The idea is to improve the army’s “teeth to tail” ratio, that is, increase the number of soldiers actually doing the fighting against those needed to support them to fight.
The approval of the Union cabinet for the first phase of reforms in the armed forces is a welcome step. It will set into motion a plan to restructure the army which will redeploy 57,000 soldiers and civilians into fighting roles, thereby improving its operational efficiency. The idea is to improve the army’s “teeth to tail” ratio, that is, increase the number of soldiers actually doing the fighting against those needed to support them to fight. This phase of reforms, which concern only the army, will be completed by end-2019. These reforms emanate from the recommendations of an expert committee headed by Lt General D.B. Shekatkar (retd), which was tasked to recommend measures for enhancing combat capability and rebalancing defence expenditure.
The committee submitted its report in December last year, and its 188 recommendations have been studied and debated by the ministry and the defence services. The defence ministry has chosen 99 recommendations which pertain to the army, navy and air force — 65 of them, which are internal to the army, have been approved for implementation in this phase. It is believed that the other 34, which are internal to the air force and the navy, will also be implemented soon. But there are bigger questions about the rest of the recommendations of the committee, which deal with higher defence management, defence ministry and other organisations, such as the DRDO, ordnance factories and DGQA. The ministry has been silent about these steps which would have far-reaching effects towards reforming and modernising the decision-making structure for national security.
Proposals, like the one that establishes the need for a Chief of Defence Staff or for ensuring 2.5-3 per cent of GDP as defence expenditure, need political and bureaucratic consensus beyond the scope of the defence ministry but have not been debated so far. There is a genuine fear in the defence services that by choosing to act on proposals internal to personnel management of the army, it has only picked the low-hanging fruit. These fears are based on the experience with implementation of reports of earlier committees. The toughest recommendations of both the Arun Singh Committee, following the Kargil Review Commission, and of the Naresh Chandra Committee, formed by UPA 2 government, were initially deferred and then never saw the light of day. With a live threat from both China and Pakistan, defence reforms are an urgent need of the hour. The first steps with restructuring the army are important but they must be quickly followed by implementation of other recommendations, particularly those of higher defence management. Anything less will be another opportunity lost.
