India News and Features Alliance (INFA) - Nightmare For Forces?: FAULTY MILITARY PROCUREMENT POLICY, by B.K. Mathur, 18 June 2007

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