of challenges to manage the complex matrix of the defence forces of a nation with two adversarial neighbours, one of which is viewed worldwide as a global terror hub. Ironically, India’s 1.4 million strong armed forces - one of the world’s largest - have been functioning for decades on arms and equipment long overdue for replacement and glaring deficiencies urgently needed to be overcome by fresh acquisitions. In the five years since the BJP– led government came to power in 2014, the initiation process of many acquisitions and replacements was begun, but their sustained follow-up was adversely affected by the frequent change in defence ministers; Arun Jaitley, followed by the late Manohar Parrikar and Nirmala Sitharaman.

To maintain peace along the frontiers with China and Pakistan and dealing with Pakistan’s continuous export of terror are the primary challenges. Containing infiltration of terrorists from Pakistan into Jammu and Kashmir and ensuring that the Army’s status and interests are not compromised by separatists or their sympathizers will be another key focus area.

A major challenge for Singh will be to strengthen the combat capabilities of the Army, Navy and Air Force by hastening the long-delayed modernisation of these three services, besides ensuring overall coherence in their combat readiness. This is also linked to the follow-up processes begun and speedy acquisition of combat ready arms and equipment. Some critical equipment— like fighter jets apart from Rafale and Tejas fighters to replace MiG-21s, airborne early warning aircraft, submarines and helicopters for the navy and tracked, truckmounted and towed artillery guns and minesweepers for the army - will have to be purchased on an emergency basis.

A pressing demand from the armed forces to equip them to deal with hybrid warfare will also need to be pursued.

For ‘Make in India’ domestic defence production, Singh will have to drive forward major reform initiatives, including implementing the ambitious "strategic partnership" model, under which select Indian private firms will be incorporated to build military platforms like submarines, warships and fighter jets in India, in partnership with foreign defence firms.

Defence research organisations and various other defence public sector undertakings will also need to modernized and streamlined so that they can produce state-of-the art military hardware required by the forces. Singh should focus on simplification of the acquisition process as most military modernisation programmes are delayed due to bureaucratic and administrative hurdles.

Delays in decision-making, combined with the risk averseness of the bureaucracy, has had a debilitating effect on the war fighting abilities of the forces. The prime minister, too, accepted this when he said the result of the India-Pakistan dogfight in the skies over Kashmir would have been different if the Indian Air Force had Rafale fighters. While the process for procuring Rafale fighters began in the late 2000s, they will begin arriving in India in September this year. The unprecedented politicisation of defence procurement is only likely to make bureaucrats even more apprehensive of taking decisions. The decision to institute a dedicated Defence Procurement Organisation to institutionalise professional expertise, initiated by the Dhirendra Singh Committee four years ago, is yet to materialise. This will need the defence minister’s immediate attention. Singh will also have to oversee implementation of down-sizing the 1.2 million strong Indian Army, a blueprint for which has already been finalized. Fixing the defence budget allocation, which has increased 200% since 2011-12, will be another major challenge.

Finally, it is vital to maintain the morale of the armed forces. Related to this are major issues like providing legal protection to soldiers involved in combating terrorism, particularly in J&K, ensuring proper compensation and rehabilitation to the next of kin of martyrs, ensuring parity in pay and allowances of armed forces personnel with the civilian and police/central armed police forces equivalents, implementation of nonfunctional financial upgradation for armed forces and welfare of ex-servicemen, along with some other morale boosting and welfare issues.