CHIEF AGENDA

GENERAL MANOJ MUKUND NARAVANE TAKES OVER AT A TIME THE ARMY IS GOING THROUGH A BUDGET SQUEEZE, A RIGHTSIZING DRIVE AND EXPLORING NEW BATTLE STRATEGIES

- Sandeep Unnithan

GENERAL M.M. NARAVANE has taken over as army chief at a significant juncture in India’s defence history. In appointing his predecessor, General Bipin Rawat, as India’s first Chief of Defence Staff(CDS) on December 30, the government signalled it was ready to begin restructuring the defence ministry and integrating the three armed forces into a single command structure. These recommendations were made nearly two decades ago by the Kargil Review Committee, but remained unimplemented for reasons ranging from political lethargy to a status quo-ist, change-resistant system.

Seen from the standpoint of reform, General Naravane is now best placed to execute what he implicitly believes in—preparing the world’s second-largest army to fight the wars of the future. “We aren’t modernising to fight past wars, we will be modernising to fight the next war,” he told a small group of media personnel in South Block two days after taking over as India’s 28th Chief of Army Staff. “Future wars are likely to be more technology-oriented, in the cyber domain, [involving] robotics and artificial intelligence… that is what we are looking at.”

With General Rawat’s entry into the defence ministry as a full-fledged Secretary in the to-be-created Department of Military Affairs, the armed forces now have a hotline to political leaders. (Until now, the armed forces functioned only as attached offices to the defence ministry.) There is now hope that the military’s reform proposals will have swift passage through civilian bureaucracy and political leadership. However, bringing change to an institution that has remained almost unaltered since Independence will be a tough job. For instance, the Indian army remains one of the world’s largest users of mules and bayonets, an indicator of how much it needs to upgrade its resources and methods.