Pravin Sawhney
Quick on the heels of the appointment of Lt Gen Bipin Rawat as the next Army chief, superseding two qualified officers, an inside media report has suggested that major military reforms are in the offing. While Minister for Defence Manohar Parrikar will reportedly discuss the need and mandate for a Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) post with the Prime Minister, work on creating joint commands has begun.
The above contentious issues have resurrected three old debates: Seniority versus political discretion in the selection of the Army chief; whether a CDS post is the panacea for India’s anachronistic higher defence management; and the need for theatre commands.
In an interview with the Business Standard of April 19, 2014, I had argued that the appointment of Service chiefs should be a political act. As wars now require politico-military synergy to continuously review crisis and escalation, the political leadership, in the absence of a formalised structure, should be free to choose an officer it is most comfortable working with from the panel of contestants given to the leadership by the Defence Ministry. This will ensure maximum collaboration between the political leadership and the Service chief.
It is another matter that few discerning observers would concur with the Government’s assessment that terrorism is the biggest threat to India, for which Lt Gen Rawat, given his vast experience in counter-terrorism and counter-insurgency, has been hand-picked. The biggest threat are the two military lines with Pakistan and China and terrorism is merely a manifestation of Rawalpindi’s threat; given his profile, the superseded Lt Gen Praveen Bakshi was better suited to handle the real threats.
Most veterans, however, decry that forsaking the seniority tradition in appointing a Service chief would lead to politicisation of the Army. To begin with, it is a myth that officers are apolitical. They are very much a part of the society. The difference is that their training instils regimentation that elevates the majority of officers to a higher plane during their service.
Moreover, what good is a seniority principle for the selection of an Army chief, when the Army with nearly 40,000 officers, does not have a written promotion policy for officers to rise in rank? All it has are innumerable amendments to a (non-existing) promotion policy, which have been inserted by successive Service chiefs to retain undesirable control and subjectivity (this has resulted in more officers going to courts for redressal). Therefore, before veterans cry foul over supersession, they should press the Government and the Army chief to have a promotion policy for officers to dispense with favouritism in career advancement.
On the CDS, the media report said that “he would be the single point military advisor to the political leadership in matters of acquisition, procurement policy and resource rationalisation”. This would be a travesty of both the originally envisaged CDS concept, and the needed major military reforms. In its conceived avatar, the CDS would be a higher rank officer (five star) than the Services chiefs (four star) doing precisely what the present Chief of Integrated Defence Staff (CIDS, three star) does regarding acquisitions and resources rationalisation.
The proposal for a CDS, first mooted by the Vajpayee Government in February 2002, had four major functions: Be the single point military advisor to the Defence Minister, head the tri-Service commands, streamline inter- and intra-services procurement for optimal bang for the buck, and foster operational joint-ness amongst the three defence services. Since the CDS did not come about for political and inter-Services reasons, the Vajpayee Government created the Chief of Integrated Staff to Chairman (CISC) of the Chiefs of Staff Committee (COSC) post, also called the Chief of Integrated Defence Staff (CIDS).
The three-star CISC is answerable to the Defence Minister, like the Defence Secretary; and yet he is not on par with the other four departments — the Department of Defence, the Department of Research and Development, the Department of Production and Supplies, and the Department of Finance — of the Defence Ministry headed by the Defence Secretary. Unlike the four departments of the ministry, the Integrated Defence Headquarters remains an attached office of the Defence Ministry, something like the secretariat, outside the Government policymaking loop. Moreover, since the CISC is a non-voting member of the COSC, his opinion on procurement is nothing more than recommendatory. Thus, the proposed CDS will not count much in terms of major military reforms.
What is needed, as the first step, is formalised interaction between the political and the military leaderships. This has never been attempted. Both the 2002 Arun Singh committee and the 2012 Naresh Chandra committee were given narrow terms of reference. While keeping the political leadership out of the ambit, both panels were tasked to suggest better bureaucracy-military relations.
While this and other major military reforms have been proposed in the recently published book, Dragon on Our Doorstep, the crux is this: The Defence Minister and not the Defence Secretary, as is the existing case, should be constitutionally responsible for the defence of India. Once this is done, the Defence Minister would seek regular institutionalised advice from the COSC for making defence policy or for political directive. It may sound strange but India, aspiring to be a leading power, does not have a written political directive given by the Cabinet Committee on Security headed by the Prime Minister, to the COSC.
The purpose of the defence policy will be three-fold. One, to help the political leadership decide, in interaction with the COSC, what national security objectives would require use of military power. Two, based upon the defence policy, the Service chiefs would then plan, propose and acquire threat-based capabilities. At present, despite clearly defined threats, the services, with an eye on empire building, focus on capability-based acquisitions. On the one hand, these capabilities are not tailor-made to tackle threats; on the other, given India’s decrepit defence-industrial complex, these are mostly imported at huge costs.
And three, for formalised interaction between the political and military leadership to craft a defence policy, the 1961 Government of India allocation of Business Rules would need to be amended to bring Services’ chiefs in the policy-making loop. Once this happens, the Services’ chiefs would qualify as chief of staff of their services rather than remain the highest operational commanders. Moreover, the Army commanders, as the topmost theatre bosses, would be able to plan and execute the operational level of war, where conventional war’s outcome is decided, without having to look at the Army chief for operational guidance.
This would pave the way for executing the directive style of command (which gives freedom to junior commanders to decide action by themselves), a must for a short, swift and intense conventional war. This is not all. Once Services’ chiefs are formally brought into the defence policy-making loop, it would be a positive first baby-step towards creating a meaningful Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) post.
On the issue of theatre commands, since India has defined military threats, limited war assets, and little inter-service understanding of each other’s core competencies which would require years of joint staff and field experience, they, and a desired CDS should wait. Perhaps, a four-star permanent chairman, chiefs of staff committee should be considered after defence services are integrated into policymaking.
(The writer is co-author with Ghazala Wahab of the book, ‘Dragon on our Doorstep’)
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