Defence Notes
New Delhi, 18 June 2007
Nightmare For Forces?
FAULTY MILITARY PROCUREMENT POLICY
By B.K. Mathur
Defence Ministry’s one policy
that has repeatedly come in for criticism for decades, perhaps since
independence, is its military equipment procurement policy. Various
Parliamentary Committees have gone into the faults in specific cases time and
again. So have several reports of the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG). On
its part, the Ministry too has made some policy changes from time to time. But flaws
in policies and planning continue unabated. The latest on this front is the CAG
report tabled in Parliament last month. It stresses
that the weapon systems that should have been inducted in the Army within 12
months were not made available to the force anywhere close to that deadline.
The CAG made this remark while
going into some acquisitions which were required to be made under the
Ministry’s fast track procedure (FTP) for buying weapon systems on emergency
basis to cater to urgent operational requirements. But the delay in their
procurement has presented a sort of a nightmare to the armed forces. The FTP
policy, remember, was introduced in 2002, that is three years after the Kargil
operation in 1999. It allows the military establishments to ignore the laid
down procurement policy in an effort to plug gaps in the military’s operational
capabilities. It has been noticed that the Ministry has compromised
“competitiveness” in terms of
adequate vendor identification in the name of urgency, but the forces did not
get any benefit. Vested interests have invariably prevailed.
Remember, soon after the Kargil
operation the, then, Chief of the Army Staff, General V.P. Malik has forcefully
commented on the role of Babudom in defence planning and security matters. A
frustrated General had minced no words in highlighting during a massive military exercise in Rajasthan, operation
Vijay Chakra, that “procedural problems” more than “funds constraints” were
coming in the way in modernization of the Army. The military brass has, in fact, been quite upset about the red-tape
and delayed acquisition for a considerable period of time. The bureaucracy sits
with great comfort on files pertaining to military demands, something which was
clearly and concerned reflected in the Kargil operation.
As various reports indicated, the
Kargil operation provided in a way the repeat of 1962, when China attacked India and the Army deployed there
was caught napping. After the tragedy of the north-eastern Himalayas, India
and its traumatized Prime Minister Nehru realized the serious shortages of
equipment and such wherewithal which provide to the forces the required teeth
to protect the country’s security. The Government then moved fast to go in for
heavy purchases to update the armed forces. The result was seen within three
years when the Indian forces took on successfully
the Pakistani attack in 1965. No doubt, the Indian machinery was undoubtedly
inferior to Pakistan’s,
but the manpower superiority helped fully.
The real advantage of updating
the arms and the men of the forces was clearly seen in 1971 when the Indian
forces performed extremely well against Pakistan, both in the eastern and
western sectors. The success prompted the Government to again go in for
updating the military machines both from the West and the erstwhile USSR.
With the machines, alas, came the scandals connected with military
purchases---big slush money, procurement of inferior or outdated weapons and
systems. Remember, the big deal in the purchase of fighter aircraft, the
Jaguars and Mirages. Both were inducted into the Air Force at least a decade
late, when other air forces had begun to go in for the next generation of the
aircraft. The delays in almost all purchases were caused by the bureaucracy,
aided and abetted by the politicians.
In fact, the system of
negotiating with foreign manufacturers officially through the middlemen was
dispensed with and the Government started “handling” the manufacturers directly.
This led to scandals and wrong contracts and, of course, slush money for the
purchases of expensive machines like Jaguar aircraft, submarines and Bofors
gun, which caused even the fall of a Government at the Centre. In this process
of increasing corruption in defence deals an effort which Indira Gandhi had
made towards increasing indigenization of military hardware started suffering,
resulting in more and more dependence on imports. Worse, delayed acquisitions
were made from the Western sources, which were at that time surprisingly
acquired without production technology.
More than two decades later, one
discovered that things were back to square one, resulting in the Kargil tragedy
in 1999 and the Army Chief’s reaction quoted at the outset. In fact, the
shortcomings which the Indian forces had faced during the Kargil operations had
prompted the Defence Ministry to work out the fast procedure to provide for the
armed forces the equipment they needed urgently. Even in the case of such acquisitions,
the same decades-old malady has continued to be practised by vested interests,
concerned more about themselves than the security of the nation. For them, it
is just a routine matter what the CAG has pointed out in its latest report.
The striking example of the utter
neglect of FTP that the CAG has pointed out is the purchase of electronic warfare
systems, which the Army had urgently needed. A contract for this deal was
signed more than four years after the Ministry had approved the procurement
under the FTP. Likewise, the purchase of
extended range rockets met an almost similar fate. A contract was signed in
December 2005, even though the FTP was invoked in August 2002. More time was
required for completing the deal. One can go on and on highlight similar delays
in acquiring for the forces important machines to keep them in operational
readiness.
This kind of delays should not
have happened especially in case of FTP on emergency basis. The FTP does away
with critical elements of the procurement process
like the issue of request for
proposals (RFP), and technical evaluation for purchasing an established and
tested project. The CAG has faulted the Ministry for going in for the FPT when
its application was not justified in some cases. For instance, it says that the
electronic warfare system for Kargil and the north-east were an urgent
requirement in 1999 when the case for procurement was initiated. But it was brought under FPT in October 2001
by when it could have been procured through normal procedure. Indeed, vested interests
would have suffered.
The frustrating story which the
CAG has revealed in its latest report last month is indeed tragic. Despite
having in our Defence laboratories excellent scientists and technicians we, in
the first place, rush for purchases abroad and then delay in acquiring the
machines the forces urgently need. The negotiations with foreign vendors take
years, as has concernedly happened in the case of advance jet trainers (AJT),
which is actually the lifeline of the IAF. More about it another time. In the
present context, the disastrous military equipment policy has indeed cost the
armed forces dearly all these years. Time now to set things right.---INFA
(Copyright,
India News and Feature Alliance)
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