According to the old cliche, armies march on their stomachs. But not in this country. Going by the Chief of Army Staff's recent letter to the Prime Minister, the Indian Army marches on pie in the sky. Promises of higher allocations to improve combat worthiness have not been met. Meanwhile, budget cuts over the last few years have led to critical shortages across operational, logistical and maintenance sectors. There are gaps in everything from battle tanks to food supplies and clothing, electronic warfare systems to fuel and paint, light helicopters to accommodation.

Compared to what generals in the neighbourhood are demanding and getting in the way of high technology and sophistication, a large part of General Shankar Roychowdury's wishlist reads like the bare essentials for an old-fashioned, shoot-what-moves-and-paint-everything-else army. It should make the government and Parliament sit up and think. There is more here than the annual ritual of service chiefs complaining about cutbacks. There is more here than can be solved by a few grudging crores more.

No prizes for guessing how MPs are going to react to the Army Chief's letter. They are entirely predictable. Chest-beating about national security is what MPs do best and they will do it again loudly this year until P Chidambaram loosens the purse-strings. Then the Army, the Navy and the Air Force will be forgotten. National security is not served by periodic bouts of anguish expressed in Parliament followed by amnesia. Knee-jerk reactions and ad hoc solutions over the last decade have done more harm to the defence services than anything else. Certainly, there must be concern about sending jawans to the Himalayas in tennis shoes. But the solution should not stop with sending out for boots.

It is high time the government and Parliament asked themselves some basic questions. Are resources being spread too thinly over a million-strong Army? Is it necessary to go on running vast establishments around the country? What force levels are required in each sector, are they inadequate or excessive at present? What needs to be improved and how? What are the other means available to reduce perceived threats to security?

A review of the security doctrine in order to proceed with modernising the Army and other services is long overdue. Such thinking as there has been during the last decade has stayed on paper. Three years ago, following dramatic changes in the world scene, a Parliamentary Committee came to the astonishing conclusion that the government did not have well-defined objectives. Indeed, it found nothing it could call an integrated defence policy. It would be no exaggeration to say the approach has been piecemeal, consisting of plugging a few holes, looking for new equipment suppliers, flirting with hi-tech solutions and raising a few more forces. All over the world, including China, modern armies are getting smaller, fitter and more hi-tech. But nowhere are service chiefs expected to begin the process on the basis of arbitrary budget cuts and a ramshackle defence policy. National security needs some hard thinking and it needs it now.

Copyright © 1997 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.