Defence Budget : Balle Balle....

From a 34 per cent increase in defence outlay for the 2009-10 fiscal year to a 3.98 per cent increase in the latest Budget, it has been a precipitous drop. But appearances can be misleading. Parsing the figures more closely aside – taking revised estimates for last year’s defence allocation into account, the jump in capital outlay, meant for acquiring new equipment, is actually 25.4 per cent – the problem facing the armed forces is not inadequate resources. It is the lack of an effective process to utilise the available funds. When Rs 7,000 crore remains unused from last year’s allocation, bridging the military’s capability gaps is no longer merely a question of throwing more resources.

There is a lack of long-term strategic planning in the defence establishment. Upgrading the military’s capabilities is not a piecemeal process. It requires a roadmap factoring in a host of variables: evolving military doctrine; estimated requirements years down the line; broader strategic considerations. And yet, a culture of ad-hocism prevails. A case in point is India’s Cold Start doctrine that has caused so much heartburn in Pakistan. Given its emphasis on swift, joint arms operations, it requires a well-planned acquisition programme. But nearly six years after it was put into place, the doctrine remains largely on paper with the army lacking vital ingredients such as a sufficient quantity of self-propelled artillery.

It makes for a good soundbyte for defence minister A K Antony to say as he recently did that India is capable of becoming a leader in the global defence industry if public sector organisations come out of old, monopolistic mindsets. But doing so requires concrete action. The private sector’s involvement is a must, given the less-than-ideal track record of its public sector counterparts. Here, the government has taken some steps in the right direction by revamping its Defence Procurement Procedure to allow more scope for indigenous private industries. Further enabling foreign direct investment is another route to beef up the sector.

What the government must guard against now is a return to.......

business as usual. Jungles of bureaucratic red tape make the entire procurement process a torturous affair. Worse, the system enables large-scale corruption in the form of kickbacks and misappropriation of centrally-allocated funds. Rhetoric about the success of our missile programme and our blue water capabilities cannot substitute for reality. Antony was right in saying that India possesses the natural resources and the skilled manpower to realise its potential in the defence sector. Now the administration must show that it can institute and implement the policies to utilise them.

Source:Times Of India.

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