Chanakya's New Manifesto: To Resolve the Crisis Within India (24 page)

Vikram Sood, a former secretary of RAW, speaking critically of the access we give to the Hurriyat to meet Pakistani leaders, gives a vivid contrast of how other countries behave: ‘The world does not appreciate such gestures because it shows a country’s weakness, not the power of its democracy. The British Broadcasting Corporation did not allow Gerry Adams, an important figure in the Northern Island Peace Process, on TV without a voice over even though negotiations were on between the Irish Republican Army (IRA) and the British government. When IRA prisoners in the Maze prison in Northern Ireland went on a relay fast-unto-death, Britain stood firm. Some prisoners died and ultimately exhausted, the IRA called off the campaign. By then, ten IRA prisoners had died. At that time, Margaret Thatcher was the prime minister and the lady did not hesitate to take a strong stance. The world moved on. The world respects, even fears, a liberal democracy’s strength, firmness of action and resolve. Conversely, it sniggers at those who seek support by being virtuous. International relations are about interests and not about accolades for being good.’
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A weak Centre further emasculates foreign policy. In recent times, this has been much in evidence. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s visit to Bangladesh in September 2011 could have been path-breaking, but it was subverted by a regional ally of the government—Mamata Banerjee—who refused to give her concurrence to the Teesta Accord. It is true that the Centre could have handled matters better by engaging with Mamata at the right political level well in advance, but it is also true that in the face of her intransigence, the government could do little because it needed her party’s support to survive. Similarly, our support to a resolution against Sri Lanka at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva was dictated by another ally of the government, the Dravidra Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) party in Tamil Nadu. The resolution, which was unacceptably intrusive and ‘country specific’ (something which we have always opposed), would never have been accepted by us if it had dealt with the Muslims in Kashmir or alleged human rights violations in the Northeast. Our considered approach should have been to work to dilute it, and if this did not succeed, to at least abstain from it. Our support for it alienated the revanchist yet popular Sinhalese-backed government of President Rajapaksa, encouraged it to retaliate by greater engagement with China to our detriment, and only made the situation more difficult for Sri Lankan Tamils facing an unprecedented phase of Sinhalese triumphalism. A carefully focused policy would have helped us understand that the best way to help the Tamil minority in Sri Lanka would have been to work for their welfare through engagement with Rajapaksa’s government, or at least by not gratuitously provoking it. But a besieged government, dependent for its survival on DMK support, capitulated. In Maldives, when the legitimately elected government of President Nasheed, who has been a friend of India and had brought in democracy and religious moderation, was overthrown by a coup in January 2012, the government in Delhi, unprepared and battling with a myriad internal problems, inexplicably recognized the new regime headed by Mohammad Waheed within twenty-four hours, and only later sent a special envoy (and later the foreign secretary) to assess the situation. In acknowledgement of our bungling, a group of ministers from the Commonwealth walked into our strategic backyard to mediate.

Foreign policy has many dimensions. The ebb and flow of diplomatic interaction encompasses the globe, where India has a presence. In many areas we have creditable successes (such as the Nuclear Pact with the US in 2009 which, for once, was pursued with determination and focus), and our diplomats, at individual levels, are respected for their professionalism. However, the absence of the key missing element in our foreign policy, especially where it relates to our security concerns, is not routine engagement but a cerebral and holistic policy framework, within which different initiatives are used in a calibrated manner, with due anticipation, clarity and planning and a long-term perspective, to achieve a consistent policy goal. It is for this reason that a perceptive commentator has described our foreign policy as ‘the afterthought’s afterthought’.
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Our defence policy needs to be thought about seriously too. It is undoubted that we have one of the most professional armed forces in the world. However, military strength, for optimal results, needs to be backed up by strong political leaders who are unwaveringly focused on the security imperatives of the nation, both in the long term and the short term. Our men and officers have, when pushed to the wall, fought valiantly. But valour is not a substitute for coherent policy. To be magnanimous in battle is one thing. To resort to war reluctantly, or as a last resort, or to refrain from being the first to use force, is also an understandable aspect of strategy. But when a certain pattern begins to emerge from the armed engagements we have had, it is critical that we re-examine and recalibrate our strategic and defence priorities.

In the fifth century BCE, Chanakya succeeded in bringing together a fractured Indian polity to resist the potential invasions of the generals left behind by Alexander. However, historically, and certainly in more recent times, Indians have had a very poor record when it comes to defending themselves against foreign invaders. Unlike the Mongols, Turks or European powers, our ancestors never pursued military conquest outside the extended periphery of the subcontinent. The impact of Hindu civilization is visible all over South and Southeast Asia, but it is mostly religious and cultural. Among the major civilizations, India is ‘uniquely unassertive towards others’
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, and as uniquely forgiving. But while we may have survived such passivity in the past, the challenges today require a different response. And yet we refuse to change. In 1948, while repulsing Pakistani aggression in the Kashmir Valley, the Indian army could have taken all of Kashmir, but Nehru stopped General Thimayya in his tracks at the urging of Mountbatten. When China attacked India in 1962, the armed forces—and Nehru—were taken by surprise. During the 1965 war against Pakistan, the Indian army was victorious, but Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri generously returned the strategic Haji Pir Pass to the enemy. In the 1971 war, which led to the rout of the Pakistani army and the creation of Bangladesh, Indira Gandhi, perhaps the best military strategist India has had, could not resist the generosity of handing back all the country’s military gains to Pakistan.

India could have chosen to become a nuclear power in 1974, but
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not to do so. It did this, despite knowing that China’s growing nuclear arsenal threatened it directly, and that it was necessary to dampen Pakistan’s belligerence by acquiring military strength of a qualitatively different and exceptionally powerful nature. There is no other example of a nation that has behaved in this manner. Other nations clamouring for nuclear disarmament have only done so after they acquired nuclear weapons. India alone decided not to press ahead with its nuclear programme without possessing the bomb. We finally became a nuclear power in 1998, almost a quarter century after we had demonstrated that we could become one. By then China’s nuclear capabilities had far outstripped our own and Pakistan had caught up with us.

Our reluctance to pursue transparent security imperatives was again vividly illustrated by the Kargil War. In May 1999, only a few months after Prime Minister Vajpayee had journeyed in a bus from Delhi to Lahore to extend a hand of friendship to Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, Pakistan launched a massive assault on India through the remote Kargil sector of Kashmir. Indian troops were vulnerable to attack and sniper fire from Pakistani infiltrators at various vantage points above them. An obvious strategic option was to allow the Indian air force to cross the Line of Control (LOC) and destroy the staging posts and supply lines of the invaders. Instead, India chose to go about collecting certificates of good behaviour and restraint from the chancelleries of the world, and sacrificed the lives of hundreds of its officers and soldiers (according to official statistics, 527 officers and other ranks were killed and over a thousand seriously wounded). Such an exhibition of ‘restraint’ must have very few parallels in military history. One need only to think of the reaction in Paris, Washington, London or Beijing to the arrival of even a dozen body bags of their countrymen as a result of some other country’s aggression to get an idea of why our own timidity is so baffling and disappointing.

If our strategic response to threats is slow and pusillanimous we do no better when it comes to building up our own armed forces. Our armed forces may have men and generals who compare to the world’s best, but they can be effective only if they are well equipped to fight. Unfortunately, our track record when it comes to indigenous defence production and defence procurement has been appalling. We set up the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) as far back as 1958, but its performance has been, in a word, awful. Among its notable failures is the production of the Light Combat Aircraft, which was commissioned over a decade ago but is running about half-a-decade behind schedule with a cost overrun of around
5,000 crore. The Kaveri engine for the light combat aircraft was commissioned over two decades ago; it is running over fifteen years behind schedule with similarly high cost overruns. Other projects allocated to DRDO, such as the Airborne Early Warning and Control System and the Naval Light Combat Aircraft, have also missed deadlines by several years. Our defence Public Sector Undertakings (PSUs) have been equally tardy. Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) could not rectify simple design faults in the HPT-32, forcing our air force to import propeller-driven trainers. The Intermediate Jet Trainer (IJT) prototype is nowhere close to flying, and the Light Attack Helicopter and the multi-purpose civilian aircraft Saras have forever been in the pipeline. The Nalanda Ordnance Factory, in collaboration with an Israeli company, is only 19 per cent complete after nearly three decades. The commitment to indigenously supply 1000 T-90S battle tanks to the army could not be met because the project failed. Indian-made 125 mm smooth bore barrels for the T-72 tanks also reportedly failed because the barrels blew up during field trials. DRDO, whose aim was to produce 70 per cent of our defence needs by 2005, is still lackadaisically hovering around 30 per cent—and much of what emerges from its factories is put together with ‘screwdriver’ technology.

To see a nation with global aspirations blundering so egregiously when it comes to meeting critical defence requirements is nothing short of scandalous. As a result of our woefully inadequate indigenous defence production, India has become the world’s largest importer of arms (China, with a much larger arsenal, has dropped to fourth place because its internal defence production has been efficiently upgraded). Apart from the unnecessary burden it places on our exchequer, this over-dependence on defence imports has grave security implications. In his book on the Kargil war, General V. P. Malik, who was then the army chief, mentions that two years before the Pakistani invasion, the army had finalized imports of AN/TPQ-37 Firefinder radars from the US. ‘Prices were negotiated and just before purchase, DRDO offered to manufacture them at half the price and within two years. The government shot down the army’s plans to buy these radars. In 1999, during the Kargil war, the radars were desperately needed. Neither had DRDO manufactured them nor could they be purchased from the US (post the 1998 Pokharan nuclear tests there was an arms embargo). Several lives were lost in Pakistani shelling (as a result).’
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The examples of the radars which never arrived are one in a long list of many where our armed forces have been let down by various branches of the civilian and military establishment. For example, Chetak and Cheetah helicopters, which are based on technology fifty years old, and should have been declared obsolete long ago, continue to endanger the lives of our servicemen. Tenders for a new helicopter were put out as far back as 2000, and this was itself late by twenty-five years. No contract has been awarded till date. The ministry of defence’s fast-track programme for procuring equipment rarely meets its stated target of ensuring deliveries within one year.

In his letter of March 2012 to the PM, (which caused a major commotion in the media and in the political establishment) former army chief, General V. K. Singh bluntly stated that the war waging capability of the army had been ‘seriously degraded’ because of delays in critical procurements. According to him, reserves of vitally needed anti-tank shells had fallen below critical levels because the Israeli firm supplying them had been blacklisted because of alleged kickbacks; artillery requirements were stalled for a similar reason, and emergency replacements sought to be obtained directly from the US army were still awaiting approval from the ministry of defence bureaucracy. And so on and so forth.

The nation is thus faced with a double jeopardy: we cannot produce what we need internally, and we cannot import—in time and efficiently—what we must buy from abroad. Obviously, defence purchases must be corruption-free; but to ban every major foreign supplier on the basis of the flimsiest allegation is to display a ‘morality paralysis’ that is unpardonable. Corruption can only be eliminated by an efficient procurement policy, which is not in place, and which I will talk about in detail a little later. But stopping vital imports on the basis of unproven allegations is suicidal. When several firms compete to supply to the world’s largest arms buyer, the easiest thing for the loser on a bid is to allege corruption. It is for the raksha mantri (RM) or defence minister to show the guts not to be concerned only about his personal integrity, but also about the crucial security interests of the nation. ‘Suspending all decision making, or calling in the CBI even before an evaluation is over, or getting paranoid about anonymous complaints, blacklisting large manufacturers merely on the basis of hand-written, unsigned insinuations is all a part of cowardly madness,’
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wrote
Indian Express
editor Shekhar Gupta. Former Defence Minister Jaswant Singh said the same thing, but with biting sarcasm: ‘With the Hon’ble PM and the Hon’ble RM, both very good men, I share Lord Halifax’s sneeringly patrician remark: “Statecraft is a cruel business, good nature is a bungler at it.” Believe me, my good Sirs, the nation is weary of your “good nature”, we crave of you “good governance”. Can you now, please, for a change do just that?’
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