The higher defence management structure followed by the British until 1947 essentially revolved around three separately organised military forces, the army, navy and air force, commanded by their own respective Commanders-in-Chief. To ensure some degree of coordination, there was a Chiefs of Staff Committee (COSC) which was always headed by the Army's Chief of General Staff who, in turn, answered to the Commander-in-Chief India who was a member of the Viceroy's Council. There was a civil bureaucracy as well, finance answerable to the finance member in the Council and administration headed by the defence secretary. In terms of protocol, senior military officials occupied relatively higher status; for example, brigadiers ranked with joint secretaries.
The last viceroy, Admiral Lord Mountbatten, asked his military secretary, General Ismay, to recommend a more relevant organisation for the new nation's armed forces and based on these proposals, a few changes were instituted. First, chairmanship of the COSC was made rotational with the Chief longest in the chair taking that place. Second, three important sub-committees were set up under this body to deal with different aspects, e.g. operations, administration and personnel, with the last two including representatives from the civil bureaucracy of the ministry of defence (MoD). It was hoped that this would result in speedy cohesive decision making while ensuring political supremacy.
Within five years, significant tampering with the structure led to protocol changes such as Chiefs of Services being ranked with and after the Cabinet Secretary, the most senior civil servant. At this same time, joint secretaries were upgraded by being equated with major generals. Over the years, the Chiefs were re-designated Chiefs of Staff, in other words, most senior military advisers to the government, yet allowed to retain their operational command profile; this at a time when in almost all developed, mature democracies, that responsibility was placed under a different and dedicated Chairman of the Joint Chiefs (in the US) and Chief of Defence Staff (UK).
In brief, both command and staff functions, not combinable in any management guru's dictum, remained together under one person. At around the same time, representatives of the civilian bureaucracy began to ignore meetings of the sub-committees of the COSC, preferring to operate from the more exclusive preserves of their offices. Some rules of business drawn up by the bureaucracy categorised the Armed Forces as "Attached Offices of the ministry of defence" (a category on a par with others such as the Films Division in the ministry of information and broadcasting). Amazingly, these same rules made the defence secretary, not his minister, responsible for the defence of India. Inevitably, the distance between the military and the civilians in the MoD kept increasing even as elsewhere in the world, these two elements were getting more and more integrated.
In 2000, following a critical review of the existing structure by a committee headed by that eminent analyst, the late K Subrahmanyam, a Group of Ministers (GOM) was constituted comprising the five most important ministers to look at every aspect of national security of which higher defence management was one. Based on the recommendations of four task forces it set up, the GoM proposed integrating the three military headquarters with the MoD, creating a dedicated post of Chief of Defence Staff (CDS), setting up a department of defence procurement, restricting defence research and development to areas of critical technologies only.
These suggestions were accepted by the Cabinet save one - the creation of a CDS. Over the next decade, changes were made, some merely cosmetic - e.g. re-nomenclature of say, Naval Headquarters as Integrated Headquarters of the MoD (Navy) and creation of an elaborate office for defence procurement including a Defence Acquisition Council headed by the defence minister himself. There are few indications that any significant results have accrued which could be mentioned positively in any performance audit. On the other hand, delays, cost overruns and charges of corruption in defence procurement have only increased.
In 2009 another committee headed by an eminent person well versed in issues of national security having headed civilian bureaucracies in the Ministries of defence and home and having sat as the Cabinet Secretary, Naresh Chandra, was appointed by the prime minister to review the entire gamut of security. This made several recommendations including those in the realm of higher defence; one of these advised the creation of a dedicated Chairman, COSC as against the rotational system presently in force. It speaks volumes for the importance assigned to this committee that its suggestions remain unattended.
So, there is, obviously, something in our genes that prevents us from getting our higher defence management into reasonably effective shape. For one, the armed forces themselves are a factor. The Chiefs are just unable - and unwilling - to shed their operational command profile. Indeed, nowhere in the world has this been done by them voluntarily. In the US, it required a directive of the Congress, the Goldwater-Nichols Act, to get this done; in the UK, a Navy Chief actually resigned in protest and was shown the door.
The story has been the same almost everywhere. The strongest political leadership is needed to get such a change enforced and neither the earlier Vajpayee government nor that of Manmohan Singh had the appetite to bite this bullet; the smallest whiff of opposition from a few sent them scurrying for cover. Without a central authority, jointness in the military itself has remained just cosmetic.
The second stumbling block is the higher civil bureaucracy, which sees in any change a dilution of its own powers. They are smarter than those in the armed forces, clouding encroachment in their turf under the larger umbrella of 'compromise of civilian authority'. The fact that this means political control and not that of the bureaucrat remains cleverly unstated. The defence secretary continues to be responsible for the defence of India, a truly laughable proposition.
The third element is a continuing bankruptcy of knowledge in our defence ministers about the armed forces - with the possible exception of a very few, Jagjivan Ram and R Venkataraman, at different times, being two. Even worse, bureaucrats posted in the MoD are poorly informed on military issues, a lament publicly articulated by former Defence Secretary N N Vohra.
And finally, unless we get protocol issues sorted out, no easy matter, suspicion and hostility will continue to plague civil-military relations.
So, what lies ahead? Some argue that a running machine needs no fixing. Others see resistance to change as the cause of inaction. What has become abundantly clear is that something really serious will need to happen for us to make course corrections. Kargil came close but even that failed to get things set right. Perhaps, we may need to lose a conflict to see the road ahead. The war of 1962 may have been a sad chapter in India's history but it led to modernisation of India's military capabilities in a way that would never, otherwise, have been possible.
One can only hope that we get our act together before we are, once again, compelled to do so.
The writer was member of the 2000 Task Force on Higher Defence Management. He has also served in the National Security Advisory Board
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