HIGHER DEFENCE MANAGEMENT IN INDIA: NEED FOR URGENT REAPPRAISAL

Nitin A. Gokhale

Nations which fail to develop a balanced pattern of civil-military relations squander their resources and run uncalculated risks.

In his two part treatise entitled The Soldier and the State and India’s Civilisational flaw: Isolation of the military, then Chief of Naval Staff Admiral Vishnu Bhagwat had tried to trace the origins of the working of the Ministry of Defence in independent India and the  evolution of civil-military relations since 1947.

In light of his subsequent dismissal less than two months after he released the two essays, many have wondered if the Admiral, known for high professional competence, had inkling about his impending ouster and was therefore putting it on record what he felt was wrong with India’s higher defence management!

Much has been written and debated about the Admiral Bhagwat saga; his run in with the then defence minister George Fernandes; the machinations of the civilian bureaucracy in plotting the Navy Chief’s abrupt ouster and its fallout on the already fraught civil-military relations. A stickler for rules, Admiral Bhagwat rubbed many powerful people the wrong way and paid the ultimate price.[i]

Nearly a decade and a half later, South Block, the colonial era building that houses the Indian Prime Minister’s Office as well as the Defence Ministry, was rocked by another face off between a military chief and the politico-bureaucratic combine. The mishandling of the Gen VK Singh ‘birth date’ issue[ii]again starkly brought forth the fissures within the top hierarchy of the Indian Army as well between service headquarters and the civil bureaucracy in the Ministry of Defence.

The controversy over the Gen VK Singh issue in early 2012 degenerated into a very public spat between the Ministry of Defence and the then Army Chief, once again forcing analysts to ask the question: Has civilian control of the military in India become synonymous with bureaucratic control?

The answer from military leaders is an unequivocal Yes.

Bureaucrats, officers of the elite Indian Administrative Service (IAS), never agree to this contention. They continue to maintain that all that the IAS does is to carry out orders of the political executive.

This, at best, is half truth.

The political executive, barring a handful few, neither has the knowledge nor any interest in matters military and therefore depends completely on inputs from the bureaucrats who continue to mould the political leadership’s thought process according to their own perceptions on governance and administration.

Admiral Arun Prakash, former Chief of Naval Staff and a prolific commentator on national security affairs has this to say about the equation between the Ministry of Defence and Service Headquarters: “Two major factors have contributed to the systemic dysfunctionality that we see in the management of national security affairs. First is politician’s detachment and indifference towards matters relating to national security, because this is not an issue that can win or lose votes.

Since politicians have not considered it worthwhile establishing a close and cordial relations with the leadership of the armed forces, it is not surprising that when faced with a crisis or problem politicians finds themselves at a complete loss. A related factor is the total reliance that the politician places, for advice, decision-making and problem resolution, on transient, generalist MoD civil servants, drawn from diverse backgrounds. This, despite the Chiefs and the highly specialized Service HQ (SHQ) staffs being at his disposal for tendering advice in the management of national security.”[iii]

 The military leadership has always railed at this ‘imbalance’ in the decision making structure at the highest levels but has been unable to change the system so far.

Civil-military relationship in the country post-1947 is replete with episodes that suggest constant state of tension between the ‘generalist’ bureaucracy and the ‘specialists’ military leaders, with the political executive watching and sometimes encouraging the bureaucracy to keep the military under control.

The political executive, starting with India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, has generally excluded the military leadership from the decision making process at the highest levels. Adm. Vishnu Bhagwat, himself a victim of politico-bureaucratic machinations, wrote in his treatise The Soldier and the State: “By selective usage, omission and interpretation of language, it (civil services) has continuously imposed a variety of constraints, checks and curbs on the very functioning of the armed forces in general, and the business of service headquarters in particular. This has virtually isolated and marginalised the defence forces from all processes which go into formulation of national policies and agendas, even in the cardinal sphere of national security.”[iv]

The effort to cut defence services down to size had begun immediately after Independence. The Indian Army, which was a prime instrument of the British hard power across the entire empire, was often called out to suppress protests during India’s freedom struggle. Many leaders and political stalwarts who were at the receiving end of the crackdown had naturally developed an aversion and suspicion against the Indian military, mainly the Indian Army troops.  But Adm Arun Prakash effectively busts the myth that the Indian military pre-1947 was unpatriotic.

Independence also necessitated creation of structures to establish parliamentary control over the military. In 1947 a committee of three senior Indian Civil Service (ICS) officers had suggested structuring of the MOD on the lines of the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) and, in the process, had also aimed at lowering the standing of the military officers much in the same way as that of the police officers in relation to the ICS. It was Lord Mountbatten who ensured that the Service Chiefs retained their status higher than the Defence Secretary. Mountbatten’s Chief of Staff Lord Ismay, not wanting to rock the boat in those turbulent times suggested the formation of a high-level committee to look after service matters instead ordering a radical restructuring.

Sixty-six years after Independence, it is no secret that the political-military interface is all but absent in India’s institutional set up. The armed forces are completely under the day-to-day as well as policy control of the MoD. The desirable politico-military interface is now reduced to weekly, sometimes fortnightly meetings chaired by the Defence Minister. According to several former chiefs this author has spoken to, these meetings are informal, without any agendas or note taking and have no official status although in theory, the Defence Minister is deemed to have given policy directions in these meetings!

Inder Malhotra, veteran journalist describes the event thus: “S. Gopal (Nehru’s biographer) perceived the Thimayya-Menon episode as “a comic-opera putsch”. According to him, Nehru dealt with it in Parliament “in such a way as to strengthen Menon’s position and shrink Thimayya’s reputation. He stressed the importance of the government’s control of the armed forces and hinted that Thimayya had acted irresponsibly.”[vii] Nehru and Menon may have won a temporary victory over the military but in less than four years the nation paid the price of undue political meddling in professional military affairs in the form of a military debacle in the month long border clash with China in 1962!

A major showdown between the three service chiefs and the bureaucratic-politico combine over the recommendations of the 6^th Pay Commission in 2008 is a case in point. After the 6th Pay panel submitted its report, a committee of secretaries was set up to look into various anomalies that were brought to the notice of the government. The service headquarters had reasoned with the ministry that since the armed forces make up for 30 per cent of the government employees, they should have a representative on the committee. But their request was not heeded. Instead, the service chiefs were told their concerns would be addressed without prejudice and with sympathy.

This assurance was taken at face value but when no communication was received from the committee of secretaries, Chief of Naval Staff, Adm. Sureesh Mehta, in his capacity as chairman of the chiefs of staff committee, asked for the details of the decisions taken in the committee. He wanted to see that the armed forces’ concerns were adequately taken care of. But the Committee of Secretaries did not deem it fit to respond to the admiral’s plea. So when the cabinet approved the amended sixth pay panel report, it was assumed all the pending issues were taken care of.

But to the great consternation of the service headquarters, not only were their major grievances not addressed, three more anomalies, indeed, glaring discrepancies, were introduced by the committee of secretaries in the final cabinet notification.

For the armed forces, this was the last straw. This was worse than the aftermath of the 5th pay commission a decade ago when 48 anomalies were pointed out by the armed forces but only eight were resolved over a 10 year period till the 6th Pay Commission was notified!

It took some time for the reality to sink in but when the anomalies were noticed, all the three chiefs decided to take up their case with defence minister AK Antony. After the meeting, Antony was convinced of the logic presented by the three chiefs. So he apparently asked his ministry officials to prepare a detailed note in support of the services’ demand to resolve the core issues and send that communication to the Finance Ministry and the Prime Minister’s Office for necessary action.

The core issues, the three service chiefs felt, would affect command and control functions in the field especially between the Army and para-military forces and the navy and the coast guard, to cite just two examples. Having taken their case to the defence minister, the three chiefs felt they would at last get justice. Shockingly however, the finance ministry and the PMO were presented a completely diluted case. Left with no other alternative, the chiefs then took up their case with the Prime Minister himself who too agreed that their concerns were genuine and should be resolved favourably. The only catch was: the MoD had not sent the requisite supporting documents!!

In the meantime, neither the Prime Minister nor the Defence minister could meet because of their pre-scheduled foreign visit. That’s when the three service chiefs decided that they would delay the implementation of the flawed 6th Pay Commission report. Simultaneously, they decided to communicate this decision to their men down the chain of command. The internal communication by all three chiefs in fact spoke about the need for not falling prey to rumours and speculation. [xi]

This act by the three chiefs in unison led to some trenchant criticism from prominent media commentators like Indian Express Editor-in-Chief Shekhar Gupta. He wrote: “For the first time, these incumbents (Service Chiefs) have stood in defiance of civil authority as no military chiefs have ever done in India’s history. And howsoever genuine their grievances over the pay commission — as they seem to be — they have set a precedent that future generations of Indians, and even their own successors in years to come, will come to regret. Their decision to not notify the cabinet order on the pay commission was unprecedented and shocking. True, they were cheered along by the increasingly vocal community of ex-servicemen, many of whom harbour long-standing, deep and justified suspicion of the bureaucracy, and who were in turn egged on by one campaigning TV channel, Times Now. They saw this pay commission as one more too-clever-by-half effort by the babus to push the military a peg or two lower in terms of both money and protocol. They weren’t entirely wrong. But was this — the three chiefs turning themselves into a group of defiant trade union heads — the only way to handle it?”[xii]

Many military veterans raised objections to Shekhar Gupta’s comments. Even I had an occasion to write: “If the above signal, as the communication is called in military parlance, is defiance then no military chief will ever be able to give assurances to and take his men in confidence. Anyone who has dealt with the armed forces will tell you that there is not an iota of truth in the canard that is being spread about the three chiefs “defying” the civil authorities. Yes, they questioned the bureaucracy’s attempts to wittingly or unwittingly introduce pay and status disparities between the armed forces and their civilian counterparts. Yes, they took the matter to the Prime Minister but in no way did they defy the government.”

The fact is this act of the three chiefs forced the Prime Minister to appoint a ministerial panel to redress the grievances. A couple of main points were immediately settled but it speaks volumes of India’s apathy towards its armed forces that five years after that episode, many of the anomalies in the 6^th Pay Commission award for the military remain stuck in bureaucratic red tape!

While very few have been able to explain the real reason behind the antipathy against the military displayed by the civil bureaucracy and the political executive, my experience suggests that non-military personnel perhaps resent the armed forces because of their evidently orderly and efficient ethos, the tightly bound camaraderie and distinct standing in the society. And this is not unique to India. Renowned sociologist Morris Janowitz had famously said: “The intimate social solidarity of the military profession is both envied and resented by civilians.”

So is there a way out of this logjam? Can the status quo ever be broken?

The government, worried over the increasing criticism over a lack of National Security Policy and half-hearted implementation of the 2001 GoM recommendations, appointed another high level committee under former Cabinet Secretary Naresh Chandra in 2011. Within a year, the high powered committee submitted its detailed report to the Prime Minister in mid-2012 but so far there is no indication that the report will be made public soon. We do not even know if within the government deliberations have begun on the recommendations given by the Task Force.

All that is available in public domain so far is a glimpse of some key recommendations made by the task force that too through media reports obviously based on conversations with some members of the task force. For instance, the task force has apparently recommended:

From some of the occasional interaction that this author has had with a few members of the Task Force, before and after the submission of the report, one aspect is very clear: There was no consensus on the creation of the post of the Chief of Defence Staff (CDS), leading to, what one believes, a half-hearted recommendation to appoint another four-star officer as permanent chairman of the Chiefs of Staff Committee (CoSC).

According to the Task Force, this officer will be in charge of the two existing tri-services commands-the Strategic Command Force (SFC) and the Andaman Nicobar Command (ANC)–while the three service Chiefs will continue command and lead their respective services, the Task Force said.

The Permanent Chairman CoSC, according to the recommendation of the Naresh Chandra Task Force, will have a fixed tenure of two years and will be rotated among the three services. This officer will be assisted by the existing Integrated Defence Staff (IDS), headed by a three star officer from any of the three services.

Over the past decade, the IDS has evolved in a barely workable tri-services structure with over 300 officers drawn from the three services trying to function as a cohesive unit tasked with evolving “jointness.” On ground however, jointness or inter-operability has remained at best patchy.

The new recommendation seeks to overcome these differences. The Naresh Chandra Task Force has also recommended the creation of a separate Special Operations Command on the lines of the US structure since asymmetric threats are seen as the main challenge to India’s national security in coming decades.

However, critics of the new system say the recommendation to appoint Chairman CoSC is nothing but old wine in new bottle. It is a ‘no go’ because the Chairman will remain ever dependent on each of the services Army, Navy & IAF for its personnel requirements. Personnel of each service will be ‘lobbyists’ of respective Chiefs.

Given what is known publicly, I would say yet another opportunity to reform has been lost. National Security System does not have to depend on seeking Least Common Multiple (LCM)-solutions. It does not have to seek to appease lobbies and turfs.

The solution, I believe lies in divesting the three Chiefs of operational command of forces. Let them be Chiefs of respective Staff – ‘resource providers to joint operational/ strategic commands’ – content with recruiting, training of personnel; holding and maintaining equipment; and executing related administrative functions.

In absence of a common meeting ground on deciding to appoint a CDS, the Naresh Chandra Task Force recommendation can however be utilised in the interim in creating more cohesion among the services. For instance, the Chairman Chiefs of Staff Committee, who will have a fixed two year tenure can be made in charge of making net assessment about the strengths and weaknesses of India’s adversaries—China and Pakistan—in a holistic manner, taking into consideration inputs from all the three services and cross-referencing those inputs with other agencies like the Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA) and RAW. Currently, the three services send their individual assessments just to complete formalities to the IDS where it remains buried in files that never see the light of the day.

Moreover, if the Chairman Chiefs of Staff Committee is going to lead the proposed Special Operations Command why not create two more tri-services commands and give him some more work?

Given the frequency of cyber-attacks on India’s IT infrastructure, creation of a cyber-command is only a matter of time. An aerospace command is inevitable sooner than later. Along with the creation of the proposed Special Operations Command, why not create these two additional tri-service commands? And let the Army, Air Force and Navy be the lead service for a particular command? And let the Army, Air Force and Navy be the lead service for a particular command?

The proposed Chairman Chiefs of Staff Committee can remain the head of these three commands with each of them being led by an Army Commander level officer. Given the experience and expertise available with the Army, it can take charge of the Special Operations Command, the IAF, with its domain knowledge, can take over the aerospace command and the Navy can lead the cyber command. The heads of these commands can have their second rung manned by two-star officers from each of the services so that they continue to have the benefit of expert advice from across the services but the overall responsibility must remain with the designated service.

Given that the existing tri-services commands go through painful changes each time their Commanders-in-Chief get rotated, making each of the service responsible for the proposed new commands will make their the working smoother and more efficient.

Over a decade after a CDS was recommended by the Group of Ministers (GoM) in the wake of the Kargil conflict, there is no unanimity on that issue yet. Given the strong differences within the services as well as in the political class, could this be the best arrangement for now? Or is it too impractical?

Historically, it is to the credit of the Indian armed forces that they have fulfilled their assigned role as an organ of the state…they have functioned effectively in every type of role, in spite of the general lack of a supportive government environment by way of adequate finances, resources, equipment, personnel policies, or higher political direction.

The government is however duty bound to take urgent steps to reform the higher defence management in the interest of the nation. As a first step, the government owes it to the people of India to make the Naresh Chandra Task Force report public and let a healthy debate ensue if India has to overcome systemic weaknesses and structural shortcomings in its national security decision making apparatus.