India`s National Defence: Defining Defence Reforms and Military Modernisation

As she charts her destiny in lifting her masses from poverty and backwardness, India is also obliged to ward off incessant military aggression from her two near, and most inimical neighbours. Resultantly, she is compelled to spend as much as Rupees three hundred thousand crores annually from her overburdened national income to maintain the world’s third largest defence forces. In normal course of state wisdom therefore, one would expect that such a humungous investment would be managed in the most efficient manner to get the maximum purchase out of every paisa. But alas, that is not the case. What else could explain the contradiction that even with so much manpower, hardware and funding committed upon her military power, none of her adversaries are deterred from perpetrating acts of gross military escalation while indulging in brazen acts of sabotaging the Indian nationhood – freely and with immunity. It is also hard to explain as to why must India’s massive defence forces have to be left short of their due war wherewithal, burdened with obsolete weaponry and hardware, and saddled with overgrown and over-frigid organisations for higher (mis)management.

The answer is straightforward: the Indian military institution is inefficiently managed. The long festering flaw is observed, understood and enthusiastically banished now and then, but corrections are never actually attempted. Solutions are known, more or less, but are held down, diverted and scotched by systemic prejudices, paranoia and partisan machinations, as if by design. The causes of such afflictions too are no secret: political apathy, bureaucratic subterfuge and to some extent, myopic military leadership.This book is devoted to arguments for empowerment of the apex military management system, identification of the hurdles, redress of systemic concerns valid or conjured, and goes on to offer certain options to modernise the system of Indian defence management into an operationally efficient political instrument that would promote the cause of India’s sovereignty in a cost-effective manner.