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Journalism of Courage
NEW DELHI, AUG 2: India spends about Rs 14,500 crore or 2.5 per cent of its GDP just to pay the standing cost’ of 1.7 million men in uniform. But Kargil has come as a wake up call for modernisation of the forces in a hurry, say defence analysts.
With up to 80 per cent of the allocated funds being spent on the salaries and pensions of the forces, there are tremendous constraints on upgrading and modernising the forces, which nevertheless has to be soon undertaken, says commodore Uday Bhaskar, Dy Director, Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses. "Kargil has been a wake up call."
Modernising and upgrading skills are deterrent enough. From the last ten years there have been several indications to show that Indian Army was not modernising and that’s what encouraged Kargil, says Maj Gen (retd) Y K Gera of the United Services Institution, a security issues thinktank.
And to avoid another Kargil like situation, India needs to step its defence allocation to at least four per cent of its GDP with theadditional 1.5 per cent being consistently spent on the capital account or upgrading skills through procurement or indegenous research and development, says Gen Gera.
"No one should be bluffed to believe that even if the entire Jammu and Kashmir is given to Pakistan on a platter the conflict will end. The only way we can avoid a war is by optimum strengthening of the military," said Lt Gen (retd) Satish Nambiar recently.
Echoing him retired Lt Gen Hridayanath Kaul says "it is unfortunate that some people have spoken a lot on economic strength while reducing the defence budget. They are complementary".
Today’s Kargil, says Bhaskar, has served as an important punctuation for India to carry out a techno-strategic appraisal of its defence spending and review its policies by balancing adequacy with affordability.
Following the breakup of the Soviet Union, India can no longer acquire arms either at low rates or the barter system with which the Russians obliged us. Today, everything has to be paid for inhard currency and weapons systems of western nations are quite expensive.
This coupled with depreciating value of the Indian rupee to the US dollar has put severe constraints on scouting for technologies in the international market.
Even as a school of thought has suggested downsizing the Army to pay for sophistication costs, Bhaskar says "given the bandwidth of operations of our personnel ranging from nuclear to counter-insurgency operations for internal security, our Army certainly isn’t oversized.
"Theoretically, for an Army involved in low intensity conflicts, as counter insurgency measures are called, for every militant there should be ten personnel."
Similarly Gera says "Mountains eat men. A majority of the force is today deployed in maintaining vigil in Kashmir and along the northern borders in the Himalayas. Forces are required there.”
While world over it’s a wise principle to adopt, India would first need to take bold decisions regarding not to use its military for internal duties and alsodiplomatically ensure security which could justify cutting down on manpower.
"But in the present context, I don’t forsee any such thing happening," says Gera.
Nothwithstanding the fact that world over expenditure on defence has come down, Gera points to the swelling allocations of China and Pakistan, its main neighbours.
While Bhaskar says that each country should draft its own wishlist and priorities, Gera notes that the issue cannot be viewed in isolation.
"Theirs is a proactive policy on defence while ours is a reactionary one. Chinese have drawn up a plan and they are proceeding accordingly. Unfortunately we haven’t," rues Gera.
