Aditi Phadnis: Can Antony hold the fort?

PLAIN POLITICS

Many problematic issues are shooting at the new defence minister simultaneously.

The hall was hushed, expectations high as Arackaparambil Kurian Antony rose to speak at a seminar on defence economics. After his appointment as Defence Minister three weeks ago, this was going to be his first major public engagement. With becoming modesty, Antony was seen making imploring gestures to the moderator to cut short the list of his political achievements. The assembled international gathering merely smiled with cynical amusement. They've seen all this before.

The speech said little. What Antony missed was an opportunity to unveil the big picture about what he's going to bring to the Ministry of Defence (MoD). He's in a place he's never been before. But those who will look to him for guidance got absolutely no clues from his speech about what he expects from the MoD, the armed forces, and the defence Research and Development (R&D) establishment. He did, however, quote Kautilya: "The power of counsel is superior to the sheer might and energy" (sic) "" which sent the hearts of the Armed Forces down to their boots. Oh no! Another pacifist Defence Minister?

They would be well-advised to lower their expectation threshold. History is silent on Antony's administrative coups, either as Chief Minister or as Minister (Civil Supplies). In Kerala, he has a clean image but a penchant for cutting and running when the going gets tough. He has resigned several times in his career, always declaring that he would not quit under pressure, and then doing so. But the Defence Ministry is not a political job and the pressures here are of a different nature. The presiding minister is an arbiter between the civilian MoD bureaucracy, the armed forces and the DRDO, all of which suffer from healthy paranoia about the others. A clever minister has to master the balance of this equation.

Several tasks have been left undone in the ministry. Before coming to power, the Congress had said it would seek a bipartisan consensus on creating the Chief of Defence Staff (CDS), as the NDA government had left a number of doubts about the position. If the CDS was to be the single point of advice to the PM, what would the role of the Service Chiefs be""whether he would be the most suitable person to command the nuclear forces (given that the IAF feels that strategic nuclear command should be under its charge); and where he should be in the Warrant of Precedence, in relation to the Cabinet Secretary? The NDA created an Integrated Defence Staff, which writes policy papers but has no operational role. This is neither here nor there. The UPA seems content with this.

An unseemly public difference of opinion recently between former Chief of Air Staff Air Marshal AY Tipnis and former Chief of Army Staff Gen Ved Malik on the way the Kargil war was conducted has brought to the fore the problems created by lack of jointness and the absence of the CDS. The IAF blamed the Army for insufficient consultation on drawing air power into the war, a move that could have escalated the conflict without preparing the IAF for the escalation. Had a CDS been there, this problem would not have arisen. In the United States, where jointness was achieved after expending a lot of lungpower in Congress, leading up to the Goldwater-Nichols Department of Defence Reorganisation Act of 1986, soldiers train jointly after reaching the rank of Colonel or equivalent.

Antony's predecessor, Pranab Mukherjee, made some fundamental changes in the procurement policy. The net effect of these has been that systems have become even more inflexible and allow the MoD to curtail the autonomy of the armed forces. Though there is now a manual on procurement procedures, no one wants to take a decision and all cite the manual to prove why a decision cannot be taken. In a regime where a retired Naval Chief can be proceeded against with an FIR, why take a risk, especially when the government might change in five years and the next one might decide to play political football with soldiers?

An example of the delay in procurement was highlighted by the Chief of the Air Staff, Air Marshal SP (Bundles) Tyagi, recently, who said wryly at a press conference that he hoped "soon, I will stop saying that soon we should issue the Requests For Proposals (RFP) for 126 multirole aircraft". Requests for Information (RFI) to vendors went out in 2004. In order to tide over the shortages caused by the rapid disappearance of Mig21s, Tyagi sought quick procurement of 40 Su-30s, bypassing the usual procedure of routing the procurement through Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd (HAL). No, said the MoD, that procedure must be followed. Now the request will go to the Defence Acquisition Council, chaired by the Defence Minister, on a date given by the Defence Minister.

The Army is severely stretched. Recently, Chief of Army Staff Gen JJ Singh said that every year 100 Army personnel committed suicide. This should be unacceptable. Internal housekeeping issues "" ranging from rightsizing to the large number of promotion-related cases in courts "" also need to be addressed. The DRDO's accountability is another issue. Everyone wants to use the organisation as a punching bag but no one will give it a policy direction. Is it to manufacture gloves and boots? If it is to produce aircraft and tanks that work, it must be given the autonomy of choosing its partners. This is a delicate negotiation that needs reflection and the ability to make some tough choices.

The question is: Is Arackaparambil Kurian Antony up to it ?