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07-03-2006, 02:38 AM
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#1 (permalink)
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Senior Contributor
Join Date: 09-01-04
Location: North London
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Are India’s armed forces ready for a CDS?
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Five years after the idea was mooted, Defence Minister Pranab Mukherjee has written to the leaders of India’s major political parties to seek their views on creating a chief of defence staff (CDS) for the armed forces, the aim being to build a consensus on the issue.
Given India’s fractured polity, that could be one way of obfuscating the issue. At the same time, the need for building a consensus could be questioned - as the very government that Mukherjee is part of does not even feel the need to consult with other political parties on a highly emotive issue like reservations.
Mukherjee himself is known to be keen to push for creating the CDS as the crowning glory of his political career but his confidants have advised he proceed with caution.
For one, there are apprehensions that a CDS would wield unbridled military power as he would not only head the three services but would be the single point of reference between the government and the armed forces. Not only would he also head the Strategic Forces Command that today exists only on paper, he would be the one to arbiter the budget and equipment demands of the three services.
Given the paranoia the political and bureaucratic establishments have about the military, it was not surprising that way back in 1952 the government designated the headquarters of the three services as ‘attached offices’ of the defence ministry. This divested them of policy-making roles and made them mere implementers of what the ministry decreed.
How then did the ‘change of heart’, if it could be termed that, come about?
Had the 1999 Kargil operation, when the Indian Army went into action to evict Pakistani intruders who had occupied the heights in Jammu and Kashmir, not happened, the suggestion for creating a CDS might never have been made.
With reports flying thick and fast about the lack of coordination between the army and the air force during the conflict - the controversy continues to this day - the then Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) promptly appointed a committee headed by noted security expert K. Subrahmanyam to examine the issue threadbare.
The committee suggested sweeping changes in the defence establishment, including the creation of a CDS to ensue the three services operated on a common net and not against each other. The government then established a group of ministers to consider the Subrahmanyam report and this too accepted the CDS recommendation.
Since then, however, the issue has remained in semi-limbo, with the government appointing a chief of integrated defence staff, who, in spite of being only a three-star general, reports directly to the defence minister, causing considerable heartburn to his superiors.
As on the vexed issue of women serving in combat arms of the three services, the moot point is: Are the Indian armed forces ready for a CDS?
The answer to that would be: Some day they would be, but only after certain critical issues are addressed.
The principal one relates to the mindset. In India, in spite of professing to concepts of inter-operability and ‘close inter-services cooperation’, the three services jealously guard their respective turfs, with the straightjacket mindset being drilled in from the time cadets are commissioned.
Contrast this with what happens, for instance, at the US Military Academy at West Point. There, the first lesson cadets learn is that the team is more important than their parent service. This is because over time, the US armed forces have been involved in operations whose success depended on close coordination among land, sea and air forces.
In contrast, the bulk of operations the Indian armed forces have been involved in have been land based - but more of this later.
Inter-services rivalries in India have led to some rather piquant situations. The army is a case in point. In the early 1970s, it acquired an air element to serve as an airborne platform to direct artillery fire at targets. Gradually it began to acquire light transport helicopters and today operates some 300 such machines, a third short of the air force’s entire transport fleet.
Now, the army is eyeing helicopter gun ships - hitherto the domain of the Indian Air Force (IAF) - and its own air wing.
The logic? Since the army needs tactical air support it alone should control these assets, with the IAF playing only a strategic role.
This is not idle chatter. Insiders say a paper is circulating in army headquarters that speaks of an army air force becoming a reality in the next decade.
This kind of rivalries raises the crucial issue of how the CDS should be selected.
Logic would say this should be by selection, as happens in the US and Britain, two countries where the CDS system is working to perfection.
But then, the word ’selection’ in a country like India opens up a veritable Pandora’s box, given the way politicians - the final deciding authority - function. There have been innumerable instances of senior military officers indulging in influence peddling and other methods to get plum postings and it must go to the government’s credit that it has relied on the principle of seniority to keep the system clean.
So, as it happens with the current chiefs of staff committee (CSC) system, could the CDS not rotate among the three services? No way, says the army, holding the CSC system is more in the nature of a club while the CDS would have executive authority. And, since all operations are primarily land-based, the CDS should invariably be from the army.
Says an officer who has served with the integrated defence staff headquarters: ‘Suppose someone from the navy had been CDS during Kargil. How do you expect him to understand the intricacies of what is essentially a land-air operation?’
The IAF has a different take on this: The Indian armed forces would have to acquire a strategic reach in a globalising world to take care of India’s economic and energy interests. Because only someone from the IAF can visualise this, someone from that force should be the CDS.
The navy, unfortunately, hasn’t even got a look in on this.
In sum, the idea of a CDS is sound and is required if the armed forces are to give of their full potential. At the same time, it’s an idea whose time has not come. Its time will come only when India’s politicians learn to put the country before self and party.
(Vishnu Makhijani writes on strategic affairs. He can be contacted at vishnu.makhijani@ians.in.)
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http://indiaenews.com/2006-07/13474-...ence-staff.htm
What do people here think about inter-service rivalry? |
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07-03-2006, 03:20 AM
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#2 (permalink)
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Bandaid
Military Professional
Join Date: 10-04-04
Location: India
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Quote:
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Originally Posted by Samudra
What do people here think about inter-service rivalry?
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Its not so much as interservice rivelry as the issue below...
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Its (CDS) time will come only when India’s politicians learn to put the country before self and party.
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The services will follow the laid down policies, the CDS may be the senior most officer from either arm. The service chiefs are there to advise the CDS. However, the politicians must learn to make decisions.
As far as the army creating its own air arm is concerned, there is nothing wrong in it inspite of the Air Force stating that the Army does not have "air mindedness" (whatever that is).
The CDS will stop the past practice of each service fighting its own battles and the office will help in co-ordinating a cohisive offensive/ defensive policy and plan of action.
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Cheers!...on the rocks!!
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07-03-2006, 03:28 AM
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#3 (permalink)
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Navajo Code Talker
Senior Contributor
Join Date: 12-27-04
Location: Patiala, India
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Sun Tzu's Art of War is a pretty good book, I recommend that you guys read it... lol... it may help you understand better why we need (or why we don't need) a CDS...
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