December 5, 1971: Sea Hawk jet fighters and Alize anti-submarine bombers roar off the decks of aircraft carrier INS Vikrant positioned off the coast of erstwhile East Pakistan. Swooping over Chittagong and Cox's Bazaar they bomb, rocket and strafe General A.A.K. Niazi's cowering 90,000-men army over the next 10 days, preventing its seaward evacuation and hastening the liberation of East Pakistan.

December 5, 2001: Thirty years after international borders in South Asia were redrawn, huge crowds throng the naval dockyard in Mumbai to board the Vikrant, now a museum. On the carrier's deck, the length of two football fields, are the same Sea Hawks and Alizes.

The same month, in Mumbai's Esselworld, Vice-Admiral Vinod Pasricha smashed the customary coconut against the hull of the 245-tonne Prabal. Lodged in a concrete cradle at the theme park after it was retired two years ago, the tiny warship has just been bought and recommissioned as an interactive exhibit. Says Esselworld's Ashok Goel: "This is military hardware that civilians would otherwise be unable to see." True. So far, the only insight the public had into India's vast and secretive military machinery was during the annual Republic Day parade.

The US, UK, France, Russia and China have military museums. But apart from the solitary air force museum in Delhi's Palam, India-which boasts the third, fourth and fifth largest army, air force and navy in the world-did not till recently. Now a host of them are offering civilians a trip into the world of military hardware.

The Vikrant, a 700-ft-long floating museum, offers visitors a two-hour experience of life aboard a seabound airfield for Rs 100. At Esselworld, visitors can walk into Prabal's belly, watch a film on missile boats and poke around crew and officer's quarters. At Visakhapatnam's Vivekananda beach, the Kursura, a Foxtrot class submarine retired after over 30 years of service, is being converted into Asia's first walk-through museum. In Bangalore, Hindustan Aeronautics Limited recently converted a cinema hall into India's first public aviation museum. The Heritage Centre and Museum charts the history of Indian aviation and is backed by an impressive collection of jet aircraft like the Marut, MiG-21, LCA and Canberra bomber. The navy also runs a small naval aviation museum in Goa, while the air force has just opened a modest show in Jaipur, the erstwhile headquarters of its Southwestern Air Command. The aircraft on display include a Sukhoi-7, HT-2 and surface-to-air missiles.

A few years ago, these carriers would have been consigned to a scrapyard. A big warship like the Vikrant can fetch up to Rs 10 crore. But the rewards of keeping an exhibit like the Vikrant for posterity are immeasurable though these exhibits do not come cheap. It cost nearly Rs 1 crore to convert Prabal into an exhibit, the Kursura cost twice as much and Vikrant will cost nearly 10 times more when its restoration is complete. But these exhibits, besides earning a revenue, may just save the government crores of rupees it spends on recruitment ads to revive interest in the armed forces as a career option. And, of course, not limit public appreciation of military hardware to foggy January mornings.