Defense Industry - Part 4 - Bofors Blast
So, between the systems that the government follows, the socialistic DNA of the past and the complete lack of understanding of issues related to defence you find every government having to tread a minefield at every step. They obviously want to avoid getting blown off and so become circumspect to the point where there is paralysis instead of action.
Now lets first look at what happened in NASA, USA (which incidentally boasts of many many Indian engineers and scientists) - a space mission to the moon conceived in early 1960 and the first man landed on the moon in 1969. Even granting that India doesn't have enough funds it took 16 years just to decide the requirements of a fighter jet.
Now lets first look at what happened in NASA, USA (which incidentally boasts of many many Indian engineers and scientists) - a space mission to the moon conceived in early 1960 and the first man landed on the moon in 1969. Even granting that India doesn't have enough funds it took 16 years just to decide the requirements of a fighter jet.
The Tejas fighter plane project was conceived in 1969, design studies completed by 1975, requirements finalised by 1985, the first flight flew in 2001 and introduced into service in 2015. A total of 46 years in which electronics technology has changed so fast, so much that anything you build in will be obsolete by the time you use it. Then the auditor will use his superior intelligence based on hindsight to point out how stupid the decision makers are, for getting the worst at a higher price. That it takes 10 years to decide the requirements is in itself a telling commentary.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HAL_Tejas
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HAL_Tejas
The development of the MBT Arjun started in 1974 and the first batch of tanks delivered in 2004 – a good 30 years later.
This kind of delay in every project is due to the kind of systems that we follow but more importantly due to the attitude of the leadership – political, civilian and even the society. Their complete lack of understanding and knowledge of the nature of this beast makes it impossible for Indians to excel in any endeavour. Failure is frowned upon to a point that lack of action is preferred so you cannot fail. Wisdom and 20/20 hindsight are others that puts the brakes on innovation and performance. The military adds to this with demands owing to changed circumstances, rightfully so, and projects keep going back to the drawing table.
If you take the Tejas and MBT projects as an example, the junior most officers who joined the armed forces, say at the age of 20, had either retired or pushing retirement by the time the project was ready. So, every newer and younger officer would have new ideas and demands which would have also contributed to the delay. Then you have lost the experience and knowledge of the older officer and his mistakes and so others repeat the same mistakes. Global politics like sanctions etc aggravate the situation and those countries which bail India out in such circumstances rightfully claim payback with business during the good times as was commented earlier.
Here is a brief report on one such ongoing project. If this happens as hoped – by 2050 - it would have taken India 41 years when Pakistan and China are ALREADY ready in 2019 itself.
Governments bend over backwards to give enough and more opportunities to as many private sector companies as possible to avoid attracting any criticism. The private sector does little to cover itself with glory because each is more interested in running down the others and preventing them from success than focussing on overall success. To be fair India being a large market every private company seeks to get business and given the decades it takes, they invest substantially in building relationships, networks, demonstrations etc and so everybody wants to win.
Secondly there have not been any instances where the selection of the big-ticket product was compromised. There have been allegations of corruption but even in such cases the quality of the purchase has never been questioned. In such a scenario the one redeeming factor in defence procurement was that the political class generally stayed united - and then Bofors happened. This changed the entire rules of engagement and politics in India. The carpet bombing of Bofors as an issue affected the nation in a way that the entire defence procurement system was paralysed with fear and retribution. That fear even 32 years later continues to haunt the corridors of power.
For those keen to know more you can read here.
This scandal caught the imagination of a nation to such an extent that I remember one senior colleague of mine asking me to bring him the Bofors file in the office before realising the incongruity of the situation. The effect of the scandal has been profound in more ways than one as can be seen below.
While it is tempting to get digressed into the Bofors scandal, what is crucial is the long-term effect that the case has had on Indian psyche and the events that changed the future course of Indian defence procurement.
As mentioned earlier, any defence procurement is complex and based on how you approach it. You can make 2 & 2 as 4 or 22 or even 1. Given the animal that is a defence deal, globally it is a cesspool. However clean one may claim it to be, a cesspool it still is and even though Bofors is linked closely to India, the following CIA report makes more interesting reading. So many countries some globally touted as the most honest are named here including those ruled by Kings who you would think cannot be corrupt logically.
So, for a minute ignoring the corruption aspect of a defence deal let us understand the impact of the Bofors scam.
Even though reports claim that the Bofors gun wasn’t the top of the heap & by manipulation was catapulted to the top, fact is that it was this gun that saved the country from blushing during the Kargil war 12 years later. So much so that the government of the day had to lift the ban on the company to get spares and enable the army to fight. Now imagine the plight of India if let’s say the company had refused to do business and supply spares to India. The direction of the Kargil war could have turned differently.
This experience shows that such blind opposition – taken politically – without thought, logic and strategy can potentially have disastrous consequences. How did this happen?
VP Singh given his political ambitions but more crucially his moral ambitions as I call it leveraged the Bofors issue to target Rajiv Gandhi. That can still be par for the course but in his blind attempts to scale the moral heights went after everything and everybody with little planning or foresight. The fundamental truth in any political corruption is that the top leader never ever has his hands in the till even if he were to benefit from a deal. The labyrinth of payments, network, tax evasion, foreign exchange controls, banking systems will always be so complex that finding absolute proof to nail and jail a top leader like a PM is almost always next to impossible.
Now in his blind rage to nail Rajiv Gandhi VP Singh finally went after the senior and then lower level officers many of who were innocent and honest. The Bofors bull had by then travelled so far and become so large that in the eyes of the people any political party ignoring it was liable to become guilty by inaction. Soon thereafter Rajiv Gandhi died. Over time many others died too but the stink of Bofors was never laid to rest.
Though knowing the pitfalls of the situation, every govt meandered along either by active intervention or inaction on the events unfolding. With change in Govts, the action against the officers/staff became the “action” to keep up the pretence and anybody who had worked for the previous govt became a convenient whipping boy.
By 1996 the Bofors scam had become a Frankenstein that refused to go away and with the rapid changes in govt, there was a nonstop witch hunt against the administration. The Cong had lost elections in 1989 over this and with the economic crisis of 1991 the defence sector was neglected. The Vajpayee govt took over defeating Cong. By then TV as a medium with nonstop news was in full flow and politicians were feeling the heat of the media glare now with visuals and debates. The opposition Cong raked up the coffin scandal to target the ABV govt after the Kargil war and the Raksha Mantri Fernandes had to resign.
With this a system that had already had a deleterious effect on itself as regards strategic decision making simply went into a coma. Nobody wanted to take any risks whatsoever. Every defence deal was fraught with political risk. With unstable coalition govts nobody wanted to address the issue.
The nation then had a RM for almost 8 years who likely believed that his sainthood would get affected if he took any decisions related to defence procurement. The govt exacerbated the situation by blacklisting large companies globally which meant that India either didn’t buy what it needed because there was nobody to supply them or paid an exorbitant price for it.
In short, a concatenation of circumstances resulted in India being paralysed over defence purchases for over 20 years and created a complete civilian chain of command in India that had spent a career from a junior level officer to senior most leadership levels without taking decisions, afraid to take decisions, risk averse. To expect this civilian chain of command to now suddenly have the talent of decision making, risk taking is not easy. With no active pressure in the form of a threat of war the attitude had become lackadaisical, there was no vision in the administration even if the men in uniform had it, every demand became a crying wolf story for the administration and corruption for the political class. That the security and defence preparedness of the country has been seriously affected is to put it mildly. That the political discourse hasn’t changed much can be seen by the political campaigning in the Lok Sabha elections in 2019 over matters defense.
We are at the finish line
https://rvasisht.blogspot.com/2020/02/defense-industry-part-5-numbers-dont-lie.html
We are at the finish line
https://rvasisht.blogspot.com/2020/02/defense-industry-part-5-numbers-dont-lie.html
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