[General Anil S. Chauhan at his ceremonial investiture as CDS]
At the United Service Institution of India yesterday, General Anil Singh Chauhan, Chief of the Defence Staff (CDS) delivered the Major General Samir Sinha Memorial Lecture. Tasked with integrating and theaterising the 19-odd military commands, he pretty much confessed that the job was beyond him. He talked of integrating logistics, communications, intel and everything else under the sun, but not about theaterizing the operational commands. Apparently, he thinks this task unachievable at least in the foreseeable future.
As senior officers and military veterans in the audience rolled their eyes knowingly at what General Chauhan did not say, the message got through with a bang. Does it come as a great big surprise to anyone? No. But one did not expect Chauhan to give up so publicly, so easily, on an initiative the Narendra Modi government has put much store by.
As a fairly low key type, Chauhan simply cannot replicate his predecessor the late General Bipin Rawat’s modus operandi of bullheadedly propelling the theaterisation programme, trampling on long nursed sensibilities without giving it much thought. Like, for instance, his dismissing the air force as a “support arm” and. collaterally, its longtime opposition to changing the status quo. It instantly steeled the IAF’s negative attitude to what Rawat was trying to do.
Then again, Rawat never made any bones about his Gurkha officer’s (5/11 GR) attitude to solving a problem — beat it down! Reflecting this attitude of pushing on regardless, he had by August 2021 readied the first of the theatre commands for operations. The Maritime Integrated Command, headquartered in Karwar, controlling the fighting assets administratively with the Western Naval Command, the Eastern Naval Command and the Andaman & Nicobar Command, was all set to go. A Vice Admiral was even selected to be its first Commander-in-Chief (CINC). And then the roof caved in.
IAF was not responsible for it. The senior babudom — the civil servants, was. The bureaucrats’ concern, as always when dealing with the military, was with protecting their positions in the pecking order, the ‘Warrant of Precedence’. To be fair, there was and is a problem with it that neither Rawat nor any agency of the government or military had bothered to address until then. A CINC of a new Integrated Command would be 4-star rank. How and where would he fit in? On the same rank-level, would he be senior, equal or junior to the Services’ Chiefs of Staff? That could possibly be resolved by jigging the seniority issue into an inter se seniority metric, even though the officers in the three services are in differently sized cadres, and get promoted and rise in different timeframes. Still, there may be a way to resolve it.
The problem is knottier when civil servants come into the picture. In the prevailing system, the Defence Secretary, the head babu in the Ministry of Defence, is junior to and below the three Services chiefs in the Warrant. Would the newly appointed integrated theatre commanders — enjoying the same 4-star rank status as the services’ chiefs, also outrank the Defence Secretary? Could they be placed at the Additional Secretary level but senior to the AdSec in the warrant? The Indian Administrative Service, allergic to any hint of demotion, raised hell and stopped the theaterisation initiative in its tracks. Since August 2021 there’s no advance on that front.
The question is how did General Rawat get as far as he did in realising the Maritime Integrated Command without resolving the Warrant-related issues? Did he subsume a special dispensation, courtesy his fellow Pauri Garhwali, Ajit Doval — the National Security Adviser? If so, why can’t Chauhan — a Gurkha officer (6/11 GR) and another native of Pauri Garhwal, revive it?
Whatever the way out of this mess, one thing is clear. The diminutive General Chauhan’s nice, aggreeable, soft talking, dull and discursive method, is not working. But, at least, he is not consigned to the basement of South Block as General Rawat initially was, when appointed as the first CDS. That, I suppose, is progress.
Security Wise 
Professor,
From what I read in this article, there will be three theatre commands initially and the job is 99% done. This is contrary to what you say.
https://theprint.in/defence/army-navy-iaf-finally-99-in-agreement-over-structure-of-proposed-theatre-commands/1646390/
So I guess we just have to wait and see what the final outcome is.
@Esteemed Dr Karnad,
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/three-theatre-commands-on-anvil-as-tri-services-concur/articleshow/101073664.cms.
The above article clearly states that the theatre commands are essentially a done job.Communications are being integrated , joint exercises and “officer exchange” is being carried out between the armed forces.With their initial structures to be rolled out early next year.
As far as the “soft-spoken”, “lackluster” ,”uncharismatic” Gen. Chauhan is concerned, he personifies the objective-minded archetypal Staff officer, essentially a “desk warrior”.It is actually gentleman like him who win wars.He certainly is far brighter a military mind than the late Gen. Rawat.While I do not wish to sling mud on the departed, but I cannot help but point out that his reference to the IAF as a “supporting arm” revealed his lack of any basic knowledge of campaigns since Field Marshal von Rundstedt’s armoured thrust throught the Ardennes in May 1940.Gen. Rawat was the classic fiery,outspoken and hard-charging infantryman.Gen. Chauhan with an Operations planning and not to mention extensive war-gaming background is far more suited to the role of the CDS than Gen. Rawat.
Rawat planned to have two theatre commands for dealing with China(Northern command for Ladakh and Eastern for North-East).This was,in fact, a cardinal error as there would have been no difference in dealing with the Chinese with that particular structure whether we had any theatre commands or not.The current structure of one theatre command for one enemy each is the natural solution to our external security problems.Moreover, I cannot agree more to the proposal of a four-star officer heading all the major combat theatre commands.This is because these four star officers will have even more incentive to perform on the field and win the fabled Field Marshal’s baton!
Bharatji,
Modi made an engineer (General Chauhan) the Chief of Defence Staff because he is nervous. Modi promised to make India another China, for which now all hope has disappeared. Post de-Colonisation of 1950s, no Asian/African/Latin American democracy has successfully industrialized. The first and true Asian Industrial success is Japan. Had India-style democracy been put in place in Japan in 1868, then Japan would also have been a catastrophic failure. India is a feudal-Agricultural country and will always remain to be so. If BJP loses elections then things will only become worse.
Will the next Chief of Defence Staff also be an Engineer ? Why not a doctor ?
I think modi should choose somebody from Army Medical Corps to Lead Indian Army.
General Chauhan is not an engineer. The current army chief General Manoj Pande is a Bombay Sapper, a combat engineer.
@Gab Singh, post 1950, S. Korea and Singapore industrialised. Thailand, Malaysia have also made significant improvements. Indonesia, and Philipines have much higher per capita GDPs than India and are still growing. All indications are that India is making the right progress. If you look at South Indian states, per capita gdp is approaching $4k this year. Why the pessimism?
The foundation of South Korea’s Industrialization was laid by Gen Park Chung Hee. Singapore was industrialized by Lee Kuan Yew. He was never a typical democrat. South Korea and Singapore became democracies later one because their economy had reached a certain stage. As far as Thailand and Philippines are concerned, I would not like to comment on them.
Americans want to cut-off from China. They are willing to buy from India. Now it is upon India to manufacture stuff and export. We need to do Labour law reforms and other stuff. I do not see this happening in Indian Democratic nonsense.
You are right that India has to still make major changes in easing bottlenecks in economic factors of production (labor, land, capital and tech, although labor and land are the big ones now). But this has been attempted, and there will likely be another attempt to reform these. There has been good change in capital (infrastructure, tax structure, bankruptcy laws etc.) and tech (UPI, Aadhaar, banking expansion, digitisation etc.).
Regarding friend shoring and alternate supply chains, look at the size of the American market. They are dead serious about diversification. I hear all the think tanks talk about IPEF. And India is always mentioned. India is extremely frustrating, but it is also making the right kind of changes – there has been definite progress in capital and tech factors of production. So there will be some positive impact of friend shoring. Maybe not as much as everyone likes, but something.
I would bet that India will achieve higher middle income status ($10k per capita gdp). The key to making that happen would be to improve the Ganga belt of states – UP, Bihar, Jharkhand, W. Bengal; and MP, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh. UP is starting to change. Those other big states will be key to how developed India becomes. The two regions one can be bullish about in India would be the south and the west. It is quite likely they will become the engines of Indian growth – so yes, there is a possibility of unequal growth.
Whether India becomes fully developed – who knows. But even with a $10k type per capita, it will pack a big punch in global affairs. And if you take PPP per capita, India will definitely be a topper (PPP will make a difference if more stuff is made in India).
The thought of creating Theatre Commands in India was ridiculous in the first place. We are not deployed all over the world that we would need Theatre Commands. Our structures in the three services are in place and work well. What we could improve is inter-service training. This is precisely what IAF had been harping on from the beginning.. but did not say it in so many words. I feel, it should have been bold enough to call a spade a spade right from the beginning than to divert attention to other reasons.
Email from Admiral Arun Prakash, former Chairman, Chiefs of Staff Committee. and Chief of the Naval Staff
Thu, 29 June at 6:10 pm
Dear Bharat,
Please refer to the following passage in your post: “The bureaucrats’ concern, as always when dealing with the military, was with protecting their positions in the pecking order, the ‘Warrant of Precedence’. To be fair, there was and is a problem with it that neither Rawat nor any agency of the government or military had bothered to address until then.”
If “concern” about the WoP, that you attribute to the bureaucrats, is all that it took to stall the process of “theaterisation,” then it is an appalling reflection on the maturity of our bureaucracy and the vision & sagacity of our decision-makers.
I say this because Note 1 to the “Table of Precedence” issued by the President’s Secretariat states quite clearly: “The order in this Table of Precedence is meant for State and Ceremonial occasions and has no application in the day-to-day business of Government.” Unfortunately, this Note comes at the foot of the notification, which is rarely read by anyone!
At best, this table should be used for deciding the seating arrangements or line-ups at functions, but certainly not to influence issues impinging on national security.
This may not have relevance for us, but let us note that in the US system, the Service Chiefs, the CINCS, and often their Service Component Commanders are all 4-star officers.
Their bureaucracy seems to have no concerns, because it none of their business.
Regards,
Email from Lt Gen Ajay Singh (ret)
Thu, 29 June at 10:50 pm
Apprpos your article & the Admiral’s comments:
– I was out of station & hence could not attend the talk by CDS.
My understanding is that we are headed for 3 theatre Commands, ie , Northern , western & maritime. The issue of protocol seniority is something that can be resolved , as pointed out by the Admiral .
Best regards
Email from Air Marshal VK Verma (ret)
Fri, 30 June at 1:29 pm
Very very interesting
Dear Mr Karnad,
It was the Major General Samir Sinha Memorial Lecture and not as mentioned by you. Gen Sinha succeeded Col Pyare Lal as Director and was responsible for arranging funds, land etc and establishing the USI in its present location.
At the lecture the General Chauhan did not in any way suggest that the theatrisation initiative had stalled or been delayed.
Matter of fact he pointed out the complexities involved and the necessity to follow a logical sequence that moved from the present single service functioning to jointmanship and on to integrated functioning with theatrisation being the end state. I don’t believe he can be faulted for his logic.
To expect theatrisation to be undertaken without first sorting out the nitty gritty makes little sense as it would then have led to more confusion rather than anything else. There appears to be a gradual understanding within the security establishment that the theatre commands are not aimed at reducing the existing commands but at ensuring better coordination and control of the various similiar geographical/functional commands of each of the services.
In my view while joint and integrated functioning are an indispensable necessity, the need for theatrisation needs further evaluation, especially since we do not have imperial ambitions. Indeed,if anything the focus needs to be on jointmanship and integrated functioning.
Regards
Thank you, text corrected on the ‘Sinha lecture’. I didn’t make it to the lecture — clean forgot about it. The post is based on an attendee’s account of it.
This is a poor article with the conclusion that it is the the high headed IAS officers that has scuttled the ill conceived system of theaterisation based on Chinese concepts.
The problem for the senior military officers who matter and are the single points of discussion with the civilian government keep their guards down infront of poorly trained civil servants and ill advised politicians. These very officers who rose in ranks facing problems of denial of best equipments and compensations. Facade of in service discussions of pro and cons of theater commands and views was ever put in open forum.
I wonder, how we could simply be deceived by Chinese in downsizing our military and bring the state of affairs that we are streched at LOC.
In the future, when we would look back at our military history, late General Rawat would stand apart for the sheet damage he alone caused to armed forces.
We know in the forces, that we don’t have wherewithal and lack assets to be divided into theater system,but other then IAF ,no one pointed this to politicians and in the process IAF was shown stumbling block.
You go to street and to a common person,give him the situation,I am sure he would be more prudent then these senior military officers.
We fought war in the past together and won without these concepts. Future combats wbe autonomous with UCAVs ,unmanned military aircrafts and majority of offensive ops would be from home based without crossing land borders and Ukraine is closest case for these uninformed generals.
Lastly, conclusion drawn by article is poor.
The initial CDS chosen by the govt gen Bipin Rawat and Chauhan are both army officers with narrow exposure to Technology oriented services like IAF and Navy . A Retd former chief senior to the chiefs defence useless babus was the need of the hour . Who better tha Admiral Arun Prakash fitted the bill better A former navy fighter pilot with service in IAF during 71 war son of a IAS babu not cowed by the wicked scheming babus he was the ideal candidate . Army generals like Bipin Rawat and Chauhan should have been under him . Capable of managing the IAF concerns he would have navigated and ensured the ideal theatre commands with babus taken care of . Having a combined eastern , western fleet and Andaman and Nicobar command is a disaster in waiting and would have made command control , inspection operations training a overburdened , unmanageable set up with elbow not knowing the arse working in silos . The Eastern and western and Andaman Nicobar are separate entities and require separate command control administer action spares logistics repairs set up and cannot be centralised . Operations yes under a operational Cdr at present DCNS ops and ACNS ops working under vice chief and chief . Surface , sub surface air assets of navy airforce are insufficient for creation of theatre commands and no’s have to be sanctioned built purchased to increase holdings rapidly before theatre commands are even operationalised . A good beginning would be to start with brigades and divisions , upgrade to Corp and commands and finally Total merger within next 10 years .
Thanks for a very insightful understanding of the situation. I have been researching to find a direction and optimal policy for the defence industry the past six years and eventually realised that it isn’t possible unless the real threats to the people of India (not the British demarcated geography) are deeply examined. Except for the internal self-made unrest in Kashmir and Manipur, I simply cannot see China wanting to and Pak being in a position to antagonise India. What exactly would they want from India? Territory ? Or simply resolving the Kashmir peoples problem of living on two sides of an LC? And safeguarding the CPEC which runs through PoK? And will not aiming to be a regional power make our 400 million poverty trapped people even poorer with defence expenditure denying them the opportunity of basic needs like health care and education of their children? Too many questions and no one is answering. Do share the answers or write to kevin.deftotindia@gmail.com
All the civilians employed in Army ( A O C ) and EME , ASC should be paid Pension ” Not from Indian Army funds ” .
They should be paid Pension from Central Govt Funds like other civilian
Employees .
@ S B Sharma- Why? and what special thing you army folks have done?
India last fought a war in 1971. Kargil was limited to that particular terrain only.
Indian armed forces are the most overhyped organization in the country. They have no respect for civilians and consider themselves as Superman.
@Murugan- Spot on brother. Once an Army Captain (an old school friend of mine) took me with him to one of these so called Army Clubs in the Cantonment area.
The bartender on seeing me told his assistant ‘One Civilian Peg’. I told him straight that listen fella, I can drink you to the floor. A drink is a drink what’s this bloody civilian peg?
The serving army personnel remain busy in buying stuff at subsidized rates from their army canteens and sell it in the open market. The ones on high positions keep on handing their never ending shopping lists to the central government regarding buying this weapon system or that. They get hefty commissions on all these foreign weapon deals.
The retired ones keep barking in the TV studios that we can handle a two front war blah blah. China gave you folks such a good opportunity three years back in Mid June 2020 by attacking and killing your Commanding Officer. What was your reaction?
PLA were using clubs, sticks and stones. Who stopped you from using your guns at that time?
You army officers are even worse than the much abused civilian babus.You folk leave no stone unturned in your attempts to sabotage any and all local defense programs.Without local weapons you are not “fighting for the fatherland” but rather simply fighting a proxy war at the behest of a greater power(like in 1971) and soldiers like yourself are nothing more than disposable “brown sepoy” cannon fodder.The civilian babudom gets well deserved flak from everybody.However, army and Air Force officers are no better and in many cases, even worse.OROP was incontrovertibly the single biggest self-inflicted wound upon the armed forces.Only officers should have received any pension.The much larger scheme is a systematic and criminal drain on scarce funds.
What are the achievements of the armed forces in last 50 years?You all were caught with your pants down by the Chinese PLA back in the spring of 2020.That is when you all woke up about the need for local defense industry, integration of tri-services and long-range precision guided munitions.The Chinese did nothing more than repeat the playbook used by Gen. Musharraf back in Kargil 1999.Even back then, and against such an inferior enemy, you all were caught again with your pants down.It took you months to first notice the infiltration and more than 8 weeks of combat to eliminate enemy light infantry with hardly any heavy weapons at all.You all used disproportionate amounts of heavy artillery and airpower.The latter too had to carry out emergency imports from Israel due to “unpreparedness for mountain warfare”.The army had to give emergency contracts to bharat forge to produce the vast volumes of 155mm shells needed to replace the ones being unloaded at the the enemy.The US denied GPS access at critical blind spots in Paki positions which resulted in GoI-ISRO developing the GAGAN-IRNSS navigation system.The artillery preparation before the main assaults was such that thousands of shells were fired at each enemy occupied hill.The famous tiger hill was struck with a mammoth 9,000 shells.This artillery preparation was almost as overwhelming as the famous soviet bombardments preceding their fabled offensives of 1944-45,when they concentrated 400 guns per kilometer of German defenses.Despite using such overwhelming firepower you all didn’t/were unable to kick the enemy out of a handful of peaks which still remain under enemy control.(Dare you to prove me wrong)
(follow-up to my previous post)
You army/IAF officers cannot handle basic COIN/CT Ops and after retirement start talking in TV studios along with fellow armchair experts about “Variable-cycle engines”,”Air-breathing Hypersonic weapons”,”Co-orbital ASAT weapons”.You folk are even worse than the much derided Paki officer corps.Whatever one may say about them,these men have ensured ensured their country’s existence against a far stronger enemy purely through their ruthlessness and boldness.These are two critical attributes which you army officers are totally devoid of. The excuse of “civilian control” has become cliche.You folk have failed to suppress insurgencies in places like Kashmir despite being given 30 long years to do so.The insurgency was always centered at a handful of North-Kashmir districts which are inhabited by a hopelessly implacable population.Back in the days of WW2,the Nazis and the Soviets didnt even bother regular units with this “rear-area nonsense” and let sadistic men like SS-Standartenfuhrer Dirlewangwer and steel-hearted NKVD units handle it,respectively.And this was when Soviet partisan units were incomparably larger,better equipped and led than the Jihadis which the ISI sends across the LoC. You folk sent as many 600,000 regular men over in North kashmir during the height of the insurgency and still failed.The long term was drawback was that our army officer corps became a team of CT experts much like today’s Pentagon and not objective-minded,tech savvy experts needed to fight a great power war with china.
The last three comments really sum up this overhyped Indian army 😆😆😆
To burst the balloon, Indians are taught wrong history. India didn’t win the 1965 war with Pakistan;
https://www.dw.com/en/why-neither-india-nor-pakistan-won-the-1965-war/a-18677930
The article by Mr Bharat Karnad seems to be based on his personal perceptions and prejudices. Some impediments that are stated by him to be holding up Theaterisation are the ones which can be solved by a determined political leadership. Issues of precedence between the hierarchy of the Armed Forces and the bureaucracy cannot be allowed to hold up Theaterisation of the Armed Forces.
What is necessary is political will and directions on issues of dissonance.
It is also necessary to allot additional finances to cater for the reorganisation and raising of new organisations like Cyber and Space Commands. Cutting redundancies and keeping fighting units deficient of manpower will only meet part of the required finances for extensive reorganisation of the Armed Forces to counter future threats.
@Nair- Yeah the whole world has seen how Indian army fought with PLA using medieval era weapons.
There is no need to waste even 1 Rupee on procuring any weapons for you folks. Watch Ramayana and Mahabharata TV series and start training your soldiers for war in those styles.
Professor,
Here is an analysis by some people from Stanford, CSIS and China on the accuracy of Chinese GDP metrics. These guys are all economists, but their low key factual statements are nothing short of alarming. Chinese GDP data is not accurate, and it should be not looked at for investment decisions is what the message is. Many other assessments, much harsher than this one also significantly dent Chinese GDP data veracity.
Key question is how big is the Chinese GDP? Is it $19T in 2023? Or closer to $10T? Those two numbers are quite different and a lot of decisions can be different based on them.
Email from Ranjit Barot
Thu, 6 July at 12:48 am
From above article, kindly let me know if I understood correctly that the Modi government was about to purchase F series fighters? And bringing out the reality from people like you stopped this transaction?
If I understood you correctly than the role of Jaishankar as the Foreign Minister should be under cloud. You have also mentioned Harsh Singhala, I saw his photo with Steve Bannon when Singhala was the Indian Ambassador. Interacting with anyone is the job of the Ambassador but the photo was taken in the office of Steve Bannon who had no government position and was just an ideologue for Donald Trump known for spreading lies.
I am not an engineer but have a close friend who has been involved in rockets and aeronautics since last 50 years who said F series fighters are obsolete and Lockheed is sitting on huge inventory – conforming with what you have written.
If I have understood you correctly then the recently signed agreements too should be under cloud.
Respectfully,
Ranjit Barot