A tragic court martial

Rs 1,762 crores. That is the extent of the alleged procedural irregularities in post-Kargil defence purchases notified by the Special Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) and briefly reported in the media. The ministry of defence (MoD) had in turn referred the cases to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and the Central Vigilance Commission (CVC), both of which, after 10 years of investigation and constant prodding since 2004 by no less than the Supreme Court of India itself, have now reported that none of the cases had involved corrupt practices. The MoD has accordingly decided to close all these cases less two in which the CBI had filed First Information Reports about five years ago, but investigations are still continuing, so far without any results.
But before proceeding further, a brief recapitulation may be in order. The Indo-Pak conflict at Kargil occurred from May 8 to July 14 1999, in which India suffered 527 killed and 1,363 wounded. During this brief but violent high-intensity war, many procedural anomalies and inadequacies had come to light, especially in respect of under provisioning and resultant shortages of several types of weapons, equipment and ammunition, which adversely affected the operations of the Indian Army. The government holding office at that time, taken by surprise and caught completely on the wrong foot, sought to rectify its errors and make up military shortfalls on an emergent basis and also enhance the Army’s operational capabilities for future contingencies even while in the heat and confusion of an ongoing conflict. A total of 129 defence procurement contracts were signed for a total of Rs 2,175 crores, and immediately after the end of hostilities, a special report by CAG was initiated to examine these procurements with the stated objective “to assess the efficiency, economy and effectiveness of the defence procurement process in emergency situations”. The CAG commenced its task in 2000, examining the 123 contracts totaling Rs 2,163 crores which were placed before it. The report, which was finally tabled in the Lok Sabha on December 11, 2001, highlighted irregularities and delays in the fast-track procedures for defence procurements, and criticised its almost total failure to obtain the necessary stores and equipment within the duration of active hostilities, besides paying excessive prices, and also acquiring equipment not optimally designed for use in the specific environments of the Kargil region. In short, the CAG findings indicated that the defence procurement procedures did not meet the requirements for urgent emergency situations, and required corrective action to function effectively if similar contingencies occurred in the future.
All totally unexceptionable so far, but the picture commences to fragment and disintegrate shortly thereafter. What was originally intended to be a major strategic review of defence procurement procedures from which parameters and guidelines for future eventualities could be evolved, became instead merely a pedestrian audit report of procedural errors in the Kargil acquisitions, a dust-cloud of minutiae necessary enough in its own place, but which obscured the main strategic issue of reforms in emergency defence procurements. Perceptions based primarily on accountancy could not comprehend the compulsions of geo-politics, the exigencies of the “fog of war”, or the total uncertainties of the extent and duration such a conflict could possibly take, the first of its kind between two countries possessing nuclear weapons.
The CAG report and the controversies that flowed from its findings were manna from heaven for politicians of all varieties who lapped it up and rushed to extract maximum political benefits from the situation, without any thought or concern for implications in the longer term. The political savagery in the aftermath of the CAG report became in effect the “real” Kargil War, a free-for-all within and outside the Parliament and in the columns and chat-shows of a carnivorous media avid for circulation and TRP ratings. Perceptions were highly partisan, ideology fixated, and personality oriented. The adversaries here were no longer Pakistan’s Northern Light Infantry to be evicted at all costs from Tiger Hill and Tololing, but the political parties and personalities sniping heavily from both sides of the sharp political divide.
The fallout from the CAG report multiplied earlier tensions from Bofors, HDW, and Tehelka and was itself further reinforced by the episode of Israeli Barak missiles for the Indian Navy that was to follow shortly. The decision-making processes sustained splinter injuries from motivated and often tendentious media speculation and commentary, which inhibited the defence procurement and modernisation of the armed forces, creaky and spasmodic at the best of times, and brought it to an almost complete and grinding standstill for over a decade. The resultant opportunity losses have never been fully calculated and, in all probability, never will be. The Krasnopol, a cheaper and less expensive Russian version of the American Copperhead terminal laser homing artillery projectile, and the Israeli Barak air defence and anti-sea skimmer missile, acquired under operational urgency for Operation Talwar, the naval operation in the Arabian Sea during the Kargil War after the indigenous Trishul quick reaction air defence missile long promised by the Defence Research and Development Organisation failed to attain acceptable operational standards before commencement of hostilities, both featured in the CAG report, and provide typical examples of kneejerk vituperation motivated by either rigid and obsolete political dogma, or radicalised religious agenda about the countries of origin.
The conclusions of the CBI and CVC and the decisions of the MoD to close the cases mentioned in the CAG report, confirm that the intense and frenzied mudslinging and elaborately-constructed allegations by political parties were actually fabrics of deception primarily designed to achieve the political objectives of regime change without any thought of consequences to the vital interests of the armed forces, and ultimately to national security itself. The political objectives were successfully achieved, but not so the national interest which were ill served by the controversies. Ultimately, of course, defence modernisation will attain its true stature only when meaningful indigenisation is achieved, which is still some distance away. But in the interim, who will answer India’s defence forces for the decades lost and wasted by political controversies?

Gen. Shankar Roychowdhury is a former Chief of Army Staff and a former Member of Parliament