India 2047

Standing on the crossroads of a millennial opportunity, will India be able to make a leap -- let alone a great leap -- into the next century? Here is the big picture.

N A T I O N A L || S E C U R I T Y
Total Overhaul

• Unless New Delhi stands up to Beijing, the Sino-Pakistan umbilical cord will remain and India will find itself tied down.
• The Indian Army will be leaner and meaner, backed by reserves. The importance of the air force and navy will grow steadily, and there will be a new missile corps.

India today finds itself lacking the military muscle to inspire awe, the economic might to win partners or even a political ideology to sway the uncommitted in a world in which power and force remain at the heart of international relations. It should not ignore an important lesson of history: a unilateral desire for peace cannot buy security. That was the message of 1962.

India is discovering that the sustained modernisation of conventional forces is an extremely costly, even prohibitive, process, dependent as the country is on imports of its main weaponry. India's military is ten times the size of Britain's, but is funded by only a quarter of the British outlay on defence. Its steadily declining military budget is one-fourth of China's. The US spends as much on its intelligence as India does on defence.

Conventional defence, howsoever potent, cannot counter non-conventional threats. India will, therefore, inevitably move to a military posture based on overt non-conventional capabilities. Policy-makers also understand that the Sino-Pakistan umbilical cord will snap only if New Delhi can stand up to Beijing. Otherwise, the Chinese strategy of building a countervailing power to tie down India south of the Himalayas will gain deeper roots.

India laid the ground for a shift to strategic defiance with logic by telling the entire world in 1996 that "national security considerations" would henceforth dictate its decision-making.

The security environment could undergo a change, given an accommodation with Pakistan which could be reached in stages. Confidence-building measures, including a mutually-agreed reduction of conventional forces, could lead thereafter to the evolution of a wider saarc security organisation, starting with a joint command for SAARC contributions to UN peacekeeping. These trends will have a bearing on Indian force levels, their composition and deployment, training and command structure, threat perceptions, and strategic doctrine in the Indo-Pakistan context. The country will, however, remain in competition with China.

The Indian armed forces will be leaner and meaner, backed by reserves and paramilitary units. Satellites will be launched to gain advance information on military and other threats and satellite imagery, missile prowess, and space-based laser platforms deployed to deter them.

While the Army will still remain the senior service, the importance of the Air Force, the Navy and a new missile corps will grow steadily with an office of the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff in place. Encouraged by the effective functioning of the Fortress Command in the Andamans, the other separate service commands may begin to be integrated in a new set of combined "theatre", or area commands, which could be in position by 2020. The present Ministry of Defence, with parallel civil and military echelons, will undergo complete reorganisation as will the whole gamut of intelligence services which will see greater integration despite rivalries.

Longer-term national security will depend on a holistic approach that integrates economic and security planning. For instance, with domestic oil and gas production falling below soaring demand, India has to ensure that the energy situation does not affect its future strategic decision-making.

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