{"id":30039,"date":"2014-05-26T16:11:14","date_gmt":"2014-05-26T20:11:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/?p=30039"},"modified":"2014-05-26T16:11:14","modified_gmt":"2014-05-26T20:11:14","slug":"arun-jaitley-being-made-minister-of-defence-and-finance-indicates-that-modi-wants-india-to-have-military-teethto-meet-challenges","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/?p=30039","title":{"rendered":"Arun Jaitley Being Made Minister of Defence and Finance Indicates that Modi Wants India to Have “Military Teeth”to meet Challenges."},"content":{"rendered":"

BY<\/p>\n

PRAVEEN SWAMI<\/strong><\/p>\n

Looking at the calendar of Prime Minister Narendra Modi\u2019s high-powered national security team, it is tempting to think there are good times ahead for them: Brasilia, in July, for the Brazil-Russia-India-China-South Africa BRICS summit; the United Nations General Assembly in New York in September; Nay Pyi Taw in October, for a summit of the Association of South East Asian Nations; a meeting of the G-20 group of major economies in Brisbane.<\/p>\n

Home Minister Rajnath Singh, Defence Minister Arun Jaitley, and External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj\u2014the troika who will implement Mr. Modi\u2019s strategic vision \u2014 will be seeing lots of the world, but it is unlikely to be fun.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

East Asian states like Japan and Vietnam, alarmed by the rise of China and an apparent decline in United States’ power, want to lock India into closer military partnership. Islamist insurgencies and Saudi Arabia-Iran tensions have made West Asia, the source of the fuel India\u2019s economy lives on, dangerously fragile. Nuclear-armed Pakistan is buffeted by civil-military tensions, and, in some areas, collapsing central authority.<\/p>\n

Ms. Swaraj will have to negotiate this maze of regional crisis \u2014 knowing all of them could directly hurt India\u2019s overarching strategic goal, high economic growth.<\/p>\n

Teeth for war machine<\/strong><\/p>\n

The unprecedented decision to give Mr. Jaitley charge of Defence in addition to Finance suggests that Mr. Modi believes these challenges can\u2019t be dealt with unless India has military teeth. Mr. Jaitley will face immediate calls from defence services for injections of cash. The 2014-2015 interim budget allocated the armed forces Rs. 2.24 billion, but just Rs. 895.88 of that is available for capital expenditure\u2014leaving the forces\u2019 acquisition programme floundering.<\/p>\n

The deficits are stark. The air force has only 34 squadrons against the 42 it is sanctioned to operate\u2014and 50 it needs to fight a two-front war, the mandate given to the forces by former Defence Minister AK Anthony. The navy\u2019s accident-hit submarine fleet is shrinking. For its part, the Army has critical deficits everything from anti-tank missiles and howitzers to assault rifles.<\/p>\n

Mr. Jaitley thus has to rapidly decide on critical acquisitions left hanging by the last government: an $1.5 billion deal for attack helicopters, $1 billion for heavy-lift helicopters, $885 million for desperately-needed 155-millimetre howitzers.<\/p>\n

The biggest pending acquisition is for 126 French Rafale fighters, worth $15 billion\u2014a deal the Air Force says can no longer be delayed, but the government deferred because of financial issues.<\/p>\n

Internal security<\/p>\n

For his part, Mr. Singh will have to make sure external crisis don\u2019t generate internal problems\u2014like heightened terrorism. He will find a Ministry that has made only limited progress in delivering on promises made after 26\/11. The Intelligence Bureau still has just two-thirds of the 26,867 the government had sanctioned for it prior to 26\/11, with gaping deficits in critical technology-driven fields.<\/p>\n

Police reform, another key element of the post-26\/11 reforms, hasn\u2019t gone particularly well, either. In 2011, there were 1,281,317 police on the rolls of India\u2019s police services, up only very marginally from 1,132,302 in 2007\u2014well short of the 250:100,000 police-public ratio that is a rough-and-ready global norm.<\/p>\n

Mr. Singh\u2019s predecessor, P Chidambaram, faced dogged opposition from Chief Ministers to his efforts to build a new, national architecture for security. He will now have to find ways to cajole States to cooperate with the Centre.<\/p>\n

COURTESY:THE HINDU<\/em><\/p>\n

Tweet<\/a><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

BY PRAVEEN SWAMI Looking at the calendar of Prime Minister Narendra Modi\u2019s high-powered national security team, it is tempting to think there are good times ahead for them: Brasilia, in July, for the Brazil-Russia-India-China-South Africa BRICS summit; the United Nations General Assembly in New York in September; Nay Pyi Taw in October, for a summit …<\/p>\n

Continue reading ‘Arun Jaitley Being Made Minister of Defence and Finance Indicates that Modi Wants India to Have “Military Teeth”to meet Challenges.’ »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[12],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30039"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=30039"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30039\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30040,"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30039\/revisions\/30040"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=30039"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=30039"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=30039"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}