indian-defence-planning-has-no-strategic-direction-35701 [Documents]

India was free from the yoke of the British Raj in 1947. Freedom from the British was achieved when the British Parliament passed the Indian Independence act 1946, that created the states of Pakistan and India. At that time India had the most advanced infrastructure in industry and defense, second only to Japan which had been defeated in World War II. India at that time also had an aircraft factory( Hindustan Aeronautics) at Bangalore which serviced the US transport planes that operated in India to carry supplies over the "hump," that is the Himalayas to the American allies, the nationalist party army in China. The Indian leadership that came to power had no comprehension of what is world domination. They also had no ambition to dominate the world and were content to live in an imaginary world hoping that India's great power status would be recognized on the strength of Mahatma Gandhi and his policy of non-violence. The net result was that heavy industry was neglected and the defence was given the lowest possible priority. For long years, the armed forces were given a step motherly treatment. India was led by leaders who hoped they would be recognized as a "great third world " leaders and India would be given global recognition, which would come through diplomacy. This was projected by Nehru himself. Unfortunately, Nehru lived in a dream world and did not know that one cannot dominate the world without a strategic initiative backed by a strong military-industrial complex. The result was that Nehru who strutted about the world as a "great third world leader" was shown to be a man which very poor strategic sense as the Chinese in a brief border war completely routed the Indian Army. They consolidated their hold over vast areas of Northern India. The defeat and the Chinese "betrayal" had a deleterious effect on Nehru. He died a broken man whose last two years were a shadow of his earlier personality. Successive Indian governments had no plans to aspire for great power status of India. Defence was relegated as a necessary evil and over the decades it got the least priority. India's new strategic budget that has just been unveiled by the finance minister Mrs. Nirmala Sitharaman brings out some startling figures. One can see that India's defence spending figure of dollars $46.3 billion is well below that of China which has a defence budget of one $177.5 billion. This underscores the mounting power gap between the two Nations, who are rivals in Asia. India’s defence budget is smaller even than China’s trade surplus with India. The low budget hampers military modernization which continues to lag due to stalled defence reforms. Another facet is that two third of the defence budget every year is marked just for salaries and day to day running costs. The money left for military hardware is very low. The army spending on modernization, for example, has been just 14% of the budget and most of the money is eaten up by vast import of arms from foreign countries. We must remember that all the great power are major arms producers and exporters. Most of them consider India as a cash cow. This is unfortunate as India produces no weaponry of any significance and over the last few decades no attempt was made to have a strategic vision and set up a military-industrial complex. Make no mistake that no nation can build security and become a great power on the basis of military imports. Indeed with this reliance on imported weapons, India can never be a power to contend with. In the past decade, India has accounted for almost 10% of the global arms sales by volume. This is nothing to be proud of and is one of the bugbears to India’s step forward for becoming a power of international standing. We must remember that when we import arms from one country, that country holds the tab for the supply of technology and a further improvement in the weaponry. Data was generated with Essay Writersversion ! It has veto power and this has never been recognized by the Indian political leadership. I am afraid India's dependence on arms imports has a corrupting role and one of the root causes of the Indian armed forces equipment shortages and the erosion in combat capability. The more arms India imports the more it lacks the capacity to decisively win a war. This is no surprise that even in the 1998 war with Pakistan on Kargil the Indian armed forces failed to win a decisive victory and at the end were content to have a ceasefire. A strategic vision is important when one realizes that it really means the capacity to define oneself. Having its own resources is the first test a country must pass on the way to becoming a great power. The Indian political leadership will have to give importance to the armed forces and not get into unproductive contests with pensioners and retired soldiers on pension and other matters.