India just woke up on defence front: ex-Army deputy chief

N.S. Malik says armed forces are still dependent onobsolete equipment and facing shortage of staff

VISAKHAPATNAM, ANDHRA PRADESH, 08-01-2014:Lt.General (retired) N.S.Malik addressing at an interactive session organised by Vivek Bharathi on Nation's Security concerns in Visakhapatnam on Wednesday, January 08, 2014. Photo:CV.Subrahmanyam

“India has just woken up to the dire need for defence preparedness. We need to be able to bring the nation on par with others vis-à-vis technology, infrastructure, personnel etc,” observed former Deputy Chief of Army Staff N.S. Malik.

He was in the city to address a meeting of students recently. Speaking to The Hindu , Mr. Malik said that defence preparedness doesn’t mean mere equipment. It was training, creating infrastructure and technology. China has developed roads up to Indian borders.

But, our troupes need to walk down three to four days to reach their posts. We need to gear up on this front as well, he said.

The armed forces are dependent on obsolete equipment even today. India still relies on MiG aircraft, which are known as ‘flying coffins’ or ‘widow-makers’. We need to replace them with latest ones, he said.

The other major challenge was shortage of staff. While 42 squadrons of army were required, the country has only 30. There are about 46,000 officers against the requirement of 60,000.

Mandatory military service

Compulsory military training might not be helpful or possible. But, the government should make it mandatory for Central services like IAS, IPS to serve Defence for two to three years.

It might take some time for Make in India campaign to ‘take flight’ as far as defence equipment and technologies were concerned.

The country should depend upon import of arms for immediate requirements and focus on manufacturing them in India itself for future necessities.

Transfer of technologies

The government should also lay emphasis on transfer of technologies while importing arms. Bofors guns would have been a successful case of ‘Make in India’ long back had it not been mired in a procurement scandal.

“Whether bribery happened or not, nobody knew. After the deal was scrapped, the transfer of technology was obviously stopped,” he said.

NCC visibility

Agreeing that NCC visibility was coming down in colleges and schools, he said that shortage of officers and lack of support from the State government was hitting the objective.