New Delhi: Terming the relationship between the Indian military and politico-bureaucratic establishment “brittle and laden with suspicion”, former navy chief Admiral Arun Prakash said yesterday the “widening chasm” between the two was highlighted by the row over former army chief General V K Singh’s age and a media report “suggesting that an incipient military coup d’état had been uncovered”.
Delivering the third K Subrahmanyam Memorial Lecture, Admiral Arun Prakash said the two controversies “demonstrated, yet again, not just the widening chasm between the military and politico-bureaucratic establishment, but also the sheer incapability of the latter to cope with crises of this nature”.
He said the media report was made “to plant suspicion about the loyalty of India’s armed forces in people’s minds”, and added: “A deeply disturbing aspect of this episode is the suggestion that media could not have dared to concoct such a preposterous canard without a nod from the establishment”.
He suggested that a “better system of higher defence management and a less adversarial civil-military relationship” could have helped avert such episodes, adding: “A strong political personality in South Block, too, could have defused most of them.”
The lecture on “Civil-Military Dissonance: Chink in India’s Armour”, organised by Global India Foundation, was held at the India International Centre.
Admiral Arun Prakash pointed out the “subordinate status” of the service headquarters as among the reasons of India’s failure to attain self-reliance in weapons production and also “interminable delays” in deciding cases relating to acquisition of hardware, ordnance and manpower.
Each case “is required to be steered through multiple layers of bureaucracy”, countering on the way numerous questions that are “repetitive and often raised to prevaricate; and every file movement takes weeks, if not months”, he said.
This, he said, “has not only thwarted force modernisation, in spite of recent reforms in procurement procedures, but also affected combat readiness”.
Admiral Arun Prakash said with civil servants lacking the necessary expertise to decide on requirements of the services and with no system of consultation with the armed forces, “the preferred solution for the un-informed bureaucracy is to cast the case in limbo. That is why delays ranging from 5-15 years are fairly common and modernization remains stalled”.
The former naval chief said “major resistance to change” has come from the civil services which have “resolutely stalled every attempt at integration” of the service headquarters with the ministry of defence “since they apprehend erosion of their influence and authority”.
IANS
