In the electronic age and with 24-hour television news channels galore, there is every danger of psychological war and disinformation being used against our defence preparedness. The expose on corruption in defence deals by Tehelka.com needs to be taken with not just a pinch of but a ton of salt.

Here are my reasons for it. After the Kargil clash with Pakistan, our country suddenly woke up to the fact that the Kashmiri militants -- or for that matter even LTTE-like insurgent groups -- whom the Indian armed forces were confronting, were equipped with superior weapons, communications and even personal equipment.

Our jawans paid a very heavy price in lives for the neglect of defence in the last 10 years. Luckily for the nation, the government hiked the defence budget last year and has continued the trend this year as well. Last year that the defence ministry could not spend the allotted Rs 5,000 crore is testimony enough of the due diligence and also the difficulty of obtaining certain pieces of equipment.

It appears that the efforts of the defence forces and the ministry had began to bear fruit this year. India is now on the verge of acquiring the T-90 tanks (one of the best in the world today), Israeli surveillance pilotless aircraft, thermal imaging systems, Sukhoi 30 Mk I fighter bombers and many other badly needed equipment.

For the first time after the 1980s, India is today on the verge of getting not just numerical but also a qualitative edge over Pakistan.

The Pakistani economy is in doldrums, its population is growing at 5% and GDP at 4% compared with India's economic growth at 6.5%. The equation becomes even more one sided when we take into account the fact that in every respect India is ten times larger than Pakistan. Many Pakistani analysts have expressed alarm at this development.

The US has never given up its goal of 'cap, rolling back and eliminating' India's nuclear capability. Indians tend to forget that the technology restrictions that the US has imposed on India are not of 1998 vintage but date back to 1974 and our first test explosion at Pokhran.

Russia under a tough President Putin has been defying the US and resumed a defence supply relationship with India. The US has realised that economic sanctions against India have failed to work. With both Israel and Russia defying the US, the Americans were worried that India was well on its way to acquire military dominance in South Asia in particular and Asia in general. A strong India would be in a position to resist American pressures and act independently. A prospect not to the liking of the Global Policeman.

Finally, there are those firms that have lost out on the lucrative contracts. They are out to scuttle existing deals. After the end of the Cold War, the competition between companies making arms has become even fiercer due to the shrinking markets.

Thus it must be clear that Pakistan, the US and rival arms manufacturers, all have a vested interest in stalling the modernisation of the Indian armed forces currently under way. Either of them or all of them using this expose to achieve their aims is a distinct possibility.

There are precedents to fear this outcome. When the Bofors scandal first broke, then army chief General Krishnaswamy Sundarji constantly emphasised the fact that the Bofors howitzer was a good gun and pleaded with the country to separate the issue of kickbacks from the gun's suitability. In fact, the Bofors gun proved its worth in Kargil. But in a kneejerk reaction to the scandal, we terminated the contract with Bofors. With a result we had to buy the same ammunition from South Africa at an exorbitant price.

What happened to the Indian Space Research Organisation in Kerala a few years ago was even worse. Two most unlikely women from Maladives were portrayed to be Modern Mata Haris. One look at those women and even the blind could see they were most unlikely honey traps. But what did we do? On suspicion several senior scientists were harassed, detained and interrogated. The Indian space programme (with a very close link to our defence capability) was put back by several years.

The guilty and corrupt must be punished by all means and certainly removed from sensitive jobs straightaway. But for the sake of the country do not throw away the baby with the bath water. The public and politicians must take care that defence modernisation is not affected at any cost. Else, we will be playing into the hands of our enemies and will be as unprepared as we were at the time of Kargil.

Only the next time, it may not be a border clash but a nuclear strike!

Colonel Anil A Athale (retired), a Pune-based defence analyst, is a former head of the War History division at the defence ministry. He specialises in counterinsurgency and peace keeping operations.

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