Civilian supremacy and defence reforms

India should not wait for another crisis to recognise the pressing need for higher defence reforms. There are sufficient studies, reports and recommendations that the government can depend on while planning the restructuring process. It can also consider an Act of Parliament to offset the existing resistance to defence reforms

Prime Minister Narendra Modi should appoint a defence minister — a full-time one — and demonstrate a great deal of administrative acumen and political will if he is serious about his declared intent to strengthen India’s national security and defence preparedness. Indeed, the absence of a full-time defence minister is merely symptomatic of a larger set of serious structural problems being faced by the country’s higher defence management today, which is in urgent need of innovative reforms and radical restructuring. Mr. Modi’s address to the Combined Commanders Conference in New Delhi on October 17 found no mention of structural reforms in higher defence management whereas his predecessor did mention it from time to time even though the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government had sidestepped implementing the crucial reforms.

The disturbing reality today is that in the absence of a full-time defence minister and by not introducing defence reforms, it is the civilian bureaucracy — having generalist IAS officers whose expertise in defence matters is questionable — that has a major say in the country’s defence planning and decision-making. This needs to change.

Committee recommendations

The demand for reforms in India’s higher defence management is a long-standing one and has grown in strength ever since the Kargil Review Committee (KRC) recommended a number of reforms. In 2000, the then National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government appointed a Group of Ministers (GoM), with four task forces on intelligence reforms, internal security, border management, and higher defence management, to review the country’s defence preparedness in the light of the KRC’s recommendations. Many of the recommendations made by the GoM were only partially implemented. And the most important one, of creating the post of Chief of Defence Staff (CDS), was ignored.

“It is the civilian bureaucracy that has a major say in the country’s defence planning and decision-making. This needs to change.”

As a result, it has been widely perceived over the past decade or so that the country’s defence sector needs further restructuring. In response, the UPA government appointed a task force on national security under the chairmanship of Mr. Naresh Chandra in 2011; it submitted its report a year later. Although classified, some of its content has been leaked to the press. Many of its recommendations were not to the liking of the Ministry of Defence (MoD) and the Defence Minister. As a result, the UPA government lost an opportunity to introduce crucial reforms. The report was to have been taken up by the Cabinet Committee on Security in February this year — after the government sat on it for no less than one-and-a-half years, but it was too late by then as the UPA government felt that it should not take key national security decisions in its final days in office. It’s now the turn of the NDA government to act.

Key issues

One of the key issues that should be addressed by the Modi government is the GoM’s recommendation to appoint a five-star military officer to serve as the Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) who then will be the single-point military adviser to the government. The CDS will chair the meetings of the Chiefs of Staff Committee (CoSC) and smoothen the process of military planning, streamlining budgetary requisitions and effecting coordination between the three services. This proposal was earlier shot down by the MoD as it feared that a “super general” would bypass the civilian bureaucracy in defence decision-making. There has also been opposition to the idea from within the military, by the Indian Air Force (IAF). The Chandra committee, being cognisant of the bureaucratic opposition to the CDS proposal, watered down the authority of the CDS and instead recommended the creation of a four-star permanent chairman of the CoSC. According to reports, this chairman, to be appointed on a two-year tenure on a rotational basis among the three services, will not only coordinate various inter-service issues but will also be in charge of the country’s tri-Service Commands: the Strategic Forces Command (SFC) dealing with India’s nuclear forces and the Andaman and Nicobar Command (ANC). This too was put on the back burner after opposition from the MoD.

Another issue is the creation of tri-service theatre commands. While the future of warfare lies in joint planning and operations, the Indian defence establishment has ignored it. As a result, the country’s defence planning is deeply reflective of service-specific strengths, weaknesses and visions. Issues that should be addressed jointly by all three services are hardly ever the priority of any of the services. Without a common leader, each service chief tends to be the spokesman of his own service. The primary concern is about a protection of autonomous turfs, and not in promoting jointness as it is bound to challenge claims of autonomy. The IAF’s opposition to the establishment of tri-service theatre commands is one such example.

Building expertise

The other area of concern is the absence of synergy among the various arms of the state dealing with defence and national security: the armed forces, the MoD, the Ministry of External Affairs and the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO). An attempt at synergy was made in 1986 when the Directorate General of Defence Planning Staff (DGDPS) was formed, but it never got anywhere because civilian officers were not keen on working in the DGDPS which functioned under the CoSC. Post-Kargil, the KRC report had proposed the integration of the armed forces headquarters with the MoD, as doing so would have led to more cohesion in the country’s defence planning. Instead, the government created the Integrated Defence Staff (IDS) — run by three-star officers and with hardly any role in the defence decision-making. It does not fulfil any of the intended purposes. In June this year, Union Defence Minister Arun Jaitley laid the foundation stone of the IDS building in New Delhi. He emphasised the need to develop “synergy between the services to achieve optimum force application”. But the IDS, Mr. Jaitley should know, is a stillborn institution and cannot contribute to synergy among the forces.

The GoM and Chandra committee reports strongly recommended the posting of military officers to important posts in the MoD to improve defence planning. Generalist IAS officers who spend one or two years in the MoD are unlikely to understand the highly complex nature of defence issues and strategic planning. This is the result of an unhealthy tendency in the government to prioritise routine administrative management over strategic planning based on specialised domain knowledge. It is time the government realised the need for specialised knowledge and expertise in the MoD. This can be taken care of by encouraging civilian officers to build expertise in strategic affairs and involving the services in strategic decision-making.

Standing committee reports

It is not as if politicians are unaware of what ails India’s higher defence structures. Various defence related parliamentary standing committee reports have not only supported reforms but have often expressed displeasure over the lack of their implementation by the MoD. In 2007, one such report, on the CDS, said that “the Government should take the GoM’s recommendations as well as this Committee’s concern in this matter seriously and take the final decision on CDS at the earliest.”

In 2009, another standing committee on defence (SCD) said that it is “of the considered view that the creation of an additional post of Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) to act as Chairman of the CoSC is essential to ensure optimum level of jointness among the different wings of the Armed Forces and to provide single-point military advice to the Government.” Parliamentary committees have also been critical of the Defence Ministry’s unwillingness to implement the required reforms. The second SCD report of the 15th Lok Sabha said: “Merely writing letters even from the level of the Defence Minister is not sufficient. There is an urgent need to use the various fora of interaction with the leaders of the political parties … The Committee expects the Ministry to take the effective steps as suggested above so that the institution of CDS is set up expeditiously.”

The Defence Ministry’s favourite excuse for not carrying out defence reforms is that there is no political or inter-service consensus on what shape the reforms should take. The reality is that it has never been serious about creating such a political consensus, and it will remain a pipe dream. The lack of inter-service agreement on defence reforms is not difficult to overcome. Today, there is clear consensus among the services on the issue of the CDS even though such consensus has still to be arrived at on the issue of tri-service commands.

The other excuse is that keeping the military out of decision-making strengthens civilian supremacy over the armed forces, a flawed argument for a number of reasons. One, while civilian supremacy should imply the supremacy of the political leadership, in India it translates into the overlordship of the civil services over the armed forces given that political bosses hardly have any time to manage defence related issues. As a result, the defence secretary, a generalist IAS officer, is the one who advises the minister on defence issues besides “managing” the armed forces. Second, since generalist bureaucrats in the Defence Ministry are not experts in the defence sector, they are either reluctant to carry out reforms whose importance they don’t understand, or actively obstruct them fearing the loss of the authority they have traditionally enjoyed. Creating a special cadre of defence specialists is one way to overcome this problem.

India should not wait for another crisis to recognise, all over again, the need for higher defence reforms. There are already sufficient studies, reports and recommendations that the government can depend on while planning the restructuring process. The government could also consider an Act of Parliament to offset the existing resistance to defence reforms

India’s gender gap rank worse than last year

It ranks 114 out of 142 countries in World Economic Forum’s 2014 gender gap index

India has performed poorly in removing gender-based disparities, ranking 114 out of 142 countries in World Economic Forum’s 2014 gender gap index, scoring below average on parameters like economic participation, educational attainment and health and survival.

India slipped 13 spots from its last year’s ranking of 101 on the Gender Gap Index by the World Economic Forum. India is part of the 20 worst-performing countries on the labour force participation, estimated earned income, literacy rate and sex ratio at birth indicators.

On the other hand, India is among the top 20 best-performing countries on the political empowerment subindex.

The index was first introduced by the World Economic Forum in 2006 as a framework for capturing the magnitude of gender-based disparities and tracking their progress. The index benchmarks national gender gaps on economic, political, education and health criteria.

On the criteria of economic participation and opportunity, India was ranked 134. Its female to male ratio in labour force participation was 0.36. The disparity in estimated earned income was high with females earning USD 1980 compared to USD 8087 earned by their male counterparts.

On educational attainment, India ranked 126 with female to male ratio in literacy rate at 0.68. India was the second-lowest performing country on health and survival, ranking 141 just ahead of Armenia.

However, on political empowerment subindex, India ranked an impressive 15. It is the highest-ranked country on the years with female head of state (over the past 50 years) indicator. There is also some evidence from India to suggest that women in local government roles make decisions with better outcomes for communities than men do when charged with budget decisions. They also appear to be more competent representatives than men, obtaining more resources for their constituencies despite having significantly lower education and relevant labour market experience.

The report said that India has the highest difference between women and men on the average minutes spent per day on unpaid work—a difference of 300 minutes. It is also among the countries with the highest difference in the female and male percentage of total R&D personnel. India has one of the lowest percentages of firms with female participation in ownership.

Govt aims to make $15-bn IoT industry in India by 2020 Internet of Things is a network of inter-connected devices that can be accessed through the Internet

The government is working on an ambitious plan to create $15 billion 'Internet of Things' industry in the next six years. Internet of Things, or IoT, can be loosely described as a network of inter-connected devices that can be accessed through the Internet.

For instance, with IoT, street lights will automatically go off when they sense no traffic on the roads and consequently save power. Another application could be a smart band that will automatically alert physician when body vitals go to abnormal levels.

"Among other things, IoT can help automate solutions to problems faced by various industries like agriculture, health services, energy, security, disaster management etc. Through remotely connected devices," the draft IoT policy document says.

Some of the proposed concepts under the policy include development of tools to monitor quality of water flowing in taps and levels in reservoirs, smart environment to monitor quality of air, technology to monitor changes in body vitals and send alerts to hospitals.

Human role will be limited to setting up parameters for alerts and other activities expected from the objects.

The policy has the objective "to create an IoT industry in India of $15 billion by 2020. This will also lead to increase in the connected devices from around 200 million to over 2.7 billion by 2020."

The number of internet-connected devices (12.5 billion) surpassed the number of human beings (7 billion) on the planet in 2011, and by 2020, Internet-connected devices are expected to number between 26 billion and 50 billion globally, the draft policy document said.

The proposed policy is in line of government's plan to develop 100 smart cities in the country, for which Rs 7,060 crore has been earmarked in the current year's Budget.

Devices or objects under IoT, will be connected seamlessly on networks and communicate with least human intervention. The IoT policy excludes phones, tablets and personal computers.

The Department of Telecom has already floated a draft policy on technical communication among machines but is yet to finalise guidelines.

To boost IoT, the government has plans to fund creation of resource centres and test-beds as a common experimental facility to conduct experiments with an allocation of Rs 18 crore as 100% fund with Rs 1 crore for each partner and Rs 3 crore for nodal agency over a period of five years.

The government will set up incubation centres that are proposed to be called National Centre of Excellence in partnership with IT industry body NASSCOM and other industry associations at an estimated cost of Rs 35 crore for 5 years to execute a centre with capacity of 40 people

Defence purchases need speeding up Govt must prioritise defence acquisitions

Between 1986 and 2000, the Indian navy commissioned 14 submarines. In the 14 years since, it has added just onesubmarine (a nuclear-powered one leased from Russia). The next new submarine will not come before 2016. When the first batch of six Scorpene submarines is fully delivered by 2021, it will be two decades after they were ordered. And by the time the new batch of six submarines that has just been approved is delivered, the pre-2000 submarines will have been phased out of service. In 2030, therefore, India will have 12 diesel-electric submarines and perhaps two or three nuclear submarines, making for a total of 15, compared to the 24 that were deemed desirable in a plan approved in 1997. The tragic state of India's defence preparedness is more than evident in these numbers.

The principal problem has been that no submarines were ordered between the late 1980s and 2001, in part as a fall-out of defence acquisition scandals. A subsidiary problem has been delays in local manufacture. As a matter of fact, the home-made Arihant nuclear submarine, which was launched more than five years ago, is yet to start sea trials; so its commissioning is some way off. What is true of the navy's submarine fleet is true of the army and the air force, whether it is night-fighting capabilities or a proper air defence system. The air force's strength is barely two-thirds of the 40 squadrons it should have, even as the order for seven squadrons of Rafale multi-role fighters is still awaited.

The Modi government has been trying hard to play catch-up. Three months before the latest orders for Rs 80,000 crore worth of equipment, an order for Rs 21,000 crore worth of hardware had been approved - for supply ships, light helicopters, transport aircraft and anti-tank weaponry. Most of these were to be made in India, and the transport aircraft reserved for the private sector (a unique reversal of the usual reservation that is done for the public sector). The stress on indigenous manufacture fits well with the government's "Make in India" thrust, and a greater role for the private sector has been facilitated by raising the limit on foreign investment in the defence equipment sector from 26 per cent to 49 per cent. These initiatives are to be welcomed, and could help reduce delays in equipment delivery. However, it should be noted that all the equipment orders are decisions by the Defence Acquisitions Council. There is a lot of ground to be covered after this before firm orders are approved by the Cabinet, and the need now is for urgency in the selection process and negotiations that must follow.

The new government is also putting stress on something that its predecessor woke up to only belatedly - the need to improve border transport infrastructure, both road and rail. Because India's total defence spending is well short of the level (three per cent of its gross domestic product) recommended some years ago by the National Security Advisory Board, there are limits to how much can be done in double-quick time. What is clear, though, is that defence acquisitions will have to be at high speed for some time to come.

Global financial alternatives New Asian bank to increase India's funding options

Close on the heels of the announcement at the BRICS Summit in July that the five-nation group would set up a development bank, another similar initiative has been set in motion. Last week, India, China and 19 other Asian countries signed an agreement to set up the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, or AIIB, with an initial capital base of $50 billion, to be subscribed by the member countries in proportion to their gross domestic product (measured in purchasing power parity terms). By this formula, China will be the largest shareholder, by a significant margin, while India will be next on the list. Both the BRICS Development Bank and the AIIB are essentially motivated by the same concerns. The global financial system in general and the multilateral financial institutions (MFIs) in particular are dominated by the developed economies, particularly the United States. These are now consumed with a set of financial challenges somewhat removed from the development agenda. Even relatively small steps to reform their governance structures to give emerging economies a larger role are being stonewalled. Meanwhile, the need for large investments in infrastructure in these countries is becoming more and more pressing, if reasonable growth and development objectives are to be met. The solution so far has been to form your own bank. And now that both the BRICS Development Bank and the AIIB are a reality, questions on whether they offer a genuine alternative to the established MFIs are likely to be raised.

It is to be noted that the great strength of the MFIs is their ability to access global capital on the sovereign ratings of their largest shareholders. Even the regional institutions are predominantly owned by developed economies. In effect, they have been intermediating between savings in the developed economies and investment in emerging ones. Without these high-rated economies, the new institutions are constrained in their ability to raise funds by the relatively lower ratings of their shareholders. Of course, this is not their intent in any case. In both institutions, Chinese resources, as reflected in their huge foreign-exchange reserves, will constitute a significant proportion of the capital base. But without the capacity for leverage that the MFIs have, the lending capacity of these new institutions will be relatively small. Then, of course, there is the concern that China will effectively control the lending agenda, ensuring that all the projects financed are consistent with its strategic interests. As lopsided as the governance structure of the MFIs may be, there is some protection against its complete capture by a single dominant interest. This will be much more difficult in institutions owned and financed by a smaller number of countries, with one of them clearly dominant.

Nevertheless, in a larger picture, these banks can be seen as the first steps in creating a financial architecture based exclusively on development objectives and funded exclusively by emerging economies. Governance and operating principles will take time to emerge through what will almost certainly be a contentious process, but that is how things work. India's need for infrastructure finance is so large that no door should be closed. These experiments may or may not work, but the process has to be set in motion.

Different kinds of partnership The quality and bandwidth of India's strategic ties with Japan, the United States, and China are not the same

On assuming office, Prime Minister Narendra Modi inherited aforeign policy marked increasingly by drift and uncertainty in the face of a sinking economy, growing global challenges and far-reaching changes in the power dynamics of Asia. With characteristic self-confidence, Mr Modi has since rapidly restored India's stature in the international arena and redefined the terms of its strategic outreach to major powers.

While handling important summit meetings with precision and poise, Mr Modi has struck a fine balance between transformative and transactional elements to build subtly differentiated partnerships with Japan, China and the US. This augurs well for the forthcoming round of regional and global summits on which he will embark in November.

The PM's brand of strategic ambition has several distinct components. It is aimed at restoring India's credibility. It signals pragmatic engagement of all major powers, each on its own merit. It raises India's profile by leveraging the soft power of democracy and the universal values that Indiaupholds. It signals the full alignment of foreign policy with India's domestic economic goals, security interests and global aspirations. It marks the interjection of India's role and responsibility in shaping the Asian and global power balance. It displays flexibility on economic engagement, firmness on meeting security challenges and resolve in safeguarding India's "core" sovereign and territorial interests. And finally, it promises the rapid operationalisation of commitments made with foreign partners, as witnessed by the constitution of a "Japan Plus" team and Core Group within a month of Modi's Tokyo visit. Each component is driven by strategic intent.

A new "Modified" framework for strategic engagement to advance India's national interests is emerging.

The foreign ministry has tended to use the terminology of "strategic partnership" rather liberally and without appropriate categorisation. There is need for much greater rigour to shape the nature of these partnerships in line with long-term global assessments and a long-overdue national strategic doctrine.

If India is to build genuine "strategic partnerships", these need to be better understood and defined.

Various categories of mutually beneficial partnerships can come into play when there are congruent interests between countries in multiple domains.

However, a far more accurate definition of "strategic partnership" would be a broad convergence of interests between two countries which has the capacity to fundamentally impact the balance of power to their mutual advantage, regionally and globally. In other words, this transformative element of serving each other's fundamental national interests is inherent to relations between strategic partners. Commitments are reciprocal, so trust and credibility become indispensable.

Evaluated against this definition, distinctions among the strategic partnerships which Mr Modi has sought to advance become clear.

India and Japan share democratic values and a commitment to each other's national strength and economic vitality. They have a common vision of a balanced regional security order with strong normative frameworks to underpin economic prosperity in an Asian Century. Together, they can make a lasting contribution to Asia's power balance, security and stability.

With the United States, PM Modi has restored strategic direction and engaged vital constituencies to sustain a long-term strategic partnership. Apart from affirming support for Mr Modi's domestic agenda and India's economic rise, the Modi-Obama summit has signalled transformative change in bilateral defence and defence industrial cooperation, as well as security cooperation to advance shared interests in regional peace and stability, both bilaterally and in conjunction with other Asia Pacific partners like Japan. India-US relations may continue to witness some short-term stress, but in the long term their interests are more than likely to be aligned.

In comparison, the "strategic" threshold signalled by the India-China summit has restricted bandwidth. India and China have a strategically important relationship with cooperative, competitive and adversarial components, not a "strategic partnership". Mr Modi went out of his way to welcome the Chinese President but made it clear that even progress on economic relations would be difficult to sustain in the face of repeated Chinese border transgressions and the absence of progress in resolving the boundary dispute.

While we can reserve judgment on the future of India's partnerships with the European Union and Russia till after the next India-EU and India-Russia summits, constraining factors are already emerging. With the EU, there can be meaningful economic engagement but the "strategic" element will be limited as the EU lacks the capacity or the inclination to help shape the balance of power in Asia. Russia's importance for India in the areas of defence and energy will continue, but long-term prospects will depend on what kind of Asian order Russia will support.

Meanwhile, India's strategic horizon has already expanded. Taken together, the outcomes of the summits with Japan and the US have enlarged the scope of India's commitments on regional stability and security. If India is to measure up, it will need to scale up contributions to the power equilibrium in the Asia Pacific. It will also need to forge new strategic partnerships in Southeast Asia to support regional order and stability.

The PM recognises this responsibility. In his address to the Combined Commanders Conference on October 17, he observed that the world is looking at India with renewed interest and there is "a universal current of expectation from India to emerge not only as one of the poles of the global economy, but also as one of the anchors of regional and global security".

The EAS summit in Myanmar and the G-20 summit in Australia next month will provide further opportunities for Mr Modi to continue his transformative impact on India's strategic partnerships. Aspirational India will stand to benefit.

Green buildings aren't that green

So are green buildings really green? I want to follow up on our discussions on this critical issue. The building sector is set to grow exponentially. It already has a huge environmental footprint - the domestic and commercial sectors consume some 30 per cent of India's electricity. So the imperative to go green is clear. The question is where India is and where it should go.

The Bureau of Energy Efficiency (BEE) has issued the Energy Conservation Building Code (ECBC) to improve the energy performance of buildings. It is expected that an ECBC-compliant building will use anywhere between 40 and 60 per cent less energy than its conventional counterpart. State governments are now adopting this code in their building permissions - Odisha and Rajasthan have made it mandatory. But enforcement of this code - which is largely prescriptive in terms of building design - remains a challenge.

The code itself has problems but these can be fixed in its next revision. The problem is bigger, when you understand that the code is for building design, with certain assumptions that its implementation will reduce energy use. But a big problem is that the use of the code in design is not linked to the actual performance of the building after it has been commissioned.

What the BEE has in addition is a voluntary star rating scheme, which sets the Energy Performance Index (EPI) of four categories of buildings -day use office, IT/BPO (with extended hours of work), hospitals and retail malls. The EPI is calculated differently for different climatic zones - hot and dry, temperate, composite, and warm and humid. But the rating, which is for an operational building, has no direct link to the ECBC. So there is no data to show what the design has actually achieved and there is no feedback loop that would improve design based on operational experience. Also, as yet, the BEE has not rated any building based on its index.

There are two other green-building certifying agencies in the country. The Indian Green Building Council (IGBC) started out as a United States initiative but is now wholly Indian and is promoted by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII)-Sohrabji Godrej Green Business Centre. It runs a certification programme that rates buildings platinum, gold or silver, based on different criteria. Delhi-based The Energy and Resources Institute has its Green Rating for Integrated Habitat Assessment (GRIHA). Many state governments provide fiscal incentives and even bonus floor area ratio, or FAR, to builders who produce green certificates from these agencies.

The actual proof will, however, be in the actual data on the use of energy and water in a commissioned building. But there is little data on this. In other words, governments are giving away largesse without any verification. A few months ago, the IGBC put on its website information on the actual energy and water consumption of 50 of the buildings it had rated, out of some 450 in total. When my colleagues at the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) analysed this data, all hell broke loose.

Why? Because we found that many reputed companies that had been given platinum rating were actually energy and water guzzlers. Obviously, this is not easy for companies to accept. The CII has written on their behalf arguing that we have got our analysis wrong because we have mixed up the typologies for the buildings. So, they say, ITC Saharanpur is a factory building, which has been compared to an office building. But IGBC gives its rating only for the office operations of a "factory". The CSE in its analysis used the EPI set by the BEE for an office building and found that as against the EPI of 190 for a composite climate, the ITC building has an EPI of 379, which is almost double.

Wipro in Gurgaon is an IT building, with server loads operating for 24 hours. It has been compared against performance benchmarks for an office building, says the CII. But the CII misses the fact that when the CSE compared the same building using the EPI for an IT/BPO complex - calculated as the annual average hourly EPI to take into account its extended hours - it exceeded the energy limits for them as well. Similarly, Wipro's office in Kolkata was found to be more than nine times higher than the minimum benchmark set by the BEE for a warm and humid climate.

The CSE analysis also finds that there are IGBC-rated buildings that match or are below the EPI set for their category for their climatic zone. So something is working, and we hope the CII and its partners will ask how they can learn from the best example so that expensive green features pay off in terms of performance.

More importantly, regulators need to get their act together on this issue. The CSE analysis is based on self-disclosure by companies, which is not verified or audited. The government needs to build a credible system of assurance, so that it can really push what is green, and not just what looks green from the outside but may be brown inside. It is time, as we say, to go beyond the green façade