POLITICS-INDIA: Scandal May Hobble Defence Modernisation

By Ranjit Devraj Reprint | | Print |

Ranjit Devraj

NEW DELHI, Mar 26 2001 (IPS) - The mid-March shady arms deal expose that has rocked Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s government, is likely to hobble badly needed modernisation of India’s defence forces, say analysts.

The scandal, which has already claimed the job of a key ruling coalition leader — former defence minister George Fernandes — will again slow down key defence purchase decisions, they warn.

Jasjit Singh, chief of the prestigious, New Delhi-based, think- tank, Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses, fears that the affair, which exposed high-ranking defence ‘fixers’, could further affect much- delayed modernisation.

Singh calls India’s unpreparedness for war, evident during the undeclared Kargil border war with Pakistan, two years ago, as “the curse of peace.”

“Three decades of peace since the 1971 war with Pakistan has bred complacency,” he says.

But defence purchases were limited in the 1990s as a direct fallout of the country’s most famous corruption scandal.

The mid-1980s deal with Swedish arms maker Bofors, which allegedly paid millions of dollars in kickbacks, to supply howitzers for the Indian Army, not only led to the fall of the then Congress party government, but put all arms deals under a cloud.

“After the Bofors scandal, the decision-making procedure was totally crippled as the people who were to take decisions stopped taking them,” says former Indian Army chief, Shankar Roychowdhury.

India’s defence preparedness is mainly against arch-foe Pakistan, which was created half a century ago by the subcontinent’s departing colonial British rulers. The two South Asian neighbours have fought two wars over the disputed territory of Kashmir.

India’s superiority in conventional arms was neutralised after the two countries conducted nuclear tests three years ago.

According to a report in the latest edition of Jane’s Intelligence Review published from London, Pakistan has now edged past India in nuclear weapons capability.

“India views nuclear weapons as necessary for their political utility; their ability to bring international prestige and provide deterrence vis-a-vis Pakistan and China,” Jane’s commented.

The weekly also said Pakistani officials believed that Islamabad’s nuclear capability give it the option of strongly supporting insurgency in Kashmir and that India would not dare hit back with strong conventional weapons for fear of escalation to nuclear exchange.

India took scrupulous care to avoid crossing into Pakistan-held Kashmir during the undeclared war at Kargil but used jet-fighters and heavy artillery to dislodge armed intruders from the Indian side of the Line of Control (LoC) that runs through Kashmir.

The Kargil war exposed serious chinks in India’s conventional armour. The Bofors guns lacked the accompanying artillery locating radar, which helped the Pakistani army pick off Indian gun positions with great accuracy.

Large-scale defence budget cuts in the 1990s led to shortages of vital equipment like night-vision devices, hand-held surveillance systems and protective clothing. These were blamed for the heavy casualties suffered by Indian troops deployed on the northern snow-bound borders with Pakistan.

“Pakistan would be very pleased with the present disclosures,” says K. Subrahmanyam, India’s leading security expert and commentator.

According to Subrahmanyam, the government could not even spend money budgeted for defence purchases last year and now there is every likelihood that procurement decision-making could grind to a complete halt.

The unpreparedness of the army highlighted by the Kargil war led to a massive defence buying spree. This included a deal worth three billion U.S. dollars signed with Russia when its President Vladimir Putin visited New Delhi in October 2000.

According to Jayant Malhoutra, till recently a member of Parliament’s Defence Consultative Committee and the Public Accounts Committee, many of India’s recent arms purchase deals are worthless and were designed to benefit middlemen and their political patrons.

“I have told Parliament and I have the proof that the Indian government prefers to deal with traders and not the manufacturers because you get a larger slice of the cake with the former,” he claims.

Malhoutra said spares and ammunition for the Bofors gun, which was used extensively in the Kargil war, were sourced from a private dealer called Mipro rather than the Swedish government which has taken over Bofors and runs it under the name of Celsius.

“Political corruption in defence deals has a very adverse impact on defence preparedness,” says Subrahmanyam who admits, however, that it is impossible to eliminate the middleman and the built-in commissions.

Defence deals provide an attractive avenue for money-making to corrupt politicians and arms dealers are adept at making secret payments, he says.

Subrahmanyam said speculation on alleged kickbacks kept on hold for ten years, a decision to buy badly-needed, advanced jet trainers (AJTs). This forced the Indian Air Force to use “ancient, crash-prone”, Soviet-built Mig-21 fighters for training purposes.