Infrastructure key to Defence strength

It was a pleasure to witness the opening of the Rohtang Tunnel finally after many years of missed deadlines and other tribulations. It was befitting to name it after Vajpayee, perhaps a mention could have been made about the sterling contribution of the late Manohar Parrikar as Raksha Mantri in closing this and many other such projects! A sardonic and often self amused Parrikar was perhaps the brightest among all of Modi’s Defence Ministers’, alas taken away too soon by a cruel fate much before his ability to break bureaucratic gridlocks and technical competence could finish the tasks he inherited.

Border infrastructure in India nee Bharat has been stalled and stuck in  socialist contradictions that has overshot the demise of the Congress as a viable political entity. Between the psychosis of India’s independence from colonial British Raj in countless blunders the late Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru made in Jammy & Kashmir, and the North East, to the humiliating defeat in 1962, lies a scandalous tale of neglect of borders across the International Border (IB), the Line of Control with Pakistan (LoC), and of course much in the news lately, the Line of Actual Control with China (LAC). That we have military units stationed a 100 kms away with no motorable roads, much less armour or artillery capable and only able to hump it on Long Range Patrol (LRPs) or pack mule logistics lines, while PLA has roads to their last post in Jammu, Kashmir, Kargil, Ladakh, Arunchal Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Sikkim and West Bengal is a scary reality.

Political Willpower for Defence Reform, Breaking Bureaucratic and Environment Gridlocks

Not even the Ram Rajya of the BJP led government in 6 years of its existence has been able to the crack the babudom that actively defeats the path of reform, development and change that the Narendra Modi led BJP Government promised when it came to power! The pace of reform especially in Defence, Intelligence and Police has been especially substandard. This then has a direct effect on Security, that was one of the key planks that hoisted the BJP to power.Coming back to the issue at hand namely border roads, railway and communication infrastructure that is crucial for not just war fighting but keeping loyal border populations rewarded for their unflinching loyalty to the nation, requires a very serious strategic rethink, but which has been little demonstrated by the powers that be.  Whatever may be the past in strategic thought or absence of it, today there is no excuse for a mammoth effort to fix this lacuna.

Be it local contract real estate mafias, environmental concerns used to stall projects, or other political fiefdoms, nothing is omnipotent over sovereignty and strategic defence of the nation.

The crux of the issue is not just the beggarly 1.5% GDP Defence Budget that is ironically similar to that of Pt. Nehru in 1962 but also the absence of the political stomach to bring politically unpalatable reforms to break silos in turfs across road, rail, and the corporatisation of the Defence R&D, DPSUs and OFB, all marching to an ancient tune of socialist mediocrity, and lack of accountability rife with terrible project management, budgetary overruns, or just plain old incompetence.

There remains no consequence of failure in the public sector sirkar damaad kleptocracy, given the self serving nature of India’s bureaucracy that usurped authority without accountability, power without actually being elected. We continue to see much the same now too.

Today we need a mix and match of both BRO and Defence Ministry, Railway Ministry, Ministry of Roads, as well as the best of private construction companies to come together to build together bring scale, technology, project management and innovative use of material to find solution to complex geological, weather and terrain problems. The synapse between public and private must be broken to come together to work for India and its people living in border states, and not just the Military.

A Two-Front War Scenario

The Chinese virus and its attendant military aggression by China on the LAC, and that of its client state Pakistan on the LoC, has India staring at the prospect of a two-front winter war where the enemy, especially the Chinese have superior border and logistics. Generations of Indian Army Officers and men have kept the cartographic aggression and territory grabbing intrigues in check by often paying in life and limb. The question one is forced to ask today is of the civil-military disconnect between a battle hardened but beggared Military, and a strategically illiterate politician and a self serving bureaucracy feathering its own nest at the cost of national interest.Today as India faces a repeat of the Kargil siege across a 4000 km LAC, not knowing where the next PLA incursion will occur, the Pakistan LoC sees daily Indian Army casualties from shelling and of late an escalatory artillery fire, the decades of neglect in border roads, Railways, Bridges, Tunnels, Hard and Soft defences, Airfields, Missile Sites, has all come under an emergency spotlight.What do we need to do: Strategic Road and Rail Asks: Current and Future State: