The new normal in defence management

Ex-Financial Adviser, Acquisition, MoD

Rahul Bedi
Senior Journalist

LIKE in social, economic, diplomatic and political fields, a ‘new normal’ has emerged in India’s complex arena of defence management, materiel acquisitions and military capability building.

In the absence of a dedicated national security policy and organisational structure for composite defence planning, the realisation that the imminent launch of complex procurement procedures is unlikely to reduce delays in procurement, and above all, imperviousness to the ever-growing paucity of funds, this ‘new normal’ is rife with nebulous and regurgitated pronouncements.

This inexorable development makes it all the more calamitous following the enduring military challenge to India posed by China in eastern Ladakh, along the Line of Actual Control (LAC). Decades of a disjointed and disorderly approach to long-term defence planning, in turn, have rendered India incapable of adequately deterring, leave alone thwarting, this looming threat.

But the proliferating financial resource crunch is without doubt, the gravest obstacle responsible for shaping this new normal. Ironically, it is also one that few in the military, the Ministry of Defence (MoD) or in the wider security establishment, either acknowledge or discuss or, in many instances, both.

Consequently, many blinkered former officials, soldiers and political leaders wax lyrical on television about the hugely expensive materiel procurements and grandiose defence programmes, assuming irrationally that funds for these will somehow magically materialise when required. Simply put, they will not.

Innumerable seminars earlier, webinars presently, and ongoing discussions among the defence strategists rarely ever debate specific measures on defining joint military capability, financing its development or most pertinently, from where the requisite funding is to be sourced.

Unfortunately, most such officials and managers fail to realise — or do, but refuse to concede they do — that money and financial resources remain finite entities, that need careful advance planning for gainful employment to secure the proverbial bang for the buck.

Financial profligacy over decades and concomitant disregard for fiscal realism have steadily burgeoned and are now proving incredibly expensive to keep abreast of the constantly shifting crossbars of the revolution in military affairs. Instead, this situation has spawned questionable military capability, largely in single-service silos, against an enemy like China that, over the decades has quietly pursued an integrated, comprehensive and top-down approach to achieve ‘informationalised’ warfare capability under hi-tech conditions.

And though panicky and expensive materiel imports to deal with the PLA invasion in Ladakh are being hastily cleared, these necessitate institutional endorsement as these procurements are being executed at the cost of other, equally critical sectors like possibly health, education or infrastructure development. After all, it’s no great secret that the national kitty’s solvency is dire, as India faces its worst-ever economic meltdown due to the unrelenting coronavirus pandemic.

Even before this devastating economic downturn, financial support for India’s military was parlous. In anticipation of the annual federal budget in February, all three services and the associated Headquarters Integrated Defence Staff (IDS) had demanded Rs 4.09 trillion from the MoD for fiscal year 2020-21 as their revenue and capital expenditure for salaries and operating costs and to modernise.

They received Rs 3.05 trillion, or Rs 1.03 trillion less, up from just Rs 230 million a decade earlier. This mounting deficit, likely to get worse in the coming years, too is accountable for moulding the ‘new normal’. Alongside are unrealistic ambitions over the impending magnitude of India’s defence market and its $25 billion export potential by 2025 and routine assertions that additional funds will be made available, if required. Once again, no one knows from where this wellspring of money will materialise.

The other facet whittling the ‘new normal’ in military matters is the imminent Defence Acquisition Procedure (DAP)-2020 or DAP-2020, which in all its seven previous editions, since 2002 was known as the Defence Procurement Procedure or DPP.

The change in the nomenclature, it appears, is the MoD’s panacea to successive problematic DPP versions which were dense, difficult to comprehend and their directions not easy to implement. The replacement over 700-page DAP, due for release around end-August, is even more convoluted and one which an MoD official said was repetitive and confusing. Its numerous long passages, with many paragraphs running perplexingly into over 400 words or more, merely add to its overall opacity.

The MoD official likened this nomenclatural change from DPP to DAP to the renaming of controversial Hindi film Padmavati to Padmavat in 2018. Following threats of violence by a sanctimonious group of film buffs, who objected to romantic scenes between Deepika Padukone, who plays the role of Hindu rani Padmavati and Ranveer Singh, cast as Alauddin Khilji, the ruthless 14th century Delhi sultan, the producer shortened the original title to Padmavat. It worked and the film was released without event. The MoD, it seems is similarly influenced with regard to DAP-2020.

Meanwhile, in this new normal setting, the services are emerging as an ‘integrated’ instrument of political power projection with mounting disdain for a dispassionate and objective discourse on security matters. Even military insiders concede that this is anathema to professionalism, as is the ongoing frantic race among service personnel to seek financial parity and status equivalence with their civilian counterparts, further muddling wobbly civil-military relations.

If there is one thing that sums up the new normal, it is the lack of clarity about the direction in which the defence establishment is headed, unable to chart a palpably new course any time soon, caught as it is in a cleft stick of military imperatives and financial constraints.

To paraphrase the enigmatic Chinese philosopher and writer Lao Tzu: If we do not change direction (from the new normal), we will definitely end up where we are heading.