From the Latest Issue of the Economist: Indian Arm forces: India is wise to speak softly, but it could do with a bigger stick

[avinash shahi]

Sep 24th 2016 | DELHI From the Print Edition
http://www.economist.com/news/asia/21707562-india-wise-speak-softly-it-could-do-bigger-stick-guns-and-ghee
TO MANY Indians, their country’s strategic position looks alarming.
Its two biggest neighbours are China and Pakistan. It has fought wars
with both, and border issues still fester. Both are nuclear-armed, and
are allies with one another to boot. China, a rising superpower with
five times India’s GDP, is quietly encroaching on India’s traditional
sphere of influence, tying a “string of pearls” of alliances around
the subcontinent. Relatively weak but safe behind its nuclear shield,
Pakistan harbours Islamist guerrillas who have repeatedly struck
Indian targets; regional security wonks have long feared that another
such incident might spark a conflagration.

So when four heavily armed infiltrators attacked an Indian army base
on September 18th, killing 18 soldiers before being shot dead
themselves, jitters inevitably spread. The base nestles in mountains
close to the “line of control”, as the border between the Indian and
Pakistani-administered parts of the disputed territory of Kashmir is
known. Indian officials reflexively blamed Pakistan; politicians and
pundits vied in demanding a punchy response. “Every Pakistan post
through which infiltration takes place should be reduced to rubble by
artillery fire,” blustered a retired brigadier who now mans a
think-tank in New Delhi, India’s capital.

e Hindu-nationalist government of Narendra Modi has trodden as softly
as its predecessors. On September 21st it summoned Pakistan’s envoy
for a wrist-slap, citing evidence that the attackers had indeed
slipped across the border, and noting that India has stopped 17 such
incursions since the beginning of the year. Much to the chagrin of
India’s armchair warriors, such polite reprimands are likely to be the
limit of India’s response.













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There are good reasons for this. India gains diplomatic stature by
behaving more responsibly than Pakistan. It is keenly aware of the
danger of nuclear escalation, and of the risks of brinkmanship to its
economy. Indian intelligence agencies also understand that they face
an unusual adversary in Pakistan: such is its political frailty that
any Indian belligerence tends to strengthen exactly the elements in
Pakistan’s power structure that are most inimical to India’s own
interests.

But there is another, less obvious reason for reticence. India is not
as strong militarily as the numbers might suggest. Puzzlingly, given
how its international ambitions are growing along with its economy,
and how alarming its strategic position looks, India has proved
strangely unable to build serious military muscle.

India’s armed forces look good on paper. It fields the world’s
second-biggest standing army, after China, with long fighting
experience in a variety of terrains and situations (see chart). It has
topped the list of global arms importers since 2010, sucking in a
formidable array of top-of-the-line weaponry, including Russian
warplanes, Israeli missiles, American transport aircraft and French
submarines. State-owned Indian firms churn out some impressive gear,
too, including fighter jets, cruise missiles and the 40,000-tonne
aircraft-carrier under construction in a shipyard in Kochi, in the
south of the country.




Yet there are serious chinks in India’s armour. Much of its weaponry
is, in fact, outdated or ill maintained. “Our air defence is in a
shocking state,” says Ajai Shukla, a commentator on military affairs.
“What’s in place is mostly 1970s vintage, and it may take ten years to
install the fancy new gear.” On paper, India’s air force is the
world’s fourth largest, with around 2,000 aircraft in service. But an
internal report seen in 2014 by IHS Jane’s, a defence publication,
revealed that only 60% were typically fit to fly. A report earlier
this year by a government accounting agency estimated that the
“serviceability” of the 45 MiG 29K jets that are the pride of the
Indian navy’s air arm ranged between 16% and 38%. They were intended
to fly from the carrier currently under construction, which was
ordered more than 15 years ago and was meant to have been launched in
2010. According to the government’s auditors the ship, after some
1,150 modifications, now looks unlikely to sail before 2023.

Such delays are far from unusual. India’s army, for instance, has been
seeking a new standard assault rifle since 1982; torn between demands
for local production and the temptation of fancy imports, and between
doctrines calling for heavier firepower or more versatility, it has
flip-flopped ever since. India’s air force has spent 16 years perusing
fighter aircraft to replace ageing Soviet-era models. By demanding
over-ambitious specifications, bargain prices, hard-to-meet
local-content quotas and so on, it has left foreign manufacturers
“banging heads against the wall”, in the words of one Indian military
analyst. Four years ago France appeared to have clinched a deal to
sell 126 of its Rafale fighters. The order has since been whittled to
36, but is at least about to be finalised.

India’s military is also scandal-prone. Corruption has been a problem
in the past, and observers rightly wonder how guerrillas manage to
penetrate heavily guarded bases repeatedly. Lately the Indian public
has been treated to legal battles between generals over promotions,
loud disputes over pay and orders for officers to lose weight. In July
a military transport plane vanished into the Bay of Bengal with 29
people aboard; no trace of it has been found. In August an Australian
newspaper leaked extensive technical details of India’s new French
submarines.

The deeper problem with India’s military is structural. The three
services are each reasonably competent, say security experts; the
trouble is that they function as separate fiefdoms. “No service talks
to the others, and the civilians in the Ministry of Defence don’t talk
to them,” says Mr Shukla. Bizarrely, there are no military men inside
the ministry at all. Like India’s other ministries, defence is run by
rotating civil servants and political appointees more focused on
ballot boxes than ballistics. “They seem to think a general
practitioner can perform surgery,” says Abhijit Iyer-Mitra, who has
worked as a consultant for the ministry. Despite their growing brawn,
India’s armed forces still lack a brain.

--
Avinash Shahi
Doctoral student at Centre for Law and Governance JNU