This can happen only in this country. The minister for tourism writes to the minister of defence to review the procurement of the 155mm heavy artillery gun that the army needs so badly. Renuka Chowdhury has gone to the extent of recommending that the Russian gun is superior and has opened herself to the possible charge of being an arms lobbyist. To cap it all, she believes that she knows all about these matters because she is the daughter of a former Service officer! The very idea of doing so assumes that our system of selecting major weapon systems is fundamentally flawed. Yet, it ignores the reality that proposals from a number of international manufacturers of such guns — including the Russians — have been under examination by professionals for nearly a decade now.Anybody who comes to know of any flaw or misdemeanour in the process of weapons procurement has a national duty to report the matter so that the facts can be examined. But it is exactly because of this type of phenomenon — where anyone and everyone gullible enough to accept the propaganda of competitive arms manufacturers, starts to interfere with the process of procurement of weapon systems — that our defence capability has suffered for nearly two decades, ever since the Bofors Syndrome impacted on defence decision making. This has no doubt been a major factor for the huge sums allocated for defence modernisation remaining unspent, year after year. It is time we tackled, head on, the issues and challenges of defence modernisation and got our defence capability back on track.Prime Minister Manmohan Singh should, at the very least, caution Renuka Chowdhury against such attempts to interfere with the functioning of other ministries. She is no longer a private citizen who is merely expressing an opinion in that capacity. As a minister in the UPA government, her stances amount to passing a judgment in an area obviously far removed from her domain and expertise. She must be told that firing blunderbusses at random is certainly not behaviour in keeping with her status.
