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At a time when many of the institutions around us are being eroded, there is one that still
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commands respect, the Indian Armed Forces.
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At the time of independence, the British passed on a professional army to both India and Pakistan.
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But while the influence of the army was seen in Pakistani politics, it has remained unseen
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And that's a damn good thing.
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The military has played an outsized role in many post-colonial nations, many of which
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have been plagued with coups and an erosion of democracy.
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Pakistan is both a case in point and a cautionary tale.
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The Indian Armed Forces have steadfastly remained far away from politics.
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And this is not just because of good luck, but a result of conscious decisions taken
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by our leaders through the last century.
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And while it's a good thing that the army has stayed above politics, it's not quite
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a good thing that politicians increasingly invoke the army for rhetorical purposes these
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It is also not a good thing that our political classes tend to take the armed forces for
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We are lucky to have the armed forces that we do.
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Welcome to The Seen and the Unseen, our weekly podcast on economics, politics and behavioral
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Please welcome your host, Amit Verma.
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Welcome to The Seen and the Unseen.
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In this episode, we'll be talking about the Indian Armed Forces.
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And my guest is Lieutenant General Prakash Menon, who's the director of the strategic
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studies program at the Takshashila Institution in Bengaluru.
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General Menon has been a guest on the show before when we discussed nuclear strategy,
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a subject on which he's written a superb book.
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And that episode and his book will be linked from the show notes.
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But before we begin our conversation, let's take a quick commercial break.
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Gentlemen and welcome to The Scene in the Unseen.
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Before we start talking about the army, both in terms of historical context and the structural
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issues that it faces and so on, tell me a little bit about yourself.
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Why did you join the army?
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Well, I actually went to the National Defense Academy, but I did not first join the army.
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I actually was a naval cadet because I come from a merchant navy family and my father
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is from the 1940 batch of the Dufferin.
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And it was during my second term at the NDA that I read a book on Field Marshal Rommel
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by a person called Desmond Young and was motivated to join the army.
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So I took the decision by myself without consulting my father and he was upset about it and gave
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an application that I want to convert my service from the Navy to the army.
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And it was the easiest thing to do because Navy at that time was a very small service.
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So it was difficult being becoming a naval cadet, but much easier moving from the Navy
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So that is how I got into the army.
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So I went in as a naval cadet, came out as an army cadet.
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And one of the things I've realized about other government services, for example, the
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My father was an IS officer once upon a time and one of the things I've kind of realized
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is that back in the day, people used to enter say the civil services and so on with a fair
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bit of idealism and wanting to serve the country and so on and so forth.
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And that idealism has been eroded over the decades.
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And today when you talk about the civil services, there's a lot of cynicism, so to say.
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But in your case, in the case of the army, I am assuming because the army is insulated
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from the regular corruptions of daily governance, I'm guessing that would not apply.
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Do you feel there's been a change for why people join the army over the years or?
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But actually, if you want to draw a comparison, probably there has been a change, there's
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no doubt because of the changes in the socioeconomic contours of this country itself.
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And therefore, the background from which people join the army are probably different from
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what they used to be in the old days.
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So there has been a change, no doubt.
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But I think as an institution, the army, once you join it, has got that capacity to keep
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you motivated and actually bring out the best in you because I think that is the institutional
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capacity because we are based on what we call, and I belong to a fighting arm, I am an infantry
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officer, it is more pertinent, that we are kept in such a state of, you can say, motivation
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that the larger and the outside world was at that time much more restricted to you.
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But that is not the case now because we never had the social media, we never had so much
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of press, we never had that much of exposure.
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So we really live in a very confined space and surely the officer of today does not live
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in the same space, he lives in a space where he's exposed to the daily meanderings of India's
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politics, world politics for that matter.
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And therefore, that exposure itself would have some sort of an influence.
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But I think the Indian army still has that institutional capacity to make sure that the
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officer is still motivated and directed to the right space.
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And is there also a sense that within the army, once you're part of the army, and not
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just if you're part of the army, but for your family itself, if you have a family member
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in the army, like if you're growing up as an army kid, so to say, as the phrase goes,
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that there is a sort of a separate culture of its own, which is homogenous through the
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country and which kind of influences how people within the army look at each other and which
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also insulates themselves from the larger sort of social currents around them.
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Obviously, it has a different value system, which is different from obviously the civil
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But I think we must understand that the soldiers and your leadership come from the same society
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and therefore, they can't purely be divorced from it.
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And what I found, at least as India's economic growth took place and as market forces sort
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of enveloped daily life, the value system itself also had to be affected by it.
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It could not be insulated from it.
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The question always was for the military leadership that how does it adjust to these changes while
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it assimilates it without making sure that your military effectiveness is not impacted?
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That was a challenge of military leadership.
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It will continue to be the challenge of military leadership.
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Changes are, in fact, today is much more rapid than was it before, it will continue to impact.
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Question is, does the military leadership recognize how those changes are to be dealt
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And that becomes, I think, in today's world, much more challenging than it ever was before.
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And you're one of the only two ex-army people who have come on my show, the other, of course,
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being the historian Srinath Raghavan.
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And so, you know, I have selection bias here, but within the army, you were an intellectual
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in the sense that, you know, you've written a book on nuclear strategy and so on, and
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you've thought very deeply.
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Is there a tradition of that within the army, within the officer class, so to say, or were
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you always an outlier and an exception?
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And what's the culture like there in that sense?
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Well, I would say that at least in the early part of your upbringing, when you're actually
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a more close, more combat soldiering, which you do, there is really no time and no space
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for the type of intellectual activity, which you can probably indulge in after you've finished
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your active combat life, and which means that you are a colonel, which means you've finished
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command of a unit, then, of course, that experience, you can actually move in that space.
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And I think there are not all, but there are quite a lot of people actually who go because
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of their, and this is all up to the officer themselves.
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The institution actually gives you the opportunity, but it's entirely up to the officers whether
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you want to, how much you want to read, how much you want to write about, how much you
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actually want to project and develop the idea.
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So my particular path was driven by the fact that in 1998, India went nuclear.
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I was that time a colonel, and I was interested to find out what meant for the armed forces
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and what sort of, how does the role of the armed forces change because we are now a nuclear
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That drove me because my thoughts were actually not in consonance with the views which are
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my peers and the seniors which I had drawn, and I decided that I must find out.
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So that is why I therefore took study leave.
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I did my doctorate, finally converted that into a book, and that's how my journey was
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So I think it's an individual journey, and there are a lot of people like that.
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To sort of get back to history, you know, we often think of the Indian army as something
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that we inherited from the British and we just carried on as we were, which of course
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raises the extremely big question of why is it that essentially both India and Pakistan
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inherited essentially the similar army, similar officers trained in exactly the same way,
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but Pakistan of course has been beset with military dictatorships and the military has
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always been a part of their politics, and we've completely escaped that.
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And one interesting fact which I hadn't thought about before, which I got from Stephen Wilkinson's
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book on the Indian army, which will be linked from the show notes, is about how the British
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army was specifically set up for a very different purpose than what the post-colonial armies
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The purpose of the Indian and the Pakistani armies of course would be to defend the borders
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You're defending the nation against external threats, whereas the whole point of the British
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army was to control the native population, and to this effect they carried out what is
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famously known as a divide and rule policy, which applied to the army in the sense that
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they constructed a colonial Indian army, to quote Wilkinson, quote, the colonial Indian
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army was deliberately constructed both to maximize its fighting potential and to hedge
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against the threat of any repeat of a mutiny like that had almost ended British control
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And what they did was they recruited within the army from what they considered the martial
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There were many more Punjabis and Pashtuns, and there was a heavy imbalance that way.
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And what happened after sort of colonization ended across the world was that in many countries,
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because it followed this kind of policy, you invariably had clashes between the army which
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was controlled by minority interests against the majority democratic forces at large, ending
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in many cases as we've seen with Pakistan.
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But in India it didn't happen.
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You know, Nehru famously wrote to his defense minister in 46 or 47, where he said that this
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is something we must specifically watch out for.
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The Congress had been thinking about it for more than 20 years.
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Ambedkar had written a book in 1941 called Thoughts on Pakistan, where he predicted that
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it was because of this compositional makeup that, you know, Pakistan would have trouble
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And we were actually better off letting Pakistan form, because what would happen is we would
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get rid of a lot of these problems.
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Can you tell me a little bit about how the army…
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See, actually, if you look at the army, don't forget that the army was initially part of
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the presidencies, you know, we had.
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So they were in different geographies.
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And of course, the Britishers were very conscious of the fact that the loyalty of the army was
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absolutely vital for retaining power within the country.
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So then that's how they devised what you described as divide and rule.
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And then it's a very artificial construct called the martial classes, and they sort
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of put their faith in these classes and recruited more from there, so that there was no one
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particular class which would be strong enough to take over.
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So they actually put the eggs in many baskets.
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So, you know, they even had the Gurkhas actually in the Indian army itself.
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So you could use the Gurkhas against somebody else.
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And all this came about from the lesson of 1857, is rooted there.
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And that's how they structured the army itself.
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So at independence, when we lost whatever had gone to Pakistan, the idea of the martial
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classes and they are being still in the regiments which we were, actually, that was not the
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change which was attempted.
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The change which Jawaharlal Nehru was conscious about was of how does he make sure there is
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sufficient civilian control on the military.
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And that was his focus.
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Because over a period of time, he saw that the military had taken control.
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So the issue was, at the heart of the civil-military relationships in India, that what sort of
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control does the civilian exercise on the military?
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And that's where the Ministry of Defense, which was in charge, and made some changes.
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Initially, the chiefs actually were called the chiefs of staff, and they were also commanders
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So while they were in Delhi and carrying out their staff activity, when they went to the
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field, then they were commanders in chiefs.
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And without consultation of the chiefs, the commanders in chiefs' nomenclature was taken
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There was a big debate about it.
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The chiefs actually protested.
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But finally, they were overruled and they were told to accept, and Nehru made this announcement
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So Nehru's consciousness of the fact that control needs to be exercised has been the
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main factor initially by which control was exercised by the politician, and that control
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began to be exercised through bureaucratic control.
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And that is where even the idea of attached offices, or that the services were attached
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offices, were all bureaucratic constructions to ensure this control was kept.
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So as we go on and as we come to the present times, it is this control which has probably
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kept India different from our neighbors and the rest of it.
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And that is we must give credit to the politicians.
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But I think we should also credit the institutional leadership for it.
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So I think just the other day, I think somebody has dug up a letter from Karyapa, I think,
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to the prime minister saying that for some time, the army should rule with the help of
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the president so that the politics can, you know, there was this, I don't know whether
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it is genuine or not, but I saw, I recently read it.
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But I think it would probably be incorrect because this Karyapa was supposed to have
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written much after he has left the army, when he's a civilian, it already stood for elections
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and lost twice and so on.
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So this is not something which he was thinking about when he was in service.
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Whoever was in service and whoever the military chief were very clear, and that's I think
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the institutional value, which has been passed down from independence to nowadays, that we
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must remain an apolitical institution.
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I think this is a value which it is imbibed in the military leaders and it is something
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Of course, there will always be exceptions to the rule.
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Somebody might say something at some point in time.
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But I don't think you would find anybody who is wearing the uniform saying something contradictory
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to this would be very difficult.
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It would have been said by somebody who was already out of uniform.
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So I think there are two things here.
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One is the consciousness of the political leaders, which made sure that the control
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is exercised and the other one was of the military as an institution itself, which sort
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of embedded in itself the value of being apolitical.
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So I think that's why both these things in combination has kept it the way it is.
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In fact, it's interesting that when he took over, General Karyapa famously sent out a
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circular to the officers he commanded saying that we must stay away from politics.
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But after he retired in 1953, and again quoting from Wilkinson's book, he argued on several
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occasions for, quote, a suspension of civil liberties, the imposition of emergency, president's
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rule on the states, the disbanding of political parties, suspension of parliament until law
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and order had been restored, and the replacement of universal suffrage with a franchise that
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was restricted to literates, stopcode.
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But this is all, like you said, after retirement and no serving officer has ever kind of said
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It was sort of really interesting, like along with what you pointed out that a lot of the
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control was, you know, the defense ministry was on the ascendant and a lot of that control
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was taken away from the army.
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But another sort of direction that Nehru tried to move in was to change the marshal composition
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And it's interesting that in 1949, the Indian government basically announced that we shall
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now be open to all able-bodied men from all across the country.
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But there was a caveat here which did sort of affect the way things worked out in practice.
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Again, I'll quote Wilkinson, quote, the specific wording of the army promises and orders given
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in 1949, which stated that new infantry and artillery regiments would be open to members
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of all provinces and that all other branches of the army would be open to members of all
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provinces had much less effect in broadening out the army than most politicians thought
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This was because, as the generals knew, the infantry and armored corps had expanded in
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World War II by adding new battalions to existing class regiments rather than through the logistically
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much more complex and uncertain step of adding whole new regiments, training centers, recruitment
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areas, and fighting traditions.
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Since independence, for instance, the Punjab regiment, which recruits mainly Sikhs and
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Dogras, has increased from five to 29 battalions, where the Rajputana rifles has increased from
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six to 21 battalions because expansion has largely happened through the existing regiment.
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So now while there is this tendency from within the army of sort of finding a Jogaru way around
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actually changing the ethnic composition, you do find that, for example, one of the
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ways in which Nehru sort of controlled that was through making sure that the chief of
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army staff reflected far more diversity.
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So in fact, in between 49 and 79, if I remember correctly, there was only one chief of army
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staff from the so-called martial races, which is the Punjabis, which was General Thapar
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after we came to Krishnamurti and appointed him.
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But the rest were from sort of all over the place.
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Despite the fact that at the time of independence, the army, 50% of the officers were Punjabis
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So it's kind of interesting that the political class is trying to weave the army in a particular
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direction and the army itself is sort of, how do you view this?
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Firstly, especially about the fact that the chiefs were chosen because of their, from
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their regional roots, I don't think that was ever the case.
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And I don't think that was a point of consideration.
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Chiefs were purely chosen depending upon their seniority and their merit and the combination
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So I don't think this issue really is true.
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I mean, this is what Wilkinson says.
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I just sort of disagree with Wilkinson on this point.
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But I think the other point which he makes, which was about the composition of the fighting
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arms, which was the infantry and the armored corps.
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In fact, I belong to a regiment, which was the first regiment raised by that time General
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Karyapa, which was an all-India class composition.
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That means we could recruit anybody from any part and that we remain, therefore, the only
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regiment which is the fighting among these old regiments, which is all-India class.
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The rest have continued to be what they were, which means the Rajputana rifles, primarily
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from Rajasthan, UP, Punjabis, Sikh, Sikhali, Bihar, Madras, and so on.
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This is the regimental system which has refused to change.
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And the only attempt to make this change, which is serious, was after Blue Star when
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the Sikh regiments, some of them had mutinied and actually there was this study which was
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ordered and there was major resistance from the infantry regiments themselves because
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the infantry leadership felt that the fact that you could have groups of men from a particular
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geography always had strengths as far as fighting is concerned, food habits, and so on.
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Although all these beliefs have been demolished by the regiment I come from, that we don't
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come, we get people and we still have, we've got a Pramvir Chakra, we've got enough laurels
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of this idea, but it has endured, it has not been possible to actually have an army with
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All the rest have changed, the artillery has changed, the engineers have changed, everybody
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else has nearly changed, not fully, nearly changed.
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The fighting arms have only the new raisings, whatever was used, the new battalions, they
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have mostly, especially outside the fighting arms, mostly been based on all-India class
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So we have this anomaly and in my personal view, we should at some point in time migrate
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into an all-India class composition and I'll tell you why I'm saying this because I come
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from an all-India class regiment.
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You see, if you are in a Gurkha battalion, the Gurkha battalion will have strengths which
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are confined to the strength of the Gurkhas, which means they'll be good at boxing, they're
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sports, good at boxing, but they won't be good swimmers, they won't be good basketballers.
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Whereas if you come to my regiment and my unit, you'll find that because of the all-India
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class, we have strengths from across the spectrum.
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You've got boxers, swimmers, isn't it?
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I mean, so the strength will always be better if you have an all-India class and therefore
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this idea, but you know, the orthodox infantry leaders would disagree with me because they
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belong to that school of thought where they have been brought up from a Madras regiment.
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The idea that a Madras regiment can actually have an all-India class will be anathema to
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the very system by which they have been grown up and not that those battalions are as good
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But I would think from a much larger perspective, the Indian Armed Forces must finally all be
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In fact, the study which I'm talking about, which was done, actually suggested to do,
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that we should do this in 30 years' time.
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Of course, in India, if somebody is suggesting to do anything in 30 years' time, that means
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they know that it's not going to be done.
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So we had some experimentation and finally it was put to sleep.
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So we have not made that change, but we should, in my point of view.
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In fact, just thinking aloud, I mean, the whole thinking about the martial classes was
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of course based on the very simplistic way in which the British tried to make sense of
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India when they first came.
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I mean, I had an episode with Manu Pillai a while back where we spoke about caste, and
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you know, Manu made the point that it's the British who made it fashionable to look at
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the entire country through the lens of the Varna system, but caste actually was far more
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And this whole theory of the martial races also seems to me a way of the British just
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trying to quickly categorize everything for the purpose of making sense of it.
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But nevertheless, the fact is that a lot of this thinking percolates through and which
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leads to this sort of very amusing construction where there is a certain set of conventional
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thinkers who say that, no, within a battalion, you must have like the Punjabis together and
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the Gurkhas together because there'll be better integration and there'll be better fighting
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units because they'll fight better together, which as you point out is not true, but that
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belief nevertheless persists.
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And at the same time, there was this determination within the political classes that we must
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have an all India composition because that reduces the chances of the army coming together
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against us because you have less chance of that kind of consensus forming if you have
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And one of the compromises was that the army's infantry battalions, for example, were structured
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in these fixed class units where, for example, you'll have the Punjab Regiment battalion
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have two companies of Sikhs and two of Dogras and a typical JNK rifles battalion will have
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four different groups, Dogras, Gurkhas, Sikhs and Muslims.
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Thereby also satisfying those who say that, no, you need to keep the Sikhs together and
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also ensuring some kind of diversity within the regiment.
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So they're not actually going to stand up and plot against the government as it were.
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You know, India is strong when we are mixed up.
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The more identities that we have is where the problem actually is, it's not by demolishing
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I'm not talking about that.
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I'm not talking about that at all.
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But the fact is, when we are together, then we bring our individual strength because the
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strength comes from the diversity that you can have different strengths in the same place
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because they are mixed.
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The example I gave you of a Gurkha battalion or let's say of let's say you have people
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from Bihar and you have Adivasis there, they'd be very good at talking, OK, but they may
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not be good at something else.
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So if you have everybody makes you'll be strong in every place.
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So the idea that we should have all India class is something which has been accepted
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officially, but we are not able to do it because entrenched beliefs and interests keep that
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But within the army, these are entrenched beliefs.
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Although let me tell you, it is now only confined to the, which is a large part, which is the
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fighting arm with the infantry regiments and I think some armored corps regiments.
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I think armored corps also has shifted.
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So it still remains an infantry sort of fortress.
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But you were of course in an all India class, so it doesn't apply to you.
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But within the army, are there then these entrenched in-group, out-group stereotypes
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like within a Sikh regiment, would you have internal sense that, oh, we are better than
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So that's the point that they believe and then this is the school of thought that when
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you are part of a fighting arm, your fighting spirit and your camaraderie comes is most
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stronger when you're with your own people.
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That's what the belief is.
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I'm saying that I've come from an all India class regiment and we have demolished that
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belief because we have actually been in combat, our units been in combat and they have performed
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So this belief itself has been disproved but yet it endures because people still have that
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So, you know, before we move on, I'll quickly sum up, you know, three of the possible reasons
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that have been cited by Wilkinson for why our civil-military relations did not go the
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same way as Pakistan did and tell me if you have something to add or elaborate upon these
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where point one he makes is that the socioeconomic strategic inheritance of Pakistan was far
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worse in 1947 compared to India because they not only had to look after their border with
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us, they had to look after their border with Afghanistan and they were separated from East
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Pakistan for so long and because of this, they needed to sort of strengthen the army
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and also the ethnic makeup or the ethnic imbalance in their army was worsened.
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Ours was slightly better but because of the flows of partition, theirs remained very Punjab
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and Pashtun dominated with practically no Bengali influence at all, which, you know,
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had a huge role to play given that the majority of the population was actually in what was
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The second factor, according to Wilkinson, is that the political institutionalization
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of the Congress party compared to the Muslim League, that it had far deeper roots, far
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So, therefore, when they set out to reform the army, you knew that they have the popular
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support and you can't sort of mess with these guys and plus they were representative in
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terms of the ethnic and religious distribution within the Congress, which of course was not
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the case with the Muslim League and Pakistan.
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And third, what you've referred to the specific co-proofing and the balancing measures that
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the new Indian state undertook, partly because you had these decades of thinking which had
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gone on on how to control the military when we get independent because this was something
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that they were sort of worried about.
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Did the China war change how people thought about the Indian military and how the military
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looked at itself because, you know, after the loss to China, there would have been the
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imperative to just grow the army as fast as possible.
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China war actually was, of course, the defense minister had to resign and it also cast a
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shadow on the civil-military relationship in terms of whether, how much of interference
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should they be by the politicians in the military affairs, especially its leadership and even
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actually deciding them.
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They were told to do things which they were not capable of doing because they didn't have
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the equipment and so on.
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So the main thing which came out of 1962 was that there was an insufficient dialogue to
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actually be able, the army had to be told what to be prepared for, if it's not given
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the wherewithal to, so it worked both ways.
#
So the army had its own pathologies which afflicted it and the politician had it.
#
It came together in 1962.
#
But that's probably the lowest point at which we, from where we must think that we have
#
only improved from there on.
#
Because 962 certainly is both on both sides of the civil-military divide.
#
The military also was not seen in a good light and so did the politicians.
#
So one can blame the other, but we must admit that everybody was to blame because it can't
#
be just one side that you blame and the other doesn't take it.
#
So it has to be a joint affair.
#
So from that low point, I think is a realization that things need to change, whether it just
#
changed fast enough or sufficiently is a matter of debate.
#
But that's the lowest point.
#
And I guess at this point, you know, there are these dual imperatives.
#
One is the imperative that the army has to expand massively, but the other is the political
#
imperative which is still there, which Nehru articulated, that we don't want the army to
#
get too powerful because we don't want a situation like in Pakistan, because these are still
#
the young years of the Indian Union, it's been like 15 years since independence and
#
And one of the ways in which they kind of did this was by far more surveillance of top
#
So in general, SD Verma wrote a book in 1988, where he kind of the book is called to serve
#
with honors, where he kind of described how his telephone used to be tapped.
#
And when he once when he wanted to talk to the commanding officer, General Timoya, they
#
actually and this was in Kashmir, the two of them took a boat out in the middle of the
#
Nagan Lake as it then war was to make sure that they're not being overheard.
#
And typically you take such precautions when you're worried about being overheard by a
#
And in this case, it was sort of, you know, your political partners, so to say.
#
So was this sort of an early distrust between the army and the politicians which gradually
#
settled down to some kind of equilibrium?
#
I think the distress would be a natural thing to happen because just look at the political
#
leaders at that point in time, not only in our neighborhood and even in the rest, especially
#
in Africa and so on, there were militaries which were actually taking over government.
#
So it was more the norm than anything else.
#
So why wouldn't it have sensitized our political leadership to be cautious about our own, whether
#
they tapped their phones, how they have kept vigilance on them, I'm not aware of.
#
But if they did, we must know that they would have done it for good reason, not because
#
they wanted to hear what the conversation was, because what is at the back of their
#
minds was the fact that this possibility existed if this happened.
#
And I think no political leadership ever should ever be complacent about this, because that,
#
I think, is the duty of the civilian, because the military has its own way of gathering
#
a particular type of momentum which must be kept under control.
#
To say that the military can be autonomously do its job, and that is why this whole theory
#
of civil-military relationship is about the fact that one need to understand the other.
#
And as far as the civilian is concerned, there must be civilian control.
#
The complaint in our case has always been that it's not civilian control, it's bureaucratic
#
And that's where the military has always been complaining about.
#
But that bureaucratic control, probably the bureaucracy will say, was being exercised
#
on behalf of the politicians, and the politicians are actually given that.
#
So the point at issue is, I don't think at any time, in a democracy, should the civilians
#
be complacent about, let the military have an autonomous existence, and they can do what
#
I think they must always be watchful, because it is the natural proclivity of the military
#
to claim that autonomy, because they think that the sphere in which they are actually
#
is so specialized that nobody should interfere in it.
#
Which is where the contradiction is that today, we are a nuclear power.
#
Certainly the military cannot be, as one model suggests, that military will be told what
#
to do by the politicians, and the military will be given full freedom to do the way they
#
I'm afraid I don't agree with that model, because everything that you do, and the type
#
of wars that you fight today, especially under a nuclear war, has to have civilian control
#
And I think the person who describes this best is Clausewitz, where he says that the
#
rational part of military affairs, once military is in action, can only be controlled by the
#
politicians, because he represents the rationality.
#
Otherwise, military acquires a momentum of its own, which is unstoppable.
#
So the very idea that there should not be civilian control, and military can be autonomous,
#
when given the job, I do not agree with that model, which we probably have.
#
And I think Cargill is a good example of how, despite the objections of the military, or
#
not even consulting them, clearly it was laid down that you will not cross the line of control.
#
To a soldier, and purely in operational terms, it doesn't make any sense.
#
And what you're saying is that those geopolitical reasons must always take precedence over military
#
And the Indian politicians at that time just laid it out.
#
They refused to budge from it.
#
So they did not even consult the military about the decision.
#
They just told them that this is our decision.
#
And that, I think, is the right thing to do.
#
Because if, and especially with nuclear power today, it becomes more, more so, because you
#
can't allow the military to do what they want when there are nuclear weapons which can come
#
So I think this idea, the main complaint has always been from the armed forces, that this
#
control, the armed forces accept, is required.
#
But it cannot be exercised purely in terms of procedures and bureaucratic control, especially
#
as far as defense planning is concerned.
#
While nobody intervenes in operational terms once you are given your constraints that you
#
can't do this, but where the complaint has been mostly is that you're not sufficiently
#
in the decision making when you have to acquire, when you have to modernize, you need the type
#
of equipment for the type of threats.
#
That's been the main complaint.
#
It's not about how wars are to be fought and so on.
#
It's about preparing for the war and the wherewithal which has to be made available to it, which
#
means these are political decisions, what is the budget going to be, where can you buy
#
it from, all these decisions.
#
Some of it and this thing has always been that instead of political control, bureaucratic
#
control has been exercised and that's been the complaint.
#
So I have three sort of follow-up thoughts on this.
#
One of course is, I mean it's very interesting to me that you should say that, I obviously
#
agree with you, that you should say that civilian control over military is paramount.
#
But it seems to me that tapping of phones was kind of a crude way of doing that.
#
Like what S. D. Verma describes in his autobiography is that after General Timmaya, who was the
#
chief of armed staff, he had a fight with V. K. Krishnamen and he left.
#
And then S. D. Verma called him to commiserate and he realized that after he had called him
#
to commiserate, he was cut off by the powers, which basically means that they had listened
#
to his telephone call, which is how he first found out about the tapping, which he later
#
And it strikes me that it's rather than resort to crude measures, like actually surveilling
#
your top army officers, it's actually far better to have rules of the game in place,
#
which introduce their own safeguards.
#
Which brings me to the next question where I'd like you to elaborate upon what you mean
#
by the distinction between civil control and bureaucratic control, that if one accepts
#
a principle that the civilian administration should have control over the army, over the
#
armed forces, then what is this distinction?
#
I mean, they'll do it through bureaucrats, obviously.
#
So what is this distinction and where is it a problem?
#
Actually this goes to the heart of the civil military issue, that the military instrument
#
has got its peculiarities, which the military probably knows best about the instrument.
#
The civilian and the civil political leadership are actually not conversant with this instrument.
#
And that is why this instrument firstly has to be shaped to meet the needs of what the
#
politicians want, which means the politicians have to first tell the military, give political
#
guidance to the military that this is what we would want you to do if you have to do
#
anything, which is the political guidance which is given to it.
#
The military has to translate that political guidance into military terms and shape the
#
instrument that it wants.
#
When it does that and that the military is the best thing for this translation.
#
But firstly, therefore, the military has to understand what this political guidance is.
#
The politician has to understand what sort of political guidance should be given to the
#
So there has to be this understanding between the two because they belong to two different
#
The political leadership is normally unlike the military, they are short-term in their
#
outlook and also they are a contingent in the sense they work for in terms of what is
#
the contingencies whereas this instrument cannot be dealt with like that.
#
This instrument has been dealt as a long-term instrument.
#
Can you give me concrete illustrations of that for a layperson like me so I can understand
#
it better of A, what is the political purpose which results in a particular military instrument
#
which then can be screwed up by the short-termism of the political class?
#
So suppose we have let's say two adversaries, one is north and one is to the west.
#
Now it is for the political leaders to tell you what sort of political objectives if there
#
is a war that you need to achieve as far as Pakistan is concerned, this is what you should
#
be able to achieve or if there is a war here.
#
Now this political objectives cannot be crystallized unless there is a dialogue between the civil
#
leadership and the military.
#
It cannot be done independently of the military itself because it requires an understanding
#
of the military instrument and the military instrument has to understand what these guys
#
want and this is the dialogue which will only make it possible.
#
So then you need to have mechanisms by which this dialogue is taking place.
#
One of our greatest deficiencies has been this, that there has been lack of political
#
guidance to the military itself.
#
So in the lack of guidance, the military assumes certain things and decide that we want.
#
Now in the military also there are three different services.
#
So it's well possible that all the three services will think in three different ways.
#
The Navy will think about what is in the maritime arena.
#
The Air Force will think about air power and this is about land power.
#
There's nobody who's going to put it together and that's why you need structural mechanisms
#
for this to take place and all this came to be and realized only after the Kargil war
#
that we need firstly political guidance and that is why we had these new institutions
#
like the National Security Council secretary where I have served but yet India still doesn't
#
have a national security doctrine or a strategy which is a mother document from which the
#
So in the absence of that mother document, there are certain assumptions which the defense
#
ministry itself is making probably with some guidance and that is why they have, we have
#
now they have made a defense planning committee with the NSA as its head and it's actually
#
located within the ministry of defense but these are all ad hoc mechanisms, they're not
#
structures which will probably endure for long.
#
So one of the problem has been there is less understanding of the politicians of what this
#
military is capable and not capable of and 1962 is a good example of when Nehru said,
#
you know, you throw them out, I mean, he gave me this same statement, throw the Chinese
#
out, he had no idea what the capability then of the armed forces were because you know
#
by which time they were under recouped, they didn't have the road infrastructure.
#
Although enough studies were done before the 1950s which said that we must develop this
#
infrastructure against China but it was not done.
#
So this lack of understanding of each other is what is at the heart of a civil military
#
problems and therefore you need a constant dialogue between the two.
#
So the illustration that comes to mind and tell me if it works as an illustration of
#
what you're describing is in fact the Bangladesh war where for example the political objectives
#
were clearly different on the two borders whereas at first on the Bangladesh side there
#
were covert operations and then when war actually began, the objective on the Bangladesh side
#
was we go in and we do whatever it takes but the objective on the Pakistani side was simply
#
we hold the border, we are not marching to Lahore.
#
So would this be an accurate example of a political objective which then needs to be
#
communicated to the army so it can then plan accordingly and it can go wrong if you just
#
have bureaucrats in the defense ministry directing operations.
#
Yeah, I say bureaucrats they don't direct operations but the example that you gave in
#
fact let me tell you that the Indian army was not tasked to actually capture Dhaka for
#
You know that happened afterwards.
#
I have an episode with Srinath Raghavan where he describes that in detail about how one
#
So it happened afterwards but 71 was one of the places where there is sufficient guidance
#
given to the armed forces so they knew much more about what they could do.
#
Let's take another example and that is Operation Parakram for that matter where the guidance
#
what Mr. Vajpayee told the chiefs were, kuch karo, what exactly it is to be done was never
#
given to them so all they did was to mobilize and then they put into action what they thought
#
should be the next thing which is to capture large parts of Pakistani territory which is
#
the norm which they have been used to not because there was some political guidance
#
So there's no interaction there between the geopolitics and the military.
#
Yeah I mean so actually the lack of clarity of what exactly had to be achieved is what
#
was the problem in Operation Parakram and we know what happened.
#
So this lesson is with us historically and so on in every report that we need to have
#
So this has been identified it's not that so that is why this Defense Planning Committee
#
which was in I think 2018 they've they have constituted one of the tasks which is given
#
to them is to come out with a national security strategy.
#
It is not the case that there was no strategy before that the National Security Advisory
#
Board or the National Security Council Secretariat was instrumental in actually getting a strategy
#
out but it never found political acceptability so we don't have it I mean so so we are here
#
which actually now getting into geopolitical let's say turbulence and we still lack a document
#
a mother document which will guide the development of our armed forces.
#
So what would this national security strategy or this mother document as it were what would
#
Would it sort of lay out geopolitical considerations that would limit and guide your military actions
#
like in the instance of Parakram for example would it have laid out that yes you can mobilize
#
but kindly do not invade because we don't know how they will respond and it could be
#
nuclear and does it embed those no no no not at all this is about the type of military
#
instrument you want to develop there what are the capabilities and the capacities that
#
One of the first meta questions which required to be answered and it has to come from political
#
guidance it has to be answered by the military but it has to come from political guidances
#
where do we what is the balance between continental and maritime power that we must have how do
#
we strike this balance should we put our efforts to become a strong this thing in the Indian
#
Ocean where we have the maximum potential utilize it or should we be able to capture
#
large parts of territory in Pakistan and in Tibet these are choices that you have to make
#
or do we defend in the north or and do we defend in the west and then do we actually
#
have more capability for projecting power in the oceans these are choices but these
#
choices the military cannot make by itself it has to come from a political guidance this
#
that is what I'm talking about you might call it a national security doctrine or a strategy
#
in the absence of that document is where we are having this problem where we have our
#
the clarity I mean it will never be clear we'll always actually have difficulty because
#
defense planning essentially is about trying to see balance your resources with the type
#
of threats that you have and the military therefore will have to plan not what it wants
#
to do what it can do with the resources it is likely to be made of it so even on that
#
front it has not been clear as to the type of budgets you can plan out so that is another
#
defense planning problem which has endured has not been resolved as yet and therefore
#
although a defense planning committee has been announced we are not quite clear as to
#
where they have reached and whether the situation has changed but the essential problem still
#
remains which is the root of the problem which is the lack of political guidance in the absence
#
of the political guidance we have something which we called it the defense minister's
#
directive that's a document which the defense minister gives to the three services on which
#
they can plan but the defense ministry does not have the type of expertise to let's say
#
write this directive so this directive is mostly written by the military itself goes
#
to the defense ministry who then probably adds or minuses it and comes back to the same
#
guy who have written it so it's it's something which you have devised and it's really certainly
#
not what you actually want so you know this again gets me to actually a question of economics
#
but not in the way you'd expect we'll take a quick commercial break and when we come
#
back we'll continue with this conversation.
#
If you're listening to the seen and the unseen it means you like listening to audio and you're
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to the seen and the unseen I'm chatting with General Prakash Menon about the Indian Army
#
and you know in all of this you were just sort of talking about how if there is a national
#
security doctrine then that sets a parameters within which all the forces then have to act
#
like if you want to be a maritime power then you know the Navy needs to focus on particular
#
things and be a particular size and so on and so forth.
#
My question to you is this you know that as someone who's into economics you know when
#
I look at say public choice theory what public choice theory teaches us is that you apply
#
the tools of economics to look at how governments function so you know I look at politicians
#
I look at bureaucrats and I'll say what are their incentives they are human beings responding
#
to a particular set of incentives.
#
Let me carry that forward now into the domain of the armed forces that I would assume that
#
just as a bureaucrats main incentives are to maximize his power and his budgets similarly
#
anybody in charge of say armored division or any kind of unit within the armed forces
#
will want to increase their own power and their budgets how do those incentives sort
#
of play out in practice is there politicking within the armed forces to grab resources
#
and in the absence of a national security doctrine as you said does it then become extremely
#
ad hoc that you know which division of the armed forces can lobby the best for higher
#
budgets and does that then determine where the money goes rather than this kind of broader
#
strategic thinking which is coming from.
#
So actually as far as the within the army or the Navy or the Air Force there'll always
#
be different elements vying for what you call scarce resources so that is natural in any
#
case but if that is guided by a budget and a prioritization of resources based on what
#
is your capability that you want to develop it is nothing to do with the individual parts
#
as much as it is to do with the capability.
#
So you have actually now a system by which you identify capabilities you have a five
#
year capability development plan and that capability development plan has to be a firstly
#
a military plan then it has to be converted as far as in this military in this plan how
#
much what what is the capability the Air Force needs to have what the Navy needs to have
#
the army needs to have within the army what are the elements within the army so it goes
#
So you have to first tackle the problem at the top because unless you tackle the problem
#
at the top this thing will always be there that the guys down below will always be asking
#
for more and trying to see as to how they can get more so that is not part of where
#
the problem is we have to tackle the problem at which it is from where it originates and
#
that problem is about firstly what is the type of but and this is a political decision
#
and it's a bread sometimes bread versus butter debate that's a political debate how much
#
actually of the public good are you actually going to invest for national security I mean
#
that's just it's a political decision.
#
So if you look at in the defense budget today is probably the lowest in terms of the GNP
#
since 1962 and that budget actually also been severely constrained by the fact that defense
#
pensions is also broom so you don't have enough money for maintaining and for capital
#
acquisitions so we have a budgetary problem right now combined with this budgetary problem
#
we have a problem of how do we prioritize depending upon we are not very clear in terms
#
of military capacity you might be clear in terms of service specific capacities you know
#
the the Air Force wants to have long range bombers the Navy wants to have submarines
#
and so on but the fact is that all this has to be measured finally in terms of military
#
First how do all these parts fit into a whole which is military capacity and B how does
#
this military capacity then serve the nation's interests which is national security doctrine
#
as you say I'll come back to Goss in a moment but tell me this it just strikes me thinking
#
aloud that there is also then a lag between geopolitical imperatives on the one hand and
#
the building of military capacity towards that end on the other you know in the rapidly
#
changing geopolitical times that we live in things change extremely fast and so a national
#
security doctrine could presumably be revised constantly but to build military capacity
#
towards any one end must be taking a huge amount of time you know and it how does that
#
Yeah I let me just let me I'm not saying that the we have a national security doctrine
#
and study and that's the golden key that's not going to be the case at all because the
#
national security doctrine itself would probably have to be constantly updated over a period
#
of time to sort of catch up with what is a changing geopolitical situation so this is
#
not something you do once and it's over it's constantly flowing but it's in essence in
#
essence you would have answered the mega questions the meta questions which you had to that will
#
probably not change I think we must differentiate between the use of the instruments and the
#
development of those instrumental capacities that is an operational part how it is applied
#
and that is sort of thing that is not where India lacks by the application of those instruments
#
where we are actually need for improvement is about identifying the type of capacities
#
matching them to the political objectives and then prioritizing its development.
#
That is where the area of improvement has to concentrate and is it the case that because
#
you have the army the navy the air force and so on with all their you know their own interest
#
to look after is it then the case that the armed forces operate in these particular silos
#
and and they're not necessarily always pushing towards the same end but in a sense are almost
#
in competition with each other yeah I mean this is you know there are three different
#
geographies so a force pilot looks at the world differently in the land the army guy
#
the soldier on the ground looks at it differently and so does the navy that is why the consciousness
#
about bringing jointness and that's the word which is used where you need to have integrated
#
organizations which can function together and the so that you can synergize the ability
#
of the others I mean you several there's first requires to be an individual specific service
#
specific capacity because only the Air Force can operate in that geography and so is the
#
army but that is insufficient we have to operate together and today bringing this together
#
is what is called jointness and that is it's normally done by integrating it within the
#
same structures and that is why this is debate about integrated theater commands which we
#
don't have and right now we've got about 17 commands each service has got different commands
#
geographically really different located and the good news is that the Department of Military
#
Affairs has been mandated now in the new this thing to bring about the integrated command
#
so we have well past the time of debate between the services and the Air Force has always
#
been an outlier and this saying that we don't require these integrated commands but that
#
time is now over because the political decision has been taken that they will be integrated
#
commands and the CDS has been mandated to make that happen so it is that's quite a lot
#
of progress this kind of talk about something you alluded to earlier before the break which
#
is about costs and budgets I'll quote from a piece written by Sushant Singh in 2018 though
#
is still relevant now where he was talking about the different vice chiefs meeting a
#
parliamentary delegation and here he quotes quote the army vice chief told the MPs that
#
68 percent of the army's equipment is vintage and the capital budget doesn't even cater
#
for the committed payments of 125 ongoing procurement deals leave alone provide funds
#
to replace the vintage equipment there is no budget for making emergency procurements
#
or for providing perimeter security to army camps susceptible to terrorist attacks the
#
powers to buy ammunition and spares for critical stocking levels needed for 10 days of war
#
fighting have been delegated to the defense services but not enough funds have been allocated
#
for it on top of that the army will be saddled with an additional bill of 5000 crore due
#
to increased taxes because of GST but no additional money has been made available for it besides
#
paying salaries there is little else that the army will be able to do with the money
#
given by the government stop quote and you know what I often hear from people is that
#
forget the nuclear element of it if we were to fight a conventional war with Pakistan
#
today there is a chance that we would lose because of under preparedness and because
#
a lot of our equipment is so out of date and so on how true is that I mean should we be
#
alarmed well I think to say that we would lose to Pakistan and this I mean just the
#
size of our country and the size of our armed forces itself is fundamentally defeatist and
#
very pessimistic I'm afraid and completely disagree with that I guess people who say
#
this do it to make a rhetorical point about no you don't you don't fight let me tell
#
you with money or you don't fight only with the equipment you also fight and that is the
#
strongest with what you call the fighting spirit so if the army itself feels and that's
#
the point I make that you are you can't fight this guy because that guy is stronger that
#
means you have lost it before the fight because that means you lost the spirit to fight let's
#
assume fighting spirit is equal on both sides because we should also give those guys some
#
credit let's assume both sides have optimal fighting spirit yeah but just the sheer size
#
of the armed forces the sheer size of the air force and the navy and even the armed
#
force okay leave aside this rhetorical point that I cited but in general do we have a problem
#
in terms of how our equipment like Sushant pointed out more than 60 percent is vintage
#
equipment and do we have a problem with modernizing the armed forces yes that you see what I know
#
I'm very very aware of what the vice chief told the parliamentary committee and so on
#
and he actually laid it bare saying that these are all the problems and he's quite right
#
let's not forget that as far as budgets are concerned this is probably the lowest we have
#
reached since 1962 also there is an issue with the budget and the fact that the budgets have
#
remained where it is when you say lowest you mean as percentage of GDP which means you
#
can actually afford you could afford much more earlier now you go away much less the
#
point is the equipment which we have right now is being constrained not only by budgets
#
which is a certainty and as I told you earlier the defense pension is also another issue
#
which is which is impinged on the budget but also our capacity to design develop research
#
and produce defense equipment of our own has has remained practically stagnant despite
#
all the make in India rhetoric we have had all these make in India and so on but the
#
fact is that we haven't moved we still remain one of the largest arms importer in the world
#
it is also a strategic weakness because we have to buy from others and they can always
#
give us stop spares if not anything else in times of crisis this is the defense industrial
#
base of the nation has not progressed to what what it should be and that remains the weakness
#
so we have a weakness of not being able to produce our own arms to have a procurement
#
system which means that even if we don't really want to buy it from outside itself is so tedious
#
and so long that it takes a long time to procure it from outside from from another let's say
#
off the shelf in combination that means now you have a budget problem which is going greater
#
and the fact that you can't produce anything also and it takes longer time to procure it
#
from others this is a deadly combination so it is because of this combination that the
#
vice chief of army staff had to now tell the parliamentary committee that this is what
#
is our situation and we need to do about it and I'm sure after he made the statement they
#
probably there's a lot of things which happened it is not that we have not ever since 1999
#
Kargil war which was the first major defense reform which was attempted studied and undertaken
#
and many other reforms have are underway the base is what we must question and that's been
#
very slow what's structural reason for that is it the bureaucratic nature of how decisions
#
are taken actually everybody's got to blame you know you're to say that this is only bureaucracy
#
I think is unfair on the bureaucracy firstly the major change there will always be resistance
#
to it the only people who can get over that resistance because there are interests within
#
the institutions that say dr duo within the military itself within the bureaucracy or
#
the only people who can get over that is actually the political leadership and I think what
#
they have done recently which was the creation of the CDS and the creation of the department
#
of military affairs is something which is commendable from that point of view that it
#
now these are two changes which were needed badly nobody people had actually given up
#
that is ever going to happen now it's at least happened but of course everything will depend
#
on the human agency which will take it forward but that we'll have to wait but at least the
#
structural reform which has been done I think is in the right direction so you referred
#
to how Cargill for you was a realization of things that were wrong within the system and
#
that also set off various attempts to reform the armed services can you elaborate a bit
#
on that like what went wrong that led to a realization of weaknesses within what were
#
those weaknesses then and you know what has been attempted since you know K Subramaniam
#
who actually headed the Cargill review committee actually makes the command that so far we've
#
been generally moving along in a manner that we have been lucky that we have not been badly
#
hurt that it's time that we woke up the and these are not this exact word but this is
#
what he wrote in his in his report and from that report came what is called the group
#
of ministers report in which they looked at internal security looked at intelligence looked
#
at border management and defense defense was looked at by Arun Singh the former minister
#
of defense you know he's a man who had a particular interest in defense matters and his report
#
the group of ministers on defense is the one which is suggested and the changes which we
#
see today including the CDS of course he had not suggested the department which is an additional
#
changes come back but most of the changes which we are seeing today is derived from
#
that report of Arun Singh which deals with defense and he identified that without these
#
structural changes without actually changes in the budgeting process all these have been
#
identified it's all I mean the report is actually available in the public domain in certain
#
deletions which have been done for security and we are still actually in the process with
#
the CDS at least the main defense this thing has finally been implemented but it has taken
#
us 20 years to do it that's a long time after that in fact in 2012 when the government of
#
the day decided that this cargo this geome report is we we have to go past it because
#
you know there was no movement on it that's why they had this narration the committee
#
report a committee which is there it again gave its report it is followed by another
#
this thing of the NDA government called the Shaketkar committee in 2015 so one in 2012
#
2015 they have all made various recommendations but the problem has always been that you can
#
easily implement recommendations which suits the institutional interests to implement others
#
you require political will which must be imposed because otherwise people will either put it
#
to the side keep it away delayed and CDS actually is a very good example of that the political
#
will has been exercised because even till recently the previous Air Force chief was
#
very vehemently saying that we don't need the CDS and we don't need theater commands
#
so nobody was listening now political will is what so I think defense reform and I'm
#
just not talking only about high defense organization even the one which has not been done which
#
is the thing about the research and development organization or the defense production organization
#
without political will they can't you can't make any change because you see they are a
#
labor force about nearly slightly under two lakhs they've got ordinance factories which
#
are there so anything which you do against this thing they would probably threaten a
#
strike and they probably say so that is another area which the previous governments have not
#
touched have not been able to touch and this government also has not been able to hopefully
#
it should now concentrate its energy on the ministry or the department defense production
#
and the DRDO because the other aspect and not that it's not being done is the fact that
#
we have kept for a long period in our history we kept the private sector out of defense
#
industry now of course that attitude has certainly changed and today's paper itself actually
#
you know there's this concept of strategic partnership and there you have LNT and one
#
public sector which is the Mazagon we're recording this on Jan 22 by the way there is some context
#
for the listener because you said today's newspaper yeah so the Mazagon dockyard and
#
the LNT had now been approved and these two can now decide team up with the OEM the original
#
equipment manufacturer and I think five of them have also been approved from Russia France
#
Germany Spain and I think one more country France so you know this is a new model we
#
know that that submarine will finally come into the water after which been produced only
#
probably slightly less than 10 years from now but these are changes which have slowly
#
taken place so it is not that we are now at a standstill we are moving but as the pace
#
of change is what we have to question but more than anything else this is also combined
#
with the fact that there is certainly a dearth of budget for building military capacity for
#
the type of capacity that you want that there is no doubt so what will happen is when you
#
don't have money you actually will have to delay it it will cost you much more because
#
of the delay so this is a political decision so we'll have to wait and see at least for
#
this year defense budget whether they will be a change in this or not and my guess is
#
it's unlikely to be because the economy itself isn't so sick so this is a political decision
#
the fact that the public good of national security will have to actually stay in particular
#
place they probably will not allow it to deteriorate but I don't think they will be they can increase
#
this therefore when you have a budget constraint and when you have constraints in your capacity
#
the armed forces is supposed to make that up by actually devising your operational strategies
#
which you can afford you cannot keep crying for better equipment better this thing the
#
only compensation is then you decide to fight in a particular way and that is what you call
#
operational genius which will overcome this lack and that is why military leadership has
#
a major role to play they can't simply blame and say that we don't have this we don't have
#
that therefore we can't fight no the idea that technology is the determinant of victory
#
has been disabused in modern war and I think the fact that the Americans the most powerful
#
nations the world is being defeated by the Taliban who actually just have an AK-47 or
#
the IED the lowest level of technology just goes to prove the point so you have to change
#
your operational concept depending upon the equipment that you can afford and you can't
#
say that you can't fight because you don't have certain things this also then brings
#
me to my next question that the decision makers both within the armed forces and within government
#
and the bureaucracy who are deciding on the future direction that the armed forces takes
#
are likely to be slightly older people in their 40s or 50s or 60s and so on and so forth
#
but technology moves fast military thinking moves very fast like what I am reminded of
#
is you for example mentioned the way the Taliban fights where equipment is not so relevant
#
and I remember reading this book by Fred Kaplan called the insurgents where he talks about
#
how within the US army it took them decades after Vietnam to understand the potency of
#
that kind of asymmetrical guerrilla warfare and how to deal with that and they learnt
#
it so late in fact that you know they made similar mistakes even when they invaded Iraq
#
to begin with and one of the people he describes as carrying the new thinking forward was of
#
course David Petraeus who then took over as a general and kind of changed course to make
#
things work better but my question therefore is that the nature of modern warfare is changing
#
completely and the cyber warfare there is more mechanization there's more AI being used
#
how much of an issue is it that the decision makers who determine the future trajectory
#
of the army may not be entirely up to speed with the changes that are happening in both
#
technology and strategic thinking?
#
Yeah obviously there will be a lag between the people who are there on the top and the
#
guys who actually understand what is the nature of the changes in technology that is for sure
#
the question really is I don't have to as a military leader understand their technology
#
or how it works as much as what is the potential of it in its application there is not something
#
I had to understand how it works as much as what is just to be used for that realization
#
is what military leaders should have and I think most militaries have now actually moved
#
to that point where their military leaders have got this technical side technical base
#
from which will make this understanding easier but this lag will always be there at the cutting
#
edge where it's moving too fast for people who are a little older to actually be able
#
to keep them up so this lag you cannot help but that's institutionally it has to be made
#
up you know the fact that somebody down below will have to take it and show it to somebody
#
else convince him of it and that's always will be problematic because that guy may not
#
be able to understand what this tab is talking about so the point I want to make is I am
#
not for a moment saying that technology is not important it is important it's very important
#
and therefore what I'm saying is you can't always have cutting edge technology that cannot
#
be in everybody's position we but you have to fight with the technology that you have
#
and how you fight that is where your let's say your tactical brilliance comes about how
#
do you innovate and that is where the human agency makes a difference because all technology
#
will depend upon how it is going to be used and that's where the human mind is much more
#
important than the technology itself. My question wasn't only about technology though
#
but about strategic thinking as well for example I'll you know ask a question in the context
#
of the Indian army but in context of what Kaplan's book is about and what counter insurgency
#
thinking has been over the decades since David Gallula wrote his classic piece on it and
#
the key thinking there is that if you want to win in a battlefield like Vietnam or like
#
say Iraq after you've invaded them the way Kaplan breaks it up is he calls it twenty
#
percent military eighty percent political the key lesson that he points out is that
#
you can't just go in and wipe out the first bunch of insurgents and hold a particular
#
piece of land if you're going to treat the local population like shit and turn them all
#
against you so what you really need to do is you also need to simultaneously having
#
you know captured whichever city or part of land that you want to capture you simultaneously
#
have to win over the local population provide them any governance that has gone missing
#
because of your invasion and so on and so forth which is a mistake that the Americans
#
made when they first invaded Iraq but that they later tried to rectify. The Americans
#
have come to us for probably we would have told them this lesson because this is one
#
of the oldest lessons the Indian army has carried. But General Menon not in Kashmir
#
the reason I would hold that we have lost Kashmir and just yesterday we were offline
#
discussing David David Das book the generation of rage in Kashmir that what the Indian army
#
has actually done in Kashmir is entirely the opposite. Not true at all not true at all
#
in fact what the Indian army has done and the doctrine has said the center of gravity
#
is the people. But in practice we have treated them so badly. No not true I completely disagree
#
with that that we have treated them badly I don't think that is the case at all you
#
know it's a uniform depending upon the level of insurgency and the type of operations that
#
you carried our people will be affected. But I think the consciousness that this is all
#
about winning the loyalty of the people is ingrained into Indian armies doctrine for
#
I don't know ever since we actually started using the army in the northeast so that has
#
not changed. And let us not forget that when you do this over a time period which we're
#
talking about they will be individual aberrations in some cases they might be for very very
#
short periods of time institutional aberrations. But let me tell you as far as this issue is
#
concerned I think the Indian army cannot be cast in the same light that you are seem to
#
cast it in it will be completely unfair that the basic teaching and I've served enough
#
in Kashmir to make the point I think we have been very sensitive to how to deal with the
#
people and we were always conscious that it is about the Kashmiris they are the central
#
capital it is their royalty that we had to win. I think Indian army should be proud of
#
what it has done and let us not take those I'm not saying it's been perfect those imperfections
#
to say that is the norm and I think that will be very unfair.
#
I'll defer to your experience there and we can agree to disagree and I wrote a column
#
on this which I'll link from the show notes but again just thinking from an economic point
#
of view we all know that people respond to incentives and power corrupts which is why
#
you know one of the reasons that our army hasn't meddled much in politics is because
#
there are so many safeguards in place and it doesn't have as much power as say the army
#
in Pakistan does but equally there are special conditions for example in Kashmir or in the
#
northeast where the army for large periods of time does have an enormous amount of power
#
as much so if not much more than the civil administration over there isn't it then inevitable
#
that those incentives will come into play and whatever your doctrine might actually
#
state whatever the established wisdom within the army might be that treat the people well
#
in the hearts of the people that what is happening on the ground is slightly different and of
#
course I'll defer to your experience in Kashmir and you're absolutely right that is very easy
#
to cherry pick a few things that have gone wrong and point to those as evidence of something
#
larger but it does seem to me that one of the ways in which India has failed is in winning
#
the minds and hearts of Kashmiris.
#
I don't think that the army has been army might be the object today of their let's say
#
anger because it's a symbol of the state it is not because what the army has done to the
#
people so there is a difference here and I think this difference is very important.
#
I think for an army which has actually spent nearly two decades continuously in a situation
#
of violence I think the performance has been commendable it is not perfect and I'm not
#
claiming perfection at all but if you really look at it from the point of view of what
#
was achieved after all where we are now and where we were let's say during this 20 years
#
we've been in different points in time we've gone through ups and downs you know but it
#
has nothing to do with what the army has done in fact whenever the army the only main aim
#
is to keep violence under controllable levels so a political process can resolve it.
#
What we have failed in Kashmir is not about the army's performance it's a political
#
process that even when violence levels were down the political process was not put into
#
effect so I think I would not agree that the army is a cause of the problem there, definitely
#
not the case army is an instrument of the state and therefore people view it as a symbol
#
of the state so today if they are angry against the state then obviously that anger will be
#
directed to the army not because what the army is doing because it is part of this state
#
so I think you know I completely disagree with what the notion that you have that the
#
army has done in fact the human rights violations of the army for such a large force if you
#
really look at it in percentage terms anywhere in the world probably we would still come
#
up on top that's a fact just in numerical terms.
#
Fair enough let's kind of move on to a topic where we would both be on the same page and
#
both equally concerned which is about the politicization of the army now one of the
#
refreshing things from what I can see is that so far the army in India like you pointed
#
out has stayed away from politics has not been politicized is there a chance of that
#
changing over a period of time is there something that gives you cause for concern?
#
Well I think the chance of that changing can never be ruled out because anything is possible
#
from that point of view institutionally the army is well very sensitive to the fact that
#
it must maintain its apolitical stance culture I think we must not take individuals as symbolic
#
of institutional change because institutional change takes a much longer period of time
#
we might have a leader here and there who might make a political statement and then
#
you can't say that the army is getting politicized although we must always view it as danger
#
signals and then it is for the institutions to make the correction if it does not then
#
it encourages it so the danger will be more as time goes on not less because the Indian
#
himself is getting to be more politically conscious is exposed social media and the
#
rest of it the information domain itself the soldier the officer cadre cannot be any different
#
so the challenge of the institution is in that sort of milieu how do you keep the body
#
politic of the institution away from politics itself and there's nothing better than the
#
leadership being so conscious and not getting into or keeping away from political controversies
#
especially making statements which are loaded politically they might not mean it but the
#
fact is that it's got a political load which can therefore the media can run with and so
#
on I think there is need for this consciousness and it is not now it is always there but today
#
it is much more sensitive because you're actually it's like you're on the stage all the time
#
and people are looking at you so it's a this is sports arena where the game is being played
#
and there's a whole lot of people looking at you so this consciousness definitely have
#
to be part of the military leadership. So what has been the level of autonomy that
#
the army has to for example when it comes to things like the appointment of generals
#
and now the appointment of the CDS and is that a sphere where the political process
#
has played a part in terms of you know how are generals selected and can political interference
#
make a difference there? Well the system is that beyond the particular rank let's say
#
a lieutenant generals and let's say you want to appoint a cnc or appoint a chief then you
#
send a panel and from the panel the politician actually selects so this is therefore and
#
I think the system is absolutely correct they should be able to select who they want. The
#
panel is by seniority and? Panel is by seniority and eligibility and obviously by seniority
#
you know seniority is one issue which you can't totally discard in a hierarchical organization
#
like the military. I mean does it just to go on a tangent like in the IAS what often
#
happens is your initial rank when you're 21 and your initial rank in the civil services
#
examination will basically determine the order for the rest of the career when you become
#
cabinet secretary and so on except in very rare circumstances. Is it like that in the
#
army or do you constantly have evaluations as you move through the rank? No it's the
#
same actually the order of your passing out from where you are in what rank have you passed
#
out will determine your seniority and it'll remain that till the time you are unless you
#
miss a promotion board and you drop and join the next bank so that system is the same.
#
See I think the politician should be able to choose the highest ranks of the military
#
because that's a political choice and I think the system is fair. Has it always been that
#
way? It's always been that way but the practice generally has been that you go by seniority
#
on the thing that this guy has already reached that place all of them are good but there's
#
nothing wrong about not keeping to that seniority and I think this government has a lot of violated
#
the norm changed the norm not violated. Changed the norm in the sense that there are we see
#
now more cases where they do not always select the senior most senior. Like General Robert
#
for example. Yeah he was actually one of the examples and even the President Air Chief
#
in the recent instance is also the case. So but I think that's a political choice and
#
I think politicians have the right to choose who the military leader should be so that
#
that's not but the politicization which you are actually referring to is whether the leadership
#
is be able to ensure that the institution they command is not used for political purposes
#
which is meant for party interests. I think that is where the differentiation is you know
#
all the time the armed forces is a political instrument is the instrument of the state
#
can be used externally can use internally. The question of politicization which is now
#
germane is whether it is being used to benefit the party and not the state. That is I think
#
where the differentiation comes and that's when the leadership will have to take a call
#
or have a dialogue with the leaders who are actually if they have to carry out something
#
but that's all the things which are done normally behind doors. We don't know what the type
#
of conversations which are taking place and you know it might be taking place. We don't
#
know whether it's taking place or not but it might be. So I think we need to differentiate
#
what we have to watch out for is this difference that it is not being used for the benefit
#
of a party as long as it's used for benefit of a state of the nation it's probably okay.
#
So let's take a completely hypothetical example and mind you it's completely hypothetical.
#
Let us say that there is a party in power which puts party above the nation and at a
#
particular point in time maybe responding to a terrorist act they want to do something
#
macho for the sake of political optics and they give the army order that okay let's just
#
carry out what we will call a surgical strike but basically you will bomb a bunch of trees
#
and nobody will be hurt but this is what we need you to do for the sake of optics. What
#
is military ethics in this situation like as an officer are you therefore as a general
#
are you therefore bound to follow the orders of your say the defense minister in this case
#
or at some point is there some point where you feel you would be duty bound to put your
#
foot down and if you put your foot down would it be only be behind closed doors after which
#
you go ahead anywhere reluctantly how does it all play out I mean and again I'm thinking
#
aloud is the first time I've thought of such a situation so it has to be a dilemma for
#
a person within the army which thankfully perhaps in our 70 something years we haven't
#
faced it but we could face in the future who knows.
#
I know this is just hypothetical the exact problem of what is the legal part of this
#
there are two issues one is a legal issue which you're talking about one is an ethical
#
issue legally the government is well within its rights to give the order give the order
#
and they could actually justify it for whatever I mean it's no they don't have a taste for
#
party they are that this that is a concealed intent yeah you can always justify it for
#
national purpose so the legal part is not what we are we are talking about here we are
#
talking about the ethical part and the ethical part can only actually come to some sort of
#
thing through a discussion between the leaders themselves and that is why this dialogue has
#
to be constant that if I feel something I might you can still overrule me but the fact
#
is that I should be able to express and say it or you can actually you can take a decision
#
yourself which you think is the most important value that you have but if the order is legal
#
the issue is they're not you know can't possibly disobey it but you know in the real world
#
you can actually obey orders and still disobey it you can do so many things and so it's
#
all up to you but the fact is that ethical disagreements will have to be dialogue which
#
is very complicated like for example going back to Nazi Germany for example which has
#
no relation to present times let me clarify but going back to Nazi Germany if Hitler gives
#
you order to one of his generals that okay this is what you have to do you know run Auschwitz
#
for me there's no dialogue there it just becomes an ethical so you as an individual you can
#
say that I'm sorry I'm leaving you find somebody else to do it I mean that's what military
#
leaders have normally done if they don't ethically agree with it they find it find somebody else
#
fair enough I also want to sort of turn the economic lens on politics again as I tend
#
to do and again I'm just thinking aloud and because I'm completely ignorant of the subject
#
I'm probably unaware of other ways of doing this that have been discussed but when you're
#
talking for example about the two possible systems of promotion that one is as in the
#
IES perhaps you just go purely by seniority and you have a norm that the senior most guy
#
gets a job and the other might be that you put a bunch of names by seniority in front
#
of a panel and the politician decides now I'm thinking of the incentives in each case
#
if you go purely by seniority and if your whole career is determined by how you scored
#
in that one exam when you were 20 or 21 then the incentive for every officer is therefore
#
not to try very hard to excel because it doesn't matter your rank determines where you go now
#
I think you got it you got it slightly mixed up you see the seniority on which you you
#
pass out of the academy in the IAS or the military is the seniority in your batch okay
#
every time that you have to be promoted you have to go through a promotion board as we
#
as the military calls it so but when you get promoted you will still in your batch you
#
will still maintain that seniority which you had when you entered the service right but
#
you need to have go through abroad so so the first guy who's number one in my batch may
#
or may not even have become let's say a brigadier right because he hasn't passed the colonel
#
to brigadier so when you get promoted you're immediately above him right so yeah so the
#
seniority is fair enough but I'm okay so I got this wrong but this is how incentives
#
would have worked if it was seniority alone but it's not so that's sorted but the other
#
incentives I'm worried about is that if the politician makes a final call on who's going
#
to be the general then the incentives are towards politicization because then whoever
#
the contenders are in that panel which are put before him their incentives are to be
#
political towards the political party in charge because that increases the chance of becoming
#
general isn't that the case I mean that's the way the incentives work so I'm just absolutely
#
right I mean this is these are human systems so what you're saying is actually is this
#
will be the natural tendency tendency so this is now up to the maturity of the political
#
leaders to deal with this issue you know do they actually want people who they think are
#
of their kind or do they want good political leaders to lead armies into battle and win
#
so this is a political choice and that is where the the maturity of political leadership
#
matters so I think in after 70 years of independence if you think that this this choice is still
#
not to be left to the politicians I think it may not be fair no I think it has to be
#
left to the politicians but are there other sort of systems which ameliorate the the way
#
the incentive structure works here no it has to be a mix of two between merit which is
#
the thing and seniority because merit can only be judged at that level it's a matter
#
of what the the politician sees is the right guy who wants to command and in a democracy
#
I think that is their right they must be given the choice and unless you give the choice
#
how is India going to actually mature as a democracy if you're going to keep seniority
#
as the principle of this thing in which means you don't exercise your judgment how is this
#
democracy going to mature because they might go wrong somewhere but unless you go wrong
#
how do you get to being right at least mostly right yeah and getting mature politicians
#
is up to the voters which is you and me so yeah we can't blame anyone else for that
#
so you know I've taken so much of your time that I think that if you know when you were
#
a serving general if someone actually took so much of wasted so much of your time you
#
would probably have court martialed them but I'll ask you two final questions to end it
#
with one is a question on which we pretty much devoted an episode the last time we met
#
but I think for the benefit of listeners who may not have heard that yet it's worth asking
#
it again which is how does being nuclear affect India's army because we've basically got deterrence
#
in the sense that you know it almost equalizes India and Pakistan in a sense because either
#
can obliterate the other how does it sort of affect the role that the army plays the
#
the role that the army plays is affected because nuclear weapons actually impact on the type
#
of political objectives which you can achieve which essentially means that this idea that
#
you can go and capture large parts of territory let's say in Pakistan is the one which we
#
must disabuse ourselves off because that would require the quantum of force which can bring
#
nuclear weapons to play so what nuclear weapons has done is driven the armed forces to fighting
#
to a level in which only the utility of force is only where you can achieve political objectives
#
of a limited nature not that you can subjugate the enemy by defeating him we don't need
#
to march to Lahore ever again basically that's what it would mean because before nuclear
#
weapons you could actually have that guy surrender that's what we did and then he will listen
#
to your terms nuclear weapons especially between nuclear powers has changed that the paradigm
#
so the utility of force is not about imposing your will as much as to affect its will and
#
that is where the differences so this is actually what it has changed is the utility of force
#
in political terms and because that has changed it will impact how you actually fashion and
#
apply and use your armed forces that's what has changed fascinating and our episode on
#
this was very interesting and I also had an episode on the nuclear dynamics between India
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and Pakistan with Srinath Raghavan so that will also be linked from the show notes my
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final question which will almost seem like a cliche to my listeners because I asked it
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to all my guests in terms of whatever is the subject we're discussing is that when you
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sort of look at the state of the Indian army and how fast or how slow reforms have happened
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and what the current thinking on it is both from within and from outside from the political
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class looking say forward into the next 20 years where there will be new geopolitical
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challenges and you know the whole military landscape will continue shifting and changing
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what gives you hope and what gives you despair I think the hope is that there is greater
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realization therefore the need for reform the despair is our inability to in despite
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knowing what we have to do we cannot get it done and unless we improve that it is not
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that India does not know the type of reforms it wants we simply are not able to implement
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and as I said we can blame the military we can make the bureaucracy but I think in especially
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in the major reforms are concerned we must hold political leadership to account for that
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because they are the ones which can make it happen like the CDS and the Department of
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Military Affairs which you feel is a big move for yes on that hopeful note General Menon
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thank you so much for coming on the show thank you so much I'm at always a pleasure if you
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enjoy listening to this episode you can follow General Menon on Twitter at Prakash Menon
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51 that's at Prakash Menon 51 you can follow me on Twitter at Amit Verma AMIT VARMA you
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can browse past episodes of the scene in the unseen at scene unseen dot in and think Prakati
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dot com thank you for listening and don't fight with anyone did you enjoy this episode
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you can go over to scene unseen dot in slash support and contribute any amount you like
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to keep this podcast alive and kicking thank you.
