Military affairs

How will you define it except to say that it is the height of shamelessness that  lobbyists are now offering bribes to the Chief of Indian Army in his own office. And now that General VK Singh has made the whole matter public, he is being threatened that his image would be sullied and he will be forced to leave his seat. Do people realise that he is the chief of world’s second largest standing army and not a circle officer?

This is happening at a time when important deals to modernise the Indian army are proceeding at a snail’s pace. The procurement of crucial military equipment has been held up for more than 25 years. The six companies which had sent proposals for artillery guns have been blacklisted. We are being told this has happened because the ministry of defence (MoD) does not want scams. If this is true, then lobbyists and middlemen should be worried. But that is not the case. Apparently lobbyists are bold enough to get into the army chief’s office and offer him a deal! The issue is getting dead serious and needs to be addressed in right earnest.

The reality is that the arms mafia is getting powerful by the day. If we see recent events carefully, we may note a pattern. First the army chief’s age issue was raised. That was followed by tales of bugging in the defence ministry. Then came the case of army equipments being used to monitor officials and now the army chief is being hounded for opening his mouth on corruption. All this is being done in a well planned manner to keep the chief occupied and divert his attention from other important issues at hand. It does not stop there. The plan, it appears, is to ultimately get him removed. At the moment vested interests are trying to put the Union defence minister and the army chief on a collision course.

Please note that Bharat Earth Movers Limited (BEML) is a public sector undertaking and it is selling its Tatra trucks to the army at double the market price. The truck priced at around Rs 40 lakh in the open market is being sold at Rs 1.1 crore to the army. In the open bids, others are offering similar vehicles at a much lower price. So why is there such a big price difference? The way the army chief is being pilloried for taking a stand, that day is not far when even promotion of officers will be dictated by the mafia. The solution lies in a quick judicial settlement. What is terrible for us, and encouraging for the mafia, is that people usually go scot free even after they have been caught in cases of large scale corruption. Post the Tehelka expose, it was army that took action against its people!

Halting defence acquisition is no way to deal with corruption. Instead, the system should be cleansed and the acquisition process expedited. Another way out is to start manufacturing defence equipments in India itself. Why is that even after 63 years of Independence, we importing up to 70 per cent of our defence hardware? Here too, defence lobbies are so well entrenched that the Indian companies barely have any space to come up and begin production.

For the sake of national security, the defence acquisition procedure should be made transparent and quick. Another example of such tricks can be seen in the case of much-needed Medium Multi RO Combat Aircraft which has got stuck because someone somewhere wrote a letter. There should be a thorough investigation but it should not delay or scuttle the procurement of essential equipment. The country has to wake up otherwise things will go out of hand. It is time we stopped potraying our lack of quick decision making capabilities as honesty. If proper punishment is awarded to the guilty, it will boost the morale of upright officers who work will full devotion and honesty.                    

(As told to Mayank Singh)