The Army slims down

When the largest and most heavily deployed combat arm of the Indian union has to shed manpower in order to keep itself going, it is time to take stock of where the country is heading on national security policies and structures. The Army must be complimented for taking a bold step forward in rationalising its manpower policies. And the two simple lessons that emanate from this welcome development must be understood. The first is that budgetary allocations are finite, even in the era of proxy wars and insurgencies. The government has been unwilling, or unable, to allocate more than a mere 2.3 per cent of GDP to its defence forces. The allocation remaining static, and the cost of equipment and increase in its wastage galloping, it becomes obvious to even the most casual observer that the answer to the budget problem lies in an in-house analysis. That leads to the second lesson. This is that, vision being severely limited within the decision-making apparatus of the government, the onus is on the armed forces themselves to sort out the problem from within their own structures. Despite the severe strains imposed on it by combat in the different theatres of India, if the Army can address itself to this issue there is no reason why the other services should be left behind. At the end of the day, even taking the spread of the insurgency environment into account, masses of manpower is not the answer to India8217;s security needs. Indeed, it is a hindrance to changing and shaping the armed forces for combat in the 21st century. This is on account of a basic structural problem: the armed forces today are spending more on manpower and capital costs than they need. In the case of the Army, expenditure on pensions and pay and allowances is a lot more than on modernisation. It has been this way for so long that the Army8217;s modernisation programme is hardly modern any longer.

This serious imbalance had to be rectified, and the Army has done well to take the lead in this matter. There is still a long way to go before the problem would appear to have eased. But a beginning has been made, and that is good for India. The government would do well to keep to its commitment and put the money saved back into the Army. And that holds good for the future governments as well. And then the government could also rationalise its manpower policy on a larger scale. There are umpteen reports which suggest that India would save hundreds of crores every year if it had a policy on the lateral induction of the armed forces into the central police organisations CPOs and the para-military forces PMFs. The immediate savings would be on training costs, but the substantial gains would be in the all-round slashing of the pension bill. Needless to say, the performance of the CPOs and the PMFs would also improve dramatically. When there are gains to be made in almost every direction there is no logic in allowing parochial interests to dictate national security policies. India cannot underwrite unlimited expansion of uniformed personnel. The nation does not need it and cannot afford it.