Part 1

Tank? You have the Bofors, na?

There is a bulky file bound tightly with red tape lying somewhere in South Block. It pertains to the procurement of advanced jet trainers.

Some 15 years have passed since it came into being. It has passed through the hands of many politicians and bureaucrats -- but AJTs still remain a mirage for the Indian Air Force.

For now, let's forget that the delay has cost the lives of many pilots. Let's, instead, focus on another incident.

Sometime in 1989, a high-level defence delegation visited the United States in search of weapon-locating radar. Twelve years on, India is still to acquire it, even as Pakistan, which possesses that sophisticated equipment, continues to hit Indian gun positions at will.

Unpardonable delays in upgrading military equipment are part of India's defence establishment. The armed forces will give you hundreds of instances.

Ask the men in uniform whom to blame for these delays. Their reply, invariably, will be: bureaucrats.

It is 'civilians' who man all key offices in the ministry of defence, they will tell you, and they are the men and women who approve -- or, as in many cases, sit over -- proposals from the forces.

Defence chiefs have often said so -- subtly, of course -- in public. Senior officers curse the bureaucracy for most ills that plague the service. As for the babus in the ministry, they continue to offer a zillion objections and excuses.

YES, delays are part of the ministry that is supposed to defend India's frontiers.

This is apparent from the fact that at the end of every financial year, the armed forces return millions of rupees from its budget to the government, unable to use it in time. Last year that amount stood at around Rs 40 billion.

No wonder, then, that former Indian Air Force chief Air Chief Marshal (retired) S K Kaul dubs the defence bureaucracy "archaic, old babudom."

"The main problem faced by our armed forces is the lack of a system to prioritise and speed up purchases," he elaborates. "In our bureaucracy, we do not have much expertise on defence and security. After all 24 per cent of our national budget goes to the defence."

Defence officials say that almost every demand from the service headquarters is returned many times by various bureaucrats with flimsy queries.

"And finally if they reject a demand, we are not even told the real reasons. They just tell us that it has been rejected," fumes a serving senior army officer.

The system for major purchases is painfully complicated and time-consuming. Based on the projections from the field, the armed forces propose a particular purchase. After this mammoth exercise, which includes analysis of various products available in the world market, the file is send to the joint secretary concerned in the MoD.

"Once the file reaches him, almost the entire exercise starts from zero again. Again analysis, study, research... The file returns with numerous queries, some of them really absurd," says an angry senior army officer.

"You expect these babus would know the importance of a weapon-locating radar, or a self-propelled gun," he continues. "Forget that, most of them cannot even distinguish between a Bofors gun and a tank!"

The file then travels to the MoD's financial controller. If the purchase is big, like the proposal for a main battle tank, T-90, or aircraft carrier Admiral Gorshkov, the red-bound papers move to the finance ministry.

"These files move at the typical government speed. It takes usually years for it to come back from the finance ministry," says a senior air force official, involved in the AJT proposal.

Many proposals have been shot down after years of anxious anticipation by the armed forces. Which exercise can be done even at a low bureaucrat's level.

"India is the only democracy in the world where the three services are not part of the decision-making," says Lieutenant General V K Sood (retd), former vice-chief of army staff. "The proposals of even chiefs can be shot down by a low-level bureaucrat."

Many are the instances of shameful delays of even small acquisitions. Immediately after he took over as defence minister two years ago, George Fernandes punished two officials with a stint in Siachen when he realised they had been sitting over the purchase of snowmobiles, which were desperately needed on the icy peaks.

"They [officials] can't even differentiate between a captain in the navy and the army. How will they then know our strategic demands?" asks General Sood.

It is not just the ignorance of officials that the government has to live with. "It has realised it is not able to get advice on defence matters on a joint basis," says ACM Kaul.

EACH service has its own priorities. And rarely is there a meeting ground.

At present, the air force continues to push for the AJT, while the army is pushing for a main battle tank. The navy, for its part, desperately seeks an aircraft carrier. All are big purchases, running into hundreds of million dollars.

"Someone needs to sit and prioritise these," says a MoD bureaucrat.

ACM Kaul recalls that during his tenure, he had proposed computerising the IAF's inventory management. "It took me over two years to get the project approved. While the higher levels of the MoD accepted it, the nitty-gritty part of it took a long time. It had to be finally intervened at the defence secretary's level," he says.

The fact that it was a piddling Rs 1.8-million project -- the IAF has an annual budget of over Rs 60 billion -- shows how slow files move.

"As far as operations were concerned, problems were such that they were not insurmountable," says ACM Kaul. "Major problem was in the allocation of funds. The size of the cake was limited," he points out.

The three service chiefs battle for slices of the defence budget every year. And end up with not enough in the kitty. Their problems are worsened by the bureaucracy which is "mostly callous".

"This could be overcome by the CDS, who could prioritise the needs," says an officer closely involved in setting up the new system.

Most service officers admit that the first step to cut down the delays is co-ordination between the three services. While delays could be blamed mostly on the stand-off between the services and the bureaucracy, over the years, the smooth relationship that existed between the powerful civilian bureaucracy under the defence secretary and the armed forces have turned into bitter turf battles.

Admiral Vishnu Bhagwat's dismissal as chief of the naval staff in December 1998 was the result of such personal battles that are a daily affair in the ministry.

"The relationship has broken down irrevocably," an army officer comments. "We need to replace this system."

The General's Call | Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4

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