Now that the dust seems to have settled over the recent accident in the submarine INS Sindhuratna and its follow-up in the resignation of the Navy Chief on 'moral grounds', it is appropriate to look at the issues in a dispassionate and balanced way without letting emotional outbursts lead the discussion, as seems to have been the case both in the visual and print media, the first obviously dominating. Former naval officers, apart from others, have been a part of the discourse.
The issues that have been highlighted are basically three. One, the poor material state of the vessels involved in the 'ten' accidents is one reason which brought them to grief. Nothing can be further from the truth. In three cases, the ships were, in fact, very new. Talwar, which hit a fishing boat, is one of our latest acquisitions from Russia; Tarkash, which collided with the jetty in Mumbai, is a frontline destroyer and Airawat, which went aground in Visakhapatnam port, is hardly four years old. So, material obsolescence did not lead to these mishaps. A minesweeper caught fire whilst under refit and this is also not old age-related. Sindhurakshak, which sank in Mumbai naval dockyard after an explosion, is one of our later submarines and had just received a mid-life refit and modernisation in Russia; all those familiar with this process know of the extensive and thorough work that is done during this period to give the vessel effective operational value for the next decade and more.
Another submarine, Sindhughosh, touched bottom while leaving the dockyard in Mumbai - once again, this has nothing to do with her age but more with faulty navigation. It is true that the naval harbour has not been dredged for some time - some commentators alleged that this was the reason the vessel met with the mishap - but it was during high tide, when there is sufficient depth of water, that the submarine met with the accident and not during the period when insufficient depth could be the factor. Finally, Sindhuratna's accident has to be seen in the context that she had just come out of repairs. The vessel cleared the mandatory period of harbour work-up under the scrutiny of the Submarine Force Commander of the Western Naval Command and only then was it cleared for the next phase of efficiency tests at sea for which this Commander himself, and his team, were on board. Initially, media reports indicated that this submarine's battery had outlived its useful life - which was preposterous, as the Navy would never have cleared the vessel for operational and dived work-up at sea if this had, indeed, been the case. It has now emerged that this report was entirely incorrect. In any event, the fire did not start in the battery pit but through short circuit of cables in the crew compartment. Interestingly, submarines of this type are in frontline operational service in two very credible navies, those of Russia and China, along with some others.
Looked at dispassionately, whatever may be the exact reason why each of these incidents occurred, poor material condition due to old age was not one of them. It is important to reiterate this as, without unravelling such misinformation, truth becomes the first casualty.
The second issue highlighted during the media discussions was the abysmal state of our force levels, in particular, of submarines and how the government has allowed this to happen. Here again, we must look at facts. In the period 1986 to 2014, the country's defence budget has increased 17 times, from Rs 13,000 crore to Rs 2.2 lakh crore; in this same period, the Navy's allocation has increased 38 times, from Rs 1,000 crore to about Rs 38,000 crore. One wishes the jump was even greater, given the increasingly maritime nature of future threats, but no sensible government can overlook issues on the land borders where we face two potentially hostile neighbours or the long land borders that we share with them. Both the NDA and UPA governments did as much as they could to give a fillip to the Navy's growth under the constraint that expenditure must, ultimately, depend on the resources that are available. So, the only way of giving the Navy more money was either to cut the shares of the Army and Air Force, or beyond that, to increase the defence allocation by further reducing the already poor outlays made for education, health and welfare of people and other developmental projects - or to tax more or to increase deficit financing with inflation being the result. Clearly, all these are not easy choices to make, then as now and, indeed, in the future.
The third issue that has been raised by many is that the government has allowed the force level of submarines to fall to alarmingly low levels. The genesis of this unhappy state goes back 25 years then Prime Minister V P Singh short-sightedly decided to blacklist a German shipyard which was helping our own Mazagon Docks Ltd-build submarines in India. No provable case could be established and the CBI applied closure a couple of years ago; but the net result is that no submarine could be built in the last 20 years, when at least 12 could have been inducted. Successive governments from 1991 till today found it impossible to cross this 'lakshman rekha' drawn by V P Singh, the disastrous impact, not cause, of which is now being debated. By the time the contract for new Scorpene submarines could be concluded and their indigenous construction initiated, more than a decade had been lost.
Actually, V P Singh did more damage to the combat capability of our armed forces than all others put together. He also blacklisted a company called Bofors which was contracted to supply heavy 155 mm guns to the Army and the result is that not a single such weapon has been procured in the last 25 years. In neither case could any culpability be established and all we are left with are masses of paper and some tattered reputations - but neither submarines nor guns. Such is the Indian way in which we excel in hurting ourselves. The MRCA multi-role fighter aircraft deal is likely to go the same route, this government or another. Some charges are certain to be levelled in due course through vendors who had lost out, and subsequent responses will most likely follow the route now all too familiar.
As for the resignation of the Navy Chief who has undoubtedly taken the high moral ground, claiming responsibility for acts which were neither of his own omission or commission, the issue is more complex. One course of action is the one he took; a different and more difficult one, to use naval terminology, would have been to 'take the weight'. There are 'pros and cons' to both and every leader of men must make his own choice. He made his.
The writer is a former Commander-in-Chief of the Eastern Naval Command
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